Maybe electoral campaigns should be totally subsidized and all private contributions forbidden, purely and simply.
Excellent suggestion!!!
Of course, it doesn't solve the underlying problem that wealth can buy elections, because wealth can still buy the press and can still bankroll belief tanks and pay for lawyers.
But it's a step in the right direction.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
You do realize that what you describe is sheer communism - ie, something as bad, if not worse, than nazism. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
:)
You mean Murdoch media? You think they have any credibility left, after the Bush years ? Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
And do you have precise figures for the supposed decline of influence of same?
What would precise figures on the influence of Murdoch's media consist of?
Anything from statistics to more ample research...
What "supposed decline of influence" do you refer to? I was looking for data because it is not possible to assess the situation without them.
Our democracy as is, is not quite under the rule of a few media barons, yet which is why all tools of democratic participation and legal means to watch over/control power should be used. It is better to concentrate on our freedoms/rights and that we use them wisely instead of pointing to glossy magazines that everyone is free to shun...
"If you cannot say 'no' [to the propaganda the media is feeding us], you won't be able to say 'yes' to greater things." (unknown)
It is also bad but they haven't engaged in any medium or large scale arrests and killings, yet.
... of white people.
That aside, you're quite correct that comparing the current Western European press to the Pravda is - with a few notable exceptions - a gross injustice to the Western European press. The problem is that things are going in the wrong direction, vis-a-vis concentration of media power, and the argument is that if something is not done to curb this trend, we will end up with a press that is, if not entirely Pravdafied, then at least Berlusconified, which is bad enough.
That aside, having some strongly subsidised independent outlets staffed by tenured reporters and insulated from partisan political pressure is probably A Good Idea. And I do think that the press needs to be officially recognised in our constitutions as a branch of government - with both the prerogatives and the checks and balances that come with such recognition.
You know, on a TimesOnline blog I once said that money have nothing to do in health care - so it should all be nationalized. Also law procedures are extremely complex for the alpha citizen, so the people should have free legal assistance, with lawyers as employees of the state. And no further than last week Sarkozy proposed that football be regulated at EU level, and not risk becoming pure showbiz, influenced by markets and money.
These kind of ideas circulate freely in France, but how practical are they? I do believe in them too a bit, but I can also see how useful and efficient the free private enterprise can be. And then there's the more general issue of freedom, which is why I mentioned communism. Press is actually quite regulated today, there are journalist associations, charts and laws guaranteeing press freedom. Owners may be billionaires, but most journalists belong to the leftwing (as most intellectuals). On the contrary, subsidised outlets dont always mean independence and impartiality. ALL French public channels are strikingly hard left and social-neolib. And communist or nazist states controlled the press far stronger than our billionnaires - and I mean, far far stronger. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
Owners may be billionaires, but most journalists belong to the leftwing (as most intellectuals).
I don't know the French situation, but in those countries that I do have fist-hand experience of, that's a myth. Danish and American newsies span the entire Overton Window, in rough proportion to the general population (and in both cases, the Overton Window is almost entirely right-of-centre...).
And even if it were true, the owners still appoint the editors, who are the ones who ultimately decide what gets published (and how to spin it). Moreover, by moving more and more "news" from investigating reporting to cut-and-paste from press releases and stories ghostwritten by belief tanks and spin doctors, current trends place even greater control in the hands of the moneyed oligarchs.
On the contrary, subsidised outlets dont always mean independence and impartiality.
Which is why staffing it with tenured civil servants is so important. Impartiality is, of course, an impossible demand, just as objectivity is. But independence is valuable in and of itself.
Any notion that journalists working for Le Figaro, L'Express, Le Point, Paris Match, financial dailies La Tribune and Les Echos, or Le Parisien, are a bunch of "leftwingers" depends on how far you can drag the Overton Window to the right, and nothing else.
They made a poll at some point, may be I'll find a link if there is one, and 80% of French journalists declared themselves leftwing.
(btw you forget to mention Marianne, NouvelObs', Liberation, Monde, Le Parisien, l'Express, Challenge ) Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
But they seem to have come to their senses (inasmuch a major American news outlet can be said to have come to its senses recently) around 2005, when it was obvious to everybody that Vietraq was gonna end in Peace with Honour. Whereas the genuine neocon house organs like the New York Post or Washington "Moonie" Times... not so much.
You may colour me unsurprised that Time Magazine supported Bush and now supports Obama. Time always supports The Powers That Be. They know which side their bread is buttered on; mistake that for conviction at your peril.
The others, I conceded, so didn't mention. Though Libération and Le Monde have certainly moved rightwards over the past thirty years, as they have become progressively more in hock to big investors.
My point is that your sweeping generalisation that journalists are "leftwing" doesn't hold good. It's an often-stated narrative meant to somehow dilute the power of big money and rightwing ideology over the press. In other words, one of the means of shifting the Overton Window.
ALL French public channels are strikingly hard left and social-neolib.
What on earth does that mean? Apart from the fact that, by calling French public TV channels "strikingly hard left", you are simply betraying how hopelessly far to the right you are?
how hopelessly far to the right you are
That depends on your definition of left/right.
I have observed that from a right-wing conservative (neo-con) US perspective, all things French are genuinely left-wing and socialist...
Only supporters of US foreign interests are centre-right.
I'm sure there were diaries written on the topic in the past...
You can observe the same when you hear someone French discussing German politics. In France, the German magazine "Der Spiegel" gets cited by those to the right, ... less so in Germany.
Well, US neocons also seem to think that Thomas Jefferson was a pinko commie traitor who hated America.
For another, it belies the notion (as claimed by some self-described "centrists" that their conception of "the centre" is a natural and inevitable position - i.o.w. it calls attention to the shifting of the Overton Window, which is in and of itself desirable.
Finally, it shows for the lie it is the hysterical rhetoric of those on the right who are apt to compare everyone to the left of them to Stalin and Mao. Now, we may quibble about the precise location of the centre, but irrespective of where it is located, Stalinism and Social Democracy are not the same thing, and claiming that it is very clearly demonstrates that someone's either disingenuous or has a poor calibration of his political compass.
One side will call the other socialist, terrorist supporter, whiners,... ; they will present 'facts' to support their allegations - and there's a population out there who want strong words and rulers who are IN CHARGE. The aforementioned is result-oriented sloganeering...
The other side will begin talking of McPain and Tory Bliar and will not get much support from old people, conservatives, and others more to the right who look for guidance and leadership. The rhetoric is not result-oriented.
If the Left adopted some more traditionalist reflexes it could gain, but to expect this seems impossible to do, and centrist parties neither have the punch needed to produce results.
Obama's an exception but he has left the classical spectrum and is above all else a pragmatic. Pragmatism does have centrist aspects in that it takes in the best from all sides of the political spectrum.
McPain is an Obama campaign slogan, not chiefly a progressive one. I always preferred McPalin myself... Which actually is a result-oriented slogan, because Palin was an albatross around McCain's neck from the first time she opened her mouth. So reminding people that a vote for McCain would also be a vote for Sarah Palin was a quite effective meme to spread - at least judging by the polls and focus groups.
"Tony B. Liar" is actually Tory slogan, AFAIK. Seemed only fair to repay them in kind by exchanging the "n" for an "r." That aside, Bliar is almost universally despised these days, so mocking him can hardly be an ineffective propaganda gambit.
If the Left adopted some more traditionalist reflexes it could gain,
In the short term, but frequently at the cost of moving the Overton Window. Quite simply, if the Overton Window remains in the current location, we cannot win, nevermind if it slides farther to the right. So any and all political action has to be evaluated in terms of how effective it is in moving the Overton Window left. And adopting authoritarian rhetoric and wingnut-lite policies doesn't do anything for that.
Obama's an exception but he has left the classical spectrum and is above all else a pragmatic.
Again, pragmatic towards what end? I don't know. You don't know. Nobody except Obama and possibly a few in his inner circle seem to know.
But given who he's filling his staff with, it looks like we're in for a third Clinton term. Which would mean essentially pragmatism in favour of staying in the White House. That's all well and good as long as it's a means to an end, but for Clinton and Tory Bliar it became an end in itself - an end that they were willing to sell out every principle that their parties had once had in pursuit of.
I didn't say that I preferred right-wing sloganeering and their "facts" - did I?
I prefer to keep language as neutral as possibly because I'm interested in dialogue and diplomatic solutions, compromise if necessary...
pragmatic towards what end
Frankly, I have no idea but I'm sceptical and critical... - Pragmatism could mean anything and everything.
Seriously, though, my attitude to "neutral language" is about the same as Gandhi's quib about Western Civilisation: "That sounds like a good idea."
I wrote an essay on newspeak here. The general thrust of it is that doing politics today - in the presence of the hard right, represented by Friedmaniacs, neocons, etc. - is like playing poker with a pathological cheater who uses marked cards. Except that you can't call a referee and you can't leave the table.
Now, if you're going to institute a referee, I wish you good luck with that. But in the meantime, I prefer to promote our own brand of newspeak, so we at least don't lose money to an obvious cheater while we wait for the referee.
You can use your own brand of newspeak for your own pleasure but it will leave the pathological cheater unimpressed. Meanwhile, others watching the scene might get the impression that the cheater's the righteous one and that you are not, based on the language you use.
So, is your own newspeak serving any purpose? It won't help to get the marked cards on the table. There is no referee. All you/one can do IMO is use decent language to name "the obvious".
As an aside, the objection that the appearance of neutrality is essential to promoting newspeak is already covered in the comment thread over there. Briefly, my response is that most successful newspeak did not sound neutral when it was introduced - it is, in fact, a feature of newspeak that it makes concepts that are highly disputed sound like matters of course by endlessly repeating highly contentious assertions as if they were neutral matters of course. See, e.g., "activist judges," "liberal media," "war on terror," "Washington Consensus." None of these terms is even remotely neutral. That does not seem to prevent them from being effective.
I'm looking to defeat him, to ruin him, and to run him out of town on a rail, covered in tar and feathers. The point of newspeak is to win, not to play nice.
Now this sounds more like revolution of the violent variety.
You mention notions (I haven't been to your link, yet) that were accepted though they weren't neutral. They were effective due to the combination of two important elements: First, it was assessed what people wanted to hear, and newspeak was adapted to satisfy the interest of a large audience. Second, the media adopted the new notions and spread the word.
In your case - the voice of the minority, of the opposition, it is not intelligent to try to uncritically copy what was successful in a different context. You cannot buy the media but you can find out what the audience wants to hear, you can listen and adapt the message to their ears.
Meh. The New Deal was an attempt to compromise and let the fuckers stay at the table if they promised not to cheat. We saw how well that worked out.
Different fora, different audiences, different approaches. When I write LTEs, I tone down on the ET newspeak. When I write for ET, however, I assume that the audience is at least sufficiently interested to challenge my newspeak and hear the explanation. After all, it worked for you and Valentin - both of you read and responded to my argument that taking away civil servants' pensions is little more than theft. As I understand it, at least one of you even accepted that there was a case to be made, even if you didn't necessarily agree with me on it.
While I don't expect you to accept my newspeak - particularly when I admit in so many words that it's a propaganda effort :-P - I hope it at least challenges you to think about the terms people normally use to describe the same things.
The Overton window is a concept in political theory, named after its originator, Joe Overton, former vice president of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. It describes a "window" in the range of public reactions to ideas in public discourse, in a spectrum of all possible options on an issue. Overton described a method for moving that window, thereby including previously excluded ideas, while excluding previously acceptable ideas. The technique relies on people promoting ideas even less acceptable than the previous "outer fringe" ideas. That makes those old fringe ideas look less extreme, and thereby acceptable. Delivering rhetoric to define the window provides a plan of action to make more acceptable to the public some ideas by priming them with other ideas allowed to remain unacceptable, but which make the real target ideas seem more acceptable by comparison. The degrees of acceptance of public ideas can be described roughly as: Unthinkable Radical Acceptable Sensible Popular Policy The Overton Window is a means of visualizing which ideas define that range of acceptance by where they fall in it, and adding new ideas that can push the old ideas towards acceptance merely by making the limits more extreme.
The Overton window is a concept in political theory, named after its originator, Joe Overton, former vice president of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. It describes a "window" in the range of public reactions to ideas in public discourse, in a spectrum of all possible options on an issue. Overton described a method for moving that window, thereby including previously excluded ideas, while excluding previously acceptable ideas. The technique relies on people promoting ideas even less acceptable than the previous "outer fringe" ideas. That makes those old fringe ideas look less extreme, and thereby acceptable. Delivering rhetoric to define the window provides a plan of action to make more acceptable to the public some ideas by priming them with other ideas allowed to remain unacceptable, but which make the real target ideas seem more acceptable by comparison.
The degrees of acceptance of public ideas can be described roughly as:
The Overton Window is a means of visualizing which ideas define that range of acceptance by where they fall in it, and adding new ideas that can push the old ideas towards acceptance merely by making the limits more extreme.
Repeatedly eluding this will not make you right
I couldn't have said it better myself.
If you insist that progress can be made without having a metric against which to evaluate progress... well, that's your prerogative. You're in good (or at least prominent) company; quite a lot of post-modernists would agree with you.
Opportunism is tactics. If you want to know the colour of a politician, look at what he has done in office - or, if he has never been elected before, at the company he keeps.
That most of the electorate is unwilling to take the time and effort required to evaluate their representatives on their merits, rather than on this week's opportunistic dog-and-pony show, is hardly something I consider progress. But hey, what do I know, I'm just another ideologue.
So the people are always to blame. Maybe we should evaluate their competence before voting.
What have you to say about Obama then? His record in the Senate is very left, his opinions are quite pragmatical/centre-left nuanced, his companionship is a bit bizarre. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
Opportunism is pragmatic. If the left has it right, I'll apply this idea even if my political company is rightish.
How are you going to judge whether somebody "has it right" if you claim to have no coherent standard for evaluating it? Go by your gut? Go by what Conventional Wisdom tells you?
If there is proven inequality, it must be tackled, period. If women are discriminated even as they're fit for the job, that must be stopped, one way or another, by a law if needed. But not automatically, by quota laws, imposing parity no matter where and how.
There is a case to be made for quota laws, particularly in jobs where a great part of the qualifications can only be acquired by on-the-job training. In those cases, denying women access on account of lack of qualifications is self-perpetuating. As an aside, gender inequalities may very well be caused by structural imbalances rather than out-and-out discrimination, and quota laws can provide the necessary impetus to challenge those structural imbalances.
That being said, there is, of course, also a case against quotas, because they are wide-ranging, sweeping and very strong interventions in society. And strong interventions in society should be used sparingly and with considerable care. But that is not quite the case I hear you making...
If life conditions in prisons are indecent in terms of health, cleanness etc, this must be corrected and means must be provided by the state. This doesn't mean anyone should have his private room with colour satellite television though.
I should very much think that they have the right to a private room (the right to privacy is a pretty basic and inalienable human right, which is not revoked merely because you are imprisoned), and they certainly have a right to some contact with the outside world (since prolonged isolation is a form of torture). Whether that contact should take the form of internet access, TV, newspapers or some combination is, of course, a matter of some debate.
I'm slightly amused that you make a point of mentioning that the TV is in colour and via satellite, BTW... would B/W cable TV be more acceptable to you :-P
That is exactly the case I am making.
Otherwise, yeah, local channels on B/W TV sets would be a nice punishment (psychological torture, you will call it) :) You know, even keeping someone imprisoned is a restriction of the fundamental right to move freely and do whatever you please. It is very hard to bear psychologically, even if less so than downright isolation. A form of torture can be in certain cases your roommate. As a student, I remember my right to privacy was limited to my own bed and my own locker in that shared room.
And so on. Goes without saying that prison is inhumane, particularly since prisoners are not to blame: the society didn't listen to their griefs, and pushed them to crime. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
However, restricting their ability to follow developments outside the prison, crowding them together too closely to permit them privacy and isolating them completely from their families and friends are simply gratuitous vengeance for which there is little pragmatic justification in terms of rehabilitation or the safety of the rest of society.
No more ranting, Jake, or you'll do it all by yourself. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
My point was about giving an example of balanced take on a delicate subject.
An example of what you consider a balanced stance on a delicate subject.
But when you repeatedly couch your own subjective - and highly ideological - assessments in the language of objective observation of fact, you get called out on your bullshit. And that involves going into some of the details of how and why you are wrong.
You may protest that the pro-prisoner part didn't go far enough (and I might say that you're too leftwing, that's why, to which you'll reply I'm rightwing, duh, boring).
The fact that you are not sufficiently pro-prisoner (pro-prisoner? WTF kind of term is that? I'm pro-human rights, thank you very much!) is not my complaint. My complaint is that you blithely conflate areas of policy for which there is a utilitarian case to be debated and areas where there is no utilitarian case to be made. That's comparing apples to oranges.
Well you can call it utilitarian, yes. The case I am actually making about the death of ideologies, is that politics are becoming more and more utilitarian these days. The time of the grand principles and their even grander invocation is past, not because the society gives them up, but because there's no need to fight for their necesity anymore. That necessity has now become quite obvious, and the talk about a rational way of putting them into practice is little by little excluding politicians of the type of J-L Mélenchon (formely of the French PS), or other hard or extreme left. The same phenomenon, but from a different direction, will occur about the neoliberalism, libertarianism, or hard right. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
The moment I will start comparing what you consider a human-rights friendly cell, with the places many people, poorer and even not so much, live in, you'll realize that by that logic everybody is subject to an inhumane treatment.
That is rank nonsense. Try taking a look at a prison cell sometimes. Yeah, students living in dormitories have similar amounts of space and privacy to what's found in a single-occupant prison cell. But students don't have to spend their every waking hour in their dorm rooms either. And they get to choose their co-occupants, which is not entirely insignificant either.
Pretending that prison cells are comparable to the accommodation offered to the twentieth percentile (nevermind the median...) income/wealth in society in general is bald-faced denial of easily verifiable facts, which is neither conducive to a productive debate, nor to my blood pressure.
You're entitled to your own opinion. You're not entitled to your own facts.
And anyway, you're shifting the goalposts again. I never objected to single-occupant cells on principle. Not even students sleep in cots in group dormitories - when two of them share a bedroom, it's usually for rather more social reasons than lack of accommodation space.
Well you can call it utilitarian, yes. The case I am actually making about the death of ideologies, is that politics are becoming more and more utilitarian these days.
Utilitarianism is an ideology. Nobody disputes that - except, apparently, you. Not even the Enlightenment thinkers who proposed it would dispute that it's an ideological position.
But I'm not going to waste any more bandwidth correcting such basic omissions in your education, because that has so far been a waste of time. You can look up the history - and critiques - of utilitarianism on your own time. Wikipedia has an excellent page on it, I hear, from which to start.
Utilitarianism? Ah, but you see, I didn't speak about utilitarianism. I used the adjective utilitarian in a commonly accepted sense - that is, by people who are aware life is more than just semantics - or hairsplitting.
