PM Boris Johnson - monster thread for a monster twat

[ViolentPanda]

"Of course violence has to be dealt with, its purpose, its problems discussed and decided upon. Do you think those who benefit the most from this current state of affairs will simply give it all away? They maintain armies and police forces, use their wealth to divide and turn people against one another."

Could you expound on that? You feel violence has a place to play in the overthrow of the present system?

It's inescapable. You know this.

 

[Pickman's model]

Your either or is bollocks hung on a label.

yeh but i note you have already surrendered the point in post 233: "the ideas ... were taking shape"

 

[JimW]

EITHER liberalism existed and was a motivating - a driving - force behind enclosures and the slave trade. OR it didn't. and i await with great interest your proof that liberalism as a distinctive and recognisable ideology existed in the first half of the sixteenth century in england. when you say that "the ideas ... were taking shape" i am not filled with confidence in your ability to substantiate your claim.

Further, that enclosure began earlier or took a different course in France or Spain doesn't mean liberalism wasn't a driving force. In fact, because in Britain it was that driver capitalist formation happened earlier and.more thoroughly than the other two countries.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Fair enough, beheadings of the 1% ers? or would you prefer something more 'low key'

How terribly late 18th century.

Why behead them, when by their own capitalistic lights, there's still surplus value to be extracted from their labour?

 

[butchersapron]

You keep saying this. It was not my intention and I don't think I actually did.

What I am saying is that, if someone criticizes socialism because of what happened in Russia then giving them reasons that Stalin acted like he did looks like you're defending what he did.

No it doesn't. It loks like someone prepared to do some in-depth research and reading to arrive at some sort of informed contextual understanding of something.

is your reaction to attempts to understand any act or series of acts that they are skating dangerously close to justification or support? What about attempts to understand why thatcher abandoned monetarism in the early 80s?

 

[butchersapron]

I don't know anything about Daniel Hannan apart from him being a Conservative Euro MP. I wouldn't have thought he'd Hard to fit him as a liberal, though. More of a libertarian.

The US type definition, so including Bernie Sanders, is the one I'd thought as being general in the UK too before coming to urban.

What is your basis for your conservative/liberal/libertarian divide?

 

[JimW]

yeh but i note you have already surrendered the point in post 233: "the ideas ... were taking shape"

As liberalism. Just because a name hadn't been settled on yet doesn't change much.

 

[ViolentPanda]

I'm all for a non violent political redistribution of wealth,you?

Everyone sensible is for that.
Much as everyone sensible knows that it's unlikely to happen without the "withs" resisting violently.

 

[two sheds]

What i saw was you challenging seventh bullets posts about liberals - a post that only mad proper sense if taken as politically liberal - by running with it as if i meant socially liberal.

That's where we disagree, when he said that 'liberals' excel at racism it looked like he meant liberals rather than liberal democratic states. If he'd said liberal democratic states none of this would have come up since it's clearly correct.

And yes fair enough on the rest of your post, I wouldn't try to argue with your political knowledge/analysis.

 

[Pickman's model]

Further, that enclosure began earlier or took a different course in France or Spain doesn't mean liberalism wasn't a driving force. In fact, because in Britain it was capitalist formation happened earlier and.more thoroughly than the other two countries.

jesus mary and joseph it's very simple: liberalism was as butchers says an ex post facto justification for slavery, for enclosures etc. the original motivation for enclosures, for slavery not i submit liberalism.

when it comes to france and spain i'm thinking more of their roles in the slave trade. it's well known, for example, that nantes was a major port in the triangle. and the spanish slave trade started in 1501 - i am unaware of any spanish liberals, let alone english liberals, of that period.

 

[two sheds]

Will come back to this later, off to the dentist for some light relief.

 

[butchersapron]

That's where we disagree, when he said that 'liberals' excel at racism it looked like he meant liberals rather than liberal democratic states. If he'd said liberal democratic states none of this would have come up since it's clearly correct.

And yes fair enough on the rest of your post, I wouldn't try to argue with your political knowledge/analysis.

Even the bit about it being actual individuals or companies of liberals being the driving force behind all them bad slavery type things rather than liberal democratic states - the state having become/been captured and used an enabler of this?

 

[Pickman's model]

Will come back to this later, off to the dentist for some light relief.

make sure you get some gas

 

[two sheds]

make sure you get some gas

I've had a reprieve for an hour.

 

[JimW]

jesus mary and joseph it's very simple: liberalism was as butchers says an ex post facto justification for slavery, for enclosures etc. the original motivation for enclosures, for slavery not i submit liberalism.

when it comes to france and spain i'm thinking more of their roles in the slave trade. it's well known, for example, that nantes was a major port in the triangle. and the spanish slave trade started in 1501 - i am unaware of any spanish liberals, let alone english liberals, of that period.

