as karl marx said (almost)

[borders]

the use of mechanisation, while inevitable, emphasizes this trend. it will not make the job easier or provide a better service or a more enjoyable job, merely allow the company to make more money.

Maybe, but isn't your car/clothing/household appliances/furniture/medication/most food etc all done with or by mechanisation?

If cars, clothes, and the rest was all still done by hand, do you think the average waged working Joe could afford it?

So there are benefits to mechanisation/automation and so therefore it isn't just about making more money.

so what are the benefits to RM workers due to this introduction of new mechanisation/automation ?

[Tman]

so what are the benefits to RM workers due to this introduction of new mechanisation/automation ?

I'll let the people who're paid to manually sort mail thrash that one out, but automation (whatever the industry) obviously isn't brought in just to help out the workers in that industry. But then RM (whatever the Daily Mail may say) doesn't exist for the RM worker's benefit.....

[Harry_Perkins]

ah but he did. do you know why cliches are cliches? because over time they've been shown again and again too be true.

Cliche.. "a hackneyed phrase or opinion" Oxford English Dictionary. Nothing whatsoever to do with "shown again and again to be true".

marx was no fool. read his works and you'll see. many things he predicted have come to pass. his vision of the future didnt happen in the 20th century, and not all of it will, but it should be noted the communist states werent truly marxist. a great if flawed mind who we all owe much too.

Of course, you can say that from the relative peace and comfort of a Western non-communist society, but millions lived and died under (and many died trying to escape from) the Communist/Marxist utopias anywhere from the Caribbean and Eastern Europe, to Africa and the Far East. Most couldn't wait to get rid of it, but I should think their opinions of Marxism count for rather more than yours.

It was far, far more complex than you are suggesting. For a start, a lot of the movements that cropped up in Eastern Europe in the 80s, against so called communism, were left-wing in nature. The focus of their anger was not at the planned economies that were in place - only the lack of democracy with that planning. This is why these societies weren't socialist but state capitalist. Yes, they called themselves socialist but then Fred Phelps calls himself a Christian and so does the Archbishop of Canterbury but there is a hell of a gap between their different views of Christianity. The same with socialism.

See this extensive poll that was complied for the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin war earlier this year: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/8347409.stm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

So in answer to your question: something like 75%-80% of Russians and Ukrainians, which made up a huge percentage of the entire population of the Soviet Union, believe its demise was a bad thing. On top of that you have parts of the Soviet Union that were more democratic and so where there was little dissatisfaction with the system at all. They had the planned economies and some limited forms of real democracy. If the whole thing was about hatred of communism, why wasn't it universal in all the so called communist states? Hungary is a good example of this: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... -life.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

When people ask me what it was like growing up behind the Iron Curtain in Hungary in the Seventies and Eighties, most expect to hear tales of secret police, bread queues and other nasty manifestations of life in a one-party state. They are invariably disappointed when I explain that the reality was quite different, and communist Hungary, far from being hell on earth, was in fact, rather a fun place to live.The communists provided everyone with guaranteed employment, good education and free healthcare. Violent crime was virtually non-existent.

.....

It was discontent with these conditions of the early years of communism that led to the Hungarian uprising in 1956. The shock waves brought home to the communist leadership that they could consolidate their position only by making our lives more tolerable. Stalinism was out and 'goulash communism' - a unique brand of liberal communism - was in. Janos Kadar, the country's new leader, transformed Hungary into the 'happiest barracks' in Eastern Europe. We probably had more freedoms than in any other communist country.

So no, it is not simply the case that couldn't wait to get rid of the whole system - they wanted rid of certain aspects of the system. Aspects which are nothing to do with socialism but in fact are entirely in keeping with the realities in the west, ie undemocratic, unaccountable planning, private or public, from above. In this respect, the Soviet Union was no different to the west.

