The Real Left, Phony Left and What’s Left
Philip Farruggio
Elizabeth Warren (right) and Bernie Sanders (slightly less right).
Cutting to the chase, if you consider yourself to be ‘On the Left’ then you have to be a Socialist. Period!
Now, there are many different levels under the banner of Socialism. Some may be Marxist, Trotskyite, Syndicalism etc. Yet, the unifying denominator is that all believe in the common ownership of the means of production and services.
Many socialists do honor the existence of Mom and Pop private ownership of small business. Under a truly socialist system banking, energy, health & dental care, housing and all necessary services would be owned and operated by the community, whether it be local, state or federal.
Imagine if you would if we had real community owned and run mortgage banks, where the only interest charges would be for overhead. Translated: Even in these so-called ‘low rates’ times, where a mortgage rate is around 4 or 5%, with non-profit community banks the rate would be perhaps 1%. Plus, the mortgage paper would remain with that bank. Today’s renters would be tomorrow’s owners of their own abode.
A truly socialist system would similarly own and operate the energy that goes into your home or apartment. For perhaps a fraction of what we pay now, everyone would have complete medical and dental coverage. (This writer has already spent $ 5000 this past year, CASH, with no insurance, for root canals, crowns and one extraction).
The real crime of it all is when we have less than 1/2 of 1% of our populace earning over a million dollars a year, and being treated in the same tax basket as those earning a couple of hundred thousand a year. In 1961, when JFK took office, the top rate was at 91% for a joint return of a couple earning $ 400,000 or more a year. By the time their accountant sharpened his or her pencil, the couple perhaps paid 40-50% of that. Nowadays, couples filing jointly and earning between $ 400,000 – $ 600,000 pay at the rate of 35%. After their accountant does the deed, maybe they pay at 20%. See the loss for Uncle Sam? I could go on and on but you should be getting my drift.
A truly socialist society would not need to have our military all over the world, pointing our majestic force and power at everyone. There is no way, if we curtailed the Corporate War Economy being run by private individuals and investors, that all those phony wars we conducted (or plan to conduct) would ever occur! Cutting the obscene military spending, which is over 50% of our federal tax revenues at present, to maybe 25% or much less than that, would ensure money for safety net programs (like National Health and Dental for All). In addition, we would still be as safe as we are now… NO, actually safer. Why? Well, with no phony wars and excursions into all those Middle Eastern countries (and soon to be Venezuela) the question of ‘Why do they hate us’ would not even be brought up.
Now let’s look at the group I name the ‘Phony Left’. The Democratic Party, continued to be subsidized by the super rich, have a large segment (especially recently) considering themselves as ‘Left wing’. Really? Bottom line: They all still serve the Military Industrial Empire. When do you see them advocating a real pullback of this empire by closing a majority of our nearly 1000 foreign bases, and cutting with muster this fiscally bankrupting military spending?
Matter of fact, Bernie Sanders, who is in reality a decent and caring guy, calls himself a ‘Democratic Socialist’. Yet, his group supported both John Kerry’s run in ’04 and Obama’s run in 2008.
Sanders supported the NATO (US led) carpet bombing and destruction of Libya in 2011 and our incursions into Syria… and now our banging the drums for a new Cold War with Russia. Sadly, he referred to the late Hugo Chavez, democratically elected leader of Venezuela, as a ‘Dead Dictator’!
This ‘Phony Left’ still won’t come out in favor of nationalizing Big Business, especially the real culprits, the Wall Street banks! Do you ever hear these folks ditto that in regard to Big Pharma or Corporate Absentee Landlords? As far as taking on the Super Rich, new ‘Phony Left ‘ presidential candidate Sen. Warren wants to assess a whopping 2% surtax on any assets over 50 million dollars. Wow! You got to be kidding me! The real tragedy is that this ‘Peanut plan’ of hers is already being slammed by the embedded mainstream media. When will this comedic material, right out of a Marx Brothers film, cease?
Ok, now as to the title of this column, what’s left on the Amerikan plate?
Well, and again sadly, we have over a hundred million of our fellow citizens who still buy into this ‘Free Enterprise’ garbage that the right-wing and centrist Phony Left have been selling for seems forever. So many decent working stiffs still will defend to their (fiscal?) death the right for anyone to earn as much as possible.
Why? Well, any mention of true socialism as been tangled together with what we have been propagandized to believe as the hated and feared Communism. Orwell’s Big Brother hangs over them like a vulture, ready to devour. Little do they realize that the Nazi gang sold this same Kool-Aid to the masses of Germans in the 1920s and 30s. Thus, Fascism became the antidote, and you should know the rest folks.
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I’ve found that many people get to bound up in the notion of what’s real socialism and what’s not that they just end up arguing among themselves about how many angels are able to dance on the head of a pin. To me there’s really only two sorts of socialism. The first, codified by Marx, used economic theory and basic common sense to argue for the social control, if not outright ownership, of the means of production. The other sort was first codified by Otto von Bismark who figured that giving the workers some of the trappings of socialism would not only lead to a strong, prosperous society but it would keep any nascent social unrest in check. Subsequent history has shown that the group we now call the oligarchs (but used to be known by various names like ‘ruling classes’ & ‘robber barons’) greatest fear is socialism, they’ll do anything it takes to keep it down. If there’s a danger it can’t be portrayed as a historical failure they’ll buy the mass of ordinary people off with ‘socialism lite’, the Bismark approach, where you get many of the trappings of a socialist society without the actual socialism (so the moment the oligarchs feel secure all those goodies get clawed back in a series of ‘reforms’).
Trying to push socialism in that climate needs finesse. Whatever ideals you start out with will get crushed under the weight of economic warfare (sanctions aren’t a new invention), destabilization and even outright invasion and occupation. The oligarchs (or whatever we call the people who control and benefit from society) are afraid of socialism so will spare no expense to see it fail. The only society that seems to have got away with it on a large scale seem to be the Chinese, they seemed to have learned from earlier revolutions and played a rather devious game where our people have only recently woken up to the realization that they’re now too big to dominate. We’re desperately trying to re-introduce Cold War memes, sanctions (“Trade Wars”) and all the trappings of anti-communism but it looks and sounds terribly dated so its not getting the traction it might have got 30 or 40 years ago. (Yes, there will be many that will argue that China isn’t properly socialist….back to the angels on the head of the pin thing.)
For us, in our Corporatist societies, where the only law is the rule of money, we may have to be content with baby steps. We’ve actually gone backwards in the last 30 or 40 years, the ability of people to earn a decent living by selling their labor has gone down (aspirations are now for many just to be able to get by paycheck to paycheck). Their ability to organize has evaporated. Education has become a must-have, a costly barrier to entry to just a mediocre lifestyle. (Obviously there’s exceptions to the general rule — some are doing really well but for many their prospects are dim.) The tragedy is that we got here largely with the consent of the electorate; they all thought they’d be rich but they were really just exchanging their birthright for lottery tickets. Under these circumstances I’d take ‘mildly social democratic’ or even ‘responsible conservative’ as a first step. It took us years to get to this state, its going to take us years to get back.
This idea of taking baby steps plays into the hands of the class of employers. To take “baby steps” implies that we should not even address the power of employers as a class. Such a view puts socialism always in the future. As John Dewey, a philosopher of education pointed out, such a view leads to an attitude of procrastination since the future is always put off.
Furthermore, as he pointed out, a real aim–as opposed to a pseudo-aim–is used to organize present activities. A so-called aim that is not used to organize present activities is not an aim at all.
The left in Toronto do just that–put off to some vague future what we need to do today. For example, rather than criticizing the need for most people to work for employers, they talk about “decent work”–as if decent work is really possible under existing conditions of a society dominated by a class of employers and a market for workers.
This does not imply that socialism can be realized immediately; it does imply, however, that it always begin–and must always begin–in what we do in the present.
A parallel is with the experience of many at school. How many have learned useless things in school that they never use? They learn them “just in case” they need them rather than using them in the present to control their own lives.
A longer-distance view can be gained by learning that, in order to control the present and our lives, they must learn to integrate more and more aspects and relations in the present (which takes time).
So, real socialism starts always now and not in some vague future, and it also must involve a radical critique of the present. See my blog for that.
I am unsure why a comment that I wrote was not posted.
There are certainly many pseudo-leftists here in Toronto (and, in general, in Canada). The general left is essentially a welfare-state left here, wanting to go back to a form of capitalism before the economic crises of the 1970s and onward rather than forward to a society without a class of employers.
Socialism involves a society where there is no class of employers and where the workers control their lives collectively on a technical basis that emerged with the emergence of capitalist society.
Consequently, one of the above posts that refers to Switzerland as socialist is hardly accurate. Do not a class of employers exist in Switzerland? And therefore a class of employees?
Socialism is a solution to characteristic problems of capitalism that cannot be solved through a society dominated by a class of employers.
The real left, then, is those individuals who adopt the point of view of the archaic nature of the employer-employee relation and the need for struggle to create a society worthy of human beings on the material basis produced within capitalism.
It did get posted, abolitionist. Your problem might be that the page needs to be refreshed after posting to view it.
Thank you. I noticed it now.
There is certainly a lot of so-called leftists who assume the fundamental eternity of the power of the class of employers. It is at this level that the “real left” should be distinguished from the pseudo-left. See my own blog on this.
Much of the left in Toronto, Ontario, Canada (and indeed in Canada in general) are a pseudo-left–really social democrats, desiring a return to the welfare state of old rather than a forward movement without the existence of a class of employers.
I note that one person claimed that Switzerland is socialist. This view merely takes the welfare state as its standard. Does there not exist employers in Switzerland? A class of employers? And a class of employees? How is Switzerland then socialist?
Socialism involves the collective control over our own life process–over our own collective lives–not welfare statism.
