The Socialist Response

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Re: The Socialist Response

Postby Elvis » Thu Jan 11, 2018 4:55 am

mentalgongfu2 wrote:
They've had over 100 years to work on it. Seems like after previous failures they would realize it just isn't going to work as an economic model


Could say the same of capitalism.


Except that capitalism has had more than 600 years to figure it out.
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Re: The Socialist Response

Postby Elvis » Thu Jan 11, 2018 5:03 am

Karmamatterz wrote:
The Marxist method is to start by trying to figure out the main processes


They've had over 100 years to work on it. Seems like after previous failures they would realize it just isn't going to work as an economic model.


Let's take Cuba for example, and compare it with, for example, the U.S. as an economic model:

Cubans are more fully employed, have higher literacy, better education, better health, lower infant mortality, are happier and live longer.

Whose model is failing?
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Re: The Socialist Response

Postby mentalgongfu2 » Thu Jan 11, 2018 5:13 am

Indeed, Elvis. Perhaps it has something to do with the underlying principles of capitalism are to benefit the individual, while the underlying principles of socialism are to benefit the society. Seems to me the failures of socialism can be often attributed to the failings of humans to live up to the ideal of the system; while the failures of capitalism are a direct and intended result of humans living up exactly to the ideal of the system.
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Re: The Socialist Response

Postby Karmamatterz » Fri Jan 12, 2018 2:40 am

Seems to me the failures of socialism can be often attributed to the failings of humans to live up to the ideal of the system


A good point. I have to wonder if perhaps communism and socialism just aren't as natural to the human race as what capitalism is. Humans tend to do well with competition. How else did we become the dominant species on the planet?

I wonder how people felt waiting in breadlines in the Soviet Union wondering if they could get a stale or moldy loaf to survive another week? Why was it that people had to resort to smuggling in simple things like Levis jeans and Hershey chocolate bars? How great was communism that you could go to prison for owning a typewriter if you didn't register it with the government? I wonder how many Soviet citizens would have loved having hot water to take a shower during the frigid winters?

Honestly, if your child required major surgery or cutting edge medical treatment would you do anything you could to get them into a Cuban hospital for care? Or would you settle for Johns Hopkins, the Mayo Clinic or the Cleveland Clinic? My good friend who is my age, early 50s had plenty of money to go to any clinic in the world to get placed into experimental trials for his Alzheimers. He chose to stay in the U.S. as he and his family believed it to be the best option. It is true Cuba does have very good healthcare and they do more with less. They are hamstrung too often with lack of consistent electricity and simple things like running water.

Net neutrality in Cuba? Good luck getting online at all let alone settling down to stream your music or Netflix. A good friend spent two weeks in Cuba last year on gig for the university he works for and told me getting online at all was a complete pain in the ass and that few citizens had basic Internet access.

How many people would trade their comfortable lifestyles in the U.S, or other western "captialist" nations for life in Cuba or any other communist country? I guess the immigration and emigration records speaks for themselves. Between 1920 and 1990 how many people left America to permanently relocate to Russia, Yugoslavia, China, Cuba, East Germany and North Korea? How about right now? How many people think communist North Korea would be a great place to live? If East Germany was so great why did the communist government build a wall to keep people from leaving and shoot them (murder) if they tried crossing the border?

Didn't The Gulag Archipelago tell us enough about the greatness of that great Russian system?

Is America's air pollution worse that communist China's?
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Re: The Socialist Response

Postby mentalgongfu2 » Fri Jan 12, 2018 4:04 am

Karmamatterz » Fri Jan 12, 2018 12:40 am wrote:
Seems to me the failures of socialism can be often attributed to the failings of humans to live up to the ideal of the system


A good point. I have to wonder if perhaps communism and socialism just aren't as natural to the human race as what capitalism is. Humans tend to do well with competition. How else did we become the dominant species on the planet?

I wonder how people felt waiting in breadlines in the Soviet Union wondering if they could get a stale or moldy loaf to survive another week? Why was it that people had to resort to smuggling in simple things like Levis jeans and Hershey chocolate bars? How great was communism that you could go to prison for owning a typewriter if you didn't register it with the government? I wonder how many Soviet citizens would have loved having hot water to take a shower during the frigid winters?

