Lady Demelza posted:

They don't believe Labour can pay for their manifesto, and don't see how they can nationalise stuff, they hate his reluctance to use nukes and believe he negotiates with terrorists.

OwlFancier posted:

Do they want a nuclear war?

Did you actually find a posadist?

Lady Demelza posted:

They don't believe Labour can pay for their manifesto, and don't see how they can nationalise stuff, they hate his reluctance to use nukes and believe he negotiates with terrorists.

ronya posted:

nationalised... and on rails

Lady Demelza posted:

They don't believe Labour can pay for their manifesto, and don't see how they can nationalise stuff, they hate his reluctance to use nukes and believe he negotiates with terrorists.

Aidan_702 posted:

https://twitter.com/uklabour/status/1198942766203645953?s=21

Guavanaut posted:

ronya posted:

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...

quote:

The programs of these campaigns are Keynesian in Mann’s sense, but the intuition of the radicals in the ranks is correct: they could, potentially, take us back to a place where the Marxian wager might be made again. Whereas the ordinary Keynesian wants to shore up the system, and expects rational policy to stabilize it and remove its worst defects, the radical Keynesian has learned lessons from the fate of twentieth-century social democracy.

Full employment turns out to be an unstable state for capitalism, since it bolsters the economic power of workers and feeds inflationary tendencies that politicize distribution. Of course, any program of reform that leaves control of the means of production in private hands is vulnerable to the economic and political power of capital. But it is at that point that the Marxian wager really arrives, because there is a real political choice: to push forward to the expropriation of capital, or to retreat.

The first choice would still be an enormous gamble, with much potential for disaster and disillusionment. But it still seems like the best chance we have. The retreat that seemed politically safer the last time around also turned into its own kind of disaster.

Plank Sanction posted:

First day of the UCU strike! We're a bit isolated from other, more 'excitable' branches down here in Falmouth, but we had some good reactions from passers by and students.

Especially positive reactions from bus drivers!

Note, this is Exeter University's campus in Cornwall. Falmouth University itself is not striking.

Gaemblor posted:

Massive turnout on the pickets at my uni today. Hopefully that'll poo poo up UUK and USS and get them to start negotiating again instead of firing off scaremongering e-mails to staff and students. One positive about this period of action is that it isn't just over the pension scheme for academics and higher paid clerical staff - it's over pay and equality too meaning all university staff will benefit from any employer concessions on that front rather than just those with a USS pension.

ronya posted:

every socialist who has ever argued for the destabilizing tendency of market competition, or the waste and duplication of work prior to consolidation under nationalization, is spinning in their graves...

ThomasPaine posted:

Hype and hope aside, do we reckon we can win this? I'm genuinely optimistic even trying to think around my biases. Please don't disappoint me Britain.

Miftan posted:

It's a good thing that socialist theory isn't set in loving stone handed down by Karl 'Moses' Marx from Mt. Sinai then, isn't it?

OwlFancier posted:

Do they want a nuclear war?

Did you actually find a posadist?

fuf posted:

I had to walk past the picket at the main Exeter University campus today and it felt lovely not being able to join them. All I could do was take a leaflet and try and look friendly.

I finally joined Unison but my rep said we're not allowed to join the strike because we didn't get over 50% turnout on the vote. I'm a bad socialist so I don't really understand the laws tbh.

Spangly A posted:

Cameron is responsible for the spread of ISIS.

sebzilla posted:

This is good but is there nor a Norn Iron fleg emoji?

OwlFancier posted:

I mean if you did that you'd just start a global nuclear war so you could just fire nukes everywhere randomly and all those things would end up nuked just as reliably.

ronya posted:

It's a good thing I'm not claiming things that all socialisms agree on innit

Spangly A posted:

probably Australia

Spangly A posted:

*ronya storms the room, armed with little pamphlets giving synopses of authors he's never going to read* actually, the question of allowing richard branson to claim "ownership" of the national utility he didn't build or maintain has given many left governments a lot of pause which you are rashly dismissing *bludgeons communist sympathiser with series of a4 binders lying about the works of ricardo* in fact if we're careful in our observations, strictly post tripartite-collapse of coursecourse, the question of who ultimately can claim ownership is less simple th*shoots single parent for no reason*an you give it credit here, whereas the extraction of some sums of material wealth from an existing system is, as per your own references to the bank of englands primer on monetary policy, more representative of a true creation of f*boards windows to bareicade hoards of angered accountants*ountainpen wealth, as i believe they called i

quote:

People turned out in record numbers to eject pro-Beijing politicians from district councils they had controlled across the city. They held on to little over 10 percent of the 452 openly contested seats.

When polls closed at 10.30pm on Sunday, nearly 3 million people had voted, representing more than 71% of the electorate and nearly half of Hong Kong’s population. Many had never voted before.

RockyB posted:

There's a Smilie for that . This should be the next OK Boomer.

OwlFancier posted:

I do hope pidcock gets back in line with the party, and that it is just a lack of understanding rather than actual terfery.

Miftan posted:

I have no idea what you're trying to say here tbqh.

Gaemblor posted:

Massive turnout on the pickets at my uni today. Hopefully that'll poo poo up UUK and USS and get them to start negotiating again instead of firing off scaremongering e-mails to staff and students. One positive about this period of action is that it isn't just over the pension scheme for academics and higher paid clerical staff - it's over pay and equality too meaning all university staff will benefit from any employer concessions on that front rather than just those with a USS pension.

Azza Bamboo posted:

This is just a dig at the man's appearance.

Ms Adequate posted:

^ 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;

ronya posted:

I might have a chip on my shoulder on the practice of equivocating into market socialisms when convenient

sebzilla posted:

This is good but is there not a Norn Iron fleg emoji?

Angepain posted:

I wish the terf set would just openly declare their disgust of the transes from the outset rather than doing the standard gradual dance of "this is an important discussion to have" -> "gosh people are being so rude, be nice" -> "the transes are being rude" -> "I'm just asking Questions about Women" -> "you're an ugly pedophile man who assaults lesbians". Would stop us having to do all this nervous guesswork all the time with people we want to be able to trust who might have just not been paying attention that much.

ronya posted:

I might have a chip on my shoulder on the practice of equivocating into market socialisms when convenient

Lady Demelza posted:

They don't believe Labour can pay for their manifesto, and don't see how they can nationalise stuff, they hate his reluctance to use nukes and believe he negotiates with terrorists.

Gonzo McFee posted:

https://twitter.com/BBCPolitics/status/1198964664706748417

But of course he's still standing.

Gonzo McFee posted:

https://twitter.com/BBCPolitics/status/1198964664706748417

But of course he's still standing.

Gonzo McFee posted:

https://twitter.com/MPIainDS/status/1198905937022660608

lol

Spangly A posted:

that quote is a meme because its one of the best descriptors of fascism ever written anywhere, in simple terms, in maybe 20 pages

RockyB posted:

Fair enough, didn't know the source and assumed it was a generic academic just blathering on. Time for a caption competition

RockyB posted:

Low effort JezzaPosting continues

https://twitter.com/jeremycorbyn/status/1198951179348258816?s=19

Great vote registration figures there. Still got the busiest 34 hours left, too