On DU tonight:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x420657#420662

OK does anybody see the hypocrisy here ?

These people who talk about how great socialism is,are the same ones who blindly supported an imperialist,capitalist,right wing warmonger like Obama,and will go back and do it again.

I got better thing to do than fool around with the likes of them.


Call me back when the class war starts.

Call me back when the class war starts.

It never ended eats. That's why we're socialists in the first place

Here is the militant version...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x4949105

Here is the militant version...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x4949105



hah

"Death to Capitalism!"

Now we're talkin'.

Oops, he is backing off a little now -

"This type of capitalism needs to DIE."

More confusion for the satire impaired:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=post&forum=389&topic_id=4960935&mesg_id=4960935Citing


Karl Marx, who presaged: "The owners of capital will stimulate the need of the working class to take expensive, collateral loans to buy their condos, houses and technological products; and, at the end, these unpaid debts will result in the nationalization of the banks upon their bankrupcy, and so the state will be on the pathway to communism," Caufield emphasized the exigency of reestablishing preschool values in all post-adolescent Americans.

Another one bites the dust.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x8158889

Another one bites the dust.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x8158889


Hey TBF, that terisian loser (post 22) is some piece of work. I don't have the slightest idea what he was talking about. It sounds like he treats "experimenting" with marijuana the same as "experimenting" working as a janitor

The idiot just oozes haughtiness, not just in thumbing his nose at others but also including his marvelous ability to blithely pawn off his dumbass opinion as indispensible pearls of wisdom

incidentally, was orientalism & outright islamophobia always as acceptable there as it has been lately? it seems like progressives have made peace w/ US militarism & imperialism by declaring islam a bigger threat to human rights than either of those two things

incidentally, was orientalism & outright islamophobia always as acceptable there as it has been lately? it seems like progressives have made peace w/ US militarism & imperialism by declaring islam a bigger threat to human rights than either of those two things


It's been on the upswing since 9/11 because there has been a general acceptance of it (with loud protests, of course). The interesting thing is that on DU, there is a generational element to it. The old anti-Vietnam War types who got suckered in by McCarthy/McGovern/RFK... John Kerry's "You can only work within the system", Haydin running for office, Jerry Brown "anti-imperialism", etc, etc... they're not so prone to it as the young 'uns, who buy it hook, line, and sinker. Besides, if Republicans are sub-human then what are Arabs? The middle class sensitivity/superiority duality is in full view a lot of the time.

I get your point though... Fifteen years ago, a lot of this post-racial racism would horrify many of the same people. The escape clause is in arguing it as "democracy", or "women's rights" or some such... along the same lines as Christopher Hitchins' support for the Iraq intervention. This is the same shit as arguing for intervention based on "preventing Genocide" (Power) rather than based on oil (Wolfowitz).

If they gave two shits about women's rights, they would have supported the pro-Soviet government in Afghanistan rather than doing everything they could think of to prop up a reactionary opposition. It's only when memory fades that they start thinkin' about "teaching manners" to the heathens.

http://www.internationalist.org/ugandarailwayad.jpg

Another one bites the dust.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x8158889


Hey TBF, that terisian loser (post 22) is some piece of work. I don't have the slightest idea what he was talking about. It sounds like he treats "experimenting" with marijuana the same as "experimenting" working as a janitor

The idiot just oozes haughtiness, not just in thumbing his nose at others but also including his marvelous ability to blithely pawn off his dumbass opinion as indispensible pearls of wisdom


Yeah, a little full of himself. They seem to reproduce at DU.

The militaristic themes must be permeating the popular press because I'm seeing a definite clarion call for Zionism at non-political sites as well.

For your consideration:



39. And unfortunately all too often the Intellectual Left likes to keep it that way

Pretenders to the ruling class most of them.

They bombard discussions of class conflict with their smarty-pants elitist non conversations, and send average stiffs away figuring Marx et al were all too clever to be understood by mere peons.

For your consideration:



39. And unfortunately all too often the Intellectual Left likes to keep it that way

Pretenders to the ruling class most of them.

They bombard discussions of class conflict with their smarty-pants elitist non conversations, and send average stiffs away figuring Marx et al were all too clever to be understood by mere peons.





Not sure where leftstreet is going there. Are you?

