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Author Topic: The Left Needs a Master Narrative
Left Turn
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posted 12 June 2005 09:06 PM      Profile for Left Turn     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
The left needs a master narrative of history.

The right wing has a master narrative of history, but their narrative is distorted along two lines:

1) Historical ommission, primarily of of the agency of the working class as an active participant in the making of history, and;

2) Distortion of the reasons for which given events happened in the first place.

The left needs a master narrative through which history can be understood, and which counters the distortions of history by the master narrative of the right.

Standing in the way of the left wing master narative of history is the beast which I shall refer to a post-modernism. Post modernism presumes that all social struggles are equal. This leads to ativists tackling individual issues in isolation from other issues. As a result, social activist fail to make the necessary links between various struggles, and this reduces the left to fighting a series of defensive battles against the neo-liberal/neo-imperial assault on the working class.

The master narrative of the left needs to recognize the following:

1) The need to place class at the centre of our analysis

2) The need to discuss current and historical issues within the the reality of the US as an imperial nation. Anti-imperialism is central to our understanding of history, and of the present global situation.

[ 12 June 2005: Message edited by: Left Turn ]


From: Burnaby, BC | Registered: Mar 2005  |  IP: Logged
xander
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posted 12 June 2005 10:03 PM      Profile for xander        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Left Turn:
The left needs a master narrative of history.

The right wing has a master narrative of history, but their narrative is distorted along two lines:

1) Historical ommission, primarily of of the agency of the working class as an active participant in the making of history, and;

2) Distortion of the reasons for which given events happened in the first place.

The left needs a master narrative through which history can be understood, and which counters the distortions of history by the master narrative of the right.

Standing in the way of the left wing master narative of history is the beast which I shall refer to a post-modernism. Post modernism presumes that all social struggles are equal. This leads to ativists tackling individual issues in isolation from other issues. As a result, social activist fail to make the necessary links between various struggles, and this reduces the left to fighting a series of defensive battles against the neo-liberal/neo-imperial assault on the working class.

The master narrative of the left needs to recognize the following:

1) The need to place class at the centre of our analysis

2) The need to discuss current and historical issues within the the reality of the US as an imperial nation. Anti-imperialism is central to our understanding of history, and of the present global situation.

[ 12 June 2005: Message edited by: Left Turn ]



It appears that perhaps you have not paid attention to the work of M. Foucault [let alone that of Derrida or any of the other post-Wittgenstein thinker].

A master narrative, according to some of those folks listed above, is not a liberal, more importantly liberating, discursive style.

In fact, as M. Foucault pointed out to us a few decades back, it is indeed within the 'master narrative' that therein resides a narrative of mastery.

As such, master (or meta) narratives are not viewed by these thinkers as being in any way practically emancipatory [let alone heuristically adequate],


xander


From: Ottawa | Registered: Jun 2005  |  IP: Logged
xander
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posted 12 June 2005 10:13 PM      Profile for xander        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Left Turn:
The left needs a master narrative of history.

The right wing has a master narrative of history, but their narrative is distorted along two lines:

1) Historical ommission, primarily of of the agency of the working class as an active participant in the making of history, and;

The so-called working class is only an invention of late modernism. As such, there is likely no coherence upon which said supposed entity (i.e. "the working class") could ally.

2) Distortion of the reasons for which given events happened in the first place.


That is, in fact, a version (in and of itself) of "history."


The left needs a master narrative through which history can be understood, and which counters the distortions of history by the master narrative of the right.

Standing in the way of the left wing master narative of history is the beast which I shall refer to a post-modernism. Post modernism presumes that all social struggles are equal. This leads to ativists tackling individual issues in isolation from other issues. As a result, social activist fail to make the necessary links between various struggles, and this reduces the left to fighting a series of defensive battles against the neo-liberal/neo-imperial assault on the working class.


THAT was damn brilliant !! [though if I was phrasing that post I would not have necessarily "the working class" as an instantiation of oppression (I'd gone with tha sex/gender thingy)] "To each their own" I suppose ...


The master narrative of the left needs to recognize the following:

1) The need to place class at the centre of our analysis

2) The need to discuss current and historical issues within the the reality of the US as an imperial nation. Anti-imperialism is central to our understanding of history, and of the present global situation.


Already answered that one in my previous post to your well-phrased and intellectually provocative message. Thanks for makin' me TRY to try to 'think'

[ 12 June 2005: Message edited by: Left Turn ]



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nonsuch
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posted 12 June 2005 10:49 PM      Profile for nonsuch     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Never mind which philosopher said what, when: chances are, most voters haven't read it.
Chances are, most voters have no perspective, no history, no memory.
Just tell the story. As truthfully as possible. As many times as necessary.

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Cueball
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posted 12 June 2005 11:30 PM      Profile for Cueball   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Left Turn:
The left needs a master narrative of history.

The right wing has a master narrative of history, but their narrative is distorted along two lines:

1) Historical ommission, primarily of of the agency of the working class as an active participant in the making of history, and;

2) Distortion of the reasons for which given events happened in the first place.

The left needs a master narrative through which history can be understood, and which counters the distortions of history by the master narrative of the right.

Standing in the way of the left wing master narative of history is the beast which I shall refer to a post-modernism. Post modernism presumes that all social struggles are equal. This leads to ativists tackling individual issues in isolation from other issues. As a result, social activist fail to make the necessary links between various struggles, and this reduces the left to fighting a series of defensive battles against the neo-liberal/neo-imperial assault on the working class.

The master narrative of the left needs to recognize the following:

1) The need to place class at the centre of our analysis

2) The need to discuss current and historical issues within the the reality of the US as an imperial nation. Anti-imperialism is central to our understanding of history, and of the present global situation.

[ 12 June 2005: Message edited by: Left Turn ]


I like this idea. The right has a very effective master narrative that has been so often repeated that its underlying ideas are taken for granted. We on the other hand have to explain things all the time.


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xander
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posted 12 June 2005 11:49 PM      Profile for xander        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by nonesuch:
Never mind which philosopher said what, when: chances are, most voters haven't read it.
Chances are, most voters have no perspective, no history, no memory.
Just tell the story. As truthfully as possible. As many times as necessary.

Good stuff nonesuch


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Stephen Gordon
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posted 12 June 2005 11:54 PM      Profile for Stephen Gordon        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by nonesuch:

Chances are, most voters have no perspective, no history, no memory.

Chances are, most voters are at least as smart as you are.


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Cueball
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posted 13 June 2005 12:13 AM      Profile for Cueball   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Your a voter aren't you?
From: Out from under the bridge and out for a stroll | Registered: Dec 2003  |  IP: Logged
Left Turn
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posted 13 June 2005 12:43 AM      Profile for Left Turn     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
xander wrote:
quote:
It appears that perhaps you have not paid attention to the work of M. Foucault [let alone that of Derrida or any of the other post-Wittgenstein thinker].

A master narrative, according to some of those folks listed above, is not a liberal, more importantly liberating, discursive style.

In fact, as M. Foucault pointed out to us a few decades back, it is indeed within the 'master narrative' that therein resides a narrative of mastery.

As such, master (or meta) narratives are not viewed by these thinkers as being in any way practically emancipatory [let alone heuristically adequate],


The problem with Michael Foucault and other post-modern thinkers is that they ignore the obective realities that have existed throughout history, and instead focus on subjective realities that do not fundamentally deepen our understanding of history.

Foucault's 'power' thesis is only marginally relevant. The notion that power in society does not rest with the ruling class is nonsense. Workers can obtain only very limited power under the Capitalist system in which the bourgeois ruling class controls the means of production.


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Cueball
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posted 13 June 2005 12:45 AM      Profile for Cueball   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I was kind of thinking a master narrative of a possible future, but go on.
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Granola Girl
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posted 13 June 2005 02:02 AM      Profile for Granola Girl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Look, do we keep having to have this argument over and over again on the left? This is where I start to lose patience with dogmatic, purblind Marxists...

As a feminst I am deeply uncomfortable with Left Turn's presumption that post-modernism "leads to activists tackling individual issues in isolation from other issues." What you really mean is, post-modernism makes it possible for people on the left to disagree with white male lefties about what our priorities should be.

The insistence on a master narrative is not the right's strength - it is the right's weakness. There is no single narrative thread that can encapsulate the very many experiences of everyone who chooses to identify themselves as a left-winger.

"Never again will a single story be told as if it is the only one" - John Berger


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Jacob Two-Two
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posted 13 June 2005 02:31 AM      Profile for Jacob Two-Two     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Chances are, most voters are at least as smart as you are.

Of course they are, but do they take any interest in, spend any time thinking about, history or politics? Not many. So it's not a slur on their intelligence to say the average voter has no historical perspective. It's considered geeky or eccentric to even be talking about such a thing.

