Rightfield

[Wanderlei]

UKIP are scum. I'm going to be spending my whole Glastonbury at the Left Field Stage to show my disgust at their success in the local elections (...well, I might venture out to see The Stones...)

[wilko8]

Nope they all incorporated elements of Marx's analysis into there own ideology, there is a subtle difference.

Nazi ideology incorporated elements of the works of Charles Darwin and Friedrich Nietzsche, does this invalidate their work?

[siblin]

Whoa there sunshine. Don't put words in my mouth to try and imply I'm in some way sticking up for hitler!!

Either play nice, or don't play at all!

[russycarps]

Fair point, but I think you're splitting hairs somewhat.

Marxism is intrinsically linked to those regimes. Linking hitler to Darwin is a bit of a leap.

It's unfair to disassociate Stalin/Mao etc. with Marxism just because it makes for uncomfortable reading.

Can you give an example of a successful Marxist state?

[wilko8]

That wasnt my point at all. I know what you said was meant to be sarcastic.

You however were suggesting that anyone whos read marx is sticking up for stalin

[mrtourette]

can you give an example of a marxist state that hasnt been demonised, invaded or blockaded by the dominant right wing western powers?

[Wanderlei]

I think it was Bill Bailey that said: "Hitler didn't eat meat. So be warned, in some cases vegetarianism can lead to mass genocide."

[wilko8]

And funnily enough, to others of us a Rightfield tent sounds awful. It comes down to a person's political perspective, and you're exposing yours.

don't vote for raving right wing nutters of any party, else you get raving right wing nutjob policies.

That's the very first thing that has to be done to get out of this shit of the right's making. Why is that very simple thing beyond your thinking?

Attack the default privileges of the rich, and take them away. They do not benefit society at all.

Create full employment, to give everyone opportunities - as we used to have and could afford to support, and still can afford to support.

Build council houses. Those who were bribed with cheap houses in the past are now hating having to pay back what they thought they'd gained (but what was really just a con).

In essence, start to reverse the Thatcherist policies that have fucked this country.

</waits for raving right wing comeback based on false accounting and smoke and mirrors tricks>

[mrtourette]

I think it was Bill Bailey that said: "Hitler didn't eat meat. So be warned, in some cases vegetarianism can lead to mass genocide."

[eFestivals]

Hmm thats an interesting point. If you created 2 million council/govt/subsidised/education/healthcare/infrastructure jobs on 20k each it would cost 40b which sounds like a lot, but thats not offsetting productivity and return, and its not alot set against a govt expenditure of £700b

all of the costs of supporting people who might otherwise be working are already picked up by the state, but without society getting any benefit from those massive costs.

If the state were to give them useful employment of some kind the costs to the state change very little but the pay-off to society is massive.

The right love to bang on about how "the winter of discontent" was a disaster for Britain (and in many ways it was, tho it's significance is massively overplayed). And yet the number of working days lost by strikes in 1979 is minuscule compared to the number of days lost every year since thru unemployment.

In 1979 there was almost full employment, and then voted in was a govt using a slogan of "Labour isn't working"* and using a poster of a dole queue .... who promptly more-than tripled the unemployment rate, and caused the benefits bill to soar.

(* still, it was an improvement on their slogan of just ten years before - "if you want a nigger for a neighbour vote liberal or labour" ... and people say the tories aren't a racist party ).

I'm not advocating a return to everything of 1979. There were things wrong then just as there are now, but for society as a whole many things were much better - full employment, social mobility, and the country run for the benefit of the country and not an elite being the main ones.

We can have that again if you want it, but it means never voting for a Thatcherist or even-more right-wing ideology* as its first step.

(*so, that means: no Tories, no Labour, no LibDems, no UKIP. Go and find yourselves the real alternatives).

Edited May 16, 2013 by eFestivals

[Wanderlei]

And as Harry Hill said, "Hitler was a bad man, but if you were in a hot air balloon with Hitler and Churchill and needed to shed weight fast, who would go first?".

[eFestivals]

Marxism is intrinsically linked to those regimes. Linking hitler to Darwin is a bit of a leap.

no one can teach you anything about politics, but you don't know what strongly links Darwin to Hitler?

Can you give an example of a successful Marxist state?

can you give an example of a successful right wing state?

[eFestivals]

The point was that Marxism as a theory has failed when put into practice.

It's never been put into practice.

But if wish to be so loose with meanings then the exact same point stands in regard to all capitalism.

[ukdaasfan]

I'd love to have seen how Cuba would have turned out if they hadnt been illegally blockaded by America for the last 50 years.

A trade embargo that for the last 21 years the UN has called on the US to remove - a resolution that was supported by 188 countries in 2012 (Israel and Palau being the only two countries in the world that supported the US in the vote )

[wilko8]

no one can teach you anything about politics, but you don't know what strongly links Darwin to Hitler?

can you give an example of a successful right wing state?

