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Politics for a dummy

Gmarthews said:
Are you suggesting that you have some permanent solution to these issues? It is always easier to go on about the obvious problems, but do you have a solution which does NOT include forcing people to do what YOU think they SHOULD do, oh moral man?

Just as I believe in forcing murderers to give up their bloodsports, I believe in preventing capitalists keeping up theirs, yes - very dictatorial! This is not going to be simple - it involves the world working class - the vast majority of humanity - establishing democratic control. Democracy is a system not yet tried, of course, but I believe it is bound to be better than plutocracy - which forces all of us not only to do what we don't want to all the time but also to pretend that we like it.
 
waverunner said:
- Left/right - what's what, what do they stand for?

"Old" Labour = centre left: pro-trade-union, "tax and spend", nationalisation - hates the conservatives (tories).
"New" Labour = centre right: half way between neo-liberal and "tax and spend". Has moved right away from the old trade union and working class image, wears suits and works in PR - catch phrase is "modernisation" and "the third way".

"One nation" Conservative = centre right: 'traditional' values, deference, family, religion, doesn't really like immigration, hang'em & flog 'em re. crime, generally more anti-EU.
"Thatcherite" Conservative = centre right: neo-liberal, free-trade, free-markets, low taxes, privatisation, generally more pro-EU.
"Cameron / New Conservatives" = centre right: trying to do for the old fashioned conservative party what Blair and the 'modernisers' did for the labour party - mainly consists of being more liberal (eg gay marriage, immigration) and supposedly softer on the "tax and spend" issue.

Lib Dems = sitting on the fence: seem to say different things depending on where they are standing for election. Specific Lib Dem policies have at times included putting a penny on income tax for the NHS, calling for Proportional Representation in elections, setting up regional governments, various 'green' and 'social' policies - the 'sandles and wooley jumpers' brigade, seem to aim their policies at teachers, nurses and other public sector workers. Are the most pro-EU of all the parties.

Other parties worth mentioning:
Green Party (England & Wales - also have scottish and northern irish versions)
Plaid Cymru (progressively-minded Welsh civic nationalists)
Scottish National Party (fairly conservative imo)
Scottist Socialist Party (the most coherent and worthwhile of any 'left' parties in the UK)
Respect (front for the SWP - has an MP: George Galloway)
BNP (far right cunts - currently trying to pretend they are not a bunch of thugs)
UKIP (Broke away from the Conservative Party over the issue of the European Union which they don't want to be part of)
Various Northern Irish Parties, of which the biggest are the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) (protestant/"unionist" - headed by Rev Ian Paisley) and Sinn Féin (SF) (catholic/"nationalist" headed by Gerry Adams).
waverunner said:
- Newspapers? Which ones are left/right?
"centre left": Guardian, Independent, Mirror
"centre right": Times, Financial Times
"right": Sun, Telegraph, Express, Mail
waverunner said:
- Which countries does the uk really not get along with politically?
France.
waverunner said:
- What are the rules on voting in a general election in the UK?
All Commonwealth and Irish citizens who are resident in the UK and registered can vote in general elections. You get one vote. The candidate with the most votes wins - a "First past the post/winner takes all" system. There are 646 seats in parliament. The party that is able to command a majority (either alone or in colation with another party) then forms a government (Prime Minister and Cabinet etc.).

The queen is the head of state: head of the judiciary (courts) and the armed forces. She doesn't actually personally make any specific decisions but by being there means that noone else has absolute power over all branches of government and protects the established constitutional arrangement - ie we don't end up with President Blair, Brown or Cameron.

Although people posting on wikipedia will all have their own bias or pint of view, you could do worse than read this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_the_United_Kingdom

...and follow the various links for more in depth articles.
 
DrRingDing said:
LOL! Trotsky was an opportunist gobshite who would of been twice the cunt as Stalin given half the opportunity.