As for Marx - you need to separate his work out. On the one hand you have his analysis of the prevailing social relations - how society works. No one can doubt this work remains pertinent. Otherwise, why are we still discussing him now? So there is his analysis of capitalism and then there is his ideas on communism. Which you can take or leave. Either way, for me, the thing about Marx is, no matter what you think on communism - I still find him a more engaging and interesting thinker than all those who claim to have refuted him. And I'm sure he'd be having a good laugh in his grave at all the fools who claimed they'd ended boom and bust or that we'd reached the end of history.

[Tman]

Thanks for the considered reply. It makes a change from the usual rhetoric...

However, no matter what the results of the survey (and you have to wonder how the questions were posed to get those results) there was still a headlong rush for the old Communist Bloc countries to rid themselves of communism back then, and even though those same countries may be suffering now, there's no appetite or desire to return to that era in any shape or form.

You also have to question that if the average person was so contented under communism in those countries, why did so many escape to the hated West (or die in the attempt)? Why did West Germans drive some of the best designed and engineered cars in the world, but East Germans drove a car made of papier mache with a two-stroke engine if they were lucky enough to get one? Why did the Communist Bloc install many miles of heavily fortified frontier solely to keep all those happy and contented people in, and why the Stasi in East Germany was one of the biggest and most extensive internal security organisations ever seen?
Does sound like societies happy and successful to me, free concerts and summer camps or not....

As for why people still discuss Marx, that's probably down to the fact that the charlatan was indirectly responsible for the deaths and misery of millions world-wide, and yet the revisonists and fantasists still think his drivel has something to offer the world. Strange people....

[Harry_Perkins]

Well again, they were at best rushing to get rid of state capitalism. It was nothing to do with communism (small 'c') or socialism, for that matter. Indeed, they wanted the freedom to visit the west, they wanted a higher standard of living etc but this just illustrates the point that these were left-wing movements seeking reform. They did not want the public tyrannies they lived in replaced by the private tyrannies that seamlessly took their place.

Milton Friedman talked about the greatest threat to freedom being the narrow concentration of power. Which is absolutely correct. He was thinking Communism but the problem is he forgot (or deliberately ignored) one the greatest narrow concentrations of power there is: private economic power. Quite simply, the 'free world' wasn't/isn't free and the 'communist' world wasn't communist.

As for Marx and the results of state capitalism - he can't be blamed for Lenin/Stalin anymore than Jesus can be blamed for the all the things done his name. Where is the Jesus quote which says you should picket the funerals of dead American soldiers with anti-gay placards? (Fred Phelps). In the same way, Lenin and Trotsky didn't read Marx properly or tried to find shortcuts that didn't exist.

[postie09]

Tman, not a pointed question in anyway, have you read any of Marx's writings? As you seem vaguely interested you might enjoy it. There's a collection of it done by a guy called Eugene Kamenka which is a pretty good introduction

[Tman]

Only snippets over the years, but it would be pretty pointless now unless you're a student of historical political ideologies.
I'm sure there's bits of it that would seem to make sense, and other parts that would be laughable, but as it's a discredited ideology based on various unworkable tenets, and highly unlikely ever to be used as a basis for any country's political system, surely it's best to consign it to the past?

[postie09]

Only snippets over the years, but it would be pretty pointless now unless you're a student of historical political ideologies.
I'm sure there's bits of it that would seem to make sense, and other parts that would be laughable, but as it's a discredited ideology based on various unworkable tenets, and highly unlikely ever to be used as a basis for any country's political system, surely it's best to consign it to the past?

oh yeah agree, just didn't know if you are interested in historical political ideologies

[k979aaa]

Only snippets over the years, but it would be pretty pointless now unless you're a student of historical political ideologies.
I'm sure there's bits of it that would seem to make sense, and other parts that would be laughable, but as it's a discredited ideology based on various unworkable tenets, and highly unlikely ever to be used as a basis for any country's political system, surely it's best to consign it to the past?

A bit like CAPITALISM after all we are all paying for it now!.