Hi loudmouth,

While Karl Max is considered to be one of the greatest political and economic philosophers of all time, he never owned a company, he never ran a company, he never had a day job, and he was financially supported by Friedrich Engles for much of his life (and Friedrich Engles was the son of a wealthy capitalist).

Karl Max never did much except write manifestos and pamphlets and give speeches, and he was similar to many of our professional politicians in Parliament today.

Perhaps the most workable political system is a mixture of socialism and capitalism.

Australia did have such a system when many things were publicly owned, but the left-wing Labor party has been one of the worst political parties for privatization, and the Labor party privatized a number of Australian institutions including Qantas and the Commonwealth Bank.

And now they want to privatize the NBN (or perhaps the Labor party will not exist before the NBN is complete).

China would be part socialist, part capitalist and part authoritarian, and if they were to remove the authoritarian part they might be more successful.

Many European countries seem to be part socialist and part capitalist, and interestingly some of the former states of the USSR (such as Estonia) now seem to be doing quite well.

america is a total basket case and beyond help.

I doubt whether most Muslim countries will be successful if they don't have any oil.

Hi ttbn,

Our posts crossed :)

There was a time when the Left professed support for homosexuals and for women. Then, as you suggest, it discovered Islam, so now:

"Some people note and wonder why the Left never chastises Islam for its attitude to homosexuals and womens' rights, while they are always slamming the West for slights, real or imagined, against homosexuals and women. ..... The Left does everything based on an agenda of hatred and power for control of society. What do a few homosexuals and 'rights' matter when it comes to power. "

If the 'Left' had any principles, it would make up its tiny mind to support either homosexuals OR Islam, but it can't do both - and it would support women's rights OR Islam, but again it can't do both. But being unprincipled, it picks and chooses when and to whom it wants to suck up.

One way to do this is never to mention, say, throwing gays from tall buildings when sucking up to the homosexual lobby. It never mentions child marriage, inferior women's rights in Shari'a law, honor killings, stoning for adultery, when it sucks up to feminists, such as there are still any.

When I was a kid and my family was vaguely involved with the Communist Party, there was a sort of smugness about, not just the rightness and superiority of communism, but its inevitable success, regardless of the obvious, even to me, that there weren't all that many of 'us'.

Later, dimly but more strongly as time passed, I sensed a strange arrogance in relation to other groups, the workers, ethnic groups, etc., that 'we' would let them fight and die and win the struggle, basically for 'us', and then 'we' would simply take over and impose the Socialist Utopian Blueprint on society as a whole.

It struck me as

[TBC]

[continued]

It struck me as fatuous nonsense, especially after I went to work in factories in the mid-sixties and experienced the working class (vastly more multi-ethnic than any communists ever seemed to realise) and its aspirations to get on, get their kids on their feet, and strive for a comfortable life. Clearly, nobody was ever going to tell them what to do and surrender their lives for some minute bunch of ratbag dreamers. But it pissed me off until I came to realise that those aspirations were quite legitimate, that they weren't going to throw themselves on the battlements for their intellectual superiors - and why should they ?

Incredibly, some of that dreamer 'Left' is still around, or their children and grandchildren are, still with the same old arrogance. They seem to alternate between a sort of empty optimism, and a vicious nihilism. But even Marx would probably sniff and consign them to the Dustbin of History.

We know now (many knew it a long time ago, but hope springs eternal) that all Utopias degenerate very quickly into fascism: Pol Pot's Cambodia is the archetype for that in our times. ISIS' caliphate is another - after all, Utopias don't have to spring from only Left roots, there is nothing particularly Left about the notion of Utopia (cf. Plato's Republic) - and the Nazis' Reich was planned as a fascist Utopia from the outset.

Hopefully, some of the 'Left' will re-assess their aims and perhaps re-form into a genuinely progressive movement. But that's the rusted-on Marxist remnant in me, still day-dreaming :)

Cheers,

Joe

Simple:

For the rich brats of the Left the enemies of their imagined enemies are their friends.

The rich Leftist brats define their "independence and moral purity" by opposing Mummy and Daddy and Mummy-Daddy's values. The West is Mummy and Daddy in Leftist brats brains.

One of Mummy-Daddy's values is to object to women-hating, "revolutionary" Muslims.

Therefore rich Leftist brats feel allied with women-hating Muslims.

Joe,

You learned from history, and you are wise man, unlike the current drones who sneer at history and treat anyone who has been there and done that as silly old farts. Very wrong, but unstoppable, I think. People seem to learn only the hard way, unfortunately.

William from my perspective that pattern of disconnect from principle seems to be core to much of "Progressive" opinion.

On almost any topic you will find progressives generally being very selective about how those important principles are applied. Not suggesting that parts of the right are any better especially the "moral majority" types.

Talk abortion and child support with progressive and you will generally find that the males rights to choice stopped at the sex act but the womans rights are all important at all and every stage.

People who screamed blue murder about criticisms of Julia Gillard's looks, attire etc relished attacks on Amanda Vanstone's figure and Tony Abbots budgie smugglers (or Clive Palmers girth).

Progressives opposed to any attacks on burkini's joined in those earlier attacks on budgie smugglers.

Talk about police shootings in the USA and progressives won't engage with the higher proportion of white males shot by police compared to black males relative to involvement in violent crime (and if that's not a factor then the gender divide is massive).

The list could go on and on but I think there is enough there to make the point. My impression is that progressives are some of the most bigoted people I've come across, just pretending at a concern for facts and justice. Some are really nice people but in the main there is little willingness to see the "issues" from anything other than a very blinkered view based on some core assumptions.

R0bert