robbo203
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“No, I don’t support Islamo-fascism so I don’t support the Taliban. But neither did I support the NATO invasion of the country. Did you support NATO’s invasion?”
_____________________________________________________________After all this time on this forum, it is astonishing that TS can even ask this question. Of course, we don’t support NATO or any other capitalist bloc including Putin’s Russia. It is the only sane and socialist response one can give. A plague on all their houses. To hell with all their nationalist warmongering. Nationalism is a toxic mental disease that needs to be expelled from the body politic of the working class
This will spell the end of the world. If it happens better quit your job and spend all your money quicksmart. Neither will be of use any longer.
https://www.newsweek.com/finland-will-allow-nato-place-nuclear-weapons-border-russia-1754925
_____________________________It takes two to tango. Of course, the provocative actions of NATO and its expansionist policies are part of the reason why the world is in the perilous state it is but equally, if a nuclear war happens as a result of NATO placing nuclear weapons in Finland, the abhorrent capitalist regime in Russia would also be responsible. There is always a choice – even in the face of NATO expansion. There is no law of the universe that says you have to insanely press that nuclear button and destroy humanity.
It’s because the Russian regime just like the appalling regimes that constitute the Nato alliance are all driven by the sick fantasy called nationalism. They all think there is something called their “nation-state” that is worth hanging on to and defending. TS, and millions of workers like him, with his own attachment to this toxic mental disease called nationalism, is part of the problem, not the solution
“And where does Marx say that workers can not have leaders?”
_________________________________________________________For the benefit of our ignorant anti-socialist “True Scotsman”….
“As for ourselves, there is, considering all our antecedents, only one course open to us. For almost 40 years we have emphasised that the class struggle is the immediate motive force of history and, in particular, that the class struggle between bourgeoisie and proletariat is the great lever of modern social revolution; hence we cannot possibly co-operate with men who seek to eliminate that class struggle from the movement. At the founding of the International we expressly formulated the battle cry: The emancipation of the working class must be achieved by the working class itself. Hence we cannot co-operate with men who say openly that the workers are too uneducated to emancipate themselves, and must first be emancipated from above by philanthropic members of the upper and lower middle classes. If the new party organ is to adopt a policy that corresponds to the opinions of these gentlemen, if it is bourgeois and not proletarian, then all we could do — much though we might regret it — would be publicly to declare ourselves opposed to it and abandon the solidarity with which we have hitherto represented the German Party abroad. But we hope it won’t come to that. https://marxists.architexturez.net/archive/marx/works/1879/09/18.htm
“Lol, ideology is not a true/false proposition, it’s a matter of values. You are comparing apples and oranges. Go back to philosophy for kindergarteners class.”
_________________________________________________________Yes and according to your “kindgartener” logic your own values must fit quite comfortably with a Nazi outlook which must be considered “right” by your standards given the sizeable electoral support the Nazis attracted. Mind you I am not surprised. Your bootlicking, craven support for the disgusting authoritarian capitalist regime of Putin and his fellow oligarchs speaks volumes. If anyone is a dupe of ruling class propaganda it is you TS
“I guess our resident clown, TS, must think that the Nazis were “winning the battle of ideas” when the Nazi Party secured 37.3 percent of the popular vote in the July 1932 elections…”
37 per cent is not winning.
__________________________________________________________Not the point
You are equating the validity of an argument with the number of supporters it attracts. Therefore according to your daft logic, there was quite a lot to be said in favour of the Nazis and that, indeed, you would consider yourself to be some extent a Nazi as well – at least to the extent that you believed they were right which they must have been having garnered 37% of the electoral support
TS> “And yet you vomit up your ruling class’ propaganda at every opportunity. Putin is a billionaire/ Russian aggression…Guardian article after Guardian article. At some point a disinterested observer has to conclude these people either collaborate with, or are the willing dupes of, their ruling class.”
“So do please explain – how then can we possibly be “simping” for this class when we oppose both regimes in this conflict?”
Just did.
_______________________________________________________________________
Further proof that our resident clown could not argue his way out of a paper bag if he tried …How, pray, can we collaborate with or be the willing dupes of the Western ruling class when we explicitly oppose BOTH SIDES in this capitalist war? The fact that we might quote an article from the Guardian or some other newspaper does not mean we are “spewing up ruling class propaganda”. That’s a stupid argument. You yourself use capitalist sources to back up your own claims. A quick scan of this page alone shows you using Reuters as a source.
Apart from that, the fact that the capitalist press might report for example that “Putin is a billionaire” or whatever does not make it untrue, does it now? Your feeble line of argument seems to be that just because an article in the Guardian says Putin is a billionaire it must obviously be false because the Guardian is a capitalist propaganda outlet. That’s a pathetic way of going about proving your point.
