Capitalism versus Communism.

As usual, EO refers his poor education on the subject with a man-down-the-pub
analysis. "Communists" and "capitalists" are sort of ideological football teams.
He has never really understood the definition of either. I'm not sure why people
sound off like this about **** they don't understand.

Strictly speaking, communism in the Marxist sense which is what is generally
meant by the term, is a prediction. It is inevitable, not a desirable state of
affairs people are trying to bring about. You can be a socialist, sure, but
not a communist in any practical sense of the word.

Did I believe in Marx? No. The basic theory is that wealth concentrates into
fewer and fewer hands. Eventually the workers become a critical mass and revolt,
leading to socialist revolution, which ultimate results in the withering of the
state and the formation of a truly communist state.

It didn't seem like this was happening or going to happen in the 80's. It seemed
like abstract theory at odds with the actuality of the world, where the working
class was actually diminishing and Labour becoming weaker.

Now, I'm not so sure. Pretty much everything that has happened since the
financial crisis falls in line with Marxist theory. It is very difficult to see
what could stop the accelerating divergence between rich and poor, which has been
very dramatic in recent years. The 99% will not tolerate the 1% if they can't
afford basic necessities.

The riots last year were widely blamed on "gangs" and "criminals". Gangs were
subsequently proven not to be heavily involved. And, while the activity was criminal
, the situation wasn't very different from that of the mob in revoltionary France
or Russia. Revolutionaries aren't, by and large, particulary intelligent or respectable
in appearance, or even political. They just want things rich people have.

I suspect the riots were the first minor tremor in a subsequent full-on
revolution.

What will follow any revolution, I'm less certain of.

the financial elite control democrat and republican, labour and conservative, and

'capitalist' and communist.

if a grass roots organisation emerges(like occupy wall street) they will move in, infiltrate it, gain control of it

and either run it into a cul de sac, or steer it in the direction that suits them.

when big money arrives to 'support' an emerging grass roots movement - you know you are under attack.

that is what  happened to the emerging 'green  movement'

any supporter of marxism or eco fascism are actually agents of the financial elite but are too dum to know it

Very good Cheese.

And back in the real world the state takes half of a working man's income every year.  Furthermore it then borrows to pay out all of this plus more in benefits to the underclass.

What level do you think we should go to, to stop this inevitable revolution.  Perhaps we can take 90% of income and borrow enough so that the benefit claimants actually have more disposable income than the workers?  Now there is an idea.

And back in the real world the state takes half of a working man's income every year.  Furthermore it then borrows to pay out all of this plus more in benefits to the underclass.

Yes, and to a large extent that is what has prevented revolution, along with exploiting the cheap labour of the third world.

You obviously haven't made the connection between that and the fact that young people are increasingly being forced into workfare schemes
where they are effectively being paid just over a pound an hour. They aren't getting benefits any more. That is increasingly being applied
to the whole workforce.

It may be that there is a case for reducing benefits when you have full unemployment and a thriving market. Doing this in a recession is
just forcing kids into slavery. I'm not surprised they were rioting-would you work for a pound an hour? I'd rather go to jail. I'd get
food, board and probably make more than a pound an hour sowing mailbags. I probably won't get caught anyway due to all the police cuts,
and I'll have a nice flatscreen TV.

cheese

Just so we know when to really laugh at you instead of the usual chortle can we have a prediction on timescales for this here revolution?

tax dodging is a larger problem than benefit claimants.

Since the media corps. are leading the way in shuffling profits overseas; they don't tell the readers that.

Better to concentrate on a large family's benefits or Somalians on Housing Benefit; all of the time they can set the people against the people they can line their own pockets.

Mister E.

We take in £140 billionish in income tax.  We pay our £165 billionish in welfare.  This was 2010, so almost certainly now worse.

This hardly seems like a non-issue?

We take in £140 billionish in income tax.  We pay our £165 billionish in welfare

Java

I was looking at the inverse; what we lose in illegitimate benefit claimants compared to the scale of tax evasion.

Of course, I can look it at as much as I like, it will change nothing.

To compare today's Europe with 18th century France or early 20th century Russia must be a joke, revolutions come when people don't have the right to give their opinion through vote and have only violence to make their voice heard. As far as i know, people are free to vote for who they want here, socialists programs are on offer but electors chose to not vote for that, it's simple.

abolux that is a load of bolux if you take the percentage of voters who voted for alledgedly left wing policy in the last election.

Labour is not a real socialist party, it's centre-left. Did it really make a big difference the last time they was in charge? I don't think so

Capatilism or Communism are just ism's. They are idea's. Idea's, that are vehicles for certain types of people.

Whatever "ism" you choose to look at, they are just vehicles for a certain type of person. A person who want's to have control, over, and thereby exploit other people for their own financial gain or self agrandisement. The people who strive to be at the top in an ism, all seem to display the same characteristic's.

