Passy, the many failed attempts that you list to introduce your
brand of socialism and all those failures, it seems to me that the
workers biggest enenemy is not Capitalism, but those many Govt/Political officials, who have shafted your workers, for their
own self interest. Clearly you are dreaming about human nature,
if you don't realise that self interest matters, as Keating wisely
noted.

So you might be pushing up daisies for a long time, before your
dream would ever happen. Govt officials will milk those workers
for every cent, as your list shows.

So see the bright side! You live in a country where workers can
make serious money, if they choose to. Look at the mining industry.
You live in a society that hands out over 90 billion$ in social
welfare benefits. 40% of the population get more hand outs then
they ever pay in tax. You live in a country where people have
the choise to aspire to anything, but are mollycoddled if they
decide to sit on their arses.

You live in a country where workers now virtually own nearly
every major Australian corporation, through their super funds.

Clearly workers have never had it so good, thank your lucky stars!

What interests me is what drives your thinking? Is it just envy?
The fact that some guy has more then you? Why should that matter,
if you are doing ok?

Passy, no matter how much food we send the third world, they have
even more babies due to better health, so it solves nothing. Even
old Bob Geldorf had to think a bit, when after twenty years, all
he has was double the number of Ethiopians and he'd solved nothing.

You have to identify the cause of the problem and deal with it.
Putting some plasters on it, is not going to solve it, which is what
you are suggesting.

Passy “Marx wrote about the self-emancipation of the working class.”

What Marx wrote about never happened, it is all theory and no substance. Marx lived and died in London because he thought his ideas would most likely flourish in UK. He was wrong about that and wrong in just about every other thing he wrote about.

So what you are telling us is all the “communist” outcomes were nothing to do with the working class, in whose names the revolutions were initiated.

So who is to ensure your “working class” aspirations is not going to end up the same way?

“Just because a group calls itself socialist doesn't make it so.”

From which I could observe that

you call yourself “socialist”

but that does not make it so

I am a libertarian capitalist. I have no hidden agenda, no entryist revolutiobnary pretending to be a libertarian capitalist.

One of the best things about libertarian capitalism, is devolves power and authority.

The worst thing about socialism is it centralizes power and authority and from the centralization of power and authority come the communists and other vermin, to exploit the system which socialism built

Remember Lenin said

“the Goal of socialism is communism”

That is what he meant
Lenin (not Stalin) also said

“While the State exists, there can be no freedom. When there is freedom there will be no State.”

I vote for freedom

Bugger the state.

YAbby posts some insightful and considered views, if you don't like what I have said at least listen to his (more moderate) exposition.

Improving rather than propping up the economy

The paradoxes to resolve include
1. the need to continually increase consumption, when the ecological threats require reducing consumption;
2. the major sources of wealth as unearned rises in property values and financial manipulations - neither contributing to the common good;
3. limiting the factors in production to capital and labour, continuing the old false assumption that a third invisible factor, material resources, are infinite and only to be measured by labour costs in using them.
4. The costs of goods do not reflect their 'future cost' on the environment.
5. In a sustainable economy, our re-use and maintenance of products will be as important as buying them. Jobs will need to buy less, but also there will be no place for jobs that produce waste - the economy must be able to pay for the jobs that are really needed, rather than only the ones that can return short-term profits.

Yabby and Col Rouge

Thanks for keeping up the arguments.

Maybe the self-emancipation of the working class has never been tried (although 1917 was an attempt, I think). But events like 1953 in East Berlin, 1968 in Czechoslovakia, 1956, 1970, 1980 in Poland, May 68 in France, Portugal in 1974, Tienanmen Sq in 1989, Eastern Europe in 1989 to 1991 contained the beginning of such a possibility.

The Communist Manifesto is in parts a panegyric to captialism. Marx saw the wealth and productivity capitalism had created as the basis for a better society, as he put it from each according to their ability to each according to their need. (This is in part why the Russian revolution failed, since the material base was in developed Europe and their revolutions, particularly in Germany, failed.)

I don't suffer from envy or tall poppy syndrome. I just think the way society is currently organised leads to sub-optimum outcomes for all of us. I think human liberation depends on community, not some warped notion of the individual divorces from society. Reading Marx and Engels, then Lenin, Luxemburg and Trotsky (for example) opened my eyes to an alternative society based on respect, equity and justice in which all are fed, housed and fit (or able to receive decent medical treatment.) Once that happens people can then participate as citizens of the world in the democratic debates about production, the future and so forth. (As you can see I think Australia and similar countries have a limited democracy. we are denied entry to the realm of production.

Ozideas is correct about externalities and how those who create them don't pay for them. I think we need to be careful about the scarcity argument. For example what prevents us moving holus bolus to solar power - cost and profitability. The profit system is a drain on the further development of society.


Finally, human nature is not immutable. It changes from society to society and system to system. You are viewing everything through the prism of the present profit driven anti-human system.

*as he put it from each according to their ability to each according to their need*

This is the problem Passy. If you introduce a system which limits
people to use their ability, everyone loses, as productivity and
innovation go out the window. If some democratically elected bunch
of workers had decided that Bill Gates had no talent, you would likely
not be typing on your cheap computer. The list is endless.

*we are denied entry to the realm of production.*

Rubbish. Do you have a good idea? Do you have a great business
plan which cosumers would vote for with their wallets? If you do,
then there is plenty of venture capital out there, to help you
bring it to realisation. If you are dreaming, they will tell you too.

*I think human liberation depends on community, not some warped notion of the individual divorces from society.*

Well society is great and we enjoy being part of it. But would I
work as hard for a company as I would for my own business? Absolutaly
not. Not unless it was to my benefit to do so. Study the basics
of evolutionary psychology, if you want to understand humanity for
what it is.

*For example what prevents us moving holus bolus to solar power - cost and profitability.*

So what happens if somebody discovers a system to do the same at
half the input cost? You have wasted all those resources with no
gain. Everybody loses. So standard of living goes down.

*inally, human nature is not immutable. It changes from society to society and system to system.*

Thats what some feminists said when they tried to get little boys
to play with dolls etc. It did not work, some things are instinctive,
ignore them at your peril

I must admit the failure of the Reps to pass the bailout was a surprise. The consequences, if this were a final decision, could be catastrophic in the very short term for world capitalism. (The bailout may only postpone the inevitable and make the next crisis worse in capitalist terms.)

I suspect however that some deal will be concocted which sees the bailout in a similar form passed.

I heard John Symons from Aussie Home loans (or formerly from there?) predict that the crisis meant the RBA would cut interest rates by 50 points (perhaps before their next meeting in October) but that the increasing cost of capital (banks are reluctant to lend to each other so forcing the lending rate up) would see the banks maybe pass on half that to consumers, ie 25 points.

As I said, I think there is a long way to go before this crisis plays itself out.

Is this really such as sensible way to organise society? All these economic crises, wars, mass starvation and incredible alienation among working people?