Moo
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
There’s been a lot of talk in this topic about a fair price for energy; but what does ‘fair price’ mean? It means the price people pay while still having enough money to spend on other commodities, without businesses having to raise their workers’ wages (eating into profits).
Imagine if the NHS were totally privatised and people demanded a ‘fair price’ for health-insurance.
“A full belly is needed before socialist ideas fill the mind.”
A wise person once said: “The people are only 3 meals away from revolution”. Two good examples of this are: the French Revolution (‘let them eat cake’), and the Russian Revolution (‘peace, land, and bread’).
Anyway, the socialist revolution is inevitable. This is due to the materialist conception of history (https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/pamphlet/historical-materialism/), and because capitalism is unsustainable (https://learnsocialism.dropmark.com/554165/17146366).
This campaign won’t work, because the energy companies can hold out a lot longer after losing a lot of customers, than households can without gas and electricity.
I suggest starting a campaign to end the global profit based economy, and replace it with a resource based one (which is what the World Socialist Movement advocates).
“Worse, any journalist, scholar or peace activist who dares criticise Israeli policy is routinely denounced as an anti-Semite, Holocaust denier and neo-Nazi.”
And any Jewish people who do that are ridiculously denounced as self-hating Jews.
“Funnily enough in the North East we used to have a high skill and high wage workforce, they were called miners and shipbuilders, I wonder what happened to them?”
Miners and shipbuilders were paid high wages?!
You’re right, ALB.
According to the Electoral Calculus, if a general election were held this month the results would be:
Labour – 50% of the seats;
Conservatives – 35%;
SNP – 8%;
Liberal Democrats – 3%.So, it looks as if Labour will either win a small majority, or do a deal with the LibDems (assuming Scotland isn’t in the process of leaving the UK by 2024).
“Why don’t they propose socialism as the common ownership and democratic control of productive resources with production directly for use and distribution according to needs. That would much simpler and more practical.”
Indeed it would, but that goes against their ideology that state-ownership is the same as common-ownership, and Parliament can reform capitalism to make it work in everyone’s best interests.
An educational video on why Taiwan thinks it’s China: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQTtwh2GRME
“The Chinese military has become significantly more aggressive and dangerous over the past five years, the United States’ top military officer, Gen Mark Milley, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, said”
When will the Guardian ever have an article with this title: ‘The US military has become a lot more aggressive and dangerous since WWII’? Answer: On the 6th of never.
“Kyiv must provide a clear response to Moscow’s proposals that Ukraine accepts ‘non-aligned’ and ‘non-nuclear’ status in order to strike a peace deal, Russian deputy foreign minister Andrey Rudenko was cited as saying.
“Ukraine must also recognise Russia’s control over Crimea and the status of the pro-Russian self-proclaimed ‘people’s republics’ in Donetsk and Luhansk.”
Those are reasonable peace terms. Well, they’re much more reasonable than half, or the whole, of Ukraine being annexed into the Russian Federation. But, of course, they don’t justify the dropping of a single bomb, nor the shedding of a single drop of blood.
“Our forum discussions are irrelevant and insignificant and our blog-posts and the articles in the Socialist Standard are invisible.
“But what else can we do?
“We can only clarify the situation for ourselves as events take place.”I agree. It’s important we (i.e. real socialists) keep in touch with each other, or else we’d go insane. These forums (in particular) are very good for mental health.
The Socialist Standards; pamphlets; and blog-posts are very interesting and do a lot to make sense of this mad world. I find it very handy to share a link to a pamphlet (on a given topic) to the unconverted on social media.
One silver lining is that due to the materialist conception of history, and because capitalism is unsustainable, it’s a question of WHEN the socialist revolution will happen, not ‘if’.
“If the public is to get what it supports and deserves – not least a basic standard of living, and a rational and urgent response to the climate crisis – we all need to take action now.”
Sadly, by this he means we should elect a soft-left, anti-war, ‘green’ capitalist government. The article still makes a lot of good points, though.
“The Liberals might demand electoral reform as part of the package to support a minority government or form a coalition. Might actual get greater support this time around.”
Good point. I didn’t consider that.
According to the Electoral Calculus (https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/homepage.html) if there were a general election this month: Labour would win 48% of the seats; the Conservatives 38%; the SNP 8%; the Liberal Democrats 3%; and others 3%. Therefore, it’s seems likely Labour will form a minority government backed by the Liberal Democrats.
If Scotland doesn’t leave the union, then I feel the days of parties winning super or comfortable majorities are over. In every future general election, either the Conservatives will win a small majority or Labour will form a minority government backed by the SNP or Liberal Democrats.
