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^ Bouncing back off that, think about how during and after WW2 the West in general and Anglosphere specifically built large and successful welfare states (Almost always flawed and insufficient, but far better than anything previous), and they became so entrenched that the received wisdom was you could never do things like privatize the NHS, or cut Medicare in the US's case, or the like. But that the capitalist class have spent literal decades working to both erode that consensus and attain whatever victories they could through fair means or foul to roll that stuff back. And today the tories have the NHS on its knees, kept going only because the ordinary doctors and nurses and porters and everyone else are fanatically, sincerely dedicated to the service's mission and have been destroying their own wellbeing to keep it going. Similarly, tax rates in many countries over the 20th century got as high as well into the 90% range, and consistently stayed there for decades. Partly this was because we needed to pay for The War but they lasted into the 70s and 80s, even Reagan needed most of his two terms before he was able to actually bring it below 50%. On top of which of course today's economy allows for incredible avoidance and evasion of tax dues by the capitalist classes. The point here is to emphasize that the capitalist class, despite the shortsightedness of capitalism itself, is fully capable of working on generational timescales to achieve its aims. No individuals need to be Machiavellian masterminds to do this*; it's just that the inherent nature of capitalism means they will always be drawn towards the exact same end goals; deregulation, loosening of financial laws and standards, reduction of worker protections, and so on. Implement every law you think is necessary, but as long as capitalism itself remains intact, the capitalist class will always work towards their own additional enrichment and against all those laws, and in fifty years they'll have made enough progress that we'll be in the same situation. * Though some fancy themselves as such and are happy to work towards those ends in that manner, like Murdoch's global press empire. e; in 326 Big Connie was right in the middle of working on making his shiny new city, Constantinople, into a shiny new city that would rival Rome herself! e2; OwlFancier posted:Yes, capitalism is shortsighted the way gravity is, it doesn't plan to get where it goes, but it always goes in the same direction. 
Ms Adequate fucked around with this message at 05:33 on Nov 25, 2019 |
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Nov 25, 2019 05:29
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Yes, capitalism is shortsighted the way gravity is, it doesn't plan to get where it goes, but it always goes in the same direction. I'm saying we need to kill gravity. I'm a posadist.
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Nov 25, 2019 05:32
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OwlFancier posted:Yes, capitalism is shortsighted the way gravity is, it doesn't plan to get where it goes, but it always goes in the same direction. Will this be before, after, or concurrent with the abolition of time?
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Nov 25, 2019 06:17
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NewMars posted:Will this be before, after, or concurrent with the abolition of time? Yes. Alternatively, no. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 06:20 on Nov 25, 2019 |
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Nov 25, 2019 06:18
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Now, to those of you who have not yet achieved total consciousness, you may find the idea of time and or space as capitalist constructs baffling. But consider this: the end goal of gravity is to accumulate all that exists into a singularity. Capital exists to do the same. The capitalist is driven by a singular goal: to concentrate all the world's wealth into themself while assuming that this is true of every individual within it. Gravity works the same way with every object. Therefore, we can see that gravity is an inherently inequal and destructive process that must be abolished. Now, time. You may think "isn't time a communist construct, after all, it is perfectly equally allotted?" I will tell you no: everyone gets the exact same proportion of time allocated to them, but much as social democracy seeks to allay the worst excesses of capitalism without understanding it's inherent structural oppression, time is given out perfectly equally to everyone without regard to circumstance. Consider the typical capitalist parasite, who spends their hours counting their gains and then utilizing them for their own leisure. Compare this to the put-upon worker, endlessly struggling to meet deadlines when they aren't scrambling for every minute of rest. One of them is in desperate need of more time, but time is only what it is and will not bend to the need of the workers. So we can see that it is the ineffectual model of social democracy: giving a modest allotment to all, despite some needing far more and others being in want of nothing. From this it follows that any properly communist society must be rid of both. NewMars fucked around with this message at 06:38 on Nov 25, 2019 |
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Nov 25, 2019 06:34
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The gently caress?
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Nov 25, 2019 06:53
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Posadism, in brief, is the idea that we need to destroy capitalism through the process of worldwide nuclear war, and also that aliens are real, have visited earth, and thus are by necessity, communists. And once we destroy capitalism with nuclear war the aliens will come and give us the space communism.
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Nov 25, 2019 07:00
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The cold war was a hell of a drug.
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Nov 25, 2019 07:06
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I don't think I will ever 'get' NiteCrew posting
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Nov 25, 2019 07:40
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It's mostly the same as my normal posting but it happens at night.