Utilitarianism is not what I described, just like real-politik or compromising isn't pragmatism. You not being able to discern this shows you actually don't know so much on what means what. You have it all wrong, Jake :) Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
The point was that prisoners are there for a reason, which is hardly to feel comfortable and be distracted. I said that decent lodging should be balanced with scarcity implied by the situation. Balance, Jake.
Your own words, from two posts ago:
Your original statement:
You started out by stating - without attempting to make a case - that you thought prisoners ought to not have individual cells. That's a view one can hold. I happen to disagree, but hey, that's life.
You also stated, however, that by "looking at the facts without bias" this was not "indecent" conditions.
When challenged on the decency of parts of those conditions, you claimed that they were not indecent because a substantial fraction of the population lived in similar or worse conditions. Of course, that's not an argument against those conditions being indecent.
But even more importantly, when challenged on the factuality of this statement, you backpedaled to words to the effect of "well, maybe they're indecent for free people, but they're in prison, silly - different standards apply to people in prison."
So now you're reduced to claiming that "yeah, conditions in prisons are indecent, but the prisoners deserve it. So there!"
For all your talk about utilitarian pragmatism, when pushed to defend your points from first principles, you fall back on primitive retributive justice. Principles that are hardly particularly utilitarian or pragmatic - retributive justice incurs far greater costs on all involved - society, potential victims and the criminal than rehabilitary justice.
So apparently principle trumps pragmatism in the case of prisoners?
Ah, but you see, I didn't speak about utilitarianism. I used the adjective utilitarian in a commonly accepted sense - that is, by people who are aware life is more than just semantics - or hairsplitting.
Your own words, again:
The case I am actually making about the death of ideologies, is that politics are becoming more and more utilitarian these days.
I'll leave it to those less linguistically challenged than I apparently am to figure out which sense of "utilitarian" that this implies, and how precisely this conflicts with saying that politics have increasingly aligned with the principles of utilitarianism.
Utilitarianism is not what I described, just like real-politik or compromising isn't pragmatism.
You'll have to show me a definition of "pragmatic" that doesn't cover realpolitik and compromise.
And you can't fall back on what "common knowledge" says here, because if you go out and ask people at random "are realpolitik and compromise pragmatic approaches?" they'll overwhelmingly answer that they are. So here you have to be using it as a term of art. And then you have to provide a coherent definition. This game of "I'll let other people guess at what I think I mean by this" is one of little value and even less amusement.
The first quotation of me is about human rights, if you pay attention. You didn't challenge me on the decency part; you made it a matter of human rights, and I pointed out that turning everything in life a matter of human rights will lead no where; this is just a way for you the Revolutionary to make sure you'll always be able to claim the Establishment (led by those fatcats, no doubt) despises human rights .
This is how you twist one tiny word in a phrase and then make a huge case about it - and why I called you a vicious debater. I don't have time to correct each of your tiny errors of logic, let alone that I suspect them to be intentional, given the general revolutionary tone you chose to use.
Finally, the word "utilitarian" has two meanings (as you might well know; so I won't give any links - there). One is about caring about the usefulness rather than the pretty packaging. The other is related to the doctrine of utilitarianism. I used the term in its first signification, and while I might have put this clearly, it was you who deliberately picked the second one, in order to be able to send a arrow about my supposed need of "education". The doctrine goes much farther than the everyday life term of utilitarian.
Compromise can be pragmatic, as well as un-pragmatic, when the two parties involved strike a deal according to the balance of power between them and other factors but the best way for the given situation. Real-politik can be pragmatic, but can also be cynical. Rational pragmatism implies in my view a good dose of humanism and especially intellectual honesty - something you seem in utter want of. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
I meant balance between decent conditions, and the degree of comfort fitting their condition of prisoners - people paying their debt to the society for a wrong done (and not just "removed from society"). Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
My fundamental difference between both you, Valentin, and Jake is that you both believe that humans act out of good faith, either politicians or ordinary humans. I don't trust our goodness which is why I believe that you both forget the pitfalls of our humanness - greed, egoism, inclination to withhold truth, to hide, envy, etc.
Pragmatism can only be good when everybody involved has a pure and honest heart. The same goes for models that derive from the communistic ideal.
It is possible to put pragmatism and communitarian life into practice but they need to be embedded in a framework of laws, societal rules, etc. to keep them save against natural abuse, and that's where restrictions need to be enforced, rendering pragmatism less pragmatic and turning communism into something that will rather look like social democracy.
So why do you think we're in disagreement?
What a thought-provoking question! ;)
The difference is in the fine print.
Not everyone who considers "Social Democracy" a good state form is a Social Democrat. Social Democracy is home to left-wing and right-wing thought. As a Christian, I could identify with "social", or with "environmental protection" (The Greens) or with the more conservative values on paper as outlined by parties to the right.
I don't identify with either side but consider myself, not above but outside of this spectrum. I like to find truth in all things but have no interest in imposing myself or see others impose their or my convictions on others. I am rational and fatalistic with regards to reality, not depressed.
I know that change begins with ones own heart, which requires patience and persistence. In a way, I also have a (though less visible) revolutionary impulse... I just don't try to reach for the stars though they are beautiful to look at.
* * *
Why don't you ask her/him by what definition of left/right s/he arrives at "strikingly hard left" for French public TV?
In my view, the simple use of such an ideologically-determined expression that bears no relation to fact, is an indicator of ValentinD's political leanings.
Why don't you ask her/him ...
lol
Why should I ask when it is you who wants to find out?
I haven't followed your exchange above but you could ask, "Could you please provide details as to what you consider to be strikingly hard left and why."
Maybe he wants to be provocative? ;)
What is a "tag-team"?
The very intensity you use to react at my statement is an indication of your own political leanings. I had the same warm welcome from the right, when I spoke against Bush, neocons or economic neolibs. For me personally this enough proof I'm quite on the centre, actually. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
sheer communism - ie, something as bad, if not worse, than nazism.
IDEOLOGY ALERT
(not sure from which point of view you call my comparison ideological :P ) Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
"Communism" covers a much broader range of ideological thought than "Nazism" or even "Fascism" does. Depending a little on how you delimit it, "Communism" can cover everything from orthodox Stalinism over the Scandinavian M/Ls (who can hardly be said to be genocidal butchers in the making) to the various hard-left versions of Syndicalism. While orthodox Stalinism is probably comparable to Nazism and Fascism, Scandinavian M/Ls, Western European Trotskyists and revolutionary Syndicalists... not so much.
The Swedish Marxist-Leninist tradition rejected violence almost to the point of pacifism, opposed the Soviet Union vigorously, and fought quite a number of legal battles for press freedom (mostly when they were charged with treason and espionage for writing something unflattering about the secret police...). Yet they were indisputably communists.
The Soviet Union embraced violence almost to the point of sadism, naturally the Soviet Union supported the Soviet Union vigorously and it clamped down hard on press freedoms, even to the point of using the secret police to shut down the free press. Yet the Soviet Union was indisputably a communist regime.
Conventional usage of the term thus suggests that both pacifism and violent repression can be accommodated by ideologies that can broadly be considered "communist."
If you prefer to refer the term "communist" for totalitarian police states, I guess that's your prerogative. But then I you'll need to find some other term for quite a wide part of the European left.
Turning each and every word of mine against myself, pushing relativism and hairsplitting to extreme, is of no use (AGAIN):
Indeed I first said "sheer communism", and that can be called broad brush. But barely twenty seconds later, I explained clearly what I meant by that expression:
quote: "And communist or nazist states controlled the press far stronger than our billionnaires - and I mean, far far stronger." unquote.
I could argue about communism as ideology too, because IMO it leads to suppression of freedoms and rights, no matter how "well" would be implemented. But that's something else. In our case, the meaning was precise. You're a vicious debater, Jake. Really. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
This is not hairsplitting, it's a straightforward matter of pointing out that you're either using a definition of communism that differs notably from the one used by the rest of the world, or you're attempting to tar the perfectly democratic and civilised variants of communism with the atrocities committed by Iosef Stalin and company.
And as an aside, your original claim that subsidising the press is sheer communism is ridiculous hyperbole as well. But that's another story that's dealt with elsewhere in the thread.
On other occasions (not on this blog though) I did argue that too, about the general viciousness of those dictatorships, on which I maintain communist ones can be seen as at least as evil as nazist ones.
Ideology is still one more step further. I tend to maintain the original comparison, broad brush as it was. But that was not the point here and now. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
You wrote
So we need to subsidize the whole press as well. You do realize that what you describe is sheer communism
You do realize that what you describe is sheer communism
in response to
Unless my English skills have taken a turn for the worse of late, this reads like a discussion of the problems of having a corporate press in a democratic country.
You can go upthread and read the exchange from the beginning. You were the one who started with the allusions to communist dictatorships - and with a highly spurious claim to boot.
When I speak of my english, I mean that I am not a native speaker, and fluent as I may seem, I do make mistakes actually, easy to misinterpret in the charged context that you provoked. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
There is a certain internal coherence to your claim. But it flies in the face of historical and contemporary facts.
I also don't understand the claim that sponsoring all of the press must necessarily follow from sponsoring part of it. It is perfectly possible for part of the press to be sponsored by political parties, part of it to be sponsored by labour unions, part of it to be sponsored by Big Money and part of it to be sponsored by the state.
That's actually how it used to work in Scandinavia, until right-wing ideologues set out to undermine our independent public radio. I don't usually hear claims that Scandinavia is a communist dictatorship - well, I sometimes do, but only when I'm stupid enough to follow a link over to FreeRepublic...
(And as an aside, the Danish press is all subsidised to some extent through various regulations that benefit organised publishers over - say - boy scout pamphlets.)
Sponsoring part of the press amounts to creating an official organ of press. Been there, done that.
Sponsoring part of it also won't stop capitalist rats from making even more capitalist papers, better quality, larger audience, slogans well instilled inside. So in order to be faithful to the purpose, you need to owe all the press; then you get to forbidding any other press but the official one.
I was speaking about sponsoring/subsidizing by the state though. Granted, what you say about Scandinavia sounds quite differently and I find fewer reasons of mistrust. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
I don't see why public press should necessarily be lower quality than the commercial press. In fact, it is often the other way around - the public press does not have to worry about the bottom line, so they can let their reporters actually do some expensive investigative reporting, instead of copying what they're fed by spin-doctors.
But of course, that requires that the state-owned press is insulated from political pressures. Much the same way universities have to be, and for much the same reasons.
You should come live in Scandinavia for a while. See socialism with a human face :-P
Heck, apart from the fact that it's cold and dark half of the year, you might even like it here...
State universities are not always quite so insulated from either state bureaucracy or political influence. There is a point to those americans saying that whatever the state touches, becomes inefficient, a perk and a political territory. The bad side of democracy. Their extremist solution is no better though.
My opening diary was about my latest two week trip to Scandinavia actually. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
State universities are not always quite so insulated from either state bureaucracy or political influence.
Tell me about it... our universities have been brought to the ragged edge of dysfunction by a right-wing imbecile of a minister who insists on micro-managing everything.
There is a point to those americans saying that whatever the state touches, becomes inefficient, a perk and a political territory.
And this isn't true for the things corporations do?
It is of course true inasmuch as "inefficient" is taken to mean "catering to other purposes than blindly maximising profit." Which is the usual wingnut definition. As to whether public institutions are in general less efficient at fulfilling their roles in society... well, no, as public railways and utilities can attest.
Corporations do other kind of bad things, they don't do bureaucracy. Their goal is always the market and the profit, which is normal, their reason of existence, and which must be well regulated to avoid abuse (like insurance corporations refusing to reimburse people on pretexts).
OTOH state's role is to serve the society, and bureaucracy or political perks are NOT normal. Not the same thing.
As it happens, the private railways example is IMO an example of bad regulation, even though I tend to consider this a domain of public service and a strategic domain, and so I even wonder whether it should not be, as such, state property. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
Corporations don't do bureaucracy? ROFLMAO! Oh, they certainly also do those other Bad Things you mention. But they sure do bureaucracy too... Yeah, it makes them less effective and hurts their bottom line, but that doesn't prevent them from doing it.
I agree with you that railways are a bad example, though, because you're right, they shouldn't be private. They were just the most obvious example I could think of off the top of my head of excessively bureaucratic private organisations vs. much more efficient public sector ones providing essentially the same services.
As about press subsidizing, it was no hyperbole at all. When you start subsidizing press, you must subsidize it all
No, there is no rule saying you must subsidize it all. Swedish press subsidys has been targeted at minor publications in accordance to sales figures. That is if you have a big enough newspaper, you do not get subsidized.
And thus your ideological story of the evilness of press subsidizing and the slippery slope it leads to, does not hold up. A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!
To return to the interesting part.
If there is no rule saying you must subsidize it all and then own the press, billionnaires will still be able to come up with more journals, better quality, wider audience. So you didn't solve the problem of the press falling prey to corporate interests, which was the point in Jake and my discussing press subsidy. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
Argh, drawing conclusions about my supposed ideology. It would be nice if you could limit yourself to countering my arguments. "Outing" me as the Enemy disguised in sheep skin is a bit silly.
No, you are misinterpreting me. I am not saying you are an enemy because you have an ideology, I am helping you see your ideology by pointing it out. A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!
Arguments and ideas is what I'm interested in. I see you don't actually answer to my latest reply on the matter. Maybe you were convinced after all. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
If there is no rule saying you must subsidize it all and then own the press, billionnaires will still be able to come up with more journals, better quality, wider audience. So you didn't solve the problem of the press falling prey to corporate interests,
But - as I have already noted elsewhere - there is no law of nature saying that the private press will always be better, more interesting or have a wider audience.
In point of fact, the state-sponsored press quite often has both higher quality content and greater viewership/readership than the private press in those countries where it's being done properly. Of course, nobody wants to read a Pravda, but that's not what anybody here is proposing anyway, so I fail to see the relevance of that fact...
You're a vicious debater, Jake. Really.
I'll take that as a compliment :-P
Seriously, though I'm sorry if you feel that my style is too adversarial. But I believe that pushing ideas to their breaking point is a good and perfectly reasonable way of testing them. And I believe in trying to achieve consistency in one's principles. And in being able to spell out what one is saying, without relying on connotations to bridge semantic gaps. Which is one reason that I keep heckling you to provide explicit definitions and spell out all the unvoiced connotations.
All of these endeavours are aided by acknowledging specific ideological frameworks - not necessarily agreeing with them, but acknowledging them. Which is why I think ideology is a useful construct.
Which is to mean there is a time, a place and a manner to act provocatively, confrontationally & co.
Or claiming that workers are stolen benefits is such an exaggerated, ideological, broad brush statement that I can hardly see any use or added value for it, especially that I did not speak against workers per se, but against certain politicized French unions.
You actually push me on the ideological field, while I am on the academic debate one, pondering on the death of ideology (currently witnessed) and its consequences. You may go on certain TimesOnline blogs and test ideas with people of your kind - of inversed polarisation. A sight to see, definitely. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
I did far less than this - barely mentioned the work conditions of train workers today, and was libeled a thatcherian propagandist.
I didn't see that exchange, but that's not quite the way I heard the story...
But these particular "activist French unions" represent precisely the workers whose benefits were stolen - and stolen is precisely the right word: If a private company suddenly decided to stop paying benefits that it had promised its workers, it'd get sued down to its skivvies. Now, there are some things that governments are allowed to do that private companies aren't (using monopoly power to set standards, for example). But reneging on benefits isn't one of them.
Those promised benefits as I know were bought back. No actual breach of contract was inflicted. Although the state can change a contract that is obviously ideological. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
Those promised benefits as I know were bought back.
Now you're moving the goalposts. The removal of those rights were being tabled, and there was a strike in response. What concessions were granted after the strike was launched can have no bearing on the justification for the strike. Unless you live in some alternate universe where future events can negatively impact the legitimacy of current decisions...
Although the state can change a contract that is obviously ideological.
The courts can dissolve a contract that is obviously unfair to the weaker party, or into which the weaker party has been tricked. But the presumption is always that if it is the weaker party that benefits unfairly, not the stronger party, the contract stands, because it is presumed that the weaker negotiating position cannot enforce an unfavourable contract on the stronger negotiating position unless the stronger party has failed to do his homework properly.
And the state is, by definition, always counted as the massively stronger party.
These are two very basic principles of public administration. Principles that underlie essentially all jurisprudence on expropriation and resolution of conflicts between states and private parties.
If the state fucks up and gives you a million € for a job that's only worth half a million, it cannot five years later say "hey, waitaminnit..." (unless you got the contract through illegal means, such as bribing a politician).
This is, again, a principle no serious legal scholar, no political faction and no bureaucrat - left, right or centre - disagrees with. Claiming that it's invalid in the case of train drivers' pensions is pure special pleading and nothing else.
From what I know, concessions were granted and the strikes stopped. Most people (about 70% French were against, I think) saw those strikes less as worrying for existing employees and more as setting things straight for the future, and I suspect this is how unions saw it too. In the end, no "stealing benefits" happened, and the matter of interest in that issue was bringing things on par with the other categories of employees.
And one can argue even for existing transport employees, given that the issue was about privileges granted without any counterparty. It was not so absurd that they be given up purely and simply.
I like the way you argue about contracts and courts (the establishment), although it fits little with your previous fiery talk :) Anyway French unions were often in the stronger negotiating positions, as unplausible as you might think it.
The state cannot come five years later and ask for the money back, of course, when it's about salary; when it's about pensions 20-30 years from now, the state can make adjustments so that you have to work 40 years for them, like everybody else, since you don't provide any counterpary in return to justify such positive discrimination. Nuancing. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
From what I know, concessions were granted and the strikes stopped.
So an illegitimate policy was being proposed, workers went on strike against it, the worst aspects were withdrawn and the strike stopped. How is this in any way an illegitimate use of the strike weapon?
The state cannot come five years later and ask for the money back, of course, when it's about salary; when it's about pensions 20-30 years from now,
Those pensions were part of the salary. That's the way a pay-as-you-go system works, as I have repeatedly pointed out to you. The Danish system is different - here, pension contributions are paid immediately to private accounts. Under the Danish system, pension contributions could have been lowered as part of the ordinary labour market negotiations without compensating workers under existing benefit plans, because the money had already been set aside for them. But under the French system, the pension benefits that would have been paid out thirty years from now were part of their salary today. That they were not actually set aside as such is merely a technicality of differing accounting practises, and in no way does this justify stealing them.
If I hire you for € 10000 a month and pay € 1000 a month to a private pension plan, I cannot simply retract 20 % of your private pension savings because I decide that I don't want to pay you that much in pension benefits anymore. OTOH, if I hire you under a pay-as-you-go pension scheme, I pay you € 10000 a month and promise in your contract that I'll support a pension scheme with a net present value of € 1000 pr. month. According to you I can then at a later date decide that I only want to actually pay out 80 % of that - and since the money didn't change hands in the first place, this is perfectly fine?
