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It’s Sir Keir

As I predicted on here the marginally right wing controlled National Executive Committee of the Labour Party would elect Sir Starmers choice of General Secretary, the most senior office in the Party, the Blairite lickspittle under Blair and utterly anti democratic, anti grass roots David Evans who was one of Blair's generals and a total gangster was elected.


What with this final peice in Sir Knights Blairite jigsaw, including hopeless duds like Liz 4.5% Kendal and rent a gob self publicist Jess Philips in the Shadow Cabinet, along with right wingers who backed Blair to the hilt in genocidal murder of 500,000 Iraqis and the subsequent evolvement of mentalist sects including ISIS.
That should be enough for @Smurf[ to rejoin the Peoples Party. He better hurray as the expelled from the Party following breaking its rules, assistant War criminal in Chief Alistair Campbell will be Sir Knight of the Realms next invitee back to top up his Blairite empire.

BIG G

All about making Labour electable. I'd rather have a Jeremy Corbyn than Boris Johnson. I'd rather have a Jeremy Corbyn than Theresa May. But on both Jeremy failed. FFS Boris Johnson beat him. Time to move on. Keir Starmer might not have the policies and politics of Jeremy Corbyn. However, Jeremy lost. Twice. Sadly it seems many on the left would prefer Boris Johnson over Keir Starmer.

I hope for a UK Government that's not Tory.

And I hope Scotland leaves the shit show ASAP.
 
Sadly it seems many on the left would prefer Boris Johnson over Keir Starmer.

That is nonsense repeated by some other seperatists on here. It always tickles me when Nationalists show concern for the Labour Party. I can only put it down to constructive critisism of their own party of choice usually being nine below zero.


Ironically Alan Woods accuses the Tories of doing the lie, repeat, lie shit sticks, in this splendid article today about the real gangsters. Ironically cannae see any Nat or yourself Kenny disagreeing with very much of it, if anything at all.


BIG G
 
Swing voters is that like, throw all the candidates into a ring and pick one out blindfolded?
Naw
 
All about making Labour electable. I'd rather have a Jeremy Corbyn than Boris Johnson. I'd rather have a Jeremy Corbyn than Theresa May. But on both Jeremy failed. FFS Boris Johnson beat him. Time to move on. Keir Starmer might not have the policies and politics of Jeremy Corbyn. However, Jeremy lost. Twice. Sadly it seems many on the left would prefer Boris Johnson over Keir Starmer.

I hope for a UK Government that's not Tory.

And I hope Scotland leaves the shit show ASAP.
A very sensible post. Dont think many can argue anything you posted.
 
That is nonsense repeated by some other seperatists on here. It always tickles me when Nationalists show concern for the Labour Party. I can only put it down to constructive critisism of their own party of choice usually being nine below zero.


Ironically Alan Woods accuses the Tories of doing the lie, repeat, lie shit sticks, in this splendid article today about the real gangsters. Ironically cannae see any Nat or yourself Kenny disagreeing with very much of it, if anything at all.


BIG G
Not sure what your definition of a separatist is but I'm certainly someone who now, reluctantly, supports independence. And the reason for that is that Labour has completely failed to get its shit together and see off the most incompetent, bigoted and heartless government in our times.
 
Not sure what your definition of a separatist is but I'm certainly someone who now, reluctantly, supports independence. And the reason for that is that Labour has completely failed to get its shit together and see off the most incompetent, bigoted and heartless government in our times.

For your good self Rocky and any other reluctant supporters of Independence. Written a few months after the 2014 Referendum result. I explained my reasons for not voting Yes prior to it on here. That still stands. A long read, however covers importantly, The National Question, Nato, the Pound and her Majesty in an Independent Scotland.


BIG G
 
This isnae meant tae be an antagonistic question but what countries / states have democratically voted in a Marxist govt and which Marxist ruled country/state would you deem a success?
 
This isnae meant tae be an antagonistic question but what countries / states have democratically voted in a Marxist govt and which Marxist ruled country/state would you deem a success?