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Nov 25, 2019 07:42
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OwlFancier posted:It's mostly the same as my normal posting but it happens at night. Speak for yourself, it's only 3 PM here.
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Nov 25, 2019 07:46
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why the gently caress is the boris still your most popular politician and why is everyone planning to vote for him for some reason. i'm beginning to suspect there really isn't much to british politics beyond "well, at least he'll gently caress them over harder"
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Nov 25, 2019 07:48
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Bundy posted:e: ^ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWIKQMBBTtk
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Nov 25, 2019 07:49
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Nothingtoseehere posted:Speak for yourself, it's only 3 PM here. 
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Nov 25, 2019 07:49
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Lord_Hambrose posted:1) Start with a tax on all wealth (not income) about a certain limit. 100 Million Pounds? Some level where you can still be very rich by today's standards, but at the end of the day the most wealthy will be forced to pay a much larger amount of money than they currently do. As this money enters the system it can be used to hire more workers/improve infrastructure/ect. These new jobs produce more spending, more bank deposits, more loans, more wealth. Just more, and it will be better distributed than now. aka change we can believe in
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Nov 25, 2019 07:49
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The governments goal should be to maximize the number of happy, content, productive citizens. And once everyone has more money and is not worried about having to save every last cent to survive they will be able to spend more money on things they like. People who own companies that produce things people like will do better, and they will be glad Brexit inspired Knife Riots didn't see all of their society and works totally pulled down.
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Tijuana Bibliophile posted:why the gently caress is the boris still your most popular politician and why is everyone planning to vote for him for some reason. he's an absolute legend m8
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Nov 25, 2019 07:50
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"do we want to abolish or reform capitalism?" is what wrecked Labour in the era of Callaghan: not over the high-concept titanic struggle over the material course of history, but over the very concrete question of wage and price controls, as embedded in the actually-then-existing tripartite corporatist social democracy embedded in the Keynesian wage-and-price control framework of wages councils and price boards, could be tolerated. If the forces of both labour and even its respective capital want to raise relative wages (as during the Ford strikes), is the Center entitled to hold absolute wages down? it's not clear this has a meaningful policy analogue in Labour circa 2019... McDonnell circa 2016 experimented vigorously with headline macroeconomic policies as a flagship policy. It went down like a lead balloon. The UK is not France, where Piketty is a rockstar. But the intraparty tensions bear a resemblance. This thread is perhaps not taking the Hambrose reformist perspective sufficiently seriously - the party leadership certainly does. It has not been the case for many decades that Labour's flagship positions on popular public services is unfavourable with the public; Labour has held an advantage with these since the Tories went through the Thatcherite transformation and surrendered the cities. The classical Labour problem is convincing the public that these are actually its party priorities and that the party won't commit its energies to flights of fancy. The party for its part assesses which policies will whip up its desired rank-and-file activist floor (four-day week, free broadband), vs which are to be tabled indefinitely to committee (abolish private schools) whilst it goes on the stump about the things it figures do hold attentions (more police officers and nurses). These are policies that differ in kind, not degree.. the Corbyn miracle is in not letting these tensions explode, no matter how much the Tories try to bait them. Mike Beggs remarked last year: quote:Much of the rank and file of the new social democracy is made up of people who think of themselves as further to the left than the positions they are canvassing for — but they have followed their political instincts into the openings revealed by the Sanders and Corbyn surprises. Some have lamented that “socialism” has been defined downwards. Just as Marx once complained that it was up to the German workers to make a liberal revolution because the bourgeoisie wasn’t up to it, it now seems left to the socialists to revive social democracy... But if Labour does not defend the gains of 2017, as current polling suggests, those within the party left arguing strenuously for moderation at the ballot box will make the case that even free broadband was a bridge too far. Being in opposition is unpleasant, even if an adroit opposition is successful at shaping particular government policies at the margins (on say... hospital car parking charges).
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Nov 25, 2019 07:58
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Tijuana Bibliophile posted:i'm beginning to suspect there really isn't much to british politics beyond "well, at least he'll gently caress them over harder" no that's just conservative/right-wing politics. it's everywhere though
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Nov 25, 2019 08:04
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The politics I see is "this all sounds nice but unrealistic" like we've collectively accepted that stiff upper lip is the only reality out there for us.
