The Revolution-Now Thread (Russell B. & others).

[MacCruiskeen]

Nordic, I get what you're saying, and I agree with it all except the last three sentences.

Believe me, I have never loved the sound of breaking glass, and I do not yearn for an orgy of destruction either. Just for some highly selective pinpoint-accurate destruction, and no I am not talking about drone strikes or anything involving the killing of anyone. But a mass occupation of Fox & CNN & MSNBC & ABC & the BBC etc? A mass occupation of the House of Representatives and the Houses of Parliament? Even at the risk of some broken glass? Yes, I'd be in favour of that (kind of thing). For example.

The thing is, nearly everyone is at least a bit scared of revolution, and that certainly includes me too. It's not just the likelihood of occupiers (not mere "demonstrators") being beaten, killed, flung in detention camps, etc. Nearly everyone is scared that they'd be (even) worse off afterwards. In your situation for example, I'd be worried about how I would make a living if Hollywood and the TV stations fell in the face of a popular uprising. And most people are at most two paychecks away from hunger already, even presuming the financial system does not go the way of the Weimar Reichsmark. So this is why they continue to hang on in vague hope, like (I hate this cliché but fuck it) slowly boiling frogs. But the pot is already being heated anyway, everyone can feel it. So quo vadis?

- Sorry, I have to cut this short or it'll end up 500 pages long and I can't afford to do that because (ha!) no one will pay me for it. Plus I am no Lenin, nor do I want to be. Nor is it even necessary, though, thank god. This is why the criticism of Brand for having No Plan is so dishonest and so stupid. A revolution cannot be planned by anyone, any more than the rehearsal period of an improvised play can be planned by any of the participants in advance. (Much less, in fact.) I guess what's needed is the acknowledgment that the collapse of the existing system has already started and that therefore the revolution is already underway too, whether we have noticed it or not, or whether we want it or not.

Analogy: Nobody wants to run half-naked and screaming into the street. But it might beat remaining in a burning building, in burning pyjamas, and hoping for the best. Especially when the landlord is reassuring you, by cellphone from the safety of his palatial residence, that there is no need for alarm. (He's not the least bit alarmed, becuse he knows all his property is insured.)

[MacCruiskeen]

tl, dr: "Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will." Personally, and just for the record, I suspect we're all fucked too. But it's not a suspicion I can live or act on.

Funnily enough, the fuckers have no trouble acknowledging -- whenever it suits them -- that some quick and radical transformations of society can be (almost) peaceful and indeed highly welcome & jolly-inspiring expressions of the Indomitable Human Spirit (cue music) crying "FREEDOM!", and actually made of Velvet or Taffeta and coloured Orange or Baby Blue or whatever. They're even happy to call them Revolutions then.


"This can't be happening."

[KeenInsight]

Its a pretty cool message - (referring to the original post). I watched that interview days ago from globalresearch.ca.

But, what I fear is that a notion of "revolution" can be manipulated. This is a tacit and clear message that is explored in the Ghost in The Shell series. There are players at every level, and if someone sees that there is a revolution, you but they work to manipulate. The idea is, that if there is a revolution, one that is sparked by manipulation at the top, the goal of that manipulator is to see it play out like they expect - the differences and individual "complexes" playing out - pushing, and pushing, for that violent reaction from a revolution, from individuals to their most basic instinct when backed into a corner - to lash out, which serves as a pretext for authority.

Of course, I'll admit I'm coming from a pessimistic perspective, as I have not seen any change - hopeful that there will be, but not so naive to see what else is happening.

[Nordic]

Well yes, any "revolution" that happens in the US of A will likely be merely a stage managed product of those already in power.

Like the election of Obama in 2008. People were lined in the streets, openly weeping with joy that the wicked witch was dead and CHANGE was a-comin'!

All manufactured, all a huge con job.

My hope is that other countries will have real revolutions and that subsequent international shunning of the US, along with the financial destruction that will occur when they remove the US Dollar from its status as the world's reserve currency will finally destroy the power of this country and that finally the US will move out of the roid-rage adolescence it currently emotes, and the US will finally grow the fuck up.

But by then we all might be starving in the flooded streets of the fully-cooked planet earth and none of this might matter. At all.

[smiths]

so am i right in thinking Mac that you would advocate some form of Socialism as a replacement for the current system?

Personally i would prefer something that leant towards Socialism in some carefully crafted form.

The critical questions become, how do you deal with property and the dynamics of trade,
and how do you deal with representation of the people and bureaucratic processes

Early Socialists like Saint Simon and Robert Owen were not into the idea of nationalisation of all assets and idealized a system more like a Rawlsian society where extraordinary taxation and elimination of inheritance evened out societal wealth levels - but, they were technocratic visionaries who believed in Capitalism and Trade as progressive and civilising forces.
After Marx, Socialism meant nationalisation and some form of command economy.
After the initial flirtation with the NEP, the Bolsheviks went for a total command economy, but they did face a number of chronic headwinds; Russia was the most industrially backward country in Europe, all the surrounding countries tried to strangle them economically, Russia is a huge landmass which is difficult to administer to

Could a more modern, nationalised command economy work in a situation where many countries tried it simultaneously and had a better starting point? Personally I doubt it
I think that any system that attempts to homogenise humans and coerce the natural diversities out of people is doomed to fail
some people want to work harder than others to achieve things, they want to compete, construct and innovate
any system that attempts to suppress this drive will fail

the opposite system, which we currently live in, has deified competition and the cut-throat entrepreneur and is sick in its heart

you have to start with a number of assumptions, many of which are as old as the hills, and work out whether they are correct, and if they are, how you will account for them

here is my first one, straight from the American aristocrats like Madison

1. a certain number of people will attempt to amass power and control, Gov should be designed to check this tendency as much as possible

anyone else have any suggestions on an actual system, or some assumptions that need to be tested, or allowed for?

