The NAZIs were socialists full stop. For Yebiga to claim they were right wing because of their affiliation with big business is rubbish and ignores the difference between capitalism and crony capitalism. Hitler did not have anti-monopoly or anti-trust laws did he?

Here in Australia one of the dominant aspects of the left is their support, tacit, or otherwise, for and from big business. During the Gillard/Rudd years not one big business stood up to them. The cowardice of big business and their duplicity in receiving government handouts, in the case of fossil fuel industries, for renewables is a case in point. And the NSW ALP, corrupt to its eyeballs got on very well with big business.

If people with money had stood up to the left than the Rudd/Gillard abomination would have been much more short-lived.

The left know how to do business with big business because the left via its Marxist economic theory is a big business in itself.

It is astounding that the Marxists would prefer big government to dictate not only their economic life but inevitably the entirety of their lives.

Tony Abbott has summed up the left when reviewing Nick Cater's book:

http://www.luckyculture.com.au/about-the-book/reviews-2/tony-abbott-reviews-the-lucky-culture/

"As Cater sees it, there’s a powerful new commentariat, dominant in the media, academia and public administration, that is every bit as condescending as the aristocracy he left behind in Britain. In contemporary Australia, the worst snobbery is not directed towards people of lower status, he says, but towards people of different opinions. He thinks that this ‘my opinion must be better than yours’ conceit is putting at risk the egalitarianism that’s at the heart of Australians’ sense of self.

What distinguishes this group from every other influential sector of society is its unshakeable conviction in its moral superiority. Everyone who disputes its thinking is not just wrong, but inferior. Critics of the politically correct consensus are not just bad thinkers but verge on being bad people, as those who are cautious about gay marriage are starting to discover…"

Marxism sucks.

Hi Tristan,

The first part of my response was to ask << if you sent this complaint to Andrew Bolt at the Herald-Sun before you tried your luck on OLO? If so, could you share any response you got with us? >>

Since this is your response to Andrew Bolt it seems a reasonable question to ask?

The issue of “progressive politics” in our education system is what was challenged by Andrew Bolt. You conveniently slid down the side of this issue to “clarify” the facts of Marxism but you failed to make a case “for” teaching it. That I think is the issue Andrew Bolt has with progressives.

No amount of distractions and misdirection’s will suffice. If you have a declared position on this, let’s hear it.

Then we can move on to the wider debate of just who is driving this proposal, who they are, what they are and where they are?

Lets’ face it we don’t want to miss any of you when we come round with the vacuum cleaner.

Thanks Tristan for a useful article that has placed Marxism on the agenda again, but it is wasted on the Bolts and their audience. The importance of Marxist philosophy, economics and history is ignored by the Bolts of this world who are paid by the idle rich to rubbish it.

Consentration has to be on the methods they are using today to trash democracy. While it is useful to read history it is how they are maintaining capitalism's domination today thats important.

The established separation of powers, the pillars of the democratic society are being destroyed. The military's role of defender of the realm is being compromised . It now serves the ideology of Abbott and Morrison.

The non disclosure of cabinet documents is relegated to the past in order to pursue the short term objective of a government to maintain power. While it is useful to record how dictatorships have destroyed past democracy it is how they are doing it today thats important

Why do we have to put up with debased posts from those like "cohenite" who refers to those it disagrees with as "maggots".

The face at the bottom of the well is its own.

Remember, it was the rightwingers who, all through history, who benefited from and developed genocide, gas chambers, slavery, poverty, destitution, convictism, exploitation, torture, invasions, MacCathyism, racism, jingoism, nuclear bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, buzz-bombed London and fire bombed Hamburg. Now they produce "cohenite".

If you want to look at the reality of capitalism, have a look at the British capitalism:

British capitalist empire – 1950s

The inmates were used as slave labour. Above the gates were edifying slogans, such as “Labour and freedom” and “He who helps himself will also be helped”. Loudspeakers broadcast the national anthem and patriotic exhortations. People deemed to have disobeyed the rules were killed in front of the others. The survivors were forced to dig mass graves, which were quickly filled.

Interrogation under torture was widespread. Many of the men were anally raped, using knives, broken bottles, rifle barrels, snakes and scorpions. A favourite technique was to hold a man upside down, his head in a bucket of water, while sand was rammed into his rectum with a stick. Women were gang-raped by the guards. People were mauled by dogs and electrocuted. The British devised a special tool which they used for first crushing and then ripping off testicles. They used pliers to mutilate women’s breasts. They cut off inmates’ ears and fingers and gouged out their eyes. They dragged people behind Land Rovers until their bodies disintegrated. Men were rolled up in barbed wire and kicked around the compound.

Source: www.tinyurl.com/capitalism-1950s

If it suits capitalism to destroy entire societies, then this is precisely what it will do - as in Tasmania. If it makes profits by selling opium, then this is what it will do. If it makes profits through child labour then this is what it will do. If it can build computers and gizmos, used by Andrew Bolt, in sweatshops, then this is what it will do.

imajulianutter

At uni I was forced to read a lot of theory in regard to 'international political economy', which I hated. I was much more interested in empirical observation about the modern world.

But, I am glad I did. Not only does it teach you specific skills in terms of understanding and/or breaking down arguments, but opened my mind to the efforts why many people criticised and looked to their own version of the progressive society.

I was also read thinkers on the so-called right, even read mean kampf.

As students, I feel it is important to read a variety of writers across the political spectrum. I have never read anyone with full-proof analysis in this complex and competitive world, but the variety is good to get one thinking.

As for Bolt, no doubt he is good at provoking argument and been sceptical about topical matters, but I have little reason to read him.

SpinDoc - you ask: "Why teach Marxism?";

a) because it is of historical importance;

b) the tradition as a whole involves insights and arguments that are worth engaging with in developing our perspectives;

c) A strong democracy is a PLURALIST democracy - where citizens are provided with the information they need to make informed choices. This includes exposure to socialism, liberalism, conservatism - the whole gamut.

And consider these quotes by Rosa Luxemburg when arguing that Marxism is 'essentially' 'totalitarian' or 'the same as fascism':

"Freedom is always, and exclusively, freedom for the one who thinks differently”

and: “Without general elections, without unrestricted freedom of press and assembly, without a free struggle of opinion, life dies out in every public institution, becomes a mere semblance of life, in which only the bureaucracy remains as the active element.”

That's Luxemburg criticising Bolshevist strategies in Russia.

Third: note that many of the Fascist and other authoritarian regimes in Europe during the 1920s-1940s period had the support of clerical/right-wing elements. Consider Franco and Dolfuss for instance. These people were not Marxists! (though importantly and notably the Catholic church *officially* opposed extreme corporatism; for example free trade unions...)

Finally: It angers me when people lump me in as an atheist; or worse a fascists!... Again I have been a Christian most of my life and often cop a fair bit of flak for it. The "by their fruits' comment earlier in this thread was quite frankly offensive. My 'fruits' comprise my writing in that I defend the rights of the poor and the elderly, support the extension of democracy, defend liberty. I'm quite glad to be considered on the basis of such 'fruits.'

And No I didn't write to Bolt personally, but I did send a letter in to the Herald-Sun which they did not publish.

I write in the article itself (try reading it) I am not in favour of a heavy handed state. Neither were most of the early Marxists. (eg:see Eduard Bernstein) I also believe 'checks and balances' re: power can be achieved through a democratic mixed economy.