CWU and The Green Party

[bustedflush]

Bizarre post. It's a matter of historical fact that Stalin was a genocidal maniac second only to that other piece of filth Mao in the "millions killed" league tables.

It's bizarre that an educated adult could fail to distinguish between the legacy of Marx the man and the legacy of those who took from his theories and shaped them for their own gain.
Was Adam Smith also to blame or Engels or Hegel?

I bet you wouldn't say the same about Marie Stopes and eugenics.

[fishtank]

Have you read any Marx Tman?
Honestly now..

Proper book read, not bits and bobs from here and there.

[fishtank]

I bet you wouldn't say the same about Marie Stopes and eugenics.

Why?

[Tman]

Have you read any Marx Tman?
Honestly now..

Proper book read, not bits and bobs from here and there.

No I haven't..life's too short and there's better works of fiction I still wish to read.
Then again, I've never read the Bible or a Haynes manual for a Vauxhall Astra, but I know enough what to expect should I ever desire to give them a go.
Your not really basing your point on some vacuous "I've read it and you haven't" scenario, surely?
Don't tell me, Stalin hadn't read it either and that's why millions died but it wasn't really Uncle Joe's or Marx's fault etc etc....

[fishtank]

Don't tell me, Stalin hadn't read it either and that's why millions died but it wasn't really Uncle Joe's or Marx's fault etc etc....

Marx was a political, social and economic theorist.
Like any theorist he got some things right and some wrong, It's what theorists do.
He was long dead before Stalin decided to take his theories and test a select few out on fifty million starving people. Stalin was an evil c***, Marx was just bones in the ground at the time.

[jetblack]

Have you read any Marx ?

No I haven't.

Well, at least you are honest.

Cos I thought for a minute there that you were a paid shill .


You know you are in trouble (the working class that is) when Marx is a dirty word on a trade union forum.

[Tman]

I thought the days of union members or hierarchy ever proclaiming themselves to be, or having leanings to Marxism gradually went out in the 1970s when it became clear that the USSR etc couldn't keep themselves in toothpaste or green potatoes, and far from being any sort of workers' utopia, living conditions were basic in the extreme (for the masses, anyway) and the regime repressive.
Then when the Wall came down, the consequent flood of former Communist Bloc residents to the affluent West, in itself confirmed that all the silly "I'm a Marxist-Leninist, me" students and all the old union room BCP members had in fact been f*cked-over in the biggest and worst way possible; it was all a bubble, riddled by corruption and inefficiencies, and only kept in place by the huge and various secret police net works.
Feel free to believe it still has any merit or value, but the vast majority have long since seen the light.
The "working class" (if such still exists in anything other than the minds of die-hard self-styled class warrior throw-backs) is more interested in the X Factor or how well Chelsea are doing, but then in reality it was ever thus, and most are probably unaware who the idiot Marx even was, let alone be concerned with how his evil legacy has cost so many millions of lives and caused so much misery for those workers unlucky enough to be born in one of the countries blighted by Marxist/communist dictatorships..

[meercat]

Tman calls Marx a moron? lol

You are conflating Marxism and Stalinism which is not fair or accurate. Marx was a theorist, Stalin a dictator.

Marx was a very intelligent political theorist amongst other things so moron is not really a suitable critique. Despite what you seem to think he advocated a peaceful transition from Capitalism to a fairer less centralised system. As I understand it he did suggested some Capitalist states may need to be transitioned by force but that does not mean he sanctioned anything other than the forceful removal of the political elite if they actively resisted the wishes of the majority.

If you blame Marx for Stalin's actions and decisions you are doing the same as blaming Jesus Christ for the actions of the Crusaders like Richard the Lionheart or David Koresh.

Communism is not an excuse for evil and it is NOT supposed to be a dictatorship program. It has been corrupted and abused to perpetrate evil. But have a look at how much war has been created by Capitalist or Socialist states. Germany was a Socialist state in WW2, is Socialism an evil? USA was a Capitalist state during Vietnam. Is Capitalism evil?