The only difference between these two cases is that in the pay-as-you-go system, the employer keeps the € 1000 - or, more correctly, borrows the € 1000 until the pension is actually paid out. So according to you, employees should be punished for trusting their employer with their pension savings?
(And as an aside, even if it had only been a benefit cut for future employees, striking against it would still have been a perfectly normal part of labour market negotiations. Non-tenured employees are allowed to go on strike, and if their strikes disrupt service, then it's the employer's fault for not hiring tenured employees. That's a basic, basic principle of all reasonably civilised versions of capitalism.)
the state can make adjustments so that you have to work 40 years for them, like everybody else, since you don't provide any counterpary in return to justify such positive discrimination. Nuancing.
Not when you have already worked for five or ten years under the current contract, they can't. They could have done it if they had a) compensated the workers up-front for the net present value of their future benefit loss or b) stipulated that it only applied to all new hires.
I like the way you argue about contracts and courts (the establishment), although it fits little with your previous fiery talk :)
There is no contradiction here: Courts and contracts have their place in a democratic system. Labour unions, strikes and blockades (even sabotage) have their place in a democratic system. Politicians, parliaments and laws have their place in a democratic system.
I just objected to the way you were trying to sweep much of civil society under the rug and deny it its institutional legitimacy - I never meant to imply that courts, contracts and parliaments have no institutional legitimacy, only that they don't hold a monopoly on it...
Anyway French unions were often in the stronger negotiating positions, as unplausible as you might think it.
Of course they are, unions are supposed to be in the stronger negotiating position. That does not, however, change the fact that under almost all democratic jurisprudence, the state is presumed the stronger party. Just as the fact that most trans-nats are in reality much stronger than the states they demand concessions from does not change their rights to compensation when those concessions are revoked (unless it can be proven - which it of course often can in the case of trans-nats, but less often in the case of labour unions - that they used illegal means to acquire those concessions in the first place).
I just told you why that wasn't such illegitimate policy.
I just told you the reason to go on strike was the fact of doing away with a privilege, as a principle. When it became clear that the new principle is equality, and no privilege without counterparty, the talk actually started on the pragmatic issues.
Often, less often, illegal means, stealing... Oh well. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
I wonder if you even read the explanation of the way a pay-as-you-go system compares to a privatised accounts system? Because you don't seem to have given any reason for why the employer can take the employee's money when he has borrowed it, but not when he has deposited it with a third party.
Does depositing money with a third party automatically launder the money and make it safe from the employer taking it? Does the employer have the right to refuse to repay money that he has borrowed just because he borrowed it from his employees?
When it became clear that the new principle is equality, and no privilege without counterparty, the talk actually started on the pragmatic issues.
There are two distinct issues at play here. The first issue is whether or not it is legitimate to strike on account of announced benefit cuts. And if you don't have tenure, it clearly is. If you don't have tenure, you can strike for whatever damn reason you want, and it's the employer's problem if he doesn't have enough tenured employees to cover his ass when that happens.
The other issue is whether an employer can renege on benefit payments from a pay-as-you-go benefit scheme. I can see no reason - even in principle - that he should be allowed to do that. In a pay-as-you-go scheme, the employer has been borrowing his employees' pension funds - funds that he would otherwise have had to pay out to third parties, who would then hold them in trust for his employees. As long as the employer doesn't default on the pension, that's a great idea, because it dispenses with a middleman who would otherwise have to be given a cut. But why does it allow the employer to suddenly renege on his debt?
You never answered that. You never even attempted to answer that. And the fact that other parts of the French labour force was robbed of their pensions is a complete red herring - that my neighbour robs a bank does not automatically permit me to rob a bank as well.
Colman:
And having the electoral process controlled by a small number of media barons is much better? What's their body count?
We must therefore assume you see ideology in that comment. It was in response to this comment of yours:
ValentinD:
So we need to subsidize the whole press as well. You do realize that what you describe is sheer communism - ie, something as bad, if not worse, than nazism.
You do realize that what you describe is sheer communism - ie, something as bad, if not worse, than nazism.
You, the objective pragmatist, decree that subsidies to the press (a proposition that could after all be debated in an objective, pragmatic manner?) constitute "sheer communism" (!), and we are supposed to accept that your statement is free from ideology?
You then go on to emphasize your position by telling us that "sheer communism" is worse than nazism. So, by inference, subsidising the press is the Gulag and Auschwitz combined? That is what is called a strawman, and what's more a strawman redolent of ideology. You are citing ideologies and comparing them in order to disqualify a policy proposal as being in itself ideological.
Your comment (and particularly the leap "subsidies = sheer communism") is far more ideologically-determined than Colman's. That's why you got, in your turn, an IDEOLOGY ALERT. With a :)
Attempts to establish communist or even socialist systems have been opposed by capitalist countries, most brutally by the US, e.g.: Iran (with the Brits), Vietnam, Indonesia, Chile, Nicaragua, etc. Re Chile:
"Kissinger declared, 'I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go Communist because of the irresponsibility of its own people.'" So much for democracy. ... The CIA set up a fascist organization, Fatherland and Liberty, headed by a former public relations man for Ford Motor Company, Federico Willoughby McDonald, who became Pinochet's press secretary after the coup. It sponsored Operation Djakarta, a plan for the systematic assassination of leaders of Allende's Popular Unity government, named in honor of the CIA's bloodiest success, the 1965 military coup in Indonesia in which 1 million people were slaughtered. http://newsmine.org/content.php?ol=coldwar-imperialism/kissinger-irresponsibility-own-people.txt
... The CIA set up a fascist organization, Fatherland and Liberty, headed by a former public relations man for Ford Motor Company, Federico Willoughby McDonald, who became Pinochet's press secretary after the coup. It sponsored Operation Djakarta, a plan for the systematic assassination of leaders of Allende's Popular Unity government, named in honor of the CIA's bloodiest success, the 1965 military coup in Indonesia in which 1 million people were slaughtered.
http://newsmine.org/content.php?ol=coldwar-imperialism/kissinger-irresponsibility-own-people.txt
The US has done everything it can to undermine Cuba, including sponsoring an unsuccessful invasion at the Bay of Pigs. The US did not want the "threat of a good example".
The ideological Right also tries to present Nazism as socialism, merely because Hitler used the word (which didn't seem to bother the capitalists who happily backed Hitler), while suppressing the unions and communists. Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice.
With regards to Cuba you say,
The US did not want the "threat of a good example".
Do you believe what you say here, i.e. that Cuba would be a good example? Or are you ironic?
I wonder whether there is any comparative study for the independent lay observer, contrasting statistics cited by right-wing ideologists and figures cited by left-wing ideologists with an attempt to not minimise either evil.
Not to mention the eradication of the Italian left, the Greek anarchists, the Spanish Popular Front and a couple of others I can't recall off the top of my head.
MarekNYC's our resident history buff - but each of the cases I mentioned easily runs into the thousands, if not tens of thousands of murdered, and several times that number tortured, disappeared or displaced.
Similarly, the peace movement isn't bad because the GRU supported it. The GRU was bad because they was in the habit of kidnapping and murdering people.
And as an aside, how is the GRU supporting peaceniks materially different from - say - the CIA supporting Radio Free Europe, or the EU supporting a cultural exchange centre in Cairo? Every country supports NGOs they like in other countries, in the hope that those NGOs will cause their country to come around to their way of thinking.
As another aside, the claims that the Soviet Union supported the peaceniks and DFHs to any great extent is largely frivolous: There were probably more Western(TM) provocateurs and spies in the various groups on the Western European Left than Soviet ones...
Radio Free Europe represented for many (myself included) the only connection with the free world, for years and years. That (as opposed to Bush's war on terror) was indeed a war for democracy. That war had a good side, democratic and promoting freedom, and a bad side, dictatorial and murderous. That was less a game of geopolitical influence than working to correct a situation imposed by the end of the WW2 and literally save hundreds of millions of people.
Not only pragmatism, not only common sense, but decency itself holds me from minimizing or relativizing initiatives such as Radio Free Europe, after those years' experience. Even in an abstract or philosophical discussion. Even less accepting as legitimate (let alone valid!) a comparison to GRU or KGB infiltrating and supporting certain civil movements. That had as sole purpose to use freedom and democracy in order to undermine free and democratic societies. The same could never be attempted in dictatorial countries, because of their very nature. There was a general spy war and it took place essentially on western side, because of its guaranteed freedom and human rights, precisely to have as result the termination of those freedoms and rights.
As one of my favourite classics said, in order to explain the unexplainable, we will end up justifying the unjustifiable. Friends will certainly recognize the author ;) Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
The difference is fundamental and one must be a sworn theorist, a certified philosophical relativist and a fanatic of quantum physics to the point of forgetting to what direction water flows, not to see it. I'm sorry. Radio Free Europe represented for many (myself included) the only connection with the free world, for years and years.
Radio Free Europe represented for many (myself included) the only connection with the free world, for years and years.
That's all well and fine, and I'm not actually disputing the legitimacy of the activities of Radio Free Europe. The point I was making was that the fact that RFE was sponsored by a gang of murderous thugs does not in any way detract from its value or legitimacy, any more than the fact that modest sums of money were channelled from GRU to various NGOs in Western Europe detracts from the merit of their work. (Usually, BTW, fringe groups. Romanticism for the Soviet Union was never the mainstream position on the organised left - and certainly not to the extent that later historians have made it out to be.)
That (as opposed to Bush's war on terror) was indeed a war for democracy. That war had a good side, democratic and promoting freedom, and a bad side, dictatorial and murderous.
It had a bad side and a less bad side, that much is true. But a "good" side? Only for a very - ah - flexible (one might almost say "relativist") definition of "good."
That was less a game of geopolitical influence than working to correct a situation imposed by the end of the WW2
Six of one, half a dozen of the other... If you believe that the policy of The West(TM) during the Cold War was driven by anything remotely resembling altruism, you really have very little business accusing other people of knee-jerk ideological reactions.
Even less accepting as legitimate (let alone valid!) a comparison to GRU or KGB infiltrating and supporting certain civil movements. That had as sole purpose to use freedom and democracy in order to undermine free and democratic societies.
How is opposing murderous colonial wars a way of "undermining freedom and democracy?" Should people in The West have sat idly by while the great powers sent their gangsters around the world to enforce a colonial order, merely because an expansion of the American colonial empire put pressure on Soviet geopolitical interests? Didn't you just speak out against sacrificing people for a higher end? Or does the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union justify all the "collateral damage" associated with creating and maintaining the American empire? (And principles aside, very few of the colonial wars that the peaceniks opposed actually had any material impact on the security and stability of the Soviet Union - the Soviet attempts at obstructing them was just old-fashioned Grand Chessboard gamesmanship...)
There was a general spy war and it took place essentially on western side,
And how the fuck does this justify spying on your own citizens? Being opposed to the war in Viet Nam did not make one a Soviet spy or agent provocateur, any more than opposing the war in Vietraq makes one a terrorist-loving fan of Osama Been Forgotten.
If you want to catch actual, honest-to-God spies (you know, the people who sell out their countries' strategic interests for money) - Russian, Soviet, Chinese, American, you name it - you look at the staff of defence contractors, you look in the counter-intelligence agencies, you look in the foreign ministries, you look in the industrial R&D departments. You don't look at a bunch of long-haired hippies brewing organic green tea in front of the Parliament building. That's just ridiculous.
"To promote democratic values and institutions by disseminating factual information and ideas"
That is not "less bad"; Freedom IS good - unless you're a faithful relativist for which everything indeed is relative. (see, I'm not saying you're downright a communist.
Most if not all of those who claim they were sponsored by CIA are self declared communists or socialist (I can only quote William Blum, you may have other sources) - hardly a model of objectivity on the matter.
RFE acted for freedom; pacifist groups often acted against military opposition of the free west to communist dictatorships. They were as such a tool used by the latter in their type of cold war, in absolutely no way equivalent to openly sponsoring a radio station promoting human rights and liberties.
I am getting more and more baffled of the things I am brought to argue about. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
The basis would be this:
Conclusion: my ideology always comes first.
I thought rule number one of Valentins ideology was that it is not called an ideology. Otherwise I agree, you do seem to consistently put your ideology first. A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!
Second, "my ideology comes first" is a conclusion of the leftwing positions quoted above. From those, one can conclude that the beacon is no highminded ideal, be it human rights, freedoms, inequalities, but winning the war, period. You can also see this in the way any of my attempts at nuancing things was received as a sign of hidden rightwing agenda. I was reading somewhere else that the Daily Kos etc were meant to support the Democrat party rather than leftwing ideology. My feeling is on the contrary that far from this being open, you get shut down immediately when you don't seem to "feel together" with the others, when you don't react exclusively emotionally (and strongly so) to oppression and inequalities. No matter how rational and argumenting you are. Hardly a sign of opening or welcoming people of other sensibilities. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
My diary is about the more and more cases of unideological people and approaches to issues that I see these days.
And my comment was about the more and more cases of obvious ideology I see in your writing. A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!
You can of course comment on all you want, but analyzing myself, like I said, is not the point at all. Kindly judge my arguments and deny, confirm or otherwise comment them if you care. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
I suspect this is an exercise in futility. You seem perfectly happy in pointing out ideology in others, but your own can not be discussed as it does not exist, and arguing otherwise is ideological, right? A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!
I gave Jake earlier the example of the psychiatric hospital. A sick man went out and killed someone. That provoked a lot of noise, of course, so measures were taken to enforce safety in these hospitals. In order to reassure people that would risk to misunderstand these measures as some authoritarian/securitarian policy of a rightwing government, a statement has been made, broadly saying that such places are not prisons, yet people shouldn't be free of their movements either.
Now one can see this as trivial, and a slogan used to mask authoritarian policy. Someone less biased would likely understand that by putting in balance both situations, the idea was to show that both viewpoints are considered, none is forgotten, and the measures don't intend to turn psy clinics into prisons. A mark of pragmatic approach.
I gave this kind of examples all the time, and they were systematically taken as positions against train drivers, prisoners, immigrants, unions, NGOs, and so on. The fact that I presented the two sides and I said both are to be taken into account, apparently looked like a way to manipulate the real intention, the ideology that you think you point as hiding behind. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
That usually creates a legal hodge-podge with little structure, little consistency and plenty of unanticipated side effects. In other words, all the things you criticise bureaucracy for doing...
That we have a tabloid press (of which the Murdoch Times is part, to go by what our British comrades are saying) that facilitates this by treating news as if it were cheap, tasteless pornography is hardly a credit to our society, or our body politic.
There simply is no escaping, never. Your conclusion "was argumented" but you chose your arguments and you had reasons for choosing the arguments that you chose.
It is not clear IMO in what exact terms your ideology should be defined but it CAN be defined. Your ideology consists of your views, your convictions, your values. The glasses that you wear when you describe the world, how you - and only you - perceive the world, are your ideology.
You don't need to say explicitly, "I believe in ...", " I don't believe in ...". The words that you choose to describe what you think allow everyone to see who you are and what your ideology consists of. No one has the full picture. The ideology that is yours has not been put in words and published in a book for everyone to read, but you transcend it, transpire it through your words.
There is no escapin' from ourselves...
I believe that your refusal to admit to be ideological like everyone else here, too - is causing more upheaval than the controversy of the political debate itself.
It's much easier to say, "I believe in this and that because of this and that", be clear about ones ideology than to claim to not have one but talk through the inspiration of rational Reason that is unattainable but absolute.
It would be interesting if you could frame your ideology and if JakeS and you would then debate and work out differences and common ground. Maybe both could learn something new from the other.
[That sounds a shade on the fanboyish side, but it's actually true...]
new levels of lucid... ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
That is your own point of view and what you looked for here in the first place.
This diary has nothing to do with my own ideology. I signaled it to you, when you were going about wildly about ideologically charged topics.
Again: I wrote about how polarisation of political life seems to lead to a new political class, rational pragmatists, defending human(ist) values, rights and freedoms, and also the capitalist economy to do well its own job.
I'm not saying they are perfect at it, or that the current state of affairs is a proof of this, but that things tend to go into that direction.
I - never - mentioned - my - own - ideology in my diary, nor related to it in any way. People should get that into their heads before drawing overarching conclusions.
On the contrary, after seeing TimeOnlines, Economist and NY Times blogs too, I see some people here as extremely polarised. They admit it unrepentfully, and it's perfectly ok.
NO wonder therefore that the slightest gut reaction I have to some case of unfairness other than the Rich and the Famous, you take it as a sign of rightwing ideology coming out.
I said a very restrained, limited, precise thing on unions, and you transformed it into a huge sub-thread where you ranted about stealing and aggression and fight and so on and so forth. It was a rant Jake, an ideological one (yourself accepted that later on, even as maintaining its justifiability), and nothing to do either with me, with my comment, or with the topic of this blog.
So to Lily, I reply that I made a few impersonal reflections on the political world today, and I have been confronted with a few extremely activist left-leaning people. I've been dragged onto their ideological field, and had to reply in ways which of course contrasted theirs. Like I said before: being centre against a violent leftwinger, positively looks like being rightwing.
The same can be said about my anti-neocon/neolib posts on other blogs. Being centre and rational to violent neocons/neolibs appears as being leftwing; I've been called a socialist Frenchie, supporting the Big Government, spineless appeasing European etc etc. The same reactions. My own gut reactions to ideological extremisms appear as sign of the opposite ideology.
Well I can tell Jake that the usual social-democrat does not believe unions are under violent attack from fatcats. The ones I knew or saw sounded much more moderate, even as being leftwing.
As to my personal ideas, I admitted to rightwing values as effort, as well as to supporting unions and NGOs as indispensable to the civic life, for instance as reflected on the website of the British vulnerabilities commission (or so - link provided by In Wales that I lost). My personal values come from the three sides, they look much like classical liberalism and enlightenment humanism. I'm for the individual, but also for the society, for punishment, but also education and prevention, for rights, and for duty (Sarkozy Alert). I could speak with people of both sides provided they're rational and not extremist. Call me a maverick if you need to label me. Again, this has nothing to do with the subject of this diary, which analyzed the political life today. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
IMO pragmatism is a new ideology, not no ideology.
Your earlier blog was called "Is ideology dead?" - The debate was controversial. I didn't read all of it but I don't remember that there was agreement on ideology's death.
This blog is called "So, Ideology is dead. So now what?" -
Who said ideology was dead? You declared it dead by choosing this title.
Then, you present your argumented views. They are NOT OBJECTIVE. I don't say they are wrong or right anyhow, or pink, green, yellow, ..., left or right. They are simply not objective. And this is what most here have been saying, I think.
You can say that in your view ideology is this and that but you begin by presenting the issue of the former debate as solved, as irrefutable fact, and on top of it you claim that this is the truth. Well, you don't talk about the truth; you simply say that this is so because of your objective and rational assessment of facts.
