What does socialism mean?

[brasicritique]

What does this mean, though? That the majority of people don't know what socialism is? That they are taught not to want it?

No what this means is the majority of socialists do not know what the situation of the 'workers' is or have yet to grasp the concept that the political paradigm of the 21st century has changed .That socialist are taught to ignore them.

i think the main problem with socialism and scciallists is that it is never about listening -it is about teching or telling as a result socialism is mumbling its way into oblivion

 

[brasicritique]

Do you ever read what you type before you post it, brasicattack or are you one of those posters who thinks that if they type enough words that it will 'look' like an 'argument' with a 'serious point'?

You are, without a doubt, one of the more useless wastes of space that I have ever encountered on these boards.

Do, kindly, piss off.

still not answering questions nino. Theres two questions in the post above your reply and your failure to answer them and your resorting to abuse stands as a monument to your limited intellect

 

[nino_savatte]

still not answering questions nino. Theres two questions in the post above your reply and your failure to answer them and your resorting to abuse stands as a monument to your limited intellect

Still typing up nonsense and pretending that it's substantive, brasic?

Quel typique. Oh and you can shove your backhanded compliments up your arse...or into your mouth: both orifices are interchangeable in your case.

 

[brasicritique]

still not answering questions nino?

 

[nino_savatte]

It's like being savaged by a dead cat.

I answer questions, I just don't oblige silly fuckers with stupid questions...like you.

As I said before, it's quality not quantity. The value of your words is zero, if there is no substance behind them.

Now piss off, you sad fuck.

 

[brasicritique]

Two questions and nothing but abuse i am unsure if you are ninoanswer or ninoasshole more like ninofriends

 

[nino_savatte]

Piss off, you sad twat.

 

[brasicritique]

ninoanswer

 

[nino_savatte]

You and L&L must share a brain. His and your posts are near enough identical in their lack of substance and wit.

 

[brasicritique]

You and L&L must share a brain. His and your posts are near enough identical in their lack of substance and wit.

dead cat originally it was dead sheep even your attempts at wit are not your own

ninonothing

 

[Fruitloop]

No what this means is the majority of socialists do not know what the situation of the 'workers' is or have yet to grasp the concept that the political paradigm of the 21st century has changed .That socialist are taught to ignore them.

i think the main problem with socialism and scciallists is that it is never about listening -it is about teching or telling as a result socialism is mumbling its way into oblivion

I am a worker in whatever sense that is meaningful in the 21st century, and I don't think I have much difficulty in grasping the political paradigm or whatever, as I live it every day. My own workplace has seen redundancy, massive outsourcing, and a coporate buyout all in the last year during which time I have been doing the best I can to defend my co-workers jobs etc by various means, so whatever I say isn't coming out of some ivory tower, and why should I be interested if you think it is, knowing as you do precisely nothing about me or my circumstances?

To be honest every time I hear the phrase 'most socialists' or 'most leftists' from you or baldwin or whoever, it just sounds to my ears like 'my prejudice/generalisation about socialists is...'. Conversely, I can guarantee that if you all concentrated a little more on positive suggestions about what might improve matters, rather than this endless oppositional posturing (a 'critical' stance definied in relation to other left factions that is ironically a quintessentially 'leftist' orientation) then your ideas would receive a better reception. After all, the majority is made up precisely of us, so we are surely entitled to an opinion.

 

[nino_savatte]

dead cat originally it was dead sheep even your attempts at wit are not your own

ninonothing

This post, curiously enough, resembles one that L&L posted in reply to my "dead cat" line a few years ago.

What I show is originality and what your post shows is your inability to improvise , to use your imagination or, indeed, to think for yourself.

I say "dead cat" and dead cat it is. I am not Dennis Healy but you are a Grade A arsehole.

 

[brasicritique]

I am a worker in whatever sense that is meaningful in the 21st century, and I don't think I have much difficulty in grasping the political paradigm or whatever, as I live it every day. My own workplace has seen redundancy, massive outsourcing, and a coporate buyout all in the last year during which time I have been doing the best I can to defend my co-workers jobs etc by various means, so whatever I say isn't coming out of some ivory tower, and why should I be interested if you think it is, knowing as you do precisely nothing about me or my circumstances?

