Dear Yabby,

This is perhaps my last post here as we seem to be going around in circles.
Re: your reference to India's need for so many big dams. I'll direct you back to my link on the stockpiling of food by the Indian authorities and the massive surpluses. Seems people are still going hungry because the water from these dams is diverted away from ordinary souls and goes instead to large-scale growing operations. This leaves the ordinary man unable to grow his own and totally dependent on the artificially contrived "market".

Grok,

Your arrogance is just breath-taking ! You are either some sixteen-year-old twit who has just discovered this Bright New Idea, or some 64-year-old ex-SPA member who has learnt nothing in fifty years.

Maybe ten BILLION people have come into being since Marx's time - and you think you have such exclusive knowledge, you are so mentally privileged, so uniquely brilliant, such a genius, that you KNOW that socialism has not really been tried yet ? Do you really think it has not been tried in a vast number of situations and permutations, by perhaps a couple of billion of those people ?

So, like the gambler at the roulette table who has lost his fortune after consistently backing the wrong numbers, you want him to borrow so that he can keep gambling ?

Sounds like Einstein's definition of insanity to me, mate :)

Joe

Dear Poirot,

When people buy 6ha plots for 3000$ to irrigate, its hardly bigtime
farmers doing it.

http://www.indianchild.com/agricultural_system_india.htm

This is the thing. Your biased mind can only ever look at one
side of the equation. Many millions of Indian farmers use irrigation.
Perhaps you need to do a bit more homework on the subject.

*tho' of course, as usual, he doesn't know what to _do_ with these facts*

Yabby doesen't need to DO anything with these facts, just point them
out. At first Grok, you didn't believe them, now you have no answer to
them.

Grok, I liked your comments about democracy, although it did take me a few minutes to disect your convoluted style. I think we can look at a dialectic tension between more or less democracy in the same way as there is a tension between me having either more or less time sitting here writing. (This would be on the category of being/non-being)

More interestingly though, I think that we can look at the ideal of democracy as existing as a balance between the extremes social cohesiveness and individual freedom. (separateness/connectedness) Too much of either will be terrible, either totalitarianism or anarchy, but we can take something good from either end of the spectrum to create a stable, organized society with high levels of personal and community freedom.

"...we are straying far afield from hegelian vs. marxist dialectics,..... since the Rightwingers here....absolutely insist on making everything about this 'dialog' _political_ in terms they can understand."

I like this too. We are certainly not hearing a lot of, "Oh, isn't the dialectic an interesting concept!" from the likes of Yabby or Peter Hume. It's all just communism sucks and capitalism is great.

*but we can take something good from either end of the spectrum to create a stable, organized society with high levels of personal and community freedom.*

That is just the problem Gilbert. Perhaps PH and myself simply
have a higher regard for the freedom and rights of the individual,
compared to yourself, who thinks he should be the captain of the
ship and clearly wants to control others, as part of your emotional
make up. You are not the only one. Grok clearly thinks that he
knows what is best for us workers. Ego mania comes to mind here.

As to the rest, I recently read a beautiful quote. It came down
to knowledge being the accumulation of facts, wisdom being in
their simplification. There is some truth in that. I'll stick
to wisdom :)

.

Gilbert Holmes wrote: "...we are straying far afield from hegelian vs. marxist dialectics,..... since the Rightwingers here....absolutely insist on making everything about this 'dialog' _political_ in terms they can understand."

Dear Gilbert,

Do you regard as Rightwinger one who doesn't accept hegelian and/or marxist dialectics? That would make Mikhail Bakhunin, Emma Goldman, Peter Kropotkin and many others previously regarded as left Rightwingers.