I think xander's and Granola Girl's point is valid about the master narrative. People don't want a master narrative from the left. The right wing is the seat of support for heirarchy, conformity, and groupthink (at least these days), and if you're in this headspace, you're probably very comfortable with a master narrative, a single script designed to answer all your questions. We should be reaching out to those who don't want that kind of society, and encouraging a dialouge of narratives, instead of imposing our own, as they do.

More than anything, the left suffers from a lack of trust from the public, who are understandably wary of the tendency toward radical rhetoric. The way to establish trust is to give out trust. Rather than imposing our message on the world, the left should be empowering others to create their own narratives, and organising to stir up historical and political debate amongst the populace.


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Left Turn
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posted 13 June 2005 03:50 AM      Profile for Left Turn     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
In the absence of a master narrative from the left, different left groups provide diferent and often incompatible narratives.

So we get feminists who put gender at the centre of their narative to the exclusion of class and race. We get American civil rights activists who put race at the centre of their narrative to the exclusion of gender and class. And we get dogmatic marxists who put class at the centre of their narrative to the exclusion of race and gender.

As I see it, the dominant left narrative of the 20th and 21st centuries is as follows.

The old style liberlism/imperialism ran headlong into the first world war, an inevitable consequence of said liberalism/imperialism. Much political change came about as a result of the first world war, with the most important change being the Russian Revolution. The Russian revolution radicalized populations in other western countries, but attempts to forge other socialist revolutions failed, and the western populations became de-mobilized.

After the first world war the world enjoyed a period of relative prosperity during the 1920s, however a financial bubble developed, and when it burst in October 1929, the world was plunged into the Great Depression. The Great Depression re-radicalized the workers in the western world. Faced with the spectre of "communism" (actually stalinism, which is a perversion of Communism) in the Soviet Union (which avoided the great depression by nationalizing the means of production and pursuing a rapid industrialisation), and finding their own workers increasing sympathetic to marxist ideas, the western nations adopted Keynsian capitalism and created various versions of the welfare state.

The exception was in Germany and Italy, where fascist governments came to power. Germany especially became very agressive, and the west decided to appease Germany in the hopes that Germany would atack and destroy the Soviet Union. Of course the plan backfired, and the result was World war II. Italy and Japan sided with Germany during World War II.

Though the fascist won great victories at the outset of World War II, the fascists ultimately lost the war. After the war western Europe remained uner Capitalist control, while Eastern Europe, which had been conquered by the Soviet Union, became a series of Stalinist satelite states of the Soviet Union. The Cold war began. The west, dominated by the United States, sought to Contain communism. The communist Countries, dominated by the Soviet Union, sought to expand the communist/stalinist bloc in order to poretect the Soviet Union against attack from the west. The west developed NATO in 1949 as an anti-communist alliance, and although the UN included the communist nations, its goal was to limit the power of the communist nations. Eventually China, Cuba, and Vietnam all became communist/stalinist nations.

The post-WWII period was one of economic stability and expansion in the west. The Labour movement succeeded in obtaining a "social contract" from captial which guaranteed higher wages and better working conditions. However, red baiting led to the destruction of the communist-led unions that had won the social contract between labour and capital. By the 1950s, most workers saw themselves as part of a new Middle Class (which I argue is a flase dichotomy). The 1960s witnessed a re-radicalization of the working class in the west, around such issues as the civil rights movement (United States), the anti-vietnam war movement, the Women's movement, the student movement (France). The radicalization of the 60s achieved important victories, but it failed to move the majority of workers twards revolution and so in the 1970s there was a de-redicalization and de-mobilization of major social movements.

The post-war period also saw the de-colonisation of Africa and Asia, although it was done in such a way as to create problems that have not been solved to this day. In South America, centre-left governments tried to create welfare states similar to those in the western world.

Many capitalists were never happy with welfare liberalism/keynsian capitalism and the social contract, and so when a worldwide recession in 1974 put an end to the extend period of post-war economic expansion, they began to implement neo-liberalism. Neo-liberalism was first introduced in Latin America. Democratically elected centre-left governments were overthrown, rightwing dictators installed, and any gains made by the working classes were wiped out. Then in the 80s neo-liberalism began in Britain, the US, and Canada.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the pace of neo-liberal attacks accelerated in the west, and expanded to European countries that had not yet experienced neo-liberalism. Trade agreements were set up to weaken the power of the nation state, and to give increasing ammounts of power to trans national corporations. Workers, bombarded by propaganda suggesting the end of history and the "death" of communism, put up pitifully weak fights against the neo-liberal onslaught, which was forwarded even by supposedly left wing social democratic regimes.

Eventually, social activists, many of them youth, woke up to the need to oppose international trade deals, and unelected bodies like the WTO. This led to an international anti-globalisation movement that held large protests at WTO meetings, IMF meetings ect.

Then came Sept 11th. The US started acting unilaterally, ignoring its traditional cold-war allies. The anti-globalisation movement lost strength as the realities on the ground appeared to have changed. In its wake an anti-war movement developed to protest the US invasion of Iraq. Though this movement was larger that previous antiwar movements, its momentum has not been sustained.

Meanwhile, massive social movements have been developing in Latin America to challenge neo-liberalism. Theses have included the Bolivarian movement in Venezuela, the factory occupation movement in Argentina, the land reform movement in Brazil, and the massive movement against privatisation in Bolivia.

[ 13 June 2005: Message edited by: Left Turn ]


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Cueball
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posted 13 June 2005 04:12 AM      Profile for Cueball   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I think what people miss (in the nostalgic sense)is the very clear (and often overly simplistic) agenda that was set out by the early marxist leninists, which had very distinct and pervasively understood. This made organizing very easy since it was easy for people to understand and relate to their lives. In short: it was easy to market.

The strenght of the early communist had a lot to do with there clear and simple and comprehensive message. There was a real ground swell of support and idealist fervor. The result unfortunately hardly matched up to the spirit of the original intent.

That said, I also really think these things being brought up by GG and J22 shouldn't be dismissed at all, because they are a much more accurate refelction of reality. The problem is though that the multiplicity of narrative hinders the kind of unified understandings that make for effective joint action.

[ 13 June 2005: Message edited by: Cueball ]


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thwap
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posted 13 June 2005 07:13 AM      Profile for thwap        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
With acknowledgement to Granola Girl and Foucault, I think a master narrative could be constructed about the struggles of two runners in human history: democracy and human rights, to come to the forefront in a race against illegitimate powers in the guise of sexism, classism, anthrocentrism, ... all the various forms of oppression.

The best of the liberals had their story about the rise of liberalism, liberal democracy, liberal capitalism. It is a highly unsatisfying narrative. It only goes part way. We can retell the story, avoiding its inherent limitations and try to finish it.

It is an alliance of human beings struggling against any and all forms of oppression.


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Fidel
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posted 13 June 2005 07:46 AM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
About LeftTurn's comment about capitalists lamenting the end of laissez faire. I don't believe they harbor complete disdain of New Deal Keynesianism. It's true that social security, affordable housing and unemployment insurance programs were viewed as frivolous socialism by them. But in the end, many capitalists soon realized how lucrative it could be and lobbied to gain access to government contracts for everything from health care delivery to housing projects and so on. It didn't take them long to implement Keynesian-militarism. Military spending and private sector re-financing of mortgages was largely responsible for slight GDP increases over the last four years in the U.S. and has left workers struggling with a soft labour recovery. Social security was considered backwards socialism, too, but I see president Dubya wanting to hack parts of it off for friends of the Republican party on Wall Street. And with all that government borrowing to finance colonialism abroad, rich American's really don't mind loaning taxpayers the money. IOW's, I think their are parts of Keynesianism they would not give up.

Capitalists have learned to socialize poverty and banking risk to the tune of a trillion dollars in bailouts to friends of the Republican party and organized crime since several S&L debacles ago under Reagan. Upside-down socialism was a winfall for little red school house conservatives and their wealthy friends. True laissez faire capitalism really did die in 1929. It's one aspect of their love affair with the past they have no desire to resuscitate.


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Boinker
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posted 13 June 2005 10:07 AM      Profile for Boinker   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
The master narrative of the left needs to recognize the following:

1) The need to place class at the centre of our analysis

2) The need to discuss current and historical issues within the the reality of the US as an imperial nation. Anti-imperialism is central to our understanding of history, and of the present global situation.


I agree with Granola Girls comments to a great extent. Howwever, Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs & Steel is a scientific examination of human "history" from prehistory to the present day. He illustrates in straightforward ways that the ancient patterns of social organization are centred around food production and geographic and environmental factors. He even states that these features persist even today.

He discusses class society in the context of human evolution and provides examples of societies where it ossifies (India) or is more maleable (Europe).

The "working class" is a difficult term in modern parlance. In pure economic terms it refers to about the 85% of the population that works for wages. But in order for a great many of us to work for wages we must renounce our solidarity in favour of careerism. This is because careerism is enhanced by having the ability to co-opt one's fellow workers by being part of the managerial class that organizes the means of production.