Jiism.

Mister E

Are you confusing/conflating evasion and avoidance?

baby steps Elastoplast ... first the apostrophes, then the political philosophy.

Lampus Joined: 02 Jun 03
Replies: 6955 24 Jul 12 06:11   
Greedy capitalism  lost all  the money
Communism  bailed them out

Capitalism  takes  what is not theirs

Gus;
'Slightly to the left of Stalin'

'Its a simple matter of evolution from capitalism to communism' 


even by the low standards of this dismal talking shop, this thread really is staggeringly idiotic.

communism has been the greatest human and environmental catastrophe to be inflicted on mankind.
it enslaved, tortured and murdered untold millions as a matter of policy (not as a result of war). add to that the wholesale deportation of yet more millions, the persecution of families of 'enemies of the people', the long sentences of hard labour for 'crimes' such as 'right deviation', 'servility to the west', 'labour desertion' and myriad other grotesqueries. so many parents were bumped off that they introduced the death penalty for the 12 year old children that were orphaned. nice.

nobody was ever allowed to leave, and those that tried were shot. every communist country ALWAYS imprisons its people. it produced the greatest decline in living standards ever known, in PEACETIME. life expectancy was pitiful, and there was zero civil society; no clubs with free-association, no trade unions, public gatherings were illegal, and a total media blackout was mercilessly enforced(and still is, in the workers paradise of cuba, to howls of approval from left-wingers who should be ashamed)

the secret police were omnipresent, and everybody lived in terror of the late night knock on the door of the horribly overcrowded, crumbling blocks of flats (several families would share one room) as the useless b@stards couldnt build anything properly. nor could they feed themselves despite natural resources and fertile land that if in the hands of the hated 'capitalists' would have produced a bountiful harvest.

and i cant be arsed going into the environmental disaster it produced(still is, in china)

and i havent started on the useful idiots in the west who were cheerleaders for it, whilst enjoying the comforts of western-style capitalism.

i could go on, and welcome anyone who wants to have a go, but i will finish by saying that anyone who describes themselves as 'to the left of stalin' is a offensive wanchor, who knows nothing about the reality of the evil brute. and before you say it was a joke, i can imagine the vitriol that would be poured on anyone who described themselves as 'to the right of hitler'

Amen brother.

grappler,
from my point view , you have missed the point.
Here is the point.
This is a pyramid scheme. This pyramid has not been built upon a solid foundation, therefore it and everything within it are liable to fall. When it fall's is anyone's guess, but fall it will.

Term's such as Communism or Capitalism are minute detail's,irrelevantly small moment's in time, in the overall scheme of thing's.

grappler,
Despite all that, Karl Marx was great though bruv.
Wasn't his fault if they misunderstood/misinterpreted/misconstrued what he said.

oi groper you and vienetta will be top of the hanging list when the revolution starts

ps you know feck all,capitalism was built on slavery ,until unions gained some power.
unless you were working for a very philanthropic employer your life and working conditions were poor to abysmall,
todays present conditions you  are working in are due to, in the main the union movement.
so shut the feck up you coco.

though i am glad to see you can admit hitler was slightly to the right even though he was leader of the national socialists

flushgordon1
Joined: 25 Jun 11
Replies: 4590 28 Jul 12 09:47   
ps you know feck all,capitalism was built on slavery ,until unions gained some power.

you are a group 1 ignoramus and wanchor. the britsh unilaterally abolished slavery 200 years ago and the royal navy set up a squadron to intercept slaveships and return them to where they came from, at great cost. the industrial revolution followed. there are millions of slaves NOW in africa, and the middle east. arabs and africans have never stopped. notions of human/workers rights only exist in north america, europe and australia. all very socialist.

and i note you do not dispute anything i wrote about socialism/communism and what a disaster it has been for humanity. a damning indictment.

only after they allowed child labour etc for centurys you feckin prune.

centuries. thicko.

you seem to struggle with facts. you dispute nothing of what i said. i rubbished your statement, yet i am a prune?

you have zero sense of historical perspective. freedom to act and think were greater in the uk in the 19th century than those that exist in most of the world now. which is why we became home to every sort of socialist revolutionary agitator you have never heard of. and why we invented everything.

laws abolishing/restricting child labour were enacted by altruistic aristocrats. they have yet to be replicated in most parts of the world 200 years on.

juan kerr

you seem to have won the debate. well done. moron.

never in doubt really knobcheddar.

i dont generally come here to educate just ridicule t0ssers like yourself groper but lets .

