Originally posted by kookie
yes but privatisation gives you choice.
Look at the phone companies. Ok the railways need sorting out. What about the utilities. And it helps get rid of the unions, which although I am not an expert, I think they contributed a major part in screwing up our country.
Choice gives the consumer more power.
Things just need to be improved, the foundations are in place.
I think:(

Privatisation = big profits for fat cat tory loving executives with nil or little regard to provide a decent service to their customer as their only concern is increasing their profit margin!!!

Yea, yea, heard it all before. That tired old line about 'fat cats' What you fail to mention is that these 'fat cats' support the economy and your way of life. They are paid good salaries, most of which are performance related, because of that.

Without them you simply would not have what you have today. Nationalisation doesn't work to any great degree. Talented people need big wages or they simply won't do the job here. Whether you like it or not you need those talented people.

Here's a nice example of the old fashioned nationalised, Labour controlled, union led way of doing things. AMICUS Union Leader Derek Simpson goes to Glastonbury Festival in a helicopter (http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2004260997,00.html). Apparently he also lives in a three quarters of a million pound house that he rents from the Union @ £1 per week . All that pretence about members interests, pah! He and his like are no different, except they are dishonest about it.

Originally posted by Tony
Yea, yea, heard it all before. That tired old line about 'fat cats' What you fail to mention is that these 'fat cats' support the economy and your way of life. They are paid good salaries, most of which are performance related, because of that.

Without them you simply would not have what you have today. Nationalisation doesn't work to any great degree. Talented people need big wages or they simply won't do the job here. Whether you like it or not you need those talented people.


Pffft! 'World class salaries for world class businessmen' - what a load of tripe.

If I may just remind you...

ENRON

So what? I could equally say Peter Mandelson or Osama Bin Laden. One bad apple doesn't represent the whole barrel.

And Abdul, please don't invent quotes that I didn't say. It's not the best debating tactic... More like a Labour tactic.

Hmmm... the politics of envy - a nasty thing.

Some privatisations seemed to have worked, like BA, and BT. These are in markets where there are effectively few barriers to entry. Anyone wanting to run a rival phone serive could use BT's infrastructure.

In the railways, however, there was a complex systems of regional monopolies. This gives as little choice as the old BR days. They also had to generate income to renew their rolling stock, and pay Railtrack. The old TOC licences only ran for seven years, which is one of the main reasons why there has been so little investment since privatisation. Why invest in new trains if you might lose your franchise before you've even paid for them. The railways are in a worse state than they ever were, because the structure of the privatisation was bound to fail, but generate a quick cash injection to the economy. This has probably been paid many times over by bailouts.

As for privatising hospitals, this is the silliest thing I've heard. If you're in the back of an ambulance, you're not going to be leafing throgh the latest edition of the league tables, saying 'take me to that one, they have better marks for cleanliness'. Everyone should have a decent hospital near them.

Originally posted by Tony
And Abdul, please don't invent quotes that I didn't say. It's not the best debating tactic... More like a Labour tactic.

'World class salaries for world class businessmen' - I wouldn't associate a gem of a quote like that to you.

You may find it was Michael Heseltine justifying the fantastic salary of former British Gas chief Cedric Brown


And Tony, please don't patronise me in future, you left wing Tory you.

Originally posted by Abdul
'World class salaries for world class businessmen' - I wouldn't associate a gem of a quote like that to you.

You may find it was Michael Heseltine justifying the fantastic salary of former British Gas chief Cedric Brown


And Tony, please don't patronise me in future, you left wing Tory you. Hehe... patronise? Moi?!?

The way you quoted me and then foplowed on with another quote looked exactly like it had come from me - which it didn't. You may not have intended it, but that's how it looked.

Anyway, I still stand by what I DID say. High salaries/incomes are justified for talented people who make big contributions to the economy. There simply is no choice or debate on the matter unless you are using the politics of envy - as I suggested previously.

'Talented people' in this context does not apply to nurses, doctors, etc, etc before it's mentioned.

