General Election
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If an ordinary American said that, ALB, then it shows that they knew all along what socialism really meant but have now lost that understanding if they mistake Sanders’ policies as being socialism…that makes me feel even more depressed that we’re regressing and not progressing and my fellow workers are all suffering from a collective amnesia when it comes to politics and what socialism actually means.
But we cannot escape the smears and the slurs which will come if we ever grow into a substantial movement. How often online have i had to refute the assertion that Nazism – national socialism is socialism, not as frequently as having to deny Bolshevism is socialism but often enough. As I said before, we are in good company if we seek to avoid the name socialist…Marx and Engels opted for the title Communist Manifesto, not the Socialist Manifesto.
What about the Wage-Slave Abolitionist Party?…Wouldn’t that focus on the essence of the debate?
I disagree.We can use all of the alternatives but must stress we mean socialism/communism, or stand accused of deliberate obfuscation and lumped in with the power seeking left.
That anecdote dates from before Sanders was well known and presumably reflects the fact that people do associate the end of private ownership of the means of production and production for use not profit with socialism , even if they don’t agree with it or that it’s possible ( and if they confuse the Government ownership with the end of private ownership).
Trouble with long threads, some things said are forgotten or overlooked, Matt and Adam.
From an earlier message, Page 4 Post 192112
Also we must question whether in the end it really matters because we will always be accused of being socialists and communists and Marxists. We would be accused of deceit and subterfuge rather than political honesty
As the Manifesto says – “The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims.”So as you can see, I fully accept both your points.
Another anecdote. Steve Coleman went to Blackpool to speak at a fringe meeting at the Labour Party Conference organised by the party on the subject of “Abolish the Wages System”. On the train on the way back to London a delegate came up to him and said “I agree with you that we should abolish the Wages Councils” (that fixed the minimum wages eg of agricultural workers).
ps. They now have been.
ALB wrote:
A breakaway from the Socialist Labour Party of
America decided to call itself the Economic
Democracy League but, when they explained what
they stood for, people said “ah, you mean
socialism.”Then that’s good. We’re not hiding the word, just not using it initially. If people reply thus, then it shows they know the real meaning of socialism, so, so much the better!
The expression socialism existed before Marx and Engels and it came thru Robert Owen
Socialism is socialism and we can not change anything to accommodate the wrong conceptions of others peoples
We must continue using it because socialism is our goal
The problem is not the expression, is the lack of knowing of what is the real meaning
Some historian are saying that socialism came from the early Christians and Engels considered that it was a working class movement
The Sun and Murdoch media empire often gets the credit for fixing the outcomes of elections and the fate of prime minister. Our esteemed BBC is regarded as a paragon of virtue. Not so.
Some Leninists have said that the wage system in the Soviet Union was different from the wage system in the capitalist countries like Lenin said that state capitalism was beneficial for the majority of the Russian workers, and we know that capitalism in any form is capitalism and it is an exploitative economic system. How many peoples turned that lie into a true statement?
Wage is slavery and poverty in any place on earth, and socialism is the elimination of the wage system, it is like the law of value which is only applicable to the capitalist mode of production, how many so-called leftist know that? It was indicated by Marx on Capital, are we going to reject Marx completely to accommodate other peoples wrong conceptions? I don’t think so, It is like the Ostrich hiding the head in the sand
The confused ones are not only the ordinary workers, the so-called communists are the confused ones too, and they are also spreading wrong conceptions like the capitalists and their news system and education system, therefore, we must continue calling ourselves socialists/communists, the SPGB in 100 years has never spread any wrong socialist conceptions. Like Dave said in another message: Being Socialists is more than enough for me
By the way, ostriches never bury their heads in the sand. That is a myth.
I am not looking for the pubic hair in the soup. It is only an old saying to indicate a particular situation
In regards to this discussion on language and words, the WSPUS has just added this article by Cde. Shenfield to their Home Page
https://www.wspus.org/2019/12/a-history-of-meanings/
“…A recurrent topic of discussion among genuine socialists/communists is whether it is worth the effort to fight for the ‘true’ (original) meanings of words that are so widely misunderstood. Or should we invent new words to describe ourselves and the society for which we strive?
Ultimately, meanings are a matter of power and influence. Only by acquiring sufficient influence over people’s minds can we introduce new words into mainstream discourse. But with sufficient influence over people’s minds we can also restore old meanings to words that have gone astray…”I am also reminded of how the Right in the USA managed to usurp the word “libertarian.” Murray Rothbard has publicly admitted to their stealing of that word:
“One gratifying aspect of our rise to some prominence is that, for the first time in my memory, we, ‘our side,’ had captured a crucial word from the enemy . . . ‘Libertarians’ . . . had long been simply a polite word for left-wing anarchists, that is for anti-private property anarchists, either of the communist or syndicalist variety. But now we had taken it over . . .” (The Betrayal of the American Right)The media and the general election.
The study found that negative newspaper coverage increased towards every opposition party in the week before the election, while negative coverage about the Conservatives halved.
For Labour, levels of negative newspaper coverage were more than double those seen during the 2017 general election campaign.
Researchers at Loughborough University analysed stories in 11 leading UK newspapers – including The Sun, The Times, The Telegraph, The Guardian, The Daily Mail and The Mirror. Labour accumulated very high levels of negative coverage during every week of the campaign.
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/press-hostility-labour-party-election-campaign-2017-112117621.html
In the House of Commons yesterday Johnson promised a “Golden Age”. That easily trumps Labour’s End of Austerity and Free Broadband for Everybody. But imagine the stick Corbyn would have got if he’d promised that.
A Golden Age is a longish period of peace, prosperity and great achievements. Given the state of the world economy Johnson is being bold, especially as the UK is about to make access more difficult to one of its best markets. In any event of course governments can’t control how the capitalist economy works. His wild promise assumes that his government can engineer continuous economic growth as the basis for his Golden Age. But it can’t. He will fail as miserably as all Labour governments have in the past and as a Corbyn government would have done too.
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