Drowning in prejudice?
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More peoples died in the coast of Greece when they were sailing on the Adriana boat, and the Greek government let them die. They were not explorers, they were poor migrants escaping from the horrors of capitalism.
Almost every day Mexicans die in the USA border due to dehydration, heat, serpent bite, and hungry, drowning in the river, and many of them are children. The Rio Grande has taken the life of many emigrants .
There is a law that does not allow peoples in the side of the USA to provide water to them, you will face a criminal process, to save the life of a human being is a crime.
The Titan was an experimental vessel to boost the future development of underwater tourism which is going to generate a lot of profits.
The USA Navy knew about the implosion on Sunday but they did not want to say that they have secret military sensor devices in the ocean.
The rescue system is becoming a private enterprise
https://english.elpais.com/international/2023-06-20/greece-imposes-silence-around-shipwreck-of-overcrowded-migrant-boat.html
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/6/23/greece_migrant_shipwreck_media_coverageJust shows you how utterly hopeless things are. Socialism is a beautiful dream. That’s all it’ll ever be.
Now, the right wingers are blaming the implosion of the Titan on wokeness. These peoples must be sent to a psychiatrist hospital immediately.
Just shows you how utterly hopeless things are. Socialism is a beautiful dream. That’s all it’ll ever be.
……………………………..Maybe. Maybe not, Ozy. None of us has a crystal ball. You cannot ever rule out small developments occurring that can metamorphize into something much bigger and could serve to put socialism onto the agenda in a way that was simply not predicted or was unpredictable.
But apart from that I keep coming back to this point in the face of all this depressing talk from our depressing Jeremiahs: Look, even if turns out that socialism is an “impossible dream” that is never going to be realized, it does not follow at all that we should give up on the struggle for a sane alternative to capitalism.
We are few in numbers but arguably punch way above our weight. By doing what we are doing we ARE having an impact on the world as it is right now. Not much of an impact, I grant, but an impact nevertheless. We are adding our little bit to the general flux of ideas and altering in a small way the social climate of opinion. For instance, we make the job of the warmongers a little more difficult to accomplish when we oppose the nationalist ideology that lends support to capitalism’s wars. There is a balance of forces out there in the real world and our job is to tilt it in the direction we would want it to go.
I cannot really see any alternative. There is either this or we resign ourselves to some coming apocalypse which, frankly. is not a healthy way to live. Hopelessness translates into a state of perpetual misery. You might just as well slit your wrists and be done with it…
“Just shows you how utterly hopeless things are. Socialism is a beautiful dream. That’s all it’ll ever be.”
If the history of change teaches us anything, it is that change usually takes place when you least expect it.
During the reign of Louis XIV and for most of the reign of Louis XV, France was probably the strongest Absolute Monarchy in the world, but the French Revolution followed in 1789.
The Tsarist system had endured through the 1905 revolution and looked to be in its strongest ever postion in 1913.
If you had predicted during the 1980 Olympics that the Soviet system would begin to collapse within a decade you would have been locked up.
In theory Britain was the Leading World superpower at the end of WW1, 30 years later the British Empire was starting to be broken up.
In 1916 the captured members of the Irish Volunteers and The Irish Citizens Army were jeered as they were marched through Dublin, Sinn Fein won a massive vote in the 1918 Irish General Election.
When Newcastle won the cup in 1955 they were the most successful club side in England and then …………..
All of the above may well be true. Socialism, however, for its establishment, requires both the understanding and active participation of the mass of humanity.
When my father, during his brief association with the Bund Demokratischer Sozialisten (League of Democratic Socialists), told me, among other things, that socialism would be a society without laws, police or prisons, I knew then that it would never become a reality.
Socialism can spread without people having heard of us, as threads of discontent begin to merge together.
That’s my hope anyway. And I ask of those who disagree: “What’s in the denial of socialism’s possibility for you?”” socialism would be a society without laws, police or prisons, I knew then that it would never become a reality.”
Socialism means the common ownership of the means of production and distribution.
I think a socialist society will have to have rules and they will need to be democratically enforceable if a minority do not wish to comply with these rules and if that leads to difficulty for others. You could call them laws if you want to, I have no objection to that.
For instance if someone insists on driving their car at speeds that put others in danger, then I see nothing unsocialist taking the car off the anti social person and stopping them from driving if they persist on doing it. It would be undemocratic not to.
In a similar way I am pretty sure that in a Socialist society the behaviour of some people would require that to protect the health and well being of others it would be necessary for them to have constraints, for instance children would still need to be protected from those who wish to abuse them. If the only way of ensuring that protection was to separate the perpertrators of this abuse physically from the rest of society in some way, again I would say this wouldn’t be unsocialist, as long as there were safeguards to ensure that system operated in an accountable and open way.
