They fuck you up your off-spring
They mean to and they do.
samedi 16 août 2008
vendredi 15 août 2008
On a lighter note
Away with the idea of being a killjoy - is the OLympics really about being joyous? - the American swimmer Phelps is being lauded in the Guardian and MSM generally for eating around six times the ordinary person eats. All this in order to swim. Swimming is a pleasant enough activity (in a pond or a river somewhere etc.) but reduced to speed, brutality and competiveness it is an odiously tedious spectacle. Also the ends, a little gold medal standing on a podium singing the national anthem, are futile.
Now, after taking that into consideration think of the food crisis currently affecting millions in the world. One person eats six times the normal amount of food - fthat is, 'normal' for the west - in order to splash about and feel good whilst millions go without food altogether.
Phelps is just one person, of course, but his pointless consumption is tasteless in the extreme but par for the course in the US and symbolic of its decadance and decline.
Now, after taking that into consideration think of the food crisis currently affecting millions in the world. One person eats six times the normal amount of food - fthat is, 'normal' for the west - in order to splash about and feel good whilst millions go without food altogether.
Phelps is just one person, of course, but his pointless consumption is tasteless in the extreme but par for the course in the US and symbolic of its decadance and decline.
jeudi 14 août 2008
The politics of envy
Over at the ever excellent throughthescarydoor a disection of the recent post by Polly Toynbee at the Guardian blog (one can hardly call it a newspaper anymore after its recent performance during the spat between Russia and Georgia. . .) concerning the rich. The rich, will they always be with us? The article is well written and informative - unusual for something by the old new Labour hackette. Many things stand out - but one particularly unsupportable moment more than the others. Faced with criticism for their lack of social awareness, one of the rich list focus groups cries out "The Politics of envy!"
"Even when confronted with that evidence, [that 'The poor are hit hard by VAT and other indirect taxes: they spend relatively more on taxable goods and services.'] the bankers especially gave the crudest response, saying flatly that they contributed more in cash - denying the point of a progressive tax system, which is that higher earners pay a larger proportionate share.
"Politics of envy!" one lawyer exploded furiously. "I really object because what it does is take the whole emphasis and focus away into something that's totally irrelevant and won't help a poor person at all."
Yes, one thing the rich are all united on is that giving money to the poor just won't help them at all. ("They were contemptuous of anything that gave extra money directly to poorer people.")The general 'argument' though that any giving way on taxation redistributively so, would be a concession to the PoE, is usually presented with a flourish by supporters of the right and rich as an argument-ending blockbuster of a contribution.
It isn't of course. But it is to the type of social democracy still defended by Toynbee is. She ends her piece by reflecting that "They could not see that the pleasure they derived from possessions, prospects and doing well by their children is universal and that others deserve a share of that, too." This is to present political economy as an inevitable zero sum gain. The production of goods and services cannot be organised any other way other than it is now under actually exisiting 'toolate' capitalism.
We revolutionaries object to the very idea that ". . .others deserve a share of that too." It is not the divvying up of the ill-gotten gains that is the problem, but the means of their production that creates the anti-social divisions of class that Toynbee rightly feels uneasy about. It is not that we think society should just make the lives of the poor slightly better or more 'radically' swap the poor and the rich's places. It is to fundamentally attack the grounds on which the whole edifice stands.
And, of course, it is not 'envy' that motivates us. As if socialism were based soley on the resentment of some fat idiot having a gold plated yacht, sixty rolexes and a genital masseur or whatever.
It is grounded in a justifiable rage against the squandering of resources and lives that keeps their whole sordid system going. And that anger is growing and getting stronger and taking shape.
They are afraid and right to be, those rich bastards.
"Even when confronted with that evidence, [that 'The poor are hit hard by VAT and other indirect taxes: they spend relatively more on taxable goods and services.'] the bankers especially gave the crudest response, saying flatly that they contributed more in cash - denying the point of a progressive tax system, which is that higher earners pay a larger proportionate share.
"Politics of envy!" one lawyer exploded furiously. "I really object because what it does is take the whole emphasis and focus away into something that's totally irrelevant and won't help a poor person at all."
Yes, one thing the rich are all united on is that giving money to the poor just won't help them at all. ("They were contemptuous of anything that gave extra money directly to poorer people.")The general 'argument' though that any giving way on taxation redistributively so, would be a concession to the PoE, is usually presented with a flourish by supporters of the right and rich as an argument-ending blockbuster of a contribution.
It isn't of course. But it is to the type of social democracy still defended by Toynbee is. She ends her piece by reflecting that "They could not see that the pleasure they derived from possessions, prospects and doing well by their children is universal and that others deserve a share of that, too." This is to present political economy as an inevitable zero sum gain. The production of goods and services cannot be organised any other way other than it is now under actually exisiting 'toolate' capitalism.
We revolutionaries object to the very idea that ". . .others deserve a share of that too." It is not the divvying up of the ill-gotten gains that is the problem, but the means of their production that creates the anti-social divisions of class that Toynbee rightly feels uneasy about. It is not that we think society should just make the lives of the poor slightly better or more 'radically' swap the poor and the rich's places. It is to fundamentally attack the grounds on which the whole edifice stands.