Honestly, if your child required major surgery or cutting edge medical treatment would you do anything you could to get them into a Cuban hospital for care? Or would you settle for Johns Hopkins, the Mayo Clinic or the Cleveland Clinic? My good friend who is my age, early 50s had plenty of money to go to any clinic in the world to get placed into experimental trials for his Alzheimers. He chose to stay in the U.S. as he and his family believed it to be the best option. It is true Cuba does have very good healthcare and they do more with less. They are hamstrung too often with lack of consistent electricity and simple things like running water.

Net neutrality in Cuba? Good luck getting online at all let alone settling down to stream your music or Netflix. A good friend spent two weeks in Cuba last year on gig for the university he works for and told me getting online at all was a complete pain in the ass and that few citizens had basic Internet access.

How many people would trade their comfortable lifestyles in the U.S, or other western "captialist" nations for life in Cuba or any other communist country? I guess the immigration and emigration records speaks for themselves. Between 1920 and 1990 how many people left America to permanently relocate to Russia, Yugoslavia, China, Cuba, East Germany and North Korea? How about right now? How many people think communist North Korea would be a great place to live? If East Germany was so great why did the communist government build a wall to keep people from leaving and shoot them (murder) if they tried crossing the border?

Didn't The Gulag Archipelago tell us enough about the greatness of that great Russian system?

Is America's air pollution worse that communist China's?
Image


Is China's pollution bad because they are communist, or is it because their government hasn't reined in fossil fuels or focused on "socialist" environmental regulations.

Humans tend to do well with competition. How else did we become the dominant species on the planet?

Opposable thumbs and big brains. And psychotropic drugs. Culture and Religion.

I wonder how people felt waiting in breadlines in the Soviet Union wondering if they could get a stale or moldy loaf to survive another week?

I wonder how people in the US felt waiting in breadlines during the Great Depression.

Honestly, if your child required major surgery or cutting edge medical treatment would you do anything you could to get them into a Cuban hospital for care? Or would you settle for Johns Hopkins, the Mayo Clinic or the Cleveland Clinic?


I am currently unable to afford health insurance, so as great as Mayo or John Hopkins may be, I would much prefer a system where I would still have access to medical care despite my current poverty.

Net neutrality in Cuba? Good luck getting online at all let alone settling down to stream your music or Netflix.

Net Neutrality in America is about to be a thing of the past. And there are large regions of rural America where getting online at all is barely possible, let alone streaming services. Really a minor problem, if it weren't nigh-impossible to get a job in the US these days without Internet access.

....

Might as well ask how many strawmen can dance on the head of a pin. Your list of rhetorical questions with obvious answers is not an argument. All these countries that you list are more totalitarian than communist. Aside from conflating communism and socialism, you ignore every "western" country that has adopted socialist policies in many areas. I'm not sure a reasonable discussion can be had if all that is brought to the table is a list of communist failures. I'm not going to pointlessly list all the failings of capitalism through its history, including things like privatized fucking police forces such as The Pinkertons, or the countless horrors visited upon groups and individuals in the name of profit.

Can we talk about socialism and capitalism like intelligent adults, or are we confined to trading horror stories that resulted under these systems?
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Re: The Socialist Response

Postby DrEvil » Fri Jan 12, 2018 8:18 pm

I have to say I vastly prefer the Nordic model of social democracy to any pure form of socialism or capitalism. Both of those tend to end up as authoritarianism.

The NM takes the best of both worlds and applies it towards helping as many as possible live a decent life. Capitalism in service to the people as opposed to capitalism for its own sake.

Some of the things that make that possible are:
- Strong unions and collective bargaining.
- Strong safety net for those who fall outside the norm.
- Free healthcare.
- Free education.
- Subsidized childcare.
- Government ownership of important industries (telecom, energy, infrastructure etc.).

So basically all the things the republicans (and to a degree the democrats) have spent the last 30 years dismantling and/or demonizing.
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Re: The Socialist Response

Postby Elvis » Fri Jan 12, 2018 8:26 pm

DrEvil wrote:- Strong unions and collective bargaining.
- Strong safety net for those who fall outside the norm.
- Free healthcare.
- Free education.
- Subsidized childcare.
- Government ownership of important industries (telecom, energy, infrastructure etc.).

So basically all the things the republicans (and to a degree the democrats) have spent the last 30 years dismantling and/or demonizing.