The advent of a socialist society would not instantly mean that parnoid schizophrenia would cease to exist (the adverse experiences that are sometimes linked to schizophrenic breakdown for instance may be reduced, but things like death of a loved one, relationship breakdown, etc. will still occur). It will be necessary to protect people with these difficulties as well as protecting the population from their actions.
I would also hope that these, and other decisions like this would be made by caring and professionally knowledgeable people. Without the resource constraints that they currently are made, I see no reason why the current arrangements to support people could not be adapted to create a compassionate and therapeutic system of support with appropriate safeguards to ensure their is no abuse of the system.
I do think, however, that the idea that punishing people through prison as a way of changing their anti social behaviour would hopefully be recognised as being pretty counter productive.
I do not think that my view is one that others in the party have expressed over the years.
I do think though that in a socialist society the need for these kinds of measures would be massively reduced in comparison to capitalism.
And as time went on, the psychological harm created by capitalism will more and more become a distant memory, until its lingering effects will have faded and disappeared.
I have been in the working class movement for over 50 years and I believe that socialism is possible to be established despite that fact that I seen organizations larger than the SPGB that have disappeared from the face of the earth, there were organizations who made a call for a general strike and everybody responded to the call and every thing was shut down, and that organization and its leader vanished but other continued and the organization was rebuilt again, that is only one example and I have several similar situation and we continued.
The MLC had a daily newspaper like the New York time and the Washington Post and they do not do that anymore, and we used to sell their newspaper on the streets, in other place peoples with money have given money for the newspapers and those peoples became part of the movement and they adopted working class consciouness
Working class taking of class consciousness can take place in minutes and I have seen that in my entire life, and I will not call it mass, I will call it working class with political knowledge and willing to establish a new society
Peoples give opinion without knowing the basic principles of socialism and without understanding how the working class movement operate, those are the peoples like the guerrillas fighters who think that workers must be carried like little baby by their hands, as
I have seen generals, captains and soldiers taking side with the peoples, and they were reactionaries, and I have seen a whole country rebelling themselves against oppression and the leaders were forced to take a plane and leave
When the base changed their minds nobody can stop them, it is a very strong force, It is so strong that the capitalist class gives up or might take sides with them.
In Cuba the guerrillas won because one sector of the capitalist class took side with them, I have seen priests fighting along with the workers
Chavez was placed in power again because all members of the working class wanted him back and those were reformists movements, and real working class movement is going to be stronger, and In some place the ballot might give power to the workers, but in some places the capitalist will resist and peoples might armed themselves to remove them.
We can never predict social activities, capitalism was considered an utopia
I do think, however, that the idea that punishing people through prison as a way of changing their anti social behaviour would hopefully be recognised as being pretty counter productive.
The Indians did not have jails and policemen, their worst punishment was to be thrown out from their society. the legal system is based on the so called Mens rea and I never supported that reactionary idea, we do not have guilty mind, society affects the minds of human being.
I lived in a society without any law about drinking, smoking and drugs and we never had and epidemic of alcoholic peoples, and we did not have drug addiction, and when capitalism destroyed all the old customs everything changed, and it became reactionary, the same place has an epidemic of drugs, alcoholic, stealing is an epidemic, peoples do not respect each other anymore, we never carried gun, and young peoples carry guns before they used to carry a book to learn and to go to the university, that is capitalism.
I lived in a small town and practically we did not need the police force, the police were used for political oppression, and peoples comported themselves like we are going to comport ourselves in a socialist society, we were all together, we loved each other, we gave the sidewalk to our elderly and to our medical doctors, we were able to sleep with the doors open, we were able to walk on the street freely without any fear, and the neighbors was our police because they cared about us, we loved our teachers and teachers were an extension of the family, we did not have muggers, the beach were free, we were able to catch and eat lobster, shrimps, turtles for free
When we had full development of capitalism everything was erased, everything is private including beaches, in a town of fishermen peoples can not find seafoods, and they are very expensive, my father was a business man and he had money and everybody loved him because he helped everybody, when he died they carried his coffin on the shoulder
I saw and experienced muggers when I moved to another country , seating on bus stop someone took my wallet in a professional way and for me it was a frustration because I had never seen that in muy entire life, and I moved to country who have a big book about criminal law and criminal codes and peoples lived their own separated way of life, and a bunch of police forces, the situation is worst than the small town where I grew up, that is capitalism
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