For your consideration:



39. And unfortunately all too often the Intellectual Left likes to keep it that way

Pretenders to the ruling class most of them.

They bombard discussions of class conflict with their smarty-pants elitist non conversations, and send average stiffs away figuring Marx et al were all too clever to be understood by mere peons.





Not sure where leftstreet is going there. Are you?

Don't know, sounds like the Trots to me, mebbe not.

For your consideration:



39. And unfortunately all too often the Intellectual Left likes to keep it that way

Pretenders to the ruling class most of them.

They bombard discussions of class conflict with their smarty-pants elitist non conversations, and send average stiffs away figuring Marx et al were all too clever to be understood by mere peons.





Not sure where leftstreet is going there. Are you?

Don't know, sounds like the Trots to me, mebbe not.


The most amazing thing is how old man Marx keeps rising from the grave though they have buried him one hundred times over. In 1989, there was universal agreement on this (even by "Marxists") - the old fart was finally dead and buried for good. Not only was an end to Marxism declared but a death to all "ideology". The ideological questions were all finally settled.

Yet... here he comes again... It's the stuff of nightmares - once again, a specter is haunting Europe (and other places).

http://www.imagecows.com/uploads/8e9d-hantu24.jpg

http://www.imagecows.com/uploads/8e9d-hantu24.jpg

Nice image, Anax, though it looks like the specter of suffering humanity to me. Marx is the guy with the fancy x-ray/sci-fi glasses that allows us to see the specter clearly. I may not know how those glasses work, what's important is that they do work.

Today they're quoting Marx ... um, sort of:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=4986316&mesg_id=4986316

A difference of opinion about priorities.......

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5002097

http://www.wickedsunshine.com/WagePeace/Election2004/Images/AwJeez,NotThisShitAgain!.jpg



http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5077694

From the ‘out of the mouth of babes’ dept:



:29. Americans are what's wrong with socialism
They'd fuck it up, like they fucked everything else up. Socialism should come to the USA the same way it came to East Germany.

http://pro.corbis.com/images/NA003340.jpg?size=67&uid=%7B03AE00A6-AE88-435E-9672-BC4C79AA8E0B%7D

http://www.wickedsunshine.com/WagePeace/Election2004/Images/AwJeez,NotThisShitAgain!.jpg



http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5077694

From the ‘out of the mouth of babes’ dept:



:29. Americans are what's wrong with socialism
They'd fuck it up, like they fucked everything else up. Socialism should come to the USA the same way it came to East Germany.

http://pro.corbis.com/images/NA003340.jpg?size=67&uid=%7B03AE00A6-AE88-435E-9672-BC4C79AA8E0B%7D






"You don't get any socialism..."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=5077694&mesg_id=5082908

"You don't get any socialism..."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=5077694&mesg_id=5082908

Hehe. If that don't get a rise tell 'em your a Stalinist....I suppose Volker might consider his money well spent, confusion serves his purpose well.

Gotta say, reflecting on that clusterfuck, the recurrent issues of party discipline and revisionism, which I gotta admit I've often found tedious, seems more relevant.

also it's this idea that's always had a following there and other places that it's not "real" socialism unless the enlightened, advanced countries are doing it. in other words, socialism only "works" when it is of, by, and for the crackers. otherwise it's just another variant of oriental despotism.

http://www.takimag.com/images/gallery/Small-Dixiecrat.jpg

here's an excerpt of h.w. edward's "the anatomy of revisionism"


The Social Democratic position on both these topics proves that support for colonialism is (because Social Democracy represents the labor aristocracy) the specific, material foundation of opportunism in our time.

Lenin had frequently tangled with opportunism in his day on its attitude toward imperialism. Taking Kautsky as a leading spokesman of these, Lenin had said:

"K. Kautsky ... refuses to regard imperialism as a 'phase of capitalism' and ... defines (it) as the POLICY* 'preferred' by finance capital, as a tendency on the part of 'industrial' countries to annex 'agrarian' countries.

"Kautsky's definition is thoroughly false from the theoretical standpoint. What distinguishes imperialism is the rule NOT of industrial ... but of finance capital, the striving to annex NOT agrarian countries particularly, but EVERY KIND of country. Kautsky DIVORCES imperialist politics from imperialist economics, he divorces monopoly in politics from monopoly in economics in order to pave the way for his vulgar bourgeois reformism, such as 'disarmament,' 'ultra-imperialism' and similar nonsense.