Good article. I’d like to see more from this author. I’ll go with Lenin’s insistence that to be a socialist, one must be an internationalist and thus an anti-imperialist. The new hot item in the US “left” these days is the DSA (democratic socialists of america). They qualify their brand of socialism as “democratic” because, like the anti-communist conservatives and social democrats, they equate stalinism with socialism/communism. As the author illustrates, this brand of “democratic socialism” is not at all anti-imperialist. I wonder how many young DSA members are aware of the pro-imperialist, anti-communist roots of their predecessors
Lenin knew a lot worth learning about how to organise vanguardism into a revolution, any sort of revolution, but he knew bugger all about socialism and was even less inclined to actually espouse it. “Soviets? Schmoviets!” says Vladimir Ilyich. Lenin was all about Permanent Vanguardism provided it kept Lenin in the vanguard of the vanguardists. Ask Rosa.
As might reasonably be inferred from the history of the 20th century, it turns out that Leninism, no less than Stalinism, is actually a programme for the successful construction of state capitalism in industrially underdeveloped countries.
It remains an open question whether socialism, understood as workers’ control and economic democracy, might be at least as successful at industrial and economic development, because it’s never actually been tried, having been everywhere viciously suppressed by either state or private capitalism, or both.
Voline — The Unknown Revolution / 1917-1921
“…it turns out that Leninism, no less than Stalinism, is actually a programme for the successful construction of state capitalism…”
It turned, past tense, out that Leninism, no less than Stalinism, was actually a programme for the successful construction of state capitalism just as soon as Lenin got his feet firmly planted under the ex-Tsar’s top table, its having been in lurking in private, awaiting the opportunity to spring fully-formed from behind the fluff of the hustings, since well before he boarded his sealed train. “Soviets? Schmuckviets!” said Vladimir Ilyich.
“It remains an open question whether socialism, understood as workers’ control and economic democracy, might be at least as successful at industrial and economic development, because it’s never actually been tried…”
That is what turns out, present tense, to be the case.
The theory that all the Bolshevik personnel were aspiring state-capitalist bureaucrats from the outset, hardly explains why most of those who survived the civil war, were eventually physically exterminated by the Stalin regime.
A more plausible explanation is that they became an obstacle to the ambitious people and institutions, that their mistaken theory had empowered as a supposedly necessary means to some other end.
“The theory that all the Bolshevik personnel were aspiring state-capitalist bureaucrats from the outset, hardly explains…”
I was neither proposing nor supporting such a theory, I was specifically referring to Lenin. The rest was his masterly creation, command and misdirection of groupthink, as well as its usual accompaniments of stage fright, jobsworthery, etc.
Dr Farr: bingo! Correct. Agree with you. Sadly, there are a lot more ‘socialists’ out there who support such things as ‘humanitarian intervention’ or who refuse to even mention Julian Assange coz they ‘dont defend rapists’ etc. A lot out there who claim to be ‘socialist’ – but willingly lap up Imperialist propaganda in rags like The Guardian, or on BBC, and believe it.
who refuse to even mention Julian Assange coz they ‘dont defend rapists’ etc.
— thus do we discover whose interests Identity Politics actually serves, and why it was constructed.
Milosevic: exactly M, touché…. But weeding out who is real and who is fake (gatekeepers) is pretty tough at times. I mentioned here or yesterday Cory Morningstar @ wrong kind of green does a good job of exposing the phony’s. I can be a bit naive at times.
I mentioned here or yesterday Cory Morningstar @ wrong kind of green does a good job of exposing the phony’s.
I second your recommendation of that resource:
http://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/
weeding out who is real and who is fake (gatekeepers) is pretty tough at times.
As I said below, I consider that anyone exhibiting 9/11 Denial Syndrome has an extremely high probability of being some kind of either witting or unwitting gatekeeper. Conversely, the proponents of no-planes-at-WTC theories are almost certainly either disinfo shills or delusional idiots.
Of course, those who promote identity politics, but ignore or disparage class politics, are without question stooges of the ruling class, whether or not they are consciously aware of it, or being properly compensated for their services. (the hysterical rage which overcomes many such people when confronted with real left-wing analysis, suggests that they are subconsciously aware of their actual role, but are trying to avoid conscious acknowledgement of their self-serving hypocrisy.)
It is really quite disheartening to realize exactly how much of the apparent left-wing opposition to the system is actually controlled opposition, which is designed to preserve it.
Milosevic: appreciate your comments, particularly regards identity politics. I smelt a rat ages ago, and steer well clear of such ‘revolutionary socialist’ (cough) groups which vocally spout Identity Politics. Also agree with your comment about ‘controlled opposition’. I also share your disheartened feelings about this at the realisation there isn’t much of a Genuine opposition at all out there. Almost none. And yeah, absolutely won’t go anywhere near AVAAZ or Get Up with a 100 ft barge pole.
“Imagine if you would if we had real community owned and run mortgage banks…”
In much of the English-speaking world, except the USA, “Building Societies” (similar to American “Savings and Loans” except more narrowly focussed, as implied by their name, flourished from their beginnings in 19th century Britain until the collapse of the gold standard and the beginnings of fincialization in the 1960s and early 1970s. There are now very few left, their members having, since the globalization makeover of civil society, voted for a restructuring more attuned to the lures of the capitalist dream. Except under the duress of needs must, fascists generally do not push their human detritus into open graves and shoot it; for the most part, it jumps in of its own accord.
Indeed. I was quite chagrined when my insurance company (NRMA) started its long demutualisation process. One less collective alternative to support, several more large private investors to please.
“health & dental care”
No “&”. Dental care is health care, c.f. F.W. Woolworth.
We often enough hear the middle class perspective. Democratic socialism ensures modest incomes even for those who can’t work, and those for whom no viable jobs are available. Post-Clinton Democrats obviously oppose this. They ended basic welfare aid. A left would have been shining a light on US poverty as proof of the failures of our capitalist system. Liberals betray their attachment to capitalism by ignoring the consequences and promoting middle class elitism (reframed as “working class” in 2016).
Fakes and frauds and faux left everywhere…. Gatekeepers to lead the unwashed masses down dead ends that will never challenge the status quo. False saviours that promise much. And deliver nothing. The blog Wrong Kind Of Green (Cory Morningstar) exposes quite a few of these charlatans.
The poor get what has been happening, especially since the 1990s. The middle class remain clueless.
dhfabian: the middle classes still have their ‘creature comforts’. Many still go on their annual overseas holiday to some tropical hotspot, or continue to buy lots of much needed ‘neccesities’ online, many send their children to private schools, many do their little bit for ‘charity’. In short, the reason they remain clueless is most havn’t experienced real grinding financial hardship, and having to count every penny. Yet. In our dog eat dog race to the bottom economic system, that will change.
I can’t agree with that, GP. What you are describing may once have been true, but it is now ancient history. The middle class is rapidly going the way of the coal miners and the rest of the industrial working class. It is an endangered species. The MC once received some benefits from our system of crapitalism. Reasonably well paid jobs, job security, pensions, maybe some degree of status. That has gone the way of the coal mines. MI5 predicted that the MC would become the new revolutionary class – because they no longer have any stake in the system.
Mark: okay, point taken and accepted, tho that’s what I meant by ‘that will change’ however I’m probably a decade out with my timing. Things are getting much tougher for increasingly large numbers of people. I see that when I’m out selling The Big Issue mag, a lot of my customers do it hard, espec pensioners. Sorry for late reply mate.
A couple of well-deserved ‘onyas, GP, for your Big Issue work. I used to buy the mag when I was in Canberra.
That’s okay, it’s just that people often say how great and wealthy London is compared to the rest of the UK. But nobody can afford to live there with the property bubbles and £500,000 for a crappy one bedroom flat. People have told me similar stories visiting Australia and Canada.
My local Labour PPC (Fran Boait) has been the catalyst of doubt for me. Five years ago she ran against Corbyn as a PPC for the Greens. Today, she runs for Labour.
Has several directorships lobbying for changes in banking (but wants to change high street banks!?!? Surely the higher ones are smarter to target?!?!)
Both organisations have recirece donations from MAVA. A Swiss based private organisation supposedly working for nature…
Something reeks here.
High street banks like HSBC ?
Most money in the economy is created by high street banks, which is the focus of Positive Money (Fran’s campaign). So I guess from their perspective it does make sense to tackle high street banking.
Why is a private wildlife fund financing both her chosen places of directorship? One of which received £183,000 in one year.
How is a private Swiss fund able to raise over £60 million in 12 months? And why would they get involved in banking when they are a wildlife concern?
http://mava-foundation.org
I thought the Plan is to herd the survivors into smart cities and conserve the natural world for the chosen ones. You know, tidy the place up a bit.
Who owns the land?
I mean legally – because in truth we belong to what we give home to and care for.
Yeah, it maybe strange.
It looks, to my superficial viewing like MAVA are genuinely interested in green finance, as Positive Money are.
I have to say that I have actually met Fran on several occasions, and it was her professed motivation for getting into finance issues : she studied environmental crises and pieced together that it was fundamentally the financial system that was driving the economy in a certain direction.
It maybe no more than that.
I have at times suspected that positive money are some sort of front designed to push an agenda of ‘digital cash’ from the Bank of England, i.e. a new paradigm that may emerge after the next crash. It’s a fairly baseless conspiracy theory on my part though as far as I can see.
I do not support Positive Money because they’ve seemed to have a naive view of the role of the Bank of England, although this has changed somewhat of late. I support Werner’s public banking solution or a debt jubilee (Steve Keen).
As for your concerns. go talk with her and check it all out, I would say.
Have thought about it already and have been offered a meet by the local PLP chairman after voicing my concerns.
She’s been given more than I’ll earn in ten years, by one charity in a single donation. She doesn’t represent me, or my ilk (my town voted out, easy to see why we did too (if you look) ).