From the 17th century to the 19th century, workhouses took in people whose poverty left them no other alternative. They were employed under forced labor conditions. Workhouses took in abandoned babies, usually presumed to be illegitimate. When they grew old enough, they were used as child labour. Charles Dickens represented such issues in his fiction. A life example was Henry Morton Stanley. This was a time when many children worked; if families were poor, everyone worked. Only in 1833 and 1844 were the first general protective laws against child labour, the Factory Acts, passed in Britain.
By the 18th century, the slave trade became a major economic mainstay for such cities as Bristol and Liverpool, engaged in the so-called "Triangular trade". The ships set out from England, loaded with trade goods which were exchanged on the West African shores for slaves captured by local rulers from deeper inland; the slaves were transported through the infamous "middle passage" across the Atlantic, and were sold at considerable profit for labour in plantations. The ships were loaded with export crops and commodities, the products of slave labour, such as sugar and rum, and returned to England to sell the items.
Historians and economists have debated the economic effects of slavery for Great Britain and the North American colonies. Many analysts suggest that it allowed the formation of capital that financed the Industrial Revolution, Slave labour was integral to early settlement of the colonies, which had too few people. Also, slave labour produced the major consumer goods that were the basis of world trade during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries: coffee, cotton, rum, sugar, and tobacco.
The Health and Morals of Apprentices Act 1802 was extended in 1819 from pauper apprentices to cover all cotton factory children restricting them to twelve hours daily labour.  A further burst of agitation in the 1820s by the cotton spinners led only to John Cam Hobhouse obtaining minor improvements to existing legislation in 1825 and 1829, as the Lancashire cotton operatives became disillusioned with the lack of enforcement of existing law and demoralised by the collapse of strikes against wage reductions. It is, however, clear that the Factory Movement began in Lancashire rather than with the better known Yorkshire agitation begin by Richard Oastler in 1830 and that it was the militant Cotton Spinner's Union that first created the rudiments of a popular organisation and gained support from the radical press.
so basically shut the feck up until  you know what your talking about you fecking rectum.

and forced the government to implement the 1833 factory act.
Factory Act 1802

Factory owners must obey the law.
All factory rooms must be well ventilated and lime-washed twice a year.
Children must be supplied with two complete outfits of clothing.
Children between the ages of 9 and 13 can work maximum 8 hours.
Adolescents between 14 and 18 years old can work maximum 12 hours.
Children under 9 years old are not allowed to work but they must be enrolled in the elementary schools that factory owners are required to establish.
The work hours of children must begin after 6 a.m., end before 9 p.m., and not exceed 12 hours a day.
Children must be instructed in reading, writing and arithmetic for the first four years of work.
Male and female children must be housed in different sleeping quarters.
Children may not sleep more than two per bed.
On Sundays children are to have an hour's instruction in Christianity.
Factory owners are also required to tend to any infectious diseases

Labour of Children, etc., in Factories Act 1833

Children (ages 14–18) must not work more than 12 hours a day with an hour lunch break. Note that this enabled employers to run two 'shifts' of child labour each working day in order to employ their adult male workers for longer.
Children (ages 9–13) must not work more than 8 hours with an hour lunch break.
Children (ages 9–13) must have two hours of education per day.
Outlawed the employment of children under 9 in the textile industry.
Children under 18 must not work at night.
Provided for routine inspections of factories

and although it was law it was frequently not implemented,

so thats capitalism for you and before the acts it was much worse with the gentrys employment of agricultural workers,

and this was before the gulags

This is still, today, a system built around slavery.

"Barred from knowlege, barred from school's. With every effort, bred as fool's."

Mr Grappler sounds as if he has just escaped the gulag so full of vitriolic hate for communism, which had he, might be understandable. No idea what he does or where he is from but I'd bet he has never lived in a communist country and hasn't any first hand knowledge of what that experience might be like. Thus his irrational hatred is purely ideological – no doubt a fascist!

I completely agree. That is why they built that big wall. It wasn't to keep them from fleeing their holiday camp existence. They wanted to keep us out.

flush

You are documenting history. Grappler is telling you how it changed.

no larry groper is telling us how the communism was so bad  and i am explaining to him and you apparently ,
that the gulags were up and running under the captalist system in uk long before the communists ever thought of them.
groper is trying to make a dogmatic point, i am educating him on historical evidence of the capitalist system before socialist put the brakes on basic slave labour conditions.

Then I apologise. Clearly you have as poor a grasp of history as reality. The workhouse was a form of voluntary safety net upon which the poor could avail themselves in times of hardship. It was designed to be harsh to dissuade malingerers hoping for a free ride. There is a case to be argued that this was unecessarily so but to compare it to the gulag misses the point. The gulag was a form of prison with forced labour. A closesr thing to a gulag would be prison chain gangs but they tend to be made up of genuine convicts as opposed to political ones and so even that comparison fails.

Please try harder.

And suggesting that socialism put the brakes on "slave labour" is more revisonist nonsense. As grappler states what gradually changed living and working conditions was Victorian enlightened paternalism. For every Cobbet there was a Wilberforce. The difference between the two was that one had the freedom to talk about change and the other had the power to make it a reality.

