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people who voted tory

Then don't make obfuscatory posts telling people that the best way to proceed is to scrap theory when you can't even be bothered to muster up the time to have the slightest acquaintance with it.
 
dialectician said:
Would you agree that a politics based on ethics is a politics of a pseudo-religious nature, wholly abstract in its assumptions and devoid of materialistic content?
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Ah ok, I do understand that, I think. But I'd turn it around a bit - I'd say that a politics not based on ethics is a dangerous thing. I'm not a Leninist - the nature of the means matters, it matters not only where you're trying to get to, but also how you plan to get there. Indeed the 'where' you get to is dependent on the means you use.
 
redsquirrel said:
I think it's symptomatic of the utter disengagement of some in the left from anything outside a small bubble.
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I think this is probably right, but I'd add that a hostile press can't help. Don't know what difference it made this time, but it must have made some. But I suspect it's not the partisan Murdoch press that did the most damage; rather it was the 'neutral' press such as the BBC, whose propaganda is more subtle and easier to miss.
 
littlebabyjesus said:
Ah ok, I do understand that, I think. But I'd turn it around a bit - I'd say that a politics not based on ethics is a dangerous thing. I'm not a Leninist - the nature of the means matters, it matters not only where you're trying to get to, but also how you plan to get there. Indeed the 'where' you get to is dependent on the means you use.
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Will respond to this tomorrow, need to go to bed.
 
frogwoman said:
I was very angry on Friday with the people who voted conservative. But this is just a knee jerk reaction tbh. As someone else posted on here, do we really write off a quarter/a third of the population as being cunts especially since labour is pretty much equally pro austerity? I was gonna ask what can 'we' do to 'win these people over' but then that seems massively patronising.

What do we do from here though? Is electoral politics a total waste of time? Anyone got any ideas?
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re-eduction camps for the genuines, salt mines for the ideological tories. Seems fair enough to me.
 
dialectician said:
Would you agree that a politics based on ethics is a politics of a pseudo-religious nature, wholly abstract in its assumptions and devoid of materialistic content?
Click to expand...

Yes - if by 'ethics' you mean the philosophical investigation into the subject rather than the day to day sense of right & wrong that exist in w/c communities - but equally, it wouldn't be my opening line if I was talking to a neighbour about resisting closures to local services. And that was the original point - don't bombard people with theory.

ETA - spelling corrected
 
Patteran said:
Yes - if by 'ethics' you mean the philosophical investigation into the subject rather than the day to day sense of right & wrong that exist in w/c communities - but equally, it wouldn't be my opening line if I was taking to a neighbour about resisting closures to local services. And that was the original point - don't bombard people with theory.
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Yeah. I agree, and I agree with CR's sentiment, too. Opposition to cuts has to be a moral one - it has to be supported by those who feel they are not affected directly, they need to feel a connection to those who are suffering, that they are affected.

Morality can be roughly defined as codes of behaviour for how to behave in a group where you don't just act out of a sense of narrow self-interest, but where your sense of self-interest includes the wellbeing of others, there is a wider sense of belonging. In that sense, imho, any politics outside the politics of greed has to be moral.
 
Ok then...Tory austerity will be overturned and lives will be saved by telling people about communist dialectics and discussing communist theory . Surprised nobody thought of that one before.:rolleyes:

This sort of proves what I've been saying about the traditional left bubble being a busted flush in many respects , and so many within it a waste of time engaging with. Communist and anarchist nirvanas are a fucking narcissistic luxury at this stage . What's on the line today is people giving up not just on politics but on life itself . The means to sustain a shred of a dignified existence being taken away from people . Alongside an agenda that continues to splinter and atomise communities to the point of extinction .

Fair play to those people who protested yesterday, but the fact is a million people protested and it didn't stop one single bomb falling on Iraq, and didn't save a single life . I'm also quite sure there's people taking solace from the previous resistance to the poll tax . But back then CCTV was much less ubiquitous, digital recognition unheard of . Kettling and preemptive arrests hadn't been invented . The surveillance state was a joke compared to now .
And now they're even talking about charging money to protestors to pay for policing .

It's also a sad fact they can kettle, arrest and douse with water cannon to their hearts content the usual suspects ...students and alternative types...and nobody cares . But could they really do that to a crowd of pensioners, nuns and people in wheelchairs, mums and toddlers ? Can they denounce those people as deranged Stalinists driven by an agenda of hate and envy ? Anyone looking at participatory democracy as a means of resistance has to be engaging with those very people on a daily basis . Not lefty wankers IMHO
 
Problem is, that's exactly what I thought in the two-million-people-shuffle against the war. I looked around at all these people who had never marched before, who didn't know quite what to do even, how to act on a march, and I thought 'they can't ignore this, this is different'.

But ignore it they did.
 
littlebabyjesus said:
Yeah. I agree, and I agree with CR's sentiment, too. Opposition to cuts has to be a moral one - it has to be supported by those who feel they are not affected directly, they need to feel a connection to those who are suffering, that they are affected.

Morality can be roughly defined as codes of behaviour for how to behave in a group where you don't just act out of a sense of narrow self-interest, but where your sense of self-interest includes the wellbeing of others, there is a wider sense of belonging. In that sense, imho, any politics outside the politics of greed has to be moral.
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Empathy & solidarity based on an understanding that we're all parts of, & entirely reliant upon, a giant interconnected human system - but as has been pointed out, it's difficult championing collectivism when we're targeted daily with the commodified mystification of the individual. 'Because you're worth it.' (that probably wouldn't be a great opening line to a neighbour, either).
 
littlebabyjesus said:
Problem is, that's exactly what I thought in the two-million-people-shuffle against the war. I looked around at all these people who had never marched before, who didn't know quite what to do even, how to act on a march, and I thought 'they can't ignore this, this is different'.

But ignore it they did.
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If those people had followed up the next day and the day after though..? As you say, a lot of people on those marches were new to it but eager to do something. They just didn't know what. People still don't for the most part. And as CR said whatever they could do it won't be the sort of insular, identity, theoretical stuff students and niche left party members do.

E2a: And I count myself as someone who doesn't know what to do, in case that sounded patronizing.
 
littlebabyjesus said:
Problem is, that's exactly what I thought in the two-million-people-shuffle against the war. I looked around at all these people who had never marched before, who didn't know quite what to do even, how to act on a march, and I thought 'they can't ignore this, this is different'.

But ignore it they did.
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And what's more set the example to future governments that the best approach is just to ignore it and they'll go home . And vote for you again if you peddle the same old shit you did last time .
 
Casually Red said:
And what's more set the example to future governments that the best approach is just to ignore it and they'll go home . And vote for you again if you peddle the same old shit you did last time .
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It knocks my optimism. Has done ever since.

I admire those who keep theirs. A friend of mine spent seven years in Pinochet's prisons. Even now, he remains optimistic. I try to think of that.
 
YouSir said:
If those people had followed up the next day and the day after though..? As you say, a lot of people on those marches were new to it but eager to do something. They just didn't know what. People still don't for the most part. And as CR said whatever they could do it won't be the sort of insular, identity, theoretical stuff students and niche left party members do.

E2a: And I count myself as someone who doesn't know what to do, in case that sounded patronizing.
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One has to blame the TUC for some of this, The March For The Alternative was exactly that, very diverse, but they didn't build on it.

oh, the blac bloc stuff on the day didn't help either.
 
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