Saturday, 25 January 2014

Telegraph Discussions




  • In France, les poulets are coming home to roost

    • prolerat     • 13 hours ago 
      Taxation is a burden on the capitalist class.Even the state capitalist class.It is a trade off.Give reforms and cradle to grave social security or get revolution eventually.Personally I am in favour of getting off our knees and making the revolution.The capitalist class will throw reforms at us.
    • prolerat     • 13 hours ago 
      ..and it is not socialism anyway.It is state capitalism.It is also in fear of the democratic will of the people to some extent.No bad thing I would have thought.

  • Discussion on Telegraph

    Ed Miliband: only Labour can rebuild our middle class

    •  hyufd 
    • Even with communal ownership you will still have murders, rapes, divorces etc which will all need lawyers to adjudicate on. In Cuba now over 70% of industry is owned by the state, if that is not socialism what is. The fact is any socialist society always has a lower GDP per capita than a capitalist one which is why most people do not support it and do not want to see their property confiscated, even if they support everyone having a basic means of support. Given the choice between your commune and the opportunity to be rewarded for the work they do most people will take the latter. To take a classic example, if someone who is hard working finds all the products of his labour redistributed equally to someone who does no work at all that hits society both ways, the hard workers will work less hard as he gets no reward for his labours and the lazy worker will see no need to work hard and will become even more lazy as he knows he will be amply rewarded even if he does no work at all!
    • prolerat     • Reply Your work example is a variation of the ‘Human Nature’ argument.It assumes a mindset which carries over from capitalism.The majority who make the revolution won’t be amenable to its failure.When asked ,”who will do the dirty work” the socialists reply,”Me”.
      Cuba is not an example of a socialist society.It still has waged labour and capital.Workers don’t own and control the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth the state does.So GDP in statist countries is irrelevant.How can it be socialism in one tiny country anyway? Is GDP a measure of human happiness anyway.
      I am looking at the facts of 18 thousand children dieing every day in capitalism.Does the fact of the part of the world I live in having a bouncy GDP make me happier about that?
      Socialism will be a global society.
      Whatever sort of criminal behaviour proceeds from a society where we all own everything in common can be deliberated upon by the populace in general.
      We wont need to adjudicate on property division or divorce in a free society. Juries can do most of the other stuff.It is unlikely that a set of codified Laws or Rules will be needed save for safety reasons…
      But we will need to get there.I can’t really do more than speculate.Is it likely that rape will persist in anything like the numbers it does today, when power relations have been removed.Will people still try to dominate or possess sexual partners?I doubt it.
      There is much discussion about these matters in socialist circles.You can see by my reply where I am at so far.
      Do you know what the murder rate or rape rate is in Cuba?
    • prolerat     • 14 hours ago 
      No .We won’t need lawyers.We will just split up from relationships.There won’t be any estates to divide up.Any murders will be dealt with by the community however they decide to organise it.
      It remains to be seen if rape will occur in anything like the proportion it does in capitalism with its macho, competitive, dominance, ethos.Women will be revolutionaries too, who make the new society in their interests.They won’t be subjugated or submissive to power being exercised over them.
      It is state capitalism in Cuba.They still have waged labour and the state is organised as the main employer.They also have regular capitalism and this is bound to increase as the embargo is lifted.
      You are not comparing socialism with capitalism but with different methods of administering capitalism. Nationalisation has nothing to do with socialism.
      A free access society means no-one is left out ,but we have equal access.This doesn’t imply that we take equally some will need more and take it some less.Access will be self-determined.
    • prolerat     • 14 hours ago 
      Getting it into some perspective.The richest 85 people in the world have as much wealth as the poorest 3.5bn.
    • prolerat     • 14 hours ago 
      Twice I have tried to reply to you.Your human nature argument is a religious one.Human behaviour is a social construction and is determined by social conditions.