To be honest every time I hear the phrase 'most socialists' or 'most leftists' from you or baldwin or whoever, it just sounds to my ears like 'my prejudice/generalisation about socialists is...'. Conversely, I can guarantee that if you all concentrated a little more on positive suggestions about what might improve matters, rather than this endless oppositional posturing (a 'critical' stance definied in relation to other left factions that is ironically a quintessentially 'leftist' orientation) then your ideas would receive a better reception. After all, the majority is made up precisely of us, so we are surely entitled to an opinion.

ok you see yourself as a worker. But the government the media the corperatist state see you as a consumer. The language of oppression has changed yet the left have not. This is what i mean by the change in the political paradigm terms like 'workers solidarity' mean nothing to many.

To attack those in power you have to engage with the language they use and make it easily accessable/understandible for the many.

The language/symbolism that the radical left use are out of date.

And if you cannot see how my critical points are meant to work then let me explain ; They are meant to say wake the fuck up and do not fall for out of date marxist arguements as espoused by people who are selfish and whose only interest lies in keeping the ideaology of marx alive whist doing fuck all with regards to tackling serious issues that face many without a stake and with out a voice in society and indeed the world today.

'my prejudice/generalisation about socialists is...'

They are socially exclusive
They are like nino if you disagree with them on any point you are painted as a racsist/nazi/sexist/homophobe etc see duruti johnsons various threads
They seem to forget class exploitation was the main lynchpin of marx's anaylsis/ critique of capitalism
They alieantae the very people they should be reaching out to
They are in an ethical/moral bind
They are irrelevent to the majority of people
They seem to think in terms of 'revolution' yet ignore the history of left wing revolution- Ie the role of the military in overthrowing governments
They see marx as a god and marxism as a religion in that the revolution always comes TOMMOROW .
They are mumbling into oblivion

The issue is 'globalisation' everything we disscuss on these boards is now as result of this issue. However 'globalisation is only discussed from a middlelcass perspective that champions the third world and dissmiss's problems of those at the bottom within western world as 'relative'

It is this reason that i would argue makes it currently impossible for any radical political groups from greens to trots to reach out to those at the bottom of society within the west and create building blocks for change. At the moment though all there is on these boards is a lot of finger wagging and snobishness. I would argue that oweing to there social status such posters like blagsta are indulging in 'cake and eat it politics ' Well heres the truth when/if the shit hits the fan ( massive economic crash environmental disaster etc ) there is no one on these boards no matter what group they belong to who is going to be immune from it. (Except nino as he dwells in a pointless void of his own making )

 

[brasicritique]

This post, curiously enough, resembles one that L&L posted in reply to my "dead cat" line a few years ago.

What I show is originality and what your post shows is your inability to improvise , to use your imagination or, indeed, to think for yourself.

I say "dead cat" and dead cat it is. I am not Dennis Healy but you are a Grade A arsehole.

and you my little imp of irrelevence are rats piss posing as dior

 

[Fruitloop]

ok you see yourself as a worker. But the government the media the corperatist state see you as a consumer. The language of oppression has changed yet the left have not. This is what i mean by the change in the political paradigm terms like 'workers solidarity' mean nothing to many.

To attack those in power you have to engage with the language they use and make it easily accessable/understandible for the many.

The language/symbolism that the radical left use are out of date.

And if you cannot see how my critical points are meant to work then let me explain ; They are meant to say wake the fuck up and do not fall for out of date marxist arguements as espoused by people who are selfish and whose only interest lies in keeping the ideaology of marx alive whist doing fuck all with regards to tackling serious issues that face many without a stake and with out a voice in society and indeed the world today.

'my prejudice/generalisation about socialists is...'

They are socially exclusive
They are like nino if you disagree with them on any point you are painted as a racsist/nazi/sexist/homophobe etc see duruti johnsons various threads
They seem to forget class exploitation was the main lynchpin of marx's anaylsis/ critique of capitalism
They alieantae the very people they should be reaching out to
They are in an ethical/moral bind
They are irrelevent to the majority of people
They seem to think in terms of 'revolution' yet ignore the history of left wing revolution- Ie the role of the military in overthrowing governments
They see marx as a god and marxism as a religion in that the revolution always comes TOMMOROW .
They are mumbling into oblivion

The issue is 'globalisation' everything we disscuss on these boards is now as result of this issue. However 'globalisation is only discussed from a middlelcass perspective that champions the third world and dissmiss's problems of those at the bottom within western world as 'relative'

It is this reason that i would argue makes it currently impossible for any radical political groups from greens to trots to reach out to those at the bottom of society within the west and create building blocks for change. At the moment though all there is on these boards is a lot of finger wagging and snobishness. I would argue that oweing to there social status such posters like blagsta are indulging in 'cake and eat it politics ' Well heres the truth when/if the shit hits the fan ( massive economic crash environmental disaster etc ) there is no one on these boards no matter what group they belong to who is going to be immune from it. (Except nino as he dwells in a pointless void of his own making )

