ALB
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The rulers of Qatar and of Turkey are both sympathisers, maybe even members, of the Muslim Brotherhood, so you are right that Al Jazeera will have to be biased in favour of the Turkish regime.
Even so, the Kurdish nationalists of the PKK have decided to become the tools of American imperialist interests in the Middle East, maybe to try to protect themselves against Turkish expansionism, but that’s what they have ended up as. So it is not surprising that former US Secretary of State Clinton should be writing a book glorifying them. It can be seen as part of their reward.
Just remembered where I heard of it. It was in this reprint of an article by Plekhanov in the Socialist Standard in 1926. Seems to be more Darwin than Marx.
This argument is silly. Nobody is saying you can’t be “permitted to enjoy the beautiful”. How could you not be even under capitalism let alone in socialism? But expect a bit (or even a lot) of twitting if you label yourself an “aesthete” with the connotation that your conception of “beauty” is superior to that of the common herd.
I believe Morris once write of not liking having to cater to the “tastes of the swinish rich” or “swinish tastes of the rich”. I can’t remember which but I am guessing you would find both unfair to swine.
ps. I have heard that there is such a thing as “Marxist aesthetics”. No idea what it is or might be.
He forgot to mention one advantage for the CBI — that during that time strikes were illegal and that the government (Labour) used this power to prosecute strikers.
https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/cabinetpapers/alevelstudies/1951-cabinet-memorandum.htm
The religious who will and do always oppose socialism are not the moderates who enjoy liturgical forms, rites and art, but the fanatics, like the fundamentalists, who reject history and are proud of their ignorance of it.
Are you sure that that’s the case? I thought Roman Catholics, Anglo-Catholics, Orthodox, Copts, Armenians and the various Middle Eastern churches, that go in for elaborate rituals, icons and incense swinging do not regard women as equal to men which is a basic socialist principle.
Ok, you like chants and incense as opposed to happy crappy stuff. Nothing wrong with that but why do you have to defend the those who practise it? (I hate to think what the words mean in Latin, Church Slavonic, Coptic or whatever)?
I remember at a Party social Steve Coleman once reciting the Declaration of Principles as a Gregorian chant. Sounded alright, as did the contents. I think there may also have been joss sticks burning.
Here’s what we are up against:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/1/8/pakistan-court-sentences-three-to-death-for-blasphemy
And we’re supposed to have sympathy for them when they get a mild taste of their own medicine?
It seems that the super-opportunists who now control the Labour Party want, not only to win back their voters who deserted to the Tories in December 2019, but also to steal some traditional Tory voters by appealing to the Tory Working Man.
In any event, it is clear that it’s back to Labour, Tory, Same Old Story, which, perhaps hopefully, will lead to people voting for neither bunch of career politicians who merely aspire to form a government within capitalism.
Note the change, by the journalist, from “could” in the headline to “is likely to” in the text. Plenty of things “could” happen without being at all “likely to”. Sloppy journalism compounded by the “could” referring to a “worst case warming scenario”, but how likely is that? (Such scenarios are normally based on the assumption that no action is taken to deal with the threat, which is unlikely to be the case and in fact is not.)
Actually, it was within quotation marks but anyway it’s clear now. Another possible source of some people’s confusion may be that the first part of the Robinhood definition reads very like how we might put it. After all, we could endorse this (except pehaps the word “business”):
Warning: this is from Robinhood site not me.
“The primary component of a socialist system is collective ownership. In a socialist system, nobody owns the land, natural resources, or business interests within the country. Instead, the entire population theoretically benefits from any wealth that is created.“
Maybe it’s just me but it’s not immediately clear who’s actually saying this.
I think it is just you as it obviously the Robinhood site that is saying this. Why I drew attention to their definition of socialism was that it got parts right but others wrong, perhaps suggesting that they were trying to be fair or had even come across a definition similar to ours.
The first part of the passage you quote — about nobody owning the means of production and everybody benefitting from what’s produced — is more or less ok. On the other hand, the bit you put in bold (and the reference to socialism as defined in the first part having existed in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia) is not.
“Funny, isn’t it, how whenever the middle and lower classes begin to establish some sort of financial foothold and flex their power, the richest among us will move as quickly as possible to crush them?”
I hope nobody here is going to suggest that this is part of the struggle against corporate capitalism and that workers should show sympathy for the small investors in their class struggle against the corporates!
Incidentally, this brings out the shortcomings of the term “corporate capitalism” — that it implies there’s not so much wrong with non-corporate capitalism.
In one of his presidential campaigns Eugene Debs said that the difference between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party was that the Republicans stood for capitalism as it is while the Democrats stood for capitalism as it was. It seems that the leftwing of the Democratic Party is trying to revive this.
You must be thinking of this:
Nobody is going to stop you enjoying incense. I’m not sure that it being Palaeolithic is a good argument for it, though. In that case so would eating other animals and wearing animals skins (or just fig leaves). It is enough that you like it and that it doesn’t harm others or you.
Of course, to get socialism, a majority won’t have to have read the Theses on Feuerbach or Anti-Dühring. They just need to be secular in practice and not subscribe to the sentiment in the favourite christian hymn “I am weak but thou art strong” or prostrate themselves while chanting “god is greater” in Arabic. Instead they will be thinking and maybe singing “We are strong and thou art irrelevant (if thou existest)”
I think you are underestimating the extent to which capitalism is and will continue to secularise people. Of course there is likely to be a minority practising historical organised religions, some of whose members might even want socialism.
Pity you missed this talk and discussion on Discord on 18 December:
“Celebrations and Socialism
Speaker: Andy Thomas.
Why do humans celebrate things? Is it a natural impulse or manufactured by class societies? How are celebrations linked to social/economic systems (tribal, feudal, capitalist)? How do religious ceremonies support class-divided social relations? What might we choose to celebrate in a socialist society, for example, if we are involved in decisions about food and the natural environment will we celebrate ‘ancient’ change of seasons?”I am sure it will be available on our website under Audio-Visual in due course.
ps.If you send me a photo of your christmas tree I’ll send you one of mine.