      prolerat        stocasticus
      • a day ago

      I see the moderator has allowed your rant but not my reply to all the points.
      I reject tour ‘Human Nature’ argument totally.it is religious argument incorporating a flawed human who is predisposed to ‘sin’ etc.Absolute stuff and nonsense.
      Rather I see it as human behaviour which is socially conditioned.In a dog eat dog competitive environment which is stratified and rewards this by riches,spoils,loot then behaviour which outwith the competitive norms is seen as ‘loser’ type and within those norms,only sinful or ant-social if caught out,as criminal, before success throws them to the top of the heap of looters, buccaneers.
      Socialism/Communism as I use the terms, mean the same thing ,as Marx used them,interchangeably.i.e. The common ownership and democratic control of all the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth.
      The Soviet Union was State capitalist with some private capitalism.The E/U definitely capitalist enterprise with some reformist and statist direction, but hell it was after two world wars.The same situation about state intervention applied across the globe where countries had run their railways into the ground and industries had been regimented for war production.
      You said,”We have societies because we have rules which inflict penalties on those who break them. ”
      No ,we have rules because you have societies and in class societies it is the powerful who shape this process.Once they have nicked the loot they have to hang onto it after all.If the rules get in the way they have ‘learned’ assistance to change them.(The best government,law,education, money can buy etc.)
      Hence the dominant ideas in class society are always those of the ruling class.The banking industry isn’t a law free stage, but it is a powerful vested interest, so carries a lot of clout.The point of capitalism in boom times is you keep raking in what cash is going.It will all happen again,but that is the essential anarchic nature of the market.It is not amenable to being interfered with or cries of ‘socialism by the back door’, will emanate from which ever group of vested interest capitalists are hurting .
      By the way,”Thou shalt not kill ” was a moral absolute and this sacred tenet has been much modified by religious bodies as part of the ideological reinforcement of dominant values,to fit the acquisitive impulses of leaders,aspirant leaders,states etc.
      You also assume a flawed assumption which I do not have.I don’t counterpose your bad,or inoncorrect,’human nature’ moral argument with an opposite,”absolutely good and honest”one.Far from it.
      My argument is not a moral argument,but a material one.Simply put, that such behaviour as hoarding,more than is needed will just be seen, as intrinsically disordered or just eccentric, in a free access society.If you take more than you need you will stink your house out.We won’t need to engage in anti-social behaviours. We don’t hoard the air we breath so it would amount to this type of silliness.
      They don’t need to feel it in their hearts.It is in their heads they need to know it.That it is in their immediate economic and political interest to overthrow the dominant class in society and establish a new one where no class is dominant and all wealth is owned in common and controlled democratically in conditions of free access.Once they have this level of political awareness then they will resist the reforms which the capitalist class suddenly feel able to throw at them.The Soviet Union,China, etc were jacobinistic style leader led ,products of overthrowing feudalism.They were not and could not be proletarian revolutions but capitalist ones.You will need to do some reading from a real socialist perspective.
      There is nothing metaphysical about Marx or me.Capitalism won’t last forever.Marx makes a materialist argument as I do.It is your intrinsically flawed,ideologically reinforced,incorrect, ‘Human Nature’ argument which is more of a metaphysical one.
      I have made it abundantly clear I don’t support the idea of professional revolutionaries.This is a left-right wing delusion.If we ever put up candidates presently, we insist that people ‘don’t’ vote for us, just in protest,we don’t want pseudo supporters or numbers of ignorant cadres, but only to vote if they understand and support the revolutionary ideas some of which I have outlined.
      Socialists of my kind don’t have leaders and will not be leaders.
      The battle of ideas wont be won by gulled supporters, but by convinced workers resolute and determined to form a revolutionary majority for an idea which time has come, and nothing will stop.
    • prolerat     • 14 hours ago 
      None the less. There are some exceptionally highly paid workers.You will have exceptions to the general rule.Lawyers are prized as they help the capitalist class legitimate their ownership of their plunder.
      It also conforms to the “labour theory of value”,where the value of a commodity is determined by the amount of socially necessary labour time incorporated within it, and Market rates for surgeons set for the surgeons commodity,”labour time” in a rigged market also.
      There will be no need for lawyers when everything is commonly owned, but surgeons will still be a highly regarded occupation.
      The difference will be that the choice of medicine will be undertaken for the social rewards,to heal the sick,I am sure most or a lot of medical people work from this perspective, rather than a financial one.
      I reject totally the idea that socialism has ever existed, even in embryonic form in any of these countries. A convenient ideology reinforcing fiction.It was state capitalism.Lenin himself admitted ,”state capitalism would be a step forward for us”.The US defence secretary or Sec. odf State john Foster Dulles, under Eisenhour administration at the time, prior to the missile crisis,said this to Kruschev that,” what you have is state capitalism”.
    • prolerat     • 18 hours ago 
      The US version is neither proper nor accurate.They do not constitute a social class i.e. with specific class interests in relation to the means of production and distribution of resources.They are ,if they have to work for a living for a wage or salary,working class, who have more in common with fellow workers from a class interest perspective,than with the rich or capitalist or parasite class.
      The British version is also a flawed,ideological cultural construct, designed to deflect from actual class position and where economic interests i.e.IOW getting rid of the capitalist class and ultimately ending social divisions in conditions of free access…
    • prolerat     • a day ago 
      Again.How can these be defined as middle class?They are only a couple of paychecks away from a foodbank. They are wageslaves like the rest of us.