Yes exactly!

And in the U.S., at least, the first objection is that someone will be denied the "right to make a profit." Followed by the myth that nothing gets done unless someone makes a profit from it.
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Re: The Socialist Response

Postby Burnt Hill » Fri Jan 12, 2018 8:59 pm

Right? I think so too. If the usa doesn't move towards these ideals then our democracy is finished...wait....shit...
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Re: The Socialist Response

Postby American Dream » Sat Jan 13, 2018 11:21 am

https://www.allianceofmesocialists.org/ ... ocialists/


Solidarity with the popular protests in Iran! Statement from Alliance of Middle Eastern Socialists

Jan 12, 2018

We, the Alliance of Middle Eastern Socialists, support the popular protests in Iran and call on progressives in the region and throughout the world to stand in solidarity with them as well. We believe it is an absolute necessity to build regional and global solidarity with anti-authoritarian struggles for democracy, social justice and equality, and to oppose patriarchy, racism, sectarian or homophobic discrimination and prejudice. We hope that the current protests in Iran will force the Iranian regime to withdraw its military and financial support for the murderous regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and to end its reactionary interventions in the region. We also hope that the efforts by some elements to inject anti-Arab chauvinism into the movement will be rejected in order to reach out to grassroots struggles across the region.

Solidarity with the popular protests in Iran!


Statement from Alliance of Middle Eastern Socialists

January 11, 2018

Since December 28, 2017, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been shaken by a wave of social protests unprecedented since the 2009 Green Movement. The protests first erupted in Mashhad, a holy city and Iran’s second largest city near the northeastern border. Protesters opposed the rise in prices of basic goods and increasing poverty, chanted “death to Rouhani”, “death to the dictator [Ayatollah Khamenei]” and called for an end to Iran’s military intervention in Syria and Lebanon. Protests quickly spread to more than 100 cities and villages throughout Iran, including the capital city of Tehran.

So far, at least 22 individuals have been killed (3 in detention) and the violent security forces have arrested more than 3700 persons including 1000 in the southern city of Ahvaz, and many women who have been actively involved in the protests. Iran’s authoritarian regime has also blocked access to Telegram and Instagram instant messaging, which are heavily used, and has limited access to the internet by creating interferences. At least 100 student activists, especially leftists and progressives, have been arrested and some have been released. Security forces have surrounded and in some cases invaded university campuses. Other students and labor activists are being hunted and kidnapped from their homes and dorms. Those captured may well face torture.

The Iranian regime, similar to other authoritarian regimes of the region, has accused the protesters of being part of an international conspiracy led by the USA, Saudi Arabia and Israel.

The protests are rooted in socio-economic problems, notably poverty, unemployment, and political repression, lack of democratic freedoms such as freedom of speech and assembly. Furthermore, discrimination against women and national and religious minorities is intensifying opposition in an ethnically diverse population that has an 87% literacy rate and is connected to the world through the internet. 40% of the population lives under the relative poverty line and 90% of Iran’s workers are contract workers without any rights and benefits. The minimum wage of $230 per month, which is one fifth of what is needed to support a family of four, is not even enforced. Many Subsidies for basic food items and essential services were abolished between 2010 and 2014, during the presidencies of Mahmoud Ahamadinejad and Hassan Rouhani. At the same time the prices of basic foodstuffs are exploding. The share of healthcare in the budget has been slashed. Energy prices are going up. All this, combined with rising general inflation (12% according to the regime and 40% in fact) is a new blow to the purchasing power of workers and the poorest segments of society.

At the same time, billions of dollars in the budget are going to institutions/foundations related to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). These non-accountable and tax-exempt foundations are among the largest holding companies in the Middle East. These foundations or “parastatal institutions” are in fact run by the state and led by the dignitaries of the regime and the leadership of the IRGC, Iran’s de facto military. They hold more than 80% of the Iranian economy. Furthermore, In 2103, the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, controlled about 95 billion dollars through the Setad (“Setad ejraiye hazrate emam” or “Seat for the execution of the orders of the Imam”). It has shares in virtually every sector of the country’s economy, from finance to oil, real estate and telecommunications.

Large portions of the profits which the state/IRGC extract from the Iranian/Middle Eastern labor force are spent on direct and indirect military intervention and ideological propaganda in the region as well as funding security/police/basij forces inside the country.