Well, I see more where you're coming from, but I’m no nearer to agreeing with it. For sure there are academic Marxists who essentially peddle ruling-class obfuscation, and Marx himself wasn’t far enough from those traditions to be immune to that sort of thing, however I don’t accept that concepts like class, exploitation, alienation etc are simply out of date – that seems to me to be a kind of Blair-eque notion that is to be honest completely delusional. Nor do I think that it’s all about globalisation – I mean globalisation in its simplest sense is a technological development that is relatively impartial, what’s wrong with it is the way in which it spreads the unpleasant features of western capitalism – primitive accumulation, class oppression, unsustainable resource usage etc etc.

For me, politics doesn’t come from a charitable inclination that mirrors some kind of religious commitment to the poor and dispossessed, but from an enlightened self-interest (as opposed to a purely individualistic one) that sees my aims as being congruent with the majority of the world’s population, i.e. the ones that aren’t the ruling-class. These aims include but are not limited to the purely material aspects of life.

Don’t you think that to work entirely within the ideological terminology of the ruling class is to already concede to them a major victory? Taking the example of ‘worker’ vs ‘consumer’, is it not obvious to anyone that the term consumer disguises the difference between myself and Digby Jones, since we both consume, but something else in our relation to capital is not the same. In fact it’s not even an accurate description on any level – it might be nice if I spent most of my waking hours consuming, but I don’t, I spend them working! If these arguments really have lost all their compulsive force then we are truly fucked, but personally I don’t believe it is yet the case.

All of your listed criticisms of socialists may be true of some examples, (some of them are tbh a bit poetic to be really contendible), but I would have thought a better idea would be to try to find points of agreement that we can move forwards with, rather than just endlessly baiting each other. I mean, there are absolutely bona fide exponents of capitalist ideology on this site, who are prepared to defend all kinds of exploitation and oppression, but they are not in the main the ones who describe themselves as socialists or whatever. In relating to the types of activity that you don’t agree with, I reckon it’s worth bearing in mind that often these arise not from some character flaw in the people concerned but from their experience of the failure of the more obvious types of activity – this is true IMO of post-modern intellectual-type leftists, whose methods arise to a large extent from the failures of ’68, as well as to lifestylists, activistoids and that whole menagerie. Lastly, the attitude of denunciation that seems to be current here is without doubt one of the most unappealing characteristics of the left mileu, and is way in which we pretty much all need to put our house in order before our ideas are going to gain wide acceptance.

Capitalism is a tenacious enemy, and those who currently hold the reins of power are not equal opponents but the people who are already the winners. To lay all the blame for the continued existence of the capitalist system at the feet of the people who are opposing it seems to me to be to internalise those failures in an unhealthy way, rather than seeing the truth of the situation which is that we face a social system that is dominant ideologically and in its monopoly of force.

 

[nino_savatte]

They are like nino if you disagree with them on any point you are painted as a racsist/nazi/sexist/homophobe etc see duruti johnsons various threads

I've just seen this: it's not only unnecessary but it perfectly serves to illustrate my point that brasicattack has nothing to contribute but snide, cheap remarks.

He has used this post just to get a quick snipe in. It's pathetic.

 

[kyser_soze]

They alieantae the very people they should be reaching out to

But in fairness brass, you can be a bit alienating yourself, even when people are agreeing with you.

Good post/answer from you and Mr Loop tho...

 

[tbaldwin]

I've just seen this: it's not only unnecessary but it perfectly serves to illustrate my point that brasicattack has nothing to contribute but snide, cheap remarks.

He has used this post just to get a quick snipe in. It's pathetic.

Has anyone ever told you your the kind of person who brings out the best in other people?

 

[TremulousTetra]

But in fairness brass, you can be a bit alienating yourself, even when people are agreeing with you.

Good post/answer from you and Mr Loop tho...

agreed.

 

[becky p]

I've just seen this: it's not only unnecessary but it perfectly serves to illustrate my point that brasicattack has nothing to contribute but snide, cheap remarks.

He has used this post just to get a quick snipe in. It's pathetic.

nino read what he actually posted not just one line. The post proves that he is more than capable of putting forward a reasoned arguement. As are most of the people who you seem intent as seeing as the enemy.

 

[nino_savatte]

Has anyone ever told you your the kind of person who brings out the best in other people?