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Nov 25, 2019 08:41
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Tijuana Bibliophile posted:why the gently caress is the boris still your most popular politician and why is everyone planning to vote for him for some reason. At least some of the polling is making extremely dubious assumptions about turnout which doesn't help Azza Bamboo posted:The politics I see is "this all sounds nice but unrealistic" like we've collectively accepted that stiff upper lip is the only reality out there for us. It's more like people just don't believe that increasing taxes is a thing you can do, like taxes should just continue to decrease forever and that would be good
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Nov 25, 2019 08:42
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Dreamers, they never learn They never learn Beyond the point of no return And it's too late, the damage is done Good morning UKMT
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Nov 25, 2019 08:43
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Spangly A posted:real talk there is a v notable de Pfeffel hairline and a real notable de Pfeffel hair ruffle that goes with the de Pfeffel slur when attempting humour I genuinely love when people come into this thread to present countervailing opinions because it leads to posts like this. The last couple of days have helped a ton in crystallising my own thoughts around a variety of issues and giving me effective arguments for my stance.
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Nov 25, 2019 08:46
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There's also the question of whether abolishing capitalism through democratic means is possible or whether (representative) democracy is inherently Liberal. Historically speaking, democratic communist societies have tended to be short lived and vulnerable to the forces of capital just absolutely crushing them: for example, the Paris Commune, the Catalonian Republic. This is because when people have absolute choice over their actions they tend to be less focused than when their choices are perceived as restrictive. Management and hierarchy create artificial restrictions which motivate most people to do better. Of course the problem with a managerialist system of Communism is that it tends to devolve into state capitalism and generate a politburo of soulless autocrats, or just one turbostalin. Anarchists will tend to argue that further advances in the political technology of democracy can lead to successful socialist implementations, but they have argued that for a century and a half and there haven't been any successful democratic Communist states. On the other hand the Soviet Union, while imperfect and creating a lot of suffering, was successful enough to survive for over 80 years and in the Kruschev era had better living standards for the majority of its citizens than the West did. Sp I don't know if there's a clear answer, but history would suggest a communist system and democracy are incompatible in any sustainable sense.
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Nov 25, 2019 08:54
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We had labour canvassers out in Patchway last night and these have popped up on every bus shelter in sight  I have one of those "please don't knock on my door because I don't want to talk to anybody" signs but I gave the guy a pass because he's got an uphill struggle in this area 
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Nov 25, 2019 08:57
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ronya posted:"do we want to abolish or reform capitalism?" is what wrecked Labour in the era of Callaghan: not over the high-concept titanic struggle over the material course of history, but over the very concrete question of wage and price controls, as embedded in the actually-then-existing tripartite corporatist social democracy embedded in the Keynesian wage-and-price control framework of wages councils and price boards, could be tolerated. If the forces of both labour and even its respective capital want to raise relative wages (as during the Ford strikes), is the Center entitled to hold absolute wages down? I take your point, and certainly I think that on Dec 12th there will be a very wide range of opinions represented within those voting Labour, ranging from "give the other side a chance" to "Abolish Spacetime", but we aren't ITT working to hammer out policies that can be sold to the public or trying to navigate a course between a dozen Scyllas and Charibdyses - we are largely talking about theoretical matters and, if not outright utopianism, at least the pursuit of relatively idealized improvements on today's world. The luxury we are thus afforded is that we can indeed press on with the (some might say bourgeois) academic discussion and try to make the case for our respective theoretical positions. Ultimately what matters in the short term is getting people to vote Labour next month. But beyond that it is varying degrees of useful and imperative that we - the left as a whole, splitting notwithstanding - proselytze and convert. Because not only do we need to think about winning in the next election as well, but even if Labour can implement everything they promise, it still falls within the realm of, well, reformed capitalism. To take further steps would and will require more people of a more revolutionary bent.
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Nov 25, 2019 08:59
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Which socialism is best socialism? And other such fun games to play at the train show.