What Jared Diamond's books do is illustrate how societies large and small deal with the environmental pressures created by human existence. In his latest book Collapse he demonstrates how societies destroy themselves by being too rigid and in a sense "doctrinaire" about their values. Other societies accommodate and change their methods and survive. He makes little comment on the political aspect other than to say that insular cultures often fail because they cannot learn from other cultures.(For example, the Greenland Vikings)

The science behind this thesis is compelling. The left does not need to create a narrative, there is one already. We need to find out what it is, evaluate it in terms of its current relevance and take action.

US Imperialism is the perfect example of an environmental and ecological disaster being made to accomodate a society's resource needs

The US economy cannot function without automobiles and airplanes and all all the other trappings of the internal combustion engine. The society is simply feeding itself on Iraqi oil. It is wrong, it is immoral, it is self destructive, but it is exactly what human societies have been doing for a 100,000 years. It is, for all the high tech gadgetry and anti-terrorist rhetoric, a primitive form of resource accumulation designed to protect the oil based economy of the US. Britain has done the same thing and is following its primitive acquisitive instincts.

The solution would be an alternative fuel source that is non-polluting and economical.

Canada should devote some substantial R&D to resolving this problem. Once you remove the biggest political attraction of the neoliberal agenda - a sort og "big-man" idea that only neoliberals can feed you - then the social stratification seems unnecessary and the vestiges of class society remaining could be eliminated.

[ 13 June 2005: Message edited by: Boinker ]


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swallow
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posted 13 June 2005 08:16 PM      Profile for swallow     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by thwap:
With acknowledgement to Granola Girl and Foucault, I think a master narrative could be constructed about the struggles of two runners in human history: democracy and human rights, to come to the forefront in a race against illegitimate powers in the guise of sexism, classism, anthrocentrism, ... all the various forms of oppression.

The best of the liberals had their story about the rise of liberalism, liberal democracy, liberal capitalism. It is a highly unsatisfying narrative. It only goes part way. We can retell the story, avoiding its inherent limitations and try to finish it.

It is an alliance of human beings struggling against any and all forms of oppression.


The first paragraph is pretty much the narrative offered by Michael Ignatieff in The Rights Revolution. The rest is more interesting. History as alliances against oppression, i like that thought. Howard Zinn tried in a farily straightforward way to do this narrative for the USA (A People's History). But in many ways the most interesting attempt to make a sort of "non-master" narrative out of history i've seen is Gerald Friesen's Citizens and Nation, which places ordinary people at the centre of our country's history -- the place most historians put the Canadian state. I don't think Frisen's book works, because even synthesizing many narratives into one is still an attempt to unite disparate experiences under a single narrative, but i do think Friesen's approach is the most promising one for those who want master narratives in a Canadian context.


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Cueball
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posted 13 June 2005 08:33 PM      Profile for Cueball   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I just can't abide the complete removal of an economic analysis in favour of qua-humanist analysis based solely on 'rights.' The dangers are quite evident in the ability of the financially enfranchised to manipulate the legal power structures needed to adminster 'rights.' It is a return to a Dickensian moral order only slightly above that espoused by Queen Elizabeth.

The power to decide who gets what rights remains with the rich, in a practical sense.

[ 13 June 2005: Message edited by: Cueball ]


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periyar
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posted 13 June 2005 08:37 PM      Profile for periyar   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Boinker:

Howwever, Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs & Steel is a scientific examination of human "history" from prehistory to the present day.

He discusses class society in the context of human evolution and provides examples of societies where it ossifies (India) or is more maleable (Europe).

[ 13 June 2005: Message edited by: Boinker ]


I read this book and I'm not sure I'd call it scientific. He presents his thesis of cultural development and history- but how can anyone call it definitive?

Secondly, the idea of some cultures being maleable while others remain static is questionable when you throw in colonialism, unless you are trying to say that the reason some cultures were colonized was beacause they weren't adaptive enough.
This analysis is often used to elevate western civilization while dehumanizing muslim societies with the idea they missed the enlightenment boat because islam was so conservative. Tariq Ali has an interesting analysis of this tendency in his book the clash of fundamentalisms.

GG- you totally articulated my reaction to the inital post.


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Vigilante
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posted 13 June 2005 11:44 PM      Profile for Vigilante        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Left Turn:
Standing in the way of the left wing master narative of history is the beast which I shall refer to a post-modernism. Post modernism presumes that all social struggles are equal. This leads to ativists tackling individual issues in isolation from other issues. As a result, social activist fail to make the necessary links between various struggles, and this reduces the left to fighting a series of defensive battles against the neo-liberal/neo-imperial assault on the working class.

Oh I recognize the links, I just apply the AEI principle, that all social phenomena are Autonoumous, Equal and Interjecting. And can you please tell me what working class means?

quote:
The master narrative of the left needs to recognize the following:

1) The need to place class at the centre of our analysis

2) The need to discuss current and historical issues within the the reality of the US as an imperial nation. Anti-imperialism is central to our understanding of history, and of the present global situation.


1) Class is predicated on power relations 2)dido. And I have problems with anti-imperialism. It tends to be black and white on the subjective realities that go on in those situations.

quote:
The problem with Michael Foucault and other post-modern thinkers is that they ignore the obective realities that have existed throughout history, and instead focus on subjective realities that do not fundamentally deepen our understanding of history.

The reason it is ignored is because 'objective' realities throughout history are written for the dominant social text of the day, they don't exist.

quote:
Foucault's 'power' thesis is only marginally relevant. The notion that power in society does not rest with the ruling class is nonsense. Workers can obtain only very limited power under the Capitalist system in which the bourgeois ruling class controls the means of production.

I'm not sure you get what Foucault's conception of power is. Your using power in the old enlightenment term "power over" and not realising that power just "is".

As for what the left needs, the left needs to die. Anyone who's read Nietzsche, and his french followers in the 60s-80s and takes it seriously should know this. The two big reasons why I reject the left is because of it's resentment based origins, and also because it is more or less the left of capital.

To point out the origin of the left. This now irrelevent ideology started with pissed off traders who were sick and tired of the nobles stealing their dinero. This is what motivated them to call for some sort of representation. One of the first arenas these representatives apeared on whas the French National Assembly. They happened to sit on the left. This was where the term came from. The house of commons people soon followed. Classical liberalism is the first encarnation of the left. This is simply a fact. The workers soon followed for the same resentment based reasons. They happened to agree more with the liberals in their ideology so by default they became a part of the left. What motivated these movements were utility, not freedom. This is a key reason why anyone remotely interested in any freedom in the world should part with this thought system. Obviously there is good to take from the left like any liberation thought system. But the core of it is not something that gives any meanigfull freedom.

Also the left is an ideology like anyother which rose via capitalism. The left is very much for continuing the means of production(something that capitalism began to begin with). Also the continuing belief in economics, progress, and division of labour. There's also the idea of value. The left doesn't challenge the value system as such, only how it is produced. Some feel it should be decentralized(or centralized depending on who you talk too) but not destroyed all together. This is why the left is the leftwing of capital.

A good reason(for me at least) to reject it.


From: Toronto | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Left Turn
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posted 14 June 2005 01:50 AM      Profile for Left Turn     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Ok, the working class does have some power. We have the power to go sell our labour in exchange for a wage. Thing is, the ruling class has the power to set the conditions under which we can work, and the wage that we can get. This is not an equal power relationship no matter how you try and spin it. I'm sorry, but the notion that power just "is" doesn't fly.
From: Burnaby, BC | Registered: Mar 2005  |  IP: Logged
Left Turn
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posted 14 June 2005 02:00 AM      Profile for Left Turn     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
And can you please tell me what working class means?

The working class means anyone who sells their labour in exchange for a wage.

quote:
'objective' realities throughout history are written for the dominant social text of the day, they don't exist.

Objective realities do exist, the right simply lies about what the objective realities are. It's the job of the left to discover the true objective realities, incorporate them into our analyses, and disseminate them to as wide an audience as possible. Oh, and I don't think that the true objective realities are that hard to come by.
ex. It is an objective reality that the US is an empire.


From: Burnaby, BC | Registered: Mar 2005  |  IP: Logged
Vansterdam Kid
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posted 14 June 2005 02:34 AM      Profile for Vansterdam Kid   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
The working class means anyone who sells their labour in exchange for a wage.

This is somewhat pedantic but that's a huge over simplification. Professionals such as Doctors and Lawyers often do that as well, they wouldn't be considered "working class".


From: bleh.... | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Jacob Two-Two
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posted 14 June 2005 02:51 AM      Profile for Jacob Two-Two     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Maybe you could outline quickly what you would consider a valid movement towards social progress, Vigilante. Your post smacks of deconstructionism to the point of meaninglessness.
From: There is but one Gord and Moolah is his profit | Registered: Jan 2002  |  IP: Logged
DrConway
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posted 14 June 2005 03:07 AM      Profile for DrConway     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Vansterdam Kid:
This is somewhat pedantic but that's a huge over simplification. Professionals such as Doctors and Lawyers often do that as well, they wouldn't be considered "working class".

