Organise!

Posted on January 13, 2013 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

12 January 2013

THERE IT IS

And if we don’t fight


if we don’t resist


if we don’t organise and unify and


get the power to control our own lives


then we will wear
 the exaggerated look of captivity


the stylised look of submission


the bizarre look of suicide


the dehumanised look of fear


and the decomposed look of repression


forever and ever and ever


And there it is

This is a poem by Afro-American civil rights activist and committed performance poet Jayne Cortez (1934-2012), born in Arizona, who died 28 December last.

Antigone1984:

 

OK. But the working class has been “organising” in trade unions and political parties for the past 200 years at least and where has it got them? They have never been weaker in living memory than they are today.

Just a thought.

——–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

Posted in Literature, USA | Tagged | Leave a comment

Guantanamera

Posted on January 12, 2013 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

11 January 2013

Technical note: readers can hear a version of Guantanamera sung by singer Julio Iglesias (b. Madrid 1943) if they click on the headline below.

GUANTANAMERA

Yo soy un hombre sincero

De donde crece la palma

Y antes de morirme quiero

Echar mis versos del alma

Guantanamera, guajira Guantanamera

 

Mi verso es de un verde claro

Y de un carmin encendido

Mi verso es un ciervo herido

Que busca en el monte amparo

Guantanamera, guajira Guantanamera

 

Cultivo una rosa blanca

En julio como en enero

Para el amigo sincero

Que me da su mano franca

Guantanamera, guajira Guantanamera

 

Con los pobres de la tierra

Quiero yo mi suerte echar

El arroyo de la sierra

Me complace mas que el mar

Guantanamera, guajira Guantanamera

COUNTRY LASS OF GUANTÁNAMO

 

I am a truthful man

From where the palm tree grows

And before I die I want

To let out the verses of my soul,

O country lass of Guantánamo

 

My verse is both light green

And  flaming red

My verse is a wounded stag

Whcch seeks refuge on the mountain,

O country lass of Guantánamo

 

I grow a white rose

In July just as in January

For the honest friend

Who gives me his open hand,

O country lass of Guantánamo

 

 

With the poor people of the earth

I want to cast my lot

The brook of the mountains

Gives me more pleasure than the sea,

O country lass of Guantánamo

 

THE NEW COLOSSUS

Below is the sonnet on the plaque mounted on the inside of the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty on Liberty Island in New York Harbour in the estuary of the Hudson River. Penned by US poet Emma Lazarus (1849-1887) and entitled The New Colossus, it reads as follows:

“Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she

With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

 

ANTIGONE1984: 

Everybody loves a birthday.

Today 11 Januay 2013 is the eleventh anniversary of the inauguration of the United States torture chamber at Guantánamo in Cuba.

Why is the United States, an avowedly anti-Imperialist power, occupying Cuban territory?

Because it acquired this Cuban enclave – by force of arms – in the Spanish-American war of 1898.

What did Democrat Barack Hussein Obama say when he was campaigning for the US presidency in 2009?

“I have said repeatedly that I intend to close Guantánamo, and I will follow through on that.”

What, on being elected president, did he do?

Zilch.

According to Wikipedia, in June 2012 no fewer than 169 persons were still detained in Guantánamo.

Are these detainees convicted criminals?

No.

They are “suspects”.

Have they been brought to trial?

No.

Why?

Because, despite all the limitless resources available to the US legal prosecution service, insufficient evidence has been unearthed to prove that they are guilty of any crime.

So why keep them in prison?

Because we can.

Hey, say that again.

Because we can.

Why keep them shackled, shoe-horned into phosphorescent orange jump-suits and under 24/7 surveillance?

Why, in order to dehumanise them, to break their spirit and reduce them to the level of animals. Why else? What a silly question.

You see, we can do whatever we want. The United States is the most powerful country in the world. It can do whatever it wishes.

So we do just that.

But what about Magna Carta, Habeas Corpus, the right to a fair trial in a court of law?

That’s for the birds.

Didn’t you read what Richard Nixon, US President 1969-1974, said?

“The law is what the President says it is.”

But what about the basic principle of human rights that the end does not justify the means?

That’s for the birds, too. It doesn’t apply in practice. It’s public relations.

The fact is that we have decided that these guys are our enemies.

Of course, we can’t prove it. But then we don’t need to prove it.

And if anyone objects, well, that’s just too bad.

