Why is Urban Pol full of racist threads?
- Thread starter bolshiebhoy
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No of course not. But capitalism cannot be managed in workers' interests, and it's not socialists' jobs to do so. It's for socialists to advance workers interests everwhere until capital is broken by stretching its contradictions to the limit, and then keeping going - demanding the impossible.tbaldwin said:
revol68 said:This by the way is why you are a dirty liberal and not a socialist.
tommy they don't get it .. maybe after they have actually had a job for more than a year and had kids etc etc
and then realised that you have to fight for the day to day AND FROM THAT comes the revolution NOT the other way around .. then maybe they will understand that they are liberlas and you are a socialists ..
maybe we should start a job club for cyber socialists to teach them a bit of reality!
revol68
what, fucking what?
yes, it is based on the day to day struggles, it fucking has to be. you are the one putting forward pie in the sky conditions for iniation of struggles, conditions that would see the reversal of equal oppurtunities legislation, the overturning of EU working directives and a whole host of legislation, and all this just in order to iniate struggle?
You claim that in order to have the possibility of having a strong working class capable of imposing itself on capital we must sort out a pro working class immigration strategy and a 'closed shop'. My point is that only a strong working class that is capable of imposing itself on capital would be able to make concrete such a proposal and therefore your argument is a tautology. And more importantly any move towards a closed shop or working class "immigration strategy" in the absence of a militant working class capable of imposing itself would lead to the co option of such a strategy for reaction, and we would see the unions pushing a divisive agenda and closed shops as centres of chauvinism.
You tell me that I need to have had a job for more than a year, that i'm some sort of pie in the sky socialist but you are the cretin pushing for closed shops, yet i can put money on it you have never actually experianced a closed shop, that you have never seen how it is used to divide the working clas, to shore up racist and sectarian zero sum politics. if you want to see where closed shops in the hands of a weak working class get you, take a look at the devastation at the heart of protestant working class communities in Northern Ireland, it did nothing for them, and now they find themselves one of the worse off populations in the UK, with a lower higher education take up than inner city working class black youth.
The irony of all this is that workers in portadown have actually went way beyond your crude economism and have started organising alongside Polish workers, arguing that if they want to stop the undercutting of wages and the extra-exploitation of immigrant labour, they must fight for immigrant rights and that the current media hysteria serves only to divide. They haven't went whinging to Union bureacrats for a "closed shop" and they aren't a bunch of ideological socialists but rather prods from mostly loyalist backgrounds. they have no desire to push for a closed shop, which would be in effect to push back equal oppurtunities legislation and see the reassertion of fading divisions.
You claim that in order to have the possibility of having a strong working class capable of imposing itself on capital we must sort out a pro working class immigration strategy and a 'closed shop'. My point is that only a strong working class that is capable of imposing itself on capital would be able to make concrete such a proposal and therefore your argument is a tautology. And more importantly any move towards a closed shop or working class "immigration strategy" in the absence of a militant working class capable of imposing itself would lead to the co option of such a strategy for reaction, and we would see the unions pushing a divisive agenda and closed shops as centres of chauvinism.
You tell me that I need to have had a job for more than a year, that i'm some sort of pie in the sky socialist but you are the cretin pushing for closed shops, yet i can put money on it you have never actually experianced a closed shop, that you have never seen how it is used to divide the working clas, to shore up racist and sectarian zero sum politics. if you want to see where closed shops in the hands of a weak working class get you, take a look at the devastation at the heart of protestant working class communities in Northern Ireland, it did nothing for them, and now they find themselves one of the worse off populations in the UK, with a lower higher education take up than inner city working class black youth.
The irony of all this is that workers in portadown have actually went way beyond your crude economism and have started organising alongside Polish workers, arguing that if they want to stop the undercutting of wages and the extra-exploitation of immigrant labour, they must fight for immigrant rights and that the current media hysteria serves only to divide. They haven't went whinging to Union bureacrats for a "closed shop" and they aren't a bunch of ideological socialists but rather prods from mostly loyalist backgrounds. they have no desire to push for a closed shop, which would be in effect to push back equal oppurtunities legislation and see the reassertion of fading divisions.
revol68 said:
i have experianced closed shop .. it was good for all of us .. as usual you cite extreme cases to justify your anti working class prejudice
i also work alongside immigrants .. and i treat them as equals as do 90% of the workers you are scared to allow power .. they do not join the union as they are agency .. we have finally got management to create new permanant jobs .. i hope some of them get them ..
Hawkeye Pearce
We're your friends man...