This in itself is subjective and highly ideological because you say that your way of looking at an issue is objective; the way you choose and analyze facts is the best there is. By implication you dismiss the arguments others have brought forward on the issue.
You didn't want this debate to be about "your" presumed ideology by trying to keep it abstract and by declaring not only ideology dead but also yourself immune to ideology.
To me this feels like a vacuum that is imploding.
Isn't this the way stars are born?
;)
This blog needs a shift to the right.
The title was merely provocative. Anyone bothering to go beyond the first line found this:
"Ideologies - or more accurately said, ideologisation of social and political life, seem to show signs of weakness. In what concerns me, I even argued about their approaching death - disappearance, if not from society, at least from public debate of any importance. Is this really the end of it, no more wars of ideas, no more ideals to dream of, no more polarisation?
I confess the idea that we would tend towards a sort of a bureaucratic-technocratic society, sounded quite appealing at first - not because of its advantages: jury's still out on that; but as a surprisingly (and terrifingly) accurate assessment of the state of affairs these days
Moreover, even arguing in favour of "the death of ideologies" is not ideological in itself. It's like arguing that the society is becoming atheist would be a religious position. In a contorted logic, maybe.
Pragmatism, as I said a few times now, is a methodology based on the systematic attempt to get free from subjective bias. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
this is starting to sound like dialogue out of star trek.
we'd all make better decisions if we had no emotions, i guess!
there's something dehumanising in the relentless verbiage, no sense of give and take, just wearying repetitions of what seems an increasingly robotic take on life, expressed with hairsplitting relish-less relish.
you are doubtless intelligent in an AI fashion, but it seems cognitively alien in some way i can't quite put my finger on, something emotionally autistic in the subtext, bleeding through the comments, also a slightly superior, hectoring tone that leaves a funny taste on the monitor.
excuse me for drifting into ad hom territory, but i use it to counter what i perceive to be a trollish passive-aggressivity, especially towards Jake, that provoked so many interesting comments i thought it just a new foil for a while for some here, who usually aren't so forthcoming as a rule.
but it's gone on so long, and while your command of language and argument is impressive, especially in a non-mother tongue, it's fucking hard work tracking you, and after doing the work, there's a vacuously cheated feeling left at the end, as i said in another comment on another semi-tedious thread, there's no 'there' there!
so i must regretfully conclude that you V are a new kind of troll i never encountered before, one that bores victims into reluctant submission, because who has the stamina, at the end of the day, to argue one's points with such a fixed-non-position as yours? in trying to be absolutely impartial, you actually create a semantic black hole for the idealistic to supposedly wormhole through to some post-ideological nirvana, where actually we all end up rendered, flattened into some different, dispassionate shape, disembodied algorithms jammed into some utilitarian anti-philosophy.
it's a recycling of the 'god is dead' mantra of the 50-60's, but this time it's ideology.
so fucking what?
you've created a little tautological loop, and having successfully convinced yourself of its invincibility to discussion, continue to batter the blog with spurious, sophistic, shaggy-dog circular non-reasoning that so far has convinced no-one of the veracity of any of the pseudo-truistic non-points you indefatigably belabour, with admirably impressive tenacity.
there's a kind of zen futility to the whole operation, kinda makes me wonder if you enjoy creating a sort of vortex into which heartfelt arguments meet a watery grave, a maelstrom of meaninglessness into which they tumble, energy and time misspent chimera-chasing.
davy jones in person!
i sure hope you got your jollies here, where's the next lucky blog you plan to enlighten in your, er, unique way?
sheez, i'm sorry if i offended some netiquette, but some of these threads have had me wanting to scream at what i have finally deduced, wading through so many murky mystifications, can only be wilful, wanton and contrarian obtuseness.
i really tried, but this one's off any map i can relate to.
happy looping! i sure wish i hadn't bothered spending precious time down a rabbit hole, but hey, chalk it up to getting accustomed to ET being a place where mental energy invested was always over-amply rewarded.
there went another cherished illusion!
wheeee (with h)... have a peaceful day.
nice job, i admit you had me going for a while... hats off to the saintly levels of patience others have revealed, in trying to welcome you and make you feel respected and 'chez toi'.
fool's gold, it just shimmers, ultimately weightless... being endlessly 'right' is a vaccination against productive discussion. we lefties are easy to bait into 'deep' dialogue, but eventually you have to come clean and take a position that consists of more than shooting holes in others'.
but you're way too clever a fox for that, huh? you are a giant wind-up, that gets kicks from daring provoking people into spitting out what you masochistically really want to hear, namely that your counter-arguments hold no water of life, they're just maya, mindstuff, monkeymind chatter, much ado about Sweet Fanny Adams...
but you were dying to have your bluff called, right?
we're on to you! at least your posts elicited some excellent responses.
lucifer's advocate? ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
Apparently you have never tussled with a global warming skeptic. :-)
The rest was bonus hours spent replying to fierce ideological shots. I merely said, ideological stances have a tendency to exaggeration, to flaming, to work for some ideal, and was noting people might be getting fed up with it.
There is no "there", just a question whether utilitarians are to take the place of the "illuminated" politicians. No intention to promote anything, but the reactions were blazing. I explained why: a non ideologue is mistaken for a hidden kind of one, and attacked by everybody else. What's the goal of pragmatism? Simply utilitarian, I suppose. No more grand vision of the future. What's my goal? None, I framed an issue that I found interesting, and for the rest, mainly replied to ranting. Jake made valid points, which we discussed, and pure sloganeering (which he admitted). But in general, he dragged me on ideological ground. What do I care that he sees the society as a war between fatcats and (cornered, battered) civic organizations? For me, that's the dychotomic view typical to ideologically polarised people.
My "impartiality", utilitarianism, certainly looked excessive and boring, due to too much repetition. My mistake was to not set things straight from the very beginning, know when to draw the line, instead of leaving those "interesting" sub-threads develop to no end, and then complain of it. For instance, it was a big mistake to speak of "sheer communism". It was ideological, and my subsequent clarification was useless. I shouldn't have replied to Ted Welch on "communist dictatorships", as it had nothing to do with my diary.
I'm not trying to revive anything, you can see that but a few people joined in. And for a reason: my diary was a bit too "academic", phrases too long and convoluted, the subject quite trivial, if you take a critical look at it. The subject was actually so dull, that stopping the ideological rants make it look void: the only "brilliant" idea is that we would be diving into prosaic utilitarianism.
So yes, you can say 300 + 300=600 posts were published on anything and everything but the topic, because the topic itself hardly interested.
"saintly levels of patience others have revealed, in trying to welcome you and make you feel respected"
Oh? Except the newcomers' welcome, each of my subsequent posts were met with mistrust and accused of rightwing propaganda. On the women discrimination, or these two blogs on ideology, all I said was in the end quite trivial stuff. But the slightest scent of me not being totally and fully for the weak and the poor, no matter how trivial and argumented, provoked the ire of a handful of people and derived into hundreds of posts.
Yes, lucifer's advocate in a way. I confess to this, I promise I don't do it on purpose, to troll, flame or hurt anybody, I just seem to thrive on hot debates and me taking several sides for the fun of argumenting. I actually tend to do that, indeed. I realize this won't bring me any more fans than I already have :)
I would apologize for this, even if it really was not meant like that. I really only wanted to speak of utilitarian politicians. But then, you do admit to having found some interest in those other reactions after all. If only for that, my "void" can be forgiven and forgotten :)
cheers Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
Pragmatism, as I said a few times now, is a methodology based on the systematic attempt to get free from subjective bias.
Not under any of the definitions of that word that appear in my dictionary. The term you're looking for is "the scientific method." But of course, being familiar with the rather dubious claims of Marxism to be based on a scientific understanding of the world, you might understandably be hesitant to claim that your ideology is "scientific." It sounds much better to call it "pragmatic" and then do a rhetorical bait-and-switch to substitute in the meaning of "scientific."
You are of course free to attempt to construct your own political philosophy based on concepts that you invent out of thin air, or based on re-defining words that have a reasonably precise meaning in the context of other political philosophy. And by appropriating words with positive connotations, you might get people to profess agreement. But that's not quite the same thing as convincing them that your position is correct.
In the meanwhile, if you want to get your point across to people who actually do have a little schooling in the standard terminology of political theory, you'd be wise to at least give a nod in the direction of the usual terminology instead of dismissing it as ideologically influenced (it is, of course, just as your terminology is, but that does not render it invalid...).
Hardline ideologists - communists/marxists, fascists, hard right, neocons, neolibs (soc' and eco') occupy the political scene for some time. The point would be no more than applying reason even when the Book says things are this or that way. I'm not saying that computers should decide life much like rugby would only have video equipped robot as referee. I don't say people shouldn't have convictions, but they should be thought of, not just faith.
You think "the war against fatcats", "bigots", "McPain", "Sarko's baiting for racists", "USSR was not really communist" are not rants, do not come from faith and visceral reactions? Do they strike you as reasonable, or productive? Polarisation, framing, invective, truth twisting, sloganeering, this is has always been in fundamentalists' toolbox.
As I said to melo, people need frameworks. People needed religions, and were often exploited by them or by their opportunists. Ideologies today are much like religions yesterday: they pretend to give people a framework, an ideal, make some good points, but behind their rather abstract theoretical base, it often hides opportunism and faith.
"My" pragmatism would be opposed this ideological faith. Not against honest conviction, but against pre-determined, unquestioned conviction, the kind saying "we know workers are exploited, we need no argument or nuancing, anyone bringing that is a miscreant, anyone in dissent is evil". (who said that? one might ask; but it was there permeating everything) Those ideologies I listed above, in the end, amount to exactly that, despite some good, humanist, or logical points they have.
The idea would be about taking faith and intellectual dishonety out of politics and political ideas - call it idealistic, and as such, ideological :) We need people who think critically, rather than just activists, we need people who believe in what they do for a good reason, who combat discrimination not from feminist faith, or biased statistics, but are aware that not all inequality comes from discrimination or unfairness. That they need to look for the causes, not just act out of activism. I didn't plead for a mathematical objectivity, it's impossible and inhumane, and I feel quite more sympathetic to classical liberalism and enlightenment humanism than would be needed to deny that. I'm just getting the impression people are beginning to appreciate more down to earth politics, and less ranting and wild dreams. One might point me to Obama's hopeful yes we can own slogans. Yes, but we can change things that don't work, so that they work, in real life, and not in order to implement this or that ideological agenda. Just wait and watch him at it :) Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
What one might see as my excessive detachedness, abstract objectivity, mathematical formulas, or "scientific method" not unlike Marx's, is more like allowing more critical thinking, more facts, more down-to-earth practical life stances into politics.
Yeah... "critical thinking" - we sure need more Cobb County style "critical thinking..."
Now, that's a real "down to earth" "practical life" approach that caters to the issues that the community actually cares about.
Coming from the guy who said that sloganeering pollutes the debate...
You think "the war against fatcats", "bigots", "McPain", "Sarko's baiting for racists", "USSR was not really communist" are not rants, do not come from faith and visceral reactions?
It's class war, and has a fairly precise meaning that involves taking away billionaires' billions (whether one permits them to keep their millions is where the imprecision comes in), respectively billionaires trying to become trillionaires at the expense of everyone who isn't a billionaire. The latter part being the more common in recent decades...
As for Sarko's race baiting... wasn't it you who said something along the lines of if the shoe fits?
"Bigot" can be a slur, or it can be an accurate assessment of a person. Someone who thinks that homosexuals should be denied the right to marry (or registered partnership or whatever you want to call it to not offend the fundagelical fruitcakes) is a bigot - I hardly think you'll deny that? Context is important.
Similar considerations apply for McPain.
I agree with you on the USSR being communist.
So what was that? One and two halves out of five? But hey, who's counting, right? I'm just being a spoilsport here and disrupting a perfectly good ideological rant.
"My" pragmatism would be opposed this ideological faith. Not against honest conviction, but against pre-determined, unquestioned conviction,
I never saw you make a serious attempt at challenging anybody's convictions. A serious attempt at doing so would involve data and policy, two things you have so far scrupulously avoided to pass comment on.
the kind saying "we know workers are exploited, we need no argument or nuancing, anyone bringing that is a miscreant, anyone in dissent is evil". (who said that? one might ask; but it was there permeating everything)
You never actually presented any data - at least none I've seen. Anecdotes are all well and fine as fairy tales go, but they really don't compare to a good, solid graph.
It would be one thing if all you wanted was for us to accept that workers are not getting a raw deal - and need to be getting an even rawer one - on blind faith, a little hand-waving and some sloganeering that could have been (and often has been) clipped right out of the part of the press that writes in big, easy letters and rarely use words with more than two syllables.
It is quite a different order of chutzpah to claim that this is injecting critical thinking into the debate.
The idea would be about taking faith and intellectual dishonety out of politics and political ideas - call it idealistic, and as such, ideological :)
I'm all for that - I just think you're barking up the wrong tree. The majority of the left got that memo decades ago.
We need people who think critically, rather than just activists, we need people who believe in what they do for a good reason, who combat discrimination not from feminist faith, or biased statistics, but are aware that not all inequality comes from discrimination or unfairness.
Yawn Been there, done that, got a Reagan Revolution for our troubles. We have all those things. What we need is activism that makes sure we can actually put to use any of the insights we gain from all this critical thinking and introspection.
You really are barking up the wrong tree here. The left is so far behind on the propaganda game that it's downright pitiful. It's like hearing a committed pacifist give sermons on the principles of non-violence to a Palestinian kid because he throws rocks at the Israeli tank that's just plowed his house down...
I'm just getting the impression people are beginning to appreciate more down to earth politics, and less ranting and wild dreams. One might point me to Obama's hopeful yes we can own slogans. Yes, but we can change things that don't work, so that they work, in real life, and not in order to implement this or that ideological agenda. Just wait and watch him at it :)
I don't know what you're smoking, but it's unfair of you not to share! (I think I know what you've been reading, but that's neither here nor there...)
I would be most happy if Obama could change the things that don't work so they start working - working for all the people all over the world, ideally. But heck, if he can get it working for all the people all over the US, I'd be impressed.
Given the shitpile that thirty consecutive years of Reaganomics (is it ideological to point out that the current financial and ecological disasters have been the sole and proprietary responsibility of the Right?) have dumped on him, I'd be very surprised.
Given the decrepit state of US democracy (is it ideological to point out that reduced voter turnout has been a deliberate strategy from the Right in the US?), I'd be very, very surprised.
Given that so far he seems to be more about centrism and sticking to Conventional Wisdom (is it ideological to point out that Conventional Wisdom is flat out wrong on how to run an economy?) than about radical change to make things work for Main Street as opposed to Wall Street (and is it ideological to point out that there has been a massive transfer of wealth from Main Street to Wall Street in the last three decades?), I'd be extremely surprised.
I wrote about how polarisation of political life seems to lead to a new political class, rational pragmatists, defending human(ist) values, rights and freedoms, and also the capitalist economy to do well its own job. I'm not saying they are perfect at it, or that the current state of affairs is a proof of this, but that things tend to go into that direction.
And the rest of us pointed out that this conclusion was bullshit when examined at the level of actual policy - you know the level of detail that actually matters - rather than at the level of propaganda and sloganeering.
Your response to this has been - consistently - that you can only evaluate politicians by what they say. We called bullshit on that as well: Clearly, there are other ways to evaluate politicians - such as by the policy they implement, or by the policy that their supporters push for.
Then you replied - over and over again - that you couldn't be bothered with details, because you were trying to make a general point. But when the details run counter to your general point, you don't get to dismiss the details.
Now, if all you had argued was that appearing pragmatic is a viable propaganda strategy, nobody would have objected with any great force - that this is the case has been known essentially since Goebbels invented modern marketing. But that's not the case you were trying to make (although it's a position that you've tried to backpedal to more than once). You were trying to make the case that a) (winning) politicians try to sound pragmatic, b) therefore the public seems to desire pragmatic politicians, c) therefore the public elects pragmatic politicians, d) therefore the elected politicians are pragmatic.
But item c) does not follow from items a) and b), except in a naïve fantasy land where democracy works perfectly, the citizenry is completely informed and propaganda has no effect because politicians are judged not by the colour of their advertising, but by the content of their policy.
I said a very restrained, limited, precise thing on unions, and you transformed it into a huge sub-thread where you ranted about stealing and aggression and fight and so on and so forth.
Where? You made a sweeping, general claim that many unions are excessively ideological and will push their ideology to the detriment of society in general.
When challenged to provide examples of this - you know, actual data from which your position could be evaluated, you not only backpedaled to the position that only a few unions were doing this, you also cited a couple of highly spurious cases.
I (and a couple of others) called bullshit on those cases. But unlike you, most ETers don't just make sweeping general claims as to the bullshitty nature of other people's proposals. There's an expectation around these parts that when you object to someone else's examples, arguments, hypothesis or conclusions, you make a case. Which I did.
You then dismissed the case on the highly spurious grounds that 1) it wasn't relevant because it was too detailed, 2) it wasn't relevant because your impression of public perception didn't agree with the conclusions and 3) you didn't agree and you considered the disagreement a result of differing ideological baggage. Full stop, no further argument presented.
This is the standard fallacy of centrism - to cast as inherently virtuous the fact that one is somewhere in between two disparate groups. Well, when one group is simply consistently wrong on the facts, this is not laudable. If a creationist says that the Earth is 6000 years old, and a scientist says that the earth is 4.5 billion years old, you don't get to split the difference, call it 2.25 billion years and claim credit for being a "sensible centrist." The creationist is flat out wrong on the facts, and the scientist is reasonably correct.
But of course, if you insist on doing politics instead of policy - that is, if you insist on only examining propaganda and slogans rather than actual content - you'll never get around to examining the data that would allow you to determine this fact.
Only looking at the slogans and not at all at the data, and to on that basis claim that all ideologies are born equal is the ultimate in epistemological relativism. But that doesn't seem to prevent you from calling anyone and everyone a relativist who argues that your position has no inherent validity (a priori and absent comparisons with data)...
I made no general claim. I said French unions are broadly considered more to the left than others, and that their discourse still goes in tones more characteristic to the 19th century. I pointed at the case of CGT and SUD unions as quite ideological and politicized, even as I mentioned that the CGT now seems to have broken ties with the French extreme left.
That was quite precise. Any of the other points I made about balanced approaches were not proven mistaken for their purpose; you (and others, about nurses for instance) immediately flamed up, imagined some denial of discrimination, inequality, or sufference, and poured slogans creating ideologically charged sub-threads to no end. You didn't contradict my point about prisons, but started the same fiery arguing about human rights. linca earlier didn't note that my reference to nurses was only to show that you can't judge discrimination only by numbers, not to claim that they have some easy life. And that thread likewise was completely hijacked by ranting against nurse sufference and degrading status. I'm discussing details of policies, but only in the context of balance. My phrase about train drivers' condition was not even attacking the unions. All I said is that that has nothing to do with 100 years ago. Again, a whole sub-thread of ranting about how drivers must be very careful and wake up early, about how their pay is insufficient, and so on. Many common sense statements obviously drew certain people into an ideological gut reaction.