That may be your opinion, but it wasn't Orwell's. Orwell was suspicious of Trotsky, and at times slightly critical, but regarded him as very different from - and much better than - Stalin. Orwell even wrote to publishers in support of having one of Trotsky's works published.
 
In Bloom said:
Or alternatively, a book about how the 'ideals' of communism are as irrelevant as any other set of ideals in the face of class interest. I'm not a big fan of Orwell, but he wasn't exactly 100% uncritical of Trotsky.

That's a novel interpretation. I would have said that it was about how the ideals of communism crumbled in the Soviet Union for various reasons, partly because there was an attempt to implement them in isolation, and partly because too much responsibility was given to the leaders, who weren't under the democratic control of the workers (except for brief periods).
 
Who are these working class people keep going on about and how are they different to the middle class? Is it to do with how much you earn or what accent you speak with? Can people change their class? :confused:
 
Global_Stoner said:
Who are these working class people keep going on about and how are they different to the middle class? Is it to do with how much you earn or what accent you speak with? Can people change their class? :confused:

Working-class people live primarily on their wages and produce the value of commodities by their labour. They are also called the proletariat, which was a Roman way of saying people who 'owned' only their children.

The bourgeoisie lives primarily off shares in companies which exploit the proletariat - whom they pay less than the price of the commodities they produce. Working-class people can join this group by sweating and cheating.

'The middle class' is a newspaper term, intended to induce the better-off workers to believe they are something else than proletarian/disguise old-time landowning aristocrats as something else.
 
Tokyo said:
That may be your opinion, but it wasn't Orwell's. Orwell was suspicious of Trotsky, and at times slightly critical, but regarded him as very different from - and much better than - Stalin. Orwell even wrote to publishers in support of having one of Trotsky's works published.

Trotsky was miles different in character than Stalin that's one reason Stalin hated him possibly the main one.

Stalin worked fucking hard for the revolution and I'm sure in his opinion Trotsky just strolled in and gave a few tubthumping speeches and gave the right views at the right time.

Trotsky was in substance very similar in that he wanted power to be all his and would be ruthless to get it...even if it meant murdering comrades en mass.
 
Tokyo said:
That may be your opinion, but it wasn't Orwell's. Orwell was suspicious of Trotsky, and at times slightly critical, but regarded him as very different from - and much better than - Stalin. Orwell even wrote to publishers in support of having one of Trotsky's works published.
Somehow I don't think it was waverunner's intention to have another thread about what happened in Russia in April 1923 or whenever. :)
 
This debate is inevitably becoming a debate about class, as it often does sadly.

It would therefore be useful to clarify the difference.

Thw Working Class tend NOT to own anything. They live on the fruits of their labour. They are divided into the ones with a skill and who usually has a job and who typically rents their abode either from a private landlord, or directly from the government. And the unskilled, who are poor and very unhappy as they have to compete within the unskilled market.

The Middle Class tend to own their house, sometimes a business and often shares as well. They usually have a better education, often from a Grammar School or the Private sector.

There is typically a vast inequality of opportunity between these two classes which causes jealousy on the part of the former and guilt on the part of the latter.

Luckily this inequality gives both sides the opportunity to blame each other for everything which is wrong with the world.

Neither side thus is interested in equality of opportunity as this might result in having to blame oneself for one's own failure.

Meanwhile the Upper Class is safely in their Ivory Tower (gated communities) hoping that no one notices that they still own most of the land, the banks and the corporations.

In general the whole class issue is a vast generalisation and should thus be avoided. There is no conspiracy against anyone, and it distracts from many problems. For example there is a problem to do with space as many landowners (of whatever class) just keep empty buildings as an investement because there is no penalty for doing so despite the negative effect on the community (see empty house problem/homeless).
 
rhys gethin said:
Don't you vote in elections then? Wise man!

