Thomas_More
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What you have said is apt for those to bear in mind who talk about paper books being bad for the environment, and who tell me to abandon books in favour of electronics!
” The word “black” was used strictly to mean dark, evil, or hidden, long before modern racial categories existed.”
In early and classic film melodrama too, villains of the piece wore black or dark colours, while heroes wore lighter colours.
Black too is the colour of death and funerals in the West. In East Asia it is white.
The Hallowe’en period sees many black cats throughout the world being seized, tortured and killed, because, in this 21st century, they are still associated with black magic.
Most here are punitive towards their fellow workers, especially immigrants and the unemployed, called “chavs”, whom they call scroungers. They support military conscription for the young, longer and tougher prison sentences, and would like to see the death penalty restored.
It’s a UK poll.
A poll today suggests so far that 95% of those polled want more welfare cuts and more military spending.
Those I have known wouldn’t think of themselves as capitalists. To be told they live on the labour of others would anger them immensely, even though it’s true. They lived on surplus value but the term wouldn’t have meant anything to them. One was aware. He owned a shipping company in East Asia. He liked my talk of socialism and agreed the word was misused all the time. He was fed up with the decades-long demonisation in Asia of Marx. He hoped more people would become real socialists. He became angry at anyone at the table who didn’t finish the food on their plate. He hated waste.
One could paraphrase Voltaire, replacing Locke with Marx:
Most people don’t read.
Of those who do read, most don’t read Marx.
Of those who read Marx, most don’t understand him.I think that the SPGB keeping roughly the same number of members through over a century is maybe due to a father to son handing down of consciousness. Not in all cases of course.
I don’t know if they think at all beyond profits.
But yes, if only because they are such a small minority and are conscious of what they want, but not beyond that. One might as well ask if Scrooge McDuck knows about the materialist conception of history.
There have, of course, been politicians from the working class, serving, of course, their class enemies. Hitler, for instance, couldn’t have been more working class; in fact he was lumpenproletariat. He was obsequious when visiting his capitalist handlers. The Bolsheviks saw themselves as working class, which they were. So did Castro.
They don’t all live in a bubble. I have known capitalists, and I studied with some in Switzerland and at university in England. They didn’t exclude me from their circles.
I knew some in the theatre too, in my capacity as a stage-manager. You wouldn’t know one was a capitalist by looking at them. They didn’t live in palaces, just in flats in expensive areas.It is the premis behind conspiralunacy that very bright and clever individuals are in charge of society.
Conspiraloons are not materialists.Wez, you mean the entire capitalist class are class conscious? Even all the dolts among them?
I think the comedy Cheers sums them up. Woody the bartender is working 24 hrs a day so he can buy a birthday present for his rich and clueless fiancée. She is told he is worn out after a 48 hr continuous shift, and replies, “Is that not normal? I wouldn’t know, not being one of the work force.”
When Woody tells her he hasn’t got any money, she says, “That’s ok. I’ll ask (the chauffeur) to drop you by an ATM on the way.”
When he says he takes the subway, she asks what’s that, and then laughs, “Really! A train that goes underground! You are such a joker, Woody!”
It is a fond belief that the rich are rich because they are bright.