But again the course and scale of the slave trade in the Anglosphere does tell you something was driving it harder. Not sure about the French, by the time they were heavily involved not short of liberals though.

 

[ViolentPanda]

The problem I have with it is: if you're a socialist, then giving reasons why a previous socialist (or someone who describes themselves as a socialist, in this case Stalin) killed 20 million people in setting up a socialist state, then it suggests that you wouldn't be averse to a few million deaths in setting up your own version of socialism. That scares the shit out of people who aren't revolutionary socialists.

"Stalin killed 20 million people".
Let's unpack that a bit.
20 million people over almost 30 years - including about half of my maternal family in the holodomor - is comparable, given the size of the population and the time-frame, to what the British did in Ireland in the mid-19th century, what the USA did in the middle 3 decades of the 18th century to Native Americans, what the King of Belgium did to the people of the Congo. The only difference is in the ideology that fuelled the deaths, and yet there's little of the opprobrium for that ideology, that there is for any form of communism. That's because we've had a couple of centuries of the capitalist narrative being naturalised.
I don't say this lightly, but all extant ruling political ideologies have caused mass deaths. To single out a single form, or a single purveyor of that form is childish.

And these were after Stalin came to power weren't they? We're not talking about deaths during the revolution, this was specifically from inefficient distribution of resources (unless there was no way to avoid the deaths through environmentally caused famines), and killing people who disagreed with him.

Those are the two basic reasons that right wing people give for why socialism is so dangerous. Trying to justify or explain them without prefacing it by "yes they were horrific, of course I don't want anything like that" plays into their hands.

Every state allocates resources based on its' own predicates. However, states tend to share a predicate: The perpetuation of the state, so guess where resources go? This is as true today in the UK as it was in the Soviet Union during Stalin's reign. Socialism isn't dangerous. What's dangerous is the bureaucracy that perpetuates the state.

 

[two sheds]

What is your basis for your conservative/liberal/libertarian divide?

As with most topics I use dictionary definitions (in this case the Oxford on-line ones). Liberal I've given.

Conservative: Averse to change or innovation and holding traditional values: they were very conservative in their outlook or (In a political context) favouring free enterprise, private ownership, and socially conservative ideas.

Libertarian: An extreme laissez-faire political philosophy advocating only minimal state intervention in the lives of citizens.

Although VP made a fair point with regard to individuals who would describe themselves as liberals. That wouldn't show up in a dictionary definition.

 

[ViolentPanda]

No, liberals aren't really liberals when they're really neoliberals.

Yes they are. The basic tenets of liberalism are still there. They just have a modern hyper-individualistic economic gloss on them.

 

[two sheds]

"Stalin killed 20 million people".
Let's unpack that a bit.
20 million people over almost 30 years - including about half of my maternal family in the holodomor - is comparable, given the size of the population and the time-frame, to what the British did in Ireland in the mid-19th century, what the USA did in the middle 3 decades of the 18th century to Native Americans, what the King of Belgium did to the people of the Congo. The only difference is in the ideology that fuelled the deaths, and yet there's little of the opprobrium for that ideology, that there is for any form of communism. That's because we've had a couple of centuries of the capitalist narrative being naturalised.
I don't say this lightly, but all extant ruling political ideologies have caused mass deaths. To single out a single form, or a single purveyor of that form is childish.



Every state allocates resources based on its' own predicates. However, states tend to share a predicate: The perpetuation of the state, so guess where resources go? This is as true today in the UK as it was in the Soviet Union during Stalin's reign. Socialism isn't dangerous. What's dangerous is the bureaucracy that perpetuates the state.

Yes, fair enough. But we're down to (as I recall) Chomsky remarking that you can't put across complex political ideas that aren't mainstream in a soundbyte. Correcting my neighbour's mainstream idea of 'left wing' would have taken half an hour from someone who knows the history of political philosophy and Russian history. That person wasn't me.

It's still dangerous, though. Sorry to invoke Godwin but if I came across someone right wing who, when I mentioned Hitler's 7 million, explained that I had to understand the political system at the time and the pressures he was under, I wouldn't care what he said next or how good his political analysis was.

 

[butchersapron]

As with most topics I use dictionary definitions (in this case the Oxford on-line ones). Liberal I've given.

Conservative: Averse to change or innovation and holding traditional values: they were very conservative in their outlook or (In a political context) favouring free enterprise, private ownership, and socially conservative ideas.

Libertarian: An extreme laissez-faire political philosophy advocating only minimal state intervention in the lives of citizens.

Although VP made a fair point with regard to individuals who would describe themselves as liberals. That wouldn't show up in a dictionary definition.