The next one. It's bound to work this time.
 
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About the only political broadcast I can stand at the moment, is George Galloway's Mother of All Talk Shows. He accurately describes Starmer as a block of wood. In fact I would argue a block of wood has more personality.
 
This isnae meant tae be an antagonistic question but what countries / states have democratically voted in a Marxist govt and which Marxist ruled country/state would you deem a success?
I'm not aware of any current Marxist regimes, but there are examples where a planned economy has generated huge economic transformations of society. If you take the example of Russia, a backward rural country was transformed into one of the most powerful countries in the world. However, politically and socially it has been a basket case since about 1920, up to and including the present day! Neither has it been Marxist since about 1920....
Cuba isn't Marxist either, but its population has benefited immensely from a planned economy.

There you go they don't teach you that in school, no in ma school anyway!
 
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Trotsky said in Permanent Revolution Results and Prospects that unless the Revolution spread world wide it was doomed to failure and so it proved.Russia was left isolated,the German,Italian,and Hungarian revolutions went down to defeat,the pre revolutionary movement in Britain similarly, and so Russia tried to hold on to what it had gained in 1917,but it was a lost cause,and the Counter Revolution came when Stalin took power in and around 1928.
 
The next one. It's bound to work this time.

Jo Grimond, prepare for power, Sir David Steel, go back to your constituencies and prepare for power, meanwhile I will turn a blind eye to big Cyril shagging young boys, Jo Swinton, I was up to my neck in Tory/Liberal hammering workers Coalition, I'm your next Prime Minister, the new fop Davey.......you have a better chance of a Marxist Government in Britain than your beloved Lib Dems coming to power.

Comradely

BIG G
 
This isnae meant tae be an antagonistic question but what countries / states have democratically voted in a Marxist govt and which Marxist ruled country/state would you deem a success?

Tony, click on frequently asked questions amigo. May answer some of your questions.


BIG G
 
Keir Starmer.Like being savaged by a dead goat.
 
I asked a question in post 167 and by 174 only Jock3 has given me a partial answer. I'll ask our well read politicos again, which country or state has democratically voted in a Marxist govt and which Marxist ruled country or state, past or present would be deemed a success
 
none.
 
you don't get to a marxist society by voting it in you get to it by overthrowing capitalism.
 
socialism can no more co exist with capitalism than ice coexist on a fire.
 
For your good self Rocky and any other reluctant supporters of Independence. Written a few months after the 2014 Referendum result. I explained my reasons for not voting Yes prior to it on here. That still stands. A long read, however covers importantly, The National Question, Nato, the Pound and her Majesty in an Independent Scotland.


BIG G
I agree with some of this G but given the bits you've highlighted can I ask you a question. Now, I agree that the SNP position on these was terrible, part of a desire to promise change and no change at the same time. But do you think it more or less likely that Scotland comes out of Nato or that the UK does so? Do you think it more or less likely that Scotland becomes a republic inside or outside of the UK? See I had this bizarre argument with a soft left labour guy in 2014 and he said the driving issue in all votes for him was being anti-nuclear, and then said he was No, a ridiculous position I'm sure you'll agree. So while I too put class interest above national, I also think that there is a better opportunity to pursue the interests of the working class in an independent Scotland than as part of this moribund basket case that we're tied to.
 
I agree with some of this G but given the bits you've highlighted can I ask you a question. Now, I agree that the SNP position on these was terrible, part of a desire to promise change and no change at the same time. But do you think it more or less likely that Scotland comes out of Nato or that the UK does so? Do you think it more or less likely that Scotland becomes a republic inside or outside of the UK? See I had this bizarre argument with a soft left labour guy in 2014 and he said the driving issue in all votes for him was being anti-nuclear, and then said he was No, a ridiculous position I'm sure you'll agree. So while I too put class interest above national, I also think that there is a better opportunity to pursue the interests of the working class in an independent Scotland than as part of this moribund basket case that we're tied to.

I quite agree.