[Tman]

All those various points you've made have been finely-honed since it became obvious that communism/Marxism/whatever was neither working nor acceptable to those who suffered under it, and the same basic premise has always been "ah, yeah, but Stalin/Mao/Khruschev/Castro/Honecker/Hotha (and a hundred more) didn't really follow Marxism properly, and if they had, things could have been different".
Whether "their" interpretation of it differs to yours is pure speculation, but Marxism/communism was the political and societal basis of the regimes they imposed, and so to try to distance Marxism from the irrational and evil regimes spawned by the old fool's nonsensical and false theories is merely ar*e-covering (by those sucker enough to have believed it) on a grand scale.
Even dear old Tony Benn had seen the light by the time he died, and finally admitted that barbed wire and minefields on a country's borders designed to keep the populace in showed that something must be deeply flawed in that country...

[fishtank]

A great deal of Marx's theories do not even concern politics, most of his social and philosophical theories are accepted by academics of all persuasions as fact, his critique of capitalism, globalisation, boom and bust and market forces have been proven correct, the flaws in capitalism are all there to see.

What Marx got wrong was the mistaken belief that the paper solution he had found could be applied in practice. It can't because it completely ignored the most base of human instincts...greed. Building any kind of political system without factoring in greed is like building a car without an engine, Sadly greed is what drives us, no point in pretending otherwise.

[Tman]

"Greed" is a fair point, although too simplistic a description of how/why Marxism is bunk. More than greed, Marx couldn't (or wouldn't) recognise that people differ for a multitude of reasons, not just how much money they wish to amass in a lifetime.
Of course, the old faker probably never did see the irony in what he was theorising, given that he came from a wealthy middle-class background.
Still, his books sold well and made him(or his estate) money, so I suppose that's capitalism (for all it's many and varied faults) in action again.

[bustedflush]

I thought the days of union members or hierarchy ever proclaiming themselves to be, or having leanings to Marxism gradually went out in the 1970s when it became clear that the USSR etc couldn't keep themselves in toothpaste or green potatoes, and far from being any sort of workers' utopia, living conditions were basic in the extreme (for the masses, anyway) and the regime repressive.
Then when the Wall came down, the consequent flood of former Communist Bloc residents to the affluent West, in itself confirmed that all the silly "I'm a Marxist-Leninist, me" students and all the old union room BCP members had in fact been f*cked-over in the biggest and worst way possible; it was all a bubble, riddled by corruption and inefficiencies, and only kept in place by the huge and various secret police net works.
Feel free to believe it still has any merit or value, but the vast majority have long since seen the light.
The "working class" (if such still exists in anything other than the minds of die-hard self-styled class warrior throw-backs) is more interested in the X Factor or how well Chelsea are doing, but then in reality it was ever thus, and most are probably unaware who the idiot Marx even was, let alone be concerned with how his evil legacy has cost so many millions of lives and caused so much misery for those workers unlucky enough to be born in one of the countries blighted by Marxist/communist dictatorships..

I can add little to this; you have saved me some typing.

[jetblack]

Marx's analysis of the workings/machinations of capitalism are pretty much accepted across the board - the question becomes, are the inevitable inequalities justifiable or acceptable ?
Marx said no - and, putting it simply, his solution was the public/common ownership of the means of production. This used to be enshrined in the Labour Party constitution until very recently. Much of the world adopts public ownership of the nations wealth - and it works admirably for them.
Of course, here in the UK (and the US) we are in the curious position of having a political ideology that finds it necessary to put into private ownership that which is profit making and which was previously held in public hands (ie. Royal Mail) - and on the other hand, to put into public ownership that which is loss making (eg. RBS).
In other words, the profits are privatised and the losses are nationalised. It absolutely stinks - and if you want to understand how this comes about you need an understanding of how capitalism works > Marx. Maybe have a look at Piketty if you find the idea of reading Marx too much

On the other hand maybe you are one of those who believe 0.1% of the world's population owning as much wealth as the poorer 50% is an acceptable, albeit unfortunate, outcome of global capitalism.

Here, you don't work for HSBC do you ?

[Tman]

The national disgrace of the last 30-odd years, so-called "privatisation" (started by Tha*cher) is now to be used as a defence of/for Marxist philosophy?
Pick a viewpoint that's pretty much universal and conflate that with another entirely separate argument...? Really?

[fishtank]

The.problem with private ownership of public services is that they don't produce the kind of savings and efficiencies they promise, Instead of a bloated public sector we end up paying for a monopolist private version where profits are made purely off the back of cheap labour then siphoned off into offshore bank accounts.

The irony is this private sector suckling at the state teat is not that far away from Marxism/communism itself, it's certainly nothing to do with the kind of laissez faire economics so loved by the right wing.