alanjjohnstone
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I think the word has now widened to apply to Zionist Apartheid Regime of Israel. The latest blog by our Zambian comrade makes your point , Brian, that Mandela did initiate multi-party democracy in neighbouring Southern African countries and a whole spate of elections took place but the backlash was that those parties then sought tribal/ ethnic support to gain political power. http://www.socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2013/12/mandela-his-political-legacy.html
John Pilger's 1998 documentary "Apartheid did not die" can be viewed herehttp://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article37035.htm
An article by the respected journalist Seymour Hersh on the sarin gas attack. http://www.lrb.co.uk/2013/12/08/seymour-m-hersh/whose-sarin "the irony is that, after Assad’s stockpile of precursor agents is destroyed, al-Nusra and its Islamist allies could end up as the only faction inside Syria with access to the ingredients that can create sarin"
To be expected – "the Co-operative Group is cutting or terminating donations to charities and organisations, some of which are now facing closure." "The Co-op board has also been presented with a plan to reduce its elected members from 15 to seven, with four non-executives being brought in, including the chief executive of the Co-op Group, Euan Sutherland. The move would change the power structure of the board at the expense of the democratically elected members."http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/dec/07/cooperative-group-slashes-funding-charities-tory
"South Africa is not a society of shared norms and ideas; it is, rather, a social formation still bound by need and greed and held together by new regulatory social institutions. The factual scales will have to decide on a more nuanced judgment, but they will have to weigh too the feeling that, alongside a remarkable transition, the Mandela decade left behind a profound sense of failure felt by the very people who struggled to create a nonracial and diverse nation."- Ari Sitas is a sociologist, poet based at the University of Cape Town. He is also author of The Mandela Decade and Theoretical parables: Voices that reasonhttp://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/07/mandela-legacy-201371717017499138.html
About time you pushed it. I find it great reading…but even i sometimes forgot about its existence. I took your advice and subscribed so i don't forget to check it out. Perhaps you were inspired to mention it by SOYMB and Socialist Courier promotion of it .
I read this comment Former Mandela cabinet member, Ronnie Kasrils: basically says that as a ruler Mandela gave in way too much to rich people. So he replaced racial apartheid with class apartheid."…South Africa's liberation struggle reached a high point but not its zenith when we overcame apartheid rule. Back then, our hopes were high for our country given its modern industrial economy, strategic mineral resources (not only gold and diamonds), and a working class and organised trade union movement with a rich tradition of struggle. But that optimism overlooked the tenacity of the international capitalist system. From 1991 to 1996 the battle for the ANC's soul got under way, and was eventually lost to corporate power: we were entrapped by the neoliberal economy – or, as some today cry out, we "sold our people down the river…What I call our Faustian moment came when we took an IMF loan on the eve of our first democratic election. That loan, with strings attached that precluded a radical economic agenda, was considered a necessary evil, as were concessions to keep negotiations on track and take delivery of the promised land for our people. Doubt had come to reign supreme: we believed, wrongly, there was no other option…"http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jun/24/anc-faustian-pact-mandela-fatal-errorActually there was no other option,IMHO, but an accommodation with capitalism as a world system. Mandela was indeed a true Thatcherite.."There Is No Alternative" “I am sure that Cecil John Rhodes would have given his approval to this effort to make the South African economy of the early 21st century appropriate and fit for its time.” Nelson Mandela in 2003The Daily Telegraph's Osbourne…Mandela can be compared with Jesus Christ…!!!!http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/peteroborne/100249502/few-human-beings-can-be-compared-to-jesus-christ-nelson-mandela-was-one/Certainly there is a big difference in tone in Mandela's obituary and the media's obituaries of Hugo Chavez…and i think it can be put down to who upset ( i won't say threatened, merely, annoyed) the international capitalist class the most. Whatever sympathies Mandela showed for oppressed people like the Palestinians are neutered by his contempt for other peoples well-being as in presenting the tyrant Sukarto of Indonesia a top award.