The latests protests have actually been preceded by over a year of almost daily actions and strikes by workers against non-payment of wages and terrible working conditions, protests and strikes by impoverished retirees, teachers, nurses as well as those who have lost their meager savings in bankrupt banks and financial institutions. Many political prisoners, including Reza Shahabi, a labor leader, have been on hunger strike off and on for several years.

Two statement by independent labor organizations have declared their support for the most recent popular protests. These statements have been issued by the Tehran Bus Workers Union and the Haft Tapeh Sugarcane Workers Union, as well as Five other independent labor organizations (Free union of Iranian workers, Association of Electrical and Metal Workers of Kermanshah, Association of Painters of Alborz Province, Labor Defenders’ Center, Committee for the Pursuit of the Establishment of Labor Organizations). We support their views which are summed up in the following passage:

“We, together with the toiling masses of Iran, shout something that should be clear: Our demands for an end to poverty and misery should be realized; all oppression and prisons should end; all political prisoners should be freed and predators of social wealth and those responsible for oppression should be prosecuted and tried, no matter what position they hold; the wealth stolen from people by financial institutions should be given back; the minimum wage of workers and employees of both public and private sectors be increased fivefold and the massive income of government authorities be slashed; the right of workers to form independent trade unions and civil organization and their unconditional freedom of speech and press and freedom of political parties is to be guaranteed and the demands of millions of Iranian masses be realized.”

Most protesters have raised slogans against all factions of the authoritarian regime, whether the so-called “reformists” or the hardliners, while calling for democracy, social justice and equality symbolized by the slogan “Bread, Work and Freedom.” Although the wave of street protests has receded after two weeks under the pressure of state repression, the struggle has now turned toward labor strikes and other industrial actions. Many women’s rights activists, teachers, families of political prisoners, various well-known intellectuals and artists are also publicly defending the protests. Families of political prisoners have been protesting outside the Evin prison in Tehran and other prisons to demand their release.

Similar to the uprisings and popular protests in the region of Middle East and North Africa since 2010-2011, these protests are a response to both economic impoverishment and political and social repression. They have the added feature of opposing the military interventions of the Iranian regime in other countries of the region, especially Syria, symbolized by the slogan “Leave Syria Alone, Pay Attention to Us”.

The Islamic Republic of Iran cannot be reformed. Since 1979 when the Iranian revolution quickly transformed into a counter-revolution, Iranian youth, women and workers have been subjected to a capitalist, reactionary and theocratic regime that represses, tortures and physically and systematically eliminates its opponents.

This is why we, the Alliance of Middle Eastern Socialists, support the popular protests in Iran and call on progressives in the region and throughout the world to stand in solidarity with them as well. We believe it is an absolute necessity to build regional and global solidarity with anti-authoritarian struggles for democracy, social justice and equality, and to oppose patriarchy, racism, sectarian or homophobic discrimination and prejudice. We hope that the current protests in Iran will force the Iranian regime to withdraw its military and financial support for the murderous regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and to end its reactionary interventions in the region. We also hope that the efforts by some elements to inject anti-Arab chauvinism into the movement will be rejected in order to reach out to grassroots struggles across the region.

We oppose all foreign imperialist interventions and demand an end to the sanctions against Iran, which affect firstly and mostly the popular classes of the country.

We demand the release of all protesters, trade-unionists and other political prisoners.

Solidarity with the popular protests in Iran for democracy, social justice, and secularism!

Solidarity with our comrades!

No to Capitalism. No to Patriarchy! No to Racism! No to Sectarianism! Yes to the unity of the popular classes!

Our destinies and our emancipation are linked!
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Re: The Socialist Response

Postby DrEvil » Sat Jan 13, 2018 1:21 pm

Elvis » Sat Jan 13, 2018 2:26 am wrote:
DrEvil wrote:- Strong unions and collective bargaining.
- Strong safety net for those who fall outside the norm.
- Free healthcare.
- Free education.
- Subsidized childcare.
- Government ownership of important industries (telecom, energy, infrastructure etc.).

So basically all the things the republicans (and to a degree the democrats) have spent the last 30 years dismantling and/or demonizing.


Yes exactly!