The content you bring up does not add anything at all either for or against my "claim" that ideology would be dying. Unless you try to show yourself very polarised, and so prove that the flame still lives on. I don't deny your data, I can ignore your slogans (that you admitted to be so), ok, passons. We agreed on certain policies, as you saw (when you managed to slow down a bit). But that wasn't the point. I don't care about discussing whose policies are true and better - left or right.
The point was, is utilitarianism and opportunism (as you call it, I think many of those politicians are actually sincere), are they pushing ideologies to the fringe of the democratic life? Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
Downgrading the level of your discourse hardly helps your argumenting.
You want some cheese with that whine?
I have said before, and I will happily say again, that I would have no objection to going through the entire thread and look at who called whom names. I'm not sure that's a particularly productive way to spend our time, though.
Try and do that in real life, then watch the effects.
Because smug arrogance is such an endearing trait... Pot, meet Kettle. Kettle, permit me to introduce Pot.
I made no general claim. I said French unions are broadly considered more to the left than others, and that their discourse still goes in tones more characteristic to the 19th century.
And that's not a sweeping, general claim? Well, I can see why you might think that it's not. There's only what? fifty million people in France? And after all, they're only organised in some two score unions, plus the small change...
I pointed at the case of CGT and SUD unions as quite ideological and politicized, even as I mentioned that the CGT now seems to have broken ties with the French extreme left.
All the while studiously refusing to provide any actual evidence to back up your position. Not so much as an objectionable quote from one of their spokespeople.
Or maybe I missed a couple of links with damning proof that the French unions are run by dangerous revolutionary Marxists who are slavering at the thought of installing a dictatorship of the proletariat? If so, could you go to the slight bother of reposting them, or do you want me to go through the entire thread to find them?
Any of the other points I made about balanced approaches were not proven mistaken for their purpose; you (and others, about nurses for instance) immediately flamed up, imagined some denial of discrimination, inequality, or sufference, and poured slogans creating ideologically charged sub-threads to no end.
Bull. Shit. What was explained to you - at some length and in far greater detail than appears justified in retrospect - was how those slogans (not "approaches" - an approach contains an actual policy, which you never once presented, nevermind justified) are in fact ideologically charged. That you wilfully refuse to even consider the context and history in which public debate takes place, and refuse to acknowledge (not "accept," acknowledge) the substantiative reasons that people consider those slogans statements of ideology, hardly amounts to a resounding refutation of those reasons.
When racist skinheads and Catholic fundamentalists think that Sarkozy is the best French president since Pétain, and you think that he's a down-to-earth pragmatist who embraces common-sense policies that nobody in their right mind can doubt, then at least one of you must be wrong. Sure, you can claim that he's just using fundagelical and racist rhetoric to get the morons - sorry, values voters - into the fold. But you ain't no mind reader, Comrade Valentin, so how do you know that you're not the one being fooled. After all, at least one of you is...
You didn't contradict my point about prisons, but started the same fiery arguing about human rights.
Really? "Fiery arguing?" You wanna see "fiery arguing," you go to somewhere like DailyKos. I see no fiery arguing in this thread.
Rhetoric aside, you claimed that your slogan about prisons represented a balanced, pragmatic, middle-of-the-road approach - or words to that effect. When you elevate statements that challenge the right to privacy to the level of elementary truths that should not be questioned (for fear of appearing "ideological"), you should expect people to call bullshit on that.
If you think that support for a fundamental, inalienable human right to privacy is an ideological position... well, you'd be completely correct. It is.
But for all your bloviating on the death of ideology, I can't really picture you coming right out and stating that you oppose universal, inalienable human rights - to privacy or otherwise - in quite so many words.
I'm discussing details of policies, but only in the context of balance.
No, you don't discuss details of policy. In this thread alone there are some three hundred posts. Around a third of them are from you. Less than ten percent of them even mention policy, other than to claim that further details are irrelevant to the subject at hand. Let's be really, really generous and call it ten posts in this entire thread where you discuss actual policy. If you can find eleven, I'm paying you a dinner next time you get to Copenhagen.
My phrase about train drivers' condition was not even attacking the unions. All I said is that that has nothing to do with 100 years ago. Again, a whole sub-thread of ranting about how drivers must be very careful and wake up early, about how their pay is insufficient, and so on. Many common sense statements obviously drew certain people into an ideological gut reaction.
You keep ignoring relevant context. I've pointed out the relevance of context to you already.
Most poignantly, I asked you upthread whether you would evaluate the slogan "Arbeit Macht Frei" solely on its isolated truth value and the degree to which it corresponded to your understanding of "common sense," or you would be persuaded to consider its history as well.
Then the crickets started chirping.
The content you bring up does not add anything at all either for or against my "claim" that ideology would be dying.
Except point out that you never actually made a case at the policy level. Which is the level that matters - the level that everybody here, including yourself agrees is the level that matters.
I don't care about discussing whose policies are true and better
Truer words are not found in the rest of the post.
I think many of those politicians are actually sincere
Well, I guess you can fool some of the people all of the time...
You do sound utterly ignorant both about France's religious situation, France's unions, or its government. I did provide proof when I said that well in the 90s one of CGT's leaders was a member of the communist party's leadership. You won't hear it because you act like a sophistic debater, as usual.
I'll make yet another sweeping generalisation and say that the French leftwing parties are in general clearly more to the left than those in other countries. Feel free to demand links.
Again, there is absolutely no sloganeering in asking that certain French unions give up the proletarian tone and also that the importance and contribution of unions be enforced; or in asking that we stop using simplist statistics to justify anti-discrimination laws or quota laws, and instead accept here and there that discrepancies are not due to any discrimination.
And so on. I provided lots of examples of balanced approaches, that you won't make disappear by posting dramas on imagined slogans or on the war against the oppressing fatcats. You think anyone is capable to reply to any bit of contorted reasoning in which you hairsplit an issue to exhaustion? You act like the living proof of what I meant: stretching reality to fit ideology. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
Your original claim was in fact that CGT got radicalised in recent years, something on which I showed you as completely ignorant of CGT's opposed movement. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
On my own diary, I said:
"The French trade unions (and particularly so the likes of CGT, FO or Sud), are considered amongst the most leftwing unions in Europe. Until not so long ago still in the "class warfare" mode, it was only in the '90s that the CGT started to take their distance from the communism (amongst other things, quitting the communist inspired World Federation of Trade Unions in 1995; leader Louis Vianet resigning from the political bureau of the French Communist Party; accepting certain negotiations rather than downright going on strike and so on). Even so, the tone for most French trade unions remains proletarian-inspired even today (some might say this is just PR, and still!)
You never showed me anything at all, want me to make a collection of all instances where I showed you to be wrong? You didn't even know what a propagandist means :)) Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
The CGT has been radicaliezd for a long longt time and has moderated a bit just last year.
Nineties, last year; Nagy vs. 1956...
You never showed me anything at all, want me to make a collection of all instances where I showed you to be wrong? You didn't even know what a propagandist means. QED. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
You seem to be an expert in getting things exactly the opposite of how they really are. Makes me wonder whether your whole political framework is based on the same kind of mind gymnastics :) Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
Now, as invective goes, that's pretty mild, and not even directed at your person...
Meanwhile, several places in the thread, you have insinuated that I relativise the crimes of the Soviet Union out of some ideological sympathy with Stalin. Do you remember that, or shall I go find some quotes? How's that for not proffering insult?
You do sound utterly ignorant both about France's religious situation, France's unions, or its government.
I'm still learning. But I'm in what was traditionally the German (and subsequently Anglo-American) sphere of influence, so my handle on German, British and American issues is somewhat better than French ones. Now, can you provide some actual references that a non-Francophone can read, or am I just going to have to take your word for the situation in France?
I did provide proof when I said that well in the 90s one of CGT's leaders was a member of the communist party's leadership [citation needed].
That was supposed to prove that France's labour unions are considerably to the left of the rest of Europe's. Even if that were true (several Danish unions maintain close ties with parties that most would call communist), that still wouldn't be saying much. The British unions have been all but destroyed. The Italian unions never got off the ground (in no small part thanks to American support for the fascist remnant, thanks to which it holds seats in the Italian parliament to this day). Poland's never had widespread unionisation, apart from Solidarnost which has drifted so far right over the years that it's barely recognisable as a union any more.
So which unions are you comparing to anyway? The German? The Spanish? The Scandinavian?
I'll make yet another sweeping generalisation and say that the French leftwing parties are in general clearly more to the left than those in other countries.
Given that left-wing political parties essentially don't exist in many countries in the Union (UK, Denmark, much of Eastern Europe, (AFAIK) Portugal, Italy), that doesn't really say all that much.
Again, there is absolutely no sloganeering in asking that certain French unions give up the proletarian tone
Such as? Examples here, sil vous plait. Your previous examples of "slogans" vs. "slogan-free" headlines doesn't precisely inspire me with a lot of confidence that I can trust your judgement on that.
and also that the importance and contribution of unions be enforced;
This is some kind of turn of phrase translated from French, right? As already mentioned, I'm not Francophone, so I'm afraid you'll have to give me the long version. What precisely does "the importance and contribution of unions" mean and how is it "enforced?"
Does it mean that something similar to the Danish Hovedaftale is hashed out and an arbitration system set up to enforce it? Then I see little problem. Does it mean that unions must contribute to keeping production running in an orderly fashion by sitting down and shutting up without getting major and significant (and irrevocable) concessions in return? Then I'd be very much against.
As it stands, though, it could read as both.
And just to make my nasty, suspicious mind even more suspicious, there's no mention of the other side of the table at all. What happened to the fact that there are always two sides to any strike: The striking workers and the employer who wan't give in to their demands. What "importance and contribution" will be "enforced" against employers?
or in asking that we stop using simplist [citation needed] statistics to justify anti-discrimination laws
Here you mean affirmative action programmes rather than anti-discrimination laws, correct?
And so on. I provided lots of examples of balanced approaches
Approaches contain policy.
Yes, a French turn of phrase. The union role being enforced means IMO that France has things a bit more similar to, say, Germany. OTOH employers shouldn't be treated like the enemy class, just like money shouldn't be regarded as dirty, I'd dare add :) We could debate this and likely reach a pragmatic compromise (no I'm not contradicting myself, please don't go off on yet another ranting) like in the case of media anti-trust laws.
I mean those other discriminatory programmes, yes.
Approaches do contain policy. And proof must be provided. The only problem is you ask for "proof" on details where it's completely superflue, and that your approach to policy looks more like hyper-biased ranting. Proletarian stuff was so pervasive in demonstrations, strikes, press conferences and interviews of those unions, that I can't even be bothered proving that to someone only because he's in Denmark and suspicious.
As for my statements not inspiring confidence, they certainly remain way way behind your own.
You said several times that you entered details of policies because you had to show my examples where not sloganeering, but substantive, and to bring forth the context, which was important too in showing that.
You made a good point about deregulation, neoliberalism etc. But this was one my targets too when I mentioned ideologies being on their way out. They too abused ideology, and this crisis will push them out of society and into history books.
But you mostly chose to do that 'substantification' like this:
the wholesale assault on labour unions, fiscal policy, unemployment and disability benefits Sarko surrounds himself with LePen apparatchiks and assumes his slogans and rhetoric for his own, the assumption must be that he will act in the interests of LePen's apparatchiks. The history of unions in the US shows that systematic union-busting works exceedingly well. privatisation of health care, price hikes for railroad tickets, cutbacks in unemployment subsidies, outright theft of workers' pensions, below-inflation indexing of public pension schemes, below-inflation indexing of unemployment subsidies...... it was the top 10 % of the wealth distribution that was waging class war on everybody else. Or perhaps you think unions are at fault for actually fighting the war that the fatcats started instead of rolling over and playing dead like the so-called social democratic parties I want to ban billionaires, by confiscatory taxation of wealth above half a billion €.
Sarko surrounds himself with LePen apparatchiks and assumes his slogans and rhetoric for his own, the assumption must be that he will act in the interests of LePen's apparatchiks.
The history of unions in the US shows that systematic union-busting works exceedingly well.
privatisation of health care, price hikes for railroad tickets, cutbacks in unemployment subsidies, outright theft of workers' pensions, below-inflation indexing of public pension schemes, below-inflation indexing of unemployment subsidies......
it was the top 10 % of the wealth distribution that was waging class war on everybody else.
Or perhaps you think unions are at fault for actually fighting the war that the fatcats started instead of rolling over and playing dead like the so-called social democratic parties
I want to ban billionaires, by confiscatory taxation of wealth above half a billion €.
And so on and so forth. This is what I call fiery talk, fist to the sky, eyes towards a better world up there somewhere. This is no "discussion of policies", this is polarised talk, ideological ranting, that many can nod to, but no one will enter in a debate with you about.
Which is why I answered to one of Lily's posts:
This is the problem I had with Jake the whole time. I could hardly reply to his posts, because to me it looked like fiery ideologic activism. I'm not passing judgement, just telling how it looked from here. Lines like these: are unions at fault for actually fighting the war that the fatcats started instead of rolling over and playing dead or stealing train drivers' pensions or dismantling of civilised society by people who want to throw us back to the 19th century to me are ideology, sloganeering (no offense, Jake, I just say how it looks for me), and I can't bring myself to even comment on it, which, to Jake or DoDo, looks like I would be eluding the subject. And Jake's discourse (which I don't judge) is filled with this kind of stuff.
Lines like these: are unions at fault for actually fighting the war that the fatcats started instead of rolling over and playing dead or stealing train drivers' pensions or dismantling of civilised society by people who want to throw us back to the 19th century
to me are ideology, sloganeering (no offense, Jake, I just say how it looks for me), and I can't bring myself to even comment on it, which, to Jake or DoDo, looks like I would be eluding the subject.
And Jake's discourse (which I don't judge) is filled with this kind of stuff.
In short, even as you discuss policies, even when you 'try' to be reasonable (at least to me you look as you do try), you sound very much like our most leftwing extremists in France (which means, in the world). Just look for Besancenot, or Jean-Luc Mélenchon, I bet you will experience a reflex sympathy for them. But I cannot debate pragmatism with such ideologically -charged characters. It's like you'd try to prove to a muslim fundamentalist the benefits of secularism.
See you around, Jake. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
The main difference between France and many other countries is that while other communist parties and organizations were shattered after the fall of the communism (which proved it a failure and an utopia as a system, breeding genocidal dictatorships) Soviet Union, the French ones still kept on the proletarian / class warfare rhetoric.
You have a really shaky grasp on the history of Western Europe.
The British left was shattered by Thatcher. The American left has never really existed, and what little there was of it was purged by Ronnie Raygun. Scandinavia has never had influential communist movements, but it's true that the Overton Window was dragged right over the past thirty years. That started in the late seventies and early 80s, so the only way that could have anything to do with the collapse of the Soviet Union would be if effect could precede cause. In Germany you might have a case. Anywhere else... not so much.
Yes, a French turn of phrase. The union role being enforced means IMO that France has things a bit more similar to, say, Germany.
I didn't ask your opinion on what it ought to mean. You say it's a slogan used by the French right wing. I asked what the French right wing thought it meant. Seeing as they're the ones who get to actually implement their interpretation of their slogan, not you.
OTOH employers shouldn't be treated like the enemy class, just like money shouldn't be regarded as dirty, I'd dare add :)
So basically unions get to make concessions and get diddly-squat in return. I think we're starting to get a pretty good picture of your sense of pragmatism here...
Proletarian stuff was so pervasive in demonstrations, strikes, press conferences and interviews of those unions, that I can't even be bothered proving that to someone only because he's in Denmark and suspicious.
You sound like you think a red flag is a symbol of militant, revolutionary proletarianism. Being from Eastern Europe, that's more or less understandable, of course. But weren't you the one who argued that immigrants should learn a bit about the culture of their new country? Or does that only apply to brown people?
That's not what I said. I said that your slogans were right-wing slogans (as opposed to unideological statements of fact). That you apparently fail to distinguish between wingnut sloganeering and objective statements of fact should give a little pause for thought.
the wholesale assault on labour unions, fiscal policy, unemployment and disability benefits
An executive summary of points made in the other thread. The one you actually chose to challenge:
In 1980, tertiary education was free France, the UK, all of Scandinavia and all of Germany. In 2000, the UK and more than half of all German länder charge "tuition fees." To take just one very concrete example. The list goes on with privatisation of health care, price hikes for railroad tickets, cutbacks in unemployment subsidies, outright theft of workers' pensions, below-inflation indexing of public pension schemes, below-inflation indexing of unemployment subsidies, tighter applicability requirements for unemployment subsidies, cutbacks in prescription drug subsidies, cutbacks in essential public services (railroads, schools, water, sewage, electricity).
The list goes on with privatisation of health care, price hikes for railroad tickets, cutbacks in unemployment subsidies, outright theft of workers' pensions, below-inflation indexing of public pension schemes, below-inflation indexing of unemployment subsidies, tighter applicability requirements for unemployment subsidies, cutbacks in prescription drug subsidies, cutbacks in essential public services (railroads, schools, water, sewage, electricity).
Are you disputing any of the facts here? Or are you just playing games?
Slogan + Substance => Policy Slogan - Substance => Bullshit
Well, LePen certainly seems to think so.
Sarko broke a tradition of not meeting with LePen.
He also calls to debate an issue of science as if was a matter of policy - a little trick he inherited from George "The jury is still out on how God created the Earth" Bush.
Then you can go here in the comment thread (#25 in particular). An American neocon (and his friends/sock puppets) show up and run out essentially the same line you have here. They/he get their asses handed to them.
You should, I think, complete that quote:
The history of unions in the US shows that systematic union-busting works exceedingly well. The US unions were systematically persecuted at the federal, state and local level. Through legislation, through a concerted propaganda effort, through workplace-level union-busting, by deliberately race- and religion-baiting at every political level. That was a case of deliberate, ideological activism by right-wing extremists.
The US unions were systematically persecuted at the federal, state and local level. Through legislation, through a concerted propaganda effort, through workplace-level union-busting, by deliberately race- and religion-baiting at every political level. That was a case of deliberate, ideological activism by right-wing extremists.
Do you actually dispute any of this? Do you really want me to go to the trouble of digging out the legal and political history of US union busting over the past quarter century? In that case, you can start here.
privatisation of health care, price hikes for railroad tickets, cutbacks in unemployment subsidies, outright theft of workers' pensions, below-inflation indexing of public pension schemes, below-inflation indexing of unemployment subsidies...
You gonna actually dispute that this happens systematically? I was not aware that any of this was disputed in your part of reality.