  • Discussion on Common Drea



    • stocasticus to  prolerat

      Para 1 : It has been tried but has failed almost immediately because it is unstable for the reasons I have given about human nature. You only need a few egotistical people who are power hungry to unbalance such a system. Some people are highly competitive and will use such a system to gain advantage. Even if you do find a group who can work together, as you seem to be suggesting, who knows what future generations are going to bring forth?
      Para 4 : I would need your definition of socialism as mine is very much in the order of the Soviet Union and in my view the EU is also in this order. I feel what you are referring to is communism which has never really been tried in the strict sense of the term.
      Para 5 : We have societies because we have rules which inflict penalties on those who break them. But because we do not have total transparency some with power get away with ‘murder’. Also, those with powers in different areas tend to find it to their advantage to work with each other and hence create opaqueness for their own greedy means. This is what we have seen in the banking industry where they have been giving a law free stage to act as they wish. Essentially if people aren’t restrained in their actions they will be totally venal. The law ‘you shall not kill’ really means ‘please don’t kill me and I wont kill you, in order that we can share our skills and we can both gain.’ However, the banks don’t need us and so don’t care if they leave us to die in the streets – hence RBS is quite happy to asset strip very viable companies by running them into the ground, because they don’t even need British companies to survive and work.
      Para 6,7 : As I have said not everyone is like that and so a society based on the flawed assumption that everyone is absolutely good and honest will never work. There are 62 million people in Britain how do you have a relationship with all those and how do you guarantee that none are psychologically damaged or just totally selfish?
      Para 9 : How do you guarantee that everyone feels this genuinely in their hearts. You can’t impose this or demand this from 62 million people. People feel the way they do, not from choice but because this is what wells up into them from their psyches. You can’t control human nature. This is the arrogance of man and leads him into all manner of folly such as the ideologies of the USSR, EU, Mao etc.
      OK, so you have a Marxist outlook. Marx held to a similar belief and perspective of life as Hegel in that man’s history was leading to better things; a kind of teleology. Only Marx’ was earthly/ materialistic and Hegel more spiritually nuanced but both were metaphysical. This is fallacious, no such thing is going on and in fact the perfect arrangement for society, an utopian life, is just not possible; it’s an unachievable dream. We can just as easily go back to living as troglodytes.
      You can’t have stateless and classless human beings because we naturally form bonds to the people we are close to and that in itself will create divisions of some kind, which is all that those things (states, class etc.) are. Our conscious wishes are worthless and weak compared to our psychologies that are at work within us driving our emotions which are more powerful than we are. In effect you are trying to be ‘God’ and like the Tower of Babel will come crashing down if you try to impose this kind of order. The ills of our society that you so wish to eliminate will just rear their ugly heads again somewhere and in some form or other. As for the last quote have you asked the majority if they want this or are you going to impose it on them, against their wishes, like some determined enlightened professional revolutionary who will liberate the working class by demanding their cooperation?
      • Avatar


