Hi onthebeach

I formed part of a tag team with an American journalist who actually managed to "convert" a really smart chick from an Australian university, who had two degrees (one on Law) , and who had handed out "The Green Left Weekly". So it can be done. She admitted that she was having doubts, and she came on the debate site to test her own opinions. Her legal training helped her be totally objective, and she was swayed only by reasoned logic. She said that the yank and myself had "thoroughly outpointed" the opposition.

The young lady admitted that she had been completely immersed in the leftist ideology because it was simply the thing to do at university. She had never really thought about it, she just accepted that "smart" people espoused leftism and she needed to fit in with her peer group.

Susie is probably the same. Catholics make the best leftists because they have been brought up in an absolutist culture which preached heaven after death, and they simply exchange it for another absolutist culture that preaches heaven on Earth.

Leftist ideology is full of contradictions and double standards. The trick is, to keep forcing the "Susie's" to face those contradictions and double standards. The most obvious, is that the lefties all champion equality, while thinking that they are superior human beings themselves.

Susie ran out of steam when I mentioned that people are not equal in intelligence, and that dumb people inhabit the lowest class. As a smart chick, she already knows that. And as a nurse, she must have had practical experience in nursing people from the lowest class who have injured themselves because of complete stupidity.

Most people do not injure themselves or become sick because they are "discriminated against" or because of "racism". They do it because they are stupid. And stupid people most commonly live in the lowest class. Smart people don't eat crap. Smart people eat good, nutritious food. Smart people exercise. Smart people are not the main customers in Emergency Units in hospitals.

I also had an encounter with a Green Left Weekly salesman. He told me that if he had the power he would limit publications to those which were against capitalism so the people would not be misled. I pointed out that we live in a capitalist society which allows the publication of the Green Left Weekly. The capitalist society we live in is also a free society which allows different points of view in the assumption that people can make their own choice. Capitalist societies can be democratic or undemocratic. Socialist societies can be democratic or undemocratic. Capitalism and socialism are economic systems. Democracy and dictatorship are political systems. Nevertheless, he was for the dictatorship of the proletariat and a thorough totalitarian who would deny other people the freedom he was enjoying. I believe I made absolutely no impression.

Hi David,

Thanks for your valuable insights. I have to admit to thinking when I was a kid, in a communist family (or maybe I'm 'remembering' from much later), and after the 1951 referendum which allowed the Communist Party to remain legal, that, after all, we WERE plotting and planning to overthrow the entire system, so perhaps it was understandable if any sensible government would seek to keep such forces in check.

As for the proletariat, somewhere I read that the actual number of workers in manufacturing peaked in about 1966 and has been in decline ever since. These days, barely 10% of workers - in all areas: agriculture, manufacturing and services - are in unions, whose total membership is overwhelmingly professional. The proletariat is far smaller, more highly skilled, better paid, than fifty years ago. And in fact is more likely to be looked down on by the Left these days as 'bogans', too materialist for their own good, betraying their true destiny.

But even back then, about the time I started working in factories, the 'proletariat' was substantially non-Anglo - migrants who had come to Australia to make better lives for themselves away from war-zones, and who were totally prepared to work like buggery to contribute to Australia's economy. In some factories, I was often the only locally-born Anglo apart from the 'bosses'.

But the Left was oblivious to this: I associated with a mob called the Worker-Student Alliance for a few weeks in about 1972 and had a few arguments with them about the multi-ethnic nature of the 'proletariat', which they hotly denied. Of course, they would have had no means whatever to reach such workers. They were probably at least twenty or thirty years behind the times, perhaps fifty years or more, even back then.

And, in one place, about 1973, when the men did a sort of dirty deal with management against the women, that was it for me.

So the likelihood of a 'dictatorship of the proletariat' in Australia is pretty low, and shrinking fast.

[TBC]

[continued]

Of course, there is one idiot strategy that I suspect some are still attached to: given, as they think, the continued immiseration of the working class, and therefore its inevitable overthrow of the capitalist system, if that can be hastened by making the condition of the working class actually WORSE, by inciting the evil capitalist state to be MORE repressive, then that will eventually enrage the working class to rise up and overthrow the system, and bring about a communist system.

Seriously.

No, seriously.

I think that was the dumb-dumb strategy which the CPA was employing before and during the War - that a victory for fascism would be temporary (see above: repression etc.) and after that short period of fascist victory, the workers would rise up etc. etc. Hence don't worry about a 'temporary' fascist victory. Hence the sabotage throughout the War by CPA-controlled unions: strikes, go-slows, outright sabotage. I was partly named after one such union boss, Jim Healy.