Originally posted by Tony
'Talented people' in this context does not apply to nurses, doctors, etc, etc before it's mentioned.

Why not? Do you judge a person solely on their ability to increase the value of share prices rather than a more selfless motive? Politics of Greed, hmm?

Originally posted by Tony
High salaries/incomes are justified for talented people who make big contributions to the economy. There simply is no choice or debate on the matter unless you are using the politics of envy -as I suggested previously.

And if I may mention Enron again...they may have contributed to the US economy - but they almost ruined it too :D

Originally posted by Abdul
Why not? Do you judge a person solely on their ability to increase the value of share prices rather than a more selfless motive? Politics of Greed, hmm?
In this context they have no additional value, or rather they have the same value as all the other 'worker bees' who perform equally important, but less politically sensitive jobs.

I am not belittling them for a second, in the same way that I would not belittle a refuse collector or an incinerator operator.
However, they are still 'worker bees, and there needs to be a 'queen bee' in all hives. That's just how it is I'm afraid.

There's no point you bigging them up, because it's irrelevant in this context. You cannot replace the board of your pension fund managers with a bunch of nurses. They both do important jobs. Just like you don’t replace insurance clerks with brain surgeons. Like it or not, you need those well paid senior people in the myriad of organisations that they serve.

Originally posted by Abdul
And if I may mention Enron again...they may have contributed to the US economy - but they almost ruined it too :D
Quote them all you like. There were a small handful of people in a single company. That does nothing whatsoever to undermine the capitalist economic model of the rest of the world. To say anything else is rather disingenuous and serves only to make political capital.

Please can we start another thread Abdul? This has nothing to do with voting Labour. You start the thread, and I will transfer all these posts into it. :thumbsup:

Network Rail last year lost £758million. They missed all there targets. So obviously the poor directors got punished by receiving a mere £436 in bonuses. Thats capitalism for ya, great innit? And the same story has been repeated over and over in any major business - esp those that have been privatised. 'top' salaries are shooting up in britain at the mo - have any of those people really added significant value, even in their own terms? most of the time they just copy what every other bos is doing (hmmm, howw shall we save some money? i know! lets cut some jobs!)

As for the fallacy of the marvellous success of the BT sale. For starters in many ways it still occupies an utterly dominating position in the market - as noted below companies that want to compete have to use their infrastructure! It was also sold off at an absurdly low price (stealing billions of the taxpayer) which put it in a better position to raise further money for investment. but the main thing that benefitted BT was nothing to do with the market at all, it was changes in technology that made it so much easier to upgrade the entire system.

oh, and the manager of my pension fund doesnt do an importan job - nothing like as important as a nurse, the fact that you think otherwise (Tony) simply indicates a depressed and depressing view of the world, imo. the capitalist economic model has been shown up as a disaster in he majority of the world, its just done a few people very nicely, is all.

(oops! just spotted your last line there - soz about that)

Capitalism works better than any other economic model.... unless of course you can suggest an even better, more effective way to run a society??? Awaiting your response, commie.....

Originally posted by t020
Capitalism works better than any other economic model.... unless of course you can suggest an even better, more effective way to run a society??? Awaiting your response, commie.....
http://www.parecon.org/

too late for me to go into more detail - but there you have the gist of it :)

but these bosses still got the bonuses - thats my point. they failed in every way imaginable but still got paid an amount over and above the the PM does, and bonuses!

and then there's the question of why people aren't using the trains. imo, given twenty years + of cronic underinvestment and promotion of motor vehicles it's hardly surprising, is it?

and what does my financial manager do, 90% of the time? nothing for me, i reckon. glance at the FT, see what stocks and shares are doing, and move my 'portfolio' (I have a stakeholder pension which is worth less to me than if I'd stuck the money in a building society - I have no choice in the matter) accordingly. Any idiot can do that, it takes no great skill. Certainly no more skill than it takes to be a nurse. It's because the way our system is structured, the only obvious thing that matters is money - but we all know that's utter tosh, don't we?

