[ALB]

mcolome1 wrote:

Moral issues of the  Churches and priests  of the left. That isn't new

Actually, it's quite good on religion, giving them all any equal kicking:

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The PHML disapproves of all cultures, beliefs, faiths, and practices that do not rest on sound logic or facts .Thus, belief in God, gods, or ghosts, belief in religion and religious rites and rituals, idolatry, palmistry, astrology, homoeopathy, acupuncture, ayurved, alternative medicine, and other similar stuff which each are just a load of rubbish, from the perspective of an enlightened human, are in conflict with the PHML.The concept of an omnipotent God is just a piece of the silly and benighted. The enlightened know it's the truth, not God, that happens to be all-mighty. And the main drawback of the idea of God the Creator is the fact that nothing but nothingness can emerge out of nothingness. Sir Isaac Newton also believed in God the Creator, but he forgot outright to throw light on how God created the great big universe with billions of stars, planets, moons, meteors, comets, black holes, pulsars, quasars, nebulae, et cetera, et cetera out of the infinite vacuum. Nevertheless, Albert Einstein who discoveredE= mc2 outright dismissed the Newtonian God the Creator. According to Einstein, the universe cannot have a ' Creator ' because it was never created— the universe, as Einstein believed, existed all along and will exist for all eternity ; it is without beginning or end, and hence cannot have a ' Creator ' or a Destroyer. The god aswell as the ghost is also, as the enlightened view it, the fruit of a flight of fancy befitting the silly and benighted.' Faith is stronger than reason, ' says the silly. But the enlightened know the faith is little more than a set of unscientific, ridiculous ideas and beliefs. Faith isn't enlightening ; nor does it have an answer to any problems relating to life or the universe, be it the accumulation of wealth at one pole leading to the pauperism of billions at the other or the phenomenon of global warming or the social pollution due to the barbarian institution of matrimony ( the poor and vulgar marry and procreate just to swell the army of the poor and vulgar and the gang of the antisocial and terrorists, and thus they pollute the society ).Christianity preaches universal love and forgiveness, which means Christianity wants you to love and forgive both the good and the bad, i.e. all the innocent along with the culprits such as thieves, robbers, murderers, smugglers, abductors, gangsters, druc peddlers, girls traffickers, child abusers, Mafiosi, extortionists, rapists, terrorists that pumped shot into Malala, the ISIS gunmen that committed the Paris massacre, et cetera, et cetera. Thus, it ought to be obvious to every sensible human now that the Christian faith is truly the path that is certain to lead the human civilisation to extinction.And what does Buddhism truly teach ? Buddha's principal teaching is life is a boundless sea of grief. Therefore, Buddhism asks its followers to seek nirvana , the Buddhist variety of suicide, meant to escape the life that has got nothing but no end of sorrow and suffering for you.Islam preaches jihad and mut'a , you know, and Islam is also known for its feminophobia*. ( * fear of the female ) Islam is so afraid of literate, free girls that it has asked its followers to spray acid, in order to punish girls that love freedom and learning, onto their faces and riddle them with bullets. And jihad means killing innocent humans, young and old, male and female, and both kafirs and non-kafirs ( i.e. those Muslims that refuse to obey dictates of jihadis). And mut'a is the Islamic name of what you know as prostitution.And as I view it, Hindutva (Hinduism of today) means barnashram, the nonsense called idolatry, worshipping beasts (e.g. the holy cow and Hanuman, the monkey god), and banning beef eating. The enlightened view barnashram as something that not only is a downright falsehood but is an affront to the humanity, as well. And Hindutvaites love and respect beasts like cows and hanumans more than humans— so much so that they might even kill you if they can know you eat beef or do not worship Hanuman.Like palmistry and idolatry, none of astrology, homoeopathy, acupuncture, et cetera are sensible or scientific, as the enlightened view them.

Good stuff. I like it.

