Ed
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ALB wrote:Ed wrote:But I was unaware of a strong party view on primitive communism.(….). The term is very misleading and in my opinion should be retired. Do you have any links to the party’s view on the subject? Perhaps the conversation on primitive societies warrants a thread of it’s own?
Some people object to the term “primitive communism” because they object to the word “primitive” with its condescending and even derogatory connotations. But this is an old usage of the word which meant “original”. So maybe “original communism” would convey the meaning better. I prefer “tribal communism”.
What I find misleading is the communism part. Communalism maybe. But regardless surely we should be calling it Primitive Socialism
Apparently they originally used China as the invading army but halfway through production changed it to North Korea as China were deemed to be too friendly.I couldn’t care less about this filmWhat I do care about is the remaking of They Live where the director has said he will be removing the political message from the film.
That all seems a little off topic Jonathan. But I was unaware of a strong party view on primitive communism. I would tend to agree with most of what you’ve said here on the subject. The term is very misleading and in my opinion should be retired. Do you have any links to the party’s view on the subject? Perhaps the conversation on primitive societies warrants a thread of it’s own?
gnome wrote:I’m intrigued to know how one should best describe the actions of those who destroyed the small shops of fellow-workers, many of whose businesses have still not recovered from the after-shock of the riots and of the setting fire to the homes of fellow-workers, some of whom almost lost their lives.One of the interesting reports I read said that in some areas some businesses had been left untouched while others around them had been smashed up. When asked why these shops had been left the people said “oh that’s so n’ so’s shop he’s alright. He gives us credit to buy essentials when we’re short of money”. When asked why the other businesses were attacked they said that those business were owned by people from out of town. People who weren’t part of the community and didn’t give a fuck about them or their area. This had nothing to do with race but was purely about how the owner operated within the community, whether they were there purely to exploit or did they contribute in a positive way. This was an area of London pretty sure South but I can’t remember which one.Should the small business owners get over their petty lust for greater private property and stop blaming fellow workers and start questioning why the state protects the bourgeouis proper but not them? If they are fellow workers surely that’s the right thing for them to be doing.As for “setting fire to the homes of fellow workers” people weren’t going around torching residential areas. They weren’t going to houses and setting them alight they were attacking shops. Now it’s incredibly stupid to not think there’s a flat above the shop but the point is the intent. It was nobodys intent to burn down someones domicile otherwise they would have been burning actual houses instead of shops. So the victims again should be blaming capitalism not their fellow workers.
Oh yeah one more thing I think the best way I can describe my feelings for the riots is I have greater respect for the riots than I do for the student protests. The student protests/occupy were pleading for reforms and for the government to be nice “Nick Clegg shame on you for turning blue” and all that. whereas the riots were not demanding anything they were the working class acting on their own spontaneously with no demands and no expectations and saying we are bloody pissed off and there’s nothing you can do to stop us. That’s a much more empowering act than marching along a predesignated route or camping outside St Pauls.
I just watched it; are you sure that was the same program that was not allowed on air? The Guardian seems to describe it more as a drama based on the confidential interviews it collected straight after the riots. It even states that it uses actors. Whereas the documentary I just watched was real people coping with coming out of prison.I’d say in general I’m more than sympathetic while neither condoning nor condemning the actions. And certainly under no illusions that it was in anyway revolutionary by our definition of the term. However, I strongly hold the opinion that if they had recieved more support and the riots had been able to be sustained for say 16 days instead of 8 then the coalition government would have been brought down and it would have forced a general election. This raises the question of whether they should be viewed as riots at all but rather as an insurrection.The fact that any party members would resort to condemning the riots is a testament to how powerful the propaganda campaign was against those revolting. It was and still is completely taboo to do anything but have outright condemnation of the riots as seen in the documentary posted above. Before you can even say anything in defence of the people who rebelled against the state you first have to get the condemnation out the way first. As seen with the dancer, “I don’t regret rioting but I’m so so sorry about stealing from Argos”. This is in complete contradiction to the majority of people I spoke to at the time who were largely in support or sympathetic to the actions. A week later those same people had completely changed their opinions once the media had told them what to think. It was by far the largest act of brainwashing I’ve ever seen from a propaganda campaign. This only goes to show exactly how worried the state was by the revolt.I recently compared a comrade, slightly harshly, to David Cameron for the choice of words he chose to describe the riots. Describing them as mindless is not just parroting the language of the media but applying the analysis of petit bourgouis thought.. What I believe the comrade was actually saying was, I believe, was that they were acting unconsciously or without socialist consciousness. While I take no issue with the fact that there was obviously no socialist consciousness it seems blindingly obvious that pitched battles with the police and driving them from their communities is a politically conscious act., an act of class struggle. Which is why I find the writing off of such a situation as criminality or mindless