        prolerat to  stocasticus

        Para 1
        I reject the ‘Human Nature’ argument totally.it is religious argument incorporating a flawed human who is predisposed to ‘sin’ etc.Absolute nonsense.
        Rather I see it as human behaviour which is socially conditioned.In a dog eat dog competitive environment which is stratified and rewards this by riches,spoils,loot then behaviour which outwith the competitive norms is seen as ‘loser’ type and within those norms,only sinful or ant-social if caught out,as criminal, before success throws them to the top of the heap of looters, buccaneers.
        ——————-
        Para4,
        Socialism/Communism as I use the terms, mean the same thing ,as Marx used them,interchangeably.i.e. The common ownership and democratic control of all the
        means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth.The soviet Union was State capitalist with some private capitalism.The E/U definitely capitalist enterprise with some reformist and statist direction, but hell it was after two world wars.The same situation about state intervention applied across the globe where countries had run their railways into the ground and industries had been regimented for war production.
        Para5.
        You said,”We have societies because we have rules which inflict penalties on those who break them. ”
        ———–
        No ,you have rules because you have societies and in class societies it is the powerful who shape this process.Once they have nicked the loot they have to hang onto it after all.If the rules get in the way they have ‘learned’ assistance to change them.(The best government,law,education, money can buy etc.)Hence the dominant ideas in class society are always those of the ruling class.The banking industry isn’t a law free stage, but it is a powerful vested interest, so carries a lot of clout.The point of capitalism in boom times is you keep raking in what cash is going.It will all happen again,but that is the essential anarchic nature of the market.It is not amenable to being interfered with or cries of ‘socialism by the back door’, will emanate from which ever group of vested interest capitalists are hurting .
        By the way,”Thou shalt not kill ” was a moral absolute and this sacred tenet has been much modified by religious bodies as part of the ideological reinforcement of dominant values,to fit the acquisitive impulses of leaders,aspirant leaders,states etc. .
        ———————–
        Para 6,7 :
        You assume a flawed assumption which I do not have.
        I don’t counterpose your basically bad,or intrinsically disordered ,’human nature’ moral argument with an opposite,”absolutely good and honest”.Far from it.My argument is not a moral argument,but a material one.
        Simply that such behaviours as hoarding,more than is needed will just be seen, as intrinsically disordered or just eccentric, in a free access society.If you take more than you need you will stink your house out.We won’t need to engage in anti-social behaviours. We don’t hoard the air we breath so it would amount to this type of silliness.
        Para 9 :
        Just a rehash of your human nature argument.They don’t need to feel it in their hearts.It is in their heads they need to know it.That it is in their immediate economic and political interest to overthrow the dominant class in society and establish a new one where no class is dominant and all wealth is owned in common and controlled democratically in conditions of free access.Once they have this level of political awareness then they will resist the reforms which the capitalist class suddenly feel able to throw at them.The Soviet Union,China, etc were products of overthrowing feudalism.They were not and could not be proletarian revolutions but capitalist ones.You will need to do some reading from a real socialist perspective.
        http://socialismoryourmoneybac…
        http://socialismoryourmoneybac…
        http://socialismoryourmoneybac…
        http://socialismoryourmoneybac…
        http://socialismoryourmoneybac…
        There is nothing metaphysical about Marx or me.capitalism won’t last forever.Marx makes a materialist argument as I do.It is your intrinsically flawed,ideologically reinforced,incorrect, ‘Human Nature’ argument which is a metaphysical one.
        You begin to rant somewhat near the end.I have made it abundantly clear I don’t support the idea of professional revolutionaries.This is a left wing delusion.If we ever put up candidates presently, we insist that people ‘don’t’ vote for us, just in protest,we don’t want pseudo supporters or numbers of ignorant cadres, but only to vote if they understand and support the revolutionary ideas some of which I have outlined.