Technically, though, a CEO is still a worker, for all that he often makes decisions that are bad for 99% of the other workers out there.

This is not to argue that the CEO has any community of interest with workers generally, but it's interesting to note how the incentives of ownership of a business are often used to separate the CEO from the workers that are under his or her authority.

How many workers get free access to stock options, bonus payments, and company perks unaudited by the accounting department?

If CEOs had to deal with the same hard-assed accounting department about their expense accounts and were legally prohibited from getting stock options and couldn't sit on either their own company's or any other company's board of directors (which, BTW, would go a long way to curing the problem of interlocking directorships helping to drive CEO salaries and compensation into the stratosphere), they would think and act a lot more like the workers they ostensibly are.


From: You shall not side with the great against the powerless. | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
N.Beltov
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posted 14 June 2005 03:11 AM      Profile for N.Beltov   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
The left is, for better or worse, inextricably tied together to the fate of the working class. Yet the identification of social classes, much less the development of class consciousness, is no simple matter. Notwithstanding the successes and failures of working class government, the working class is now an historical actor whose role in the history of the world is far from over. Our class has a history, with national variations and differences notwithstanding, that is essential knowledge for anyone interested in social questions of justice and general progress. Any social analysis that ignores the class question ignores what is often the mainspring of social life and risks long term irrelevancy. Even the business pages of bourgeois newspapers make coded references to the degree of organization and mobilization of "the enemy" as they see it.

The working class was literally brought into being by capitalism with the development of modern industry. Without a labour force to work and reproduce the social or private property characteristic of capitalism the whole damn thing would come to a grinding halt. What sense does the ownership of a factory, much less a zillion dollar transnational corporation involving tens or hundreds of thousands of working people make unless it is possible to put those people to work and extract a profit? The contradiction between the private nature of the appropriation characteristic of capitalism and the social nature of modern capitalist production is a contradiction characteristic of capitalism that will never go away as long as this form of social production and society exists. If you can't exploit workers then it is not capitalism.

The very idea that this social contradiction exists and can never be overcome in our current form of social production points to a kind of permanent adolescence of humanity. Private ownership of social property is just dumb like a foolish teenager is dumb. It permanently holds back the creativity and full flowering of individual development for billions of people. Shall we move forward, as humanity has done in the past, or shall we march towards the precipice of some barbarism or annihilation or endless social injustice of exploitation to the end of time? That is the implicit capitalist meta-narrative and it seems sometimes like a silly fairy tale to me.

In contrast to that vision, perhaps the simple vision of a better world that is currently not possible but could be possible with a different social arrangement is all that is needed to make that better world. We learn by going where we have to go.

[ 14 June 2005: Message edited by: N.Beltov ]


From: Vancouver Island | Registered: May 2003  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 14 June 2005 08:18 AM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Extremely well said, N.Beltov. Capitalism is about retarding the progress of whole nations of people for the sake of capital. Capitalism is the second coming of colonialism. And according to scientists the world over and now even World Bankers themselves, unbridled capitalism must go.

Capitalism is about squeezing every last drop of productivity from fewer and fewer workers as they attempt to relive the glory of Roman slavery without actually paying for the cost of owning slaves outright. But in the end, capitalism is proven to be pockets of prosperity in major cities surrounded by inefficient use of labour and resources with no real goals other than to produce plastic widgets only to be buried in landfills when they wear out or become tedious due to obsolescence by design.

Capitalism is about allowing anywhere from 6 million to 13 million people to die of starvation around the capitalist third world every year as 80% of hungry nations export food to "the market."
Capitalism is about squeezing 50 or more hours of work per week from the fewest labourers while a billion pairs of hands around the world remain idle. And yet work needs doing in every country. Capitalism is a ship wreck movie that plays over and over, but we can't leave the theatre until it, too, burns to the ground.

Capitalists leave social costs to the state while they use its citizenry for the creation of their own wealth. The establishment of individual rights and private property laws over existing common rights in John Locke's England would be of paramount importance to capitalism's future. Essentially, Locke's reasoning for private property was absconded from a previous case made for common rights by none other than Gerard Winstanley of the Digger Movement. As Linda McQuaig says, Winstanley's arguments were more in accordance with natural laws than Locke's.

Furthermore, socialists have re-established who we are as human beings after that brief experiment in laissez faire capitalism. Socialists refuse to believe in Smith's homo economicus as a model for human behaviour within any theoretical system. We are more than just one dimensional prisoners of our own greed. Adam Smith's model distorts not just human nature but the the economic results as well. Observe the capitalist abominations that were: Nortel, Arthur Anderson, Global Cross-up, ENRONg, Adelphia, World CON(Poor Bernie Ebbers. If only Alberta could see him now) and more to come, presumably.

Laissez faire capitalism failed miserably in 1929. R.I.P.

And now organized chaos is holed-up in America and having to resort to stealing elections for lack of convincing effort on the economic front. Clandestine societies representing capital continue to have to confront protests to their abuse of power by unfinished people's revolutions having spread slowly from Russia through Europe and now Iraq, China, Iran, Phillipines, Africa and Latin America.

And if it weren't for the massive loss of life and destruction in Iraq and Afghanistan, we might thank president Dubya for driving the rest of the world further to the left since his terrible rein began. But we won't defile the memory and honour of those slain for the sake of oil and corporate welfare handouts.

What remains of capitalism has been a monumental failure. Give us socialism, or give us death.

Viva la revolucion!

[ 14 June 2005: Message edited by: Fidel ]


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
GJJ
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posted 14 June 2005 10:53 AM      Profile for GJJ        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I'm wondering about this right wing narrative. I've worked with quite a few people who consider themselves right wing (I'm an engineer, comes with the field), and I'd say they're about as divided as the left is (you just have to sit down with some over a regular basis to get the range of disagreements). What they do better is vote together despite differences.

As for capitalism, I think there are probably about ten big capitalists left in the world, and they're all getting old (okay, I'm exagerating a bit, maybe there's a hundred ). No one running a company risks their own resources, what we're living in is corporatism. To call someone like John Roth (of Nortel fame) a capitalist is like calling John Kerry a socialist.


From: Saskatoon | Registered: Apr 2005  |  IP: Logged
forum observer
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posted 14 June 2005 11:06 AM      Profile for forum observer   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Extremely well said, N.Beltov. Capitalism is about retarding the progress of whole nations of people for the sake of capital. Capitalism is the second coming of colonialism. And according to scientists the world over and now even World Bankers themselves, unbridled capitalism must go.

Capitalism: an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market

Profiteer: one who makes what is considered an unreasonable profit especially on the sale of essential goods during times of emergency

Can "Profiteering" and "captitalism" share the same distinctions?

This would mean that "conversion of any process" from one method to another, would signal, massive change in "thinking processes?" Canadian people have been duped? Vision had been altered to view business as the sustenance?

IN this case, resource materials in Canada are owned by the Canadian People. Liberalism, would say that as a "governing force," such production is inherent and yet, "the resource" allows "workers of this process" to come from those same Canadian people.

Are they then profiteering off the "resource" or the canadian people?

It was pretty hard to get some mathematical cohesive realism from the topic here. Nothing offered, and nothing gained? The Left Needs a Master Narrative? How can the Canadian people, profit? The "Candian people," already exist as a entity. Divisive tactics, reductionistic proportionality, to confuse(choas) and transform the Canadian democratic vision?

If such a "construct of fundamentals" is offered, then insight to the left views would recognize the abiltiy of the "right" to profiteer? We fight that "feature of capitalism" by Canadian people, to unionize.

The Canadian views already "pre-existed as a force" to recon with. But alteration of "the process" has lead to the need for unionization.

In this case, the niavity of the Canadian people had been altered?

Sorry, looking for something more profound.

One example here might be the canadian healthcare system, "enmass," go seeks help from "private institutions," rather then, our own medical system?

Refusal of treatment would be grounds for similar case in Quebec over private healthcare?

To refuse treatment of those "without money" before those "who have money," then such a charge can be made against the private healthcare over the inherent right as Canadians?

I am not sure here.


Our medical system is already better then the Americanized version. Why would we need profiteering to instigate our medical system to be better then the Amercian version, when it already is?

Secondly, any views that instigate profiteering off of our medical system, has already a long standing history of decline in hospital care, as evdienced in the Amercianized version? Why Canadians are looked too, for the sake of there healthcare and indiscrimminate views. Why the challenge then for medical services other then, a system we could improve then have it fueled by competition?

"G8" seeks to oversight, Country's identities.

Is there something here, to work with?