If you want to say Putin is not a billionaire then what you need to do is go about marshaling facts that demonstrate that Putin cannot possibly be a billionaire. You don’t do that. Your whole mode of argumentation is based on ad hominem attacks or ridiculing sources. That’s weak. Very weak
People like Marx drew on capitalist sources like contemporaneous newspapers and periodicals to build up his argument. Would you say he was therefore spouting ruling-class propaganda?
TS “Building socialism is a process. Who are you to criticise how actual, real world socialists arrive at the destination?”
____________________________________________________________Because trying to arrive at socialism via state capitalism is a complete dead end. You are not building socialism. All you are doing is building capitalism. Even you cannot possibly be so naive as to imagine that the authoritarian capitalist regimes like China, North Korea, Venezuela etc ad nauseum intend to establish the Marxian goal of a moneyless wageless stateless and non-market alternative capitalism
“There are 93 million in the CPC. Who’s winning the battle of ideas?”
I guess our resident clown, TS, must think that the Nazis were “winning the battle of ideas” when the Nazi Party secured 37.3 percent of the popular vote in the July 1932 elections…
He seems to think the validity of an idea or an argument depends on how much support it attracts. There was a time when 99.99 percent of the populace believed the sun revolved around the earth. ‘Nuff said
“For an antisocialist supporter of the disgusting imperialist capitalist regime of Putin”
Russia is not imperialist….Put simply, Kiev lost all right to rule over its Russian speaking minority when it attempted to ethnically cleanse them from the east. The population of the liberated regions happily voted to rejoin their historic motherland. Are you going to deny them agency and object? Well, they don’t give a shit because you’re a useless, brainwashed simp for your country’s ruling class.
_________________________________________________LOL TS It is not unusual for an imperialist power to annex some neighbouring territory on the pretext that the populace there is ethnically or culturally akin to the imperialist power in question. That doesn’t make the actions of that power any the less “imperialist”
But let us, for the sake of argument, assume you are right. Let us look at how the actual invasion of Ukraine proceeded. The Russian military did not just enter the Donbass to protect the civilian population there. No, it entered via the North, via Belarus and went as far as the outskirts of Kiev. And you reckon that this is not the blatant act of an imperialist power eh? LOL
By the way, I am not apologizing for the Ukrainian regime. I’ve made it perfectly clear this is a capitalist squabble between two capitalist entities (one of which you support as an antisocialist). Maybe it’s because you are clearly a sandwich or two short of a picnic that you can’t seem to grasp the concept that the “enemy of an enemy is not necessarily a friend.”
Saying that I am a …er..” useless, brainwashed simp for your country’s ruling class” shows what a clown you truly are. You couldn’t argue your way out of a paper bag if you tried TS. In case you weren’t aware the British ruling class actually sides with the Ukrainian ruling class in this conflict. I don’t and the SPGB does not. So do please explain – how then can we possibly be “simping” for this class when we oppose both regimes in this conflict?
“All of these movements without exception have ended up fully embracing capitalism.”
Complete fantasy. But it is true that there have been failures.
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Point to one example of a successful so-called national liberation movement that has not ended up administering the system of production for the market with to a realizing profit. Just one example. Many of these new capitalist regimes have ended up actively soliciting foreign investment and suppressing their local populations to render them more pliant to capitalist exploitations whether at the hands of foreign investors or the local comprador bourgeoisie.
For all your hot air it seems you know next to nothing about socialism , capitalism or indeed politics in general But do carry on making a laughing stock of yourself TS, I find it quite entertaining to tell the truth
TS: “The Guardian is a mouth piece of the British establishment. It is as trustworthy as a used car salesman running a Ponzi scheme. The fact you credulously quote from it is a sign of just how politically unsophisticated you are. Guardian Bros, lol.”
——————————————————Nice evasion TS. And where, pray, is your evidence that refutes what the Guardian said? As usual, you are all mouth. You don’t like the messenger so you dismiss the message. Automatically. Anyone who does not hold your point of view must be wrong by definition. How arrogant. So, Mr Political Sophistication, where is your counter-evidence or are we expected just to take your word for it that the Guardian piece was flat wrong in making its claim? How unsophisticated! By the way, did you even read what the article said? My guess is you did not and that consequently you are making your comments completely in the dark
TS: “According to some estimates, Robert Mugabe has about £1bn-worth of assets…”
The Guardian? Lol. Socialist Posers Guardian Bros of the world unite and do your part in spreading bourgeois imperialist propaganda.”