"The purpose and significance of this theoretical falsity is to obscure the MOST PROFOUND contradictions of imperialism and thus to justify the theory of 'unity' with the apologists of imperialism, the outright social-chauvinists and opportunists."26Actually, it was around the question of colonialism that Social Democracy played – and to this day continues playing – its most characteristic role.

Reproving Kautsky for "obscuring the deepest contradictions of imperialism, which inevitably becomes the embellishment of imperialism," Lenin had noted:

"The result of these tendencies (for domination) is reaction all along the line, whatever the political system, and an extreme intensification of existing antagonisms... Particularly intensified become the yoke of national oppression and the striving for annexation, i.e., the violation of national independence."27

Lenin inveighed against chauvinism, noting that colonial countries, as well as those industrialized, have workers whose struggles need support. "But," he had added,

"even in those colonial countries where there are no workers, only slave-owners and slaves, etc., the demand for 'self-determination,' far from being ABSURD, is OBLIGATORY for every Marxist."28

So, what did the Social Democrats do? First, they refused to see imperialism as it was. Lenin had referred to opportunist

"efforts to make capitalism look more attractive, an occupation in which all the reformists are engaged."29

Their position had an aim: Lenin had exposed how

"the OPPORTUNISTS (social-chauvinists) are working hand in glove with the imperialist bourgeoisie PRECISELY towards creating an imperialist Europe on the backs of Asia and Africa, and ... objectively the OPPORTUNISTS are a section of the petty bourgeoisie and of certain strata of the working class who HAVE BEEN BRIBED out of imperialist super-profits and converted into WATCH-DOGS of capitalism and CORRUPTORS of the labor movement."30

Because of the crucial nature of support for anti-colonial revolution, Lenin incorporated, as Point 8, among his "Conditions for Affiliation to the Communist International," the following:

"Parties in countries whose bourgeoisie possess colonies and oppress other nations must pursue a particularly distinct and clear policy in respect to the colonial and oppressed nations ... (they) must support – by actions and not merely by words – every colonial liberation movement, demand expulsion of the imperialists from the colonies, educate the workers in a spirit of brotherhood with the laboring population of colonial and oppressed nations, and conduct systematic agitation among the armed forces against all colonial oppression."31

Pursuing on the practical level the consequences of such an ideological position for the working class in power, Lenin had showed how foreign policy in any country fully exposes the real attitude of that country's ruling class toward oppression:

"The Soviet government has torn the veil of mystery from foreign policy in a revolutionary manner. Kautsky has not noticed this, he keeps silent about it, although in the era of predatory wars and secret treaties for the 'division of spheres of influence' (i.e., for the partition of the world among the capitalist bandits) the subject is one of CARDINAL importance for on it depends the question of peace, the life and death of tens of millions of people."32

Thus, on every count by which any alleged socialists can be tested for their relation to revolutionary Marxism-Leninism, Social Democracy from its inception and right down into our own epoch has failed to qualify. Neither its theory nor its practice (but only an occasional verbal pretension) has even the most superficial connection with scientific socialism.

The record of Social Democracy since Lenin's day, whether in Singapore or in Britain, has served to confirm Lenin's diagnosis of and polemics against them: no revolution has alleviated those oppressed by the minority imperialist ruling class in localities where Social Democrats thrive. Rather, an elite – its size depending on where in the world it lives – has been evoked by Social Democracy. That elite – a labor aristocracy in the West; an imperialist-tied comprador group in the world's Singapores – has grown under Social Democratic influence and assistance, and has added to the numbers of parasites leeching the international working class.

http://doc.maoist.ws/ar/ar_2.htm

also it's this idea that's always had a following there and other places that it's not "real" socialism unless the enlightened, advanced countries are doing it. in other words, socialism only "works" when it is of, by, and for the crackers. otherwise it's just another variant of oriental despotism.

http://www.takimag.com/images/gallery/Small-Dixiecrat.jpg


You are an unusually perceptive fellow, Mr. Squid. Oriental Despotism it is. They simply don't attach the same value to human life as we do, no? And they speak in such languages: baa, baa, baa... like sheep, really.