Has anyone ever told you that you're a mindless troll with a penchant for apologising for racist comedians? Oh, they already have.

 

[ViolentPanda]

ok you see yourself as a worker. But the government the media the corperatist state see you as a consumer. The language of oppression has changed yet the left have not. This is what i mean by the change in the political paradigm terms like 'workers solidarity' mean nothing to many.

True, but how people identify themselves (rather than how the state identifies them) is still an important part of their identity.
It's doubtless true that we've moved beyond being able to easily separate people into "bosses" and "workers" (let's face it, people were challenging such distinctions a century ago, let alone now), but people do still use the old tags in leiu of anything better.

To attack those in power you have to engage with the language they use and make it easily accessable/understandible for the many.

The language/symbolism that the radical left use are out of date.

I totally agree, but can you really see any of the self-styled left groups putting effort into re-writing the language of class politics? If it happens at all it's not going to be through the aegis of "the radical left" in it's manifestation as political grouplets all scrabbling around on issues of power or ideological purity, it's going to be from the "grassroots" re-writing everything to fit their own current experiences.

And if you cannot see how my critical points are meant to work then let me explain ; They are meant to say wake the fuck up and do not fall for out of date marxist arguements as espoused by people who are selfish and whose only interest lies in keeping the ideaology of marx alive whist doing fuck all with regards to tackling serious issues that face many without a stake and with out a voice in society and indeed the world today.

'my prejudice/generalisation about socialists is...'

They are socially exclusive
They are like nino if you disagree with them on any point you are painted as a racsist/nazi/sexist/homophobe etc see duruti johnsons various threads
They seem to forget class exploitation was the main lynchpin of marx's anaylsis/ critique of capitalism
They alieantae the very people they should be reaching out to
They are in an ethical/moral bind
They are irrelevent to the majority of people
They seem to think in terms of 'revolution' yet ignore the history of left wing revolution- Ie the role of the military in overthrowing governments
They see marx as a god and marxism as a religion in that the revolution always comes TOMMOROW .
They are mumbling into oblivion

Is anyone really that fixated with pure Marxism, rather than just regarding it as an interesting century and a half old analysis?

The issue is 'globalisation' everything we disscuss on these boards is now as result of this issue. However 'globalisation is only discussed from a middlelcass perspective that champions the third world and dissmiss's problems of those at the bottom within western world as 'relative'

That particular mindset is very deeply ingrained, though. It's at least a couple of centuries old and fits very snugly with the whole middle-class enterprise of self-promotion and self-regard, and the division of "the indigenous poor"/"the underclass" (or whatever other patronising name you want to label people with) into "deserving" and "undeserving" is of a piece with the patronisation of entire nations of people in the developing world. Looking through their middle-class prism, the "deserving poor" and the Bangladeshi flood victim are the same, someone to be pitied and patronised, but also someone who'll conform to the middle-class ideal of "pulling themselves up by their boostraps". That's why they loathe and fear the people they label "the undeserving poor" (100 years ago the Irish were major victims of the label, nowadays the label is applied to a wider catchment); because they either can't or won't conform.

 

[tbaldwin]

Has anyone ever told you that you're a mindless troll with a penchant for apologising for racist comedians? Oh, they already have.

I think you may have mentioned something along those lines a few hundred times.
Still doesnt make it true though.

 

[nino_savatte]

I think you may have mentioned something along those lines a few hundred times.
Still doesnt make it true though.

Sorry pal, but it is true.

 

[tbaldwin]

Sorry pal, but it is true.

Show me yours and i'll show you mine......

 

[nino_savatte]

Show me yours and i'll show you mine......

Tosser.

 

[Louis MacNeice]

Thanks to all who have contributed thoughtfully to this thread...to those others, I've made a new thread where all the knee jerk name calling, the off topic accusations and recriminations can sit happily out of the way.

Cheers - Louis MacNeice

 

[nino_savatte]

Did you have a particular poster in mind, Louis?

Silly me, of course you did.

 

[TremulousTetra]

Thanks to all who have contributed thoughtfully to this thread...to those others, I've made a new thread where all the knee jerk name calling, the off topic accusations and recriminations can sit happily out of the way.

Cheers - Louis MacNeice

and what about those who continually suggest other people are being disingenuous, will they/you be posting there?

 

[Louis MacNeice]

On this page there are posts from you THBaldwin and Brasicattack which would all be better off elsewhere. So next time any of you three - and others - feel the need to start trading off topic playground insults, I've provided you all a space to do it...because I'm kind like that.

Louis MacNeice