[fur_q]

Fair point, but I think you're splitting hairs somewhat.

Marxism is intrinsically linked to those regimes. Linking hitler to Darwin is a bit of a leap.

[ukdaasfan]

It's never been put into practice.

But if wish to be so loose with meanings then the exact same point stands in regard to all capitalism.

[ukdaasfan]

no one can teach you anything about politics, but you don't know what strongly links Darwin to Hitler?

can you give an example of a successful right wing state?

[eFestivals]

Now for the "how"......??

Build council houses.

Properly staff the NHS, local councils, social support services.

Collect taxes where they're due.

Don't give tax cuts to the wealthiest whilst penalising nealy everyone else for what the wealthiest caused.

Outlaw unpaid positions of employment, zero-hour contracts.

Strengthen workers rights to properly balance with the power of employers (German style perhaps, you know that failing socialist state where these things cannot be afforded).

Remove all fees from under-21 education, and restore grants, and also reduce the number of degree students.

Restore the apprenticeships scheme that thatcher abolished in the early 80s and which threw a generation on the scrapheap (and nothing of the piddly little 'alternative' that has recently been introduced)

Enforce fair policies on Universities so that they cannot demand to see all costs for living for the length of a course in place before starting post-grad courses.

Enforce a proportional entrance requirement on Universities so that they cannot stuff themselves full of privately educated elites.

End charitable status for private schools.

Abolish 'charitable trusts' which are a front for tax evasion by the rich.

Implement PR as an electoral system, to ensure that the people rule and not minority parties that few want to support but know that the system gives them little alternative but to vote for them.

Renationalise public assets - trains, buses, water, power generation, gas extraction and distribution.

Etc, etc, etc.

It's really not hard, not hard at all. But people like you need to want change, because your stated position just ensures the system that you say you think is wrong you act in support of keeping.

[eFestivals]

I asked first. Don't answer a question with a question.

there's never been a Marxist state.

Those states you wish to wrongly view as marxist had little chance of the best possible 'economic success' even if they'd have been fully capitalist because of the economic war that was being fought with them by far more developed countries.

And yet despite that, note that none of those 'marxist' states were developed economies before that 'marxism', and yet they developed economically at a rate far faster than undeveloped capitalist states did. Why is that, when 'marxist' economics don't work?

So, I've answered your question and posed you with things to think about which are contrary to your limited knowledge from reading too much propaganda and not enough facts.

Now, please do tell me about the fantastic right wing models for society, where that ideology causes many more deaths than Stalin ever managed, and where capitalism regularly needs socialism to bail it out.

[wilko8]

Didn't someone about twenty pages back describe how it is a right wing characteristic to wish to return to a previous era?

All good stuff Neil. But it's still mainly "what".

Staff the NHS....why didn't anyone think of that.

Collect taxes......incredible. You've opened my eyes.

You believe in this stuff more that anyone else on here, and you're not doing anything about it. Why not?

[eFestivals]

Americans think the US is successful.

yep they do - by ignoring all of the bits about their society that are inconvenient to that idea.

America - the land of the free. With the biggest prison population in the western world.

America, where private healthcare is a success ... and uyet iot costs twice as much as healthcare does in the UK and gives worse health outcomes than the UK does.

Etc, etc, etc.

[eFestivals]

Didn't someone about twenty pages back describe how it is a right wing characteristic to wish to return to a previous era?

I'm not suggesting the return of some never-existing fantasy right wing culture.

I'm suggesting something based in the solid facts of full employment and social mobility.

You believe in this stuff more that anyone else on here, and you're not doing anything about it. Why not?

Oh sorry, I must have missed the bit where you got off the fence and voted for the ideas that you say you support to get me elected as PM to make these changes.

I can only support the idea of making these changes. That's the limit of my power.

But that's much more than you're doing. You say the system is fucked but cannot be changed - and so do nothing at all, not even support change.

Oh dear - you're everything that you wish to label me, while I'm none of what you label me.

[siblin]

In which case you should be more careful with what you say.

And you've totally misunderstood. The point was that Marxism as a theory has failed when put into practice.

[mrtourette]

It's a good point. There are no pure economies of either sort. And a bloody good thing too. Pure capitalist market would not provide social goods well and the markets can never be perfect so the government will always need to try and dela with market failure. On the Marxist side the ideal works in theoretically but requires a vast majority of the population to support it. Communism by compulsion is always bound to fail as people will play the system unfairly. Even Marxist will point the major problem with organising Humanity on Marxists lines is humanity itself. Lots of people will always work for the good of themselves or there family first. I know I would always put my family before other people. And I don't even like most of them :-) But there family.