I applaud your discussion of the police riot against the miners. The working class was severely battered and badgered by the reign of Empress Thatcher, and it pains me that most people are deaf, dumb and blind to the victimization workers endured.
And it has all been getting worse since 1989. As long as the Soviet Union existed, they tempered the rapaciousness of Western Capitalists. As long as the Soviet Union existed, western capitalists reasoned: We mustn't be too hard on the workers or they will rally for red revolution. With the fall of the Soviet Union, we witnessed the obliteration of leftist oppositoin to capitalist thuggery.
The fall of the Soviet Union provoked, if we're honest, derision clouded by uncertainty. When Ukraine delivered up its nukes, there was a sigh of relief, as if Russia had delivered up its. But it didn't. We drew broad conclusions from the skimpiest of evidence. Capitalism had made inroads into the USSR because of a hamburger stand on Red Square. When businessmen started to be assassinated in hotel foyers in Leningrad, that was mere detail. We're all so afeared now that Putin might want to reconstitute the USSR. People speculate as to how far he wants to go. Well, he quickly ditched Yeltsin's new wordless national anthem and brought back the old Soviet one, three verses of words an' all. If it is symbolism we seek, then we need seek no farther than a national anthem. And if we seek more moderate politics than Putin, we need not seek at all.
The great conundrum of western capitalism is that it yearns for constancy, reliability and predictability, whilst lying, cheating and betraying those it deals with. It looks for a virtue in others that it does not itself know the meaning of. Someone said in the 90s "We assumed that Russians would all simply revert to western liberal ideas. They didn't." No, indeed they didn't. They reverted to the state they'd been in before the Wall fell, the state that Marx wouldn't have imagined his theories going into practice in in a million years: a state of serfdom. Perhaps that's where Russia faltered: it instituted a system of government whose instigator had predicated as following after capitalism without first going through capitalism and that wasn't in any case what its instigator had instigated.
It came damned close, but it killed too many people. Communism is a wonderful system, but one that cannot be imposed from above, by its very definition.
However, your observation about how the fall of the Soviet Union presaged the fall of the left across the world bears consideration. It's as if Stalag prisoners stop constructing tunnels because Richard Attenborough is frogmarched back into the camp.
Statistically, you can win at roulette. Even if it's explained to you that the existence of the green numbers, 0 and 00 and, on some tables, even 000, tips the statistics in favour of the house, quite significantly, people still feel it's a gamble that's worth it.
Then you tell them how the house has other ways of influencing the roulette wheel's outcome, like magnets and eccentric balls, and they will still gamble that it's worth it.
Then when you tell them the tax breaks and inducements that have been proffered to welcome the casino to their town, people may start to reason that it's less worth it, but they still gamble.
Finally you tell them of the suicides that gambling has caused, about the predatory practices of betting companies and about the wining and dining they practise in getting laws shaped the way they want them.
At what point in this progress does one realise one is being duped? Well, it depends on your insight and experience. And a little bit, just a tiny little bit on whether you lose at the tables. Now, we know at the first stage that a deception is being practised upon us. But will that make us prescient of the next one? I hope so.
Your engagement is warmly appreciated. Thank you, David.
Mmm... My husband described the brutality of those police when he covered the miners' strike. He also carried a card that declared "If I should be taken to hospital, do not allow Margaret Thatcher to use me for a photo opportunity."
I applaud your discussion of the police riot against the miners. The working class was severely battered and badgered by the reign of Empress Thatcher, and it pains me that most people are deaf, dumb and blind to the victimization workers endured.
And it has all been getting worse since 1989. As long as the Soviet Union existed, they tempered the rapaciousness of Western Capitalists. As long as the Soviet Union existed, western capitalists reasoned: We mustn't be too hard on the workers or they will rally for red revolution. With the fall of the Soviet Union, we witnessed the obliteration of leftist oppositoin to capitalist thuggery.
The fall of the Soviet Union provoked, if we're honest, derision clouded by uncertainty. When Ukraine delivered up its nukes, there was a sigh of relief, as if Russia had delivered up its. But it didn't. We drew broad conclusions from the skimpiest of evidence. Capitalism had made inroads into the USSR because of a hamburger stand on Red Square. When businessmen started to be assassinated in hotel foyers in Leningrad, that was mere detail. We're all so afeared now that Putin might want to reconstitute the USSR. People speculate as to how far he wants to go. Well, he quickly ditched Yeltsin's new wordless national anthem and brought back the old Soviet one, three verses of words an' all. If it is symbolism we seek, then we need seek no farther than a national anthem. And if we seek more moderate politics than Putin, we need not seek at all.
The great conundrum of western capitalism is that it yearns for constancy, reliability and predictability, whilst lying, cheating and betraying those it deals with. It looks for a virtue in others that it does not itself know the meaning of. Someone said in the 90s "We assumed that Russians would all simply revert to western liberal ideas. They didn't." No, indeed they didn't. They reverted to the state they'd been in before the Wall fell, the state that Marx wouldn't have imagined his theories going into practice in in a million years: a state of serfdom. Perhaps that's where Russia faltered: it instituted a system of government whose instigator had predicated as following after capitalism without first going through capitalism and that wasn't in any case what its instigator had instigated.
It came damned close, but it killed too many people. Communism is a wonderful system, but one that cannot be imposed from above, by its very definition.
However, your observation about how the fall of the Soviet Union presaged the fall of the left across the world bears consideration. It's as if Stalag prisoners stop constructing tunnels because Richard Attenborough is frogmarched back into the camp.
Statistically, you can win at roulette. Even if it's explained to you that the existence of the green numbers, 0 and 00 and, on some tables, even 000, tips the statistics in favour of the house, quite significantly, people still feel it's a gamble that's worth it.
Then you tell them how the house has other ways of influencing the roulette wheel's outcome, like magnets and eccentric balls, and they will still gamble that it's worth it.
Then when you tell them the tax breaks and inducements that have been proffered to welcome the casino to their town, people may start to reason that it's less worth it, but they still gamble.
Finally you tell them of the suicides that gambling has caused, about the predatory practices of betting companies and about the wining and dining they practise in getting laws shaped the way they want them.
At what point in this progress does one realise one is being duped? Well, it depends on your insight and experience. And a little bit, just a tiny little bit on whether you lose at the tables. Now, we know at the first stage that a deception is being practised upon us. But will that make us prescient of the next one? I hope so.
Your engagement is warmly appreciated. Thank you, David.
Mmm... My husband described the brutality of those police when he covered the miners' strike. He also carried a card that declared "If I should be taken to hospital, do not allow Margaret Thatcher to use me for a photo opportunity."
Her reign was truly a turning point.
We must turn it back. There is no alternative.