One person i notice not being asked for her opinion and feelings is ex-wife WinniePerhaps the kidnapper and inciter to murder remarks here maybe the reason the press appear reluctant to ask herhttp://www.standard.co.uk/news/how-nelson-mandela-betrayed-us-says-exwife-winnie-6734116.html
Yet another story of police striking. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-25230743
“Also no references on your blog.” John Pilger a respected journalist is quoted. John Minto, an anti-apartheid campaigner. A Financial Times article is cited. A number of facts are used that are verifiable. The proof is in the pudding. Mandela accepted the decision for the new country to go with free-market economic policies in 1994 and the results were predictable. The rich have got richer and the poor poorer. Much of Mandela’s failings is what he did not do such as criticise ANC corruption. Here is John Pilger again.
“The ANC, said Mandela, would take over the great monopolies, including the mines, and the financial institutions. ‘That is the fundamental policy of the ANC’, he said. ‘It is inconceivable that we will ever change this policy.’ When it was clear, in the 1980s, that the regime of P.W. Botha was doomed, big business changed its allegiance to the ANC, confident that its multinational interests would not be obstructed and that foolish promises about equity and the natural resources “belonging to all the people” would be abandoned. Since the ANC has settled into office, Margaret Thatcher’s infamous TINA (“there is no alternative”) has become the government’s touchstone. The policy is known as GEAR – for growth, employment and redistribution – but it has little connection with employment, as jobs are being shed by the tens of thousands, and even less with redistribution, which seemsconfined to changing seats on a gravy train. A government adviser told me: “We refer to cautious Thatcherism’Nelson Mandela is very different, and perhaps he is the enigma It seemed to me that his authority and reputation rest on what he represented, rather than his politics. He has served as a mighty symbol, calming and reassuring; this has been his remarkable power. He also has the rare quality of grace; he makes people feel good.
When we met, he listed for me the ANC’s achievements: the supply of water to more than a million people, the building of clinics, the free health care to pregnant women and children under six. (To these, I would add the new abortion laws, which have saved the lives of tens of thousands of women, whose death at the hands of back-street abortionists was a feature of apartheid.) Then he suddenly changed course and praised privatisation “as the fundamental policy of this government”, which was the diametrically opposite of what he promised in 1994. He quoted an array of statistics about inflation and the deficit, while omitting the terrible facts of unemployment. By the year 2000, it is estimated that half the population will be unemployed: a bomb ticking to its inevitable detonation. He told me he had repeatedly warned people that substantial change “could not happen overnight: that the process might take as long as five years”. Five years are up next April. Moreover, it has to be said that the rise of the new elite has not been inhibited by such a time restriction, that their enrichment did, in many cases, happen “overnight”. I was surprised that the president failed to see the irony in his statement that an ANC government, brought to power partly as a result of boycotts and sanctions, was willing to “do business with any regime regardless of its internal policies”. The west, he said, had no monopoly on human rights, which were also the rights to health care and education. Amazingly, he gave as a model Saudi Arabia “where students enjoy benefits I have not seen anywhere in the world”. Saudi Arabia and Algeria, both of them serious human rights violators, are current clients of the billion dollar white-run South African arms industry, the source of death and suffering in the region, and which has been reinvigorated under the ANC. On one of his visits to see the dictator of Indonesia, General Suharto, Mandela offered to sell him arms, too. How many times”, he said, “has the liberation movement worked together with the people and then at the moment of victory betrayed them? There are many examples of that in the world. If people relax their vigilance, they will find their sacrifices have been in vain. If the ANC does not deliver the goods, the people must do to it what they have done to the apartheid regime.’ http://tomweston.net/ANCSOLD.TXT Admice, Mandela declined to take his own advice and condemn the ANC (although he did recant on South Africa’s suicidal AIDS/HIV denial that led to the death of hundreds of thousands)and as the SOYMB said allowed himself to be used to give the ANC legitimacy, that makes him in my eyes guilty of betrayal and hypocrisy.Chavez and Mandela gone…who will be the next political icon to worship….answers on a postcard…SOYMB Mandela's obituary herehttp://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2013/12/saying-good-bye-to-madiba.html
Again the SOYMB was there. http://www.socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2013/11/its-not-all-papal-bull.htmlIt was not his first critique of the way capitalism is operating, i was planning an earlier blog on it but it got lost. He has tried to rein in extravagence of some cardinals such as the German one, and he has tried to re-organise the Vatican bank to counter the corruption that was insiduous. But on the issue of sex abuse he is still conservative, refusing to co-operate with the UN on the grounds as Pope he has no control over the Catholic Church !!!http://www.socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2013/12/when-is-pope-not-pope.htmlObama, the Pope and John Major…what a Marxist Party that would be, maybe LU can count them as members