        The battle of ideas wont be won by gulled supporters, but by convinced workers resolute and determined to form a revolutionary majority for an idea which time has come, and nothing will stop.
    • prolerat     • 5 hours ago 
      I think even Adam Smith (With Ricardo, Marx’s favourite economist) despaired at the implementation of all that ,when he saw business combinations enshrined but workers ones bloodily dispersed.
      We can’t have capitalism without periodic crisis and the rich can live off their fat while the rest have to struggle.So prosperity is not shared.It just can’t be made fair or fairer.
    • prolerat     • 5 hours ago 
      Capitalism is not the natural order of things .It is a SOCIAL construct.It has come into being oozing blood from every pore and it will die out of being.
      Either we replace it with a truly humane society in which everyone has freely self determined access to the social product,call it socialism,communism,anarchism,or macaroni, as you will or we descend into the barbarism you fear.
      One thing is certain rival capitalist nations and power blocs are eyeballing each other up as we speak,at the North Pole,the South China seas,this isn’t because they are ‘bad’ people.It is because war and poverty are essential concomitants of capitalism.
    • prolerat     • 5 hours ago 
      Nonsense.This has ‘never’ been tried.The Soviet Union was a follow on from the Feudal Russian Empire and could only establish capitalism.
      For its anti-democratic elitism and its advocacy of an irrelevant transitional society misnamed “socialism”, in theory and in practice, Leninism today deserves the hostility of workers everywhere. Lenin seriously distorted Marxism and thereby severely damaged the development of the socialist movement.
      ‘When the International was formed we expressly formulated the battle cry: The emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves. We cannot, therefore, co-operate with people who openly state that the workers are too uneducated to emancipate themselves and must be freed from above by philanthropic big bourgeois and petty bourgeois.’ (Marx Engels 1879)
      The EU was an attempt to form a trading bloc to prevent rival capitalist nations in Europe from going to war again over raw materials ,trade routes and other empire building adventures.Damn all to do with socialism.
      Your view of human nature is also a distorted one.If it were our nature to be as you described we wouldn’t have any such thing as society as we know it.
      Society ,even in capitalism,functions because of co-operation,even to the extent of people volunteering their services for free.The National Lifeboats etc.is one specific example.The blood transfusion service another.
      What we should focus on , rather than a negative view of human nature , is human behaviour which is a social construct and can be made and unmade arising from the relationships we undergo in our society.
      In a dog each dog class society with its competitive environment, with accumulate! accumulate! as its dominant ethos,with wealth owned by the minority and the rest having to compete to be employed in their service,we do indeed have the behaviour you attribute to seeking and gaining power.
      In a truly free society where competition is not the dominant ethos and we were proceeding from a cooperative tenet such as ,”From each according to their ability to each according to their needs”, human behaviour would have undergone a revolutionary change which chimes with our co-operative and social animal type endeavours..
      Marx’s theory of socialist revolution is grounded on the fundamental principle that “the emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself”.
      Marx held to this view throughout his entire forty years of socialist political activity, and it distinguished his theory of social change from that of both those who appealed to the princes, governments and industrialists to change the world for the benefit of the working class (such as Robert Owen and Saint Simon) and of those who relied on the determined action of some enlightened minority of professional revolutionaries to liberate the working class (such as Buonarotti, Blanqui and Weitling).
      There is a wide chasm between the views of Marx and those of Lenin in their understanding of the nature of socialism, of how it would be achieved and of the manner of its administration.
      Marx’s vision is a stateless, classless and moneyless society which, by its nature, could only come to fruition when a conscious majority wanted it and wherein the affairs of the human family would be democratically administered.
      A form of social organisation in which people would voluntarily contribute their skills and abilities in exchange for the freedom of living in a society that guarantees their needs and wherein the poverty, repression and violence of capitalism would have no place.
