the neoliberal vision of the future

[Idris2002]

Probably one of the communist countries such as Cuba, but I assume that your point is that Singapore has a very high percentage of public housing. That is true, but so? The People's Action Party is a labor party, and obviously pursues many socialist policies. Someone described Singapore as the most successful socialist state in the world, and that is probably true. However, at least until very recently Singapore has based its socialism on a firm market foundation. Everything in Singapore has a market component, including the housing. The houses are not OWNED by the government, but rather cheap loans are given to Singaporeans so that they become the house owner. The market component is so integral to the thinking of PAP that Singapore is the least socialistic country in the world.

 

[nino_savatte]

Probably one of the communist countries such as Cuba, but I assume that your point is that Singapore has a very high percentage of public housing. That is true, but so? The People's Action Party is a labor party, and obviously pursues many socialist policies. Someone described Singapore as the most successful socialist state in the world, and that is probably true. However, at least until very recently Singapore has based its socialism on a firm market foundation. Everything in Singapore has a market component, including the housing. The houses are not OWNED by the government, but rather cheap loans are given to Singaporeans so that they become the house owner. The market component is so integral to the thinking of PAP that Singapore is the least socialistic country in the world.

The PAP aren't socialists, at least not in the accepted sense of the word. You keep falling into the same old right wing trap that any party that calls itself "socialist" is automatically socialist and therefore left wing. What about Vladimir Zhirinovsky's Liberal Democratic Party? Are they liberals? How about the Australian Liberal Party? Are they liberal in a social sense? No, they're social conservatives. Last, there's the Arab Socialist Renaissance Party (known as Ba'ath), are they real socialists? Not really.

 

[Kizmet]

with all this stretching, shrinking and distorting it looks like some of these concepts are getting a bit... saggy....

 

[littlebabyjesus]

It's stupid squabbling over semantics. It has nothing to do with any substantive argument about ideas. In fact all this linguistic wrangling just serves to obscure the utter vacuity of everything onarchy says.

 

[Louis MacNeice]

with all this stretching, shrinking and distorting it looks like some of these concepts are getting a bit... saggy....

Which is why onarchy's keep ending up around his ankles. Not so much the emperor's new clothes as the Randist's old gusset.

Louis MacNeice

 

[Jeff Robinson]

Get your credit cards out guys:

http://freestateinitiative.org/about-us/donate

$1,000 a month pledge from me!

 

[Bernie Gunther]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/16/venezuela-oil-hugo-chavez-politics

It's worth bearing in mind that the US Department of Defence information warfare people were tasked with spreading bullshit about Chavez's regime back in 2008 according to a Wikileak or two.

http://cablesearch.org/cable/view.php?id=08CARACAS420

 

[onarchy]

The PAP aren't socialists, at least not in the accepted sense of the word.

Well, from their website:

http://www.pap.org.sg/partyhistory.php

"Party philosophy: A Socialist Democracy"

Of course they could just be calling themselves socialists, but who does that voluntarily without meaning it? And their public housing policies are indeed in a socialist spirit.

 

[WorkersUnite]

What do you base this on? Which studies? What historical evidence? Which academic studies agree with you?

Lots of documentation about mussolini and fascism out there, just pick up a history book and start reading. Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism has a ton of references as well.

 

[Idris2002]

Probably one of the communist countries such as Cuba, but I assume that your point is that Singapore has a very high percentage of public housing. That is true, but so? The People's Action Party is a labor party, and obviously pursues many socialist policies. Someone described Singapore as the most successful socialist state in the world, and that is probably true. However, at least until very recently Singapore has based its socialism on a firm market foundation. Everything in Singapore has a market component, including the housing. The houses are not OWNED by the government, but rather cheap loans are given to Singaporeans so that they become the house owner. The market component is so integral to the thinking of PAP that Singapore is the least socialistic country in the world.

Well, from their website:

http://www.pap.org.sg/partyhistory.php

"Party philosophy: A Socialist Democracy"

Of course they could just be calling themselves socialists, but who does that voluntarily without meaning it?And their public housing policies are indeed in a socialist spirit.

Were you dropped on your head as a child?

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Lots of documentation about mussolini and fascism out there, just pick up a history book and start reading. Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism has a ton of references as well.

Sure ... great source. Here's a history professor's view ...

Goldberg’s book perverts historical and historiographical truth with the scarcely hidden agenda (perhaps the real ‘secret’ alluded to unwittingly in the subtitle) of tarring and feathering with negative, anti-democratic, and inhumane connotations a broad current of reformist policy and social justice campaigns which has for decades been a legitimate current of liberalism within U.S. democracy (and not exclusively the Democratic sector of it). It does so with the blatant aim of making this current guilty (by association) of some of the most heinous crimes ever committed against humanity. It is a work of sustained pseudo-historical calumny and defamation disguised under the (constantly slipping) carnival mask of an ‘alternative history’.