But isn't it so for those who take a Marxist position that (crudely put) it rests on the "international", whereby the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot transpire without basically the abolition of borders/nation states altogether? And in fact it's often claimed that this was at least one of the reasons that "a true Marxist society" has never been achieved; eg as it spread out of Russia in the early part of the century, it basically failed to spread far enough (or was curtailed by force; either way, outcome the same), and thus failed? This is at least what was put to me by the "Marxists for No" (or whatever they called themselves) whom I spoke to during the Indy campaign in 2014 many times (in George Square), as a primary reason to resist the move to an independent Scottish state.

As I say, though, I absolutely 100% agree that "there is a better opportunity to pursue the interests of the working class in an independent Scotland than as part of this moribund basket case that we're tied to", but then I'm not a Marxist. Smaller, more cohesive polities, just seem to me to be the best chance; but isn't that contrary to the fundaments of the theory? Or is it just another step in the teleological progress of history?

For clarity, I don't know what "ism" I am, really. Which is because I personally think that the effect of digital Pandora's Box on the world is rapidly outstripping 20th century modes of political thought, and I'm more than happy to freely acknowledge that I'm unsure of what the best, most effective way forward for those of us with more than a passing interest in a (more) just society.

The new digital world poses a problem for capitalism as much as Marxism (as I've alluded to elsewhere, data becoming both commodity and currency kind of begs questions of how the labour theory of value is to be applied). Capitalism, though, the great adaptor, seems to be recasting the internet around forms of rent (I'm sorry that's so clumsily expressed, but nevertheless). Right now, I see digitisation as more likely to mark an evolution of capitalism into something possibly worse – we can already see bizarre new forms like China's dynamic capitalism fused with a kind of hi-tech Stalinism. Who had it right (in my reading, anyway) was a conservative: the sociologist Daniel Bell, who suggested that Marx was correct in his analysis from the 1700s to the 1970s, but failed to account for the "post-industrial society" which would be dominated by the spread of a "knowledge class, the change from goods to services and the [changing] role of women". However, "we should expect new premises and new powers, new constraints and new questions, with the difference that these are now on a scale that had never been previously imagined in world history". I guess I'm just deeply sceptical that this will result in the stateless utopia of the Paris Manuscripts. (Murray Bookchin has also speculated on how well the Marxist paradigm works in conditions of abundance as opposed to scarcity. Anyway, I digress.)

Here I am, essentially Joe Soap, attempting to grapple with all this with my own average intellect, such as it is. However, I must say that I'm truly heartsick of the intellectual condescension that comes out of the Marxist left. There really is no one more likely than Marxists (in my own limited experience) to for example condemn you as a 'rambling blether' or 'unscientific' – whatever that means in this context – and patronise you with the assumption that you've never read a book in your life, and hence that your disagreement – or even your honest queries and speculations – are the result of pure ignorance. I'm trying to understand, so I'm asking questions, and presenting my own thoughts. If ordinary people can't be persuaded of a position, or even have an intelligent, speculative conversation between each other about that position, without being simply and high-handedly referred upstairs to basically the "professor class", then how far is that position ever likely to get in actual reality? Why must honest questions be a priori presumed to be hostile, rather than an invitation to dialogue? Really gets me down sometimes – like, it really, really does.

I can honestly say, and with a genuine and deep sadness, that I'm glad to be rotating out of the orbit of the university this year (into a future as yet unknown), because alas that's where I've felt it the most. It's just safer to keep schtum there if you are "off the orthodox reservation" in even the smallest ways – EGB really was right about that. I hoped for better here, though.
 
I quite agree.

But isn't it so for those who take a Marxist position that (crudely put) it rests on the "international", whereby the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot transpire without basically the abolition of borders/nation states altogether? And in fact it's often claimed that this was at least one of the reasons that "a true Marxist society" has never been achieved; eg as it spread out of Russia in the early part of the century, it basically failed to spread far enough (or was curtailed by force; either way, outcome the same), and thus failed? This is at least what was put to me by the "Marxists for No" (or whatever they called themselves) whom I spoke to during the Indy campaign in 2014 many times (in George Square), as a primary reason to resist the move to an independent Scottish state.