Viva la revolucion

[ 14 June 2005: Message edited by: forum observer ]


From: It is appropriate that plectics refers to entanglement or the lack thereof, | Registered: Dec 2004  |  IP: Logged
N.Beltov
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posted 14 June 2005 12:26 PM      Profile for N.Beltov   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Fidel, I can’t help but admire your enthusiasm but I’m frankly uncomfortable with the juxtaposition of “revolution or death.” That slogan may well reflect the actual situation in some country other than Canada but it’s completely out of whack with most Canadians. Some of the articulate defenders of capitalism at its current (imperialist) stage, especially in the U.S., seem to be very comfortable with apocalyptic visions of annihilation and being part of some “chosen” group at the end of the world. Such nihilistic thinking is part of the problem in my view.

****************

GJJ In the Preface to the First German Edition of Das Capital, Karl Marx outlined the new way that he used “capitalist”. It’s worth quoting the entire paragraph:

quote:
To prevent possible misunderstanding, a word. I paint the capitalist and the landlord in no sense couleur de rose. But here individuals are dealt with only in so far as they are the personifications of economic categories, embodiments of particular class-relations and class-interests. My standpoint, from which the evolution of the economic formation of society is viewed as a process of natural history, can less than any other make the individual responsible for relations whose creature he socially remains, however much he may subjectively raise himself above them.

Again,

quote:
…capital is not a thing, but rather a definite social production relation, belonging to a definite historical formation of society, which is manifested in a thing and lends this thing a specific social character (Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. III, p. 814)

It’s how the whole thing works, the relations between people that form in a capitalist society, rather than the membership and size and composition of this or that class that’s important. You might want to check out John Porter, Wallace Clement and other writers on social composition of the capitalist class in Canada if you are looking for more quantifiable date on class composition and size in this country.

In my view it is the real aim of the socialist project to transform the relations between people into the "end" of our social activity rather than a "means" of survival. The socialist project seems unlikely to me to ever be completely abandoned simply because the human dream of a better world is within the easy “Imagine”-ation of all of us and reflects deeply felt hopes, articulate and not so articulate, of millions and billions of people. Really. It's easy if you try.

[ 14 June 2005: Message edited by: N.Beltov ]


From: Vancouver Island | Registered: May 2003  |  IP: Logged
forum observer
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posted 14 June 2005 03:11 PM      Profile for forum observer   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
If society is being changed by trends of capitalistic structures, then of course there will be individuals who will pop up to counter and balance those views of the right.

If independance is a strong drive, then of course there will be those who will try and throw off the shackles that would hold our views to current established woes?

These are Americanized views that Canadians wanted no part of? We are wee bit different, eh?

The Nature and Necessity of Scientific Revolutions

Introducing "new thoughts" are revolutionary?

So is "confronting" capitalist systems?

[ 14 June 2005: Message edited by: forum observer ]


From: It is appropriate that plectics refers to entanglement or the lack thereof, | Registered: Dec 2004  |  IP: Logged
Vigilante
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posted 14 June 2005 04:54 PM      Profile for Vigilante        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Jacob:
Maybe you could outline quickly what you would consider a valid movement towards social progress, Vigilante. Your post smacks of deconstructionism to the point of meaninglessness.

Movements are for bowels as far as I'm concerned. I believe in the power of spontanious revolt by uncontrolable individuals. Alot of the classic revolutions and rebellions consisted of this. The problem was the various leftist managers who ended up perpetuating the power of capital.

quote:
left Turn:
The working class means anyone who sells their labour in exchange for a wage.

Well this is an awfully lot of people. The original conception of working class did not take into account changes such as the rise of the civil service sector. You also have groups like low income students on loan, the Appalachian mountaineers who are on some sort of social assistence, people who live off the grid then go back to school,the guy who makes over a hundred thousand a year and owns an SUV, ect. It seems pretty redundent to keep using a strictly early pre-ford industrial term. I believe Hardt and Negri used the term multitude to describe this phenomena of exploited workers. For this it is better to use an analysis related to power and domination.

quote:
N.Beltov:
The left is, for better or worse, inextricably tied together to the fate of the working class.

But the left created the working class concept as you know it. And the left does not want to completely do away with the concepts that enslaved so many to begin with.

quote:
the working class is now an historical actor whose role in the history of the world is far from over.

Well in France 1968 the chance was had to overthrow the state, didn't exactly happen.

quote:
Any social analysis that ignores the class question ignores what is often the mainspring of social life and risks long term irrelevancy.

I don't ingore it. I don't however reduce the problems we have to that phenomena as oppose to racism, speicism, sexism, homophobia, ect. A power as such analysis tends to cover these issues much better.

quote:
The working class was literally brought into being by capitalism with the development of modern industry.

Well, generally the left doesn't want to part with these things, just re-arrange them.

quote:
Shall we move forward, as humanity has done in the past, or shall we march towards the precipice of some barbarism or annihilation or endless social injustice of exploitation to the end of time? That is the implicit capitalist meta-narrative and it seems sometimes like a silly fairy tale to me.

Move forward? You mean like 10 000 thousand years ago when when this mess started. I would say that civilization is moving us toward that end you speak of. For the simple reason that civilization is by its constructed essence exploitive.

[ 14 June 2005: Message edited by: Vigilante ]

[ 15 June 2005: Message edited by: Vigilante ]


From: Toronto | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Stephen Gordon
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posted 14 June 2005 05:07 PM      Profile for Stephen Gordon        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I'm been following this thread with horror and amusement. It reminds me of nothing so much as the bickering amongst the marketing executives from the Golgafrincham B Ark about the difficulties they encountered while trying to (re-)invent the wheel:

quote:

‘And the wheel,’ said the Captain, ‘What about this wheel thingy? It sounds a terribly interesting project.’

‘Ah,’ said the marketing girl, ‘Well, we’re having a little difficulty there.’

‘Difficulty?’ exclaimed Ford? ‘Difficulty? What do you mean, difficulty? It’s the single simplest machine in the entire Universe!’

The marketing girl soured on him with a look. ‘Alright, Mr. Wiseguy,’ she said, ‘you’re so clever, you tell us what colour it should be.’


What's the point about worrying about the 'narrative', when you still haven't figured out how the story will end? Why are you worrying about how to structure marketing campaigns for obtaining power when you're not able to articulate what you'd do once you got it?


From: . | Registered: Oct 2003  |  IP: Logged
Left J.A.B.
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posted 14 June 2005 05:10 PM      Profile for Left J.A.B.     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
It will all be worthwhile if it involves phone sanitation professionals.
From: 4th and Main | Registered: Apr 2005  |  IP: Logged
GJJ
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posted 14 June 2005 07:07 PM      Profile for GJJ        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Beltov, if a capitalist is no longer someone who creates and owns capital, who is one? If its enough to have a little authority in an industry that controls capital, how many of the say 50,000 employees at Nortel are capitalists onsidering probably 10,000 of them are some sort of team leader or management?

I'm not sure the word means anything now ... though its a kind of interesting word, in that the left uses it as pejorative and the right as complimentary. Some of my rightwing co-workers consider themselves capitalists because they are low level managers in a private company or own mutual funds ... I've always felt that they were using the term wrong. Is it possible that the next time it comes up I'm going to have to admit that they were right? Anything but that

I don't know, there seems to be a huge difference in behavior between someone who owns a company (and hence wants it to make a profit) and modern managers who are willing to run a company to the ground secure in the knowledge that their salary and shares (which they've of course long since sold) are already in the bank.

Edit: A quick look at the Oxford dictionary suggests that you and they were correct - anyone who owns capital or supports capitalism is a capitalist. I'll have to make sure I get up for coffee the next time the topic arises

[ 14 June 2005: Message edited by: GJJ ]


From: Saskatoon | Registered: Apr 2005  |  IP: Logged
Boinker
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posted 14 June 2005 07:29 PM      Profile for Boinker   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
The idea that "the working class" is an organic society set apart from the "ruling class" seems patently false to me. Working people, "labour" work with the managerial classes to ensure the well oiled industry of Capitalist production works in accordance with the profit motive. The working class adoppts the same view towrd many things as do the shareholders of corporations. Only when threatened with severe repercussions, usually financial will they act. Otherwise the working class in North America is a fundamentally lumpen and reactionary beast. Working people have common interests to be sure and can come together but there is a wide range of belief, opinion, worldview, etc. What they have to realize is that to save the planet they will have to get more involved with the business decisions and corporate practices.

The overarching narrative is human survival and people must realize that it is closely tied to human prosperity.

The world faces two major problems that are at loggerheads. Firstly population growth threatens the worlds resources. But paradoxically population growth is a greater danger to impopverished countries than prosperous ones. More prosperous nations find that their population growth levels out and the accompanying strain on finite resources is lessened.

Secondly the model for prosperity in the world is the US model. Rapacious consumption and the accompanying pollution. If the peoples of Africa and Asia attain the kind of lifestyles the average North American enjoys the biosphere will be destroyed. But if they don't then population will grow until equally horrific natural consequences will result.