Although I would extend grappler's comment about altruistic aristocrats. One of the reasons why when at a time revolutionary fervour was sweeping the continent we were choosing evolution was because of the gentry's ability to bring in and assimilate the brightest from outside into positions of power. Wilberforce himself being one of many examples.

talk about trying to rewrite history ffs larry do  you have the big blue tory book on historical events?
apart from bournville and robert owen the majority of business owners were totally against reform.

wilberforce did work againt slavery but did nothing for his own people in dire conditions in factorys at home,
ffs i know there are a lot of do p coonts on here.


Wilberforce was convinced of the importance of religion, morality and education. He championed causes and campaigns such as the Society for Suppression of Vice, British missionary work in India, the creation of a free colony in Sierra Leone, the foundation of the Church Mission Society, and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. His underlying conservatism led him to support politically and socially repressive legislation, and resulted in criticism that he was ignoring injustices at home while campaigning for the enslaved abroad.

The workhouse was a form of voluntary safety  net upon which the poor could avail themselves in times of hardship


dear oh feckin dear

Thank goodness the communists helped defeat the Nazi's, or we wouldn't be here today discussing this thread, agreed?

das is gut

wilberforce wasa religious nutter tory ****.

Wilberforce was deeply conservative when it came to challenges to the existing political and social order. He advocated change in society through Christianity and improvement in morals, education and religion, fearing and opposing radical causes and revolution. The radical writer William Cobbett was among those who attacked what they saw as Wilberforce's hypocrisy in campaigning for better working conditions for slaves while British workers lived in terrible conditions at home. "Never have you done one single act, in favour of the labourers of this country", he wrote. Critics noted Wilberforce's support of the suspension of habeas corpus in 1795 and his votes for Pitt's "Gagging Bills", which banned meetings of more than 50 people, allowing speakers to be arrested and imposing harsh penalties on those who attacked the constitution. Wilberforce was opposed to giving workers' rights to organise into unions, in 1799 speaking in favour of the Combination Act, which suppressed trade union activity throughout the United Kingdom, and calling unions "a general disease in our society". He also opposed an enquiry into the 1819 Peterloo Massacre in which eleven protesters were killed at a political rally demanding reform. Concerned about "bad men who wished to produce anarchy and confusion", he approved of the government's Six Acts which further limited public meetings and seditious writings. Wilberforce's actions led the essayist William Hazlitt to condemn him as one "who preaches vital Christianity to untutored savages, and tolerates its worst abuses in civilised states.

junkie tory **** held up as an icon by larry,
but did not want to tread on the toes of the mill owners and landed gentry,

there are similir parameters happening today ,or perhaps this is the twilight zone.

but not all bad


Wilberforce was generous with his time and money, believing that those with wealth had a duty to give a significant portion of their income to the needy. Yearly, he gave away thousands of pounds, much of it to clergymen to distribute in their parishes. He paid off the debts of others, supported education and missions, and in a year of food shortages gave to charity more than his own yearly income. He was exceptionally hospitable, and could not bear to sack any of his servants. As a result, his home was full of old and incompetent servants kept on in charity. Although he was often months behind in his correspondence, Wilberforce responded to numerous requests for advice or for help in obtaining professorships, military promotions, and livings for clergymen, or for the reprieve of death sentences,

northernlad5
Joined: 21 Feb 11
Replies: 40 30 Jul 12 10:41   
'Mr Grappler sounds as if he has just escaped the gulag so full of vitriolic hate for communism, which had he, might be understandable. No idea what he does or where he is from but I'd bet he has never lived in a communist country and hasn't any first hand knowledge of what that experience might be like. Thus his irrational hatred is purely ideological – no doubt a fascist!'


difficult to reason with an imbecile, but here goes;

everything i wrote about communism is objectively true. not one of the fools on here has made any attempt to dispute this. you accept it is a horrible litany of mass-murder. yet my dislike of it is irrational!

and being anti-oppression makes me a fascist. err.... shome mistake shurely

i defy to to find any political leaning in anything i have posted. i dont like humbug, thats all.

I didn't hold Wilberforce up as a paragon of virtue. I pointed out that he got something done. Slavery was his legacy. What was that of Cobbet or the other talking heads?