There’s also the issue of modern history showing the bad people get lots of non jobs for think tanks and the like.
Something smells.
Hi Crank
“Most money in the economy is created by high street banks”
Where do you get that – arrive at that – statement from?
Do you mean credits given out?
Have you any substantiation?
If you care to…
Positive Money (mentioned) have done a lot of educative work on this, check their website.
Probably the definitive book on the UK money system is called Where Does Money Come From?
Or there is Prof R Werner who has campaigned for public banking but also has written journal papers showing how the accounting procedure that we call ‘banking’ acutally functions.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=richard+werner+money+system
Even the Bank if England have now admitted that these (above) models are correct, if you search.
Yes money is ‘created’ by issuing credits – but it was the assumption that High street banking is the major input.
I found that surprising and not at all what I would expect. So if you have support for that specific statement- I’d be interested.
But yes I’m aware of the ‘money is debt’.
I suggest the book (‘Where Does Money Come From?).
Ok – but lacking specific substantiation I don’t simply accept that High street banking is the major vector for ‘creating’ debt money.
Polarities operate to deny the middle way, which is not a centrist DEFINED by fear or aversion to extremes, but a centred embrace of all the forces in play for the embodying of the resultant – and ever fluid balance point.
Our identification with the tool, renders life and the challenges of life into terms of the tool.
Man is ruled by his tool.
What is the tool that divides to rule?
Judgements of rejection. Knowledge cartels. Regulatory capture of the narrative.
The desire to feel and find the balance point is seeking within life.
The wish and attempt for power over life has already made itself alien to its own life – and projects otherness and lack onto others and to situations, so as to find them unworthy and in error – as the basis of its own sense of self-legitimacy.
The very metaphor of left and right implicitly suggests a cooperative unity IF the bird is to fly, or the man to walk. However what is underneath is more of a top-down and a bottom up – is it not?
A top down sense of denial is hateful and hated.
Hate finds a home in the heart of a grievance – and so no offence will be passed by or overlooked but to fuel its justification as the claim and right to power.
Hate is the power by which we cut from awareness of our own being, and lose sight of the being of others. It operates in our world as a deceiver through play on sympathies by which to take joy in the scapegoating of others of the same life, and in their pain of loss and sacrifice by which to seem to divert and escape your own.
The original movement is always a movement of and within being and can be nameless in that it knows itself in the act of its moving. Early Christians did not call themselves thus but shared a recognition of love and met in each other’s houses. The naming of something changes it.
The naming is thus a spell, by which a set of judgements and associations operate through the name as a referent and symbolic and simulated presentation of a living communication. This adulterated idea, conceptual framing or ideology can then be exploited and developed as a marketable possession of derivative benefits accruing from the sharing and exchange of the symbol as a group or collectively reinforcing identity.
The movement is known or felt ‘in the heart’ but the organisation of the exploitation or harnessing of the movement of being is of a mind that usurps or interjects to presume to speak for the heart, rather than a willingness to give witness in thought, word and deed to being truly moved. And so a masking artifice of coded and symbolic representations passes of as life, relationship or communication. But a defence to its own offences is simple spinning in pain of its own denial, and the heart cannot find a true reflection.
“Fuck left and right. Show me who you are!”.
This is not address to Mark – (or Phillip) – but is it a call to be met or seen that SEEMS like a threat or attack on the established habit that passes as order?
The hate in the heart is of being denied.
The sense of being denied gives in like kind.
‘You don’t love me” is the posture of withholding a full attention and the unseeing that is mind-populated with every kind of hate or fear, kept at bay or un-personed.
The screen-captured mind is in surface appearances – plugged into what the programming directs as the interface of human and machine.
The development of what we hold to be cultural, social and technological abilities is of the explication of consciousness to tools, initially as a lack driven need, but becoming a neediness driving the development of lack. More is never enough for a sense of lack – whether it be more ‘notional security’, more resources or more power, money, or any other symbol of a sense of self-completion in external terms.
In the movement of our being, this saying speaks differently:
“to those who have, more shall be given, but from those who have not, more shall be taken away – even the little that they have”. Poverty can be defined and agreed and fought over, but a poverty of spirit hides in shame – in masking against exposure – like a king with no clothes.
We have been framed (tooled and exploited) but not without playing a part.
The mind as a weapon works confusion (disinfo and division).
Who thinks to live by such a sword, dies by their own act.
Over and over and over again, until the choice not to use it thus.
Love within a group specialness is a redistribution of hate.
Relative guilt never becomes innocent.
Systems of distributed guilt and power cannot become alive but will take all the life we give them, and never have enough.
Is there any point voting for the Faux Left any more, whether it’s Sanders or the Blairite Backstabbers over here, puffed up poisonous little toads one and all, shilling and cheerleading for every Neocon bloodbath and smash-and-grab regime change that comes along, the latest being Venezuela??? You might as well vote Trump or Tory, it’s exactly the same result. People put some hope in Sanders or Jezza, but it’s pointless. It all makes bu**er all difference. The only change is who gets to ride on the gravy train and put his hand in the till.
If you vote Labour, the chances are 4-1 that you are voting for some loathsome Blairite Backstabber like Bradshaw, Berger, Bryant, Gapes, Ellman, Benn and all the rest of that filth. Personally I’d sooner vote for the BNP or Ku Klux Klan.
The only movements of any value are the Peasants Revolts and Gilets Jaunes, but it is probably only a matter of time before they are infiltrated and subverted by Soros and the Deep State. Occupy and Black Lives Matter were both Soros Fronts.
You don’t have to be very old or paying very much attention to remember the buzz that accompanied the election of promising, good-looking, energetic, articulate leaders promising to be different and to govern for ALL the people – Tony Blair, Obama, Justin Trudeau, Macron et al. How long will it take for the masses to twig to the fact that these are no more than telegenic puppets put in place to continue the work of TPTB.
You forgot to reference Bob Hawke in the list of .”promising, good-looking, energetic, articulate leaders promising to be different and to govern for ALL the people”. That was a man for the people. And he managed to snare (what is widely considered) a trophy wife – can’t get too much better than that.
Re Bob Hawke’s trophy wife – I rather thought she snared him 🙂
I don’t know who snared whom but they sure had plenty of time to do it while his bio was being written. Having talked with Hazel during an awards dinner for my non-profit organisation and watching the flamenco dancing entertainment together, it seems to me she would have been the real trophy wife.
Bush (Dubya), Obama, Trump, all gained substantial popular support by stating they would scale back the ruinously expensive foreign wars for Israel with chaotic and disastrous outcomes, and focus instead on America’s many neglected domestic crises.
Once elected, we got Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Georgia, Ukraine, and a dozen other grubby little wars that we never hear about in the MSM like Niger and Nigeria. And soon Venezuela, Iran, and maybe Russia and China.
The problem with Binra’s “centrist way” is that it never equates to scaling back military aggression or pursuing policies designed to meet the needs of 99% of the population. Unconditional and unlimited support for Israel is “centrist.” Devoting yet more money to a trillion dollar a year war machine is “centrist.” Vitriolic hostility to Iran, China and Russia is the “centrist” concensus. Giving free rein to Wall Street’s parasitic looting kleptocracy is “centrist.” Mass poverty and gross inequality is “centrist.” Everything in the MSM is “centrist.”
And of course anyone who fails to sign up for this agenda and climb aboard the requisite bandwagons is obviously a tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theorist and probably a Kremlin agent who cheats at cards and kicks his dog into the bargain.
I specifically stated that the middle way was not a centrist position, defined against polarised extremities or risk aversion – but you insisted on reading what I did NOT say.
Is that not in itself curious?
It is not ‘my way’ but my willingness to live. You are uncovering or evading your responsibility to your own life. Which ‘freedom’ do you accept true? Of course it entirely depends on how we see our self. If responsibility equals burden. sacrifice, pain and loss – then NIMBY (push it somewhere and to someone else. But if freedom truly calls, your response-ability is to move!
If you are invested in lies of convenience, you will not be able to move unless you write them off and let the dead bury the dead.
So those who are as yet willing and able to live a lie – perhaps under a fearfully compulsive dictate in their own mind, are indeed out of communication by election.
But not because a true willingness for life ‘doesn’t work’.
Rather because they haven’t found it or let it find them.
As I see it the mind is defended against truth – how else a world of lies?
I don’t pretend to discuss how to solve problems that are framed in terms that consolidate them, and do not identify where I am in relation to them.
People can and do become passionate in solving the problems of the world – but the world does not participate in the argument – even should there be an agreement as to how to proceed. Global technocracy is committed, disciplined and persistent in framing the narrative so as to no longer engage in relational communication, but simply manipulate outcomes that ensure the flow of power and wealth upwards from disempowerment by design.
Given the resources – or perhaps – when not denied and deprived the resources to do so, people are very resourceful in finding ways to meet their needs. But a deceptive agenda is effective until seen exactly for what it is, where it is. Now it has not the status that concealed it in something true. Now you have awakened response-abilty for choice. Use it, or lose it.
So then I am not in the business of telling people how to live, but in uncovering deeper resources that are called on within the predicament of an extremely top-down toxic canopy.
Even conformity and compliance will not ensure security or survival.
So whatever I am writing about is not to the framework of our current thinking – but to a deeper honesty of being – that of course we are each defended against opening – because it undermines our sense of personal control – and so here we have a thumbnail of the global situation and this is within our sphere of responsibility and does not preclude social witness or actions for a just and honest accounting – instead of obfuscations and deceits.
I regard blame as a blocking of the signal. Many regard it AS the signal.