You show charming naivity commie pig :). Worthy employment doesn't make it better or more useful employment - it just makes it more worthy. Don't make the mistake of confusing the differences or believeing that you don't need the full spectrum of tasks that people perform, for which they get paid according to a combination of demand and ability.

Shall we start a thread on capitalism -v- communism where it can be discussed away from the voting Labour thread?

and with the current state of affairs 'worthy' employment is paid vastly less than those jobs that serve capital, but not people.


new thread sounds fun :)

Well, this is the new thead now!

blimey, i thought that it had had a very rapid mass interest! till i realised what you'd done...

I heard the other day that China's Economy is booming big time.
Would people class their economy as capitalist or communist?

Nomme

I'd have said it was pretty much always capitalist - the state run version which lasted until the 80's was not fundamentally different to the system in the west, tho there was obviously no internal market.

Since the death of Mao (or probably a little later, I'd have to check me dates to be certain) the Chinese state has 'opened up' it's economy massively to western investment and expropriation, and it is unashamedly capitalist in economic terms.

In political terms I would also argue that it has nothing to do with communism and never did, but simply replaced one ruling elite with another.

Oh, and while it is booming massively now, it is only doing so at enormous cost to Chinese workers (health and safety isn't exactly a big concern for the Chinese govt, hence the string of massive factory explosions that have happened over the last few years), and it is growing at such a rate that a large number of economists think it is expanding too quickly and will have a big crash soon.


Anyhows...I really must do some work today...

The improved living standards and social provisons in many western capitalist states were obtained as a result of consistent pressure from the much abused Trade Union movement and the widespread radicalism of millions of people who wanted a better way to live after WW11.
If we look further afield we would see what Capitalism would offer most Britons if companies could get away with it.
Trade Union activists in Coca Cola bottling plants murdered in Central America, subterranean aquifers polluted in India (affecting millions) thanks to Coke and Pepsi, mountains of asbestos waste in South African townships left by UK companies, child labour in sportswear manufacture in any number of countries, Oil companies "fingering" local activists in Nigeria to the security forces who make them "disappear". Remember Bhopal? Union Carbide still hasn't paid proper compensation for hundreds of lives lost and thousands devastated.
The list is almost endless but indicates how companies would behave in Britain if they could get away with it!

by Tony
You cannot replace the board of your pension fund managers with a bunch of nurses. They both do important jobs. Just like you don’t replace insurance clerks with brain surgeons. Like it or not, you need those well paid senior people in the myriad of organisations that they serve

But we need more doctors, nurses and teachers. Do we really need more fat cat bosses? I'd say that's a nice-to-have, rather than a must-have.

Unless you're one of the unfortunates made redundant to downsizing / restructuring etc, that is

Abdul, I never said that it was an either/or situation, but you seem to intimate that.

Why is it either/or. I'm merely pointing out that they are both neccesary in our society.

I have no direct need of schools or NHS hospitals, but I pay for them gladly for many varies reasons, not specific ones.

We have and should encourage a broad society where there is a place for everyone - even if they don't like the place that someone else has.

Originally posted by Ned Ludd
Remember Bhopal? Union Carbide still hasn't paid proper compensation for hundreds of lives lost and thousands devastated.

It was actually thousands of lives lost Ned.

We're approaching the 20th anniversary of the Bhopal tragedy later this year (early December)

To this day, Union Carbide has never disclosed the makeup of the gas that killed so many poor third-world peasants (they're calling the chemicals trade secrets).

http://www.bhopal.org/

http://www.eco-action.org/dt/bhopal.html

Apologies Abdul. I couldn't recall the figures and I didn't want to be accused of fibbing. It remains the prime example of the callousness of unregulated capitalism. The fact that it's a US company, not Chinese , Indian etc is proof that "Western civilized values" are a very light cloak hiding a monstrous beast beneath.
Of course the total number of human deaths from BSE could match Bhopal. Not as spectacular or obvious but with some similarities as to cause.

I'm glad that you mentioned China.