I'm too young to remember the closed shop, but in order to enact it now you'd need a much more militant union than exists in this country at the moment. I can't exactly see the TUC bunch going in for it, right now they are too busy begging for crumbs from tony's table. As far is I can see the only way a closed shop could work would be if the union was controlled by its members on the shopfloor rather than some bureaucrat in an office somewhere.
revol68
what, fucking what?
how can a closed shop be good for us all, by definition it is closed, it's benefits do not extend to those outside.
I'm sure that there were positive aspects to closed shops in northern ireland too, but they were intrinsically bound up with negatives, with exclusion. Even if people weren't sectarian, the tedency saw the sons and relatives of workers get the next line of jobs and this tended to make the workplace sectarian by default. I imagine that in somewhere London that such a policy would still maintain a diversity ofthe already settled ethnic groups but it would still lead to exclusion of new groups. it's the equivalent of pulling up the ladder.
And I am from a staunchly working class background and do not harbour anti working class prejudices, or do you have to deny the reality of working class potential for reaction to hold faith in the potential of the working class to emancipate itself.
You are a guild socialist at best, a petty lil Ian Beale, a Proudhonian prick and certainly nothing that Durruti (a migrant to south america) would want to be linked to.
Divisive Cotton
Now I just have my toy soldiers
The sons and daughters policy isn't reactionary, neither is a closed shop - both strengthen the working class, in the community and in the workplace.
You can have both while also demanding this:
You can have both while also demanding this:
revol68 said:This by the way is why you are a dirty liberal and not a socialist.
I think Socialism is about improving the lives of people in the here and now and in the future.....
I certainly dont think its a clever academic theory that means people can sit back and say "oh well your poor what do you expect thats capitalism etc"
The SWP (bless them) used to say that Revolutionaries made the best Reforms......I believe in massive redistribution of wealth and power....I think it can only happen gradually....The arguement over reform and revolution is historical one.....But the arguement now has to be about building a sustainable alternative not just a quick one.....
Hawkeye Pearce
We're your friends man...
tbaldwin said:
Well capitalism is not going to collapse overnight. But whilst taking action to improve peoples lives in the here and now and in doing so trying to increase class solidarity and internationalism, we must keep in mind that people tried to reform capitalism in the past and it ended with capitalism incorporating the unions then destroying them along with the ideals of many of the social democratic organisations that believed in reforming the system. My point is that any gains made in the here and now can only be secured by working to destroy capitalism and the modern state system.
Divisive Cotton
Now I just have my toy soldiers
revol68 said:
I've read them - and?
Hawkeye Pearce said:
If you look at Politics and Class struggle as a kind of tug of war........And sorry i do.......................
It seems to me that a lot of people on the left are not pulling.....but arguing with each other.......
Im not against the odd arguement myself........But the Left needs to start getting its act together, the sooner the better....
Divisive Cotton
Now I just have my toy soldiers
In Bloom said:
Go on - explain that point more.
nightbreed
Im Bored
In Bloom said:
You dont 'trust the bureaucrats' cos they cant be trusted. You get in the unions to kick them out and replace them with class fighters.
Divisive Cotton
Now I just have my toy soldiers
bolshiebhoy said:
It's not racist to debate immigration. Personally speaking, I think there's been some great points on either side of the debate - I say either, but I don't think the debate is as polarised as what it seems.
poster342002
PROPER leftwing socialist
Who then go onto become new bureaurocrats.nightbreed said:
By making it so that people have to be a member of the union to work in a specific place, you give the union de facto power to hire and fire, which, with the current structures and politics of the mainstream unions, would only give the upper levels of TU management more power to keep the rank and file "moderate" and under control.Divisive Cotton said:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't the original US IWW have a policy of not fighting for closed shops for this exact reason?
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Divisive Cotton said:
IMHO a "sons and daughters" policy is only acceptable when and if enough social housing is being built to provide some form of decent housing to all. At any other time (say, for example, the present) it's wrongheaded purely because it becomes a divisive force in communities.
As for the closed shop, intellectually I'm in favour, but I've seen how workplaces with more than one union can have the closed shop unions manipulated by the bosses playing one t.u. off against others. Even with there being fewer unions nowadays after all the mergers, I'm sceptical that clever bosses wouldn't use this ploy again. I'm also sceptical that many union leaderships in the UK have the guts for a fight anymore.
revol68
what, fucking what?
the whole concept of Son's and Daughters housing policy is fundamentally reactionary. A) it assumes as given and natural a shortage of housing. When surely even the most simple socialist understands that the argument is against a shortage rather than for a redistribution of shortage.