But hope springs eternal: the dumb-dumb 'urban guerillas' in South America - Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Peru - from the sixties onwards tried the same strategy: force the system to get more repressive, and the inevitable overthrow of capitalism would follow. Workers' paradises would rule.

So how did that go ?

Playing with other people's lives, hoping to sacrifice the lives of perhaps thousands of workers for the victory of a party clique - this approach has been an evil assumption ever since Marx's hopes for the Paris Commune in 1871. And, come to think of it, how did that go, apart from the slaughter of workers against the walls of Pere-Lachaise ? Nearly 150 years ago.

Religious thinking is a strange beast - it depends on which god one believes in. And Utopian blueprints can so easily generate into that way of thinking, godless religions maybe, but still religions for all that, based typically on unchanging - and unchangeable - dicta. In that way, they all become reactionary and repressive, and utterly out of touch with reality.

Thanks again, David. Merry Christmas.

Joe

LEGO,

Generalisations are always wrong. And your defence in your last post to me, that stereotyping is just what everyone does, is the Appeal to Common Practice fallacy (http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-common-practice.html).

This is the problem with your arguments, they sound as if they are well reasoned to the naive, yet are based purely on fallacious reasoning.

<<Catholics make the best leftists because they have been brought up in an absolutist culture which preached heaven after death...>>

How is this any different to Protestantism?

<<...and they simply exchange it for another absolutist culture that preaches heaven on Earth.>>

Communism might. There you go generalising again.

<<Leftist ideology is full of contradictions and double standards.>>

So is Rightist ideology. This is why there are many out there who cannot be clearly labelled as Left or Right. They are aware, to some degree or another, of the inherent contradictions in ideologies.

<<The most obvious, is that the lefties all champion equality, while thinking that they are superior human beings themselves.>>

Really? All of them? How do you know this?

<<Susie ran out of steam when I mentioned that people are not equal in intelligence, and that dumb people inhabit the lowest class.>>

Or perhaps she saw the futility of arguing with you? I, for example, have already explained to you the complexities surrounding the relationship between socioeconomic status and intelligence numerous times, and yet here you are making the same simplistic assumption.

Now you’re making more simplistic assumptions about low socioeconomic status and health care, assuming that it’s all about intelligence without factoring in access to preventative care due to distance, language or cultural barriers; the cost of healthier lifestyles; lower education levels; biological factors; psychological factors, etc. (http://www3.nd.edu/~wevans1/class_papers/Adler_1994_Health.pdf).

Then you play the victim card by assuming that all the blame is directed towards the demonisation of white people, despite myself having corrected you on that numerous times too. It’s mostly the educated upper-middle class that aren’t vaccinating their children anymore. Are they dumb too?

Your entire worldview is a network of over-simplifications and generalisations, making it so easy take down.

Hahaha AJ!

You said that "all generalisations are wrong". THAT IS A GENERALISATION, you fool. You made a generalisation about generalisations. And your generalisation must be wrong, because you claim that all generalisations are wrong. Thank you for putting your foot right in it and proving that I was right. People think by making generalizations or stereotypes about everything. They may be generalisations that may be right, or they may be wrong. But you have to generalise to form concepts in your mind. To say that people should not stereotype or make generalisations "because they might be wrong", is exactly like saying that people should not think "because they might be wrong."

Then what did you do? You made a generalisation about my arguments, saying that all of my arguments are based on "fallacious reasoning." All you are did, was prove that my premise was correct again. My arguments are therefore not based upon "fallacious reasoning" because you have twice proven that I was correct. Your generalisation was incorrect again.

And what do you mean by "rightist ideology?" Please tell me what that "rightist ideology" is without making generalisations.

What makes anyone "right wing" is simply nationalism. That is why people like yourself consider a socialist like Hitler as "right wing." He may have proclaimed himself a socialist, and bragged about saving Europe from "Jewish-Bolshevik socialism" with "real socialism." But because he was a nationalist, you think he was "right wing." Nationalism is simply loyalty to ones own country and people (what went wrong with you?) Since when was loyalty an ideology?

Anytime you want to debate me on race, social dysfunction, and intelligence, go right ahead. But I demand that you submit arguments justifying your position, instead of simply attacking everything I say and using links instead of arguments. And you can bet that I will come down on you like a ton of bricks every time you make generalisations or stereotype. Have fun thinking up an argument without doing that.

Hahaha.