The narrative of the left then should be as someone has suggested a description of our goals? This has always been the left-wing narrative - a better world with peace and justuce for all.

We can begin this by eliminating the need for vast consumption, by providing for the necessities like healthcare, education, a meaningful job in balance with the global needs of society and the planet and the individual's need for community and self expression.

I really don't see how any ideology is going to work if people in Haiti and Africa are starving decade after decade with no one being able to help the people there solve their problems.

the One Campaign

[ 14 June 2005: Message edited by: Boinker ]

[ 14 June 2005: Message edited by: Boinker ]


From: The Junction | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
Cougyr
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posted 14 June 2005 07:39 PM      Profile for Cougyr     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
When I studied economic history about 40 years ago, it was very difficult not to come to leftist conclusions, even at an American university. Note that we were not taught left, historical events just take one there if one pays attention. We don't need a narrative, it's already there.

What needs to be done is to teach history, all of it. Not this white-washed crap that bores students to death. No more pretending that Richard the Lion Hearted was a nice guy, or that modern day crusaders are defending their counrty. No more hiding monsters behind patriotic slogans or corporate walls. When it all comes out, you automatically draw conclusions that lead you left.


From: over the mountain | Registered: Nov 2002  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 14 June 2005 08:21 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by GJJ:
I don't know, there seems to be a huge difference in behavior between someone who owns a company (and hence wants it to make a profit) and modern managers who are willing to run a company to the ground secure in the knowledge that their salary and shares (which they've of course long since sold) are already in the bank.

Agreed. The difference between people like John Roth and the workers at Nortel was that John was able to dump his shares before full knowledge of his mismanagement of Nortel became public. Ten thousand workers had to watch as their stock options took a nosedive while we awaited layoff notices.

Stephen, the left has a clear vision of where it wants to go. And it doesn't include mollycoddling rogue corporate CEO's who threaten to move the company to a right-to-work state because taxes were too high in Canada at the time. Let'em go and good riddance.

[ 14 June 2005: Message edited by: Fidel ]


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Boinker
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posted 14 June 2005 09:02 PM      Profile for Boinker   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
What needs to be done is to teach history, all of it. Not this white-washed crap that bores students to death. No more pretending that Richard the Lion Hearted was a nice guy, or that modern day crusaders are defending their counrty. No more hiding monsters behind patriotic slogans or corporate walls. When it all comes out, you automatically draw conclusions that lead you left.

I was brought up in a small town (Malton) on the outskirts of Toronto. It was a working class town that housed the Arenda plant that built the Avro Arrow. When I attended highschool I was shocked to discover that I did not live in the centre of the universe and that my straight As in grade school were not easily accomplished in highschool without doing homework.

During my many battles with teachers to fight this demand on my time the topic of the slave trade came up. I was a supporter of civil rights a big fan of Muhammed Ali and thought myself very "liberal" at the time. So we had the usual discussion about the history of the slave trade and we were getting bored. So I took the devil's advocate position which simply asked why Africans did not invade Europe and take slaves first. The teacher was stumped and said I shouldn't ask such a question. Then the girl I drooled on at a grade 10 house party during a slow dance got up and agreed with me that I had a right to ask this question. The teacher freaked out no doubt fearing we were about to light burning crosses and goose step arounfd the classroonm at any minutre. I was not asking the question out of any reactionary sentiment but probably because I felt that I secretly knew the answer as to why African civilization was the way it was. They had an equally low tolerance for boring subjects like history! And I thought who is to say their pastoral life in communion with the wonders of nature was inferior to european civilization that need to murder and rape the rest of the world to keep itself fed? But it never got that far, It was too close to home. People felt the need to feel special and above the everyone else.

Anyway that put me off history altogether. Then Jared Diamond 40 years later answered the question. Continental orientation of Africa being north and south rather than east and west meant slower proliferation of food sources in the way of crops and cattle. Geographic and ecological factors slowed African development and speeded up European development - plain and simple.

He answers the same question about Australian Aboriginals and North American natives. He demonstrates in Collapse how different races around the globe respond in identical ways to resource scarcity and concludes that it is environment that shapes human societies not genetics or individuals.

It is hard to descibe the feeling of emancipation I felt when I read those passages. It literally brought tears to my eyes ending many years of doubt. There is a vista of humanity that goes back tens of thousands of years that shows how little our fundamental behaviour has changed.

So I agree let us teach all of human history not just the ossified chess match of the last few hundred years of European colonialism.

For these reasons I believe every marxist ought to read Jared Diamond's books Guns, Germs & Steel and Collapse.

As a side note, look at video games these days. Virtually all of them deal with the violent appropriation of resources, war, invasions, etc., etc.

Is this a feature of capitalism or a crude representation of instinctual human behaviour absent of meaningful social community?

[ 14 June 2005: Message edited by: Boinker ]


From: The Junction | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
forum observer
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posted 15 June 2005 02:23 AM      Profile for forum observer   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
If a company was already profiting, then why would a decrease in profit, require special circumstances and attention? Is this indicative of a captialist failure, or that the profit, a sign of better times, requires hedging the bet, and dependancy for right wing propoganda to require media to covert enmass, views about sustenance?

Sustenance, now a "dependant view of society," on business acumen?

When we really lost sight of, where these resources are drawn from.

As an entity, "the canadian," now speaking about society, has certain preferences about the way it shall deal in all it's matters. Having lost sight of the governance it holds over it destiny (some will speculate this is not possible), then it slowly looses the ability to speak from a position from which it had authority and independance. Why, because it had been subverted to views of a rightwing, capitalistic interpretation of what is good for "the Canadian."

This is a orange!


Apple, by Boyd Purdom, colored pencil


From: It is appropriate that plectics refers to entanglement or the lack thereof, | Registered: Dec 2004  |  IP: Logged
N.Beltov
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posted 15 June 2005 02:26 AM      Profile for N.Beltov   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Stephen Gordon: What's the point about worrying about the 'narrative', when you still haven't figured out how the story will end? Why are you worrying about how to structure marketing campaigns for obtaining power when you're not able to articulate what you'd do once you got it?

I'm hoping that you're not trying to defend Fukiyama's myopic "end of history" views or something like that and that "how the story will end" is your way of expressing an interest in the public policy goals of a prospective "left" government.

Given that, I would note that the public policies are only part of the story. The building of unity and coalitions and alliances, in the working class, between the working class and its closest allies (the women's movement and other social forces), and between the working class and other more distant class forces are essential prerequisites to any real advance in a "left" direction whatever the public policy goals are and whoever is in power at the time.

I would add that I don't consider the NDP "left enough" to lead the charge. The NDP has to be "pushed" to the left. It's an established trend that, in the past, the NDP has softened its policy approach when its support has gone up prior to an election in order to convert the increased support into better electoral representation for the party. So the policies we are looking for may come from the NDP in part but not entirely. That's where I would agree with those in this thread who have asserted the general idea that no one has a monopoly on the truth and there are many narratives. That includes the attempt by the NDP to "monopolize" the left and make the mass movements subservient to the NDP's electoral goals.

I think it is easy enough to find alternative policy approaches to neoliberalism if one looks hard enough in the mass movements, progressive think tanks like the CCPA, and political organizations to the left of the NDP or on the left of the NDP.

Capitalism has lots of practice "structuring marketing campaigns" and selling consumers all sorts of vacuous "revolutionary" products like shampoo and Chevrolets. It's entirely appropriate to pay close attention to people's needs and ways to address those needs that will develop unity as I have noted above while reaching people where they are at and not starting with some imaginary ideological purity of perfect, but unsupported, public policy.

Policy isn't enough. It is encumbent on people who are serious about left political success to outline not just the policy goals but the extra-parliamentary steps to get there. That takes solid class analysis, understanding the balance of forces, organization, hard work, coalition-building and so on.

At the top of my list of policy goals, of course, is the necessity to prevent new and wider wars, just as the struggle to block fascism and militarism was the focus of the working class and democratic movements of the 1930’s.


From: Vancouver Island | Registered: May 2003  |  IP: Logged
Coyote
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posted 15 June 2005 02:43 AM      Profile for Coyote   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Stephen Gordon:

What's the point about worrying about the 'narrative', when you still haven't figured out how the story will end? Why are you worrying about how to structure marketing campaigns for obtaining power when you're not able to articulate what you'd do once you got it?


Do you know how the story will end, Stephen? Does anyone? The best critiques of Marxism are those that attack the determinism of his theory of dialectical materialism; in fact, the best critiques of Western thought are those that take issue with determinism in its economic, theological, and biological forms.

It seems to haunt Western culture, this notion that A leads to B and thusly through the alphabet. Any cursory look at our own history can show that nothing of the kind is true.

That is why I am leary of the notion of a Master Narrative of any kind; but not of the discussion. Certainly, a degree of cohesion on the level of political discourse would be advantageous; and there are certainly those who use the lack of cohesion on the Left as an opening to insert really vile notions into the discourse of the Left and hide under a blanket of "Solidarity".

