Foxy.

"In Australia Safe Schools are a target [of the focus on Marxism]".

Given that Safe Schools was founded by an unreconstructed Marxist, and incorporates much of the current Marxist thinking about how to change society to be more accepting of that ideology, this might be seen as a red (grin) flag to some and explain why the Marxist agenda isn't welcomed. Others however, pre-disposed to averting their gaze from any red flags, (nothing to see here, move along) might want to pretend that its all about fairy dust and lollipops.

Loudmouth,

"So how on earth can there be food shortages, particularly if land was supposed to be re-distributed to the poorest ? "

Land redistribution almost always ends up in food shortages. The only way it works is if the land is being taken off people who aren't involved in working it and given to those who work but don't own it. Its worked for that reason in China a few times and in Ancient Rome.

But generally the productive landed classes are the targets for redistribution and are forced off the land. Then output falls. Then the government steps in to save the day, because in the minds of certain types government is always the solution. Once that happens its all over, red rover.

Russia went from being a massive food exporter to a massive food importer once the kulaks were redistributed off the land. Zimbabwee. North Korea. South Africa's next cab off the rank.

"Communist parties are inevitably patron-client systems. Schemers quickly learn the value of joining,.."

It is truly said that in capitalist countries the rich become powerful while in communist countries the powerful become rich. Chavez family is now among the richest in central America. Castro also. There's a funny story (probably apocryphal) about Brezhnev's mother fretting, when he showed her around his new house, new dacha, new car etc, that he could lose it all if the communists ever got back in power.

Communism inevitably fails. As Orwell said "there are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them." And so it remains in favour among many intellectuals in universities, unions, international organisations etc. These people surely aren't so disconnected to reality as to not know that it fails. But I think that they are so awe-struck by their own super-intelligence that they think that they'll do it better than Lenin, Trotsky, Chavez and Mao when their time comes. They forget what happened to intellectuals in Kampuchea and that they're more like to end up on the wrong end of a gun should their dearest desires eventuate.

Loudmouth,
Venezuela's socialists have certainly created a cronyism problem, but AIUI that's mainly in the oil industry. I think that country's problems with agriculture stem from the government's attempts to regulate prices, making it unprofitable.

Hayek's Triangle is an extremely bad way to look at politics, as it's steeped in an ideology that can't tell the difference between freedom and the tyranny of the rich. A better way would be the Political Compass: a square with a vertical axis going from libertarian to authoritarian, and a horizontal axis going from (economic) left to right.

Expanding it into three dimensions, with a social axis from conservative to liberal, would theoretically be better, though much harder to implement well. I have seen political viewpoint tests with more than 3 dimensions, but I don't think any yet match the clarity and usefulness of the Political Compass.

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ttbn,
Of course we can pick and choose! The political class is not an exclusive club – it's available to everyone. We're a democracy; we're not slaves to what the elites want. Though hypothetically, if the elites had the power you think they do, you've missed the important point that they'd still be able to pick and choose rather than accepting or rejecting a political or economic philosophy in its entirety.

I'm impressed by the comments in this discussion.

Great going guys!

Hi Aidan,

Yes, your Political Compass model is probably superior to Hayek's: a particular ideology can be placed anywhere in those four quadrants, with democracy ideally here the two dimensions cross. Thanks.

Mhaze,

Probably what we're witnessing is sort of post-Marxism, Gramscianism and its 'march through the institutions' of bourgeois society, i.e. democratic rights, the accumulating values of the Enlightenment. Even Gramsci (with his leanings towards anarchism) realised that the workers were as likely to support Mussolini's fascism as anything else, and that as far as a communist revolution was concerned, the jig was up: it was a dead loss.

Therefore, how to bring society - capitalist society - down any way they could. Therefore, attack the institutions of capitalist society, even all the values of the Enlightenment, and bring society down to nothing, and somehow start again from scratch. No matter how much damage and loss of life it might take.

There is some of that revert-to-ancient-communal-society Utopianism in Marx's writings, even a sense that medieval peasant life was superior to the workers' lives under capitalism, everybody was so happy and content (after the ShaKer and Digger movements of the seventeenth century). That might explain the idiot belief that 'all cultures are equal', whatever that may mean, and the reluctance to criticise or even analyse other systems, such as hunter-gatherer or Islamist cultures - but of course, that dogmatic idiocy isn't applied to capitalism - capitalism is, after all, pure evil, not like any other 'culture'.

Yes, democracy is a constant battle against such stupidities. Our grand-kids and great-grand-kids, etc., will probably be spouting them at uni all over again, as if they are their own original discoveries.

Joe

Foxy,

99.5% of people identify as the gender they were born with, while 3-4% of those are not heterosexual, so the whole concept of gender fluidity is complete bollocks except for a miniscule number of people.

My problem with safe schools is that its teachings have as much scientific background as the teachings of creationism, and any enforced "teaching" without a rational basis is pure ideological indoctrination.

Making schools safer has more to do with teaching tolerance than gender fluidity. Imagine if teaching racial fluidity was espoused?