And in the U.S., at least, the first objection is that someone will be denied the "right to make a profit." Followed by the myth that nothing gets done unless someone makes a profit from it.


Those two points are some of the most frequent complaints we hear from the free market zealots over here too, and of course they're complete horseshit. Doing business is just as easy here as in the US and with the same productivity levels.

We have a free market economy just like the US, but with all the stuff I listed on top of that to temper the worst excesses.
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Re: The Socialist Response

Postby American Dream » Thu Jan 25, 2018 12:31 pm

We republish here a commentary by Roger Silverman in London, Britain:


ON THE BRINK

REVIEWING WORLD PERSPECTIVES: AN INTRODUCTION


A NEW ERA

All we can say with certainty is that a new era has started, although its character and outcome are not yet clear. After decades of relative stagnation, history is catching up with a vengeance. Marx once quoted a reference from Shakespeare, to liken history to the mole of revolution which burrows deep for decades before unexpectedly poking its nose through and breaking the surface of the earth (“well burrowed, old mole!“). Subterranean processes develop over decades before unexpectedly erupting in sudden crisis. What are the underlying historic tensions that have now blasted to the surface?

1) The end of the tripartite division of the world into a stable equilibrium of separate mutually balanced sectors, such as evolved in the post-war period between the poles of the US and USSR. The world is sucked ever more rapidly into a common vortex of crisis and horror.

2) The end of the “American century”. Despite the premature jubilation of 1991, when their ideologues were crowing triumphantly about “the end of history”, we are witnessing the beginning of the end of the postwar ascendancy of US capitalism, its unremitting relative decline. The supremacy of the dollar, which had enjoyed a booming recovery from the Vietnam war and the shocks of the 1970s, is now once again in question. World capitalism is thrown into crisis by the falling rate of profit, a malaise from which there has been no remission in the decade after the Great Recession of 2008. There is a massive surplus of capital, a huge fluid ballast swilling around in search of a profitable niche. Following the end of the 25-year postwar upswing in 1974, it found temporary expedients in a grotesque rise in arms expenditure, then the dot.com bubble, a flood of economically senseless privatisations stripping the state bare, then finally a further descent into an orgy of rampant and increasingly complex speculative gambling, ending in a gigantic crash prompting massive redistribution of wealth to the super-rich and ushering in a prolonged recession. Now outlets are becoming exhausted. This has always in the past heralded slumps and wars. The decline of US imperialism has aggravated tensions and brought to imminent crisis long-running pressure points throughout the world, from Syria and the Middle East to the Korean peninsula.

3) The collapse of the USSR and its satellites. The downfall of these states, for all their monstrous brutality, corruption and stagnation, still dealt yet another mortal blow to the morale of the labour movement; while the removal of an alternative power bloc to imperialism, which had allowed a certain scope to play off rival power blocs, meant a material defeat for resistance movements against imperialism and a closure of radical populist options to governments in the former colonial world. All that is left is the wreckage of the Soviet legacy and the survival of a few historically anomalous bizarre relics.

4) The world is threatened as never before by environmental catastrophe. The consequences of climate change and the depletion of natural resources constitute an existential threat to human society; a threat which can be resolved only under a socialist plan which can alone safeguard the environment and protect human survival. Capitalism doesn’t just pose a looming threat of imminent human annihilation; its legacy of environmental despoliation has already precipitated unprecedented turmoil: a succession of environmental disasters, local wars and civil wars, natural devastation, mass migration, an unprecedented refugee crisis, and major wars for the control of diminishing oil and water reserves. According to a report by the UNHCR, there are currently 65.3 million people who have been forced from their homes, including nearly 21.3 million refugees, over half of whom are under the age of 18.

The threat of environmental collapse has also tended to undermine the appeal of socialist ideas. Among the challenges we face is a mission to restore confidence in the ability of the working class to harness science, industry and technology to the cause of saving humanity. And yet with the development of 3D printing, robots, renewable energy, synthetic meat, electric cars, energy efficiency, etc., society today has within its reach unlimited scientific potential to create a world of peace and plenty.

5) Albeit a secondary and minor complication*, mention should also be made of the rise of terrorism and religious fundamentalism. For all the hysteria whipped up against it, the phenomenon of Islamic terrorism and similar manifestations actually represent little more than a symbolic gesture of impotent defiance against decades of murderous imperialist plunder. And yet this phenomenon suits the ruling class perfectly, enabling it to promote chauvinism, xenophobia and racism and divert attention from the real causes of the crisis in society.