As I say, though, I absolutely 100% agree that "there is a better opportunity to pursue the interests of the working class in an independent Scotland than as part of this moribund basket case that we're tied to", but then I'm not a Marxist. Smaller, more cohesive polities, just seem to me to be the best chance; but isn't that contrary to the fundaments of the theory? Or is it just another step in the teleological progress of history?

For clarity, I don't know what "ism" I am, really. Which is because I personally think that the effect of digital Pandora's Box on the world is rapidly outstripping 20th century modes of political thought, and I'm more than happy to freely acknowledge that I'm unsure of what the best, most effective way forward for those of us with more than a passing interest in a (more) just society.

The new digital world poses a problem for capitalism as much as Marxism (as I've alluded to elsewhere, data becoming both commodity and currency kind of begs questions of how the labour theory of value is to be applied). Capitalism, though, the great adaptor, seems to be recasting the internet around forms of rent (I'm sorry that's so clumsily expressed, but nevertheless). Right now, I see digitisation as more likely to mark an evolution of capitalism into something possibly worse – we can already see bizarre new forms like China's dynamic capitalism fused with a kind of hi-tech Stalinism. Who had it right (in my reading, anyway) was a conservative: the sociologist Daniel Bell, who suggested that Marx was correct in his analysis from the 1700s to the 1970s, but failed to account for the "post-industrial society" which would be dominated by the spread of a "knowledge class, the change from goods to services and the [changing] role of women". However, "we should expect new premises and new powers, new constraints and new questions, with the difference that these are now on a scale that had never been previously imagined in world history". I guess I'm just deeply sceptical that this will result in the stateless utopia of the Paris Manuscripts. (Murray Bookchin has also speculated on how well the Marxist paradigm works in conditions of abundance as opposed to scarcity. Anyway, I digress.)

Here I am, essentially Joe Soap, attempting to grapple with all this with my own average intellect, such as it is. However, I must say that I'm truly heartsick of the intellectual condescension that comes out of the Marxist left. There really is no one more likely than Marxists (in my own limited experience) to for example condemn you as a 'rambling blether' or 'unscientific' – whatever that means in this context – and patronise you with the assumption that you've never read a book in your life, and hence that your disagreement – or even your honest queries and speculations – are the result of pure ignorance. I'm trying to understand, so I'm asking questions, and presenting my own thoughts. If ordinary people can't be persuaded of a position, or even have an intelligent, speculative conversation between each other about that position, without being simply and high-handedly referred upstairs to basically the "professor class", then how far is that position ever likely to get in actual reality? Why must honest questions be a priori presumed to be hostile, rather than an invitation to dialogue? Really gets me down sometimes – like, it really, really does.

I can honestly say, and with a genuine and deep sadness, that I'm glad to be rotating out of the orbit of the university this year (into a future as yet unknown), because alas that's where I've felt it the most. It's just safer to keep schtum there if you are "off the orthodox reservation" in even the smallest ways – EGB really was right about that. I hoped for better here, though.


No text speak.
:coffee1:
 
A few weeks ago a good friend of mine Neil Davidson died.Maybe you haven't heard of him,but he was one of the best Marxist thinkers ever to have come out of Scotland,he brought out several books and was a lecturer with the Open University Sociology dept.
He was the author of How Revolutionary Were the Bourgeois Revolutions? Holding Fast to an image of the Past, We Cannot Escape History, and Discovering the Scottish Revolution,for which he was awarded the Issac Deutscher Prize.
It was under his and other's influence within the SWP that they changed their position of being against Indy for Scotland to leading the call for Socialists to support it.He was one of the leading founders of the RIC or Radical Independence Campaign which did much to up the anti, for a working class support for indy which had been lacking in the SNP's 2014 Ref Campaign.
A few of us left the SWP in 2013 after a rape cover up; and Neil was prominent in those who left. In 2016 there was a RISE meeting held in the Assembly Rooms,which Cat Boyd, George Kerevan,and others attended in which he debated with Alan Amstrong another marxist in the city, the argument for Socialists to back the Leave campaign in the Euros.
Anyway right now I am reading his book,Nation States,Consciousness and Competition,in which he analyses the concept of the capitalist nation state.
Anyway can I recommend this book to anyone who wants to look into the extent to which nationalism can be a component of left wing politics and how nationalist ideology and consciousness are used to bind the subordinate classes to the nation whilst the state is wielded by capital as a means of conducting geopolitical competition.
 
