Introducing Grandpa
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If you have a good look at this site, you’ll see it’s far from being an echo chamber. But it IS a place of meaningful – and even exciting – discussion.
Let’s address the poster attacks first. In any discussion they’re the go to option when someone is losing an argument. No room for dissent in your democratic world where everyone has a say then? All must follow the party line?
Second, I’m not some nasty troll who’s suddenly appeared and is daring to criticise. I’m actually a big pussy cat, it’s just that I taught English and politics for a living in a communist country and visited others and I know communism disguised with socialism when I see it.
China
I looked through the Chinese thread because that’s an interest. The usual links to western sources from people who have never been there. Very little mention that the Chinese government has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty, while western capitalism has put tens of millions in it. We could do with a bit of that statism in the west!The first post had a link to an article, “How China forgot Karl Marx.” China was never Marxist, it was Maoist and the difference is that Marx wrote about industrialised countries and the effects on the working classes and Mao about agrarian societies, so more about peasants and land reform.
Ukraine
Ukraine is also an interest. How on earth do you turn the Ukraine conflict into a class struggle against capitalism?! With the usual lemming like links to western media.RT News is banned in the west because they don’t want you to know the other side of the story. I use the free VPN in the Firefox browser. Or how about watching some filmed documentaries and learn what’s going on in the world first before you start talking politics; instead of being stuck in an echo chamber of fantasies about eight billion people sharing what they have and singing Kumbaya.
I’m convinced that if I wrote a short piece that Alice in Wonderland was actually a tale about being exploited by The Mad Hatter and The Cheshire Cat who were really capitalists, it would fit right in with the content here.
“What the SPGB says it is and what it actually is are two different things. Of course it’s going to distance itself from failures.”
But, do you accept that those failures are of a completely different plan: a minority seizing power and forcing the population at gunpoint to enact their programme? We do not advocate that, and so absolutely do not consider those instances to be failure of what we advocate. Without the conscious and voluntary co-operation of the vast majority, you cannot build a democratic society of common ownership (indeed, Russia, China, Cambodia, etc. are proof of what we are saying, not a refutation).
As our Beveridge pamphlet shows, the welfare state is about rationalising insurance and saving the costs to the capitalist, it’s not a net benefit to the workers.
Granpa wrote:
” Every society is built on culture as its foundation. This includes language, religion, identity, values, traditions … Dilute or remove these and the foundations on which that society was built collapses.”
Culture is not the foundation of a society but the expression, the superstructure, produced by the economic base. “The morality of a given society is the morality of its ruling class” – those who own and control the means of production. Identity, values etc., whether supportive of, or in opposition to, the prevalent social structure are all superstructure.
Granpa wrote:
” Every society is built on culture as its foundation. This includes language, religion, identity, values, traditions … Dilute or remove these and the foundations on which that society was built collapses.”
Culture is not the foundation of a society but the expression, the superstructure, produced by the economic base. “The morality of a given society is the morality of its ruling class” – those who own and control the means of production. Identity, values etc., whether supportive of, or in opposition to, the prevalent social structure are all superstructure.
Oh stop it Thomas. That’d the biggest load of intellectual gobbledegook on this thread so far and a very near paraphrase of Marx.
“What the SPGB says it is and what it actually is are two different things. Of course it’s going to distance itself from failures.”
But, do you accept that those failures are of a completely different plan: a minority seizing power and forcing the population at gunpoint to enact their programme? We do not advocate that, and so absolutely do not consider those instances to be failure of what we advocate. Without the conscious and voluntary co-operation of the vast majority, you cannot build a democratic society of common ownership (indeed, Russia, China, Cambodia, etc. are proof of what we are saying, not a refutation).
As our Beveridge pamphlet shows, the welfare state is about rationalising insurance and saving the costs to the capitalist, it’s not a net benefit to the workers.
Yes, it was definitely a coup as it’s the only way these characters can get into power. You can add Castro, Mao and Lenin to that.
You don’t advocate the use of an armed overthrow, but you’ll never get in by the ballot box either. Stalemate.
The welfare State introduced a social security and healthcare system. It’s the reason you have a roof over your head, you’re not in absolute poverty, you get free healthcare at the point of deliver, a pension when you’re older and guaranteed an education under the 1944 Act.
You want to know what came before the Welfare State? Read Orwell’s ‘Down and Out in Paris and London’ or ‘The Road to Wigan Pier.’ That will open your eyes to what naked capitalism was really like and not today’s bleating of, he’s got more than me.
grand, well, we’d argue that the long postwar boom did more to raise wages and living conditions than the cheeseparing of the welfare state did: that plus the cheapening of the means of living that came about through worldwide productivity growth. When Labour last left power, inequality in the UK was pretty much the same as it had been in the 1930s: poverty wears a different face, but it is still very much there.
” Yes, it was definitely a coup as it’s the only way these characters can get into power. You can add Castro, Mao and Lenin to that.”
In fact you are wrong about Castro and Mao. They were of course nationalists, not communists, and were carried to power by majority peasant support, not by coups.
Lenin and Trotsky did stage a coup.
In fact also, your ridiculous notion of socialism and communism being different things is pure Lenin.What the SPGB says it is and what it actually is are two different things. Of course it’s going to distance itself from failures. My point was that what Pol Pot wanted and what you’re suggesting are the same thing.
This demonstrates you are not listening at all. You are just determinedly plugging your own pre-set rigid views regardless of what anyone says to the contrary
No, what the SPGB want and what Pol Pot wanted are emphatically NOT the same!
