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Well, when I complain that the formal left only has  stale and discredited marxism to offer people get huffy and get all sixth-form politico dialectic theory on me.

I want to propose a new left concensus around co-operatives and the creation of specifically non-authoritarian democratic institutions, but I simply don't have the socio-political or philosophical background to do it. I can put up bullet points and ideas, but creating a newly minted ideology is beyond me I'm afraid.

keep to the Fen Causeway

by Helen (lareinagal at yahoo dot co dot uk) on Tue Aug 28th, 2007 at 12:01:03 PM EST
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Well, your blanket dismissal of Marx  is a bit  - though I'm with you on the whole dialectics thing.

A new ideology? Do we need one past simply rebalancing things? The problem, really, is that we've let the system get out of balance in several ways. We need to fix that.

by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Tue Aug 28th, 2007 at 12:11:28 PM EST
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Marxism is simply command capitalism, state dictatorship. There is no liberal freedom. Sorry, but if anyone can point to a single marxist based society that didn't descend into authoritarianism within a few weeks of establishment I must have missed it.

I'm not the sort of person who can survive a conformist society, if there's no space at the edges I don't want your future in my backyard. And the argument last night about gay people in cuba was ridiculous, of course ALL communist societies regard gays as degenerate. Any society that idealises the people whilst treating the individuals like shit cannot bear to have its iconography mocked. It's only societies that allege to be free that have to face their hypocrisy.


keep to the Fen Causeway

by Helen (lareinagal at yahoo dot co dot uk) on Tue Aug 28th, 2007 at 12:33:18 PM EST
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Which is all only part of Marx's work: his solutions are just as silly as any of the other people who think that they can come up with a "solution" to the problems of the work. His identification of the problem was pretty interesting though.
by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Tue Aug 28th, 2007 at 12:38:20 PM EST
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The concepts I found most interesting - apart form "Surplus Value" - were his early conclusions in relation to "alienation" and the "Abolition of Labour" and the "Abolition of Property".

But his theoretical solutions were IMHO never based upon correct assumptions in relation to Reality, and via the wonders of Dialectics, he flew, like the Oozlum Bird, in ever decreasing circles until he disappeared where the Sun does not shine.

"The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed" William Gibson

by ChrisCook (cojockathotmaildotcom) on Tue Aug 28th, 2007 at 12:54:44 PM EST
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I can't beat dialectics into a shape that will fit into mind: it keeps rejecting it with a "you can't be serious" error.
by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Tue Aug 28th, 2007 at 12:57:16 PM EST
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