Bentley Boy
Joined: 01 Aug 08
Replies: 2682 30 Jul 12 18:39   
Thank goodness the communists helped defeat the Nazi's, or we wouldn't be here today discussing this thread, agreed?


dear old bender, wrong again.

communists made the nazis job a lot easier by signing a pact with them. 2 countries invaded poland in 1939. the ussr was the other one. and for good measure the commies also took the baltic states, having already invaded finland.

the calamity that was the commie dictatorship actually destroyed the army. commissars murdered tens of thousands of 'bourgeois' military (under bolshevism, the sin of being middle class was a death sentence. and bolshevik definitions were very loose. owning a cow would be enough). the soviet army was in disarray, and this is why the nazis made spectacular progress, it was only when the commies appealed to the soul of 'mother russia' rather than 'the party' that things began to change. and they stopped persecuting the orthodox church.

when the nazis decided to turn on their partners-in-crime 1 million russians joined the wehrmacht to try and rid themselves of the communist dictatorship.

it was not the commies that stopped the nazis, but the russian people, aided by colossal supplies of american materiel. the communists actually made a dire emergency a lot worse. yet even during a life or death struggle, political correctness had to be enforced, and political prisoners were sent in front of regular troops to clear mines. with their bodies. and 'blocking' troops behind the front line shot anyone retreating. grim beyond belief. and even after the appalling sacrifice of the poor miserable peasant soldier, those returning post-war were then sent to siberia in case they had been contaminated by contact with west. you couldnt make it up.

flushgordon1
Joined: 25 Jun 11
Replies: 4613 30 Jul 12 17:08   
no larry groper is telling us how the communism was so bad  and i am explaining to him and you apparently ,
that the gulags were up and running under the captalist system in uk long before the communists ever thought of them.
groper is trying to make a dogmatic point, i am educating him on historical evidence of the capitalist system before socialist put the brakes on basic slave labour conditions. 


so you accept the communists worked millions of innocent people to death, despite them having committed no crime? its a start i suppose. why dont you make any attempt to refute anything else i wrote about the reality of socialism/communism? i said plenty. your failure to do so speaks volumes. all you do is cut and paste from wikipedia. it is the same old moral equivalent non-argument. instead of answering the question, you seek to find something that was just as bad.

i must have missed the watchtowers and barbed wire surrounding the slave-labour camps full of enemies of the people that litter the british countryside. and as i said earlier, comparing living conditions and workers rights of 200 years ago with what pertains now is a specious exercise. if you had a sense of historical perspective you would realise that grim though they were, they were a long way ahead of just about everywhere else at the time, and more importantly, most parts of the world NOW.

and another of my points you ignore; human/workers rights are safeguarded only in western europe/north america/ausrtralia. none of these places are very socialist. although in the avowedly socialist peoples republic of cuba, trade unions are illegal. no doubt you are outraged by this....

during the 1970s what was regarded as the standard of poverty in  USA was higher than the average income in the soviet union.

Another voice of reason. I seem to remember the left were still telling us what a great place the USSR was at that stage.

Even some nut butties were waxing lyrical about Cuba until a couple of years ago.

as usual the right wing feckwits miss the point that extreme capitalism as at the start of the industrial revolution,
and today as shown by the financial crisis need the counterbalance of an alternative view to prevent extremism,
ditto with communism.

Nonsense. It needs education. That is something the working poor once understood. An educated man has far more options. All socialism does is drag everybody down to the same level and all unions do is promote those who can flex the biggest muscles at the expense of the rest.

Most Literate Nations in the world.

1 Georgia (former USSR Rebublic)
2 Cuba

Marvellous. Now they can read about how many tractors they are told they have.

"and today as shown by the financial crisis"

Garbage. How is bailing out failed private sector companies capitalist in any way?

Java

They don't get that. They can't get that. They refuse to get that.

Grappler,
Despite all the so called horrors of living under communism during the USSR era, and the apparent joys of life under capitalism in the USA. In 250 years, (which will seem like a thousand if you take into account the degree of technological change) all people will want to know is what was achieved by these two world powers  in the last 100 years. Taking into account the USSR started with a backward agricultural nation that had to go through a revolution and two world wars. The USA on the other hand was well developed and profited out of both world wars.

Their legacy's -

USA, nation that invented the Atomic bomb and murdered hundreds of thousand of innocent people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

USSR, first nation to put man (Yuri Gagarin) beyond the confines of his own planet and into space.

Thats all most people will know about & remember.

We also have to accept that the Soviet Union were decades ahead of the west when it came to equality for women.

Having seen many movie clips of the fall of Berlin in 1945, I had always assumed the Russian soldier tearing down the Nazi flag and replacing it with the hammer & sickle, above the Reichstag, to be a man.  A few years ago they interviewed the soldier, who, to my surprise turned out to be a woman.

northernlad

Stalin murdering tens of millions of his own citizens and you cite a glorified trampolining.

Equality for women. To be as miserable as the men.

Eeternal,
I've told you ten million times not to exagerate!

Interesting thoughts.

Here's mine:

1) The state cannot bankroll inefficient private sector companies just as it cant bankroll inefficient public organisations.
2) There is an inflated hype over private companies and many, in particularly some in the financial sector just actually aren't that good and have staff who aren't that good.
3) Many public workers - like the private sector - have an over-inflated opinion of their worth and actually aren't that efficient or effective either.