I quite agree.

But isn't it so for those who take a Marxist position that (crudely put) it rests on the "international", whereby the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot transpire without basically the abolition of borders/nation states altogether? And in fact it's often claimed that this was at least one of the reasons that "a true Marxist society" has never been achieved; eg as it spread out of Russia in the early part of the century, it basically failed to spread far enough (or was curtailed by force; either way, outcome the same), and thus failed? This is at least what was put to me by the "Marxists for No" (or whatever they called themselves) whom I spoke to during the Indy campaign in 2014 many times (in George Square), as a primary reason to resist the move to an independent Scottish state.

As I say, though, I absolutely 100% agree that "there is a better opportunity to pursue the interests of the working class in an independent Scotland than as part of this moribund basket case that we're tied to", but then I'm not a Marxist. Smaller, more cohesive polities, just seem to me to be the best chance; but isn't that contrary to the fundaments of the theory? Or is it just another step in the teleological progress of history?

For clarity, I don't know what "ism" I am, really. Which is because I personally think that the effect of digital Pandora's Box on the world is rapidly outstripping 20th century modes of political thought, and I'm more than happy to freely acknowledge that I'm unsure of what the best, most effective way forward for those of us with more than a passing interest in a (more) just society.

The new digital world poses a problem for capitalism as much as Marxism (as I've alluded to elsewhere, data becoming both commodity and currency kind of begs questions of how the labour theory of value is to be applied). Capitalism, though, the great adaptor, seems to be recasting the internet around forms of rent (I'm sorry that's so clumsily expressed, but nevertheless). Right now, I see digitisation as more likely to mark an evolution of capitalism into something possibly worse – we can already see bizarre new forms like China's dynamic capitalism fused with a kind of hi-tech Stalinism. Who had it right (in my reading, anyway) was a conservative: the sociologist Daniel Bell, who suggested that Marx was correct in his analysis from the 1700s to the 1970s, but failed to account for the "post-industrial society" which would be dominated by the spread of a "knowledge class, the change from goods to services and the [changing] role of women". However, "we should expect new premises and new powers, new constraints and new questions, with the difference that these are now on a scale that had never been previously imagined in world history". I guess I'm just deeply sceptical that this will result in the stateless utopia of the Paris Manuscripts. (Murray Bookchin has also speculated on how well the Marxist paradigm works in conditions of abundance as opposed to scarcity. Anyway, I digress.)

Here I am, essentially Joe Soap, attempting to grapple with all this with my own average intellect, such as it is. However, I must say that I'm truly heartsick of the intellectual condescension that comes out of the Marxist left. There really is no one more likely than Marxists (in my own limited experience) to for example condemn you as a 'rambling blether' or 'unscientific' – whatever that means in this context – and patronise you with the assumption that you've never read a book in your life, and hence that your disagreement – or even your honest queries and speculations – are the result of pure ignorance. I'm trying to understand, so I'm asking questions, and presenting my own thoughts. If ordinary people can't be persuaded of a position, or even have an intelligent, speculative conversation between each other about that position, without being simply and high-handedly referred upstairs to basically the "professor class", then how far is that position ever likely to get in actual reality? Why must honest questions be a priori presumed to be hostile, rather than an invitation to dialogue? Really gets me down sometimes – like, it really, really does.