Health Care.
Public transit.
Sub-inflation transfer increases.
You gonna actually dispute that? You gonna claim that this isn't class war by the rich?
That's actually an example of a policy that can be implemented as it stands, right off the shelf. The legal technicalities were hashed out by the West German government during the de-nazification period, when they needed to confiscate all the fortunes that had been made in ways that were not - quite - meriting a full war crimes trial.
Are you telling me that you can't tell the difference between a slogan and a policy? The shock. The horror. The surprise.
You can argue the merits of this policy (and get your ass handed to you - removing billionaires from the political equation would remove much of the concern about media power and corruption, and it wouldn't do any harm to anybody, because it's not like anybody actually needs a billion €... all in all, a very pragmatic approach to a very concrete corruption problem).
Indeed. I should note that someone from both Eastern Europe and France should be aware of similar views about liberalism as failed utopia two centuries ago, after the terror of the French Revolution and the rise and fall of Napoleon. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Last week I think I heard at least half dozen people on different televised interviews or debates claiming themselves un-ideological. Mere consistent use of careful argumenting seems to drive faith out once again (and ideologists out of themselves).
Or maybe it is just a fashion afterall. It just looks like it's gonna be a dam'd hard one to fight against :) Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
To claim one self un-ideological is like pretending to be objective. Objectivity claims to be truthful. This introduction is very persuasive. The masses don't want to hear the bias of clearly defined ideologies but they want objectivity. So, they get to hear what they want to hear. Politics is all neutral, objective, ...
These are good times for those who don't want to take sides or take on responsibility for a decision. Let's all trust the un-ideologists which feels like trust into a neutral, objective and truth-bearing entity and we'll see where this will lead us.
"Consistent use of careful argumenting" - ...aiming for what? with what baseline? defending whose interests? ...
Asking these questions will lead you to an agenda that, too, is based on some sort of ideology.
Communism manipulates through open repression. This, however, is the kind of manipulation that must be dealt with in democracies, i.e. the free world. To ignore this amounts to opportunism; it is naïve at best.
they're materialists and support Darwin, but refuse biological determination
Which is different from Darwin's position in what way?
they support human rights in all cases - except those when those are promoted by Rightwing/capitalist governments or groups (human rights come behind class warfare)
You'll need to give examples here, because I don't know any case where the left has opposed human rights on grounds that class warfare was more important.
they are ready to destroy anyone even nuancing anti-racist policies,
Can you cite even a single example of such right-wing "nuancing" resulting in an expansion of anti-racist protections? If you can't, I'd call that pure newspeak. If you think anti-racist protections are too widespread and need to be rolled back, come right out and say so and be prepared to defend your case - don't hide behind weasel words like "nuancing."
but they support multiculturalism
Oh, R'lyeh?
You really should go back in the archives and read some of the flame wars from around the time of the Cartoon Jihad...
"They support multiculturalism..." I laugh so I don't cry.
they are ready to terminate anyone even implying a doubt about far-right policies, but they understand far-left philosophy; crucify nazism and justify communism
Dude, now you're conflating different variants of communism again. Nobody here makes apologetics for Stalin and his merry band of butchers - and if somebody does, he gets crucified, as you so aptly put it.
But in tarring all of communism with Stalin et al, you're attempting to relegate half of the mainstream European left for most of the 20th century to an extremist fringe. That's simply not honest brokerage in the debate. We're talking here about people who were opposed to the Soviet Union, who were opposed to violent repression (who were, in many countries actually the targets of violent repression), who were opposed to toppling democratically elected governments and imposing dictatorial regimes. How the fuck is any of this "far-left" or remotely comparable to nazism?
OK, the term "communist" carries negative connotations for you, because you were oppressed by a communist regime. That's OK, I get that. But it doesn't make all communists evil or comparable to nazis. Just like the fact that some people get bad vibes from the term "catholic" because they were raped as kids by a Catholic priest doesn't make all catholics child-raping perverts. And just as the fact that "capitalism" carries unfortunate connotations for many Chileans doesn't make all advocates of capitalism the equivalent of Milton Friedman and Augusto Pinochet.
I was more speaking about how left comes off by and large, impressions and tendencies, when we look from above.
Me, personally, hathes no issue with the left the moment private property and enterprise stops being evil. On the other hand, "my hero" :) Nicolas Sarkozy, said a very important thing once: the Left should not be allowed as the only defence of the poor, the vulnerable, the different. Granted, this is because in France things are much more polarised and the left much more to the left than elsewhere, and it had become impossible to allow the left occupy the place of the angel waging war on the vicious capitalists. But it's a sign of entering traditional left domain, just like your dear Bliar entered left one, and with as much success. That's the way that leads to pragmatism. Is that going to lead to an unideological democracy? Are lack of ideology and pragmatism a sign of a-politicalness? Does this mean democracy is in danger? Those are the questions, rather than about more or less humane variants of communism. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
But you don't look from above. You look through the lens of the media you consume, and the principles and opinions that you already hold. That's an important point that you keep refusing to acknowledge.
RFE was sponsored by the US Congress and had as statement of mission: "To promote democratic values and institutions by disseminating factual information and ideas"
And we all know the US Congress' bottomless respect for factual information and ideas...
That is not "less bad"; Freedom IS good
Well, yes... for the definition of "freedom" most people use. But "freedom" a la "Operation Iraqi Freedom" - not so much. Problem is, it's usually hard to tell which sense the US Congress is using at any given time.
I am not quite sure where wikipedia gets the CIA link from, but given the general tenor of the article, I'm inclined to think that the sources for that claim have been challenged and found to be kosher.
RFE acted for freedom; pacifist groups often acted against military opposition of the free west to communist dictatorships.
Y'mean like opposing - oh, I don't know, the ousting of a democratically elected government in Viet Nam? Or the democratically elected government in Chile? Or the democratically elected government in Iran? Or the democratically elected government in Nicaragua? Or the democratically elected government in Bolivia? Or the democratically elected government in Argentina?
You dislike it when apologists make light of Soviet atrocities that they know little about. I can respect that position, and I have actually defended it downthread. Will you do me a favour and not make light of Western(TM) atrocities that you apparently know equally little about?
They were as such a tool used by the latter in their type of cold war,
Bah! Soviet funding of the peace movement was minuscule. Soviet influence was even less.
The dirty hippies that you accuse of being on the USSR's payroll were demonstrating outside the Soviet embassy when the tanks rolled into Hungary. They were passing out fliers condemning Soviet aggression in Afghanistan. They were vehemently opposed to Soviet nuclear weapons testing.
Even the MI6 - who are not precisely famous for their competence - could set up better puppet organisations than that.
CIA working for the destabilization of communist regimes actually happens to be a bit different from KGB working for the same about democratic countries.
Calling the Viet Minh or Ho Chi Minh democratically elected government is a wild stretch. In the end it was all about Chinese communist expansion. The cases you quote were part of the cold war, and you cannot put on the same moral place soviets and west, tm or not.
Minuscule or not, that remains to be evaluated. I don't have numbers here and now, but you giving your personal opinion, particularly in this context, is not quite enough. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
That's why I said you can't compare those years with what happened since 9/11, because of a fear-mongering power-obsesssed president.
And the Domino Strategy wasn't fear-mongering? And Nixon wasn't a power-obsessed president?
First, the regimes in question weren't communist. Second, the regimes in question were democratically elected. Third, the "destabilisation" of them involved mass murder.
Didn't you just criticise communists for their doctrine of exitus acta probat?
Calling the Viet Minh or Ho Chi Minh democratically elected government is a wild stretch.
Why? They stood to win a constitutionally mandated election. How is it anything like a stretch to call that "democratically elected?" The fact that the election was preempted by an American invasion can hardly be laid at the feet of the Viet Minh.
In the end it was all about Chinese communist expansion.
More Domino Theory bullshit. This was revealed as a lie already with the publication of the Pentagon Papers. Where did you get this from? The Washington Pravda?
The cases you quote were part of the cold war, and you cannot put on the same moral place soviets and west, tm or not.
So supporting murderous dictators is OK when they're our murderous dictators? Exitus acta probat, eh? By that logic, you could argue for supporting Hitler, on account of him being the only leader to ever come within arm's reach of deposing Stalin.
That's not - unfortunately - wild-eyed accusations. Several Estonian skinhead groups actually espouse that line of reasoning.
Minuscule or not, that remains to be evaluated. I don't have numbers here and now, but you giving your personal opinion, particularly in this context, is not quite enough.
Bah! You want to argue that the peaceniks were patsies of the Soviet Union, then you have to provide evidence. No evidence of substantial support (much less evidence of favours going the other way, nevermind support for wild-eyed conspiracy theories about "undermining Western democracy") was ever uncovered by Western(TM) intelligence or counter-intelligence agencies. Despite their considerable effort to do so (even to the point of fabricating it wholesale in some countries...).
Here you are simply, factually in the wrong and seem to be talking out of your ass. Please stop doing that - you've shown elsewhere that you can provide better signal to noise ratio than that.
As usual, you relativize, you consider it was a game of influence, and like Ted Welch, you see it as not genuine communism. I repeat to both of you that the theory, even coming from a peaceful man, who accepted velvet revolution, the theory divided the world into rich and poor, exploited and exploiters, oppressed and oppressors, promoted class warfare, revolution and this led directly where it led: blood baths and dictatorship.
You hairsplit, abstractize and relativize it, and I'm telling you again that for one, the situation as I have it is generally accepted (including the designation as communist of those regimes) - except marxist theorisers and philosophic circles marred in endless highly abstract discussions on this or that aspect not present or not precisely as postulated by Marx; for two, all this is pointless, since I'm well aware we can play sophisms ten more years from now; playing intellectual games may bring you some aura in extreme leftwing circles, but it has no relevance whatsoever here, or for myself. It's exactly what you did with those other issues. Here the original point was my mentioning the press freedom in communist dictatorships. There it was about politicized extremist French unions. And so on. I am doing no more fighting against extreme left sloganeering, Jake. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
The regime in South Viet Nam invited in an American colonial regime because they were scared shitless that Ho Chi Min was going to win the elections fair and square. He might not have - that's in the nature of elections - but both the US and the regime in Saigon very clearly thought that he would. Blaming Ho Chi Min for the lack of elections caused by an American invasion is like breaking into my house, shooting me and then accusing me of theft because I am now in possession of your bullet!
And now you claim that Ho Chi Min was a client of the USSR. Last time, you claimed he was a client of the PRC. So who did he take marching orders from? Both Moscow and Beijing? What about the issues they disagreed about (and they did not have the same policy on Indochina, except in the very superficial sense that they agreed that the USA had bugger all to do there).
Or do you simply fail to distinguish between China and Russia "cuz they iz all commiez"?
I'm not going to go into a philosophical fight about the nature and ideals of communism, partly because I'm not a communist and partly because political factions like the Perónists provide all the empirical evidence needed to dismiss the claim that communism and class consciousness deterministically lead to repression and totalitarianism. And besides, weren't you opposed to historical determinism yesterday?
If you want to see Marxism with a human face, look to Latin America. If you prefer to stick with your bigotry and nurse your resentment over whatever wrongs were inflicted upon you by the Soviet empire, there's bugger all I can do to drag your head out of your ass for you.
Your view of history is extremely naïve, and your view of the history of half the 20th century is straight out of the Springer-presse's la-la land. But why do I even bother? I'm not here to give you remedial history classes.
And by the way, I'm sick and tired of hearing you imply that I deny or minimise the wrongs committed by the Soviet Union - that's pure, base libel when I have acknowledged them in so many words, on several different occasions, both here and elsewhere.
Well, you are debating someone who sought to prove Christian tolerance in the Roman Empire with policies of the sole non-Christian 4th-century Emperor -- who 'earned' the epithet "the Apostate" for his attempts... *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Worse, DoDo also seems to be memory challenged, and desperately so. My point about emperor Julian, far from being about some "christian tolerance", was in the context of a discussion about the separation between church and state.
I imagine this isn't the only time that you happen to remember things not quite as they actually were. The least you could do for the community is to check the facts before posting. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
But in very serious ways Cuba shows what can be done, even when undermined by a powerful neighbour and when poor, if one has the right priorities. Freedom from illness is a very important freedom. Many in the US would envy Cubans' access to health care - cf. Moore's F 9/11 sequence on taking sick Americans to Cuba for treatment.
When the Macroeconomic Commission on Health met to consider the global health challenge it essentially did little more than recommend implementation of Essential Health Interventions, a more systematic way to provide the quasi-technical solutions that `Selective Primary Health Care' had promised. And yet, while this was occurring, Cuba was able to develop a set of coherent policies to adopt a national strategy, develop a comprehensive primary care capacity, and achieve excellent health outcomes. Some time ago, it was suggested that the threat of a good example (or a politically alternative development trajectory) was an ideological factor in explaining why US policy was uncompromisingly hostile to Cuba.9 The openness to consider Cuba's achievements is clearly called for now, and the taboo on evaluating this experience should be lifted. The question ultimately should then become less of `whether' and `why' the successes are being achieved and more of `how' this can be done. Over the past 10 years, our team of Canadian and Cuban researchers has documented how it is not just the organization of health services but the broad way in which health determinants are addressed that plays a major factor in the `social production of health'--with the possibility of fruitfully engaging the health service workforce as part of a broad-based `population health team.'10,11 http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/35/4/825
When the Macroeconomic Commission on Health met to consider the global health challenge it essentially did little more than recommend implementation of Essential Health Interventions, a more systematic way to provide the quasi-technical solutions that `Selective Primary Health Care' had promised. And yet, while this was occurring, Cuba was able to develop a set of coherent policies to adopt a national strategy, develop a comprehensive primary care capacity, and achieve excellent health outcomes.
Some time ago, it was suggested that the threat of a good example (or a politically alternative development trajectory) was an ideological factor in explaining why US policy was uncompromisingly hostile to Cuba.9 The openness to consider Cuba's achievements is clearly called for now, and the taboo on evaluating this experience should be lifted. The question ultimately should then become less of `whether' and `why' the successes are being achieved and more of `how' this can be done. Over the past 10 years, our team of Canadian and Cuban researchers has documented how it is not just the organization of health services but the broad way in which health determinants are addressed that plays a major factor in the `social production of health'--with the possibility of fruitfully engaging the health service workforce as part of a broad-based `population health team.'10,11
http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/35/4/825
And that aside, I wouldn't put too much credit on a photo-op. The Cuban propagandists aren't any dumber than American propagandists, and I'm sure that if you took a band of Cubans to the US for a film shoot about how awful the Cuban system is, someone in the US would come up with excellent care for them for a very modest sum.
More significant was the article I quoted from. In terms of health-care for the whole population, Cuba is indeed a threatening "good example" for US "health" corporations. See also a WHO report:
"We fought for the Declaration of Alma-Ata before it was official," says Dr Cristina Luna, "and its message has guided and challenged us ever since." At 43, Luna is Cuba's national director of ambulatory care, and on her shoulders rests the country's entire primary health care system, by many standards one of the world's most effective and unique. Cuban health authorities give large credit for the country's impressive health indicators to the preventive, primary-care emphasis pursued for the last four decades. These indicators - which are close or equal to those in developed countries - speak for themselves. For example, in 2004, there were seven deaths for every 1000 children aged less than five years - a decrease from 46 such deaths 40 years earlier, according to WHO. Meanwhile Cubans have one of the world's highest life expectancies of 77 years. http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/86/5/08-030508/en/index.html
Cuban health authorities give large credit for the country's impressive health indicators to the preventive, primary-care emphasis pursued for the last four decades. These indicators - which are close or equal to those in developed countries - speak for themselves. For example, in 2004, there were seven deaths for every 1000 children aged less than five years - a decrease from 46 such deaths 40 years earlier, according to WHO. Meanwhile Cubans have one of the world's highest life expectancies of 77 years.
http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/86/5/08-030508/en/index.html
Cf.Krgman on "socialized medicine":
The dissonance ... is one reason the Medicare drug legislation looks as if someone went down a checklist of things the veterans' system does right, and in each case did the opposite. For example, the V.H.A. avoids dealing with insurance companies; the drug bill shoehorns insurance companies into the program... The V.H.A. bargains effectively on drug prices; the drug bill forbids Medicare from doing the same. Still, ideology can't hold out against reality forever. Cries of "socialized medicine" didn't, in the end, succeed in blocking the creation of Medicare. And farsighted thinkers are already suggesting that the Veterans Health Administration, not President Bush's unrealistic vision of a system in which people go "comparative shopping" for medical care the way they do when buying tile, represents the true future of American health care. http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2006/01/paul_krugman_he.html
The dissonance ... is one reason the Medicare drug legislation looks as if someone went down a checklist of things the veterans' system does right, and in each case did the opposite. For example, the V.H.A. avoids dealing with insurance companies; the drug bill shoehorns insurance companies into the program... The V.H.A. bargains effectively on drug prices; the drug bill forbids Medicare from doing the same.
Still, ideology can't hold out against reality forever. Cries of "socialized medicine" didn't, in the end, succeed in blocking the creation of Medicare. And farsighted thinkers are already suggesting that the Veterans Health Administration, not President Bush's unrealistic vision of a system in which people go "comparative shopping" for medical care the way they do when buying tile, represents the true future of American health care.
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2006/01/paul_krugman_he.html
Thank you for outlining your position. I understand that you have sympathy for victims of US aggressions.
OTOH I don't think that the evil done unto them makes them automatically good, or rather -
Have you ever lived in a communist country? I haven't but I sort-of have, too, since Germany has had experience with both. - I visited East Germany twice with the wall still there, and twice when it had just come down. I didn't like it. People who lived there didn't like it, and why did the system collapse to begin with?
I have a friend you lives in England, and I know of the dire state British health care is in. I understand that it is tempting to admire Cuba's "freedom of health" in comparison. But that still doesn't make of it a "good example".
Eastern Germans are less satisfied with and less optimistic about their situation than those living in the states that made up the former West Germany. They are also less convinced about the virtues of democracy than their western counterparts -- with many believing that socialism is a good idea that just hasn't been implemented well in the past. Indeed, the biggest differences in the survey come when eastern and western respondents are asked to share their views on life in the former East Germany. The communist state gets far higher marks from those living in the east than from those in the west. A full 92 percent of 35- to 50-year-old eastern Germans believe that one of the greatest attributes of the former East Germany was its social safety net, with 47 percent of their children in the east believing the same thing. By contrast, only 26 percent of western youth and 48 percent of their parents expressed the view that East Germany had a strong social welfare system compared to today's. http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,516472,00.html
Indeed, the biggest differences in the survey come when eastern and western respondents are asked to share their views on life in the former East Germany. The communist state gets far higher marks from those living in the east than from those in the west. A full 92 percent of 35- to 50-year-old eastern Germans believe that one of the greatest attributes of the former East Germany was its social safety net, with 47 percent of their children in the east believing the same thing. By contrast, only 26 percent of western youth and 48 percent of their parents expressed the view that East Germany had a strong social welfare system compared to today's.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,516472,00.html
Of course there are problems with the UK health service (as there are even with the French system), partly due to underfunding for years and wasting billions on things like Trident. But in general it is very popular. The US system which leaves millions with no health insurance, and many with problems getting their claims paid. Cf. Krugman's "Conscience of a Liberal" for a serious discussion, and Moore's "Sicko" for a dramatic comparison. Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice.