Did Pol Pot want a moneyless, wageless, classless, and stateless society in which individuals voluntarily give according to their abilities and freely take according to their needs?
NO, HE (AND THE KHMER ROUGE) DID NOT!
You might say he wanted, and achieved, at least part of the above — the bit about getting rid of money — but even that is disputable and, as I patiently explained to you, the mere absence of money does NOT in itself denote a communist society. The aristocratic, large-scale Inca civilisation didn’t use money, but you wouldn’t call that a communist society, would you?
I don’t care two hoots if Pol Pot imagined himself to be some kind of communist wanting to bring about a communist society. A communist society didn’t materialise under the Khmer Rouge. Period. If anything, it was a reversion to a pre-capitalist society rather than a progression to a post-capitalist one. Actions, not pretty words, count.
Throughout its history, the SPGB has been very insistent on the need for a majority to understand and want communism, aka socialism. It cannot possibly be imposed on workers from above by some kind of Leninist vanguard.
The SPGB´s outlook is completely and utterly different from the authoritarian vanguardism of the Khmer Rouge regime, and to try to suggest otherwise is dishonest or ignorant or both
I remember watching a documentary in which a former accomplice of Pol Pot burst into giggles when his interviewer referred to the Khmer Rouge as communists.
If Grandpa despises us as a tiny “utopian” group with no relevance, what is he doing here? Nothing better to do?
grand, well, we’d argue that the long postwar boom did more to raise wages and living conditions than the cheeseparing of the welfare state did: that plus the cheapening of the means of living that came about through worldwide productivity growth. When Labour last left power, inequality in the UK was pretty much the same as it had been in the 1930s: poverty wears a different face, but it is still very much there.
The postwar boom had nothing to do with the creation of the welfare state which was already up and running, but yes, wages rose and living conditions greatly improved by the 60s. Largely due to the welfare state. It’s why we use relative poverty figures now and not those of absolute poverty.
As our industrial era began to decline, other countries starting theirs made the west uncompetitive. What large industries we had left Thatcher destroyed in the 80s.
Depends what you mean by ‘inequality.’ Are you suggesting that poverty was worse at the end of the last Labour government in 2010 than it was in the 1930s Great Depression?
” Yes, it was definitely a coup as it’s the only way these characters can get into power. You can add Castro, Mao and Lenin to that.”
In fact you are wrong about Castro and Mao. They were of course nationalists, not communists, and were carried to power by majority peasant support, not by coups.
Lenin and Trotsky did stage a coup.
In fact also, your ridiculous notion of socialism and communism being different things is pure Lenin.Castro and Mao were nationalists? Really? You mean like Mussolini, Franco and Hitler? The same Castro that allied itself with the USSR during the Cuban crisis, or the Mao that aided communist North Korea in the Korean war?
If you haven’t got the knowledge, use google. It’s generally useless at explanations, but good for facts.” Castro and Mao were nationalists? Really? You mean like Mussolini, Franco and Hitler? The same Castro that allied itself with the USSR during the Cuban crisis, or the Mao that aided communist North Korea in the Korean war?”
Waste of time arguing with someone who puts mere labels before any consideration of substance.
“Castro and Mao were nationalists? Really? You mean like Mussolini, Franco and Hitler? The same Castro that allied itself with the USSR during the Cuban crisis, or the Mao that aided communist North Korea in the Korean war?”
Nationalism does NOT preclude capitalist states (in this case, Cuba, China, Italy, Spain and Germany) from cooperating with other capitalist states or, indeed, riding roughshod over, or even conquering, other capitalist states.
The basic spatial unit is the nation-state, and this is what the pseudo communists of Cuba or China relate to and identify with.
The Soviet Union, which is the prototype of the pseudo-communism you go on about, made no bones about promoting nationalist values (the SPGB as a genuine communist aka socialist organisation completely repudiates nationalist values and the death cult of nationalism). Stalin talked about the glorious Soviet Motherland etc etc…
State capitalism, such as in Cuba or the Soviet Union, I would argue, is particularly closely associated with bourgeois nationalism — even organically connected with it — because of the centrality of the state in the economic affairs of the so-called “nation-state”
I remember watching a documentary in which a former accomplice of Pol Pot burst into giggles when his interviewer referred to the Khmer Rouge as communists.
If Grandpa despises us as a tiny “utopian” group with no relevance, what is he doing here? Nothing better to do?
Currently, Grandpa is laughing at you. No seriously, doing a Q&A session.
Mao was a nationalist? The Maoist with the little red book and red flag? The Khmer Rouge (translated Red Cambodians) weren’t communists?… What planet are you people living on and you present yourselves as members of a credible political alternative? I don’t despise you, I’m just amazed that in the 21st century people with an education can have so little knowledge. I’m still waiting for one of you to pop-up and tell me Farage is a liberal democrat!
Perhaps many of you are Gen Z? That would explain the rebel without a cause and railing against the world attitude, as well as being gullible and open to influence by others as you gather together in little peer groups on the Internet.
If you were even faintly familiar with politics you wouldn’t come out with statements such as we’re not communists we just believe in Marx. Do you realise how stupid that sounds? Or, we believe in a cashless, equality based and stateless society, but we’re not Marxists.
You’re communists, why not just admit it? Is it because every time it’s been tried it’s failed and so you pretend communist societies aren’t communist but are something else? Anyway, instead of commenting against this very low level of knowledge, perhaps I should put up a quick post myself?
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