      “the proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority ”- The Communist Manifesto
    • prolerat     • 13 hours ago 
      For workers to collectively decide to take power out of the hands of a minority class,who will send your sons to die in foreign fields,deny food clothing shelter and medicine to your brothers and sisters all over the globe unless they can make a profit from them, and to share this collectively with you, is railroading you?Poor wee you.Notwithstanding the ‘nutter’ epithet earlier, I had thought you were an intelligent correspondent.I am quite willing to agree to disagree ,but I am just a little cork bobbing about in a sea of murder and mayhem trying to plug it, until you all come to your senses and say enough of capitalism, let’s harness its technological advances,its scientific breakthroughs,all created by workers by hand and by brain and make a post capitalist future for all to benefit and no one is left outside the bounteous repast which is possible from a completed human family.
    • prolerat     • a day ago 
      There is no middle class and hasn’t been so since the industrial revolution and the dominant class became the capitalist one.The landed gentry moved into the new money and the others, if they have to work for a wage or salary in order to get the necessities of life,including school fees for young Dimkins are members of the working class.
      An amusing take on the above,
    • prolerat     • a day ago 
      Kinnock, Mandelson, Milliband etc are all supporters of capitalist wage slavery and class society in general.The are not socialists.the best that could be said is they want a nicer capitalism with not as much inequality.An impossible dream,as capitalism can’t be reformed and has to be overthrown in a democratic revolution.This can only happen when the majority know and understand what they are doing and why they must do it themselves without leaders.
    • prolerat     • a day ago 
      Farage is a political opportunist,making nice noises for the herd, who will do the same as all politicians,Left Right or Centre, if he is ever in a position to govern,he will govern in the interests of the national and collective capitalist class.They may trim and tail in slightly different directions but you will still be left with a national and world capitalist class doing very well thank while 90% are in relative or actual poverty.(Defined in relation to the Gross product of our collective endeavours.)
    • prolerat     • a day ago 
      It is because I do understand power I want a real demos where no -one can possibly wield it. Your thinking is dominated by present structures.
      A real democracy where everyone has equal access to its collective produce and ownership is in common, can’t establish such structures.Where we can delegate when necessary with the delegates being instantly recall-able.
      Socialism opens up a great range of new possibilities. With the populations of all countries co-operating as one people, working together in their common interests whilst celebrating their cultural differences and joining in democratically deciding a new future, the prospects can only be seen as exciting. What a contrast with the dreary prospects of electing yet another capitalist government and giving a further lease of life for an out-dated capitalist state.
    • prolerat     • a day ago 
      I think this smacks of a sort of conspiracy theory.I don’t agree that the capitalist class consciously do any of that.While individual hands on capitalists may do so,increasingly it is their managers and so on in the upper echelons and generally spread about their bureaucratic apparatus who make decisions for the most part.It is just following the dictates of the market, but the market is anarchic so can’t really be controlled.I think economic decisions to downsize or relocate are just easier to make as capitalist globalisation has got into this phase.This is just as amenable to a free access economy we just won’t turn off production before needs are met.In capitalism it gets turned down or re-focussed before needs, as profit dictates creating artificial scarcity to drive up prices.
    • prolerat     • a day ago 
      The tradition of free speech was won,often with dead workers or broken heads.It is all relative anyway, when the organs of dissemination of information are owned and held by the upper class.
      So, consent is manufactured, for various repressions of it ,often disguised as protections,so no need to thank anything outside of the material world in this regards.
      It is not necessary to fit in.The freedom from exploitation or coercive social control enables the individual to place themselves at the centre or outside as they choose.
      To be truly human.

