Ed
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Perhaps we should e-mail the current CPGB a link to the photos."communists support labour"would that be the party or labour as in the labour movement?
The last thing I have to say on this is to Alan, I hope you realise just how kind and generous I have been with you, especially regarding your blog posts. But seeing as how you started the debate with underhand tricks and attempts to discredit me personally rather than debate the subject I can only say no, I won't bite.
ALB wrote:Ed wrote:Well of course it's standard for the bourgouisie to rig elections, encourage coup d'etats, assasinate or imprison political opponents. That's not a secret, or a secret state though that's one and the same state apparatus which must be captured. So not really sure what you mean by a secret state or how it would effect an overwhelming socialist majority?I don't think it's true that in countries like Britain and the USA elections are rigged by "the bourgeoisie". I've been to many election counts and can't see how "the bourgeoisie" could do this. To do it, they would have to have a vast secret organisation involving polling clerks, returning officers, some candidates, etc (so vast in fact that it would be impossible to keep it secret). Theories that 9/11 was an inside job or that flying saucers exist but that the government has covered this up also presuppose a secret organisation.Some of our critics argue that there is no point in trying to win control of parliament because "parliament does not control the government and that the apparent government is not the real government". We deal with this argument in the section headed "Conspiracy" in our pamphlet What's Wrong With Using Parliament?:
Quote:But is the government that is chosen by parliament the real government or is this some shadowy committee of capitalists? There is not the slightest evidence for the existence of such a parallel government. The idea that it exists is pure conspiracy theory. If it did exist, it is difficult to see how its existence could be kept secret. The ministers of the government we can all see and know about would mention it in their memoirs. None ever has. There are other problems with this conspiracy theory. How would the members of this supposed secret committee of capitalist puppet-masters be chosen? What mechanisms would they have to settle policy differences between different capitalist groups (since the capitalist class is not a monolith with a single obvious common interest)? There certainly exist capitalist pressure groups, such as the European Round Table of Industrialists, but these endeavour to influence governments, rather than themselves being a kind of power behind the throne. The whole theory is absurd. The fact is that the government is the government we seeThe ironic thing is that the USA, the land of conspiracy theories, probably has one of the most open governments (relatively speaking) in the world.
COINTELPROOperation GladioFor the record I said it was not beneath the bourgouisie to rig elections, not saying that they do in the UK. But they well might if we were an actual threat.
Alan, I find your posts in this thread most uncomradely. First you imply by association that anyone who disagrees with your analysis on the Kennedy assassination is the same as someone who denies the link between HIV and AIDS. Secondly I find your smarmy condescension quite nauseating and therefore have made no attempt to nor will debate you on this matter. Thirdly the fervent vigour with which you have attacked me indicates that you are just as obssesed with the Kennedy assassination as those of the websites you used to frequent. Get a grip comrade and climb down off your high horse.
I seem to have touched a raw nerve here. I too have done extensive research and had many debates on the subject, albeit haven't had one in a while. And I too find that they always, without exception, lead nowhere. I am interested reading the report linked in this post http://mailstrom.blogspot.co.uk/2007/02/kennedy-assassination-again.htmlIt seems it has expired.You have written a lot on his motives. And his motives are speculation either way. It's quite plausible that he was a lone nutter. As with Jack Ruby's motives for shooting Oswald dead. I'd also like to say that I don't offer any alternatives to who killed Kennedy, nor do I really care.The only real points that can be debated is on the weapon, the bullet and the chosen vantage point from which he supposedly shot. The fact is weapons experts have tried to recreate the shot many times over the years with the same rifle and struggled to reload as fast as Oswald supposedly did. When they have achieved it, it is with no accuracy. That is, with even less than the rifle would usually fire with. Coupled with the fact that Oswald's military record shows he couldn't hit the broad side of a barn door. Maybe he improved in the intervening years, it's possible. But not with that rifle and not from that vantage point. Unless it was a freak one in a million shot.
Well of course it's standard for the bourgouisie to rig elections, encourage coup d'etats, assasinate or imprison political opponents. That's not a secret, or a secret state though that's one and the same state apparatus which must be captured. So not really sure what you mean by a secret state or how it would effect an overwhelming socialist majority?
ALB wrote:Ed wrote:Gnome is right we shouldn't dismiss something just because it's dubbed a conspiracy theory. All we can do is analyze the evidence we have and draw our own conclusions from it.On the other hand life is too short to analyse the evidence for and against every conspiracy theory, however silly, unlikely or implausible. If 9/11 was proved to be an inside job then something would change: Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld would go to the electric chair.
Agreed, we have all the conclusive evidence we need to know that we are ruled by murderous bastards. Individuals may be prosecuted but they'll just be replaced with some other equally callous individual.
…….and President Kennedy was shot by a lone gunman, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Gnome is right we shouldn't dismiss something just because it's dubbed a conspiracy theory. All we can do is analyze the evidence we have and draw our own conclusions from it. The main thing is that whether Kennedy was shot by Oswald or the CIA or the mafia or Marilyn Monroe or alien time traveling pirates from Pluto it doesn't really change anything. Same with 9/11 if it was proven an inside job nothing would drastically change, capitalism would still continue.