[Nordic]

2. Banks should be public utilities and nothing more.

[bluenoseclaret]

smiths

"..Bolsheviks .....they thought remarkably little about what to do once they had captured power..."

Oh, I think they did. Was it 20 million or 60 odd million that were murdered by the Bolsheviks.?

[MacCruiskeen]

bluenoseclaret, shurely they murdered everyone in Russia?* Shurely that's what shocialism meansh (in your little blue book)?

*In contrast to those nice Czars, who never harmed a hair on the heads of their grateful, forelock-tugging serfs.

[justdrew]

smiths

"..Bolsheviks .....they thought remarkably little about what to do once they had captured power..."

Oh, I think they did. Was it 20 million or 60 odd million that were murdered by the Bolsheviks.?

there is no evidence to support a magnitude like either of those numbers.

Throughout the 1930s, the Soviet Union experienced massive industrialization and economic growth under the leadership of Joseph Stalin. Stalin's central tenet, Socialism in one country, manifested as a series of nation-wide centralized Five-Year Plans. This was an ideological shift in Soviet policy, away from its commitment to the international communist revolution, and eventually leading to the dissolution of its Comintern organization.

hard to believe a nation was industrializing, and experiencing real economic growth while exterminating a huge percentage of it's population.

You've swallowed propaganda. congratulations. Now ask where you got that bullshit from.

[smiths]

Stating, or arguing over numbers of dead under Communism from the Bolsheviks to the end of Stalinism is, in the context of this thread, pointless

I mentioned the Bolsheviks because their revolutionary zeal combined with extraordinary lack of planning for what to do once they had captured power contributed to the ultimate catastrophe of the Soviet 20th century

the point is that people have to consider what they intend to replace a system with

2. Banks should be public utilities and nothing more.

totally agree with that one

any systemic change now would have to be global, which is fascinating because it really is possible,
in that vein

3. Abolition of tax havens and secrecy jurisdictions of any kind

[gnosticheresy_2]

4. All companies or other commercial organisations of 2 people or more must be owned by said people by a "one member one vote" arrangement. Use of casual labour or other methods to get round this will be banned.

[gnosticheresy_2]

Now if we could just come up with a decent method of capital allocation....

[bluenoseclaret]

Political repression in the Soviet Union http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_ ... viet_Union

"Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who deeply studied this problem, considers that 66 million 700 thousand people became victims to the state repression and terrorism from 1917 to 1959.[24]:375 Analogous figure — over 66 million people — was announced by Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev, the chairman of the commission for rehabilitation of repressed persons.[24]:375, 376 According to Viktor Luneyev, actual struggle against dissent was manyfold larger than it was registered in sentences, and we do not know how many persons were kept under surveillance of secret services, held criminally liable, arrested, sent to psychiatric hospitals, expelled from their work, restricted in their rights everyway....."

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=xyq5 ... &q&f=false


Stalin's Jews
We mustn't forget that some of greatest murderers of modern times were Jewish
Israel Opinion

"Here's a particularly forlorn historical date: Almost 90 years ago, between the 19th and 20th of December 1917, in the midst of the Bolshevik revolution and civil war, Lenin signed a decree calling for the establishment of The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage, also known as Cheka.

Within a short period of time, Cheka became the largest and cruelest state security organization. Its organizational structure was changed every few years, as were its names: From Cheka to GPU, later to NKVD, and later to KGB.

We cannot know with certainty the number of deaths Cheka was responsible for in its various manifestations, but the number is surely at least 20 million, including victims of the forced collectivization, the hunger, large purges, expulsions, banishments, executions, and mass death at Gulags......"

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340 ... 99,00.html

[MacCruiskeen]

Stalin's Jews
We mustn't forget that some of greatest murderers of modern times were Jewish

^^Your choice of a "response". Your bold type. Check the RI board rules and the posting guidelines.

No one here needs reminding of the evils of dictatorship or mass murder by people of any nationality, or any religion, or any professed political ideology. This is not a thread about the Russian Revolution or the Soviet Union, nor is it one about "Jews". You are a troll and a timewaster, bluenoseclaret. And worse.

________________________________________________

Back on-topic.

smiths, if I had to put a label on my politics I'd call myself an anarchist (as Chomsky is, and in Chomsky's sense of the term --- and most decidedly not a "libertarian" in the way that word has been hijacked by certain US "free market" capitalists). I like the turn this thread has taken with your post near the top of the thread, and the ones that have responded to it. I'll try and respond properly myself later.

[bluenoseclaret]

MacCruiskeen

bluenoseclaret, shurely they murdered everyone in Russia?* Shurely that's what shocialism meansh (in your little blue book)?

*In contrast to those nice Czars, who never harmed a hair on the heads of their grateful, forelock-tugging serfs.

So you don't give a shit about 20/60 million people murdered by the bolsheviks. Then you are one fucking whore.

I remember you went on a "posting holiday" during "Operation Cast Lead". Do another one, you two-faced cunt.

Revolution.....you would be hiding under your duvet.