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Nov 25, 2019 09:13
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bad words
Sanford fucked around with this message at 09:26 on Nov 25, 2019 |
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Nov 25, 2019 09:17
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YMMV but in my experience there's no shortcuts or places that'll reach into my sad brain and tear out poo poo feelings. If there was I'd be smashing that poo poo. There's CALM and the other other charities as well as your GP depending on what you're looking to find as well as a whole swath of books that come from different angles on different issues. In the end, though, you're with the feeling and it's there, you're here and we're here. I'm not saying it won't change, just that it's one of those loving annoying things that takes time and effort and consistently keeping up with it and honesty with yourself and dealing with setbacks and yeah if there was something to tear it out I'd be smashing that poo poo. If there was something I could point to that just works, I'd be pointing to it. Azza Bamboo fucked around with this message at 09:32 on Nov 25, 2019 |
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Nov 25, 2019 09:28
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https://twitter.com/NevilleSouthall/status/1198881160539123712
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Nov 25, 2019 09:29
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Sanford posted:can anyone with sadbrains experience please point me towards any resources to help get past feeling the ill person is a lazy ungrateful miserable shithead. I know its wrong but its how I'm feeling. Do you have a memory of a time when you were not politically left? Can you recall, if so, what your perception of the world was like then? The kinds of ideas you could entertain? Can you imagine how you might react to some of the ideas you take for granted now, at that time? That's perhaps a good comparison. Specifically, your depressed person is a lazy, ungrateful, miserable shithead, because that is essentially what depression does to you. It makes you feel extremely lethargic, it makes you struggle to be appreciative towards people trying to help (because they can't, and in their failure they are just putting more emotional labour on you to try and make them feel better about their inability to help, you didn't ask to be helped, really it's just making things harder, but you can't say that of course, because that would be both starting a conflict you don't have the energy for and it's probable on some level you understand they're trying to be nice, even if they're failing). The misery is all consuming, to the point you broadly can't feel anything else other than the leaden feeling in the gut that you would probably associate with the worst moments of your life. If that feeling struck, and persisted, and didn't go away, until the intensity burned out your nerves and you're left with the same paralysing effect, but the pain is dulled, rather than being sharp and horrifying it's become dull and utterly crushing. And all of this of course conspires to make you into a pretty unpleasant person to talk to. You become tremendously hard work in conversation, and people of course try to logic you out of it because that's all they can think to do, but their lack of success usually annoys them, sometimes makes them lash out, which of course you are used to by this point, it happens a lot if you haven't alienated everyone yet. On some level you do understand that there's something wrong, but you are looking up at normality from the bottom of a very deep pit, so your academic understanding that there is something else up there is rather stifled by the immediacy of your present surroundings, and no amount of that knowledge brings you closer to being able to get out of the pit. On some level you want to talk to people who aren't in the pit, even though you know full well they're just going to get annoyed at you eventually, because the alternative is complete isolation and the sheer monotony of your experience. Ultimately though you've been in the pit for so long that you're just passive, if someone wants to try to talk to you you haven't the energy to make them go away, nor the energy or perception of the level they're operating on to actually engage them as equals. They're at the top of the pit, yelling down at you. You're at the bottom, responding. That's the way it is, nothing will change that. If they choose to turn up and yell or go away in a huff, that's nothing to do with you, you can't control who comes close to you, you are an object to be acted on, not a independent force yourself. You simply go through the motions of what an interaction between equals looks like, but you are the one acted upon, not the actor, while at the same time no action done to you can actually move you from your position. Your role is merely to be the passive participant in a meaningless conversation that for some reason someone has decided to have with you. (something something paulo friere submerged consciousness historical object, this is another thing pedagogy of the oppressed really struck me with, the way he describes the process of becoming a historical subject is very, very similar to my experience with depression though I don't think he makes any direct comparison) It's a lot like poverty, in many respects, if you've any familiarity with that. Or talking to your boss, or your landlord, or your parents as a child. You're not talking to someone like you, you're just stuck in a conversation inflicted on you by someone with more power than you, all you can do is just go through the motions until they go away. You yourself aren't wrong in identifying the shape they're presenting to you, the error is really only in believing that they can just choose to do otherwise, that they are fundamentally operating on the same level as you and their conduct is just rudeness, it runs a lot deeper than that, which you understand academically but if you don't have things to compare it to, or direct experience yourself, it's hard to find any other understanding to substitute in for the person just appearing to be an rear end in a top hat. People with depression might well act like assholes but it's because they're in a tremendous amount of mental pain and undergoing some seriously thought restricting emotional pressure. To the degree that I think if it hit people intermittently they'd probably be screaming, but when it's a constant feature of your life, you basically lose the ability to express it, but you still feel it. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 10:03 on Nov 25, 2019 |
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Nov 25, 2019 09:33
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Azza Bamboo posted:Which socialism is best socialism?
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Nov 25, 2019 09:39
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Lord_Hambrose posted:I really hate that you people have given up, honestly. ronya posted:But if Labour does not defend the gains of 2017, as current polling suggests, those within the party left arguing strenuously for moderation at the ballot box will make the case that even free broadband was a bridge too far.
