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There's no such thing as left and right anymore...

Orang Utan said:
I don't think they are left wing.
Their MP is a scab.
Click to expand...

Caroline Lucas isn't a scab, she supported the strike and I don't think that what she did could constitute scabbing, she put nappies and broken glass in a pile of rubbish by the side of the road but she certainly didn't facilitate any kind of rubbish collection. I don't think that's really scabbing, is it? No one wants kids or dogs to cut their feet on broken glass and she, unlike the council, went to the picket lines and supported the strike. The Green Councillors in Brighton are obviously scabs though.
 
well she may not have been out pulling 10 hours with a scab crew on a lorry but symbolically you can see why it got backs up. Hard to leave utter filth lying round I know, it gets one twitchy to see...
 
The left were traditionally for change and the right opposed change because change inevitably favours the interests of one group and disfavours the interests of another that was the original determinant of the political left and right.

In a society in which the mainstream left and right both support progressive change and differ only in how that change is managed the essential plurality of view has been lost in western democracy so the mainstream left and right now both serve the interests which are favoured by progressive change, in that sense western societies are no longer true democracies but progressive orthodoxies.
 
dilberto said:
The left were traditionally for change and the right opposed change because change inevitably favours the interests of one group and disfavours the interests of another that was the original determinant of the political left and right.

In a society in which the mainstream left and right both support progressive change and differ only in how that change is managed the essential plurality of view has been lost in western democracy so the mainstream left and right now both serve the interests which are favoured by progressive change, in that sense western societies are no longer true democracies but progressive orthodoxies.
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What progressive social change do the Tories want and how do they differ from labour in how they seek to manage this change? Who/what are the interests favoured by this progressive change?
 
The grand illusion is that national parliaments still hold actual power. You see, Left and Right don't make sense any more not because the ‘Right has won’ (no-one ‘wins’ this game in the long run), or because the 'Class War is over’ (it isn’t) but because all power has been channeled and concentrated into the hand of a very few select individuals. (ie 85 people own as much as the poorer half of humanity, an unprecedented concentration of wealth) Parliamentary politics (where the Left or the Right always have had their traditional stage) has become a puppet theatre, a sideshow. The world is ruled by corporations, private interests, financial oppression and overpowering technology. The ‘future’ truly is now.

Those people who protest in countries where the shit really has hit the fan don't do so because they are ‘left or right’. They protest because their lives have become unbearable at a very basic level.

Anyone who harks on about the Left/Right paradigm is 50 years behind the curve. Know thyself, then know thy enemy as Sun-Tzu has said. What's needed is a new way of thinking, and the generations currently alive will probably not come up with constructive new solutions. Wearing V for Vendetta masks and wondering whether there still is a Left or a Right are not it. Perhaps today’s kids’ kids will try and revert the nightmare that has been constructed around them, with truly new ideas.
 
The utter banality that politics is the shadow cast on society by economics does not in itself even start to deal with whether a left and right exist. Maybe just maybe the right argue that this is the proper model for how society should be organised and the left doesn't? Maybe people actually have different politics and positions?
 
Don't they just quote-mine?

Hands up anyone who's read Sun Tzu.



Ok, butchers, we see you.


Raises hand a quarter way up.
 
Remus Harbank said:
The grand illusion is that national parliaments still hold actual power. You see, Left and Right don't make sense any more not because the ‘Right has won’ (no-one ‘wins’ this game in the long run), or because the 'Class War is over’ (it isn’t) but because all power has been channeled and concentrated into the hand of a very few select individuals. (ie 85 people own as much as the poorer half of humanity, an unprecedented concentration of wealth) Parliamentary politics (where the Left or the Right always have had their traditional stage) has become a puppet theatre, a sideshow. The world is ruled by corporations, private interests, financial oppression and overpowering technology. The ‘future’ truly is now.

Those people who protest in countries where the shit really has hit the fan don't do so because they are ‘left or right’. They protest because their lives have become unbearable at a very basic level.

Anyone who harks on about the Left/Right paradigm is 50 years behind the curve. Know thyself, then know thy enemy as Sun-Tzu has said. What's needed is a new way of thinking, and the generations currently alive will probably not come up with constructive new solutions. Wearing V for Vendetta masks and wondering whether there still is a Left or a Right are not it. Perhaps today’s kids’ kids will try and revert the nightmare that has been constructed around them, with truly new ideas.
Click to expand...
Regarding the 85 people and their capacious pockets, it's a case of yes, but. . . that picture omits the role of sovereign wealth funds and their power.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_wealth_fund

These are hugely capitalist entities, but they're also state-owned, and not in private hands - and the biggest of them play an increasingly important part in the world economy.
 
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TruXta said:
Well I'll be damned. I've read bits of it, never got through the whole thing.
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As laptop said, I think they love him for his quote potential rather than studying the Art Of War etc in-depth. But if you see Sun Tzu quoted especially in context of V masks/Occupy etc, chances are it's one of the conspiracy theory hangers-on.
 
cesare said:
As laptop said, I think they love him for his quote potential rather than studying the Art Of War etc in-depth. But if you see Sun Tzu quoted especially in context of V masks/Occupy etc, chances are it's one of the conspiracy theory hangers-on.
Click to expand...
A bit like Machiavelli then I take it.
 
cesare said:
As laptop said, I think they love him for his quote potential rather than studying the Art Of War etc in-depth. But if you see Sun Tzu quoted especially in context of V masks/Occupy etc, chances are it's one of the conspiracy theory hangers-on.
Click to expand...
Yes, and often the content of the quote is misunderstood or misused - as above, where the know thyself bit - the really constitutive and relevant bit - is totally ignored in favour of simply knowing the enemy (and even that is infantilised down to a group of bad people).
 
cesare said:
Wasn't that specifically a 2pac thing?
Click to expand...
Tupac-Shakur-206528-1-402.jpg


:confused:
 
Idris2002 said:
Regarding the 85 people and their capacious pockets, it's a case of yes, but. . . that picture omits the role of sovereign wealth funds and their power.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_wealth_fund

These are hugely capitalist entities, but they're also state-owned, and not in private hands - and the biggest of them play an increasingly important part in the world economy.
Click to expand...
State owned but the money has sometimes ended up in private hands. See the fraud investigation about the Libyan Investment Authority under Gaddafi. Wouldn't be surprised if similiar wasn't happening in the UAE or China for instance.
 
Idris2002 said:
Regarding the 85 people and their capacious pockets, it's a case of yes, but. . . that picture omits the role of sovereign wealth funds and their power.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_wealth_fund

These are hugely capitalist entities, but they're also state-owned, and not in private hands - and the biggest of them play an increasingly important part in the world economy.
Click to expand...
Apart from Norway and Canada the top ten are all ruled by semi feudalist regimes, ie privately.
 
cesare said:
As laptop said, I think they love him for his quote potential rather than studying the Art Of War etc in-depth. But if you see Sun Tzu quoted especially in context of V masks/Occupy etc, chances are it's one of the conspiracy theory hangers-on.
Click to expand...
Oh Cesare, is that all you've got. Getting that old Conspiracy-Theorist brush out? So now there is a black list of whom one is allowed to quote and whom isn't?
 
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