Quote:Lenin assigned the dominant role in Marxist revolution to the revolutionary party. Leninism has had disastrous results in the modern history of revolution. But what does this say of Marxism itself?Marx and Engels had declared that "The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to other working-class parties" and that "the emancipation of the working class is the task of the working class itself." Just two years after the publication of What Is To Be Done?, Rosa Luxemburg, a revolutionary leader of German Social Democracy, wrote a scathing attack on Lenin's view of the party, later published under the English title, Leninism or Marxism? A number of present-day Marxists see Leninism as a fundamental distortion of Marxism. In their view, Marxism has not failed; it simply has never been tried.My purpose in this chapter is to show that Leninism, or Marxism-Leninism, is not a distortion of Marxism, but follows from the Marxist paradigm of history. Leninism is a consistent development of the internal logic of Marxism, adapting it for practical use. If "there has been no serious and lasting non-Leninist Marxist challenge to Leninism," it is not because there are no elements of Marxism which contradict Leninism; it is because the particular development of Marxism which Leninism represents is necessary to operationalize Marxism as a theory of revolution. The Soviet Union and other Communist societies represent not a betrayal of Marxism but its fulfillment.http://www.newdemocracyworld.org/old/Revolution/WCCTW-Ch8.htm
alanjjohnstone wrote:Colour-coded politics has been around for a while. In Thailand the two rival elites fighting out as red-shirts and yellow-shirts. The Orange Ukraine revolution…(i see that one going down well in parts of Northern Ireland and Scotland but not in others.)Exactly and this really only enforces my point that it's something people do; Assign specific colours to certain movements. And to use a different colour can lead to confusion.
alanjjohnstone wrote:However your examples are, of course, a bit Euro-centric…Green is the colour if Islamists, as is black, i believe, so it will always be a question of location to what colour socialists should choose.Yep true some do cross over, I suppose culture does play a big part in it. Culture is also difficult to manufacture. Switching colours to one that you wouldn't associate with something takes time better to keep it simple and stick with red.
alanjjohnstone wrote:Why should our symbols be restricted to certain patterns? If anarcho-syndicalists/anarcho-communists can go for the diagonals, can we not go for the red polka-dots? Dotty socialists…where have i heard that said before…hmmm….I like it! Polka Dots…..although the 50's retro thing did sort of go out of fashion about 10 years ago.I think in the end though, we must remember that it's the parties case which will win over workers not the colours we choose.Your TovarischEd
Colours have very specific meanings, I'm not sure I'd call them cliched. Red obviously represents the blood of the workers and was universally adopted after the paris commune. Black represents anti-nations, my anarchist buddys tell me it too came from the paris commune. Green the obvious choice for the eco warriors. Yellow is used by libertarians, I guess because it's a bit like gold? The colour of money. It's difficult to even come up with a mix of colours which isn't already associated with something a rainbow for the LGBT, red black and green for pan african nationalism. The list is probably endless, but those are the ones that spring to mind. My point is that whether it's a good thing or a bad thing it's something that everyone does. Using a colour other than red (or red & black) runs the risk of being mistaken for something entirely different.On names the 1st international used citizen, which I guess would make some of you shudder. Did the term have a comeback in the 70's? What with Citizen Smith and all. Comrade is ok. But it's almost a little militaristic seeing as they're the other group outside commies who use it. Brothers and Sisters comes of a little religous. Fellow worker I agree with you is a little weird, it doesn't roll off the tongue, does it. I've no good ideas for an alternative, perhaps we should invent a new word?
I always thought it was one of those sarcastic "in" jokes. Like the bolshevik/menshevik thing. The menshiviks calling themselves the minority while they were still in the majority of the RSDP as a sort of middle finger to the bolsheviks who falsely claimed to be the majority. Unless I've got that mixed up. The term possibilists appears to be much older than impossiblists as Engels speaks very negatively of them on several occasions.Here's one example of Engels writing to Lafargue about what to call the opposition to possibilists.
Quote:My dear Lafargue,We have never called you anything but ‘the so-called Marxists’ and I would not know how else to describe you. Should you have some other, equally succinct name, let us know and we shall duly and gladly apply it to you. But we cannot say ‘aggregate’, which no one here would understand, or anti-Possibilists, which you would find just as objectionable and which would not be accurate, being too all-embracing.http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1889/letters/89_05_11.htmI think the term impossibilists gives out the wrong impression to the uninformed. Better is the term used by the Japanese guy (I forget his name) of Anglo-Marxism. But the problem with that is it gives the impression of a cultural or worse ethnic movement rather than a world-wide one. Probably best just to call ourselves scientific socialists. Labels like possibilist/impossibilist Leninist/Stalinist/Maoist etc, etc, all strongly suggest ideology and dogma. Something which any scientific socialist must reject.
