DJP
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
“Can it be explained how the current website ‘snippet’ is ‘low-hanging fruit?”
Hopefully, I did that in the comment above?
I appreciate that writing in a short space is a hard thing to do, and don’t want to disparage those that have been trying.
“all subjects can be talked about.”
I agree with that. But to anyone with a half-skeptical eye – articles like this just look like willful blindness. The article mentions the RNLI, well for a counter-example, look at what happens to refugee crossings in the med!
The trouble with saying that certain human behaviours, are “natural” is that it just gives your opponent an easy knockdown, they can just refer to some other type of human activity and say that is “natural” too.
The article says “Humans help each other whenever they can. That’s why socialism will work.” But clearly, that is not empirically true. Humans don’t always help each other – and sometimes they go to great effort to cause pain death and suffering. As well as having a potential to co-operation, human beings have a potential to hostility and domination. These are just as ‘natural’.
Instead of saying how certain behaviours that are beneficial to socialism are ‘natural’ (and presumably by extension those that are not beneficial ‘unnatural’). Would it not be better to explain how the structure of capitalism would incentivise anti-social behaviours and discourage freely co-operative ones?
There’s nothing wrong with the topics of these articles, I like the topics, they just need some minor tweaks to avoid some simple and common objections.
Like I said before on the front page of the website. The heading is “Nasty, brutish and short”. You might need to scroll down if you are viewing on a phone. If it’s not displaying on your screen I’m not sure what to suggest.
The front page is this:
For what it’s worth my original comment was meant to be more about the moralism than boxing. The boxing discussion was interesting enough though.
However, the new front page comment is now an even worse piece about ‘human nature’! The socialist party should be presenting strong and robust arguments for socialism, not providing socialism’s opponents with low-hanging fruit.
Do I need to spell out what is wrong with these kinds of pieces or can other people see it?
One more..
This episode about what attracts working-class voters to Trump:
Thought this Facebook comment by Alex Gourevitch, author of ‘From Slavery to the Democratic Commonwealth’ – a book about the Knights of Labor, was quite good:
“If Trump really does live in the late 19th century when thinking about trade, foreign policy and national consciousness – his love of McKinley, his devotion to tariffs, belief in national industrial cooperation, etc… – then it seems to me there is an underappreciated reason for his love of tariffs. That was a period when tariffs where the major source of national revenue. The amendment making a federal income tax legal was only passed in 1913. Before then, tariffs, customs and the like were the major way of financing the federal government. This is the period that he claims the United States was the wealthiest. His mental image, or ideal, is a society in which there is no income tax. Wealthy Americans keep all that they have accumulated. He has made off-hand claims that he will pay for the tax cuts through tariffs. There is no realistic way for him to do it. But I do wonder if his ideal is the pure oligarchic return to those features of the Gilded Age. Regardless, there’s a reason (an additional reason) for the incoherence of his policy. The modern American state cannot give up its income tax. We are so wealthy, and the state so heavily involved in the economy top-to-bottom in virtue of its ability to tax that wealth, that ‘taxing’ foreign trade cannot make up the difference. We would also have to suddenly stop being the financial center of the global economy. Contemporary oligarchy and its Gilded Age variant are not compatible.”
So it looks like Starmer wasn’t able to drum up the support he was hoping for. This commentator is a small c conservative but entertaining enough to listen to
But if an agreement is reached that all parties can bear then the conflict will be over. The changes in the US administration represent a change in the balance of forces in the region. All players will be aware of that.
A bit of an aside. One of the makers of this film was an SPGB member when they made this documentary about a boxing club in Hull.
“Of course, as long as both consent”
There are already limits to what you can legally consent too. I would have thought such limits will carry on over into socialism. We are not mad marketeer “libertarians”.
“Link to the obligatory Socialist Standard article on boxing from yesteryear’
Note the difference in tone between this article and the short website front piece.
“It’s the capitaalist equivalent of the Roman arena.”
That’s a bit like thinking that everyone who plays the guitar is Elvis. Most boxing takes place in small clubs.
“I hope there will be provisions in place to stop people doing vile and harmful things, like trophy hunting, badger baiting and other such atrocities.”
I share the same sentiment. Socialism isn’t a society without rules or means of enforcing them. If the political community decided, probably by means of a vote, that there would be a ban on such types of activity then there would be. And that would entail some kind of mechanism for enforcing the ban against those that might try to get around it.