B) It may not necessarily lead to racial ghettoisation in already mixed areas, but most parts of the UK it would, as well as further reinforcing sectarian division in Northern Ireland (paramilitaries have been running a kind of son's and daughters policy in the North for quite a while).
C) Even if every community in the UK was a walking, talking United Colors of Benetton advert, new immigrants would find themselves ghettoised and more than likely find themselves as a new underclass, and would be even more open to exploitation by capital, a reserve army of labour in which the economic marginalisation would mix with a potent sense of racial or ethnic oppression and serve as a great tool for divide and rule.
I honestly can't believe that people think closed shops and sons and daughters policies are something we should be struggling for.
No fucking wonder they are so convinced the BNP and their ilk are makig such head way in the white working class. They are the "left" equivalent of Labour poiting to the BNP's success and arguing that they have "get tough" on immigration in order to cut them off.
B) It may not necessarily lead to racial ghettoisation in already mixed areas, but most parts of the UK it would, as well as further reinforcing sectarian division in Northern Ireland (paramilitaries have been running a kind of son's and daughters policy in the North for quite a while).
C) Even if every community in the UK was a walking, talking United Colors of Benetton advert, new immigrants would find themselves ghettoised and more than likely find themselves as a new underclass, and would be even more open to exploitation by capital, a reserve army of labour in which the economic marginalisation would mix with a potent sense of racial or ethnic oppression and serve as a great tool for divide and rule.
I honestly can't believe that people think closed shops and sons and daughters policies are something we should be struggling for.
No fucking wonder they are so convinced the BNP and their ilk are makig such head way in the white working class. They are the "left" equivalent of Labour poiting to the BNP's success and arguing that they have "get tough" on immigration in order to cut them off.
Divisive Cotton
Now I just have my toy soldiers
Revol there is a chronic shortage of housing the south east - but not in the north where I understand there are 700,000 plus empty council properties.
This is because of uneven economic development.
Aside from northern ireland, I know that a Sons and Daughters policy in the south east would lead to stronger working class communities.
In inner-london the turnover of residents is astronomical - the lack of informal community structures onlybenefits the voracious property developers, slash'b'burn Labour councillors and anti-social elements.
Because this is what happens without a political opposition - and a political opposition cannot come from working class areas without a community.
I'm not overexaggerating when I say that whole swaths of working class areas in London have no community to speak of!
But for you Revol your own solution is, Wait for the revolution!
This is because of uneven economic development.
Aside from northern ireland, I know that a Sons and Daughters policy in the south east would lead to stronger working class communities.
In inner-london the turnover of residents is astronomical - the lack of informal community structures onlybenefits the voracious property developers, slash'b'burn Labour councillors and anti-social elements.
Because this is what happens without a political opposition - and a political opposition cannot come from working class areas without a community.
I'm not overexaggerating when I say that whole swaths of working class areas in London have no community to speak of!
But for you Revol your own solution is, Wait for the revolution!
revol68
what, fucking what?
Why do we need to think of the working class as a geographical "community", why does it need to be constituted in such a manner? Would it because it's the struture of bourgeois electoral politic?
Also you haven't even came close to addressing the issue of racism and gheottisation that son's and daughters policy would have.
Also you haven't even came close to addressing the issue of racism and gheottisation that son's and daughters policy would have.
Divisive Cotton
Now I just have my toy soldiers
revol68 said:
There's racism and gheottisation without a sons and daughters policy!
What happens is that the worst quality housing is left to newly arrived immigrants, and the previous occupants go in search of something better.
The sons and daughters policy will not change the nature of crap housing in itself - but it's not meant to.
You can't shirk away from investment in housing, and the appalling state of industry, which primarily will dictate housing needs.
But there needs to some sort of planning that ensures continuity over the generations.
A community is primarily constructed through a geographic area - although of course that is not the only existence, or definition of community.
revol68
what, fucking what?
there is of course ghettoisation without the Son's and Daughters policy, but that's akin to saying there was anti semitism prior to the Holocaust (to sail as close to Godwins law as I can 
).
The Son's and Daughter's policy would further exasperate the problem whilst at the same time naturalise such "ghettoisation" into "sustained communities".
If the Son's and Daughters policy had been kept in effect many of Britains most diverse working class areas would never have come into existance.
Working class communities have always been the most diverse and dynamic, from the days when Kropotkin and Rocker were knocking around the East End, involved in the Yiddish workers movement, it is this instability and constant breaking down of cultures and synthesis that gives the working class such explosive potential to break with all forms of conservatism.
