robbo203
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PGB
It is difficult to know where to start with dissecting the utter nonsense you come out with. I take it you are some sort of liberal and so perhaps will find it difficult to comprehend the deep repugnance socialists feel towards nationalism and flag-waving that you refer to.
You write almost as if socialists are indifferent to the fact that Russia invaded Ukraine and to the consequences for the local population, On the contrary, the very ideology you endorse as a liberal – nationalism – lies behind the actions of the invader just as much as the invaded. We oppose it in both instances. You have that much in common with the hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers who invaded Ukraine – your unwavering belief in the historical fiction called the “nation”. We don’t.
While we are at it, what is your view of Donbas when it decided to break away from Ukraine following the illegal 2014 coup there? What´s sauce for the goose is surely sauce for the gander as well. Do you condemn the Ukrainian military´s bombardment of Donbas since 2014 (and in contravention of the Minsk agreement) with the loss of some 8000 civilian lives (if my memory serves me correctly)? I bet you don’t. I bet you have conveniently forgotten about that but that was part of the reason why Russia invaded was it not? Again I am not in the least trying to justify that invasion. I am just pointing out that like all nationalists you present a very one-sided simplistic version of history in favour of your own preferred nation.
Then we have the current military situation which makes the case for an immediate cessation of war all the stronger. The Ukraine counter-offensive has run out of steam and is not going to go anywhere. Even its NATO backers are beginning to concede this point. The Russian military by all accounts is getting stronger and has learnt from the mistakes of the early part of the campaign. There is talk of them moving to take Odessa which will cut off Ukraine from the sea. There is also some signs of them moving westwards up in the northern sector. And yet the Zelensky regime dreams on about retaking Donbas and Crimea, a dream which presumably you and Lizzie45 share never mind what the people living there might think about that.
For all the delirious rubbish posted by the MSM every day in my feed, Ukraine is running out of options. It has lost so many soldiers and equipment that it is but a pale shadow of what it once was. As I understand, it has not been able to penetrate even the first line of defense set up by the Russians (of which there are 3) and seems less and less likely to do so with every passing day.
This was the context of my earlier comment that it made pragmatic sense to end the war now rather than waste thousands more lives in a pointless military adventure. But it seems you and Lizzie45 don’t seem to care much about those lives that will wasted. You don’t value them above the importance you attach to your own flag-waving nationalist idealism and that sacrosanct nation-state you genuflect towards.
You lecture us socialists about what the Ukrainian workers want. Well, for your information more and more of them want to escape Ukraine and avoid the fighting. But that lunatic zealot, Zelensky, and his regime have widened the conscription net to ensure a larger supply of cannon fodder to serve the fanatical goal of retaking Donbas and Crimea. Even kids are being called up. Ukrainians who fled Ukraine are now at risk of being deported back to Ukraine.
Of course, when things go pear-shaped it will be alright for Mr Zelensky. He can afford to play wargames now while the Ukrainian working class suffers. He can use his millions to find a safe haven in the US or anywhere else in the world that would have him. (I understand he has already purchased one or two expensive homes abroad). That is if he is not deposed and put on trial first – if not assassinated.
One or two things you said are true, though. It is undoubtedly true that the majority of Ukrainian workers are nationalist-minded – like the majority everywhere else. But since when does being in the majority make your opinion automatically right? I am sure the majority of North Korean workers enthusiastically endorse the repulsive Kim Jung Un regime. Are we supposed to think that the regime there must be OK because it has mass support?
Socialists have never been deterred by the fact that we are at the moment a tiny minority so what is the point of you telling us what you think the majority of Ukrainian workers might think? What they might think doesn’t necessarily make them right
Being willing to die for a capitalist state is beyond stupid. Let’s say it like it is. What is the point of it? There is no sense of national glory to experience when you are dead. When you are dead you are dead. Thats it. Anyone with any sense would want to make a decision that would ensure they remain alive.
Personally, I don’t give a fig about the “national humiliation” one is supposed to feel upon surrendering. At least one would still be alive. You might want to go on about the oppression that Ukrainian workers would experience under Russian rule. It would probably be no worse than what the people in Donbas or Crimea would experience under Ukrainian rule. Remember the horrendous acts that those Ukrainian Nazis did to those people in Odesa – set alight a building with many trapped inside. There are plenty of other examples.
The point is that war brutalises everyone who engages in it. From whatever angle you care to look at it the only rational sane and humane option is to end this barbaric war now and without further delay.
