Old Zygote, you say “Capitalists can only grow wealthy if others grow poor”. This was Marx’s biggest claim, and biggest error. He expected the conditions of the working class to deteriorate steadily under capitalism – longer hours, lower wages, fewer skills. In fact, exactly the opposite has happened. The workers of modern-day developed economies enjoy living standards and working conditions that Marx could not have dreamed of. Parts of the left, especially the greener parts, now recognise this. Clive Hamilton’s famous address to the national left expressed this well:

“Difficult as it may be to admit, social democrats and democratic socialists have a psychological predisposition to believe that the mass of people are suffering from material deprivation. We thrive on the imagined wretchedness of others. When the economy goes bad we feel secretly vindicated, for our reason to condemn the system is renewed. We revel in a collective schadenfreude …. By any standard Australia is an enormously wealthy country. The great majority of its citizens want for nothing”

http://evatt.org.au/papers/social-democracy-consumer-capitalism.html

Tristan, you are right that later Social Democrats were influenced by Marx, and Marxism and Social Democracy co-evolved and co-operated in the nineteenth century. But there were clear divisions between them. The Communist Manifesto makes clear that Marxists would co-operate with social democrats and other opposition groups to the extent they shared objectives and tactics, but saw social democracy as primarily a bourgeoise movement. Communism was firmly committed to violent revolution as the means to effect political change: “The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions”

You don't even have to necessarily live in a country where Marxism, Leninism, Maoism, Socialism or any other 'ísm' exists.

Simply to have an idea or product that THREATENS the status quo, or monopoly on any single product or ideology, gives them (they feel) their mandate to eliminate or exterminate opposition/competition.

Capitalism in its raw form is not a nice concept, human greed takes on many guises, jealousy, envy, whatever...lots of well meaning inventors and idealists have 'disappeared' here in Oz and the US over the years... e.g the guy who designed a very efficient carburettor in the early 1970's that achieved around 70 miles per gallon (US), went quite innocently to the major oil companies and GM/Ford/Chrysler never to be seen again.

Ralph Sarich who, in WA consequently sold his Orbital Engine R & D and all rights to BP...a lucky man who survived, becoming very wealthy because he had the nouse to see his lawyers first.

The reason alternate energy tech has not seen its full manifestation yet is that it will only be when the last litre of fossil fuel (auctioned off on E-Bay at some incredible amount), that we will see the big oil conglomerates give the nod to funding solar, battery technology and the likes.

Back to the 'ísms' & abuses of human rights that seem to happen in places like Pinochet's Chile etc, it will happen here and is already, due mainly to government and media collusion. The Qld anti Bikie legislation is a portent of things to come.

No I don't condone for one moment the 1% ers who wear colours, and behave as if they own whatever they see. But remember for a moment that I, & my 2 sons could get jackets emblazoned with lets say '"Father And Sons Tourers" and ride our motorbikes into Qld from interstate to be quite readily & freely harrassed by police there.

Australians as nation are very apathetic, its very plainly NIMBY Syndrome for the majority, who until it bites them on the bum do very little.

BTW Chris Warren; You list Romero in El Salvador. Wasn't Archbishop Romero a liberation theologian who was murdered for standing up for the poor in that country, and opposing authoritarian rule?

No.

General Carlos Humberto Romero controlled ORDEN the Salvadorean anti-communist terror squad. He became President only through massive electoral fraud.

He was trained by the United States.

In 1974 farmers were massacred. In 1975, it was the students' turn. In 1977 civilians were killed, then the Jesuit priests.

Another right-wing death squad emerged - "White Warrior Union".

Tristan

General Romero was not the priest "Romero".

Cheers

There is so much which is inane in Marxism/left. Old zygote says:

"For Marxists, the key to solving the economic crisis, is to ensure that all workers receive purchasing power (wages) equal to the full value of their product. This is the only way the so-called "circular flow" can balance without increasing debt or importing low wages, as currently applies."

That is nuts. It would mean that no single worker would have any purchasing power since his purchasing power is equal to the value or cost of the product.

In addition what happened to reward for entrepreneurial risk taking? Oh, that's right, there is no such thing with the state commandeering the means of production. If workers under the Marxist scheme get full value for their work what extra is the state going to have to provide some of the staples of life like hospitals, roads, trains, schools etc.

You couldn't make this garbage up. Marxists are idiots economically and in every other respect. On the one hand they claim it is a peace-loving ideology and in the next breathe rabbit on about violent insurrection. Their grasp of economic is on par with this moron:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=306665082791936&set=a.252830414842070.1073741829.252175321574246&type=1&theater

If he isn't a Marxist I'll walk to Bourke backwards.

Previously in this debate I claimed that the anarcho-syndicalists in the 1930's had better ideas than the Marxist Leninists ...

In this respect, I admit, I was talking about Spain not Austria!

However, from what I've read by Karl Popper a lapsed Austro-Marxist (he abandoned Marxism whilst still a teenager at the end of world war one) the Austro-Marxists were into historicism an authoritarian doctrine which posits that the working class has some destiny to bring about utopia ...

In my view this positing historical destiny has semi-religious overtones ... it's certainly not based on science: I can't see that decoding of our DNA would have a message from God saying: "Ha-ha, the destiny of the working class is to bring about the new heaven and new earth in situ, Yours Faithfully, God", encoded in the four letter DNA code somehow!

I refer, into alia, to Popper's "The Poverty Of Historicism" ...

As to those going on about democratisation and participatory democracy, building the new society inside the old by building democracy in the labour movement, why not acknowledge the anarcho-syndicalist nature and origins of these concepts?