6) The decline of industry in the old metropolitan countries. Europe and the USA represent a dying power, increasingly peripheral to historical progress. The new technology created the conditions for an era of globalisation, in which the old industrial proletariat was fragmented if not decimated in most of the former strongholds of industry. This led to an erosion of the material gains of the postwar era: deep cuts in wages, welfare and the “social wage”. Trade union cohesion was weakened, and along with it the socialist traditions that had taken root in the labour movement. In Britain especially, the old concentrations of the proletariat have been liquidated in the new era of insecurity, deindustrialisation, the gig economy and zero-hour contracts.

Faith in a mission to assume power and reorganise society comes more naturally to steel workers, miners and manufacturing workers, housed in industrial communities and concentrated on assembly lines with their hands gripping the levers of production, than to temporary packagers, couriers or sales clerks. For the moment, the working class remains relatively dislocated and its combativity accordingly weakened. However, these super-exploited workers too are painfully learning the lessons of organisation and struggle.

7) For the first time in history, the working class constitutes an overall majority of the world population. On a global scale there has been a colossal and unprecedented growth of the proletariat. It has spread with meteoric speed to every corner of formerly peripheral outlying continents. Within the old metropolitan societies too, the working class now encompasses strata considered in previous decades privileged members of the middle-class. Exploited and unionised, teachers and hospital doctors for instance are now among the most combative of organised workers.

8 ) Above all, women have taken their places in the forefront of industry and now constitute a majority of the working class worldwide. Still condemned to continuing dual exploitation as domestic slaves and child-minders, women throughout the world are now also among the most highly organised and militant of production-line workers.

9) The meteoric rise of China on the basis of a bureaucratically managed economy. China’s unprecedented growth was made possible by a unique combination of factors: a revolution that had swept aside landlordism and released almost inexhaustible labour reserves; globalisation, which created the material basis through exports and the new technology to facilitate enormous industrial investment; and strictly administered state planning. The result is a society resembling a projection of Russia’s New Economic Policy on to a massively higher plane: “state capitalism” in its original sense. Ultimately the contradiction of Stalinist bureaucratic state control and a rapidly growing capitalist class must eventually be resolved one way or the other in future explosive upheavals. The impressive growth of the proletariat and the consequent rise in labour combativity (a crucial new element that has been hardly even noticed by the traditional left) represent potentially the most historically decisive factor in the world situation. Now a predominantly urban society, China now has nearly 200 million industrial workers – more than all the G7 countries put together. On a much grander scale, China today resembles Russia in the period from the 1890s to 1905. A generation of peasants find themselves uprooted from the level of the feudal wooden plough and transplanted into the most sophisticated super-technological centres of industry, with correspondingly revolutionary effects on their consciousness and combativity.

Just as the English proletariat created the conditions for the First International, the German the Second, and the Russian the Third, so the Chinese today are busily and silently creating the foundations for the new international – a global force organising and mobilising a working class which has for the first time in history become a majority of the world population.



* – Oaklandsocialist comments: We are not so sure that it is correct to label the rise of terrorism and religious fundamentalism “a secondary and minor complication.” On the one hand, for example, the Christian religious fundamentalists were absolutely central to the election of Donald Trump and they remain as his core base. His recent decision to move the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem was made to please that base. On the other hand, religious fundamentalism has been the main factor in driving back the movement in the mainly Muslim world. Islamic fundamentalism is also a main selling point for the racist, chauvinist right wing parties in Europe. Religious fundamentalism and terrorism have played an important role in the period of reaction, sectarianism and division which we have been experiencing recently but which may now be coming to a close.


More at: https://oaklandsocialist.com/2018/01/25/on-the-brink/
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Re: The Socialist Response

Postby Karmamatterz » Thu Jan 25, 2018 1:04 pm

The world is threatened as never before by environmental catastrophe.


Nothing happened here, just move along and ignore the aftermath. Nothing to see from the grand USSR.