  • Discussion on Telegraph

    Ed Miliband: only Labour can rebuild our middle class

    • prolerat     • 2 days ago 
      Why do you say this?
      It can be demonstrated that capitalism will do such things, but the results, and the motivations,proceed from a variety of motives. In the first place,it will need to be deemed profitable in the long run for resources to be committed.i.e an opportunity to exploit this newly educated group is or will be present.(Once again let me reiterate that there are many well meaning and sincere individuals committed to doing work such as this.Without their immense co-operation and goodwill these projects wouldn’t get off the ground)
      For my part an educated working class is an essential component of the revolution ,so anything which will improve the lot of people is desirable, but as a route out of poverty?No if you are born poor you will die poor, as a general rule.Whether this poverty is relative or actual is neither here nor there for my purpose.
      Only removing the barriers to access IOW global free access and democratic control of all the means and instruments for creating and distributing wealth can weeliminate poverty.
    • prolerat     • 2 days ago 
      The truth is that no elected politician can control the market—which operates for the private gain of a tiny number of owners. As long as the market exists we cannot have control of our own lives, run things in our own, and our own communities’ interests, because that would threaten the profits of the tiny few. Leaders can’t change that. Only we can, by acting together, without leaders, to end the whole profit-driven, market system.We totally rejected Lenin.Trotsky and their distortions of Marx.WE did so form the start of the Bolshevic revolution.WE gave him credit for keeping his promise and initially getting out of the 1st war.It is silly to suggest any deaths of capitalist.Such a change in society would be unstoppable.It doesn’t come from a single idea of what is right but from the fact that it is workers who presently don’t just produce wealth presently, but also run capitalism from top to bottom.I think you all have a very narrow view of who constitutes the working class.
    • prolerat     • 2 days ago 
      You didn’t hear it from me so you must be using Leninist distortions of what Marx wrote in order to tar me rather than engage with some of the ideas..We didn’t have the D.O.P. in Russia but the dictatorship of the Bolsheviks. Incidently when Marx used dictatorship in those days it was simply meant government.He referred also to the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.This was at the time when we still had to win the vote for the rudimentary democracy we presently have.
    • prolerat     • 2 days ago 
      Not even in Spain not even that.You are incorrect.Nothing like someone sticking to their guns even when they are incorrect ,to keep their delusions intact.
      The Labour Party was never a socialist party.It was formed in 1906 from a mixture of Liberals and Trade unionists in order to get reforms of capitalism.My definition of socialism goes back long before the formation of any of these reformist partes of government.
      Socialists don’t aim to BE the government rather the populace will govern the allocation of resources without leaders.
    • prolerat     • 2 days ago 
      What does it matter to workers which trading bloc their capitalist masters are signed up to?
      Political careerists are all part and parcel of capitalist politics.You are deluded to think any one party differs from another in this regards.
      There are still well meaning individuals within all of the parties but attempts at reforming capitalism lead at best to a truncated version of what was initially being introduced to address a particular problem,with neglect of another problem a cost for another reform to attempt to redress and eventually leading to a clawing back of the original truncated gain.
    • prolerat     • 2 days ago 
      His old man was as confused about what consituted socialism as some of the Tories on this page.
      “Thank goodness I am not a Marxist” (Karl Marx)
    • prolerat     • 2 days ago 
      He wasn’t a socialist he was a well meaning,but deluded,Labourite, Fabian ,reformist who timidly set out to reform capitalism.(Make it nicer).
      Capitalism ‘can not be reformed ‘in any meaningful way.
      Socialism is a revolutionary perspective which wishes to replace capitalism. Nationalisation is state capitalism. It is not common ownership.It is still wage slavery conditions which persist.Workers still have to take action on wages,safety conditions etc. as the fundamentals remain unchanged,regardles of whether the state or some private corporation own the means of production.
      Labour,Tory, Liberals all support nationalisation at different periods.
    • prolerat     • 2 days ago 
      There has been no ‘socialist. acts in the UK or anywhere else.What you had was reformist capitalist acts.If you are a worker you have no country.
    • prolerat     • 2 days ago 