I can honestly say, and with a genuine and deep sadness, that I'm glad to be rotating out of the orbit of the university this year (into a future as yet unknown), because alas that's where I've felt it the most. It's just safer to keep schtum there if you are "off the orthodox reservation" in even the smallest ways – EGB really was right about that. I hoped for better here, though.

I'd vote for you Aggie, 7 paragraphs that were understandable is a decent effort, I fail dismally to do that in my Just Backs. :giggley:

Enjoy your rotation out the orbit.

A few weeks ago a good friend of mine Neil Davidson died.Maybe you haven't heard of him,but he was one of the best Marxist thinkers ever to have come out of Scotland,he brought out several books and was a lecturer with the Open University Sociology dept.
He was the author of How Revolutionary Were the Bourgeois Revolutions? Holding Fast to an image of the Past, We Cannot Escape History, and Discovering the Scottish Revolution,for which he was awarded the Issac Deutscher Prize.
It was under his and other's influence within the SWP that they changed their position of being against Indy for Scotland to leading the call for Socialists to support it.He was one of the leading founders of the RIC or Radical Independence Campaign which did much to up the anti, for a working class support for indy which had been lacking in the SNP's 2014 Ref Campaign.
A few of us left the SWP in 2013 after a rape cover up; and Neil was prominent in those who left. In 2016 there was a RISE meeting held in the Assembly Rooms,which Cat Boyd, George Kerevan,and others attended in which he debated with Alan Amstrong another marxist in the city, the argument for Socialists to back the Leave campaign in the Euros.
Anyway right now I am reading his book,Nation States,Consciousness and Competition,in which he analyses the concept of the capitalist nation state.
Anyway can I recommend this book to anyone who wants to look into the extent to which nationalism can be a component of left wing politics and how nationalist ideology and consciousness are used to bind the subordinate classes to the nation whilst the state is wielded by capital as a means of conducting geopolitical competition.

And another very good post by Moaty.
 
I asked a question in post 167 and by 174 only Jock3 has given me a partial answer. I'll ask our well read politicos again, which country or state has democratically voted in a Marxist govt and which Marxist ruled country or state, past or present would be deemed a success
None and none. Its not that surprising given the powerful forces aligned against even moderate economic change never mind radical change, but that's not a reason to chuck it all in and not bother trying
A few weeks ago a good friend of mine Neil Davidson died.Maybe you haven't heard of him,but he was one of the best Marxist thinkers ever to have come out of Scotland,he brought out several books and was a lecturer with the Open University Sociology dept.
He was the author of How Revolutionary Were the Bourgeois Revolutions? Holding Fast to an image of the Past, We Cannot Escape History, and Discovering the Scottish Revolution,for which he was awarded the Issac Deutscher Prize.
It was under his and other's influence within the SWP that they changed their position of being against Indy for Scotland to leading the call for Socialists to support it.He was one of the leading founders of the RIC or Radical Independence Campaign which did much to up the anti, for a working class support for indy which had been lacking in the SNP's 2014 Ref Campaign.
A few of us left the SWP in 2013 after a rape cover up; and Neil was prominent in those who left. In 2016 there was a RISE meeting held in the Assembly Rooms,which Cat Boyd, George Kerevan,and others attended in which he debated with Alan Amstrong another marxist in the city, the argument for Socialists to back the Leave campaign in the Euros.
Anyway right now I am reading his book,Nation States,Consciousness and Competition,in which he analyses the concept of the capitalist nation state.
Anyway can I recommend this book to anyone who wants to look into the extent to which nationalism can be a component of left wing politics and how nationalist ideology and consciousness are used to bind the subordinate classes to the nation whilst the state is wielded by capital as a means of conducting geopolitical competition.
i worked with Neil moat. His death is personally crushing but for the Scottish and indeed international left it’s a massive blow. His piece in the new left review just after Indy ref is the best thing written about it full stop in my view. The last ‘organic intellectual’ we had.
 