Can you enlighten us about the number of chinese female infanticides? How about political prisoners in North Korea while you are at it? Then we can have a chat about the isolation of Burma eh?

Originally posted by Tony
I'm glad that you mentioned China.

Can you enlighten us about the number of chinese female infanticides? How about political prisoners in North Korea while you are at it? Then we can have a chat about the isolation of Burma eh?

Erm Someone has already expressed the view that China is actually Capitalist (whatever it calls itself)
I can't see that infanticide is anything other than an unpleasant cultural phenomenon rather than anything to do with a political/economic system. If it was a proper Socialist society there would be social provisions in place to prevent this abhorrent cultural practice based on economic necessity (as seen by perpetrators)..err tends to prove China is capitalist then?

Your argument would infer that honour killings and throwing acid at women in Pakistan is because it's Capitalist then?
Or dowry related murders in India are because of it's Capitalist system.

I'd still like to know why Union Carbide haven't provided compensation, haven't apologised and why it's boardroom aren't serving time. If Indian law isn't strong enough, we (the West) should have laws to control the actions of our companies abroad.
We can do it for Paedophiles so why not for companies?

I'm not sure what you're on about with Burma. They've isolated themselves , have appalling human rights and destroy their country in collusion with Thai and Western logging companies

North Korea. What's new? It's no secret. It's a bizarre State which Marx wouldn't recognise as "comumunist". I suspect they don't have many political prisoners because the population has been brainwashed with all the b*****t about The Great Leader. Is it any worse than supporting death squads (Ronnie R., Bush Snr) whilst banging on about freedom and democracy or invading other countries (Ronnie R, Bush Jnr) or engineering coups against democratic governments for political/economic self interest (take yor pick)

The fact is that unregulated capitalism is completely self serving, callous and with no regard to the rights of individuals (unless they can somehow make a buck out of those rights)

We're talking about the comparisons between capitalism and communism (+ other isms).

All of the above named countries are communist by style and deed.

I don't claim that capitalism is perfect by a long chalk, but it's by far and away the very best system of economic and populace governance that has ever come about.

Can you point to successful communism, anywhere, ever? Please don't quote Marx et al, as these are mere ideologies and all attempts at communism have been completely unworkable and ALWAYS result in totalitarianism, where funnily enough the libertarianism expounded by supporters of communism is only ever achieved through capitalism. Strange eh, hehe :)?

I ask again... can you point to successful communism, anywhere, ever?

Originally posted by Tony
I ask again... can you point to successful communism, anywhere, ever?

There was a successful anarchy (i.e absence of any form of political authority) during the spanish civil war.

eg.
http://www.che-lives.com/home/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=15

What do you mean by 'successful'?

Nomme

Well to be honest nomme, I will consider anything.

I just don't think that there is any kind of successful communism! :shakes: It's the refuge of idealists, not pragmatists.

I think I will have along wait. :P

Originally posted by Tony
Well to be honest nomme, I will consider anything.


OK then. Cuba.

Didn't have to wait that long eh? ;)

Nomme

Cuba.. hmm yes there is an interesting one. People are so desperate to stay there that the USA has had to impose a ceiling of 20,000 cuban immigrants per annum.

How about this from 2003...?

'In March of this year, the Cuban government announced it had arrested, tried and convicted 75 dissidents, sentencing them to prison terms of up to 28 years. In April, three Cubans who took over a ferry and sought, unsuccessfully, to take it to the United States, were executed. These actions once again have sparked international condemnation of the Cuban government’s human rights practices. Moreover, they have led the Bush Administration to voice concerns about the possibility of a new Cuban boat lift to Florida similar to the Mariel boat lift in 1980. News reports indicate that if a significant number of Cubans were to seek freedom in the United States, the anticipated response from the Bush Administration, dubbed “Operation Distant Shore,” would involve “a dramatic escalation in the number of Coast Guard and other military vessels patrolling the Florida Straits – a veritable floating wall designed to interdict as many migrants as possible at sea.”

source (http://www.ailf.org/ipc/CubanMigrationPrint.asp)

Doesn't sound like a very successful model of communism to me, even if we ignore the fact that Cuba was a the centre of causing the worst threat to the annihilation of the human race EVER.