For me, I've meandered politically and theologically enough to know I can't really hold to anything more firm than ethical Humanism - it's a broad category, and thank God or I wouldn't be able to stay in it.


From: O’ for a good life, we just might have to weaken. | Registered: Jan 2004  |  IP: Logged
forum observer
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posted 15 June 2005 02:59 AM      Profile for forum observer   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
For me, I've meandered politically and theologically enough to know I can't really hold to anything more firm than ethical Humanism - it's a broad category, and thank God or I wouldn't be able to stay in it.

Great! Possibly a Rug maker or basket weaver? Something that has to do with the manipulation of the fingers? Typer?


From: It is appropriate that plectics refers to entanglement or the lack thereof, | Registered: Dec 2004  |  IP: Logged
forum observer
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posted 15 June 2005 03:12 AM      Profile for forum observer   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 

Do you think a Beaver "with Eagles wings" would fly as a national symbol?

[ 28 June 2005: Message edited by: forum observer ]


From: It is appropriate that plectics refers to entanglement or the lack thereof, | Registered: Dec 2004  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 15 June 2005 03:15 AM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Boinker:
As a side note, look at video games these days. Virtually all of them deal with the violent appropriation of resources, war, invasions, etc., etc.

Is this a feature of capitalism or a crude representation of instinctual human behaviour absent of meaningful social community?

[ 14 June 2005: Message edited by: Boinker ]


With that kind of reasoning, centuries of Roman slavery might be justified. And people like Margaret Thatcher's comments that there is no such thing as society might not seem as ridiculous.

Karl Polanyi pointed out that the economic model based on self-interest alone is in error. Real people are capable of much more than just self-interest. We are capable of empathy for the poor, civic mindedness and causes outside of our own self-interests. Many of us desire to work toward greater societal goals. We are more than just one-dimensional prisoners of our own greed. An economic system based on a single human behaviour distorts real human nature as well as the results.

Capitalism has attempted to transform hundreds of thousands of years of human tendencies toward communalism and tribalism to slavery and low wage capitalism as a compromise to people's revolutions for communism.

I think that if we are to continue allowing predatory capitalism to raid the earth's resources and justifying murder of innocent women and children in Iraq with statements like, "Our way of life(American) is not negotiable", then we'll all be in trouble before very long. Their way of life not only isn't feasible for the other 90 percent of humanity, they're having to steal finite resources from other countries to continue their predatory existence. Globalism is a lie. We'd strip our resources in nothing flat with a world-wide spread of middle class capitalism based on widget consumption.

We have progressed from imperialism to feudalism, colonialism and currently, capitalism. Socialism is the future - Socialism or barbarism. If we believe people are capable of little more than predatory survivalism, then we're in for a rough ride.

There may be no alternative to violence and chaos at some point in the future if unbridled capitalism leads us to world-wide scarcity of clean air and water. Industrialised farming in the High Plains region of the US has already desertified over a quarter of what was once arrable farmland.

Ronald Wright tells us that all civilisations that existed to concentrate wealth and power toward the top of pyramidal hierachies have collapsed. Easter Island was a history lesson in self-interest manifest as greed. Today, the income gap between rich and poor in North America has become a canyon. And the wealth gap is now a chasm. Socialism or barbarism.

[ 15 June 2005: Message edited by: Fidel ]


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
nonsuch
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posted 15 June 2005 03:45 AM      Profile for nonsuch     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Chances are, most voters are at least as smart as you are.

Obviously: the evidence is all around us.

On the other hand, suppose we don't try for a master narrative, but allow individual little narratives to be heard?
Is not the moral (if one is allowed to use that word?) impact of a story greater when it's personal and concrete than when it's massive and theoretical? I believe that it's easier for most people to decide what's right and wrong to do in a real situation than in the abstract.


From: coming and going | Registered: Sep 2001  |  IP: Logged
GJJ
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posted 15 June 2005 10:46 AM      Profile for GJJ        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
My rather cynical view is that any organization of more than a few hundred people turns into a power structure whose prime purpose is to keep power in the hands of those in top - I've seen this in businesses, in environmental groups, in the peace movement, and even in volunteer sports organizations (one which I've never been able to figure out .

If by master narrative you mean one over-arching leftish vision and organization, count me out, I think I know how the story ends. The strength of socialism should be that it is an expression of the will of the people, and that means lots of decentralized communities adapting to local conditions while co-operating on an equal basis with other communities. The left as a unified entity will turn out just like any other large unified entity - as has I think already been shown historically.

[ 15 June 2005: Message edited by: GJJ ]


From: Saskatoon | Registered: Apr 2005  |  IP: Logged
Cougyr
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posted 15 June 2005 01:07 PM      Profile for Cougyr     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Boinker:
. . . The teacher freaked out no doubt fearing we were about to light burning crosses and goose step arounfd the classroonm at any minutre. I was not asking the question out of any reactionary sentiment but probably because I felt that I secretly knew the answer as to why African civilization was the way it was. They had an equally low tolerance for boring subjects like history! And I thought who is to say their pastoral life in communion with the wonders of nature was inferior to european civilization that need to murder and rape the rest of the world to keep itself fed? But it never got that far, It was too close to home. People felt the need to feel special and above the everyone else.

I know the feeling. I had similar experiences. One of mine was 1066. We had to know that William the Conqueror landed on English shores in 1066. It was drummed into us. Big deal. Who cares. It took me nearly 40 years to find out why that was important. William was French. The prevailing language of British royalty and administration was French for about 300 years! That's why there are so many French words in the English language. Now, why couldn't a high school history teacher tell us that? Probably never thaought about it; didn't know.

Modern societies always underestimate ancient peoples. We even under-estimate most of our ancestors in recorded history. It's all about us, here and now.


From: over the mountain | Registered: Nov 2002  |  IP: Logged
Vigilante
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posted 15 June 2005 01:07 PM      Profile for Vigilante        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I think what Diamond shows us is that you shoudn't be manechean. Many living things have something of a fascism in the head(including humans) However it is existential, we can mediate these relations of power. This undercuts any idea of survival of the fittest. What is obvious is that civilization is what brings out the worst results of humans. Freud I believe said that civilization is essentially enslaving. It's not something that can be reformed in anyway. It has to end.

And Fidel once again your idea of progress is predicated on primitivism to slavery.

[ 15 June 2005: Message edited by: Vigilante ]


From: Toronto | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Boinker
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posted 15 June 2005 07:28 PM      Profile for Boinker   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
We have progressed from imperialism to feudalism, colonialism and currently, capitalism. Socialism is the future - Socialism or barbarism. If we believe people are capable of little more than predatory survivalism, then we're in for a rough ride.

I do not subscribe to this linearity. It is a variation on the idealist notion of progress. Jared cites examples of societies going in the opposite direction and of course we have the "dark ages" as an example of social retrogression.

What we have been seeing over the last 30 years is exactly the same kind of retrogression in terms of social values.

I think the idea of socialism actually means many things and that historically there are many examples of societies that exhibit these traits. Doctrinaire Marxists klike to drammatize the struggle as a neat critical nexus a crucial battle in some vast Wagnerian opus. I don't agree with this idea at all. i think conciousness and particularly working class conciousness is not homogeneous and automatically a progressive thing.


From: The Junction | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
forum observer
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posted 16 June 2005 01:02 AM      Profile for forum observer   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Some talk about power, and to me, I couldn't help but imagine a crowd of people representing a democracy gathered together, having little quotes above their heads saying, "I want to be King?"

"King," has a interesting psychological feature in the "ego state."

I am the first to unite Venn Logic with Transactional Analysis. As well as, uniting the concept of Entanglement in this menage' If you loose the " a trois" you understand it is a higher form of "evolutinary standards" that one would acumen too, and not indulge in, in your "Father's House?"

As you drawn back, the view is really quite amazing in context of all these little democracies being part of some larger framework, we like to call Canada? "An entity" unto itself, representing many entities?

Frustrated about losing hold of the power are you?

Democratic institutions, no matter how centralizing this power base is, represents the majority of the idealization of that one big guy/girl called Canada.

If you do not participate, then the idea is that part of your ability to change the course and direction, quoted too, "well it doesn't help anyway" a copout of the worst kind and a allocation to being insignificant in the "skein of time."

Yeppers, you count in everything that happens?

Now don't forget there is a bigger individual to the south of us that would like to rule over the neighborhood.

Studing some Venn logic, you see how such "entanglement issues" would say, "watchout you are loosing sight of the distinctive natures of individuality" and becoming part of the planet's personae, called "Gaia"? (oh boy


Parent EGO
As we grow up we take in ideas, beliefs, feelings and behaviours from our parents and caretakers. If we live in an extended family then there are more people to learn and take in from. When we do this, it is called introjecting and it is just as if we take in the whole of the care giver. For example, we may notice that we are saying things just as our father, mother, grandmother may have done, even though, consciously, we don't want to. We do this as we have lived with this person so long that we automatically reproduce certain things that were said to us, or treat others as we might have been treated.