Incidentally, Mason has apparently been having difficulty in getting selected as a Labour candidate.
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Mason is such a disappointment and has sunk in my estimation. Like people in the Ukraine Solidarity Campaign, he takes this rather moronic view that anyone who opposes the continuation of the war in Ukraine must ipso facto be a Russian stooge It does not matter how many times you tell people like that that one is just as much opposed to the Putin regime as one is to the Zelensky regime, it makes no difference. They still come out with this same dumb response.
Wrong on all counts, suckers… 🙂
But thanks anyway for revealing your true colors
_______________________________Lizzie45
I don’t think so
I don’t think we have been wrong on ANY counts
I´m proud to have “revealed” my true colours which is vehement opposition to toxic nationalism and the criminal insanity of capitalism´s wars. Something you are clearly not concerned with….
“The reality is that we do not support the killing of our fellow workers and we do not instigate the murders of any member of the working class.”
Exactly. I don’t see what the issue is Paula. Anyone who supports that and the cause of nationalism should be vigorously opposed. You´ve opposed this stupid barbaric war in no less vigorous terms and good on you
I didn’t realise Lizzie45 was a pro-Ukrainian nationalist, I thought she was a buddy of that pro-Russian nationalist troll True Scotsman who used to frequent this forum. At any rate, she has now shown her true colours
“Slava Ukraini!” eh Lizzie45? No wonder she has been so belittling towards socialists of late…
Of course you can’t, with your overly simplistic world view.
Yet every time a kindergarten, school or hospital is bombed; every time atrocious war crimes, rapes and hideous acts of torture are uncovered; every time a family weeps over the grave of a loved one, the obligation to resist such barbarism is reinforced.————————————–
So I take it then that you consider it perfectly justifiable even obligatory to continue this barbaric ridiculous war in order to avenge the “war crimes, rapes and hideous acts of torture”. Who do you have in mind to be the target of this revenge? Or, talking about simplistic worldviews, do you imagine one side is squeaky clean and the other side full of nasty war criminals?
War brutalizes everyone and here you are, warmongering and calling for revenge. It’s a bit pathetic don’t you think? What’s that gonna achieve? I tell you what it’s gonna achieve – yet more “war crimes, rapes and hideous acts of torture” and innocent civilians on both sides being killed in their sleep by missiles. And so it will go on and on – tit for tat, tat for tit until there is nothing left to fight over and nobody left to fight.
My comment was with reference the so-called Ukrainian counter-offensive which. four months in. has made very little impression on the front line but has already cost the regime thousands of lives It is fairly obvious that Ukraine stands no chance of achieving its goal of retaking Donbas and Crimea and may very well lose more territory if and when the expected Russian offensive starts up (again). That was the context in which I said: “I cannot understand the mentality of those who want to drag it out any longer just so they can stick some tacky piece of cloth on a flagpole somewhere”. It is stupid even from a capitalist standpoint let alone from a socialist standpoint. And it means throwing thousands of more lives into the meat grinder to achieve little or nothing.
And here you are suggesting such action is not only justified but obligatory FFS. I will assume you have suddenly taken leave of your senses and have not thought it through
It looks like there is some kind of concerted movement backed up by the nationalistic-minded Ukraine Solidarity campaign and misguided individuals like Paul Mason to get the British Trade Union movement to support increased military aid for Ukraine.
https://labourlist.org/2023/09/why-unions-must-not-vote-to-support-open-ended-war-against-russia/
Mason himself has unironically compared Ukraine to the Republican side in the Spanish civil side. While I have never considered Ukraine to be a fascist state there are unquestionably fascistic elements in the regime and its military (as there are on the Russian side as well)
This stupid war seems destined to drag on for a long time with thousands more lives being lost utterly pointlessly in the meat grinder. I cannot understand the mentality of those who want to drag it out any longer just so they can stick some tacky piece of cloth on a flagpole somewhere. It’s sick.
Let’s hope, for your party’s sake, that Danny picks up more votes than the 11 Shannon Phileas Fogg Kennedy, or whatever his/her name was, received in a recent local election, and who, according to the grapevine, threw in the party towel shortly afterwards in desperation.
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You love taking the piss, don’t you? Never anything helpful or constructive to say. Talk about a wet towel. Got anything else that you can do that would brighten up what is otherwise presumably a miserable existence? Why are you so obsessed if you are so convinced we are going nowhere, eh? I can’t fathom it. Weird (to say the least)
So you’re saying that people don’t like change but a minority was able to enact change against the wishes of that majority?