Yes i do (usually) but i believe in an extension of democracy not a limited democracy that we have now or the kind of nightmare version that sections of the far left would force on us.
 
tbaldwin said:
Yes i do (usually) but i believe in an extension of democracy not a limited democracy that we have now or the kind of nightmare version that sections of the far left would force on us.

Well, I give you my personal promise not to give you electoral nightmares. Can't say fairer than that, can I?
 
rhys gethin said:
Well, I give you my personal promise not to give you electoral nightmares. Can't say fairer than that, can I?


A truly Socialist system would be very democratic and that what id like to see. An extension of democracy so that people in positions of power in the judiciary and media are elected etc.
The far left in the UK seems to have very little respect for the idea of real people power.
 
tbaldwin said:
A truly Socialist system would be very democratic and that what id like to see. An extension of democracy so that people in positions of power in the judiciary and media are elected etc.
The far left in the UK seems to have very little respect for the idea of real people power.

Dunno. I'm happy with your first para. myself. But how to bring it about?
 
rhys gethin said:
Dunno. I'm happy with your first para. myself. But how to bring it about?

Ordinary people are treated like pawns by most politicians and political groups.
The far left look down on their views and aspirations and the establishment manage it....
A Left that argued for an extension of democracy and genuine socialism rather than some bastadised form of tried and failed democratic centralist wank would be likely to be far more successful.
 
tbaldwin said:
Ordinary people are treated like pawns by most politicians and political groups.
The far left look down on their views and aspirations and the establishment manage it....
A Left that argued for an extension of democracy and genuine socialism rather than some bastadised form of tried and failed democratic centralist wank would be likely to be far more successful.

Democratic centralism is for the Party itself: the idea is that any group that wants to change policy should have the use of the full resources of the Organisation to put its point of view for a fixed period of time - then the Party votes and everyone accepts the decision until such time as the situation changes. Then the Party puts its policy to the class and the People. That keeps us able to put the case to working people, as the Stalinists couldn't. It is implied that they can vote us down if they don't like it.

The problem is that it is difficult to run an open democratic system - which is for everyone - during a crisis when foreign armies are attacking you. Unfortunately they always do, and the partybosses are always very glad to use that excuse to shut up all this awkward dissent.

The idea is that we should learn from our defeats, and this is one of the big issues we need to be looking at, clearly - and we have just now, alas, time. My own opinion is that we need to establish democracy everywhere and work to eliminate armaments entirely, thus gaining trust. But meanwhile they are burning up the world, it seems, so the power-people say, ' We haven't got time for all that. Perhaps the species is inadequate? Let's hope not!
 
Gmarthews said:
This debate is inevitably becoming a debate about class, as it often does sadly.
Class doesn't exist, it is irrelevant - it is a bogus category for a bogus political ideology.

Debate about class is only inevitable for those sad people who's politicvs revolves around outdated and obselete ideologies in which is it central the enite way of thinking.

Back in reality it doesn't have any importance whatsoever. Yes there are rich and poor and people do all have a relationship to "capital" which also moves according to its own logic and momentum, but these can't be resolved down into labelling indoivudual people with a single "class" label and claiming that they have a straightforward relationship with capital or discrete and simple 'interests'. Separate and discrete "classes" do not exist and this method of analysing populations and economies is so outdated (by a hundred years or more), mechaical and simplistic that it is entirely worthless and in no way sound or coherent basis for constructing a political philosophy upon.
 
To all those who have contributed to helping my understanding of politics, thank you. But can you please stop DEBATING on this thread because I cannot keep up and I created this to be a simple learning process not a political argument/debate between posters who do this all the time anyway on every single other thread. Please :(
 
waverunner said:
To all those who have contributed to helping my understanding of politics, thank you. But can you please stop DEBATING on this thread because I cannot keep up and I created this to be a simple learning process not a political argument/debate between posters who do this all the time anyway on every single other thread. Please :(
waverunner, I'm not sure how realistic it is to ask people to simply be descriptive - this is such a subjective subject. One person will state what they claim to be a 'neutral' description and anyone person will totally disagree with this description. They will naturally tend to start arguing about their alternative versions.