In short - right v left - both sides have big inefficienies yet argue their case based on historical ideals and ideologies defending their cause like silly football fans.

Carry on.

Point's 2 and 3 I agree with.

Point 1 is wrong IMO. The state has bankrolled inefficient public and private sector inefficiency for all of my lifetime and probably intend's to do it forever. Providing that they can get away with it.

That is because the state know's that it is inefficient itself. The last thing it would want, is to be put into the spotlight. So, it directs attention toward's other people's inefficiencies, to take the heat off itself.

the eu will rules do not allow state subsidy,but it allows farmers subsidy through single farm payment etc.

"USA, nation that invented the Atomic bomb and murdered hundreds of thousand of innocent people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

USSR, first nation to put man (Yuri Gagarin) beyond the confines of his own planet and into space.

Thats all most people will know about & remember. "

I haven't seen a more stupid post for a while.

The insinuation that the USSR will be remembered as peaceful, benevolent pioneers of space travel where all its citizens were joyous.  And the States remember solely for launching an atomic bomb during a world war.

What a dope.    I assume you are the kind that thinks the Berlin Wall was made to stop East Germany becoming overpopulated by the West Germans trying to flee to Communist utopia?

"In short - right v left - both sides have big inefficienies yet argue their case based on historical ideals and ideologies defending their cause like silly football fans."

Of course the key difference is that the inefficient private firms will be wiped out (if the government stayed out of it) whilst the public sector parasites are immune from any kind of productivity measure.

Of course the key difference is that the inefficient private firms will be wiped out (if the government stayed out of it)

They dont Mr J.

And transferring "non jobs" and "easy tasks" from the Public Sector to outsourcers doesn't make a jot of difference financially but ideologically soothes a few.

We have too many MPs, too many Lords, too many councillors, too many councils.
It doesn't matter which team you "support" neither of them will change it. It is their life blood.

The government are subsidising too many inefficient companies.
It doesn't matter which team you "support" neither of them will change it. It is propping up the Financial services sector which they are reliant on.

Agree with bet of decade.

His analysis is correct but I don't think his conclusion is. There is no free market right able to take power. The question is whether if there were they would be or become corrupted by big business? I'd love to see. Such a shame that someone like Ron Paul hasn't been President of the US.

Java,

"The insinuation that the USSR will be remembered as peaceful, benevolent pioneers of space travel where all its citizens were joyous.  And the States remember solely for launching an atomic bomb during a world war."

And if you read it properly its quite clear that I was making no such statement (you just wanted me to have said that).

I was merely pointing out that living conditions in both the USSR  & USA will be irrelevant, most people won't know or care any more than we care about how the ancient Greeks treated their citizens.
Only their contributions to science & technology will be widely known.

Why do you twist things?

So you accept that life for the general worker was significantly worse for a soviet than for an american?

Of course!   Just as it was in 1900 long before the Bolshevik revolution!

dear mr.lad,

you are a moron.

here are a few facts that you will ignore;

the ussr imprisoned and murdered millions of its own pepople. for no reason. it had concentration camps before the nazis, and when they took over eastern europe post-45, they re-opened them.

half the world wanted to get into the u.s. the other half wanted to escape communism.

the contribution to science and technology was zero. they had a vast network of spies and 'illegals' that stole western technology. despite havig 25% of the worlds engineers in the ussr, and no less than 50% of physicists. they couldnt make anything work. they couldnt even produce a loaf of bread, the queues for which were gigantic. in a country with greater natural resources than any other.

"Of course the key difference is that the inefficient private firms will be wiped out (if the government stayed out of it) whilst the public sector parasites are immune from any kind of productivity measure".

Java,

Don't fully agree with this comment.  To call all of the public sector parasites is a blinkered, ideological view.  I very much agree with sentiment around measuring productivity and the benefit the public sector brings to our society.  I very much acknowledge that there are lots of public sector organisations and workers whose work and productivity does not add any value to society at all and is nothing but a drain on resources.

I would also suggest that there are many public sector organisations who give society real benefit and offer value to so many people in our country.

To call all of the public sector parasites, to me, suggests you think the private sector has all the solutions.

Grappler,
I am not a mormon!

"here are a few facts that you will ignore;"

"the ussr imprisoned and murdered millions of its own pepople. for no reason. it had concentration camps before the nazis, and when they took over eastern europe post-45, they re-opened them."

The USA turned the whole of Latin America & South America into a concentration camp, (Uncle Sam's so called back yard) proping up fascist dictatorships the only haven for any socialist who didn't want to disappear, throughout the whole continent – Cuba.
They also waged war throughout the whole of Indo China killing millions & had the audacity to object to the U.N.  When the victorious Vietnamese Army invaded Kampuchea & routed  the deranged Pol Pot in the vacuum they left, simply because they had been humiliated by the tiny agricultural nation.