 

In a letter to the London Guardian  on 10 January 2012, reader Joy Hurcombe said:

“On Friday 11 January, the US detention facility at Guantánamo will have been open for 11 years. It is universally regarded as a place of torture and abuse, where human rights are routinely violated. While it remains in existence, it stains the reputation of the US and its supporters, and denies justice to the prisoners still held there beyond the rule of law…… On Friday [11 January] campaigners will join the London Guantámo Campaign to tour London embassies, marking the rendition routes of prisoners who were cruelly transported to Guantánamo on secret CIA torture flights. Many countries, including Turkey, Portugal, Spain and the UK, allowed the use of their air space and facilities for these covert operations across national borders, in breach of international rules and agreements…..The route will end at the US embassy for an evening candlelit vigil. We will demand that President Obama fulfils his pledge to close Guantánamo…

 British resident Shaker Aamer [has been] held for nearly 11 years in Guantánamo without charge or trial.”

 

This is the big one. You cannot uphold human rights by abusing them. Even Chuck Hagel, Obama’s current nominee for Defence Secretary, acknowledges that the existence of Guantánamo tarnishes America’s image, albeit it should be noted that his reported remarks concern not the immorality of the torture camp itself but simply the effect of its existence on US public relations.  The Guantánamo jail was created by President George W. Bush and continues to be maintained by President Barack Hussein Obama for one purpose only: to keep selected “suspects” deemed hostile to US Government interests in legal limbo and, in particular, out of the reach of courts in the USA that might have invoked human rights legislation to free them from indefinite detention without trial.  Ever since the camp was set up, brutal dictatorships around the world – think China or Russia – which think nothing of tossing their own enemies into custodial oblivion (Liu Xiaobo, for instance, or Mikhail Khodorkovsky) have been rubbing their hands with glee. They, at least,  have sometimes mounted a show trial before announcing the pre-determined verdict. It should not be forgotten either that the crimes ascribed to many of the inmates of Guantánamo often involved armed resistance to the US invasion and occupation of Muslim countries in the Middle East and Central Asia – crimes which the US media would term “freedom-fighting” had they involved, say, Texans taking up arms against an invasion from Mexico.

America has long wished to be portrayed throughout the world as a champion of human rights and civil liberties. Well, then, go for it. Not only the world, but America itself, deserves better than the existing immoral quagmire at Guantánamo.

However, we are not holding our breath.

Obama may be an economic dove. In defence and on questions involving human rights he is a hawk.

Stop-press: US director Kathryn Bigelow has just completed a film, Zero Dark Thirty, which, according to the previews, empathises with the difficult job being done by US soldiers deputed to prise information out of Muslim detainees by means of “enhanced interrogation techniques” – torture, to you and me. Well done, Kathryn, nice work if you can get it! And no, we shall not be publicising the release dates.

GUANTANAMERA

——–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

Posted in Politics, Torture, USA | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Last resting-place

Posted on January 11, 2013 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

10 January 2013

 

Wo?

 

Wo wird einst des Wandermüden

Letzte Ruhestätte sein?

Under Palmen in dem Süden?

Unter Linden an dem Rhein?

 

Werd’ich wo in einer Wüste

Eingescharrt von fremder Hand?

Oder ruh’ich an der Küste

Eines Meeres in dem Sand?

 

Immerhin! Mich wird umgeben

Gotteshimmel, dort wie hier,

Und als Totenlampen schweben

Nachts die Sterne über mir.

Where?

 

Where will it be, the last resting-place of the wander-weary?

Under palm-trees in the Midi?

Under lime-trees on the Rhein?

 

Will the hand of a stranger bury me in some desert?

Or shall I rest in the sand on the shore by the sea?

 

What ever happens, God’s sky will surround me, then as now,

And above me at night, like funeral lamps, will hang the stars.

This melancholy ditty is by the German poet and essayist Heinrich Heine  (1797-1856). Heine lived in Paris from 1831. Hence the liberty we took in translating “Süden” by “Midi”.

 ——–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in France, Germany, Literature | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Homer v. chick lit

Posted on January 9, 2013 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

9 January 2013

THE CLASSICS

“Let us consider…how differently young and old are affected by the words of some classic author, such as Homer or Horace. Passages, which to a boy are but rhetorical common-places, neither better nor worse than a hundred others which any clever writer might supply, which he gets by heart and thinks very fine, and imitates, as he thinks, successfully, in his own flowing versification, at length come home to him, when long years have passed, and he has had experience of life, and pierce him, as if he had never known them, with their sad earnestness and vivid exactness. Then he comes to understand how it is that lines, the birth of some chance morning or evening at an Ionian festival, or among the Sabine hills, have lasted generation after generation, for thousands of years, with a power over the mind, and a charm, which the current literature of his own day, with all its obvious advantages, is utterly unable to rival…….”