“People put some hope in Sanders or Jezza, but it’s pointless. It all makes bu**er all difference.”
courtesy #integrityinitiative
Voting… for a salesman who will give you more of the same – Ivan Illich
I didn’t realize until reading this that Bernie Sanders had supported the NATO destruction of Libya and the attempt to do the same in Syria. I did notice, though, during his debates with Hillary that he was always talking about having not supported the Iraq war but was strangely silent about the Libyan one. I wondered about that at the time and now i know. He could have hammered her so hard over that, but he supported it too. And, he probably thinks the America needs to go and rid of another unfavored leader, a monster, in Venezuela, as he now refers to Chavez as a ‘dead dictator’.
Sounds like he is a big fake, a pretend compassionate person, who actually has a heart of stone. Has he ever apologized for his support of the destruction of Libya, a true socialist country under Gaddafi? Everything he says he wants for American citizens, Libyan citizens had when Gaddafi was there: free health care, universal free education through university (if the university subject was not taught at the university in Tripoli, costs were paid to study anywhere in the world), and in addition, in a Muslim country, any religious belief was OK, a secular society. In addition, Gaddafi used the oil revenues to build the biggest aqueduct structure in history, called ‘the great manmade river’ from waters drawn up from wells dug deep in the ground in southern Libya and then transported via the aqueduct into the arid regions to create arable land. Any Libyan citizen was invited to become a farmer, given land, equipment, training, a house to live in as well as start up money.
During that horrific, for no reason at all, make believe fiction that he was ‘killing how own people’, war, not only was every government installation and facility bombed, including homes of government officials, but NATO actually bombed the aqueduct as well, using shells with depleted uranium, causing the severely polluted water to pollute the soil where it seeped into and the aqueduct has been inoperable since the war in 2011 (with civil wars still raging to this day…).
Prior to this, there were no Libyans seeking refuge in Europe because they had it so good at home. When I think about this, my blood almost boils. This was why it was inconceivable for me to have voted for Hillary who orchestrated all this and I was very relieved and pleased when she lost (there is a God!!!). At least Donald Trump had never killed anyone (that we know of) and that was his most redeeming trait, making him vastly preference to a dead set certain warmonger, Hillary Clinton!!!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Man-Made_River
Why is it that I carefully proof my text before submitting it, but always find typos, or slightly wrong word usages like ‘vastly preference’ rather than ‘vastly preferable’, which I know is correct. Maybe I am getting old…. And we can’t go back and fix any mistakes, like you can do with Facebook. Anyway, i guess it shows that I am a fallible human being and not a machine, perhaps even adding a bit of credibility to what I had to say (as long as it is not about global warming!!!).
Many devices have a spelling correction facility on by default.
I turn this off but also notice similar errors that don’t feel like I would have typed the keys to me. I often find a ‘the’ has gone where a ‘to’ was intended for example.
This apart from dyslexic typing. Too much aluminium/mercury/lead etc in our brain?
I’d say that dyslexic typing is the least of your problems; even if your oeuvre was flawlessly spelled, it wouldn’t be any less meaningless. So many words needlessly wasted, on so little content.
The two worst spellers in Eng.Lit were Jane Austen and Wm.Shakespeare. Didn’t harm their readership.
Yes, I can feel where you are coming from. You have a purpose for your words too – and they are faithful to your intended meaning.
Different purpose is a different mind – and in conflicted minds communication is lost.
However, you must have a meaning – and so you have given what I write all of the meaning it has for you – which you clearly feel a need to deny in derision, ridicule and smear.
When we make peace within our selves, the world becomes a different place milosevic.
Much that was hidden becomes clear, and much that seemed clear is rendered meaningless so as to wonder that we ever believed it.
Beneath the mind that thinks, is a world unknown, and yet a place of being truly known.
The personality is a mask, milosevic, and yet – as part of us, it needs neither deifying or demonising or it becomes as if a power in itself – set against its counterpart.
So from where I am – as my own life has in a sense brought me, I offer what I feel to be helpful to the purpose I recognize and align in as truly worthy. And I meet or join in that purpose, because I am not investing in any other.
When the whole is judged unworthy of engaging with, is it not usually because it does not support the narrative identity. Is this not the mechanism of the ‘unpersoning’ and demonisation of dissent or challenge to any established and defended narrative.
you clearly feel a need to deny in derision, ridicule and smear.
yah, I have an instinctive hostility to government disinfo shills. I’m just irrational, that way.
I would associate ‘government disinfo shills’ with baseless accusation and smear.
Not that I suggest you are on the payroll, but surely a ‘useful idiot’ in making such services available for free.
Perhaps you hate the axis of evil and declare that anyone who is not with you is against you – and therefor evil. IF that is your rule, I am un-person to you by my refusal to join in the evil of hate. Not that the feelings OF hate do not come up for me in terms of man’s broad spectrum of inhumanity to man.
It is possible that the belief in shills creates more division than needing to actually pay them, because once incited to distrust and attack anything they cant understand and feel threatened by – people will do it to each other.
How much of the fact of conspiracy to dominate and subjugate is by power actually possessed and how much is actually the art of tricking others to give it them.
I don’t mean to patronise you when I state that you are capable of a greater discernment. But perhaps it is more attractive to attack an easy target, after setting yourself against such overwhelming adversity. Get it out of your system and feel better about yourself.
My invitation to you as to anyone, is to feel better about yourself first – and then act.
If I have wronged you – bring it out. If I fail you expectations, then perhaps you have unrealistic expectations.
Occult fecal blood, example 11274:
“I don’t mean to patronise [x] when I state that [x]” [insert debilitating passive-aggression and/or unchallengable patronization here]
Occult fecal blood, example 11275:
“I’m not perfect but… [insert disparagement of another here]
Occult fecal blood, example […]
…
You’ve lost me, with that reference.
I have oft appreciated vexarbs posts as I just did one of yours.
This obscure comment seems to imply I am seeing to defend myself by smearing vexarb.
But he is the one who makes accusation to associate me publicly with a an object to be hated and cast out.
And I responded to the situation as I see it and not to his personal fears and behaviours that are symptomatic of such fears.
He could have joined with the theme of dyslexic typing as something that I know many others experience. He could have simple stated that he did not understand or therefore value my posts. But he elected to ‘understand’ them in terms of his fear – without ANY substance whatsoever – excepting as far as I can see, that he did not feel me to be on his ‘side’ in a war as he sees it.
The personally emotional reactive narrative distortion and the father of it is the ‘enemy’ I see.
It is here in my view that a true movement is lost to a ritual formulaic reaction. So I write to the layer or mind running beneath a world that is held captive by polarising conflicts to frame the living against themselves.
The key perhaps is recognizing the self-contradictory futility of a thought system or identity that is set against that on which it depends for its own existence.
This theme is not special to the leftovers of political identities, but runs back to the denial and dissociation from our original mind, by the intent to usurp and replace it.
The son that kills its father, is then killed by its own effect. This may be impossible for anyone here to read and simply understand that cause and effect are one, and that an effect unlike its true cause is a lie and the father of it. But in one way or another, a false framing limits and directs the mind to attack its own shadows in others, as if to finally emerge victorious or vindicated.
The ‘magical’ invocation of potencies in terms of symbolic associations – such as ‘faecal blood’ to demonstrate your point – (what is your point?) – only smears you in the associations you are perhaps seeking to identify and illuminate?
Vexarb is capable of owning what is his, and recognising what he puts on me as his own. I don’t defend myself from baseless assertions because they are not true. ‘Toxic debt’ remains in the mind of its giver, in the intent to pass it on to someone else.
But I defend the right of communication against the acceptance of a false currency that attacks or undermines the appreciation of the true. If he has any substance – or you – bring it forth. Otherwise why not just admit that you are want to deny my voice for your own unstated reasons – and then presume yours to be dominant in setting the narrative?
Narrative control is the nature of ‘war’ that is coming to awareness now – and merely to attack and denounce the lie in the other is not to be a possessor or dictator of the truth. Rather it is a power-envy that would depose the Tsar to take the role as its own, in the name of the ‘people’ – of course.
Power corrupts BECAUSE our idea of power is corrupted, and its lack of Rest, in driven fear of threat or rival makes it seek ever more ‘control’ which is absolutely insane. And yet that is the logical or inherent outcome of worshipping power as a personal attribute or weapon – by proxy or in fantasy acted out upon the body or the world.
Socialism has set itself to usurp the territory of a brotherly love and spirit of cooperative solidarity from the Human Spirit – and weaponise it as an agency of willing subjection.
Brotherhood is then made a ‘church’ set against its new devils, with rules that associate its members with demand for penalty and exclusion if they are broken, and the holiest truth of which becomes the enshrined and protected evil it is founded against.
But I am ‘brother’ by virtue of the same life that lives me – as in all – whether currently aligned in purpose or at war with itself and acted out upon life. And so I look for the willingness for a true communication rather than to justify demonising it, even though the forms of seeming to communicate are the basis of the self-illusioned world of power struggle, pain and loss.
When it becomes obvious there is nothing left. The idol falls.
I look for the domino effect, because all lies depend on the same ‘father’ and the ‘children’ of such a ‘father’ are all different forms of the same purpose; replacing your true source and nature. Thy will be done – and yet ‘Heaven’ waits – outside time, for you to share the true in time – and re-establish a basis from which only a true expression can rise.
Truth is not manufactured or made real by fighting over it – excepting to the mind that gives its truth to the a-tempt. We all hold facets of the true for each other because we have sought to lay our fear upon ‘others’ and hide it there. And then cement it with concepts and symbolic associations that operate as acceptable currency wile intimacy itself is denied.
Perhaps stumbled on for a brief moment of a true shared being, before being brought to room 101 and exchanging the willingness to love for the mindless extension of a will to stamp on its face – in the name of Big Brotherhood of course.
Equality is only recognized by its extension. Give as you would in truth receive. How can this not call for releasing the self-specialness of judging others and believing it true?