Liberal Fascism is to be seen as a mischievous exercise in party-political journalism writ large as a pseudo-academic monograph, its revisionism far removed from that of a legitimate academic exercise in rethinking a basic historical issue from a fresh angle. Rather, its revisionism directly parallels that of the Institute of Historical Review, which produces euphemistic essays in Holocaust Denial misleadingly adorned with full scholarly apparatus, an airbrushed Playboy variant of racist political pornography.

http://roger-griffin.blogspot.com/2010/01/review-liberal-fascism.html

 

[Idris2002]

Jonah Goldberg, author of Liberal Fascism (he's the one on the left, btw).

 

[TruXta]

I don't really know how to put it in simpler terms.

The imposition of financial value on human activity mistakes the nature of that activity.* This is in fact the primary ethical objection to wage labor.

Do you understand now?

*by conceiving it as an objective thing rather than a subjective process.

Yet more bollocks. You might as well say that imposing moral value on human activity mistakes the nature of that activity. Inasmuch as you can trade one thing for another, one favour for another, one action for another, then you're at some primitive level quantifying behaviour. Tit for tat, remember? You might want to argue that this is morally wrong, but that's a whole different debate. The point we're making is that it's perfectly logical and acceptable to quantify, measure and evaluate behaviour. Finance or money is secondary to that process.

 

[Louis MacNeice]

Well, from their website:

http://www.pap.org.sg/partyhistory.php

"Party philosophy: A Socialist Democracy"

Of course they could just be calling themselves socialists, but who does that voluntarily without meaning it? And their public housing policies are indeed in a socialist spirit.

Here's what they put under that rubric:

Although the PAP worked with communists in the early days, with anti-colonialism as their mutual platform, we made it clear that we had a different set of political values.

Over the years, these values have formed the foundation for the country's key policies. The party's preference has been for our ideas to manifest themselves through our policies, rather than be cast in a theoretical philosophy of manifestos.

Our multi-racial and multi-religious focus can be seen in the equal treatment which all races - Chinese, Malay, Indians and Eurasians - receive in all areas of public service. This includes equal treatment in education, housing, and health. As a party, we also raised funds to to support community and social groups working on education and health across all racial groups.


Politically, the minorities are assured of proportionate representation in Parliament through the Group Representation Constituency, or GRC system set up in 1988. MPs can be elected under single wards or under GRCs, where a group of MPs are elected as a team. Each team must contain at least one MP who is a member of a minority group.

Our focus on meritocracy can be seen most clearly in the education system, in which one child is ensured of as many educational opportunities as the next child - regardless of his parents' financial status. This is through the many scholarships and bursaries given out for academic excellence.​

It contains nothing concerning public/social/common ownership and management of the means of production and the allocation of resources. So not only is the PAP not socialist (a claim that it notably doesn't make), it's philosophy is empty of the central tenets of socialism.

Louis MacNeice

 

[TruXta]

Are you commenting on his blog as Christian by any chance? If so good on you but I think you've got as much chance of getting any of them to see sense as I have of convincing Kent Hovind to accept the theory of evolution. I think any sane person who comes across that blog, and that post in particular, will be far more disturbed by the comments he and his disciples are making than by the violence of the internet debate rapist socialists.

Yeah, that's me. I've given up, I really don't have the energy.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Yet more bollocks. You might as well say that imposing moral value on human activity mistakes the nature of that activity. Inasmuch as you can trade one thing for another, one favour for another, one action for another, then you're at some primitive level quantifying behaviour. Tit for tat, remember? You might want to argue that this is morally wrong, but that's a whole different debate. The point we're making is that it's perfectly logical and acceptable to quantify, measure and evaluate behaviour. Finance or money is secondary to that process.

Yes, I agree with this. Specifically, money is used to attach the value an activity or good held by one person has for another person. It is used to measure the value of a good/activity in order to exchange that good/activity with other goods/activities.

I do agree with dwyer that money is an abstraction of the concept 'value' such that all content of that concept has been taken out. I don't agree with him that there is anything mystical or mysterious about this, and most people have no trouble relating this abstract, seemingly content-free concept to the real world of goods and services that it was invented to represent.

It is possible to understand a concept without being able to define that concept. Understanding isn't always an algorithmic process. The concept 'love' is another example of this. It is understood at an emotional level. It isn't really possible to explain it properly to someone who has never experienced it, but that doesn't mean that it is impossible to understand.

 

[SpineyNorman]

Edited because it's not worth it. Onarchy/workersunite (same thing, a bit like socialism/fascism? Maybe) this the last time I'm going to say this before I put you on ignore. If you want to discuss socialism/fascism and your definitions thereof start a new thread and we'll have that discussion there. But this thread is about the neoliberal vision of the future (ie. Neoliberal realpolitik, not your fantasies) and promises to be interesting and informative. Please allow us to continue this thread - we can still discuss the stuff you want to talk about - just start a new thread.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

@workersunite: "Jonah Goldberg's liberal fascism has a ton of refrences too" LOL Blagsta was right - you really do take your arguments from that piece of Republican right propaganda masquerading as scholarship. Many of us have read plenty of "history books" on the subject. That's how we know that you, Onarchy and Goldberg are talking out of your arses. I'm on my phone so can't post links but earlier in the thread butchersapron posted a link to Roger Griffin's critique of Liberal Fascism. I suggest you take a look. Griffin's a proper scholar and and widely considered to be an authority on fascism. Goldberg isn't to say the least.