Can I suggest you have a look at the wikipedia page I linked to?

Also I might as well point out that many people here are arguing from a far-left perspective (I might as well admit at this point that I am a 'light-green'/'pragmatic-green' "liberal", which puts me a fair way to the "right" of the people I am talking about, but maybe still at the "centre left" or "centre" in terms of the UK mainstream).
 
Gmarthews said:
Despite some protestations against this synopsis, i must admit that it does ring true. Everytime one tries to discuss issues rationally with Marxists (or SWP) they do start tend to start talking about minutae which has frankly NO relation to the real world.
well that is different, from what the other guy said, he suggested SW were always arguing with the rest of the left-wing, when they have always concentrated on people to the right of SW.

so you raise a different charge, that you have never been able to have a discussion with an SW member without them start talking about minutiae which has frankly no relation to the real world. Do you have an example of this so we can test the voracity of your contention?
 
waverunner said:
OK fair enough but could you argue slower so I can keep up :D
You have to remember that some people are just spouting incoherent rubbish. Do not feel stupid if you can't make any sense out of some of the posts on u75. Use your gut feeling: if it sounds like a load of incoherent rubbish even after a couple of careful read-throughs then there is a fair chance that it *is* in fact incoherent rubbish.

The other alternative is the the poster is unable to articulate their ideas very well, but for your purposes that will add up to the same thing, so you can just skip over those posts and discuss things with the people whose posts you can understand and which you find interesting.

Don't even try to take every single post on u75 seriously as some people will go off into their own obscure pet theories and start arguing the toss over tiny 100-year-old ideological splits from the Russian revolution or Spanish Civil War for the ten-thousand-nth time.
 
TeeJay said:
Class doesn't exist, it is irrelevant - it is a bogus category for a bogus political ideology.

And those who support capitalism have been chorusing just that since there has been capitalism. It is one way to achieve the classless society - by the same means people become Jesus Christ or Napoleon - i.e. by cutting off contact with the outer world altogether and asserting loudly what is obviously untrue.
 
ResistanceMP3 said:
so you raise a different charge, that you have never been able to have a discussion with an SW member without them start talking about minutiae which has frankly no relation to the real world. Do you have an example of this so we can test the voracity of your contention?

I would love to, but i must admit that the moment they start arguing over what Marx really meant i fall asleep, and find it hard to concentrate.

;) :p

meanwhile i would say to Waverunner that this thread is quite good in comparison with the rest of U75, in that usually it descends into name calling, and there seems to be some good issues here!!

Go through them at your leisure, try and work out what assumptions the writer is making about the world, both how it is and how they feel it 'should' be. Try and identify the problem and stick with normal, everyday examples. Many here will try to prove things by using extreme examples, and this is NOT valid. Does the argument relate to real life?
 
TeeJay said:
Class doesn't exist, it is irrelevant - it is a bogus category for a bogus political ideology.

Debate about class is only inevitable for those sad people who's politicvs revolves around outdated and obselete ideologies in which is it central the enite way of thinking.

Back in reality it doesn't have any importance whatsoever. Yes there are rich and poor and people do all have a relationship to "capital" which also moves according to its own logic and momentum, but these can't be resolved down into labelling indoivudual people with a single "class" label and claiming that they have a straightforward relationship with capital or discrete and simple 'interests'. Separate and discrete "classes" do not exist and this method of analysing populations and economies is so outdated (by a hundred years or more), mechaical and simplistic that it is entirely worthless and in no way sound or coherent basis for constructing a political philosophy upon.