So don't try and give me any lessons in the history of the 20th centuary.
I'm not a communist or a capitalist & when examining evidence I am totally unbiased and act like a High Court Judge.

Quite apart from the fact that & for the third time, I was talking about what students in 250 years time in a science lesson will learn of their legacy's.

"To call all of the public sector parasites is a blinkered, ideological view"

Yes you are right - that didn't come out how I meant to convey it.  Should have said "the parasites that exist within the public sector are immune from any kind of productivity measure"

I have no truck with frontline health workers, emergency services, teachers, armed forces, binmen, traffic wardens or anyone else who can actually describe what their job is as opposed to the verbose waffle we see from the others when asked for a job description.

northernplank says


The USA turned the whole of Latin America & South America into a concentration camp

Seriously, why do people write this tosh?

blacburn, Can I call you Tony?

Trouble with your sort is you take these ridiculous extreme stances on every single issue. Your no doubt a librarian that I refered to earlier. I've never met a entrepreneurial businessperson who isn't balanced in their opinions, - they might take the odd extreme view on a particular subject but never on every subject.
If they displayed such views they wouldn't be in business very long and wouldn't keep their staff.

You deny the US bankrolled dictatorships throughout Latin & South America, trained their armies, I never remember them insisting on democracy. During the Reagan years in Guatemala they trained malitas (death squads) who went round at night taking people from their homes (including Nuns) and murdering them, no trial, not even a gulag! According to you, they never interfered in any country in the America's,  (what was the Bay of Pigs all about?) & of course they never toppled any socialist government that had been democratically elected.

I also note you agree the USA waged war on the whole of Indo China that killed millions, by simply refusing to mention it.

The USSR was responsible for massive human rights violations particularly under Stalin, but so was the USA  under various administrations.

Get you arguments balanced you ****!

should have read d0ucheb@g!

You deny the US bankrolled dictatorships throughout Latin & South America

Do I?

According to you, they never interfered in any country in the America's,

Where did I say that?

I also note you agree the USA waged war on the whole of Indo China that killed millions

What?

Its obvious you are either a phucking loony or you've got me mixed up with somebody else. My moneys on you being a phucking loony.

Tony,

You omitted to mention any of them only sighting the horrors of the USSR – a totally unbalanced appraisal of the subject – Capitalism v Communism!

Always know when you’ve dished out a good spanking your opponent resorts to obscenities!

Weirdo

Good to see you've given up the argument Tony!

I completely agree with you there Java! Well said.

I get frustrated with crass, generalised, sweeping statements from both right and left viewpoints, which are (in my opinion) largely based on a defiant defence of the ideology which they hold dear.

Good Luck with bets!

the financial elite will be laughing at you lot (as if theyd bovver

reading this thread!) squabling over the 'left wing /right wing paradigm'

nonsense, knowing as they do, that it was they the capitalists

(the financial elite) who put the commies in power in the first place.

yes, the bolshies,mao,and castro

sidesplitting humour!

Grappler,
I am not a mormon!

"here are a few facts that you will ignore;"

"the ussr imprisoned and murdered millions of its own pepople. for no reason. it had concentration camps before the nazis, and when they took over eastern europe post-45, they re-opened them."

The USA turned the whole of Latin America & South America into a concentration camp, (Uncle Sam's so called back yard) proping up fascist dictatorships the only haven for any socialist who didn't want to disappear, throughout the whole continent – Cuba.
They also waged war throughout the whole of Indo China killing millions & had the audacity to object to the U.N.  When the victorious Vietnamese Army invaded Kampuchea & routed  the deranged Pol Pot in the vacuum they left, simply because they had been humiliated by the tiny agricultural nation.


as predicted, you ignored what i said. you are remarkably defensive of soviet brutality and mass-murder.  and instead of any attempt to refute what i said of it, all you can do is say 'well what about this?

admit the truth; you might feel better. and you ignored my other 2 points completely.

and you call cuba a 'haven'. laughable. nobody has been allowed to leave for 50 years. it is a giant prison camp where tens of thousands have been tortured, imprisoned and killed for the crime of demanding freedom. another fact you will ignore.

How dare you critisize the Cuban people?

Grow up grappler!

Why the tribalists argue from their entrenched positions;
the elite are bleeding us dry.

They love you.

Grappler,
Your a strange fellow!
You appear around 10pm a few times a week, go through the threads and accuse anbody who makes the slightest critism of of the US or Capitalism of being a commie & of supporting & sympathising with Stalin & his murderous regime.
Your like a little terrier snapping at our heals.
Snap! Snap! Snap!

“as predicted, you ignored what i said. you are remarkably defensive of soviet brutality and mass-murder. and instead of any attempt to refute what i said of it, all you can do is say 'well what about this?”

