Satire and counterpropaganda.
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lol, nice one Thomas, a modern take on the Milgram experiment with a twist. I wonder what percentage of pets would push the button if an authority figure told them to? 65%? Goes to show what I’ve always said about the media being more manipulative than people realise.
Actually, in that experiment, when the monkeys were offered a reward if they pressed the REAL electric voltage on other monkeys, they refused. But the humans obeyed when they thought they were giving other humans electric shocks.
I didn’t know it had been tried with monkeys, surely that would omit the authority figure and general understanding of their purpose. Humans need to drop hierarchy, I’d talk to King Charlie his royal heinous in the same way I’d talk to anyone else. If he didn’t like it he could always go back to talking to his plants.
When you say ‘Monkeys were offered peanuts to REALLY electrocute their fellows’ are you talking about capital punishment in the US? lol Sorry couldn’t resist 🙂
The Milgram experiment and it’s results have long been questioned.
Many of the participants have stated that the acting by the supposed “victims” was so comical that many of the students continued to deliver “shocks” because they thought it was worth watching the ham acting!
“Starmer is a second-rate Blair tribute act. Until you overthrow Capitalism then we have to deal with the consequences of the current system. Labour are the lesser of two evils, ”
____________________________Hi Covvie and welcome to the forum.
I will be brief. The problem with the lesser evil argument is that the “lesser evil” always and invariably prepares the ground for the “greater evil” to take its place (I put these terms in inverted commas because the distinction between Labour and the Tories is one that you would struggle to shove a cigarette paper through, it’s so wafer thin).
Capitalist politics is, by its nature, cyclical. It is the system that runs the politicians, not the politicians the system. Consequently, when the politicians fail to live up to their promises, as they inevitably and invariably will (you cannot run the profit system in the interests of wage labour any more than you can run the abattoir in the interests of the cattle), they will be replaced by some other set of politicians with a slightly different spin but no less foredoomed to failure.
It’s like the SPGB has always said “Labour-Tory, same old story”. To encourage the illusion that Labour will be any different is to sow the seeds of a future disillusionment.
Hi and thank you. But I’ve already said red and blue neoliberalism, and that doesn’t change the fact that we used to have a real Labour party that took the poor out of the slums by giving them social housing, gave them legal aid, free healthcare, the welfare state, public transport and national industries. Preaching to the converted buddy, we still have to live with the reality of now! We still have make choices that affect the next generation.
Money – Money is simply a human construct that in practice allows a tiny minority to own and control the vast majority of the world’s ‘actual’ resources (Land, Water, Human Labour).
Capitalism – Burying efficient technologies and creating useless tat with built-in obsolescence in an endless cycle of consumerism and pollution, plunging the human race headfirst into extinction for the sake of profits, in a relentless debasement of sanity and logic.
The Mainstream Media – The mainstream media writes the script for society and we unwittingly play our part. With each psychological cue, every handcrafted narrative, and each carefully chosen word to manifest the illusion. They predict the future and we become the self-fulfilling prophecy.
“The rich aren’t worried about the rest of us, they can wait it out in bunkers. What plan do you have to deal with billionaires their bunkers and private armies?”
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I have this image of the billionaires (or, to be more precise, ex-billionaires) emerging from their bunkers blinking in the dim light of a nuclear winter and wondering where the bloody hell Jeeves has got to when he is needed to chauffeur them back to their stately home (now sadly in ruins). Or Julia and the other kitchen staff to a prepare sumptuous meal (now sadly impossible without a functioning power grid).
Meanwhile, Jeeves and Julia will have joined the rest of us in the massed ranks of the “Walking Dead”. The only difference between us and the billionaires is that our deaths will have been mercifully short and swift; theirs will be prolonged and agonizing with the comfort of a servant class to wipe their bottoms becoming an increasingly distant and dim memory.
So, nope, I cannot imagine the billionaires wanting to bump us off any time soon; they need us far more than we ever needed them
lol, but climate change is real, so is automation, and so are shock collars and private armies. They’ll have plenty of ‘us’ in the bunkers with them doing the ‘Jeeves’ impression. The only thing that will change is the scale. Billionaires reading books like Boris’s dad wrote about eugenics and stating again and again that we are overpopulated. Do you really trust megalomaniac psychopaths to provide you with a future? We aren’t so much overpopulated as suffering from a resource allocation problem due to an immoral system of government and logistics. We are heading for a culling of the human cash cow herd through nuclear Armageddon, climate change or dystopian corporatocracy. Maybe a mixture of all three just for the fun of it. Fallout 4 is not much fun in the real world.
Anyways the main point is that we are at a crossroads, too many people are happily binge-watching TV in apathy and don’t even care. As much as I want Capitalism to go the way of the dodo can you really see that happening? can you really imagine that without opposition from people who use genetic warfare, phosphorous bombs, and ballistic missiles and have access to safe bunkers where they start again as omnipotent deities?
I’m just saying that the only thing we can be sure of is that power is never given, only taken. Unfortunately, the vast majority of people live in apathy and have already given up. The rest of us an extreme minority, are facing the most technologically advanced sociopaths in history.
“we used to have a real Labour party that took the poor out of the slums by giving them social housing, gave them legal aid, free healthcare, the welfare state, public transport and national industries.”
_____________________________One could argue, Covvie, that these things would have come about anyway, given the contingent conditions of capitalism in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War – irrespective of which political party came to power. There was a considerable degree of economic consensus between the capitalist political parties with respect to Keynesian economic policies. There was also considerable support among the Tories for things like the welfare state and the NHS.