Speaking truth to power is of the quality of resting in power, not ‘using it’ and thus being ‘used’ by the attempt to use it. But surely it starts in the willingness to question or challenge our own fears, rather than re-enacting them over and over – perhaps in shifting forms but always protected from awareness by their own protection racket.
Left to ourselves, we would take insanity to ever more inversion and denial of our Right Mind – but right in terms of a true Inherence and not in terms of false claim to conserve what is left of a wrong mind as the ‘right to rule’. But we are not left to ourselves any more than we are aware of our true rights, but only struggling in the false amidst the willingness of the true to restore to wholeness and a quality of rest amidst the richness of life’s expression and reflection, recognized.
Right now is the only point of our true responsibility to our own experience and yet we cannot give a measure that does not set our own receiving – however cunningly packaged in a mind made legion.
The social is the extension and expression of our individual willingness. Not the dictate of a collective upon the freedom to give and receive. Feed the soil – not the plant as if a thing or things alone and in themselves – or as if a unit or commodity of consumption.
When we hate someone’s guts (did you use that saying as a child sometimes?) is it not that we hate our own. I don’t know I can prove it – but hating our own gut is a self-wretched or self-retching state of intolerable hate. I understand the movement to dissociate and escape – but I see the connection between anti-biotic or anti-life – and bleeding within. The signs of which then leak out as a wake-up call – if one wakes to hear it. or the fixation in disease of sickness management.
Amnesty International played a big part in legitimising the destruction of Libya. They put out propaganda stories of Gaddafi giving Viagra to black Africans to rape women. A lot of black African migrant workers were lynched from lamp posts as a result. The others found themselves up for sale in the slave markets that are a feature of the “new Libyan democracy” Cameron and Sarko helped them build.
That war was really the worst. Chavez really admired Gaddafi and I remember him trying to help, offering to negotiate, or intercede in some way, to assist Gaddafi in any way he could. It was so disgusting! I mean, Saddam Hussein did fight a war with Iran, did invade Kuwait, killed many Kurds, so what happened in Iraq was a bit understandable. But, Libya!!! Never invaded any neighbors, did try to help the IRA and the Palestinians, only because Gaddafi saw that the situations were unjust. What happened is unforgivable and I really feel for the people there who have had to put up with so much, through no fault of their own. I read that Gaddafi’s son was possibly running for office. I can imagine that for Libya, having Gaddafi as leader was like heaven compared to now. Maybe Gaddafi’s son could win but probably he would be designated as a dictator and ‘taken out’ just because of who his father was.
Never forgetting that the US backed Saddam’s invasion of Iran all the way – he was a ‘friend’ then.
— nor that Saddam Hussein sought, and received, the permission of the US ambassador to invade Kuwait.
— nor that pre-gulf-war massacres of the Kurds were carried out with chemical weapons kindly provided by the US and Germany.
— nor that post-gulf-war massacres of the Kurds were facilitated by US permission for the Iraqi military to fly their attack helicopters, which would otherwise have been shot out of the air.
https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/
Nonetheless, and this was my point, Gaddafi did not none of that and yet he wasn’t even given the dignity of being captured and hung. And, of course, then there is the famous ‘we came, we saw, he died’ clip of Hillary, whilst cackling, like it is the biggest joke ever. After seeing that, I just couldn’t believe in her, or her boss, Obama, or any of their ilk, ever again. Trump’s most redeeming point, in contrast to Hillary, is that he had nothing to do with all that, making him a saint in comparison.
Even Saddam Hussein was heaven compared to the Mad Max Hellhole of present day Iraq. Dumb goy muscle Uncle Sam doing the Zionists’ dirty work yet again.
That’s what the dumb goyim are for, to serve the needs of the Master Race. Otherwise, they would have no reason to exist.
Then (2009):
“If you succeed in getting a no vote here [in Ireland: on the Lisbon Treaty], that will be such a boost to people like us, all over Europe, that do not want to live in a European Empire of the 21st century.”
“…and under the terms of the Lisbon Treaty, Europe will become subservient to the wishes of NATO and the aims of NATO.”
“We are creating for ourselves here one massive, great Frankenstein, which will damage all of us in the long run.”
“What it does [the Lisbon Treaty] is create this military machine, this military Frankenstein, which will be so damaging to all of us”
https://www.theredroar.com/2019/02/exclusive-corbyn-branded-eu-military-frankenstein-and-trashed-second-irish-referendum-in-unearthed-footage/
Now (2019):
Labour has long argued that the Government should change its negotiating red lines and seek significant changes to the Political Declaration to provide clarity on our future relationship and deliver closer economic relationship with the EU.
The changes we would need to see include:
A permanent and comprehensive UK-wide customs union…
Close alignment with the Single market. […]
Dynamic alignment on rights and protections …
Clear commitment on participation in EU agencies …
Unambiguous agreements on the detail of future security arrangements …
https://twitter.com/jeremycorbyn?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
Something that Tusk and Verhofstadt have indicated would be favourable terms of surrender to the European Empire. It appears we have our own Quisling phony-left in the UK.
Thought I’d link to a Guardian (pseudo) debate two weeks prior to the 2015 Labour leadership election.
The issue of Europe comes toward the end (Corbyn speaking on it at 1h28s).
https://www.theguardian.com/membership/2015/aug/26/guardian-live-labour-leadership-hustings-live-stream
[It’s interesting just for the chance to witness the (body) language of R Behr and J Harris]
The difference that you point out between Corbyn 2009 and Corbyn 2019 is mentioned by many, but is it not the difference between Corbyn as a campaigning renegade MP and Corbyn as a self professed leader of a so-called ‘bottom up democratic party’? The Labour Party is split on Europe, so to represent the Party’s views as policy rather than impose his own he would have to strike a compromise, no?
To really Leave in a ‘Lexit’ sense would mean nothing short of revolution in my opinion, which might be the better option in the long term, but it’s fair to say that Corbyn has never presented himself as a revolutioinary, and I would argue cannot therefore be accused of being a quisling on this issue.
If he’d stood up in 2015 and said “Europe is consolidating into a totalitarian neoliberal power bloc enforicng policy through an unaccountable governance and a unified military. Vote for me for a wholly different direction.”
He didn;t though, so I’m not surprised or disappointed that he has ended up positioned to enact the only compromise that is workable within this wholly corrupt and deeply entrenched failure of a political and economic system in which we live,
The position is absolutely clear – despite the miasma of superheated foetid air emanating from Westmonster – any minister who is not prepared to deliver Brexit, is constitutionally ‘in breach of contract’ to the Crown …and should be suspended (see comment below). Tertium non datur: a third was not given – its either Leave or Remain. So that’s one betrayal.
The EU “military Frankenstein” and European Empire have progressed to become an actualised entity in the last decade. There has not been a single word on the anticipated EU Military Unification (the European Defence Union) in the entire debate. We are being sold into NATO suzerainship without a single word of debate. “Qui tacet consentire videtur”. That’s another betrayal.
Socialism, any socialism, is a priori ruled out by the Maastricht Treaty, etc. There will be no progressive socialist reform in the neolib/neocon EU Empire. Especially not to vassal members who have a minimal sovereign say (if, as yet to be agreed, we have any say at all). Without a say: we will be ceding our sovereignty. Ceding our sovereign right to self-determination; our sovereign right to our own, independent fiscal and monetary policy; our sovereign right to self-defence; our sovereign right to nuclear deterrence; our sovereign right to foreign policy; our sovereign right to democratically administer our defence budget; etc to a military Frankenstein dictatorship. Which is, perhaps, as the full betrayal of socialism and accedence neolib/neocon suzerainship, is the most heinous betrayal of all.
Don’t take this personally: but I am incredulous as to how complacent and hypernormalised people have become to those who are prepared to betray us to regimes of power that will be forever beyond our control.
These constitute Constitutional acts of Treason. It’s a bit more than a workable compromise, Crank. It betrays the abhorrent, de-legitimated state of the disUnion. Jeremy Corbyn has betrayed his own principles; betrayed his class affiliation – selling us into permanent neolib/neocon austerity; betrayed democracy and sovereignty to a military Frankenstein he saw in the making. And that is the kind version of what I really think!
I don’t disagree with any of that.
I only think that Corbyn ‘betrays his class affiliation’ as anyone does who seriously thinks that Labour offers a significant route toward their enfranchisement. That ‘compromise’ is mentioned only in the context of a system where there really is no meaningful compromise, nor the possibility of one.
I now stand with those who claim that Corbyn was not ever a meanigful break with the status quo, because there is no meaningful break with the status quo short of some complete overhall of just about every institution in modern society, and that his term as leader has only benefited us by showing how true this is.
I think that any honest sense of ‘sovereignty’ is long gone down the river from Westmonster to the square mile, there to be shuffled around in private offices, many of which are occupied by people with loyalty to something quite outside the interests of those living in the UK.
As such, I consider the whole politics charade (esp Brexit) as something orchestrated to distract : a celebrity reality game show of nostalgic ideologies competing for the prize of the chance to appear in the next season’s episodes.
On it goes. Bring on AOC, Gabbard and the rest….
‘There is no greater misnomer in our Western world than calling our systems of electoral representation ‘democracies’. This misnomer -or illusion – began to take hold around 1800. Before then ‘democracy’ was understood to mean the opposite of electoral representation. It meant citizens participating in government in three ways : by voting directly on issues and appointments; by acting as part-time public officials themselves; and by being members of parliament-type assemblies selected (as juries are) by lot. These practices are all opposite to electoral representation.’