What on earth are you going on about? Reference was being made to the transition from Feudalism to Capitalism where the overwhelming majority, the peasantry, had no say in the matter
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Given that there WAS a transition from feudalism to capitalism even if the overwhelming majority, according to you, had no say in the matter (really?), what could have prompted the minority in this case to push for a change in this direction?
According to your dogmatic arch-conservative interpretation of history, “People generally hate change, particularly change which is untried and untested”. Well at some point in time capitalism was most definitely “untried and untested” so what, according to you prompted the minority then to try it????
It’s the same with your assertion (with its Thatcher-like overtones of “there being no alternative”) that since people generally hate change, particularly change which is untried and untested…” capitalism remains the only game in town.”
What makes you so cocksure that this is the case and what makes your position any different from, say, the feudal nobility who could not conceive of a world in which capitalism prevailed and they were reduced a mere sideshow or beheaded?
ps On the subject of people generally “hating change” wasn’t one of the core ideals of the Enlightenment period that of continual progress and improvement? Have people abandoned these ideals today in your opinion?
Fairly obvious I would have thought. Capitalism didn’t require a politically conscious and overwhelming majority to bring it about. Only a relatively small and sufficiently motivated minority prepared to take risks.
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A totally irrelevant argument by the looks of it. According to your arch-conservative dogmatic view of the world, “people generally hate change”. If that were true homo sapiens would still be roaming the African savannah.
You try to get around this obvious nonsense by first asserting that it is “particularly” (or maybe you mean, “only”) change that is “untried and untested” that you have in mind and that can never happen. This begs the obvious question. The kind of change you have in mind that presumably IS possible to make, having been “tried and tested”, must have at one point been untried and untested before it was tried and tested. But how is it ever going to be tried and tested if, according to you, “people generally hate change” and are inherently reluctant to experiment? Explain
Secondly, you assert that “Capitalism didn’t require a politically conscious and overwhelming majority to bring it about”. That is true enough but quite beside the point. We are talking about the motivation to bring about a different society, NOT the method…
What you really want to say, I guess, is that the majority will never want to establish an alternative to capitalism or are incapable of ever wanting to do that. Again this is a mere dogmatic assertion for which you supply no evidence whatsoever. You no more possess a crystal ball than we do.
Apart from that this implies a very naive way of looking at how ideas catch on and spread. Socialist ideas are not propagated in a vacuum but in a social environment that is at the moment very much hostile to them. We cannot say whether such ideas will ever catch on and spread, or how that might happen, but if it does happen it is very likely that the spread of these ideas will take an exponential form as the social climate adapts to accommodate them.
The socialist movement is at the moment tiny and inconsequential but that doesn’t mean it has to be forever and forever and that there is some law in human nature (which evidently bypassed us few human beings who happen to be socialists!) that human beings must always spurn socialism. That´s just ultra-conservative ideological hogwash.
In many ways, if David Graeber’s argument is to be believed people are already halfway there in the way they behave – in their “everyday communism”
Hmm, more than likely they voted to retain the status quo.
People generally hate change, particularly change which is untried and untested.Which is why capitalism remains the only game in town.
…………………….If people hate change how come capitalism exists? Wouldn’t it have been better to have stuck with feudalism? Your qualifying (or cop-out) argument might be that “capitalism! was tried and tested on a small scale before being generally accepted (how? by a show of hands? LOL) could equally apply to a communist or socialist society. See David Graeber´s concept of “everyday communism”
Not a video but a book that I’ve just come across doing an internet search. Have we heard of this guy before?
The more you search the more you come across people on our sort of wavelength -whether in book form, article form, or video form even if the terminology might be sometimes quite different…
It’s a big world out there and there are more and more reasons to be cheerful. We are not as alone as we might think
There is also the “Moneyless Society” FB site which seems quite active. I posted something there a few days ago which got 248 likes and 168 shares – easily my most “successful” FB post. The group currently has 24.1K members
The establishment of your dream world requires the understanding and implementation by a majority. That’s what makes it fundamentally different to all the other societal changes that have ever taken place.
Not. Going. To. Happen.
==============================Lizzie45
This is about as convincing as those who say “socialism is inevitable”. And no less dogmatic.
The truth is we don’t know. It might not but then again it might. But even if socialism is never going to happen, that would not invalidate being a socialist and putting forward the case for socialism, one bit. To the extent that any of us as individuals make a difference to the world that we live in today, I cannot think of anything that would make a better difference than this