And, of course, it is not 'envy' that motivates us. As if socialism were based soley on the resentment of some fat idiot having a gold plated yacht, sixty rolexes and a genital masseur or whatever.
It is grounded in a justifiable rage against the squandering of resources and lives that keeps their whole sordid system going. And that anger is growing and getting stronger and taking shape.
They are afraid and right to be, those rich bastards.
The only side is the international working class
There is lots more guff floating around about the disasterous Georgian adventure in Ossetia. The latest load of agitprop comes from the Guardian in an article quoting Georgian sources that those darned Ruskies are lying about ceasefires and are piling more troops into the area.
The background to the positions being taken is obvious enough. Those on the left are suspected, wrongly for the main part, of being Russian sypathisers. The quasi-argument going,
'You are left-wing. You support the ideas that inspired the Russian Revolution. You read subversive blogs called 'Lenin's Tomb'. Thus you have been seduced by Russian propoganda in the past. You are being seduced by Russian propaganda now. The claims by Moscow of 2000 dead are exaggerated. The Russians are like your Soviet comrades and just as bad. The tanks that rolled into Georgia are a ghostly repeat of those that trundled into Czechslovakia in '68. Therefore the US humanitarian aid is like that it gave Berlin back in '61 and is given to save the cherished principles of the West. If you criticise any aspect of this assisstance, you are anti-American and anti-simetic too.'
By and large that's the argument of comment pages, papers all over the continent and all the other media nozzles. Naturally it's all rubbish. Despite all else, faced with an "either/or" dichotomy - often the best response is to take the "neither" option. It's not that difficult to think outside the circle that some try to place around an argument. Washington is the centre of a brutal postmodern empire. Moscow, the centre of a smaller but no more aggressive state with wider geo-political ambitions. Georgia is a client state of the former. Under the cosh of all these countries' propaganda, economic rigour and police are working people. The main casualty in war is the working class. This relatively small conflict has seen off perhpas fifteen hundred people and left thousands of refugees. There is rarely a clear burden of blame in the outbreak of any conflict. Further, it is not worthwhile to develop argupments with something as flimsy and moralistic as 'blame' at its centre. Imperial-like countries, states that seek to extend their influence by creating energy corridors, friendly regimes and military bases will necessarily come into conflict with other governments doing the same. Millions of Professors of the Obvious have written piles of books on this type of story. We are not interested in their moral arguments. We want to know in whose interests wars were launched when and why then. Analysis is focused on the main acytors involved in war. The leaders, the ruling class(es) to which they belong, the armies and the people themselves.
Of course, the only people able to resolve the problems that lead to conflict in the first place, though, are the working people themselves.
All else, the lies, the sordid deals and phoney calls for peace are all rubble on the road.
The background to the positions being taken is obvious enough. Those on the left are suspected, wrongly for the main part, of being Russian sypathisers. The quasi-argument going,
'You are left-wing. You support the ideas that inspired the Russian Revolution. You read subversive blogs called 'Lenin's Tomb'. Thus you have been seduced by Russian propoganda in the past. You are being seduced by Russian propaganda now. The claims by Moscow of 2000 dead are exaggerated. The Russians are like your Soviet comrades and just as bad. The tanks that rolled into Georgia are a ghostly repeat of those that trundled into Czechslovakia in '68. Therefore the US humanitarian aid is like that it gave Berlin back in '61 and is given to save the cherished principles of the West. If you criticise any aspect of this assisstance, you are anti-American and anti-simetic too.'
By and large that's the argument of comment pages, papers all over the continent and all the other media nozzles. Naturally it's all rubbish. Despite all else, faced with an "either/or" dichotomy - often the best response is to take the "neither" option. It's not that difficult to think outside the circle that some try to place around an argument. Washington is the centre of a brutal postmodern empire. Moscow, the centre of a smaller but no more aggressive state with wider geo-political ambitions. Georgia is a client state of the former. Under the cosh of all these countries' propaganda, economic rigour and police are working people. The main casualty in war is the working class. This relatively small conflict has seen off perhpas fifteen hundred people and left thousands of refugees. There is rarely a clear burden of blame in the outbreak of any conflict. Further, it is not worthwhile to develop argupments with something as flimsy and moralistic as 'blame' at its centre. Imperial-like countries, states that seek to extend their influence by creating energy corridors, friendly regimes and military bases will necessarily come into conflict with other governments doing the same. Millions of Professors of the Obvious have written piles of books on this type of story. We are not interested in their moral arguments. We want to know in whose interests wars were launched when and why then. Analysis is focused on the main acytors involved in war. The leaders, the ruling class(es) to which they belong, the armies and the people themselves.
Of course, the only people able to resolve the problems that lead to conflict in the first place, though, are the working people themselves.
All else, the lies, the sordid deals and phoney calls for peace are all rubble on the road.
mercredi 13 août 2008
Words fail
“Russia has invaded a sovereign neighboring state,” Bush declared Monday. “Such an action is unacceptable in the 21st century.”
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