The fact that the dictatorship that is Castro is also gearing up a capitalist system for after he dies is hardly going to convince anyone of the merits of communism either eh?

Yes very interesting.

Forgive me I don't laugh at the Bush administration going on about human rights (cf Iraq) and take with a pinch of salt your american source.
You seem to have missed out the fact a lot of Cuba's problems are caused by Americas enforcement of a humanitarian and economic embargo. What a nice capitalist bunch they are.

"Other political issues include illegal emigration to the US, the economic and humanitarian embargo enforced by the United States and how much truth there is behind stories of things like the government's imprisonment of political dissidents."
(from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuba)

You said :

Well to be honest nomme, I will consider anything.

So consider this as a measure: Literacy.
They have a 96.8% literacy rate.
That's just 0.1% behind the good ole USA. and better than some EU countries eg Greece and Portugal. I'll take that as a measure of success. YMMV.
http://www.indexmundi.com/g/r.aspx?c=cu&v=39

Nomme

I have some problems with the USA as you do nomme, and I have to be honest, I'm surprised that literacy in the USA is as high as that!

However... the USA's stance on Cuba is reactionary, not causatory.

Ultimately though, in the USA you have a more than equal chance to progress. In Cuba, you do not. Even at the simplest analysis Cuba quickly becomes apparent as a dictatorship. Why does the Castro regime not allow its people the very basic human right to travel freely?

America may not be perfect, but it offers more freedom and human rights to more people than any communist state does. You cannot throw in a few isolated human rights abuses as citation that Cuba is more successful than the USA, because it plainly is not. Cuba has endemic widespread human rights abuses, the USA, or to be more faithful to the thread, capitalism, simply does not.

Question: would you rather live in the UK or Cuba?? Precisely...

I think a better question would be 'would you rather be Cuban in Cuba or British in Britain.

Our 'western well-to-do foriegn holiday in the sunshine with cheap wine and lovely tapas while the sun sets' gene will kick in far too easily otherwise.

Cubans don't have a 'western well-to-do foriegn holiday in the sunshine with cheap wine and lovely tapas while the sun sets' gene. They just go to work, then home to a state apartment block or shack to feed the baby.

Heres's another statistic. 78% of the Cuban population work in nationalised industries and there is still 4.1% unemployment.

We're still waiting for an example of successful communism

Originally posted by Tony
We're talking about the comparisons between capitalism and communism (+ other isms).
Yes and some of us still wonder how Chinese Infanticide and Burmese isolation falls into this comparison

Originally posted by Tony
I don't claim that capitalism is perfect by a long chalk, but it's by far and away the very best system of economic and populace governance that has ever come about.
The 90,000 Mayan Indians slaughtered by US sponsored death squads would obviously agree with that. Their democratic goverment which nationalised fruit growing to give land to malnourished, jobless landless peasants had to go for interferring with US agribusiness. CIA coup, military dictatorship, a 30 year genocide, torture (what better friend for the US than "Major Blowtorch", what a fine Vice-President)

Hitler's version of capitalism turned mass murder into a production line efficiency. (National Socialism has nothing in common with Socialism!) Stalin's secret police and Gulags were hopelessly inefficient in comparison to this fine example of Capitalism in action. The extraction of the Jews' gold fillings and recycling of clothing into military uniforms, a superb example of asset stripping in action and let's not forget...best ever profits for the chemical companies who manufactured the all important gases. Henry Ford would have been well impressed. I admit that with the state involved it could be seen as a prototype PPI but these are a facet of capitalist economies anyway. The fact that this efficient system could only be developed after the liquidation of assorted Trade Unionists, Socialists, Communists and their sympathisers is testament to the adverse effect these groups have on the Capitalist economyOriginally posted by Tony
Can you point to successful communism, anywhere, ever? Please don't quote Marx et al, as these are mere ideologies
Seems a bit a unfair as he wrote the Communist Manifesto (which Stalin, The Great Leader, et al wouldn't recognise anyway)[Originally posted by Tony
all attempts at communism have been completely unworkable and ALWAYS result in totalitarianism,
They usually result in rightwing totalitarianism