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Nov 25, 2019 09:40
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ronya posted:"do we want to abolish or reform capitalism?" is what wrecked Labour in the era of Callaghan: not over the high-concept titanic struggle over the material course of history, but over the very concrete question of wage and price controls, as embedded in the actually-then-existing tripartite corporatist social democracy embedded in the Keynesian wage-and-price control framework of wages councils and price boards, could be tolerated. If the forces of both labour and even its respective capital want to raise relative wages (as during the Ford strikes), is the Center entitled to hold absolute wages down? If reformist is all we can get and it will improve the lives of the poor and downtrodden in the near term, we will campaign vigorously for it. That's not incompatible with arguing for a much stronger position that would cement these improvements in the much longer term. I don't know whether, given human nature, it's possible to achieve a steady state in society that doesn't involve some segment of society being miserable, but we have to keep trying for it. Simple empathy dictates this. Those without empathy will of course sit back and sneer at the futility.
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Nov 25, 2019 09:41
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You start with the small plug.
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Nov 25, 2019 09:45
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You can accelerate the process with the right chemicals.
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Nov 25, 2019 09:51
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Guavanaut posted:You can accelerate the process with the right chemicals. It's true. Also let's all go easy on hambone, he does seem to be posting in good faith
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Nov 25, 2019 10:08
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Ms Adequate posted:I take your point, and certainly I think that on Dec 12th there will be a very wide range of opinions represented within those voting Labour, ranging from "give the other side a chance" to "Abolish Spacetime", but we aren't ITT working to hammer out policies that can be sold to the public or trying to navigate a course between a dozen Scyllas and Charibdyses - we are largely talking about theoretical matters and, if not outright utopianism, at least the pursuit of relatively idealized improvements on today's world. The luxury we are thus afforded is that we can indeed press on with the (some might say bourgeois) academic discussion and try to make the case for our respective theoretical positions. I don't know about you, but I'm ITT herein dead comedy forum for the academic spitballing  something something distilling their frenzy from some scribbler...It's like watching the arc of Podemos. One is not in the fray but it's still engaging as a topic. Big tent politics is big tent politics, true (we are large, we contain multitudes). But I don't think this is coalition of socialists or even a coalition of former bourgeois social democrats thusly converted into being socialist... it's still the same squabbling factions held together by a different set of compromises, under the same long-term demographic trends (decline in the north, rise in the cities). Insofar as there have been zeitgeist changes, the UK has not been an exceptionalist experience; many post-GFC-but-not-insolvently-so Western democracies have been moving due populist; the UK has not moved appreciably more so and its signature populist outburst of late was largely un-asked for at large and highly driven from the establishment. Labour UK's mark of distinction has been its relative success as a big-tent, major-party vehicle; it has not been PASOKified but neither has it spiralled back into being a protest party. I don't think anyone can deny that Labour successfully navigating intra-party squabbling comes down heavily to Corbyn's personal authority (e.g. witness the recent Conference fight over Brexit being won by pitching it as a party motion of confidence in Corbyn himself), and yet Labour's relative success does mean that the particular direction of Corbyn's triangulatory choices, as the closing act of a long career as a London politician, will shape the nature of UKpol for many years yet. Guavanaut posted:And I will be there to whisper "it's because you didn't go far enough, was your welfare policy really radical compared to Harman?" rightward of Ed Miliband and all that... it's a comment on the times when the Lib Dem manifesto technically contains a larger reversal of Welfare Reform and Work Act 2016 than the Labour one does, but of course insofar as Labour has a credibility problem, the Lib Dems have it in triplicate
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Nov 25, 2019 10:08
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Maugrim posted:If reformist is all we can get and it will improve the lives of the poor and downtrodden in the near term, we will campaign vigorously for it. That's not incompatible with arguing for a much stronger position that would cement these improvements in the much longer term. the claim after 2015 was that people are more keen on voting for the extreme policies than the triangulated ones, and so you could argue for a stronger position and improve your electoral chances simultaneously. this was somewhat born out in 2017. in 2019 though, it's looking pretty dodgy and if - as ronya says - the 2017 gains aren't defended, there's going to be a reckoning between the revolutionaries and the incrementalists coffeetable fucked around with this message at 10:15 on Nov 25, 2019 |
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Nov 25, 2019 10:10
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Does anyone have figures on how the voter registration numbers compare to 2015 and 2010 (and 2017)?
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Nov 25, 2019 10:13
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Another shock ant semitism from the Labour Party #grime4corbyn 
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Nov 25, 2019 10:16
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