Samuel Courtauld, a Tory industrialist, enthusiastically endorsed the Beveridge Report during the war on the grounds that nationalised health care would be more efficient than the old ramshackle system of private health care in the prewar years. Similarly Quentin Hogg, later Lord Hailsham, argued along the lines that if “we don’t give the workers reforms they will go for revolution” (or words to that effect). The welfare state is not necessarily the province of the capitalist Left; think of Bismarck in late 19th century Germany. The state capitalist policies introduced by his right-wing regime to improve workers’ health (and by extension industrial productivity) drew increasing interest from the British capitalist class at the time who wanted to adopt much the same measures and were concerned that Britain was falling behind Germany in the industrial league table.
Of course, since the contingent conditions of capitalism changed in the post-war era, notably, since the rise of so-called neoliberalism in the 1970s, the policies of political parties – Labour and Tory – seeking to administer capitalism have correspondingly changed. This is why appealing to some distant memory of “Old Labour” when it was in power is quite misleading.
Firstly because the circumstances were quite different and arguably needed the reforms Labour introduced to facilitate the smoother and more efficient exploitation of workers at the time and secondly because these reforms would almost certainly have been introduced as well had their Tory opponents been in power instead – albeit in a slightly different form
You could argue that. But it’s mostly misdirection using exceptions to the rule to disprove the rule. And capitalists improving the lifespan of their workforce for their own benefit vs a communal system of welfare provided by the people for the people. Tories voted down the NHS 21 times, Bevan fought tooth and nail for it.
The re-emergence of neoliberalism was Thatcher and Reagan’s baby. Thatcher then went for a Pinochet-inspired attack on the working class through culling production and legislation to deny workers’ rights and their power of representation. Blair is well known as Thatcher’s greatest legacy and not just because he used Thatcherite policies. The Overton window started shifting to the right at that point and now people like Bevan, Keir Hardie and Attlee would be considered extreme left, whatever the flock that means.
Yes, Beveridge and other liberals contributed to the ideas and arguments for the change in direction. Some capitalists did so too out of self-interest. But, it matters not. Labour used socialist policies via Social Democracy and the Marshall plan money to create a better society for us and fought every step of the way to make it happen. Sorry but I’m being sealioned by right-whingers on YT and so am trying to be concise.
My own union, the postal workers, was the only trade union to officially endorse GD Cole’s guild socialism, a form of co-operative worker-controlled economy, as being already state-owned and state-controlled they recognised the folly of nationalisation with government departments in charge that the miners and rail workers were all cock-a-hoop about establishing.
Old Labour as a genuine workers’ party with many sincere socialists within it is a prevailing view that exists today and there are some who romanticised it and wish for its return.
Corbyn was perhaps an example some would suggest. But just as the Democratic Party machine sabotaged Bernie Sanders, it was the Labour Party officials that foiled Corbyn albeit with the eager assistance of the media. From the acclaim at the Glastonbury Festival to a backbench pariah outsider. Such a dramatic fall.
But just as Sanders refuses to support a third party and sticks to the Party that betrayed him, Corbyn, too, holds to the forlorn hope of the return of Old Labour despite Starmer-ites have seen that only his loyalists are selected as candidates.
I think the SPGB failed to connect and communicate with the emotion and spirit of working-class awareness, no matter how vague and undefined it manifests itself.
At one time, our masters tried to declare the working class extinct, an outdated concept, we were as they always say in the USA – all middle class. now. Perhaps even class-free.
Now the reality is showing itself, with even the professional workers such as the lawyers forced to strike, obliged to acknowledge their economic status as waged-workers.
The big question is how do we spark the recognition within our fellow workers that real socialism is feasible option for us to choose and strive towards.
Earlier excuses for failure are now gone with the demise of Soviet Union “communism”, the austerity cuts in the Scandinavian-style welfare state, the short-comings of nationalisation. Privatisation is no longer seen as the answer even by many business-orientated commentators. Keynesian and Hayek economists are exposed as charlatans.
And you know what, even with all that, we remain pitifully small and without a voice or presence in the workers’ movements.
The stronger siren calls of the faux socialists are returning – let’s go back to Old Labour and re-nationalise, let’s privatise again but call it a different label, let’s repeat the mistakes of the past.
Sorry for my pessimism, but as Marx said first-time tragedy, second-time farce
I agree with some of what you say regarding Corbyn and Sanders and how they were betrayed. But All profit under Nationalised industry is used to reduce costs to the public and to reinvest to improve services. It is a nation being self-sufficient and not being at the mercy of a profit-driven hostile market.
Profits from Privatisation go to shareholders and predominantly find their way out of our economy to offshore accounts for tax purposes. Failures in nationalisation in the UK were due to the Tories usual run down, underfund, create complex expensive management and admin. A routine they reuse in order to offer our taxpayer-funded industry to private finance for asset-stripping. Then when it all goes wrong we’re expected to bail them out again and again. While the rich bet against failing industries on hedge funds.
Privatisation is the polar opposite of nationalisation.
As for Socialism, it’s always subject to embargoes, sanctions, regime change from US assets etc. For example Libya was a socialist-style country they used ‘The Green System’. Gaddafi was essentially just a figurehead because he’d fought US imperialism all his life and was respected. Libya had no IMF debt, no international debt. Libya had $150 billion in reserves, 143 tons of gold and a similar amount of silver. Libya also created the world’s largest irrigation project. Having a house was a human right, each Libyan had a share in the country’s 50 billion barrels of oil and petrol was $0.14 per litre. Then Libya decided to create an African currency ‘The Dinar’ to challenge the petrodollar for oil sales in Africa and the Middle East. Many countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria all dropped the petrodollar for oil sales. America’s reaction wasn’t to legitimately compete in a capitalist system, they chose to invade to enforce regime change and to loot Libya’s gold, precious metals and oil. US Capitalism brought human trafficking and slavery to Libya and caused the death and migration of millions.
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