Here is a copy of Raymond William's excellent and very useful book Keywords:

Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society is a book by the Welsh Marxist academic Raymond Williams published in 1976 by Croom Helm.
Originally intended to be published along with the author's 1958 work Culture and Society, this work examines the history of more than a hundred words that are familiar and yet confusing: Art; Bureaucracy; Culture; Educated; Management; Masses; Nature; Originality; Radical; Society; Welfare; Work; and many others.The approach is cultural rather than etymological. Sometimes the origins of a word cast light on its meaning, but often one finds that it originally meant something quite different. Or that there has been a fierce political struggle over the 'correct' meaning.

Can i suggest that you have a look at the entry for liberal - it's not very long but contains a lot of interesting stuff.

 

[two sheds]

Bookmarked, ta.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Yes, fair enough. But we're down to (as I recall) Chomsky remarking that you can't put across complex political ideas that aren't mainstream in a soundbyte. Correcting my neighbour's mainstream idea of 'left wing' would have taken half an hour from someone who knows the history of political philosophy and Russian history. That person wasn't me.

It's still dangerous, though. Sorry to invoke Godwin but if I came across someone right wing who, when I mentioned Hitler's 7 million, explained that I had to understand the political system at the time and the pressures he was under, I wouldn't care what he said next or how good his political analysis was.

Then you're reacting emotionally, rather than logically. You can't begin to understand Nazism and what took place under it without understanding that what happened was more than just 12 years of horror - that the underlying politics appeared acceptable to some who didn't have murderous intentions for particular reasons, and why Jews became the scapegoat. What many people don't acknowledge is something raised by the German historian Karl Dietrich Bracher almost 60 years ago - that the holocaust could have been of the Slavs, rather than the Jews, given the anti-Slavism of many of Hitler's inner circle, who were mostly - like Hitler himself - ethnic Germans, rather than born in Germany. As Adam Tooze makes horribly clear, the focus on Jews as a scapegoat for Germany's ills boiled down to a combination of anti-Semitism (something still prevalent where Hitler was born and raised) and economic opportunism.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Here is a copy of Raymond William's excellent and very useful book Keywords:



Can i suggest that you have a look at the entry for liberal - it's not very long but contains a lot of interesting stuff.

I do enjoy flicking through my copy of "Keywords". It may be old, but it's still a fair crack at getting at the meanings behind the meanings.

 

[seventh bullet]

You keep saying this. It was not my intention and I don't think I actually did.

What I am saying is that, if someone criticizes socialism because of what happened in Russia then giving them reasons that Stalin acted like he did looks like you're defending what he did.

I should have added more meat and said that I don't believe Stalinism guided Soviet society towards communism, the path there being the transition to a lower-stage socialist society by an accelerated capitalist development within a compressed time-scale with supposedly careful attention given to its direction by the state. But I do believe that, including its horrors whether deemed 'necessary' or not, it was a genuine failed attempt to establish a new mode of production. I think they only further developed capitalism in the USSR. I don't share the Stalinist conception of socialism or see its political organisation as being able to bring it about.

There's your neighbour's hypothetical view that expressing an opinion about Soviet capitalism is a 'mealy-mouthed' answer to the question of Stalinism's human cost, or a move to pretend or deny that it had anything to do with socialism/communism at all. It did, according to a particular understanding and one I don't agree with. I recognise it, though, and the historical conditions it came out of. Exploring that is worthwhile.

Trying to understand something like Stalinism on its own terms rather than constructing and then attacking an inaccurate one based on disgust or fear or whatever doesn't mean you will end up absorbing it as your own. It doesn't mean you will end up defending mass murder for example because you have attempted to contextualise it.

My other clumsily made point earlier was that other socialists/communists/whoever are, in my opinion, going to face the complex problems of power and the use of violence in the struggle to create a new society. Stalinism or something like it isn't the only possibility, the only outcome, but I don't think violence will be absent, it's inevitable. I got the feeling this neighbour of yours was just your indirect and dishonest way of asking me (after guilt has already been determined) to offer a defence of the millions killed by Stalinism. I can instead point out that it is not something I own and it's one conception of 'socialism' among many.

 

[krtek a houby]

Dear Lord, a talking dog turd, what next?

 

[Pickman's model]

 

[stuff_it]

How many votes does it take to win? One. One single vote more than the other guy. Given the population make up of London, either there were left wingers voting for Boris, or, more likely, not voting at all. There is no way, given the demographic of London that Boris should have won, but he did. Twice in fact, once and then again. Take that you Godless commie horde.

I realise that Boris is no saint, indeed would not even be considered for 'Servant of God', never mind canonisation, but he has a certain flair. I don't know if I fancy him for PM though, although it would certainly be interesting, the country would perhaps not survive it. On second thoughts, fuck it, let's see what happens. If we can survive Blair and the most incompetent chancellor in history, we can survive Boris.

For what value of 'survive'?

 

[jusali]

just broken!

 

[JimW]

It's all Gove-r bar the shouting.

 

[Pickman's model]

Maybe he recognises next leader is a poisoned chalice but the one after might be better