Originally posted by Tony
I ask again... can you point to successful communism, anywhere, ever?
Attempts are always strangled at birth. Allende's democratic regime overthrown by the CIA in Chile with only Pinochet and Thatcher thinking it was an improvement.
Stalin and Franco acted in concert to crush the Spanish Republic,
Social Democrats ending the fledgling communist state in Germany (opening the way to Hitler)
US blockade on Cuba (Although Castro is still a vast improvement on the US stooge who preceeded him)
The invasion of russia by 19 foreign armies lead to Civil War, the Red Terror and then Stalin

Originally posted by Tony
We're still waiting for an example of successful communism
Are we?

I'm still waiting for a successful example of free market capitalism, doesn't mean one will just turn up.

Originally posted by Tony

We're still waiting for an example of successful communism

Well I'm still waiting for you to define how you measure success.
The only answer you've given so far to paraphase you is 'I'll consider anything'.
When I suggested Cuba you chose to measure sucess in terms of human rights. Not really a good argument - it would seem that capitalist and communist societies are as bad as each other on that score.
I then suggested a measure of success might be the literacy of the society and using this measure went on to suggest that Cuba could be considered successful.
You don't aappear to have disputed that.

So I'll ask (again) : By what quantative or qualative measures do you think we can measure the 'success' of a society?

Nomme

Strength of economy - e.g. GDP
Wealth of citizens - e.g. average salaries
Freedom of citizens - e.g. being able to buy what they like, move where they like, etc
Opportunity for citizens - e.g. job prospects, education, entrepeneurship, etc
Quality of life - e.g. life expectancy

OK, there are some interesting anomalies, but at the end of the day I would suggest that a pretty good measure of a successful communist regime is one that its people wish to continue partaking in voluntarily.

Once again I would not suggest that capitalism is perfect, but it is the model that all nations peoples move to when they have the choice. I would call that successful.

What do people make of this?:

(Taken from http://www.cat.org.au/dwu/moneytrk.html)

The Great Money Trick

Taken from The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist by Robert Tressel

"Money is the real cause of poverty," said Owen.

"Prove it," repeated Crass.

"Money is the cause of poverty because it is the device by which those who are too lazy to work are enabled to rob the workers of the fruits of their labour."

"Prove it," said Crass.

Owen slowly folded up the piece of newspaper he had been reading and put it in his pocket.

"All right," he replied. "I'll show you how the Great Money Trick is worked."

Owen opened his dinner basket and took from it two slices of bread, but as these where not sufficient, he requested that anyone who had some bread left should give it to him. They gave him several pieces, which he placed in a heap on a clean piece of paper, and, having borrowed the pocket knives of Easton, Harlow and Philpot, he addressed the, as follows:

"These pieces of bread represent the raw materials which exist naturally in and on the earth for the use of mankind; they were not made by any human being, but were created for the benefit and sustenance of all, the same as were the air and the light of the sun."

"Now," continued Owen, "I am a capitalist; or rather I represent the landlord and capitalist class. That is to say, all these raw materials belong to me. It does not matter for our present arguement how I obtained possession of them, the only thing that matters now is the admitted fact that all the raw materials which are necessary for the production of the necessaries of life are now the property of the landlord and capitalist class. I am that class; all these raw materials belong to me."

"Now you three represent the working class. You have nothing, and, for my part, although I have these raw materials, they are of no use to me. What I need is the things that can be made out of these raw materials by work; but I am too lazy to work for me. But first I must explain that I possess something else beside the raw materials. These three knives represent all the machinery of production; the factories, tools, railways, and so forth, without which the necessaries of life cannot be produced in abundance. And these three coins" - taking three half pennies from his pocket - "represent my money, capital."