First of all I didn't ignore what you said, I agree with most of it, and as others have made similar points to yours I didn't feel the need to repeat them yet again (too much repetition makes a thread boring, unbalanced & one sided.)

As for:-
“ you are remarkably defensive of soviet brutality and mass-murder.”

I never defended it once, anywhere and never would. I did in fact say:-

“The USSR was responsible for massive human rights violations particularly under Stalin.”

It was actually we the British who invented concentration camps in the modern era, in the South African Boar War, so you need to get your historical facts right!

I'm not disagreeing with the main thrust of that argument. You do need however to look at the other side of of the argument and not ignore what the Americans did.

Grappler like Tony, you need to start looking at things in a balanced, unbiased & unemotional way!

We should indeed examine our own histories which have not always been glorious but you should at least attempt historical accuracy and context. Firstly you can't hide behind a term like human rights violations even though the right to life is indeed a human right. For instance Stalin was blamed for millions of civilian deaths and himself ordered several hundred thousand personally.

Whilst it is a stain on our history that we used them, even though they initially began for humanitarian reasons, it is also wrong to suggest that the British invented concentrations camps.

Eeternal, for anyone living in the USSR who showed capitalist or western tendencies you were likely to be sent for 're-education' to an ordinary prison within whatever Republic you happened to live. For what the Soviets considered more serious crimes,
say writing pro western, pro capitalist literature, you were more likely to be sent to a  mental institution & finally the gulag.
During the Stalin years you could end up in the gulag for no reason what so ever (his wife for example) due mainly to his own insecurities & paranoia. The vast majority who died in those camps did so because of the harsh environment (temperatures well below minus 20.) minimal rations & lack of medical treatment. Although it is also true many were shot, the level of summary exocutions varied dramaticaly depending on who was in power. 

If you lived in one of the Latin or South American Countries under one of the many Junta's  propped up by the US & were suspected of being a Communist or even a socialist, belonging to a Trade Union for example you risked being taken from your home during the night & being found by the roadside blindfolded, hands tied behind your back & with a bullet in your head, or along with a group of fellow socialists taken out in a plane, bags over  your heads, hands tied and dropped from 10,000 ft. into the Atlantic/Pacific.

Even in the US today openly admitting your a Communist will bring your career prospects to an abrupt end. During the Mc Carthy Period you would be blacklisted and wouldn't find work, having to depend on family & friends to survive & putting them at risk, so the entire country becomes your prison.

So which was worse, - being a capitalist in the USSR or a communist in the Junta's Latin or South America?
I have to say being a capitalist in the USSR, at least there's a chance of surviving the gulag  (Alexander Solzhenitsyn) did. In Pinochet's Chile, being dropped from 10,000ft,or Guatemala during the Reagan Years, a bullet in the back of the head – your dead!

I should add, just to give a completely balanced picture, that both the US & USSR also did some great things during the same periods.

Certainly the term 'concentration camp was first used by the British during the 2nd Boer war. The Spanish disagree with calling their internment camps 'concentration camps' in the conflict with Cuba in 1895-98 as they were only used for prisoners/guerrillas

even though they initially began for humanitarian reasons

Allegedly conceived as a form of humanitarian aid to the families whose farms had been destroyed in the fighting, the camps were used to confine and control large numbers of civilians as part of a Scorched Earth tactic In reality the camps were used to flush out the Boer fighters.

Although interment camps had been used against enemies for centuries by all nations, 1900 was the first time a policy was introduced to purposely target a civilian population by forcing them to need a place of refuge by burning down their farms and dwellings. Kitchener used the term 'a camp for the concentration of people' in a report to London on the progress of the war.

The British certainly found a new use for concentration camps.

mr.lad, as i have said repeatedly, you ignore the truth; here are some facts. you appear to be a supporter of cuba. instead of looking around for an equivalent evil. why not confront the truth?

cuba has been a dictatorship for 50 years.
true?

nobody is allowed freedom to travel. cubans are denied passports
true?

there is a total media blackout in cuba. nobody is allowed access to the media, including the bbc world service.
true?

cuba had fewer than 10 prison camps pre-revolution, now there are 100+
true?

i could go on, but the point is made. i post facts, yet i am wrong?

mickstick

The US used concentration camps against civilians known as reconcentrado (spelling) in the war with the Phillipines beginning in 1899.

There's evidence of the Romans herding groups into camps in the lands they conquered. American indians were also put in camps  called 'Reservations', and there are many other examples throughout history.

It was however the British who first used the term 'Concentration
Camp'.

EO

Americans run internment camps in the conflict with the Philippines to protect civilians from the revolutionaries. These were set early 1901 up after the Taft Commission had issued laws in September and August 1900 and the rebels started using guerrilla tactics in 1899. There were no reconcentrados until late 1901 well after Kitchener had used them in SA, a war by the way which had American observers.