Extract from “An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent”, the magnum opus of Cardinal John Henry Newman (1801-1890), completed in 1870, as reproduced on page 655 of “The Oxford Book of English Prose” edited by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch (1863-1944) and published by the Clarendon Press in 1926.

Antigone1984:

Words as valid today, in our view (feel free to differ), as when the venerable Cardinal penned them in 1870. Homer v. chick lit? No contest.

However, being naturally both impious and sceptical, we wonder whether the eminent Victorian Cardinal Newman had ever ventured into the Sabine hills or, even more unlikely, had tripped the light fantastic at some Dionysian dance during an Ionian festival?

Mind you, if he had done so, we are sure, it would merely have confirmed his convictions.

——–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

Posted in Literature | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Pain in Spain

Posted on January 8, 2013 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

8 January 2013

EUROPE EXACERBATES THE PAIN IN SPAIN

“The position of Andalucía’s 200,000 agricultural workers on the land who face nine months’ unemployment each year and depend on patronage from the great landowners for work during the other three remains unresolved, despite the PSOE [Partido Socialista Obrero Español: Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party] government having introduced a minimal unemployment benefit scheme in the 1980s. Vastly increased land improvement grants from the European Union have further enriched the landowners, enabling them to mechanize their farms, whilst the braceros or landless day-labourers get nothing and have fewer job opportunities as a result. Industries such as fishing have also been affected by EU regulations limiting the size of catches to conserve dwindling fish stocks, with the consequent rise in unemployment in port towns throughout Andalucía.”

Extract from page 630 of the Fourth Edition of “The Rough Guide to Andalucía” by Geoff Garvey and Mark Ellingham, published in June 2003.

Antigone1984: It’s hard to imagine that much will have improved down on the hacienda in the years since, given the Spanish banking crisis and the fiscal austerity now being imposed on the recession-hit peripheral countries of the EU (such as Spain). Figures just published for November 2012 show Spain with an unemployment rate of 26.6 % – the highest for any of the 27 member states of the European Union. The rate for the EU as a whole was 10.7 %.

——–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

Posted in Economics, Europe, Politics, Spain | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Things ain’t wot they used to be

Posted on January 7, 2013 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

7 January 2013

……ἐν δὲ τοῖς κατὰ τὴν πόλιν αὐτὴν θεάσασθ᾽ ὁποῖοι, ἔν τε τοῖς κοινοῖς κἀν τοῖς ἰδίοις. δημοσίᾳ μὲν τοίνυν οἰκοδομήματα καὶ κάλλη τοιαῦτα καὶ τοσαῦτα κατεσκεύασαν ἡμῖν ἱερῶν καὶ τῶν ἐν τούτοις ἀναθημάτων, ὥστε μηδενὶ τῶν ἐπιγιγνομένων ὑπερβολὴν λελεῖφθαι: ἰδίᾳ δ᾽ οὕτω σώφρονες ἦσαν καὶ σφόδρ᾽ ἐν τῷ τῆς πολιτείας ἤθει μένοντες, ὥστε τὴν Ἀριστείδου καὶ τὴν Μιλτιάδου καὶ τῶν τότε λαμπρῶν οἰκίαν εἴ τις ἄρ᾽ οἶδεν ὑμῶν ὁποία ποτ᾽ ἐστίν, ὁρᾷ τῆς τοῦ γείτονος οὐδὲν σεμνοτέραν οὖσαν: οὐ γὰρ εἰς περιουσίαν ἐπράττετ᾽ αὐτοῖς τὰ τῆς πόλεως, ἀλλὰ τὸ κοινὸν αὔξειν ἕκαστος ᾤετο δεῖν. ἐκ δὲ τοῦ τὰ μὲν Ἑλληνικὰ πιστῶς, τὰ δὲ πρὸς τοὺς θεοὺς εὐσεβῶς, τὰ δ᾽ ἐν αὑτοῖς ἴσως διοικεῖν μεγάλην εἰκότως ἐκτήσαντ᾽ εὐδαιμονίαν.