[ALB]

ALB wrote:

Meanwhile here's what the "moderate" rebels recently booted out of eastern Aleppo are up to

More on the "moderates" here:http://www.syriahr.com/en/?p=63332

[ALB]

Revealing article in today's Times under the headline "EU migrants leaving as pound falls":

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European Union migrants are leaving Britain because the collapse in the pound has cut the value of their pay, according to the Bank of England.Foreign workers send much of their earnings home and the 12 per cent fall in the pound against the euro since last June's referendum means that work in the UK is worth less than before. This has reduced the incentive to take a British job as well as convincing some EU migrants to leave.The Bank said that companies were now struggling to recruit from abroad. The findings, in the Bank's monthly agents' report, suggest that the impact of Brexit on exchange rates could prove the most decisive factor in bringing net migration closer to the government's target of tens of thousands a year.Last month's official figures showed that annual net migration had fallen below 300,000 for the first time in two years. Foreign construction workers at the Battersea power station develop­ment have left the country because of the collapse in the pound."There was little evidence of EU migrant workers leaving the UK due to its plans to leave the EU," the agents' report said.

So it was a question of workers coming to get a higher paid job and, now that the pay is lower, less are coming and some are leaving — the simple operation of supply and demand in the labour market. And now the poor employers are short of workers, unless they increase wages of course. 

[ALB]

Most of what you list is ok. But I don't see why a person who wants a classless, stateless, moneyless, communist (socialist) society has to forego smoking and alcohol:

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The PHML requires you to lead a healthy, both physically and mentally, and meaningful life. In order to remain healthy and strong, you have to avoid all unwholesome food and stuff like alcohol, tobacco products, narcotics and all such things that lead to addiction or morbidity

That strikes me as a personal choice which a political party can't require of its members (we have vegetarian members but that's up to them. The rest of us eat meat). Same goes for "matrimony". Of course it's a private property institution but should members be expelled if they get married? Should we refuse to admit new members who are married? I don't think so.

[ALB]

I don't understand why there were invited back and one of them given pride of place on our General Discussion thread with his name in flashing lights.

[ALB]

JohnD has put up this original piece of research on LibCom:http://libcom.org/history/bordiga-early-political-viewsInteresting to see what comments it brings there.

[ALB]

There is a difference, Alan, between expressing commonly held views and prejudices (as our porcine friend is doing) and promulgating pet schemes thought up and held only by those promoting them (as three others currently here are doing). We don't really need to discuss with these crackpots as everybody else can see straightaway what they are.

[ALB]

This forum is becoming a cranks' convention. I suppose nobody else would be so tolerant of them but they just take advantage.

[ALB]

Socialist Standard April 1932 wrote:

In 1920 when a British Labour Delegation visited Russia the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries each issued a full statement of their position. These were included in the Report of the Delegation (Published by the Labour Party and Trades Union Congress, London).If the Mensheviks could be judged solely on this declaration of Socialist principles there would be little to find fault with.

The Menshevik document in question has now been published on the internet:https://www.marxists.org/archive/martov/1920/07/thesis.htmIt is very revealing. Quite a radical document, giving quite a different picture to that sometimes painted of the Mensheviks.

[ALB]

The conclusion of this article from the April 1928 Socialist Standard raises some questions:

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In conclusion, it may be as well to point out that this is in no sense a condemnation of the Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917. Our criticism was and, is that they claimed to be able to achieve the impossible. Certain definite tasks lay before them and have been achieved. They brought Russia out of the war, exposed the purely capitalist nature of the conflict to the workers in both camps, and hastened the building of capitalism in Russia at a time when there was no other party with sufficient experience or determination to tackle so great an administrative work. They cannot, however, by legislation solve the fundamental conflicts between contending classes in Russia. They cannot permanently make the working class content with the capitalist economic system, and it would be better that they should recognise before it is too late that if they remain in office the discontent of the workers will come to be directed against them.

I think that some Party members at the time admired Lenin for admitting that capitalism was the way forward for Russia (as of course, objectively, it was) and seemed to think that he had made a fairly good job of it. Also, the conclusion appears to be saying, that, now they've put capitalism back on the rails, they should leave "office", i.e hand over power, but to who?Of course that was never going to happen. They didn't leave office and Stalin agreed that the only alternative would be a government based on the peasants and so decided to clamp down on them (and how). It worked but was of no benefit to the workers. They got stamped on too.