Image

Image

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https://thediplomat.com/2014/10/how-the ... -disaster/
According to the United Nations Environment Programme, over 60 million people live around the Aral Sea basin. As the sea diminished in size beginning in the 1960s, the economic activity spurred by the Soviet irrigation efforts encouraged drastic population growth in the Aral Sea basin. The lake’s swift disappearance has left the region, particularly in the southern part of the basin, devastated. In addition to the negative economic outcomes, the receding sea has created a major public health hazard, leaving huge plains that were once isolated and used for biological weapons testing, industrial projects, and dumping grounds for pesticides and fertilizer (among other purposes) exposed to the air and the wind. Vozrozhdeniye Island, an island in the middle of the Aral Sea, was a Soviet biological weapons testing site for almost 40 years.

Image

https://socialist-alliance.org/alliance ... was-ussr-0
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Re: The Socialist Response

Postby American Dream » Thu Jan 25, 2018 2:08 pm

Never mind that the Stalinoid/tankie types are increasingly likely to be found in bed with the worst sort of reactionary losers these days!

Reactionaries of most any stripe love to strawman the excesses of Mao, Stalin et al. as a way of stopping thought about today's Socialism, which as I know it represents many libertarian tendencies. The authoritarians are mostly in their own parallel universe and as far as I am concerned, they can stay there.

Such stupid shit is not worth my time...
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Re: The Socialist Response

Postby Karmamatterz » Thu Jan 25, 2018 9:35 pm

Never mind that the Stalinoid/tankie types are increasingly likely to be found in bed with the worst sort of reactionary losers these days!

Reactionaries of most any stripe love to strawman the excesses of Mao, Stalin et al. as a way of stopping thought about today's Socialism, which as I know it represents many libertarian tendencies. The authoritarians are mostly in their own parallel universe and as far as I am concerned, they can stay there.

Such stupid shit is not worth my time...


Aaaaahhh yes, resort to name calling when someone calls you out on extremism. If the copy/pasta was intellectually honest it wouldn't branded capitalism as the driving economic model behind all environmental catastrophes. If there was even as shred of balance to the copy/pasta one could clearly demonstrate that all economic models have contributed to pollution and wrecking swaths of the Earth's ecosystems. Since your default tactic is one of extremism it fits that an extremist response is necessary. If one were honest they could find positives about both socialism and capitalism. Anarchy....hmmmm....doubtful.

Its the constant drumbeat with zero balance or discussion that stop rational thought and debate about governance and economies. You don't know jack shit about me, but you label me as a reactionary. LOL. Nice try AD. I'm not extremist, but I will gladly call out any extremist who claims to know it all and has all the answers to the salvation, freedom and joy of what it means to be human and living in a civilized society.

How about we add some rainbows and unicorns to the grand experiment of the USSR, just for the sake of reinforcing a bit of extremism? Does that make it better to excuse the "excesses?" I'm sure the deformed child and parents of the kid depicted in the horrifying photo would be have their hearts swell to know it was just merely an "excess."

Image

Stalin was long dead before Chernobyl built, but we could dredge up plenty of data that tells of the genocide via starvation of millions during the Holodomor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_fa ... E2%80%9333

Could one point to the Great Depression and the resulting impact that capitalism had? Sure, but how many Americans starved to death? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2765209/
The delightful Soviets deliberately starved millions, to death. I'm not making ANY excuses for what the U.S. government AND military industrial complex has done. I am pointing out that extremist rants about capitalism need to be met with extremist examples of your unicorn socialist dream.

If you want a honest conversation that doesn't shut people down then be honest and don't revert to the default of extremism. There is no doubt that millions of human live fulfilling happy lives with both socialism and capitalism. Why is it so hard to see that balance and middle ground is really what works best? If you want to continue the name calling then bring it. I'll refrain for now, but next time you blow your dog whistle calling me a reactionary I won't refrain. Get real dude. If I were a reactionary I sure as f*ck would not bother reading or posting on RI.

Have a nice day.
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Karmamatterz
 
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Re: The Socialist Response

Postby mentalgongfu2 » Fri Jan 26, 2018 5:50 am

Karma, is there a reason you ignored my response above? If you want balance and discussion, there is some to be had in this thread.

Do I have to post random pictures of the consequences of rampant capitalism to get your attention, or can we actually have a conversation away from the extremes?

Image
"When I'm done ranting about elite power that rules the planet under a totalitarian government that uses the media in order to keep people stupid, my throat gets parched. That's why I drink Orange Drink!"
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