….Now consider what they [your predecessors] were like in the affairs of Athens, both public and private. In their public capacity they raised for us buildings and works of beauty both in temples and in the offerings they contained, of such quality and grandeur that no chance has been left to anyone in succeeding generations to surpass them; in their private life they were so moderate and so loyal to the spirit of the constitution that even if any of you happens to know what the house of Aristides or Miltiades or any famous men of those days is like, he sees that it is in no way more grand than his neighbour’s; for they did not conduct the city’s affairs with an eye to advantage, but each thought it his duty to increase the common good. Because they dealt faithfully with Greek affairs, piously with religion, and fairly in what concerned themselves, they naturally obtained great prosperity.

 

Extract from a speech in 349 BC (Olynthiac III, sections 25 and 26) to the citizens (demos) of Athens by the Athenian orator Demosthenes (384-322 BC) . Demosthenes was citing precedent to encourage the Athenians to defend their ally, the city of Olynthus in northern Greece, against aggression by “the barbarian” Philip of Macedon. Translation from a series by L.A. and R.W.L. Wilding.

Antigone1984:

In 2006 the current British Prime Minister David Cameron, then in opposition, submitted a bill to Parliament, for payment out of the public purse, to compensate him for repairs to his second home in Oxfordshire – he also has a home in London, where Parliament is situated – including the removal of a wisteria plant from the chimney. Following a public outcry over the expenses’ claims of Members of Parliament, he subsequently repaid the money.

Exercise for students of politics: write an essay comparing the public morality of Cameron and Miltiades.

Demosthenes almost certainly made his oration from the bema (rostrum) on the Pnyx hill overlooking the city of Athens. The bema is still there today, albeit not on the mass tourist trail. No politician or student of politics should visit the city without visiting this launch-pad of democracy. See the paean to ancient Athens that we wrote on leaving the city for Paris in June 2012:    Gray Paree

 ——-

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

Posted in Greece, UK | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Adieu la voiture! Adieu la boutique!

Posted on January 6, 2013 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

6 January 2013

“I can sympathize with the French sense of loss at the defeat of the language of Voltaire by the world triumph of the language of Benjamin Franklin. It is not only a linguistic but a cultural transformation, for it marks the end of the minority cultures in which only the elites needed international communication, and it hardly mattered that the idiom in which it took place was not widely spoken on the globe, or even – as in the classical dead languages – that it was not spoken at all. I can understand the retreat of a once hegemonic French culture into an hexagonal ghetto….It is not that this is what Paris wants, but simply that it cannot get used to a state of affairs in which the rest of the world no longer looks to Paris and follows its lead. It is a hard fate to go from global hegemony to regionalism in two generations. It is hardest of all to discover that for most of the world none of this matters. But it matters for my generation of Europeans, Latin Americans and Middle Easterners. And it should matter to younger generations. The stubborn rearguard action by France in defence of the global role of her language and culture may be doomed, but it is also a necessary defence, by no means predestined to failure, of every language, and national and cultural specificity against the homogenization of an essentially plural humanity by the processes of globalization.”

This is a passage from “Interesting Times: A Twentieth-Century Life” (page 336), the autobiography, published in 2002, of the late polyglot polymath Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm (1917-2012), who was born in Alexandria and educated in Vienna, Berlin, London and Cambridge.

Antigone1984:  To pick out just one example of what Hobsbawm is driving at, you have only to read the novel “War and Peace” by Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) to understand the integral place of the French language in the culture and intercourse of the Russian elite in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

——–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in France, Globalisation, Politics, Russia | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Participative democracy

Posted on January 5, 2013 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

5 January 2013

 

“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

 

Comment by Lord Acton (John Emerich Edward Dahlberg, 1st Baron Acton), 1834-1902, in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton dated 3 April 1887. Regius Professor of Modern History at the University of Cambridge, he lectured on the French Revolution. An honorary fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and of Trinity College, Cambridge, he wrote articles and reviews but never completed a book. A Liberal and a Roman Catholic, he defended the whiggish belief in progress. A descendant of Sir John Acton (1736-1811), who was Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Naples under Ferdinand IV, Lord Acton was born in that city.

 

The following remark is also attributed to Lord Acton:

 

“Great men are almost always bad men.”

 

Antigone1984:

This is why the permanent accountability to the people of those holding political office is so important.

In the case of representative government, elected parliamentarians and members of the executive should be required to stand for re-election at any time during their tenure of office at the demand of a specific limited proportion of the electorate. This proportion would have to be determined by the people, of course. We would suggest 5 per cent.