The problem of rationally allocating productive resources in an economy is common to all human societies at least as long as these resources remain relatively limited compared to needs. However, there is no need to assume that this allocation could be effected only through the exchange of resources taking the price form. If people cannot change their behaviour and take control and responsibility for their decisions will socialism will fail. If people didn't work society would fall apart. If people want too much(more than is sustainably produced) and over-consume then socialism cannot succeed. There is no getting around these facts. But we don't share this pessimism about the human character. Humans behave differently depending upon the conditions that they live in. Human behaviour reflects society. Capitalism requires consumption drives us to consume and there is a very large advertising industry devoted to creating what is described as false needs. Also in capitalism there is a tendency for individuals to seek to validate their sense of worth and seek status through the accumulation of possessions. In socialism when you can freely take what you need the only way in which individuals can command the esteem of others is through their contribution to society. How can the status of conspicuous consumption be used as a reward as it is now for a privileged elite when everybody has equal free access. Hopefully, admice, by now, you have learned that we envisage that for the establishment of socialism we expect the existence of a mass socialist movement and a profound change in social outlook. We know that to build socialism the vast majority must consciously decide that they want socialism and that they are prepared to work in socialist society so the question is, having struggled and strived to reach that new stage in society, we will then proceed to undermine what we helped to create by making too heavy demands upon it. For sure, we will still be concerned primarily with ourselves, with satisfying our needs, our need to be well considered by others as well as our material and sexual needs. No doubt too, we will want to “possess” personal belongings , and to feel secure in our physical occupation of the house we live in, but this will be just that – our home and not a financial asset. Such “selfish” behaviour will still exist in socialism but the acquisitiveness encouraged by capitalism will no longer exist. Socialism doesn't require people to be any more altruistic than they are today. The coming of socialism will not require great changes in the way we behave, essentially only the accentuation of some of the behaviours which people exhibit today (friendliness, helpfulness, co-operation) at the expense of other more negative ones which capitalism encourages. Priorities can be determined by applying Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs” as a rough guide. We are talking here about our basic needs for food, water, adequate sanitation and housing and so on. High priority end goals would take precedence over low priority end goals such as your friends personal whims. We have to always remind ourselves that we are not starting from a blank sheet of paper , that there already exists various ways of distribution and nor is it one size fits all, different cultures and communities have their own traditional means of decision making. You need to change accommodation , then the neighbourhood council will have a list of available housing and will allocate according to individual need. If there is a shortage then the type and design will be chosen by consultation, all the more easier with the internet and online voting. Oh, by the way, it is your sculptures, a personal not a social possession …you decide and i am sure your own manner of picking who gets it will resemble the wider one. The real question is who and how your raw materials for the sculpture will be decided. Chocolate with lavender? No idea what that is. But she can only make a request to the Willy Wonkas Chocolate Factory and if there are others desiring it , then the factory will re-format the technology to satisfy the demand. If she is the only person she will have to garner people of similar tastes to make it efficient for the factory to manufature. Or she can learn how to make it herself! If you want detailed answers you are going to be disappointed. All sorts of variances exist between local regional and more wider decision making bodies. What your village or town does might be not the approach of mine. Socialism is not about imposing uniformity in democracy. Often the easiest form of rationing of non-essentials if things come down to that is the easiest…first come first served, as it is in a show of democracy…a mass assembly and all those in favour, raise your hands…
'how about 'adult humans'. Hummmffff…Ageist… 'I did not necessarily mean a socialist democracy.,When it comes to true democracy, it can only be a socialist Democracy, anything less than decision- making free from wage-slavery is just a form of partial democracy. I'm not being pedantic but that is the reality…democracy transcends just the political process and involves control and a say in our means of living.
Always useful to have local connection in our propaganda so perhaps the details of Kent Councils suppression of a report on the effects of austerity cut in this link may be handy for any leaflet or meetings your branch may have in the near future.http://www.theguardian.com/society/patrick-butler-cuts-blog/2013/dec/04/suppressed-tory-report-welfare-reform-link-to-foodbanks-homelessness