I agree with some of this G but given the bits you've highlighted can I ask you a question. Now, I agree that the SNP position on these was terrible, part of a desire to promise change and no change at the same time. But do you think it more or less likely that Scotland comes out of Nato or that the UK does so? Do you think it more or less likely that Scotland becomes a republic inside or outside of the UK? See I had this bizarre argument with a soft left labour guy in 2014 and he said the driving issue in all votes for him was being anti-nuclear, and then said he was No, a ridiculous position I'm sure you'll agree. So while I too put class interest above national, I also think that there is a better opportunity to pursue the interests of the working class in an independent Scotland than as part of this moribund basket case that we're tied to.

Amigo we have discussed this in the convivial and spendid environs of the Iona Bar, particularly after a Hibs win. Whìch was a definite bonus.
Do you really think that the SNP, whìch you correctly do not support, will placate Big Business in Scotland. In the run up to a second Referendum, there will be the same shite, from Big Business as some folk think that Banking institutions with Scotland in their name are good guys, illusional in my opinion. they will desert, Cripes that is what Capitalism is about ....God help us. The Sottish Government which to be fair to them are liberal and not denying it. I will support every single reform the Scottish Government, as I have said on here . There is zero guarantee that an Independent Scotland would even attempt your and my demands. Absolutely no chance my good amigo . Keep the Faith.

G you know me as a Labour Party Marxist however historical events like this in the US, posses other fundimental issues
BIG G
 
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Amigo we have discussed this in the convivial and spendid environs of the Iona Bar, particularly after a Hibs win. Whìch was a definite bonus.
Do you really think that the SNP, whìch you correctly do not support, will placate Big Business in Scotland. In the run up to a second Referendum, there will be the same shite, from Big Business as some folk think that Banking institutions with Scotland in their name are good guys, illusional in my opinion. they will desert, Cripes that is what Capitalism is about ....God help us. The Sottish Government which to be fair to them are liberal and not denying it. I will support every single reform the Scottish Government, as I have said on here . There is zero guarantee that an Independent Scotland would even attempt your and my demands. Absolutely no chance my good amigo . Keep the Faith.

G you know me as a Labour Party Marxist however historical events like this in the US, posses other fundimental issues
BIG G

Well fuck me, a triumvirate of good and understandable posts on this thread.
 
None and none. Its not that surprising given the powerful forces aligned against even moderate economic change never mind radical change, but that's not a reason to chuck it all in and not bother trying

i worked with Neil moat. His death is personally crushing but for the Scottish and indeed international left it’s a massive blow. His piece in the new left review just after Indy ref is the best thing written about it full stop in my view. The last ‘organic intellectual’ we had.

Can you link to that article, please, G? I’d like to read that.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Can you link to that article, please, G? I’d like to read that.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
About the only political broadcast I can stand at the moment, is George Galloway's Mother of All Talk Shows. He accurately describes Starmer as a block of wood. In fact I would argue a block of wood has more personality.

What's Gorgeous George proposing? The election of a Jeremy Corbyn type candidate? Oops tried that and got defeated by May and Johnson. The latter the worst election defeat in our lifetime. FFS, get real.
 
What's Gorgeous George proposing? The election of a Jeremy Corbyn type candidate? Oops tried that and got defeated by May and Johnson. The latter the worst election defeat in our lifetime. FFS, get real.

George Galloway is a weirdo. That cat stuff? I’m still (successfuly)blocking that from memory.
 
It's not obvious to me quite how the labour theory of value, for example, applies to the commodification of data by the tech oligopoly (which furthermore becomes both a commodity and a currency).
Could you explain a bit more why you think the labour theory of value doesn't apply in this instance? Also, currency (or money) is a commodity too, the universal commodity which enables all other commodities to be exchanged, according to Marx, is it not?
 
Jo Grimond, prepare for power, Sir David Steel, go back to your constituencies and prepare for power, meanwhile I will turn a blind eye to big Cyril shagging young boys, Jo Swinton, I was up to my neck in Tory/Liberal hammering workers Coalition, I'm your next Prime Minister, the new fop Davey.....you have a better chance of a Marxist Government in Britain than your beloved Lib Dems coming to power.