Class maybe more complex than some on the left like to admit.But it is still hugely important.
The UK is run by and for the upper classes. Look at how many public school pupils there are....Then look at what % are in Higher Education...And look at Oxbridge....Look at the Judiciary...Parliament..The City.
 
waverunner said:
To all those who have contributed to helping my understanding of politics, thank you. But can you please stop DEBATING on this thread because I cannot keep up and I created this to be a simple learning process not a political argument/debate between posters who do this all the time anyway on every single other thread. Please :(

I take your point. The difficulty is that it isn't simple at all, and can't be made simple except by lying. I'd suggest that your notion that it can be simply explained might lead you to the Conservative Party, which deals in simple explanations. Try them, and see if their way fits your own life-experience, then go, if necessary, to the Liberals and the Blairites. If you find that any of those satisfy you, you are not interested in politics and can simply relax. Good luck!
 
The main political parties are basically moderate, and so many on these boards do not like them because they deal in compromise.

Many of the members of U75 are not keen on compromise and so end up with extreme ideas which often bear no relation with real life. That side it is essential to have a bit of vision and not to let fear stop you from trying a solution. The existing parties often tend towards the status quo or no change unless absolutely essential.

Certainly it is difficult to sort out the best ideas from the unrealistic. Simple answers might exist however they often conflict with vested interests which will make sure that your solution will never work.

Welcome to the political treadmill. Try not to be too concerned with what other people think and don't be afraid of being wrong as this is the only way humans learn.

The reason why this thread has turned into a debate so often is because there are still issues which are far from clear cut and so if they are mentioned, then another side of it needs to be stated to maintain a balance.
 
Gmarthews said:
The main political parties are basically moderate, and so many on these boards do not like them because they deal in compromise.

Many of the members of U75 are not keen on compromise and so end up with extreme ideas which often bear no relation with real life. That side it is essential to have a bit of vision and not to let fear stop you from trying a solution. The existing parties often tend towards the status quo or no change unless absolutely essential.

Certainly it is difficult to sort out the best ideas from the unrealistic. Simple answers might exist however they often conflict with vested interests which will make sure that your solution will never work.

Welcome to the political treadmill. Try not to be too concerned with what other people think and don't be afraid of being wrong as this is the only way humans learn.

The reason why this thread has turned into a debate so often is because there are still issues which are far from clear cut and so if they are mentioned, then another side of it needs to be stated to maintain a balance.

Good post... i think its true that people who seem to have unrealistic ideas can often also have a good effect.
And the main parties are moderate in some ways but are responsible for maintaining a status quo of disgusting extremes.
 
TeeJay said:
Class doesn't exist, it is irrelevant - it is a bogus category for a bogus political ideology.

Debate about class is only inevitable for those sad people who's politicvs revolves around outdated and obselete ideologies in which is it central the enite way of thinking.

Back in reality it doesn't have any importance whatsoever. Yes there are rich and poor and people do all have a relationship to "capital" which also moves according to its own logic and momentum, but these can't be resolved down into labelling indoivudual people with a single "class" label and claiming that they have a straightforward relationship with capital or discrete and simple 'interests'. Separate and discrete "classes" do not exist and this method of analysing populations and economies is so outdated (by a hundred years or more), mechaical and simplistic that it is entirely worthless and in no way sound or coherent basis for constructing a political philosophy upon.

What a load of shite - who does the work then??? You wouldn't get far in the towns and villages of County Durham with that rubbish.
 
Attica said:
What a load of shite - who does the work then??? You wouldn't get far in the towns and villages of County Durham with that rubbish.
How does someone's occupation automatically give "classes"?

If your definition of "the working class" simply means "people who work" then it is a politically useless idea and can't be used for analysing societies or economies.

I don't see the relevance of either your question or County Durham to demonstrating the validity of class as a coherent analytical tool.
 
TeeJay said:
How does someone's occupation automatically give "classes"?

If your definition of "the working class" simply means "people who work" then it is a politically useless idea and can't be used for analysing societies or economies.

I don't see the relevance of either your question or County Durham to demonstrating the validity of class as a coherent analytical tool.

Try EP Thompson child....:p :D
 
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