I just reposted the Griffin review. There are some other academic reviews linked at the bottom of Griffin's blog page.

Also, might be worth mentioning that Hannah Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism is online in full, by way of an alternative and rather more academically respectable source on e.g. what Hitler and Stalin had in common.

http://www.archive.org/details/originsoftotalit00aren

 

[TruXta]

Yes, I agree with this. Specifically, money is used to attach the value an activity or good held by one person has for another person. It is used to measure the value of a good/activity in order to exchange that good/activity with other goods/activities.

I do agree with dwyer that money is an abstraction of the concept 'value' such that all content of that concept has been taken out. I don't agree with him that there is anything mystical or mysterious about this, and most people have no trouble relating this abstract, seemingly content-free concept to the real world of goods and services that it was invented to represent.

Yes, but I wasn't talking about money, initially I was talking about using numbers (stats or whatever) to quantify, normalise and manage behaviours, systems and what not. I agree with both of you on money, it is of course the ultimate abstraction of a particular value - namely that of a promise.

 

[nino_savatte]

Well, from their website:

http://www.pap.org.sg/partyhistory.php

"Party philosophy: A Socialist Democracy"

Of course they could just be calling themselves socialists, but who does that voluntarily without meaning it? And their public housing policies are indeed in a socialist spirit.

I cant be arsed. See Louis MacNeice's reply.

People do a lot of things "without meaning it". What makes the PAP any different? Cherry-picking to suit your thesis is a very ignoble thing indeed.

So Zhirinovsky? No comment?

 

[ViolentPanda]

If essentially everyone except you agrees on the definitions of words and concepts who exactly is the one sabotaging communication? Several people, me included, tried to "waste a single calory" by engaging with you but when you won't even try to agree on the definitions of terms it is exactly that - a waste. It's like two monolingual people, one speaking Chinese and the other Spanish, trying speak to one another in their own languages. In fact it's worse - you don't even appear to be trying. Anyway, can't you just piss off for a bit? The grownups are trying to talk now.

Onarchy's claims of communication shouldn't be taken seriously. His entire motivation is to feel victimised. Feeling victimised gives validation to the sense of misanthropy he projects in his writings (read his blog and you'll see what I mean). Even if nobody on this site had "insulted" him, he'd have invented an insult so that he could be offended by it, and feel victimised.

 

[WorkersUnite]

Sure ... great source. Here's a history professor's view ...

http://roger-griffin.blogspot.com/2010/01/review-liberal-fascism.html

So you need to be a history professor to find the real definition of fascism? Wow, I guess we all are disqualified from discussing anything Mad as a bag of ferrets, m8.

 

[Blagsta]

Lots of documentation about mussolini and fascism out there, just pick up a history book and start reading.

Which ones, specifically are you referring to?

Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism has a ton of references as well.

FAIL

 

[rekil]

I just reposted the Griffin review. There are some other academic reviews linked at the bottom of Griffin's blog page.

Robert Paxton mentioned there, his Anatomy Of Fascism is excellent.

 

[Blagsta]

Jonah Goldberg, author of Liberal Fascism (he's the one on the left, btw).

Not an academic either.

 

[nino_savatte]

What happened to jonathanbishop? Given their crude arguments, this onarchy fella and him could have been separated at birth.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

What happened to jonathanbishop? Given their crude arguments, this onarchy fella and him could have been separated at birth.

Banned. It was actually a bit of a sorry spectacle in the end. The man was breaking up mentally before our very eyes.

 

[TruXta]

Banned. It was actually a bit of a sorry spectacle in the end. The man was breaking up mentally before our very eyes.

Thread link? Morbidly curious.

 

[ViolentPanda]

His mates are scarily mental though. The comments on his blog are full of One of them explains how "libertarians" need to take control of the military and police in order to arrest and, one must assume, liquidate all socialists. (Remember that for this lot anyone who isn't a vulgar right libertarian is a "socialist" so that means getting rid of most of the population). The Pinochet apologetics make more sense now. In another place Onar tells someone that their grandmother is as bad as Hitler because she approves of state funded roads etc. Proper stone bonkers.

The real LOL moments coming when you realise that most of these tough guys have probably never fired a shot in anger, and would expect someone else to do the "liquidation" that has fueled their masturbation fantasies for so long.

As for their fantasies of taking over the military and police, most of the "right-libertarians" I've debated over the last 20 years (Farage excluded, oddly enough) couldn't strategise their way out of a paper bag, and think that tactics are small mints that come in a plastic box with a flip-up lid.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Thread link? Morbidly curious.

Can't remember the name of the thread. Can't you search for banned posters' posts?

Actually, Ed changed his poster name too to disguise his real name a bit, so that won't work.

I felt sorry for him in the end. I don't think I would ever feel sorry for Onan here.