Comradely

BIG G

I'm not sure where this obsession with me being a Lib Dem came from or why it's so hard to shift. It's almost like you're trolling me in some obscure and unfathomable way.

I shall be voting for Sir Starmer and his bloodthirsty Blairites next time. I expect it feels good to have me back?
 
George Galloway is a weirdo. That cat stuff? I’m still (successfuly)blocking that from memory.
Ach. Stop purring away there and drink your milk.
George is not weird, he simply desires attention.
Now away and give him a stroke.....
 
Could you explain a bit more why you think the labour theory of value doesn't apply in this instance? Also, currency (or money) is a commodity too, the universal commodity which enables all other commodities to be exchanged, according to Marx, is it not?
Sure, again with the caveat I've previously made that I'm a layman not an economist, but put pretty simply: Doesn't data as the commodity it has now become have both use value and subjective value, but no labour value, as it were? ie human labour value that is "stolen" by those who own the means of production? I guess by that I'm trying to understand how any theory where value is predicated on a relationship to labour understood as essentially human be fit for purpose as that becomes ever more obviously less the case; as in, has this not shown that value can indeed become completely and utterly divorced from labour in any human context? So it shows ultimately that there is in fact no "law" that links the two?

I hope my query is adequately expressed there!
 
Another excellent article by Neil.
 
Now where's my old copy of Capitol?Ah yes, under my Hibs Quiz book.The Labour theory of value.I'll get back to you.
 
Sure, again with the caveat I've previously made that I'm a layman not an economist, but put pretty simply: Doesn't data as the commodity it has now become have both use value and subjective value, but no labour value, as it were? ie human labour value that is "stolen" by those who own the means of production? I guess by that I'm trying to understand how any theory where value is predicated on a relationship to labour understood as essentially human be fit for purpose as that becomes ever more obviously less the case; as in, has this not shown that value can indeed become completely and utterly divorced from labour in any human context? So it shows ultimately that there is in fact no "law" that links the two?

I hope my query is adequately expressed there!
But isn't all data gathered by humans (workers) and processed into useful forms by humans using machines designed, built and programmed by humans?

Is your query at heart to do with automation?Yes over time there might be less labour time embedded in products, and this might be a long term problem for capitalism as profits are derived from extraction of surplus value.

Not sure what you are getting at with your distinction between use value and subjective value. I know Marx distinguished between use value and exchange value but that doesn't seem to be what you are querying here. Is a better example of what you mean maybe a work of art which can sell for millions of pounds because someone likes it (subjective value) regardless of the labour time which went into making it or its 'usefulness'?

I'm not particularly stepping in to defend Marx by the way although I do find his economic analysis a very good way of understanding how capitalism works.
 
Another thing from history we shouldn't forget is, not long after the 1917 Revolution several nations sent armies to Russia to undermine the Bolshevik's achievements. This sadly included the UK, who despite the human carnage on the western front, politically sh*t themselves.

A previous comment stated Marxism is not achieved by the ballot box. That is because only a general strike, or similar, will effect the demise of Capitalism. As much as I support Jeremy Corbyn, in reality the tactics he represents are not left wing enough!

Over the past week I have been thinking maybe just maybe, then nahhh. Maybe what? Well the US is such a lash up of a country led by a basket case. There are people on the streets, what a chance to seize power and consign the ruling class to the dustbin of history? Just sayin...
 
Getting off Starmer a bit.I reckon the US is more likely to break out into a civil war right now than any insurrectionist movement.However I'd back our side,i.e.BLM side than alt right backed by Trump.Our side have more to fight for and I don't think Trump can rely on either Troops or Police.We'll see.
 
Getting off Starmer a bit.I reckon the US is more likely to break out into a civil war right now than any insurrectionist movement.However I'd back our side,i.e.BLM side than alt right backed by Trump.Our side have more to fight for and I don't think Trump can rely on either Troops or Police.We'll see.

I'd support the left ans their co workers, I reckon the fascists would win though, they have more guns, more ammo, better training and less brain cells.
 

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