Ivo Mosley -‘In The Name of The People’
“Jeremy Corbyn has betrayed his own principles; betrayed his class affiliation…”
Jeremy Corbyn has betrayed neither. He was born, grew up and was educated the son of well off, middle class, Labour supporting peaceniks and remains very much a chip off the old block; he worked in trades unionism and remains fully committed to it; he learned the resilience and endless persistence required of internationalist “democratic socialists” (an example of which he has stated himself to be) from Tony Benn and has forgotten none of that either. He also, clearly, made a conscious choice to go into traditional British parliamentary politics in a long-established, major political party as a way of expressing all of that, rather than into any of scores of possible sideline fantastics. Nothing in his current or any previous public platform is at odds with either any of the above, or even all of the above combined. Your wildly dramatic misrepresentation of his position is a function of your so far unfounded and maybe never to be realized wishful projections, in no way related to his own life-long, patently transparent beliefs and affiliations. If there is a chance that you might not like the way a horse will run on race day, carefully check and take the trouble to understand fully its prior form before you place your bets.
Whatever, Mr Corbyn is trying to steer a way through the tory mess that will prevent the schism which the tories have and have been trying to infect the Labour Party with – ably assisted by the blairites who will do anything if they think it keep a Corbyn led party out of government.
I am a bit puzzled as to why anyone would raise the issue of Corbyn’s leadership of Labour in a conversation about establishing socialism, given that the notion of creating a socialist state by way of getting people to dutifully tick a box is farcical.
We’ll just set to one side the elephant which is that Mr Corbyn has said from the get go yjat he is not up for belonging to an eu which prohibits the re-socialisation of vital national assets and infrastructure.
He has not or ever would resile from that but he hasn’t bought it up simply because this letter to may bizzo is a tactical ploy to keep the pot boiling while sticking to the batting order conference gave him Believing that Corbyn holds his letter will change May’s moronic play is showing an incredible naivety.
People who choose to vent over this really puzzle me because I simply cannot comprehend how they imagine ‘delivering socialsm in a manner that places personal comfort and committment ahead of a real struggle
It cannot happen because any attempt by any political organisation to do so to do so would cause the sort of shit Mr Corbyn has endured. Not only at the hands of the elite puppets such as tories and nulabourites to the nth degree, but also the tiresome ersatz lefties who never grew up and who criticise anyone who tries to move things along because that person of the left isn’t, they are impure because blah blah blah.
Right now there is no chance of a successful socialist revolution getting up anywhere, especially not in the UK where the depth of citizen indoctrination is only surpassed by amerika.
But if someone such as Mr Corbyn did become PM and adopted many of the policies he has espoused, people would see that the sky hadn’t fallen in and they would be much mpre protective of what they had gained at the same time as being much readier to fight for what they want/need.
UreKismet
See what you did there? Gave ‘them’ your power of autonomy and self-sovereignty. We, the People, are the sovereign power. They only do what they do because we crawl and refuse to stand tall. There is fuck all they can do without our authority. The more we volunteer servitude, the more they take our autonomy. Right now that autonomy is in existential danger of going forever. To keep it topical: if we support the phony-left – what’s left?
“..There is fuck all they can do without our authority.” Which ‘they’ have asserted that they have since the beginning, so that all that they have done from Bengal to Culloden, from Peterloo to the Boyne, was done with our consent, on our behalf and arm in arm with us all.
And, in the final analysis, they make the same argument that you do, BigB, which is “if you want power you will take it. You haven’t taken it so we can assume that you are happy with current arrangements.”
Your argument differs slightly in that you will claim that, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, “The Sovereign people” already have power, which they are choosing not to exercise..
As ‘crank’ points out Corbyn’s apparent change in attitude is largely attributable to the fact that he is now employed to promote Labour Party policy. (There is also a considerable difference between the Lisbon treaty referendum in Ireland and the current situation in the UK) No doubt he ought to have waited until he had persuaded the party to adopt his policies in every respect before running for the leadership. But I suppose that he worked out that being in the leadership he would be in a position to prevent the office from being used, as it long was, to erase any socialist influences and expel all socialist members.
ureKismet presumably remembers those days, whilst BigB chooses to ignore them.
Corbyn is doing a very good job in extremely difficult circumstances. Essentially he is trying to persuade people to trust in themselves and their communities and back their own strength and ingenuity in a time of great danger, a time when poverty and the socio-economic abyss threaten ever larger sections of the people. They have seen their living standards crumble and their sense of security has been worn away- for millions of people, the most vulnerable, the past forty years have been a deepening nightmare. People have no resources, their savings have been eaten away, their careers depend upon the whims of nasty people in positions of power, investment in the economy has been diminishing as capital is exported to hire cheaper labour. The Health Service is being sliced up and demolished, to the fears of unemployment, homelessness, hunger and cold is added the fear of being unable to get medical treatment for the family.
Corbyn has to say- if we trust ourselves we can reverse the course of history, restore and rebuild, and, in the end, transform our society entirely-build the New Jerusalem. He has to be given the benefit of the doubt, due to friends and neighbours, and encouraged to become more radical, to worry less about our working with him.
Unless of course, we aren’t serious. Life for many is very bearable, and change would be, at least unsettling, but we can hardly say that we support the government and its political course. So let us say Corbyn is not radical enough for us. We are waiting for the right leader, the one who agrees with us in every respect, not a mere 90% of things. And, in the meantime, we will take our place alongside the Friends of Israel (and enemies of Palestinians) the fans of John Bolton and Al Qaeda in Syria, the United States, the Tory Party and the neo-liberal financial interests and undermine Jeremy Corbyn.
And when he’s been replaced by someone more acceptable to The Guardian , the Israeli Ambassador and the State Department, and the Labour Party is back to forty or fifty thousand members and relies on spivs and oligarchs for its continued existence, we can note to ourselves that our struggle against Corbynism was not the same as the Daily Mail’s though we both wanted his downfall.
Bevin
Let’s start from a presumptuous common denominator I think we share? We both want socialism, and we both want a sovereign people. Let’s bracket out the “military Frankenstein” of the Lisbon Treaty for the moment. Let’s confine the issue to a self-sovereign people, and where their best interests lie: viz-a-viz the EU. I do not need a situational report on impinging poverty. I live in the country and am a loss of job and 3-4 months away from the food-banks myself. I’m a just-above JAM (just about managing) precariat.
Why are we poorish and getting poorer? Why are our social welfare safety-nets being packed up? Why is our healthcare services… you know the score. The deep answer is EROI (you must be aware of my POV by now). The surface expression is neoliberal austerity. How can a complete accession to a neolib/neocon Empire be an answer? It cannot.
I have framed my views through Bill Mitchell’s empirical data analysis, and his policy manifesto ‘Restructuring the State’. The Remain (CU, single market, etc) position is not substantiated by any data. In framing it as a protection for jobs and workers rights: we are being lied to. In the EU, we will continue to get poorer. Why do you think the Gilet Jaunes are on the street having their eyes blown out and hands blown off – because of their collective neoliberal prosperity? Or because they been austeritied and taxed out of existence?
And the Franco-German neoliberal response to authentic protest. Apart from the abhorrent brutal state-sanctioned repression by paramilitary police: they took more autonomy away from the People by creating a federal, plenipotentiary, Eurodistrict – de facto creating a two-tier Europe for the haves and have nots (via the Aachen Treaty). Mitchell calls this ‘depoliticisation’: the removal of autonomy and sovereignty from the grassroots into tiers of supra-sovereign hierarchies – which further de-legitimate any form of inclusive government. It’s one rule for them, another for us. We have no redress, not even on the streets.
If the Corbyn proposal becomes any sort of a basis of a post-real deal – that will be our lot. There will be no repoliticisation (grassroots, direct democracy, participatory politics) and no socialisation under EU Empire rule. Gone forever, unless the EU collapses (which is not unlikely, but cannot be banked on).
What can be banked on is enforced pauperisation under a military Frankenstein and NATO suzerainty. Stoltenberg will be our de facto PM, Mogherini our Foreign Minister. Our sub-imperial satrap ministers will be answerable to them. Only, God knows who they really answer to. We will be the basement gimp of the IMF/BIS for eternity. If a deal is made on the basis of recent proposals: thanks mainly to a Corbyn led social post-democracy.
I still have that t-shirt, if you want it……
XXL? 🙂
Hey, room for “really, really, really,,”
Look at the MPs who supported Corbyn’s selection as contender for leader; they don’t seem to be around much in support these days. Also when asked, they say lame comments like “wanted to give the left an opportunity”, etc. Corbyn was put in place as Labour Party Leader so that when Maggie May channelled Heath on steroids (hopefully without his hobbies), no-one would want that ‘loony’ running the country (good god, the man wear’s a coat like the last labour loony). The most important thing to remember when you have a left wing and a right wing, is that both are owned by the body in the middle – and the body wears blue with little stars…….
Mikalina
That’s the problem entirely: that the mass perception cannot see the body in the middle. They think the left wing is an independent entity that will fly with all of their hopes. As soon as they give their consent their hopes are dead. You can write to your MP, or start a petition …but who do you send it to? The Pentagon? The BIS? That is where hopes go to die under neoliberalism. We have this unique, amazing, intrinsic power that we so cheaply give away. I maintain more than ever that those who support actually existent phony-left socialism within the EU Empire – which is a sick joke – have no idea what sovereignty is. If they realised what it is worth – or did not delude themselves that it is to be retained – we could really effect a change. So long as we honour traitors – who sell our autonomous unity so cheaply – we will always be on our knees. Better send me two tees! 😉
BB – disappointed that you are selective and generalising.
The simple election of the ‘socialist’ wing of Labour under Corbyn – twice – does not mean the deep foreign, banking, academic infiltration and worm tonguery suddenly left the scene. They need to be faced down.
No doubt the specific issues will be fully addressed at the forthcoming general election. Where JC can be afforded equal news coverage.
In the meantime it is obvious that tory central office and the nulabinc ‘traitors’ are singing from the same hymn sheet.
As the BBC news leads with the Berger bullshit, fully supported bt the Graun and msm. She will chase down anti- semitism wherever ! Where else has she found it except in her party leadership?