In addition to which, wherever possible, the electorate should be allowed to vote by referendum on major issues (eg a decision to go to war) and lesser matters (eg a decision to approve a bilateral trade agreement).  In other words, decisions would be taken in general by the people instead of by politicians.

The ideal, of course, would be for representative government to wither away altogether and be replaced by recurring local and national referenda. With the advent of the internet, of course, this is already feasible.

Naturally, those currently enjoying the salaries and prestige of office do not want to hear of this. Just as turkeys do not want to hear talk of Christmas.

It will be objected that participative democracy is both expensive and time-consuming. To that we answer: what price democracy? Is it not worth a bob or two and a bit of an effort?

The most efficient polity known to man is merciless military dictatorship.

Is that what we would prefer?

——–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

 

 

Posted in Italy, Politics, UK | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Unrepresentative democracy

Posted on January 4, 2013 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

4 January 2013

Representative democracy is a contradiction in terms. The representatives in question represent not the demos but themselves. They represent not the will of the people but their own self-interest. Public service is a euphemism for personal ambition. The candidate on the hustings promises the earth. Once he/she is elected, the promises are quietly forgotten – until three months before the next election when they are wheeled out again. And the people fall for it every time.

——–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Politics | Tagged | Leave a comment

Wolves in sheep’s clothing

Posted on January 3, 2013 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

3 January 2013

SOCIAL DEMOCRATS: WOLVES IN SHEEP’S CLOTHING

In the developed western world the biggest obstacle to political justice is the existence of the social democratic parties. Having broken completely with the leftwing goals of their 19 C founders, these parties are neither social (an improvement in the social conditions of the mass of the population no longer figuring among their objectives) nor democratic (their policies and organization being determined by a tiny hierarchy of party apparatchiks). The social democratic parties of today – such as the British Labour Party, the French, German and Spanish Socialist Parties and the Italian Democratic Party – are fully paid-up card-carrying supporters of the capitalist free market red in tooth and claw. Naturally, they pretend that this is not so. That nothing has changed (except, where necessary, of course). Having abandoned full frontal opposition to capitalism – why exactly? one might ask – they are now reduced to claiming that their goal is to moderate its excesses. Well, they would say that, wouldn’t they? In order to sell their parties to the public, they have to pretend to differentiate the policies they propose from those of the overtly we-make-no-bones-about-it capitalist parties. However, it is all smoke and mirrors conjured up to mislead the electorate. As we have repeatedly said, Antigone1984 has a simple rule-of-thumb for sizing up politicians: ignore what they say and judge them exclusively by what they do. By this criterion, of course, the social democratic parties have failed abysmally. Since World War II (except for the 1945-1951 administrations of Clement Attlee in the UK), the social democratic parties of western Europe have moved at warp speed to the right to such an extent that they now fully integrated into it. Socialism was jettisoned by Socialist Party leader François Mitterand (French president from 1981 to 1995) as soon as he got his hands on power. The picture is the same in Italy (Bettino Craxi),  Spain (Felipe González and José Zapatero), and Britain (Anthony Blair and Gordon Brown). Germany’s Social Democratic Party has existed since 1890 but since it moved decisively to the right with the adoption of the Godesberg Programme in 1959, the party has put clear blue water between itself and anything resembling socialism.  That being the situation, what (as Lenin asked) is to be done? No mass socialist movements are possible, we believe, as long as the left-leaning component of the electorate is gulled by the specious campaign promises of the social democratic parties into thinking that these parties offer a real alternative to the capitalist status quo. If this analysis is correct, then it is at least arguable that the radical western left – rather than fighting, at this stage, the capitalist parties – should instead focus its efforts and energies on exposing the hypocrisy of the social democratic parties. It is only when the voters have seen through the naked power-at-all-costs opportunism of the latter that they will give serious consideration to a genuine socialist alternative to the capitalists. In line with this view and however paradoxical it may seem at first glance, the aim of the left must be to do all it can to damage the electoral prospects of the social democratic parties. It is a waste of time and elbow grease canvassing the social democratic parties  – as so many leftwingers do – in the hope that somehow or other they will suddenly, against all the odds and in the teeth of all experience, reveal themselves to be valiant paladins of the people, ready and willing to splinter lances against the dark forces of reaction. It is only when the left has broken the back of the social democratic parties that the definitive battle with capitalism can begin.

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 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

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