Glorfindel

Socialism cannot exist without democracy, and democracy cannot exist without socialism. I suggest you read Marx on the Paris Commune for example to understand the link, or even the Communist Manifesto where he talks about socialism beign the movement of the majority for the majority.

CJ described you as a troll. You are not. You are an elf. (That is a bad joke for those in the know.)

As to those who think capitalism wlecomes all consumers, including homosexual conusmers, how do you explain the criminalisaton of homesxual activity? For some time it was a capital offence in Australia. The last hanging was in 1830.Homosexual activity was decriminalised in the UK in 1967, and around the same time in NSW. Not sure about othe states. Was homosexual activity only recently de-criminalised in Tasmania?

The pink dollar is an important issue, but my view is that pink capital further ghettoises homosexuals. Rather than confronting homophobia the pink capitalists see the market for their products as other gays. They create pockets of gay consuemrs and so reinforce the idea of separation from society.

Passy: << CJ described you [Glorfindel] as a troll. >>

Not me, old chap. Quite the reverse, in fact - I applauded Glorfindel's rejection of the economic reductionism inherent in your historical materialist analysis.

Passy,
I think that certain consumer items such as clothes are now becoming a mild pink. If someone doesn't like capitalism, then they should live in a society where there is no capitalism. I don't think they would live for very long.

But because someone is heterosexual, it does not mean that they are homophobic. The repeated use of the word homophobia now defines people as being either heterosexual or homosexual.

Passy - I am indeed "an elf-lord revealed in his wrath", fighting spiritually dead Nazgul in thrall to Evil.

In 2x350 words a day, I can't adequately deal with Rachel Morgan's article on homosexuality. But Bible-literalists oppose homosexuality for theological, not economic reasons. There is also "culture" in this. After brief experimentation with sexual liberation after the Russian revolution, right throughout the Soviet period which nearly extirpated religion, and up to now, Russia remains culturally very homophobic.

I remind you too that the Marxist ruler of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, is violently homophobic!

Rachel writes "To challenge homophobia, we need to challenge the material basis underpinning it - the family, the laws, the state and the BOSSES WHO BENEFIT, all of which has shaped a society in which oppression of lesbians and gay men is virulent and systemic." The reference to bosses is pitiful. Green cheese, anyone? If homosexuality is seen as undermining the economic basis of society, for heaven's sake, what about all the Victorian old maids, and unmarried priests? Why didn't the owners of capital go after them too?

Rachel writes "[Australian] Muslims are unlikely to be any less tolerant of lesbians and gay men than other religious people." I don't believe it. Islam in Australia is growing by reproduction and immigration. Immigration generally (except from Turkey) is from VERY homophobic cultures with draconian punishments for homosexual activity. Indeed, Islamic, especially Arab, South Asian and Iranian cultures are pathologically obsessed with sex, because of the tremendous obstacles they put in the way of any social dealings between the sexes before marriage, and often after as well.

George Bernard Shaw wrote “There is no harder scientific fact in the world than the fact that belief can be produced in practically unlimited quantity and intensity, without observation or reasoning, and often in defiance of both, by the simple desire to believe founded on a strong interest in believing.” For a different context, but equally applicable to your own uncritically Marxist filter on reality.

You align me with "imperialist butchers". Really? Like all the Left-ideological murderers of the last century?

Passy - you say "Socialism cannot exist without democracy, and democracy cannot exist without socialism." I despise Derrida, but quote "There is nothing beyond the text" and ask what YOU mean by "democracy".

Do you mean "democratic centralism", as applied by a party with a permanent monopoly on power, to the population? Lenin, not Stalin, instituted a "temporary" ban on factions within the CPSU in 1921, making democratic procedures an empty formality.

Through the "economism" of Labour parties in the bourgeois-democratic system, the economic life of many millions of people has been improved without loss of physical and intellectual freedom.

There's not been many Trotskyist socialist regimes one can judge, but Hugo Chavez calls himself a Trotskyist. I watch with interest to see his legacy by 2012 when his term runs out. In 2007 he narrowly (51%) lost a referendum to remove the constitutional limit on presidential terms - surely that proposal was a worry? Reckon he'll do a Putin?

You say of the Russian revolution "the working class and peasantry fought a civil war for three years against the return of the capitalist class and landed aristocracy. The reds successfully defeated not only the reactionaries (who if they had won would not have set up democracy but fascism)..."

The peasantry never sought collectivization (a disaster later). And it's untrue that Whites ("reactionaries") would have established fascism. Most intellectuals were in the White camp - including Miliukov, leader of the Kadets - vehemently left-liberal. Actually, one sees much fascism in POST-SOVIET political culture.

You say the Constituent Assembly elections were for an assembly to develop a bourgeois constitution, not a parliament. Leaving aside the jargon "bourgeois" (which here means only "democratic"), of course this was a first step - to parliamentary democracy.

You say "the workers', peasants' and soldiers' councils were more democratic since constituents had the right of immediate recall of delegates." - What meaningful democratic recall remained later? And "Third the Constituent Assembly elections were held before the ripening of the revolution." Ripening is a misnomer. The Provisional Government failed because it didn't stop the war.

Glorfindel

You accuse me of postmodernism then quote Derrida at me! I am not into deconstruction, although I was tempted to disguise a book proposal as deconstructing tax law in Australia. (No, it hasn't been published becasue it is an idea still in my head.)

The Whites were not Liberal Democrats. The white Terror was fascism.

The defeat of the revolution saw the rise of Stalin and with it the rise of pro-family propaganda about breeding for the revolution (really breeding future generations for state capitalism.) The rise of Stalin saw too attacks on homosexuality, on women and on wages, all consistent with building state capitalism in Russia.

Lenin did temporarily ban factions in the Communist party to save the revolution. Whether he was right to do so is a debatable question. But by then the councils were shells since the working class no longer existed as a class in 1921 and the Bolsheviks were attempting to save the revolution through substituing themselves for the class, hoping for revolutions in the West to save their revolution. That didn't happen and the revolution destroyed itself from within, ie Stalin came to power and then built state capitalism.

Mugabe is not a marxist. His homophobia comes from his Catholicism.

Chavez is not a marxist. He is a left wing populist wedded to the wage slave system.

Castro is not a marxist. The state caplitalism he created is homophobic.

The working class is central to Marx's concept of socialism. It is the agent of its own change - thus marx's idea about the class of and for itself.

In the Paris Commune he wrote about smashing the state, a concept Lenin finally understood in State and Revolution in 1917 when he saw the Workers, peasants and soldiers Councils as the alternative state. All power to the Soviets was not an empty slogan but an expression of the reality of the time and a joining of marxist theory and practice. These democratic organs surpassed the fake democracy of the constituent assembly, whose abolition went unremarked and unlamented at the time.