Arjay “If the USA/Israel invade Iran,all hell will break loose and then you'll know the meaning of tyranny.”

I grew up in a divided Europe.

I remember TV newscasts of people trying to escape over the Berlin Wall

That, Arjay was a visual demonstration of “Tyranny”

The Tyranny of collectivism, shooting its citizens for daring to try for something better than the “workers Utopia” of East Germany, Russia, Poland, Hunagry, Czechoslovakia etc etc....

That tyranny whose onetime leaser, Lenin said of the French Revolution

“We need the real, nation-wide terror which reinvigorates the country and through which the Great French Revolution achieved glory”

and I also recall... i was standing on the good side of that wall
America had run a round-the-clock airlift of essential supplies to stop the spread of the “collectivist disease”.
America was the bastion between a free Western Europe or a Western Europe enslaved under the yoke of the glorifiers of the French Revolution.

A time when a poker bluff meant... who will press the nuclear button first?

So Arjay, all I will say is “If the USA/Israel invade Iran, all hell will break loose and then you'll know the meaning of tyranny.”

Only if the Iranians were to win would there be tyranny

Because you have no vision, no real cause or pressing agenda, no goal or possibly soul,
it does not mean that alot of Americans and Israelis and even some Australians are likewise deficient

some of us would say “it is better to die on our feet than to merely exist on our knees”

and you know what, we really do mean it

So for me... "labors death throws" is a blessing.. the demise of socialism in any form is a blessing..

acknowledgement, once again, of the failure of collectivism by any name

and the detoxification of "middle-politic" policy.. clearly identifying the greens as the tool of the real danger, the extreme left and assorted lunatic radicals who infiltrated the environmental movement 20 years ago, following the collapse of that evil Russian bemoth

Labor's agonies might have more to do with having promised in 2007 to be fiscally responsible, and then at the first excuse, dumping all its promises and spending like a drunk with a credit card.

Its reversion to the centre and copying the liberal policies are more to try and recapture the centre.

An interesting post Stern in defence of individualism. You say: “it is better to die on our feet than to merely exist on our knees”. This is a quote more or less from Zapata, a man leading a peasant based collectivist revolution against the oligarchy of landlords and captilaist in Mexico during the revolution there.

Before he was assassinated, and drawing from events in Russia, he began to udnerstand that it was Mexican workers and their collective power to remake society that held the promise of the liberation of all of society, including the poor peasants.

I think your mistake is to imagine stalinism as collectivism or socialism. To me it was a form of capitalism - state capitalism in which the state expropriated the value workers created and used it to reinvest in machinery etc in competition with the West. Hence when Hungarian workers rose in a workers revolution in 1956 against the Stalinist dictatorship my political tendency supported the Hungarian workers against the tyranny.

The other argument you will also have to address Stern is that production is collectivised - it is only the rewards of that production that are individualised - to capital who steal the value we workers create.

Passy “is is a quote more or less from Zapata, a man leading a peasant based collectivist revolution against the oligarchy of landlords and captilaist in Mexico during the revolution there.”

Who cares how misguided his politics were,

A leader of collectivist can quite possibly encapsulate the spirit of individualism –after all, it takes an individual to lead a revolution – not the sheep that follow, Passy… but that is hardly a role you seem up to.

“I think your mistake is to imagine stalinism as collectivism or socialism”

Not at all Passy.

Lenin was murdering in the millions before Stalin came to power

Robespierre was not inspired by Stalin when his version of collectivism (by any name) inaugurated the Terror, only to be followed by the Great Terror

And Napoleon, the inheritor of Robespierre & Cos legacy, butchered, raped and pillaged Europe for a couple of decades, reflecting nothing which any collectivist could claim as “merit” in him either.

Regarding “to capital who steal the value we workers create.’

Ah that old chestnut, the notion that the “borrowed funds”, needed to purchase stock and rent premises has no value.

That has been answered here more times than I can think but some dullards either just do not “get it” or live in a permanent state of collectivist “denial”…

But that “denial” is wholly understandable

“denial” is exactly what to expect from a collectivist state…

Denial of freedom
Denied of food
Denial of choice
Denial of a meaningful life

I do not suffer your illusions / delusions regarding the truly perverted nature of collectivism, Passy.

You will die with words like “workers action collective”, “proletariat revolutionary zeal” and the “great class war” dribbling off your enfeebled lips

And I will die saying… “it was better to die on my feet than to exist on my knees” – kowtowing to the local commissar – because will I die with passion burning in my heart

Even you must understand exactly what I mean.

or maybe I will die making love to my beautiful wife

either way, I will die smiling