The phony war heats up.
The Labour Party is an organisation designed to prevent genuine socialism from gaining real ground in the political system. It’s a containment excersize.
I cannot see it as a vehicle for ‘facing down’ the secret state, zionists and the financial powers who run this country.
Tom Watson steps in to save Berger’s ass. The demotion or removal of all the wreckers in the party will be accompanied by the detonation of their worst ‘bombs’ yet.
What will be left at the end of that process?
Is that Mark Regev’s subaltern Tom Watson?
The Wavertree affair will surely be the opening salvo in the final battle between the zionist lobby and the Corbyn movement.
Some make the case that his passive non-resistance to their onslaught has been most effective in showing anyone -who can still think, the true nature of this lobby, with its outriders and boosters in the media.
Others label Corbyn a capitulating wimp who has allowed fascists to stomp over the movement and effectively turn the party into a zionist enforcement agency.
Either 40% of the electorate supports (in their minds) ‘an antisemtite’, or we have to conclude that there is at least some truth in the former case.
Crank
Well I’d be in the latter camp – the discrediting of a real lifelong anti-Zionist, anti-racist like Hadjo Meyer being the final straw. Then there was the capitulation over the IHRA plus mendacious pseudo-defintitions. That made the whole Wavertree fiasco somewhat predictable. The real racist Berger claims she is the victim and Tom ‘proud to be a Zionist’ Watson waves the anti-semitic ‘get-out-of-jail-free-card’. As I predicted at the time, the neolib/Blairite/Zionist phalanx hold the balance of power. No one is safe from crocodile tears to camera or a fifteen year old tweet turning up if they cross the real racists. All in all, Jeremy Corbyn has presided over the death of the once proud Labour movement in the UK. They never served the People, but now they serve another God entirely – Mammon. Of the phony left, what is left is the Labour Party of Israel (Westmonster Branch). If people want to turn a blind eye to the support for the White Helmets, NATO, Russophobia. Zionism, the military Frankenstein of the EU Empire, nuclear power, nuclear weapons, and neoliberalism – and call that ‘socialism’ …quite frankly, they are part of the problem, not part of the solution.
Is it Corbyn, the person, or the machinations of a party where the leadership and the membership lack power and control?
The members overwhelmingly wanted mandatory re-selection and it was stolen from them. This is perhaps an equal pre-cursor to the Berger situation. M.R. would have dealt with the situation without creating this fractuous atmosphere so desired by the wreckers. Who scuppered mandatory re-selection? Lansman and momentum with the right wing unions.
The hustings vid I posted at the top showed Corbyn promising to lead a party where the leader was a representative rather than a dictator. Has he done that?
In a way he has stood back and allowed the string pullers free rein. I can understand why people think that this was all a plan to draw activists into a cul-de-sac : a fake Left movement.
This doesn’t take away from the fact that Corbyn’s tenure has revealed more clearly than ever just who is in control. (to me at least). Maybe at this juncture that revelation just doesn’t matter that much any more.
Crank
You raise some really pertinent points. I think the warning signs came with the Lansman email coup d’etat – backed by Corbyn – that de-democratised Momentum. Then, as you say, we were told all last year that the grassroots would get mandatory re-selection and purge the party of Blairites. Now it is quite clear that if the CLP move – absolutely legitimately – against arch-racists like Berger, they have the backing of the party Nomenclature. In other words, I do not think Tom Watson acted as a unilateral. independent agent.
Fundamentally, I still believe Jeremy Corbyn to be an honest man – too honest and genuine, perhaps? All party decisions are ‘democratically’ made is a policy mantra. Therein lies the rub. How does one form policy in a pit of neoliberal vipers? There is a vicious dialectic set up that means that any real, genuine, progressive politics is poisoned by the process.
In a way, Bevin is right. Corbyn is doing the best he can. Where I disagree with him is that the end result is a completely unacceptable slightly ameliorated Business As Usual and capitulation to Brussels/NATO suzerainty – hidden behind the sloganeering (for the Few, not the Many – would be the correct slogan).
Then there is what I call the ‘Corbyn singularity effect’ – where Corbyn’s honesty is used to wrongly legitimate the views of the likes of Berger, Smeeth, Umana, Thornberry’ etc. Views that would be viewed as unnacceptable otherwise. In other words, Corbyn gives Labour a genuine kudos it should not have.
If we accept that many of their radical proposals will be subject to EU ideological sovereignty – not ours – what’s left? A de-radicalised Tory manifesto, and not much else?
So it’s the party system, of a whipped, neolib/neocon captured, unrepresentative system. For all the hot air, there aren’t really even two parties – just the blue or red Tories either side of the aisle. In fact, the blues are more honest in effect – there is no pretence of those in whose interests they act. In effect, Jeremy Corbyn has become the representative of a neoliberal dictatorship – the military Frankenstein and EU Empire he foresaw back in ’09. I bet he never thought he would become one of its advocates?
Yep.
I wonder what proportion of the 3-400,000 people who joined the party with hopes of genuine change, think this way BigB.
Corbyn strikes me as callow, but what do I know? What of Milne et al? Surely they knew who controls Westminster and what it would really take to create a genuinely democratic movement. Perhaps they are frauds, or incompetent ?
I wonder what (assuming that they are genuine) they could have done differently. It could have been priority number one to establish a new media organisation to counter the propaganda and smears and to get their side of the story out. Instead they seemed to cower away, capitulate, give mixed messages and rely on fringe independents to build the base in the information sphere, perhaps hoping that more members would join and push through the changes.
Perhaps they are not strategists at all but blithering idiots?
I guess the end game of Corbyn becoming a watered down centrist PM or being destroyed by a zionist conspiracy might tell us what it has all been about.
Jezza needs to grow some b*lls and face these people down. You can never appease these people. Jesus couldn’t when he walked the earth, so what chance has anyone else got? The Board of Deputies and the Mossad folk are quite open about mounting a multi million campaign “to drive him out of public life”, in their own words. This is the way it always is. Fight 5 wars for Israel and you are anti semitic because you haven’t fought 10 wars for Israel. Give Israel $20 billion and you are anti semitic because you haven’t given it $50 billion. Grovel on your knees to the Zionist Lobby and you are anti semitic because you aren’t simultaneously kissing their a*se.
Maybe you have to cut Jezza some slack, because 80% plus of the PLP are scum and absolute filth – people like Berger, Bradshaw, Bryant, Gapes, Ellman, Benn, Watson,and so many others, all bought and paid for Friends of Israel. In the circumstances, just surviving all the Zionist backstabbing has been a miracle in itself.
Yes, he’s got the Board of Deputies and the Mossad Office at the Israeli Embassy on speed dial.
I hold an idea of a ‘human alliance’ – regardless of party.
While I hold the Climate guilting a scam, it takes the ground of a genuine and imminent threat to human being as the embrace of life on Earth. This threat IS the result of human doing – but masked in falsely framed thinking. And so can be undone.
Recognition of self in other remains the basis of Sanity.
This calls on a miracle – does it not – and therefore on the true nature of your being – as no different than another as an expression of life. But this is not how we accept ourselves in thought and image and so we cling to what we ‘know’ in social reinforcements of conflict that attract opportunistic predation.
The difference between conditions and conditioning is that the former is regarded as settled consensual fact. Or rather – what we believe we have to conform to to have some sense of protection from what we most hate or fear.
DG
Selective and generalising – how? I have laid out a case for our loss of sovereignty to an EU Empire. The “the deep foreign, banking, academic infiltration and worm tonguery” do indeed need to be faced down. How can acceding our autonomy into their control in anyway achieve that? It’s a circular argument: face them down – where and how? When we are their basement gimp we will not be consulted. Nor will we know who to seek redress from. Our elective dictatorship will all be wearing the gimp masks the IMF/BIS gave them. When our troops and navy are deployed as EUFOR and EUNAVFOR (already occurred – EUNAVFOR is billeted at our Navy HQ which should raise alarm): who will they answer to? Who will be in command? And our shiny new Tridents Labour want us to buy (£31bn the NHS should have had): who will deploy them …with NATO missiles and NATO commanders. Do you honestly think they will be contacting Jezza in the event of the war that the NATO/EUMU military Frankenstein foreign policy could plausibly lead to? I think you might be a little delirious if you do.
It may well be futile saying this: but if we are going to face down our oppressors – we better do it in the coming weeks when we have a small chance of identifying them. If and when a deeper union with the European military Frankenstein Empire occurs, and our military is theirs …we cease to be a nation state. Who do we turn to face down then?
Even godly “Brother Nathanael” is more “left” than this bunch of traitors:
A while back, I used to think this guy was just a crank.
And what is your current opinion of the person whose birth name is Milton Kapner but is now more commonly known as Brother Nathanael ?
At this extremely late date, nobody still upholding the Official 9/11 Faery Tale and similar delusional fantasies, which have served as the essential pretext for the entire ruling-class programme of the 21st century, can be considered “left-wing” in any meaningful sense. They are rather, as they must be at least subconsciously aware, a controlled opposition, in fact the best opposition that money can buy, to divert popular discontent down harmless ratholes which pose no threat at all to Business As Usual.
Medialens linked to this revealing exchange between Aaronovitch, Owen Jones, Badiel and Bastani yesterday.
twitter.com/DAaronovitch/status/1093207721447510016
Does it not exemplify Atzmon’s ‘Jerusalem thinking’ just perfectl i.e. the need to adhere to the ‘correct line’ rather than to argue rationally? They stumble over each other to demostrate how they keep to ‘God’s law’ on Russia, Skripal, Sarin etc..
Aaronovitch chimes in, asking, ‘9/11 ?’ as a loyalty test to one who dares to defend the logic of asking basic questions about things, although even they repeat the ‘written truth’.