"But before we go any further," said Owen, interrupting himself, "it is important to remember that I am not supposed to be merely a capitalist. I represent the whole capitalist class. You are not supposed to be just three workers, you represent the whole working class."

Owen proceeded to cut up one of the slices of bread into a number of little square blocks.

"These represent the things which are produced by labour, aided by machinery, from the raw materials. We will suppose that three of these blocks represent a week's work. We will suppose that a week's work is worth one pund."

Owen now addressed himself to the working class as represented by Philpot, Harlow and Easton.

"You say that you are all in need of employment, and as I am the kind-hearted capitalist class I am going to invest all my money in variuos industries, so as to give you plenty of work. I shall pay each of you one pound per week, and a week's work is that you must each produce three of these square blocks. For doing this work you will each recieve your wages; the money will be your own, to do as you like with, and the things you produce will of course be mine to do as I like with. You will each take one of these machines and as soon as you have done a week's work, you shall have your money."

The working classes accordingly set to work, and the capitalist class sat down and watched them. As soon as they had finished, they passed the nine little blocks to Owen, who placed them on a piece of paper by his side and paid the workers their wages.

"These blocks represent the necessaries of life. You can't live without some of these things, but as they belong to me, you will have to buy them from me: my price for these blocks is,one pound each."

As the working classes were in need of the necessaries of life and as they could not eat, drink or wear the useless money, they were compelled to agree to the capitalist's terms. They each bought back, and at once consumed, one-third of the produce of their labour. The capitalist class also devoured two of the square blocks, and so the net result of the week's work was that the kind capitalist had consumed two pounds worth of things produced by the labour of others, and reckoning the squares at their market value of one pound each, he had more than doubled his capital, for he still possessed the three poinds in money and in addition four pounds worth of goods. As for the working classes, Philpot, Harlow and Easton, having each consumed the pound's worth of necessaries they had bought with their wages, they were agin in precisely the same condition as when they had started work - they had nothing.

This process was repeated several times; for each weeks work the producers were paid their wages. They kept on working and spending all their earnings. The kind-hearted capitalist consumed twice as much as any one of them and his pool of wealth continually increased. In a little while, reckoning the little squares at their market value of one pound each, he was worth about one hundred pounds, and the working classes were still in the same condition as when they began, and were still tearing into their work as if their lives depended on it.

After a while the rest of the crowd began to laugh, and their meriment increased when the kind-hearted capitalist, just after having sold a pound's worth of necessaries to each of his workers, suddenly took their tools, the machinery of production, the knives, away from them, and informed them that as owing to over production all his store-houses were glutted with the necessaries of life, he had decided to close down the works.

"Well, and wot the bloody 'ell are we to do now ?" demanded Philpot.

"That's not my business," replied the kind-hearted capitalist. "I've paid your wages, and provided you with plenty of work for a long time past. I have no more work for you to do at the present. Come round again in a few months time and I'll see what I can do."

"But what about the necessaries of life?" Demanded Harlow. "we must have something to eat."

"Of course you must," replied the capitalist, affably; "and I shall be very pleased to sell you some." "But we ain't got no bloody money!"

"Well, you cant expect me to give you my goods for nothing! You didn't work for nothing, you know. I paid you for your work and you should have saved something: you should have been thrifty like me. Look how I have got on by being thrifty!"

The unemployed looked blankly at each other, but the rest of the crowd only laughed; and then the three unemployed began to abuse the kind-hearted capitalist, demanding that he should give them some of the necessaries of life that he had piled up in his warehouses, or to be allowed to work and produce some more for their own needs; and even threated to take some of the things by force if he did not comply with their demands. But the kind-hearted capitalist told them not to be insolent, and spoke to them about honesty, and said if they were not carefule he would have their faces battered in for them by the police, or if necessary he would call out the military and have them shot down like dogs, the same as he had done before at Featherstone and Belfast.