Communism is an extremely harmful and mistaken ideology, IMO, no matter how you would emphasize its different nuances. So is fascism and its declinations. But saying that Stalin's dictatorship had nothing to do with marxism is the usual excuse of communist utopians: pretending the System was Right - it just happened to be applied slightly wrongly. I'm coming from a former communist dictatorship and to hear this kind of justification here (for that is what it amounts to), in what we thought is a land of freedom, is simply outrageous. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
Rather than trying to disqualify a proposal, I was questioning its pragmatism. The anti-trust idea sounded much more so to me, and since Jake has accepted it as well, it is soon going to become official policy ! :)
You may repeat that as you wish, I still have no hidden agenda whatsoever. A rightwing agenda would have no chance with you, anyway :) Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
Let's not pretend that we can just magically "uncommunistify" a movement, person or regime because they or he or it turn out to be assholes. That excuse doesn't fly for Catholics when dealing with priests who rape children. It doesn't fly for neocons when one of their "democracy promotion projects" is revealed to be a colonialist resource grab. It doesn't fly for Intelligent Design Creationists when someone from their fundagelical base goes off-message. Why should it fly for Communists when one of their experiments goes to Hell?
Similarly, it is worthwhile to examine how a Communist revolution (or was the Russian revolution not a Communist one?) can impose a regime that is so decidedly undesirable as that of the Soviet Union.
The French Revolution is - quite rightly - cited as a blemish on the history of democracy, because it turned into such a bloodbath. Future proponents of democracy arguably learned from this - learned such valuable lessons as "checks and balances" and "the popular vote isn't the be-all-end-all of democracy."
Tarring all of democracy with the French Revolution would clearly be unjustified, and tarring all of Communism with Stalin (or all of Christianity with child-raping priests) is equally so. But that does not mean that there are not lessons to be learned from the Russian Revolution that cannot be learned if you insist on sticking to the "they weren't communist enough" story.
Quite.
"But that does not mean that there are not lessons to be learned from the Russian Revolution that cannot be learned if you insist on sticking to the "they weren't communist enough" story."
One obvious lesson is try to avoid someone like Stain from taking over and having almost total power. I.e. try to stick to the most fundamental aspects of communism which are opposed to dictatorhsip.
But the problem with learning from history is that it doesn't exactly repeat itself; Nicaragua in the 80s isn't Russia in the 1920s, etc. Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice.
The concept is a theory. Its application has so far proved less convincing than the practice of democracy, q.e.d. - This doesn't say that there isn't any evil in democracy but it's still the one that is better adapted to our human nature. Democracy needs boundaries (legal, social) to function properly.
If humans were only good and self-less, communism could work but that's not how we are which is why communism implies repression at all levels, and repression is a vast term.
This is put in practise with some success among the Amish, and some other Christian groups. Kibbutzim also operate with some success.
All other examples you may cite, involving entire nations whose citizens did not decide out of free will to want to adhere to this societal order either failed or have very big problems.
So, do you simply dream of this perfect world with wonderful human beings where communism as described in theory would be a reality? How would you want to put it in practise? The starting point would have to be that everyone would have to WANT it first.
:) What if the Londoner wasn't allowed to decide on living in Nice anymore? ...
But in many of the cases Ted cited, the citizens actually did choose that way of government, at least inasmuch as democratic elections and constitutionally permissible laws can be called an expression of the will of the citizens. In all those cases, the regime was put in big trouble by outside forces who decided that they didn't like the domestic policies they practised - usually because they involved forcing transnationals to actually, horror of horrors, pay taxes and because they involved confiscating property of the feudal nobility and various colonial charter companies. Actions not entirely without precedent in democratic countries in Northern Europe.
As an aside, I would claim that many, if not most, of the countries Ted cites were not actually communist at all - rather a lot of the deposed regimes in Latin America were developmentalists, which is basically social democracy for third-world countries. The labelling of developmentalist governments as communists was part of the propaganda justifying the various and sundry "interventions," and does not necessarily reflect the facts on the ground.
Cite your cases - and let's compare them with all the right-wing coups organised by the US and direct interventions by the US this century. Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice.
The whole point is that the west was the good side in the cold war, and that moral position cannot be relativised
A moral position can not be argued without an ideological compass of what is right and wrong. A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!
I agree that that's not ideological at all. I don't find it particularly admirable, though.
The bottom line is that for you, life is either ideological, or is not at all, and truth, like good, like justice, are defined according to the ideological compass.
That being said, it's the end of our discussion because I can't debate with a fundamentalist notions that I deem as not relative to any faith. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
Helping a sick man on the street can be a commendable act of principle, if it is founded in some sort of moral obligation to help the less well-off. But if it's simply a matter of gratifying a sense of moral superiority by helping those who are made disadvantaged by a system that you otherwise support, then no, on balance I don't see that as a particularly moral act.
Give a man a fish, and he'll have food for a day. Teach a man to demand justice, and he'll have food for the rest of his life.
We've covered the nature and merits of ideology elsewhere in this thread. And if you feel that acting on a set of gut feelings and superficial impressions that have no connection to each other, no coherence and no requirement of consistency is admirable and something that all of humanity should strive for, well, that's your prerogative.
For myself... not so much.
And some of the principles used to justify free press can be incorporated both in ideologies that are right wing and ideologies that are left wing.
Very few principles are inherently right-wing or left-wing. Most often, the political alignment we assign to a principle has more to do with the context and justification for the principle than with what it says in and of itself.
Another way of putting that is that most principles don't say all that much in and of themselves, unless one knows the context in which they are applied. Which is why some of us keep harping on the fact that you seem to want to divorce principles, actions and politics from their context and history. Because when one tries to do that, one most often ends up with either a load of fluffy generalities or a baggage of implied context that one refuses to examine because one assumes to be liberated from the need to examine context.
The one I quoted was a much more common way to assume power than the one you do
Which is - aside from the dubious truth value of that statement - entirely irrelevant. That a malicious variant of capitalism instigated a dozen or so coups in Latin America that brought vicious capitalist dictators to power in no way invalidates social democratic capitalism as practised in Scandinavia.
Similarly, that a malicious variant of communism instigated a dozen or so coups in Eastern Europe that brought various vicious communist dictators to power in no way invalidates social democratic communism as practised in Allende's Chile (leaving aside the fact that I dispute that Allende was doing communism...).
That the communists in Czechoslovakia came to power in a coup is hardly relevant to how "communists" (actually developmentalists, but I digress) came to power in Chile.
In our days, everything seems pregnant with its contrary: Machinery, gifted with the wonderful power of shortening and fructifying human labour, we behold starving and overworking it; The newfangled sources of wealth, by some strange weird spell, are turned into sources of want; The victories of art seem bought by the loss of character. At the same pace that mankind masters nature, man seems to become enslaved to other men or to his own infamy. Even the pure light of science seems unable to shine but on the dark background of ignorance. All our invention and progress seem to result in endowing material forces with intellectual life, and in stultifying human life into a material force. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1856/04/14.htm#art
At the same pace that mankind masters nature, man seems to become enslaved to other men or to his own infamy. Even the pure light of science seems unable to shine but on the dark background of ignorance. All our invention and progress seem to result in endowing material forces with intellectual life, and in stultifying human life into a material force.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1856/04/14.htm#art
Cf. Cuba - see comment above, and in the short-lived Sandinista regime in Nicaragua, brutally sabotaged by the US, a philosopher and priest was put in charge of education - and literacy increased dramatically, and a poet, Ernesto Cardenal, was put in charge of the arts:
Ernesto Cardenal is a major poet of the Spanish language well-known in the United States as a spokesman for justice and self-determination in Latin America. Cardenal, who recognizes that poetry and art are closely tied to politics, used his poetry to protest the encroachments of outsiders in Nicaragua and supported the revolution that overthrew Somoza in 1979. Once the cultural minister of his homeland, Cardenal spends much of his time as "a kind of international ambassador," notes Richard Elman in the Nation. Victor M. Valle, writing in the Los Angeles Times Calendar, cites Cardenal's statement, "There has been a great cultural rebirth in Nicaragua since the triumph of the revolution. A saving of all of our culture, that which represents our national identity, especially our folklore." Literacy and poetry workshops established throughout the "nation of poets," as it has been known since the early twentieth century, are well-attended by people whose concerns had been previously unheard. Most workshops are led by government-paid instructors in cultural centers, while others convene in police stations, army barracks, and workplaces such as sugar mills, Valle reports. In these sessions, Romantic and Modern poetry is considered below standard; Cardenal also denigrates socialist realism, which he says "comes from the Stalinist times that required that art be purely political propaganda." http://www.umc.sunysb.edu/surgery/cardenal3.html
Victor M. Valle, writing in the Los Angeles Times Calendar, cites Cardenal's statement, "There has been a great cultural rebirth in Nicaragua since the triumph of the revolution. A saving of all of our culture, that which represents our national identity, especially our folklore." Literacy and poetry workshops established throughout the "nation of poets," as it has been known since the early twentieth century, are well-attended by people whose concerns had been previously unheard. Most workshops are led by government-paid instructors in cultural centers, while others convene in police stations, army barracks, and workplaces such as sugar mills, Valle reports. In these sessions, Romantic and Modern poetry is considered below standard; Cardenal also denigrates socialist realism, which he says "comes from the Stalinist times that required that art be purely political propaganda."
http://www.umc.sunysb.edu/surgery/cardenal3.html
This threat of a good example had to be destroyed - and was. Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice.
The typical response of the ideologist - ignore the evidence, ignore the arguments - a dictatorship is not a version of communism - and pretend that "practice" is your opinion about what happened. Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice.
No, of course you don't have to cite anything - you just think to know and we are supposed to accept your opinion which is, like the truly ideological, impervious to the evidence and doesn't bother to offer any. Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice.
You want me to prove that dialectical materialism, or historical materialism was materialist and, well, dialectical ? :) Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
Only at the end of it all, after the Armaghedon, came the selfless sharing community.
I provided evidence showing this was not true, Marx allowed for the possibility of peaceful change. You don't dispute the evidence - you simply decide to ignore it and just proceed with the usual ideological nonsense. It's about time you tried to deal with arguments in a serious way. Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice.
You know, you've almost earned all of these in a single thread... Those aren't precisely merit badges, ya'know. No need to pursue them so relentlessly.
At the same time Marx treated the situation concretely - he allowed for the possibility of a peaceful revolution as well as the likelihood of violent uprising. In July 1871, a few months after the crushing of the Commune, Marx gave an interview to a certain R Lander, the London correspondent of the US-based journal The World. Marx explained to him that the methods employed by the various national sections of the International should "include every form of working class activity". "In each part of the world," Marx continued, "some special aspect of the problem presents itself, and the workingmen there address themselves to its consideration in their own way ... In England, for instance, the way to show [manifest - JC] political power lies open to the working class. Insurrection would be madness where peaceful agitation would more swiftly and surely do the work. In France a hundred laws of repression and a mortal antagonism between classes seem to necessitate the violent solution of social war" (K Marx and F Engels CW Vol 22, Moscow 1986, p602). The last question posed to Marx by the gallant reporter concerned Britain (or "England", as the bad habit of the day would have it). Lander put it to Marx that Britain had a free press and a system which allowed minorities to become majorities and thus avoided any violence. Marx refused to be prescriptive. He conceded that the bourgeoisie in Britain "has always shown itself willing enough to accept the verdict of the majority so long as it enjoyed the monopoly of political power" But he warned: "As soon as it finds itself outvoted on what it considers vital questions we shall see here a new slave-owners' war" (ibid p606). Put another way, in respect of Britain, Marx advocated peaceful revolution and urged the working class to be vigilant against a bourgeois counterrevolution. Whether or not there was violence depended entirely on the ruling class. Marx and Engels came out with similar arguments to the ends of their lives. http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/448/peaceful.html
Marx explained to him that the methods employed by the various national sections of the International should "include every form of working class activity". "In each part of the world," Marx continued, "some special aspect of the problem presents itself, and the workingmen there address themselves to its consideration in their own way ... In England, for instance, the way to show [manifest - JC] political power lies open to the working class. Insurrection would be madness where peaceful agitation would more swiftly and surely do the work. In France a hundred laws of repression and a mortal antagonism between classes seem to necessitate the violent solution of social war" (K Marx and F Engels CW Vol 22, Moscow 1986, p602).
The last question posed to Marx by the gallant reporter concerned Britain (or "England", as the bad habit of the day would have it). Lander put it to Marx that Britain had a free press and a system which allowed minorities to become majorities and thus avoided any violence. Marx refused to be prescriptive. He conceded that the bourgeoisie in Britain "has always shown itself willing enough to accept the verdict of the majority so long as it enjoyed the monopoly of political power" But he warned: "As soon as it finds itself outvoted on what it considers vital questions we shall see here a new slave-owners' war" (ibid p606).
Put another way, in respect of Britain, Marx advocated peaceful revolution and urged the working class to be vigilant against a bourgeois counterrevolution. Whether or not there was violence depended entirely on the ruling class. Marx and Engels came out with similar arguments to the ends of their lives.
http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/448/peaceful.html
I'm not interested in revolutionaries, be them of the far left, or far right, nor in their papers, nor in their nuances, feelings, intellect, taste for art or whatever. Class warfare, the world in black and white, the fist raised to the sky and the fiery look towards invisible ideals, how was that expression, mene, mene, tekel, peres. Outing such ideas no better than justifying the "ideology" leading to fascist rule and nazi camps. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
First you just can't read, far from "avoiding scoial conflict" I cited Marx as saying:
"In France a hundred laws of repression and a mortal antagonism between classes seem to necessitate the violent solution of social war" (K Marx and F Engels CW Vol 22, Moscow 1986, p602). ... Marx refused to be prescriptive. He conceded that the bourgeoisie in Britain "has always shown itself willing enough to accept the verdict of the majority so long as it enjoyed the monopoly of political power" But he warned: "As soon as it finds itself outvoted on what it considers vital questions we shall see here a new slave-owners' war" (ibid p606).
Secondly you don't present any arguments to justify calling oppressive dictatorships communist, other than that the dictator kept using the word. Right-wing people use the same stupid argument to claim that Hitler was a socialist. By the same argument one might, if one had as little regard for rational argument as you, claim that the Khmer Rouge were an example of the evils if democracy, given what they called themselves:
Khmer Rouge seized power in 1975, and in 1976 Khmer Rouge established a new constitution with the new flag under offical name, Democratic Kampuchea ... As one of the most violent regimes of the 20th century, the Khmer Rouge regime was responsible for the deaths of approximately 1.7 million people by execution, starvation and forced labor. http://www.cambodia.org/khmer_rouge/
http://www.cambodia.org/khmer_rouge/
Yes, I know, they were really communists, but of a kind so unlike anything Marx advocated that Marx would have been amongst the first to be killed:
Anyone believed to be an intellectual, such as someone who spoke a foreign language, was immediately killed.
They and Stalin were as communist as Hitler was socialist, or the Contras of Nicaragua were the freedom-loving democrats of Reagan's lies. Now do try to come up with something resembling a serious argument. Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice.
Oh really - just as an example, do remind me of where in Marx and Engels they advocate a huge and repressive police force - in a communist society. This is pretty fundamental - so your first-hand experience was of a regime which was no more communist than Kampuchea was democratic under the Khmer Rouge.
Also yet again you use the phrase "communist dictatorship" - if YOU had really read and remembered anything from Marx you'd know that he would see this as a contradiction in terms - as already pointed out. Just try to take on board that simple fact and stop repeating yourself. Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice.
"justified the necessity to overturn order violently , to literally terminate the opposite "class".
when I have now TWICE quoted Marx as saying that there is no necessity about violent revolution, it depends on the context and that in Britain peaceful change was a possibility. But history showed that it was the ruling class who usually used violence to defend their privileges.
Read before ranting.
"but marxism/communism in its accepted meaning has little to do with humanism or classical liberalim "
Which meaning is that - accepted by whom ? Those who write similar uninformed rants ?
Not that it will penetrate your dogmatism, but some evidence of what Marx actually said on the subject:
Rather than thinking of a being with simple needs and simple productive powers, Marx looked to the `development of the rich individuality which is as all-sided in its production as in its consumption' (Marx, 1973: 325). This is what Marx's conception of communism was all about - the creation of a society which removes all obstacles to the full development of human beings. He looked ahead to that society of associated producers, where each individual is able to develop his full potential--- i.e., the `absolute working- out of his creative potentialities,' the `complete working out of the human content,' the `development of all human powers as such the end in itself' (Marx, 1973: 488, 541, 708). In communist society, the productive forces would have `increased with the all-round development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly' (Marx, 1875: 24). The result, in short, would be the production of rich human beings. `What is the aim of the Communists,' Frederick Engels asked in a draft for the Communist Manifesto? He answered, `To organise society in such a way that every member of it can develop and use all his capabilities and powers in complete freedom and without thereby infringing the basic conditions of this society.' In the final draft of the Manifesto, Marx presented this goal as necessarily indivisible - as an `association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.' http://www.ruc.dk/upload/application/pdf/f51d6748/research_report%203_2004%20Lebowitz.pdf
This is what Marx's conception of communism was all about - the creation of a society which removes all obstacles to the full development of human beings. He looked ahead to that society of associated producers, where each individual is able to develop his full potential--- i.e., the `absolute working- out of his creative potentialities,' the `complete working out of the human content,' the `development of all human powers as such the end in itself' (Marx, 1973: 488, 541, 708). In communist society, the productive forces would have `increased with the all-round development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly' (Marx, 1875: 24). The result, in short, would be the production of rich human beings. `What is the aim of the Communists,' Frederick Engels asked in a draft for the Communist Manifesto? He answered, `To organise society in such a way that every member of it can develop and use all his capabilities and powers in complete freedom and without thereby infringing the basic conditions of this society.' In the final draft of the Manifesto, Marx presented this goal as necessarily indivisible - as an `association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.'
http://www.ruc.dk/upload/application/pdf/f51d6748/research_report%203_2004%20Lebowitz.pdf
But history showed that it was the ruling class who usually used violence to defend their privileges.
What should be done with the ruling class who want to keep their privileges and money, defending them violently -
I feel "marginalized"!!
How can I convert to the right wing of this screen??
In many cases it will be possible to dispose of them through perfectly democratic elections resulting in a government that enforces confiscatory taxation of excessive wealth.