Hillary Clinton is in Indonesia at the moment, explaining to the Indonesians how they are a model of democracy and multi-culturalism. The stench of between a half million and a million dead - the bulk, ethnic Chinese - don't even enter her nostrils, though they are the products of just a historacal minute ago.

What? It's not like it was Kansas...

http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/3134/whatsthedifferencerf4.jpg

nothing will change these people's minds, so to hell with them. who cares what some crypto-racist chickenshit liberal on the internet thinks about stalin or mao or the truly amazing achievements of actually-existing socialism.

It's elbows & assholes:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=5114755&mesg_id=5117157

The 'paid' must be on commission today....

i think that for the american layman, the cat is out of the proverbial bag w/r/t to the historical legacy of the soviet union, i.e. it was not such a bad place to live after all. hence the anti-soviet (interchangeably anti-"stalinist") rhetoric has become increasingly shrill and hysterical. the crypto-neocons are unmasking themselves for this latest PR effort.

who am i kidding, they're all crypto-neocons! hawks in doves' clothing.

especially the ones who say, "well we can't just bomb them into the 21st century, we have to 'reason' with them too."

It's elbows & assholes:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=5114755&mesg_id=5117157

The 'paid' must be on commission today....


Yeah that's the one question I asked that the geek refused to answer. Although I mostly went back & forth with him to keep the post bumped up for visibility. It's about time someone talks about Afghanistan.

It's elbows & assholes:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=5114755&mesg_id=5117157

The 'paid' must be on commission today....


Yeah that's the one question I asked that the geek refused to answer. Although I mostly went back & forth with him to keep the post bumped up for visibility. It's about time someone talks about Afghanistan.


Gotta watch that over there, accusations of troll or paid agent will get a post zapped, might even get ya banned. Geek had one removed cause he called me a troll. Course he also called me a commie and stalinists, mebbe he ain't as dumb as he looks.

Wonder if I could get a commie troll avatar for over there.

OK, I didn't know that. Guess I'll have to actually find the rules on there and look 'em over. Really bizarre to have to read so much pro-war stuff on a democratic website. The party really has taken an odd turn. Or maybe I'm just noticing it now...

ETA: Man, they have a lot of rules. It must be hell to mod over there. It took me quite awhile just to read them all, much less remember them.

OK, I didn't know that. Guess I'll have to actually find the rules on there and look 'em over. Really bizarre to have to read so much pro-war stuff on a democratic website. The party really has taken an odd turn. Or maybe I'm just noticing it now...


No, your perceptions are accurate I think. They are beating the war drums over there now as much as the right wingers ever did.

Did all of those people forget that during the primaries the Obamabots were furiously insisting that Obama was the peace candidate, and brutally attacking anyone who said otherwise?

Very strange.

They're makin' a comeback... and they're "Socialists".

Check it out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SDUSA

Squid was talkin' about Kautsky before... check out how far real revisionism went. Vietnam War plus George Meany.

Course, the lesson is that EVERY faction in American politics has some sorta rabid degenerate "Socialism" at its center... neocons, new right, new left - you name it. What can you say? It's the only ideology in town... even in its stinky to high heaven rotten forms.

What the shitbag yuppies who think they "select" their own politics don't know, can't really hurt 'em. In truth, its a parallel comicbook universe in their midst, in which the mutant good and mutant bad "scocialists" are constantly at battle with one another.

It's a hot topic....


11. Other. Marxism is...
...way, way too complex for most people to understand because it takes more words than fit on a bumper sticker to describe it.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5132585

http://mvred.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/wearesocialists.jpg

George Orwell, eat yer heart out.

The "blackberry president" is "quitting the thug life"? I have a feeling the peeps in Pakistan and Gaza are going to beg to differ on that one...

A response to the above issue, not so bad, considering the publication.