The argument must always be one of "housing for all" with no qualifications at all! That way immigrants are able to become part of the community, to bring something to it.
You still haven't explained how the Son's and Daughters policy would avoid marginalising immigrant populations, afterall if they aren;t the sons and daugthers of a local they are in essence second class citizens. Also why son's and daughters, does that mean that a single 25 year old with English parents has more right to a house than a the daughter of an immigrant or an immigrant with two kids?
Also if I moved to an area would I be excluded from housing too?
You are living in a fucking dream world. A sustained community is not some great thing in itself. Infact it's provincial and in can be extremely reactionary, just ask the millions of people who come to London to escape such a dull existance. In Northern Ireland there are sustained communities and they are the fucking bastions of bigotry, and the sooner immigration ruptures them open the better.
).The Son's and Daughter's policy would further exasperate the problem whilst at the same time naturalise such "ghettoisation" into "sustained communities".
If the Son's and Daughters policy had been kept in effect many of Britains most diverse working class areas would never have come into existance.
Working class communities have always been the most diverse and dynamic, from the days when Kropotkin and Rocker were knocking around the East End, involved in the Yiddish workers movement, it is this instability and constant breaking down of cultures and synthesis that gives the working class such explosive potential to break with all forms of conservatism.
The argument must always be one of "housing for all" with no qualifications at all! That way immigrants are able to become part of the community, to bring something to it.
You still haven't explained how the Son's and Daughters policy would avoid marginalising immigrant populations, afterall if they aren;t the sons and daugthers of a local they are in essence second class citizens. Also why son's and daughters, does that mean that a single 25 year old with English parents has more right to a house than a the daughter of an immigrant or an immigrant with two kids?
Also if I moved to an area would I be excluded from housing too?
You are living in a fucking dream world. A sustained community is not some great thing in itself. Infact it's provincial and in can be extremely reactionary, just ask the millions of people who come to London to escape such a dull existance. In Northern Ireland there are sustained communities and they are the fucking bastions of bigotry, and the sooner immigration ruptures them open the better.
Divisive Cotton
Now I just have my toy soldiers
revol68 said:there is of course ghettoisation without the Son's and Daughters policy, but that's akin to saying there was anti semitism prior to the Holocaust (to sail as close to Godwins law as I can
The Son's and Daughter's policy would further exasperate the problem whilst at the same time naturalise such "ghettoisation" into "sustained communities".
If the Son's and Daughters policy had been kept in effect many of Britains most diverse working class areas would never have come into existance.
Working class communities have always been the most diverse and dynamic, from the days when Kropotkin and Rocker were knocking around the East End, involved in the Yiddish workers movement, it is this instability and constant breaking down of cultures and synthesis that gives the working class such explosive potential to break with all forms of conservatism.
The argument must always be one of "housing for all" with no qualifications at all! That way immigrants are able to become part of the community, to bring something to it.
You still haven't explained how the Son's and Daughters policy would avoid marginalising immigrant populations, afterall if they aren;t the sons and daugthers of a local they are in essence second class citizens. Also why son's and daughters, does that mean that a single 25 year old with English parents has more right to a house than a the daughter of an immigrant or an immigrant with two kids?
Also if I moved to an area would I be excluded from housing too?
You are living in a fucking dream world. A sustained community is not some great thing in itself. Infact it's provincial and in can be extremely reactionary, just ask the millions of people who come to London to escape such a dull existance. In Northern Ireland there are sustained communities and they are the fucking bastions of bigotry, and the summer immigration ruptures them open the better.
Just how 'diverse and dynamic' working class communities have historically been is a matter of opinion.
I agree - housing for all! That's fine - but that's an aim - which, even in the very best of circumstances - could not be realised for a generation.
So in the mean time...
It depends on your focus though - if your entire political activity is based around the internet - then you can demand anything. As for housing for all, why not throw in world peace while you're at it?
So you either face the reality of limited housing in the foreseeable future - or just shout slogans from the sidelines.
I take in your points about community having the potential for reaction - but there is also the potential for rebellion.
Sons and daughters is not the only means of planning - there should also be the same for private housing. You should have to prove your worth and your roots in any given area - this works well under certain trust-based shared-ownership schemes.
You keep talking about ghettoisation - of who? a race? a religion? I don't know what you mean.
Yes, a sons and daughters policy would dramatically slow down the movement of people in any given area - but that's the idea of it. And note I say slow down and not halt. Because to halt means that everybody in any given place would want to live in that particular area for the rest of their lives. Of course that will not happen - but they should at least be given the opportunity to do so if they wish.
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