Here is capitalism (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3793663.stm)

Just got a spare 2 minutes at work at the moment, so don't have enough time to expatiate, but couldn't the ancient Inca society be viewed as a pretty successful communist society? Athough the culture predates modern communist theories!

The Inka culture cannot be described as communist in any way. Granted, they did not have currency in the conventional sense of the word. But they were a massive, aggressive, expanding empire, ruling over many peoples. Everything was run by the Inka, the heriditery emperor. The whole economy was geared towards tribute, patronage, sacrifice to gods and class. The Inka managed to build their empire with relatively few wars by sending high born daughters to marry local rulers, and therefore perpetuate the ruling dynasty.

There was a good deal of collective action though, like men had to spend a certain proportion of the year in the Army, mostly spent building and maintaining roads.

The society that seems to me to most honestly approximate communism is that of the !Kung San of southern Africa.

http://kyky.essortment.com/kungsanpeople_rftw.htm

There are various examples of what marx described as 'primitive communism' where there was a fairly general level of equlity with food work etc being shared out. Unfortunately, because they were all primitive, there wasn't actually enough food to share out sometimse, and so elites developed, leading to modern class society.

Examples of 'really existing communism'? Tragically i don't think there are any today. No on, other than a few lunatic Stalinists (and, uhh, Arthur Scargill) believes North Korea is socialist/communist. Cuba is probably the closest thing going, and it has more than its fair share of deeply unpleasant aspects to it - especially the treatment of gay and lesbian people (slightly dropped lately, but only to the kind of levels that, well, that tories over here generally approve of). But you can't seriously compare living in Cuba with Living in the UK - if you want to draw comparisons, Jamaica or Haiti would be better (in terms of economic development as well as geography). There i think you'll find that basic human rights are better served in Cuba - as said, there far higher levels of literacy and health care, lower crime etc. And thats without even taking into consideration the dire effects that the US blockade has had on the Cuban economy.

btw - as to the Us limits onnumbers accepted, wonder if that's anything to do with castro emptying the jails a few years back, and allowing all of them to migrate. The US were pretty keen to stop there 'we welcome you all' policy then. And you had to laugh.

Examples of 'communism in action' have existed tho - the Spanish Civil war as mentioned earlier (I consider myself a left communist, and so wouldn't really bother distinguishing those politics from the best of those of anarchists) and in the first year after the Russian revolution, where a combination of circumstances (17 invading armies, economic backwardness, failings in the structures and theories of the Bolshevik Party) meant that its achievements were thwarted and slowly but surely over-turned (with Stalin finally putting a river of blood between the new regime and that ushered in in October 1917) and it turned into USSR plc.

There have breen more recent examples too - indeed across South Yorkshire (and many other area's) we saw examples of communism in practise when whole communities came together to defend the miners and their communities against attack. The spirit of solidarity then is a fine example of the strength and power that we have working together rather than as individuals fighting against each other. Tragically the miners' eventual defeat meant that that kind of solidarity has been pushed off the agenda in the following 20 years, so that now we have a far more selfish society, and all too often an isolated and insular one.

In this context they have no additional value, or rather they have the same value as all the other 'worker bees' who perform equally important, but less politically sensitive jobs.

I am not belittling them for a second, in the same way that I would not belittle a refuse collector or an incinerator operator.
However, they are still 'worker bees, and there needs to be a 'queen bee' in all hives. That's just how it is I'm afraid.

There's no point you bigging them up, because it's irrelevant in this context. You cannot replace the board of your pension fund managers with a bunch of nurses. They both do important jobs. Just like you don’t replace insurance clerks with brain surgeons. Like it or not, you need those well paid senior people in the myriad of organisations that they serve.


Quote them all you like. There were a small handful of people in a single company. That does nothing whatsoever to undermine the capitalist economic model of the rest of the world. To say anything else is rather disingenuous and serves only to make political capital.

Please can we start another thread Abdul? This has nothing to do with voting Labour. You start the thread, and I will transfer all these posts into it. :thumbsup:

Who knows eh, they might have managed it better, to be honest I'd be surprised if they didn't.