PLus, a psychological process, based on, Parent, adult Child relations. Just one more way to add such features of Venn logic together in that "entanglement issue" as a Canadian entity in the league with the G8.

Whose view do we want to extend across this globe? One that takes the power of your own thinking away from you? The contribution you can make to changes in how we can become productive facets of transformative processes in a molst humane way?

Or one, that seeks to bring the perspective in line with a developmental phase, no less then the evolutionary scale of emotive causes? That also intellectually rise from this planet, to a mentality, that is most desirous of it's neural distinctiveness of whatever region and country, to one of many neuronic pathways of the planet into a rhythm called "Brain Wave resonance."

Hum a tune, and the whole world is humming? Depends on what song you like to sing?

Okay, I like to be a little mushy sometimes

[ 27 June 2005: Message edited by: forum observer ]


From: It is appropriate that plectics refers to entanglement or the lack thereof, | Registered: Dec 2004  |  IP: Logged
Boinker
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posted 27 June 2005 09:12 AM      Profile for Boinker   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
In Guns Germs and Steel Jared Diamond also draws some diagramatic portarits of societies. They go as I recallm Tribe, Kingdom, Empire and they have numbers associated with them and certain features that are common for all societies throughout history.

We have to be careful about trying to superimpose psychological paradigms on social history. It creates all kinds of problems. So called primitive societies mght be a lot wiser than a modern empire society, a patoral existence and a three day work week in the Middle Ages might have been a better existence for the common man than 19th C industrialism offered, etc., etc.


From: The Junction | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
forum observer
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posted 27 June 2005 01:23 PM      Profile for forum observer   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
even in "short sentences" some of the crap I see, is just as "verbal in diarrhea" as one who could comment on mine?

......wasting my time obviously.

Given the "Dr." you'd think you had a "wider perspective?" That you think you could comment? Yes, you have the perogative. So do I.

no respect... how do expect given?

While I like to save consistacy in threads, I will edit for shortness if that is requested and will start doing.

There will be an option for the original post here to be re-instate if there is a desire to see. If not. Fine

Even a DR. is infallible in their comments on the character and work written. I make no apologies, but out of respect for the moderators I'll save them time to question moderation prinicpals.

[ 27 June 2005: Message edited by: forum observer ]


From: It is appropriate that plectics refers to entanglement or the lack thereof, | Registered: Dec 2004  |  IP: Logged
DrConway
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posted 27 June 2005 02:03 PM      Profile for DrConway     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
"Lieutenant, Engage Moderator Hat." *BLEEP*

forum observer, I'm going to start chopping your posts for size if you can't quit the verbal diarrhea.

"Lieutenant, Disengage Moderator hat." *BLOOP*


From: You shall not side with the great against the powerless. | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
Michelle
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posted 27 June 2005 03:25 PM      Profile for Michelle   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I would check with Audra before you do that, DrC. Seems to me that it's not her policy to edit people's posts for length, or to cut out any part of anyone's post unless they've written something illegal or they've committed the sin of sidescroll (which SHOULD be illegal!).

[ 27 June 2005: Message edited by: Michelle ]


From: I've got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell. | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
Alan Avans
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posted 27 June 2005 04:35 PM      Profile for Alan Avans   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Fidel, Beltov...very well said!!

I simply must know...are you a solitary genius or do you have a muse?

quote:
Originally posted by Fidel:
Extremely well said, N.Beltov. Capitalism is about retarding the progress of whole nations of people for the sake of capital. Capitalism is the second coming of colonialism. And according to scientists the world over and now even World Bankers themselves, unbridled capitalism must go.

Capitalism is about squeezing every last drop of productivity from fewer and fewer workers as they attempt to relive the glory of Roman slavery without actually paying for the cost of owning slaves outright. But in the end, capitalism is proven to be pockets of prosperity in major cities surrounded by inefficient use of labour and resources with no real goals other than to produce plastic widgets only to be buried in landfills when they wear out or become tedious due to obsolescence by design.

Capitalism is about allowing anywhere from 6 million to 13 million people to die of starvation around the capitalist third world every year as 80% of hungry nations export food to "the market."
Capitalism is about squeezing 50 or more hours of work per week from the fewest labourers while a billion pairs of hands around the world remain idle. And yet work needs doing in every country. Capitalism is a ship wreck movie that plays over and over, but we can't leave the theatre until it, too, burns to the ground.

Capitalists leave social costs to the state while they use its citizenry for the creation of their own wealth. The establishment of individual rights and private property laws over existing common rights in John Locke's England would be of paramount importance to capitalism's future. Essentially, Locke's reasoning for private property was absconded from a previous case made for common rights by none other than Gerard Winstanley of the Digger Movement. As Linda McQuaig says, Winstanley's arguments were more in accordance with natural laws than Locke's.

Furthermore, socialists have re-established who we are as human beings after that brief experiment in laissez faire capitalism. Socialists refuse to believe in Smith's homo economicus as a model for human behaviour within any theoretical system. We are more than just one dimensional prisoners of our own greed. Adam Smith's model distorts not just human nature but the the economic results as well. Observe the capitalist abominations that were: Nortel, Arthur Anderson, Global Cross-up, ENRONg, Adelphia, World CON(Poor Bernie Ebbers. If only Alberta could see him now) and more to come, presumably.

Laissez faire capitalism failed miserably in 1929. R.I.P.

And now organized chaos is holed-up in America and having to resort to stealing elections for lack of convincing effort on the economic front. Clandestine societies representing capital continue to have to confront protests to their abuse of power by unfinished people's revolutions having spread slowly from Russia through Europe and now Iraq, China, Iran, Phillipines, Africa and Latin America.

And if it weren't for the massive loss of life and destruction in Iraq and Afghanistan, we might thank president Dubya for driving the rest of the world further to the left since his terrible rein began. But we won't defile the memory and honour of those slain for the sake of oil and corporate welfare handouts.

What remains of capitalism has been a monumental failure. Give us socialism, or give us death.

Viva la revolucion!

[ 14 June 2005: Message edited by: Fidel ]



From: Christian Democratic Union of USAmerica | Registered: Dec 2004  |  IP: Logged
forum observer
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posted 27 June 2005 08:28 PM      Profile for forum observer   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Insubordination is not tolerated lieutenant.

This must be fox news at it's best, where the right meets the left? US must be rubbing off on some of our moderators.

I don't think ranks should be used, especially if you hadn't earned it Just cause you go to college doesn't make you suitable for the rank There is something about impersonator, isn't there, that bothers some?

General forum observer

[ 28 June 2005: Message edited by: forum observer ]


From: It is appropriate that plectics refers to entanglement or the lack thereof, | Registered: Dec 2004  |  IP: Logged
Left Turn
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posted 07 July 2005 07:28 PM      Profile for Left Turn     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
US socialist and activist Bill Fletcher says the following about post-modernism:

quote:
The way I think about postmodernism is to go to a bowling alley. You have a row of games, where for every lane you have a different game. No one is playing the same game. You might be able to watch somebody playing a different game, but you’re not part of that. So the difficulty is that if we’re all in these separate lanes, how do we become more than the sum of our parts? How do we become more than just a lot of people playing our own games? So my criticism is that post-modernism, in effect, accepts that we have been defeated. It accepts that we can’t do anything about it. And that will ultimately lead to despair, regardless of what sugar-coating is put on it.

Seven Oaks Interview With Bill Fletcher


From: Burnaby, BC | Registered: Mar 2005  |  IP: Logged
forum observer
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posted 07 July 2005 11:33 PM      Profile for forum observer   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Interview with Bill Fletcher Correction in post linked above article?


Even in seemingly "unassociative views," do they not have some meaning in the greater context of any forum? What roles do they play?

Exploring the Potentials of Creative Dialogue

When I retired from the board, the town officials and some of the citizens gave me a rather elaborate party. This was embarrassing. But then I realized that it wasn't a party for me at all. We were all honoring the creativity that had taken place among us through our work (dialogue) together. The party was full of skits and sendups of the trials we had endured and solutions generated.

For me the best testimony to the dialogue came after I left office. The dialogue went on in the town. The boards and departments continued right along talking to each other and working together, working things out. I felt I had played my part in the municipal psyche by adding the creativity of that New York dialogue group to the creativity of the many people who volunteered their time for the town. In short, in this small way I saw that a dialogue begun in one place can spread to another without in the least turning itself into an ideology or an imposition. To me this is as remarkable as if I had witnessed the birth of an entirely new species of thought.by John Briggs

[ 07 July 2005: Message edited by: forum observer ]


From: It is appropriate that plectics refers to entanglement or the lack thereof, | Registered: Dec 2004  |  IP: Logged

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