————————————————————————I am curious. How is it ..er… “bourgeois imperialist propaganda” to point out that someone like Mugabe ended up a very rich individual? Are you saying this is untrue in which case do you have some evidence to substantiate your claim??? Just because the source of the information was the Guardian doesn’t necessarily make it untrue, does it now?
You have a constant tendency to mock the referenced claims of others without providing any evidence whatsoever to demonstrate that these claims are false. You expect others to believe you just because it is your opinion? LOL TS
TS: “Your contempt for the anticolinial struggle reveals your true reactionary colors. If this group isn’t an MI6 psyop it bloody well should be”
On the contrary, your contempt for socialist opposition to such bourgeois constructs as so-called “national liberation movements” reveals just how thoroughly reactionary and conservative you truly are. All of these movements without exception have ended up fully embracing capitalism. Some of them ended up even worse than their erstwhile colonial masters (with whom many of them continued to do business) in their degree of corruption, and repression of the local workers and peasants.
For an antisocialist supporter of the disgusting imperialist capitalist regime of Putin, you have some nerve for criticizing others for not endorsing your cherished bourgeois notion of anti-colonial struggle when your very own beloved hero is at this very moment exemplifying his commitment to colonialism by annexing new territories with the intention of expanding “mother Russia”
I think the question of whether state capitalism was progressive vis a vis other variants of capitalism has to be in a temporal context: Are we talking about early capitalism or late capitalism? Also “progressive” with respect to what?
If we are talking about industrial output and the growth in GDP there is little doubt that state capitalism at least in the early stages of capitalist development was superior. Germany under Bismarck was arguably the first significant example of state capitalism in practice. By the end of the 19th century, it had decisively overtaken Britain in the industrial league table.
Similarly in the early decades of soviet state capitalism, GDP growth was remarkably high – though it started to peter off in the post-war era. The role of big American, and other, corporations in soviet industrialization in the Stalin era should not be overlooked, however.
The 1848 Communist Manifesto talked about the need to centralise capital and for the state to take over the means of production to hasten the development of the productive forces as rapidly as possible. Marx and Engels figured that this required the development of large-scale industry which in turn required the centralisation of capital. State ownership being the most centralised expression of capital ownership it seemed logical to them to call for the state ownership of capital as the means of accelerating capitalist development more rapidly than any other extant form of capitalism and so hasten the time when socialism might be materially possible
However, in the late 19th century and in light of the “great strides” already made in the development of modern capitalist industry, it seems they started to soft-peddle this particular notion of the “state capitalist road to socialism”. In the 1872 Preface to the Manifesto for example they seemed to distance themselves from, if not disown, much of the state capitalist reformist agenda set down in part 2 of the original manifesto
I think this provides us with a clue of sorts as to how to go about answering the question posed in this thread. State capitalism might have been progressive in the early days of capitalism but that is no longer the case.
Of course, we should be aware that there are not only different forms of capitalism but also different forms of state capitalism too. The current model of state capitalism in China is quite different from the so-called “command economy” of the Stalin era. At the recent Party Congress of the CPC Xi declared that it is the market, rather than a central plan, that will continue to play the “decisive role” in resource allocation.
In late capitalism which is much more economically diversified and complex than early capitalism, that is perhaps quite a predictable development
TS: ” I would include Mugabe and Gadaafi on my list of goodies. Mugabe was an anticolonial hero and instituted land reform, returning what was stolen by Euro colonists to indigenous Africans”
“According to some estimates, Robert Mugabe has about £1bn-worth of assets, much of it invested outside Zimbabwe. A 2001 US diplomatic cable, later released by the whistle-blowing organisation WikiLeaks, quoted this figure, and said that while reliable information was difficult to find, there were rumours that his assets “include everything from secret accounts in Switzerland, the Channel Islands and the Bahamas to castles in Scotland”.
Grace Mugabe is said to have bought a number of properties in the affluent Sandton suburb of Johannesburg and there are reported to have been property purchases in Malaysia, Singapore and possibly Dubai.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/17/robert-grace-mugabe-missing-millions-money-zimababwe
“The “fast track” land reform program in Zimbabwe has been accompanied by significant human rights abuses that harm the very people it was designed to assist, Human Rights Watch charged in a report released on the eve of Zimbabwe’s elections.
Militia groups affiliated with the party of President Robert Mugabe have carried out serious acts of violence against rural dwellers and landless workers on commercial farms, the report said. Human Rights Watch also received reports of discrimination in the distribution of land on political grounds.”
https://www.hrw.org/news/2002/03/08/zimbabwe-abuses-plague-land-reform
Robert Mugabe and his big buddy the slum landlord Nicholas van Hoogstraten – partners in profiteering
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/23/nicholas-van-hoogstraten-robert-mugabe-zimbabwe-coal