thuggery or lumpen proles doing their thing so infuriating. It just comes across to me as lazy analysis.I’m glad Alan has related the riots in Egypt to the riots in England as I feel they are very similar. But the build up starts earlier with the student protests which started in November 2010. I was on/at most of those marches first as a passive protester locked in a kettle, assaulted by police and generally treated little better than an animal. As those protests continued you got more and more people who weren’t middle class uni students but were from council estates some turning up in their school uniforms. As the protests went on the tactics to avoid being kettled changed and the emergence of black blocs became much more prevelant. I joined the blac bloc followed them arround while I didn’t partake in any throwing graffiti or other naughty business as most didn’t it was an exhilarating rush of freedom to be able to out smart the police and throw them into comlete chaos reminiscent of a Benny Hill sketch. However, it didn’t all go our way for long and by the evening the police had regained the upper hand. What ran through my head and I’m sure ran through the head of many of the young council estate kids was “if they were on our turf, on our streets there would be no way they could beat us”.Now while all this is going on the Arab spring has gotten underway. There was a strong showing of solidarity, I remember a couple of anarchists walking around with the flag of the libyan monarchy, who got quite agitated when I questioned their choice. Now as the Arab movements grew and started to be praised by our own media including a comparitively positive reflection of the riots in Egypt and Libya at least as justified. What were people to think? I’m sure many saw the hypocrisy of the media condemning the largely peaceful protests in London while praising the much more violent actions in Egypt and Libya. But for most I think it was the sudden realization that the government isn’t going to listen to any form of protest and that they neither care about what they think or their well being. Now that’s no surprise to us, but to the majority of people out there protesting for the first time it was a sharp and angry reaction to something they had previously held believed. The fact that none of this is applied to the reasoning behind the riots comes as little suprise to me as it would make for an uncomfortable truth for the establishment. Also on the evolution of protest movements I’d say that they seem to run in cycles. For instance the 60’s protest movements seemed to be relatively peacefully and the general flower power culture and rejection of violnce which was perfectly understandable for the first generation born into a post WW2 world. As these protest movements failed by the 70’s they’d started to become more violent which still didn’t work. I anticipate that the trend will repeat small disaffected groups upset at the failure of peaceful protest will see more violent means as the way to go. Except they’ll be disappointed as we all know that, that won’t work either. Except now they’ll be disappointed in a prison cell instead of an office cubicle. Anyway I digress.The other reasons for the riots are the obvious declining material conditions primarily unemployment, the same reason for the Arab spring as it was for the England insurrection. Added with the social alienation which had been building since, well, all my lifetime at least.So TL;DR version protest is a form of class struggle which is a learning process but ultimately follows the same patterns and repeats the same mistakes. Primarily that protest doesn’t change anything and all that is carried over from one generation to the next is the failures of the previous one. And to play us outhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8GvLKTsTuI
is there any more of that peoples century video? It looked like Harry Young had more to say on the subject.
yeah saw this about a year ago. After an initial schoolboy-esque giggle I decided that rape was no laughing matter.
Well there’s two explanations as to why there are less wars shown elsewhere. The first is that they got all of their information from the English language version of Wikipedia which may be biased in not including many battles which are not well known in the western world. Or that they simply weren’t recorded.The second and the reason I find more plausible is that the battles elsewhere in the world did not result in as high casualties and were not prolonged wars. For example there have been some Americans on there asking where the American revolution and civil war are. They are on there but blink and you’ll miss them. As they weren’t particularly long wars with high casualty rates compared with the larger wars seen in Europe. As the size of the explosion indicates the amount of casualties suffered from the battles. You’re a smart man not signing up to youtube as google own it it links up all your information and search options. All very intrusive.
SussexSocialist wrote:I got hounded humanist as well. Thing is, most religions at their core, stripped of all the crap and mumbo jumbo preach much the same as socialists do: peace and love to all, a brotherhood of man working in harmony for the greater good. It’s only the reasons why and the route to this paradise that differ. Oh, and we don’t lay claim to thousands of years of war and oppression based on our interpretations of ancient works of fiction!!!I’ve been looking into some of the Greek philosophies recently and saw that some historians think that Jesus was a Cynic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynic#Jesus_as_a_Jewish_Cynic
SussexSocialist wrote:I got hounded humanist as well. Thing is, most religions at their core, stripped of all the crap and mumbo jumbo preach much the same as socialists do: peace and love to all, a brotherhood of man working in harmony for the greater good. It’s only the reasons why and the route to this paradise that differ. Oh, and we don’t lay claim to thousands of years of war and oppression based on our interpretations of ancient works of fiction!!!I’ve been looking into some of the Greek philosophies recently and saw that some historians think that Jesus was a Cynic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynic#Jesus_as_a_Jewish_Cynic
I got hounded humanist as well. It’s explanation was literally the opposite of my views and experiences. I think it’s because I answered that my perfect garden would be functional.