      Your spanking obsession seems to have robbed you of ,or disordered your ratiocination.social systems come and go.Capitalism is not for ever.Try to get your poor wee head to think outside its spanked capitalist ideologically reinforced box.
    • prolerat     • 2 days ago 
      We can’t be truly human in a competitive world society,wracked by poverty,war,crime, exploitation of others at the point of production,compelling workers to sell their ability to work for the minimum which the market can bear requisite with reproducing themselves as wage slaves in order that 5% of the worlds population can live in ease and luxury.
      How can we be truly human ans support a system wher children die in the first year form preventable causes due to poverty,where treatable disease is allowed to continue when we have the collective capacity to eliminate it but Profit dictates otherwise.
      Take the scales from your eyes and observe the war dances at the North Pole,the South China seas for the pursuit of natural resources to further Profit..
      The US “black budget” of secret intelligence programmes alone was estimated at $52.6bn for 2013. That is only the secret programmes, not the much larger intelligence and counterintelligence budgets. We now have 16 spy agencies that employ 107,035 employees. This is separate from the over one million people employed by the military and national security law enforcement agencies.
      In the first 10 days of the Libyan war alone, the Obama administration spent roughly $550m. That figure includes about $340m for munitions – mostly cruise missiles that must be replaced.
      War may be hell for some but it is heaven for others.
      Socialism as a free access society will remove this beggar thy brother competition ethos and set people free from the tyranny of wage slavery compulsion.it is as old as the English Civil War,”When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?”
      Socialism couldn’t by-pass the capitalist revolution.It needed the productive capacity.Capitalism had not yet fully created the material basis for Socialism as a means of hastening this. But once capitalism had done this then they became outdated and reactionary. In these changed circumstances, an application of the Marxist method showed that socialists need no longer help capitalism prepare the way for socialism.
      The socialist’s job is to overthrow the capitalist system. For too many the day for socialist struggle never seems to come around – not even when fellow workers are being slaughtered. Let us be united against the warmongers who would send us to our deaths.
      Your enemy is not the worker in other lands; it is the capitalist class at home. There is only one way to prevent war and if it breaks out to end it, namely, by the overthrow of capitalism, the real root from which war springs. The solution rests in the power of the working class.
      If world capitalism has no solution for its problems excepting new and more horrible slaughter, it is time this insane system were ended. The fight for socialism is the fight for peace. Destruction and carnage can be ended, not by the victory of one or other of the combatants which would merely lay the basis for new wars and is not in the interests of the workers of any country, but by the victory of the workers over capitalism.
      Socialism will only come into being when a self conscious majority will it into being so,having become aware of the fact they produce all the wealth in society and can distribute it according to self determined needs.Nothing will stop this idea when its time has come.
      Perhaps some psychiatric assessment of your own conditional support for capitalism is in order,perhaps not.I may be addressing a member of the capitalist class.In this case this system is in your class interest, but your human interest? No never.
      A Chartist Poem To Working Men of Every Clime
      Working Men of every clime,
      Gather still, but bide your time,
      Bide your time, and wait a wee,
      Yours will be the victory.
      Britain’s sons, whose constant toil
      Plies the looms and tills the soil,
      Lift the voice for liberty,
      Yours will be the victory.
      Toil-worn sons of Spain advance,
      Give the hand to those of France,
      Join you both with Italy,
      Yours will be the victory.
      Serfs of Poland, gather near,
      Raise, with Austria’s sons, the cheer,
      Echo’d far through Germany,
      Yours will be the victory.
      Danish workmen, hear the cry,
      Scandinavia’s quick reply,
      Workmen, “panting to be free,”
      Yours will be the victory.
      Dutchmen, linger not behind,
      Working men should be combined,
      Russian slaves themselves will see
      Yours will be the victory.
      Europe’s workmen, one and all,
      Rouse ye at your brethren’s call,
      Shouting loud from sea to sea,
      Yours will be the victory.
      Kings and nobles may conspire,
      God will pour on them his ire;
      Workmen shout, for ye are free,
      Yours is now the victory.
      Northern Star 28 November 1840
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