9/11 changed the discourse and made it kind of mandatory (within public debate at least) to defy all logic and reason and to devoutly recite the narratives of the powerful.
Amazingly, Medialens seem to obey this diktat on 9/11.
I agree that nothing moves until this situation changes. It’s all just guff.
to defy all logic and reason and to devoutly recite the narratives of the powerful
It’s all just guff.
“He who pays the piper, also calls the tune.”
“It is hard to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon him not understanding it.”
The “Grassroots” Myth: “Liberal CIA” Network of “New Left” Foundations, Media and Activist Groups
Just to bring this thread full circle, one of the people who brought the motion against Berger is a 9/11 skeptic:
https://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/no-confidence-motion-in-berger-tabled-by-9-11-conspiracy-theorist/
The motion was withdrawn (one can only assume under duress) before any constitutional response from the NEC was given. Watson was just playing his part in stirring it up in the media.
The fake Left Novaramedia journo Michael Walker suggests that the bringer of the motion should be suspended not Berger, because ‘tin foil hats’ etc….
There is no bridging this divide except through understanding 9/11 and understanding the importance of it, but people like Walker never will because they are mentally gridlocked fuckwits.
And that is how you get on the BBC. That’s how the zionists stay in power.
they are mentally gridlocked fuckwits.
Perhaps this is a colloquial way of saying “they know on which side their bread is buttered.” Or perhaps it’s the other way around — the colloquialism, that is, not the bread and butter.
A more specific psychological analysis would be, that the mentally gridlocked fuckwittery is a symptom of their emotional need to remain consciously unaware of their actual social role, as well-paid disinfo shills for the ruling class. That kind of cognitive dissonance would be enough to mentally gridlock any aspiring fuckwit.
Phony Left: those with iPads / iPhones, fancy cars, lots of frequent flier miles. Amongst the poor a few phonies also reside, but much less than under the well off.
Paulo Freire > Quotes > Quotable Quote
Paulo Freire
“[T]he more radical the person is, the more fully he or she enters into reality so that, knowing it better, he or she can transform it. This individual is not afraid to confront, to listen, to see the world unveiled. This person is not afraid to meet the people or to enter into a dialogue with them. This person does not consider himself or herself the proprietor of history or of all people, or the liberator of the oppressed; but he or she does commit himself or herself, within history, to fight at their side.”
― Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed
One of the best books ever written, IMHO.
Quote from a Gilets Jaunes protester: “The powerful will only stop dominating us when the little people stop crawling.”
On-the-ground reporting as usual by Great Britain’s very own Vanessa Beeley:
https://www.mintpressnews.com/macron-tactics-against-yellow-vests-have-nothing-to-do-with-public-safety-everything-to-do-with-global-politics/254782/
On ‘Direct Democracy’; and the right to a CIR (Citizen Initiated Referendum) – we, the People of the UK, already have a similar right. We have had it since 1215. We have a right of redress with the Crown (not the sitting-tenant Monarch – with the Crown.) We can petition for the Crown to withhold Royal Assent on any anti-Constitutional statute law that violates the corpus of common law contracts we hold with the regimes of power. That would be pretty much all of them – certainly since 1972 – when Parliament anti-Constitutionally acceded sovereignty to a foreign power (the then EEC). This was made clear at the time by Lord Kilmuir.
We have the right to petition the Crown – in the form of the sitting-tenant Monarch – to prorogue (suspend) Parliament, if and when Ministers are acting anti-Constitutionally, against our interest, in violation of their oaths to the Crown. Which is, again, pretty much all of the time.
In extremis, we can withdraw the Crown from the Monarch – as we have done six times historically – that is, depose them …in favour of someone who will carry out the democratic wishes of the People.
We are only crawling because we (present company excepted) refuse to unite and stand up for ourselves …flashguns or no flashguns. We will get a million on the street for a Royal Event. Zero percent of whom are aware they work for us. They hold our power in trust, for us. One day we might take it back.
We have the right to petition the Crown
yah, good luck with that.
It’s an arcane POV for sure. I’m not really expecting a mass mobilisation any time soon. My point was more that if we accept voluntary servitude to the diktats of the EU Empire – we will be on our knees forever. Or worse, missing an eye, face in the dirt. Faced with such a prospect, I’m somewhat miffed as to why intelligent people think this is a good thing …because some bloke called Jeremy says so? He had more insight ten years ago.
The criteria for socialism seem a bit arbitrary to me. Switzerland, of all countries, might have a good chance of being called socialist.
– In Switzerland, there are state-owned banks (cantonal banks owned by the cantons) that are quite popular (there are private banks, as well, of course, and their reputation is not that good internationally).
– Mortgage rates and interest rates in general depend on several factors. But mortgage rates around 1% are, indeed, normal in Switzerland (this hardly has to do with the existence of these state-own banks, let alone socialism, but it also brings Switzerland closer to the image of socialism).
– Generally, private households in Switzerland still get their electricity and water from state-owned companies. There has been some privatization, but mostly for the electricity supply for companies, not for private households.
– Of course, Switzerland as a neutral country does not send its military around the world, it only participates in some humanitarian peace-keeping missions.
I think these are generally good things. It is mainly the left that is against the privatization of electricity, but other things like the the cantonal banks and neutrality are popular from the left to the right.
But at the same time, Switzerland is a very business-friendly country with good conditions for the rich in which the left is weak. So, I find it a bit strange that, according to this description, it might already seem to be partially socialist.
Anyway, I think a mixed capitalist-socialist system is probably more realistic for highly developed countries, and then, in many areas, it is a matter of degree. I think the main emphasis of the left should be to get further in a socialist direction, not to denounce those who have demands in some areas, but don’t tackle everything at once as „fake socialists“.
The Article is almost politically illiterate in my opinion,
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/robert-graham-the-general-idea-of-proudhon-s-revolution
https://longhairedmusings.wordpress.com/2017/05/09/the-bastiat-proudhon-debate-on-interest-1849-1850-letter-13/
”NOW PROUDHON ADVOCATED A SOCIETY WITHOUT GOVERNMENT, AND
USED THE WORD ANARCHY TO DESCRIBE IT. PROUDHON REPUDIATED,
AS IS KNOWN, ALL SCHEMES OF COMMUNISM, ACCORDING TO WHICH
MANKIND WOULD BE DRIVEN INTO COMMUNISTIC MONASTERIES OR
BARRACKS, AS ALSO ALL THE SCHEMES OF STATE OR STATE-AIDED SOCIALISM
WHICH WERE ADVOCATED BY LOUIS BLANC AND THE COLLECTIVISTS. WHEN
HE PROCLAIMED IN HIS FIRST MEMOIR ON PROPERTY THAT ” PROPERTY
IS THEFT,” HE MEANT ONLY PROPERTY IN ITS PRESENT, ROMAN-LAW,
SENSE OF ” RIGHT OF USE AND ABUSE ” ; IN PROPERTY-RIGHTS, ON THE OTHER
HAND, UNDERSTOOD IN THE LIMITED SENSE OF POSSESSION, HE SAW THE
BEST PROTECTION AGAINST THE ENCROACHMENTS OF THE STATE. AT THE
SAME TIME HE DID NOT WANT VIOLENTLY TO DISPOSSESS THE PRESENT
OWNERS OF LAND, DWELLING-HOUSES, MINES, FACTORIES AND SO ON. HE
PREFERRED TO ATTAIN THE SAME END BY RENDERING CAPITAL INCAPABLE
OF EARNING INTEREST; AND THIS HE PROPOSED TO OBTAIN BY MEANS OF
A NATIONAL BANK, BASED ON THE MUTUAL CONFIDENCE OF ALL THOSE WHO
ARE ENGAGED IN PRODUCTION, WHO WOULD AGREE TO EXCHANGE AMONG
THEMSELVES THEIR PRODUCES AT COST-VALUE, BY MEANS OF LABOUR
CHEQUES REPRESENTING THE HOURS OF LABOUR REQUIRED TO PRODUCE
EVERY GIVEN COMMODITY. UNDER SUCH A SYSTEM, WHICH PROUDHON
DESCRIBED AS ” MUTUELLISME,” ALL THE EXCHANGES OF SERVICES WOULD BE
STRICTLY EQUIVALENT. BESIDES, SUCH A BANK WOULD BE ENABLED TO
LEND MONEY WITHOUT INTEREST, LEVYING ONLY SOMETHING LIKE 1 %,
OR EVEN LESS, FOR COVERING THE COST OF ADMINISTRATION. EVERY ONE
BEING THUS ENABLED TO BORROW THE MONEY THAT WOULD BE REQUIRED
TO BUY A HOUSE, NOBODY WOULD AGREE TO PAY ANY MORE A YEARLY
RENT FOR THE USE OF IT. A GENERAL ” SOCIAL LIQUIDATION ” WOULD
THUS BE RENDERED EASY, WITHOUT VIOLENT EXPROPRIATION. THE SAME
APPLIED TO MINES, RAILWAYS, FACTORIES AND SO ON. ”
Kropotkins entry on Anarchism in the Encyclopedia Britannica.
‘Mutual Aid’ should be compulsory reading for every high school senior on the planet.
The No True Scotsman Fallacy anyone,
https://longhairedmusings.wordpress.com/2016/09/29/bourgeois-resolution-a-poem-in-three-voices-for-added-4th-part-harmony/
https://lbo-news.com/2012/06/18/from-the-vault-money-and-the-mind-a-psychoanalysis/
There is no or right its a false paradigm.
There is Rich and Poor and there is the Oligarchy and the rest.
There is also the Bourgeoisee or the 5 %
This is where the Gatekeepers live.
Divide and Rule or Polemics, Binary argumentation.
https://longhairedmusings.wordpress.com/?s=Left+Right
Hush, quiet now; don’t tell the cattle. They’ll stop fighting, or voting, or posting, and then where will we be……..