Economy, Ecology, Empire

By John Bellamy Foster

We are living in a new historical moment. Today's threefold crisis of capitalism--viewed in terms of economy, ecology and empire--is potentially the worst in history, not excluding the 1930s and '40s. The current economic downturn already compares in many ways with the Great Depression, and the bottom has not yet been reached. The ecological catastrophe is the most serious that humanity has experienced, threatening the mass extinction of species and human civilization. The struggle over empire, with US hegemony waning but far from gone at present, points to the danger of more frequent and larger wars. I have discussed the three aspects of this historical crisis in The Great Financial Crisis (recently published with Fred Magdoff), The Ecological Revolution (forthcoming in April) and Naked Imperialism (2006). Any realistic treatment of the world situation, and the need for socialism, must attend to all three of these global contradictions emanating from capitalism.

Fortunately, global resistance to the system is also growing, in response to its economic, ecological and imperial contradictions. Today Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, together with Cuba, are leading the way in promoting a "socialism for the twenty-first century." Much of the rest of Latin America is also in revolt against decades of neoliberalism. In Nepal a revolutionary struggle has overthrown the monarchy and is working at establishing more egalitarian and democratic conditions. A broad, popular movement against neoliberalism has emerged in South Africa. General strikes have broken out in Guadeloupe and Martinique (the French Antilles). Widespread revolts have arisen in Greece and throughout the European Union with millions in the streets. The governments of Iceland and Latvia have been toppled. A New Anti-Capitalist Party (NAP) has been established in France. China is experiencing labor unrest as a result of the crisis.

If there is one place in this world ferment where mass dissent seems noticeably absent at the moment, it is in the United States, the epicenter of the global crisis. In my view, this is likely temporary. In the 1930s it took four years before the great revolt from below gained momentum. The 1929 stock market crash occurred at a time when the US labor movement was extremely weak, dominated by a restrictive craft union structure under the AFL. The economy hit bottom in 1933 with 25 percent unemployment. It was in 1934 that the country witnessed a general strike wave and the massive entry onto the world stage of the industrial labor movement, leading to the creation of the CIO. It was this grassroots revolt that formed the political impetus for the "Second New Deal" in the late 1930s, culminating in Roosevelt's landslide election victory in 1936.

Today the prospect of a revolt from below in the United States, which could well gain momentum within several years under conditions of deep economic stagnation, promises new space for a radical/socialist movement. Such a movement could start by demanding the institution of Roosevelt's 1944 Economic Bill of Rights, and go on to pursue socialist and ecological policies in the direction of equality, community and sustainability. Even the slightest tremor of such a social earthquake in the United States, the center of a world empire, would, like Seattle in 1999, be heard around the world, helping to inspire a greater planetary struggle.

Such a new socialist movement should dispense forever with capitalism's endless irrational pursuit of "More!" and focus instead on "Enough!"

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090323/foster

Such a new socialist movement should dispense forever with capitalism's endless irrational pursuit of "More!" and focus instead on "Enough!"

but whats wrong with more?

Such a new socialist movement should dispense forever with capitalism's endless irrational pursuit of "More!" and focus instead on "Enough!"

but whats wrong with more?


http://blog.lib.umn.edu/scha1028/architecture/american%20wasteland.jpg

Such a new socialist movement should dispense forever with capitalism's endless irrational pursuit of "More!" and focus instead on "Enough!"

but whats wrong with more?


I know where you're going with this, Kid. The people should enjoy the fruits of production, eh? None of that 'ash & sack' bullshit of the gloomy greens.

Don't see why we have to adhere to Ayn Rand's dichotomy and I don't see why we should expect an economy dedicated to the benefit of the people to produce unlimited crap with no regard for the effects of the production process either.

The capitalists have shown how to maximize production, they have also shown how damaging that production can be when that production is coupled to the profit system. That some socialists states have perhaps taken Marx a bit too literally, creating the damage as well as the productivity at which the capitalists excel, is imo, water under the bridge, part of the learning curve.

I have no idea how this will work, I doubt I'll be around by then to piss & moan, anyway. But I think we might speculate that planned obsolesce will be obsolete. Products will be made to last. That alone takes away a lot of current production, production that might be freed up to produce necessities & amenities. The people will decide what is to be produced, but I expect that they decide will be at least somewhat different from what is produced today under capitalism. People who have been educated in a communist society are not likely to clamor for pet rocks.

Surely the people of the socialist future will do better, things are much better understood now as compared to the mid-20th century. Science has advanced much, scientific socialism will necessarily absorb and make use of what is required for human happiness and survival.