In other cases, where democracy has been sufficiently undermined that the ballot box cannot be trusted - the USA springs immediately to mind - a series of general strikes can serve to force the powers that be to hold honest elections.
Where a general strike has been made impossible by violent repression - think Pinochet's Chile or South Africa during Apartheid - one can agitate for various kinds and degrees of international pressure to be applied by countries in which the above methods still work.
When a country proves unresponsive to international pressure - or when there is no such international pressure to be found - one can take direct action in reasonable proportion to the kind and degree of repression faced, from civil disobedience through sabotage, through armed resistance to arrest to actual violent uprising in the most extreme cases.
To give a practical example, the liberation movement in British India employed many of the above tactics. There were strikes, and smuggling activity, to deprive the colonial overlords of revenues. Attempts were made to gather support from the international community. There was civil disobedience. There were attacks on British military targets by militant liberation groups.
All of these activities contributed - with different degrees of impact - to the liberation of India from British colonial rule. And given the nature of the repression faced and the weak support from the international community, I certainly don't fault the insurrectionists who attacked legitimate military targets.
Attacking civilians is, in my view, out of bounds, although there are borderline cases, such as paramilitary groups (think Israeli settlers on the West Bank, armed gangs of skinheads in Croatia during the dissolution of Yugoslavia, etc.) where it is unclear whether they are civilian or military targets.
to dispose of them
Actually, I think that all these measures help to control or reduce the power of the money or military "elite". Communism requires that the elite become integral part of society, without their privileges.
I wouldn't want to miss my freedoms to the extent as is required in a communist society (I think of positive examples like Christians choosing communitarian life; I know examples, not only Amish people). This doesn't mean that I'm egotistical and selfish to the bone. It only means that I like to choose when I want to be selfish and when I want to be generous (which appears selfish, too, I guess). I approve of social democracy where there is a balance of sacrifice for and benefit from the common good and we still have freedom to pursue our own happiness.
I don't count myself to above elites but do not buy into Marx's writings, have read some of them. His ideals are simply not fit for human nature, as is. Sorry, the right wing has nailed this and uses this fact for their own ends. I don't condemn all his ideas but we are selfish, the world is run by money and corruption, ... and no matter how peaceful Marx's ideas were, we - are - not.
"We", that's not all of us, but if there are 97 % selfless, citizens, there would still be a rest of 3 % rebellious, selfish, greedy, violent people left who could spoil the whole enterprise. But, I doubt that there would ever be only 3 %.
True. But then again, I'm not a communist :-P
OTOH, in a reasonably democratic society, depriving "the elite" of its disproportionate wealth would also deprive it of most of its privilege - certainly of most of its ability to distort the political process - and force it to live as an integral part of society. That's why I'm in favour of banning billionaires.
Also the link you provide, from Lebowitz, is more about exploring Marx's unfinished work, from a sentiment that the Capital was excessively deterministic, reductionist and lacking a humanist touch. This kind of research work will not replace the fact that the fundamentals of marxism are just that. Also you may post a thousand links like that, actually saying nothing, I won't bother analyzing them more. This is not a discussion about marxism and its application. I gave the general ideas, justified them with the ideology (which you could accept or not, comment, but not demand quotations as if we cannot use our own mind and say that seeing the society in a dialectical and historical materialism is blatantly reductionist, and led to revolutions and dictatorships.
If you really want more hairsplitting, do start a diary. My original remark was about the press freedom in communist dictatorship (term generally accepted today) and you dragging it astray is pointless. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
It is not such peripherical phrase, but the antagonism (dialectic) and the materialism along with the whole idea of taking over power that led to the bloodbaths.
It is said that a good description of chutzpah is to murder your parents and then plead for clemency on account of being an orphan.
I wonder whether we have found an even better one: To lambast a political theorist for being excessively deterministic, on account of historical determinism deterministically leading to genocide.
Do look up the history of the left wing of the Perónists. When you can place them in the correct country (and perhaps the correct decades), we can argue the merits of calling them communists, the merits of calling them totalitarian oppressors, and then the implications of the conclusions from the above points to your claim that Marxism leads inevitably and deterministically to repression and totalitarianism.
And then we can continue on to the Sandinistas, the Argentine social democrats, the Paris Commune, the left wing of the PLO, Nasserite pan-Arabism and so on and so forth.
Now, if it turns out that even one of these groups can rightly be called communists but cannot be said to be violent oppressors, your claim of deterministic causality between Marxism and totalitarian repression goes the way of the dodos, and you'll have to backpedal to a much looser Bayesian claim.
Should it turn out, then, that not even the majority of these groups imposed totalitarian dictatorships (or attempted to do so), your position will become decidedly precarious.
But you'll have to do a little reading first, I think, because I'm willing to bet dollars to doughnuts that you don't know half those groups even by reputation. And I'm done doing your homework for you.
Those who were in a position to, and did not, were not real marxists :) I know all of those groups, I'm just not in the mood / not the time to discuss such a huge topic here and now - for instance, the Sandinistas can hardly be called marxist or communist, they looked like that, but their actual ideology never followed, and their policies when in power were hardly looking up to the Communist Society.
If you look a bit around, you'll see those who say those dictatorships were not true communists, are the latest surviving communist faithful. Fortunately in France we're almost done with both extremes, and I can't tell you how much more quiet and peaceful everything is :) Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
Interesting. So, in your mind, had the 1956 Hungarian Revolution prevailed in Hungary or the Prague Spring in the Czech Republic; Imre Nagy, the Workers' Councils or Dubček would have progressed to exterminating the enemy class? *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Neither the 1956 Revolution, nor the Prague Spring was an ideologically homogenous movement. However, Nagy, a large part of the Workers' Councils (which in fact survived the Revolution, were at first recognised by the new regime, and were dismantled only over the next two months) and Dubček were all card-carrying communists. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
"Those"? You are trying to change the subject for a second time. I asked you about Nagy, the 1956 Workers Councils, and Dubček.
Gorbatchev was a card-carrying communist too, even the best of them, right. And look where he brought them :)
Not into the extermination of the enemy class. QED. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
I said that a man with a card doesn't make him communist. You don't agree that the USSR was a communist dictatorship ? Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
Where is this caricature described in marx's theory ? You didn't get it from reading Marx, but from the usual caricatures in the media.
First, about the only thing we can say about human nature is that is is very flexible and adaptable, hence the great diversity of human cultures through history. We are capable of great selfishness and brutality and also self-sacrifice. Different cultures emphasise different aspects of our many possibilities.
Marx did not give any simple recipes for future communist societies, they would be developed by the people themselves in their particular circumstances (rather like Chomsky's reluctance to give advice about what people should do). But such societies would involve the removal of class differences, which doesn't involve us all being the same, having no personal possessions and all the other features of right-wing caricature.
But a communist society would not encourage selfish consumerism, but rather the development of what ML King termed "the content of their character". A recent documentary on Cuba did not yet again talk about lack of political freedom, instead it showed that culture's support for the arts, e.g. ballet, and, in that still macho culture, there were a large number of boys in the ballet schools.
Cf.:
The U.S. government would like you to believe that all U.S. citizens support the campaign against Cuba, but in fact lots of U.S. people think the country's anti-Cuba policy is for the birds. Treuhaft is one of them. He is one of the organizers of a project with the catchy title Send A Piana To Havana. "We tuners collect used pianos for Cuba, visit the island en masse to fix them, and help run our Newton Hunt Workshop/School of Tuning and Instrument Repair at the National School of Music in Havana." To show how absurd the U.S. policy is, while the Treasury is hounding Treuhaft for "trading with the enemy" in 1994, the following year he received permission from the U.S. Commerce Department to ship to Cuba the hundreds of pianos donated by U.S. citizens to Send A Piana To Havana! So far, the U.S. tuners have delivered 210 pianos to "the 90 conservatories that dot that musical island." And they have another 30 "waiting to go." But the U.S. government is well aware of the threat posed to American values and the democratic way of life by tuned pianos just over the water in Cuba. So this year OFAC refused to renew the U.S. piano tuners' license to travel to Cuba to tune the pianos Americans donated. "This makes no sense so I'm going anyway," said Treuhaft in a letter to the Cuba Desk of the U.S. State Department earlier this month. And he went. No doubt there will be further repercussions and efforts to stop Benjamin Treuhaft and his colleagues from continuing their simple humanitarian work. But every time U.S. government officials try to stymie such actions and to silence the "perpetrators," they create more rebels against U.S. policy in the U.S. itself. This article is reprinted from The Guardian, the newspaper of the Australian Communist Party. http://havanajournal.com/politics/entry/us_cuba_policy_out_of_tune_opinion/
He is one of the organizers of a project with the catchy title Send A Piana To Havana. "We tuners collect used pianos for Cuba, visit the island en masse to fix them, and help run our Newton Hunt Workshop/School of Tuning and Instrument Repair at the National School of Music in Havana."
To show how absurd the U.S. policy is, while the Treasury is hounding Treuhaft for "trading with the enemy" in 1994, the following year he received permission from the U.S. Commerce Department to ship to Cuba the hundreds of pianos donated by U.S. citizens to Send A Piana To Havana!
So far, the U.S. tuners have delivered 210 pianos to "the 90 conservatories that dot that musical island." And they have another 30 "waiting to go."
But the U.S. government is well aware of the threat posed to American values and the democratic way of life by tuned pianos just over the water in Cuba. So this year OFAC refused to renew the U.S. piano tuners' license to travel to Cuba to tune the pianos Americans donated.
"This makes no sense so I'm going anyway," said Treuhaft in a letter to the Cuba Desk of the U.S. State Department earlier this month. And he went.
No doubt there will be further repercussions and efforts to stop Benjamin Treuhaft and his colleagues from continuing their simple humanitarian work. But every time U.S. government officials try to stymie such actions and to silence the "perpetrators," they create more rebels against U.S. policy in the U.S. itself.
This article is reprinted from The Guardian, the newspaper of the Australian Communist Party.
http://havanajournal.com/politics/entry/us_cuba_policy_out_of_tune_opinion/
Communism is about people's potential and forms of social organisation which will develop that - not people's potential to make a few individuals very wealthy. People won't be perfect, but they won't be ruthlessly exploited and will be encouraged to understand that the development of each person requires the development of the whole society towards more humane ends (see the bit about medicine in Cuba in an earlier comment). Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice.
At some times, we can fit reality into many ideological frames. But beyond some point, ideology becomes like a masturbation (in mild cases). Stalin was probably aware of how far were Marx-Lenin's ideals and the real world. Trying too hard to realize a "perfection" in practice is certainly dangerous. Working ideology should be respectful of existing background, and give people time to adjust. This smells like conservativism a bit. But modern conservativism allows this wild race economical transformations, while being very narrow-minded how the whole world should adjust.
There may be times when we need to guess the right view of the world, for mere survival or civilization continuation. Otherwise no one would have a vision nor determination. Collective thinking may not be in the human nature (even without so much rationalization of individualism), but if this is this is necessary for adaption, it is within our capabilities to adopt that collective way.
i'm starting to wonder if stalin hijacked marx in the same way bush hijacked jesus... ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
"Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat." - Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/index.htm Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
Fortunately he was quite produtive and his writings has studied extensively.
Dictatorship of the proletariat - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The term "dictatorship" describes control by an entire class, rather than a single individual (dictator rei gerendae causa). According to Marx, the bourgeois state, being a system of class rule, amounts to a 'dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.' When workers take state power into their hands, they become the new ruling class and rule in their own interest, temporarily using the state machinery to prevent the bourgeoisie mounting a counterrevolution. Although Marx did not plan out the details of how such a dictatorship would be implemented, he pointed to the Paris Commune as a model of transition to communism. He stated that: The Commune was formed of the municipal councilors, chosen by universal suffrage in the various wards of the town, responsible and revocable at short terms. The majority of its members were naturally workers, or acknowledged representatives of the working class. The Commune was to be a working, not a parliamentary body, executive and legislative at the same time.[1] This social order with its emphasis on recallable delegates and maximal public participation in governance has many similarities to the modern conception of direct democracy. Friedrich Engels, in his 1891 postscript to The Civil War in France, stated that "Well and good, gentlemen, do you want to know what this dictatorship looks like? Look at the Paris Commune. That was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat." He criticized what he saw as corruption among politicians and stated that "the Commune made use of two infallible expedients. In this first place, it filled all posts - administrative, judicial, and educational - by election on the basis of universal suffrage of all concerned, with the right of the same electors to recall their delegate at any time. And in the second place, all officials, high or low, were paid only the wages received by other workers. The highest salary paid by the Commune to anyone was 6,000 francs. In this way an effective barrier to place-hunting and careerism was set up, even apart from the binding mandates to delegates to representative bodies which were also added in profusion." He also stated that the state is "at best an evil inherited by the proletariat after its victorious struggle for class supremacy, whose worst sides the proletariat, just like the Commune, cannot avoid having to lop off at the earliest possible moment, until such time as a new generation, reared in new and free social conditions, will be able to throw the entire lumber of the state on the scrap-heap."[2] Marx's attention to the Paris Commune would make the commune take a central place in the thought of later Marxists.
Although Marx did not plan out the details of how such a dictatorship would be implemented, he pointed to the Paris Commune as a model of transition to communism. He stated that:
The Commune was formed of the municipal councilors, chosen by universal suffrage in the various wards of the town, responsible and revocable at short terms. The majority of its members were naturally workers, or acknowledged representatives of the working class. The Commune was to be a working, not a parliamentary body, executive and legislative at the same time.[1]
This social order with its emphasis on recallable delegates and maximal public participation in governance has many similarities to the modern conception of direct democracy.
Friedrich Engels, in his 1891 postscript to The Civil War in France, stated that "Well and good, gentlemen, do you want to know what this dictatorship looks like? Look at the Paris Commune. That was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat." He criticized what he saw as corruption among politicians and stated that "the Commune made use of two infallible expedients. In this first place, it filled all posts - administrative, judicial, and educational - by election on the basis of universal suffrage of all concerned, with the right of the same electors to recall their delegate at any time. And in the second place, all officials, high or low, were paid only the wages received by other workers. The highest salary paid by the Commune to anyone was 6,000 francs. In this way an effective barrier to place-hunting and careerism was set up, even apart from the binding mandates to delegates to representative bodies which were also added in profusion." He also stated that the state is "at best an evil inherited by the proletariat after its victorious struggle for class supremacy, whose worst sides the proletariat, just like the Commune, cannot avoid having to lop off at the earliest possible moment, until such time as a new generation, reared in new and free social conditions, will be able to throw the entire lumber of the state on the scrap-heap."[2] Marx's attention to the Paris Commune would make the commune take a central place in the thought of later Marxists.
Sounds a bit different to Lenins defintions. A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!
But speaking of your excerpt, I knew this, I just didn't want to get into that much detail, because seeing a situation as the enemy class' dictatorship is a part of the same manicheist and violent vision. One can always argue violence can be justified when nothing else works, but the point was about the term communist dictatorship being a contradictio in termine.
We can discuss all this in detail, I only feared, as before, that this blog too will become about each and every social and political issue today or in the past.
Or is it me managing to systematically position myself opposite each and every "truth" established through previous ET debates. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/prrk/common_liberal.htm#fw03
...it must be a democracy for the exploited, ‘and a means of suppressing the exploiters; and the suppression of a class means inequality for that class, its exclusion from “democracy”. The indispensable characteristic, the necessary condition of dictatorship is the forcible suppression of the exploiters as a class, and, consequently, the infringement of “pure democracy”, i.e., of equality and freedom, in regard to that class. The proletariat cannot achieve victory without breaking the resistance of the bourgeoisie, without forcibly suppressing its adversaries, and that, where there is “forcible suppression”, where there is no “freedom”, there is, of course, no democracy
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/prrk/equality.htm Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
"So, do you simply dream of this perfect world with wonderful human beings where communism as described in theory would be a reality?" Where is this caricature described in marx's theory ? You didn't get it from reading Marx, but from the usual caricatures in the media.
No.
I got this caricature from comparing Marx/you with what I have seen and experienced and heard/learnt from others in real life.
First, about the only thing we can say about human nature is that is is very flexible and adaptable, hence the great diversity of human cultures through history. We are capable of great selfishness and brutality and also self-sacrifice.
In the "free world", democracy - you risk having poor people, a hopefully broad middle class, and few (very) wealthy people, i.e. huge inequality. But then, there would also be freedom of speech for everyone, and selfishness is framed by legal boundaries. Maybe we achieve only little but life is full of possibilities.
Of course we're flexible and adaptable but I would not want to adapt to what other people believe works best for them, and hence for me. I don't repeat any media mantra. I speak of myself.
Right-wingers also say that we are all selfish, and that "communists" are greedy people who want to have from rich people [read in the media]. Well, well, ... - I have read a bit about Cuba, and have found that your words about Cuba's education and health systems have merit. At the same time, the rich and many people of the middle class, artists and intellectuals in particular LEFT THE COUNTRY when it went communist. Those who benefited from the change stayed. ;) Further, Cuba depended on aid from the Soviet Union which led to a crisis after 1989. (no quotes; from a brochure on Latin America issued by the German Government).
Marx did not give any simple recipes for future communist societies, they would be developed by the people themselves in their particular circumstances
Communism is about people's potential and forms of social organisation which will develop that - not people's potential to make a few individuals very wealthy. People won't be perfect, but they won't be ruthlessly exploited and will be encouraged to understand that the development of each person requires the development of the whole society towards more humane ends (see the bit about medicine in Cuba in an earlier comment).
All this can only work when all involved can agree on a (this) common belief system. I for one have a genuine distrust in human constructs. Let's assume that a majority will democratically decide on communism as the new state form. This would not simply mean that I would then be part of the "minority" because there would be no minority anymore but all would have to "forcefully" (that's reality; it doesn't necessarily imply physical force) surrender to this system, where I would LOSE my anti-communistic voice. I would have to be oppressed.
This is profoundly different from the communist who complains about social injustice in a democratic system. He can still make his voice heard, give his wealth to the poor. The greedy rich ones will stay wealthy, and there will still be poor people. Communism implies that wealth will be (more) equally distributed (ideally). The rich person will have to give his money to the less fortunate.
Individuals who prefer democracy to communism also understand that it is unhealthy when there is a huge discrepancy between rich and poor. From the rich person's perspective, there will be instability.
It seems that today's pragmatism takes this also into account: In above-mentioned brochure, it was also stated that both Bolivia and Chile today rather looked like social democracies, and Obama's change also includes improving social safety (health care, education, ...).
These are natural developments that take into account both our selfish human nature and this:
the development of each person requires the development of the whole society towards more humane ends
Marxist theories will be (and are already) put in practise, neither in its idealistic perfection nor in its destructive form. Diversity (cultural, religious, personal, through free choice at many different levels) will be preserved; there will still be incentives to grow and excel (the positive side of our selfish nature), etc.