[ALB]

I found the link here:http://www.whatnextjournal.org.uk/Pages/Ratner/Prematur.htmlhttp://revolutionary-history.co.uk/index.php/315-marxist-writers/harry-ratner/5496-1997-premature-and-diseased-from-infancyIt seems to have first appeared in New Interventions in 1997/8 by Harry Ratner, a dissident Trotskyist. He makes some good points but answers this question:

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So were Kautsky and the Mensheviks right to oppose the October Revolution from the start, as an attempt prematurely to go beyond the bourgeois stage of the Russian revolution? Were they right to declare a socialist working-class revolution in a backward Russia premature and doomed to failure because the conditions for socialism were not ripe – both as regards the economic base and the social and cultural level of the working class? On the face of it, subsequent history would seem to justify them.

which was essentially the position we took, by saying

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Nevertheless, the Bolsheviks and the supporters of the October Revolution could – and did – argue with some justification that the Mensheviks were looking at Russia in isolation, and ignoring the international context. The war of 1914-18 had demonstrated the terminal crisis of imperialism – the last stage of capitalism – on a world scale. Proletarian revolutions in several advanced capitalist countries were an immediate possibility; the mass slaughter of the imperialist war was driving the proletariat of the belligerent countries to revolution. Tsarist Russia was the weakest link in the chain. The October Revolution would trigger further revolutions in Europe. If these assumptions were correct, then the Bolsheviks were justified. And one must admit that in 1917-18, these assumptions seemed reasonable

The trouble is these assumptions were neither reasonable nor correct.There was one justification for overthrowing the Provisional Government and that was to stop the war on the Eastern Front, which (to its credit) the Bolshevik government did. But this is not a justification for the Bolsheviks establishing the dictatorship of their party, as this could have been done by the sort of coalition government that Ratner speculates about. Nor did it change the fact that socialism was out of the question in isolated backward Russia in 1917 and that any attempt to establish it there was doomed to fail.

[ALB]

Has he got any of these?The Making of the English Working Class by E. P. ThompsonDarwin by Adrian Desmond & James MooreKarl Marx by Francis WheenThe Swerve. How the Renaissance Began by Stephen Greenblatt.Mind you, the first two are real tomes. The second two are an easy read.

[ALB]

Aaronovitch is good (making, by coincidence in view of his other views, the same points as we would). Seymour is pathetic (he might as well still be in the SWP).

[ALB]

Here's Gilmac's classic article "Russia Puts the Clock Back" from the April 1962 Socialist Standard:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1960s/1962/no-694-june-1962/russia-puts-clock-back .

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Now, in the effort to build up Socialist parties, one supreme task has been added to the rest; the need to unveil the falsity of Russian propaganda and take the name of Socialism out of the mud in which the Russian leaders and their henchmen have immersed it. And still today the supporters of the Russian dictatorship everywhere carry out the intriguing, tortuous and hypocritical policy of their mentors.The Bolsheviks have certainly put the clock back and, in the name of Socialism, have built up one of the most ruthless Capitalist states that have ever existed. Even the forms of democracy that exist in the Western world cannot be found there.

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Hard as the road to Socialism always was, the Russians have made it harder, and have destroyed, or driven to despair, many genuine fighters for the workers' freedom from Capitalism, even if some of these have been mistaken in their methods.

[ALB]

Capitalist Pig wrote:

the actions and thoughts of a person can change the way genes are expressed making the appearance of a religious gene.

Which particular gene is that?

Capitalist Pig wrote:

I'm not a neuroscientist but this is pretty easy to understand.

That you're not a neuroscientist is very easy to understand. How thoughts could create a new gene is not. In fact, if you can demonstrate this you will be a sure bet for a Nobel Prize. At the moment you are only in the running for the Junk Science Prize.In any event ,you need to decide what your argument is — whether genes determine thoughts or that thought determines genes — but you don'r seem to know what a gene is or does. Here's one definition to help you get started:

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Microscopic, yet powerful, a gene is segment of DNA, the molecule that stores the code for building living bodies.A gene is a single unit of genetic information, stored on twisting strands in every cell of every living being. In sexual reproduction, the parents' genes mix together to make the child. Although people would like to think that genes code for discrete traits, like friendliness or mathematical genius, that's not the case. Genes control the color of your eyes and the shape of your toes, not your weird personality.

In other words, genes determine how a living organism is structured and how it functions. In humans they don't — and can't — determine what ideas we have, these are derived from society.This might help too:http://kidshealth.org/en/kids/what-is-gene.html 

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