Bashar

Last time it was all about fucking with Happ's shit. But it's nothing personal, I don't hassle him when he posts on DVDVR.

In terms of you not getting an answer, yeah I did stop responding to you because I was engaging with other people and I thought your points were a bit pedantic. If I had unlimited time, I would have certainly debated with you further but my priority was Happ. Sorry about that.

You didn't answer my question at all.

Horseshit.

I assume you disagree that our society is either 1) a democracy, 2) essentially liberal or 3) a capitalist economy. Perhaps you could explain which one, in your opinion, is wrong.

I answered you, but if you somehow missed that - I stated that 1) was deeply questionable, 2) false except as propaganda and 3) increasingly true in the Marxist sense, but false in the sense of free markets actually existing.

You waffled on about the history of the liberal movement in the 19th and early 20th century, which is all very interesting as Rosegarden pointed out, but not particularly relevant. And you presented, as you acknowledge, no alternative description.

Description of what? I didn't map out an entire alternative political system? Oh yeah, silly me - easy five minute job that.

You've completely missed the point of what I've been saying. Not everyone did.

without actually engaging fully in a debate.

And you're not interested in, or more accurately probably incapable of understanding, any kind of debate that doesn't accept your terms of reference. Terms of reference that completely privilege your liberal position. As soon as they start getting questioned incisively it's 'Soviet Russia' this and 'David Icke' that - with a side portion of spell-check pedantry. Adult stuff. Yea.

but when I pointed out some actual facts and figures,

I critiqued the ideological underpinnings of your assessment. That's political discussion. It's completely reasonable to say that this had nothing to do with capitalism. If you don't like that, then critique my position. Referring to my words as woolly isn't doing that.

Basically you're completely outmatched here and so you're going to keep resorting to name calling no matter how well I address your points - and I have addressed everything you have said. I couldn't give a shit if everyone around here thinks I'm strange.

So rather than just leave this thread as a succession of you replying to your own posts, I thought I'd try and move on.

But rather than critique what I said in response, you decided to revert to this. Yeah, okay.

Are you now replying to yourself!?

Best way of guaranteeing intelligent political debate. But I did answer your question also, as you requested - so if you were even a vaguely honest about a willingness to debate you would at least have acknowledged that.

Oh.

A-anyway, moving on from the strangeness above.. what do people think of the debate today on universal benefits vs targeted ones? The coalition was planning on removing the child benefit from those in the higher rate tax band, however they've (only now!) noticed that this will create 'unfair' anomalies around the cut-off, and are backing away from it.

 

I find it fascinating that it could actually be cheaper to pay a universal benefit than try to target it.

They never genuinely planned to implement it. More neoliberal dishonesty a la 'we're all in it together'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/wintour...ne-davidcameron

Their lack of grip on reality caught up with them.

Classical liberals did not give too shits about the poor. A better deal for the working classes came about for a few reasons - not least the realisation that most of them would not be fit to fight, if needed, in a war. Another was the Labour movement. The modern welfare state was created out of the unique opportunities presented by the aftermath of World War II.

 

The Germans had been building welfare programs in the 1840s (i.e. even before unification), partly out of paternalist ideology and partly to prevent immigration to America - but also partly to produce a nation capable of going to war.

 

America had the 'New Deal' in the 1930s, in response to the Great Depression (i.e. market failure). Neoliberals have been determined to prevent this happening again, with great success, so my inkling is that it will more or less take another world war to generate enough political will to rebuild social democracy - and I'm not even sure that it would be enough.

Despite the 'liberal reforms' being primarily motivated more by political expediency than genuine concern for the poor, there was, within the Liberal Party, nonetheless a general shift from classical liberal ideology towards a more pragmatic approach that recognised the need for active government. This shift culminated in 'The Yellow Book' of 1928 and their 1929 general election manifesto largely written John Maynard Keynes and pretty much stayed in place for the rest of the century.

The Orange Book, written by hedge fund chairman Paul Marshall, David Laws, Nick Clegg &c, is, by their own admittance, a reclamation of 'classical liberalism'. When asked about 'The Yellow Book', Paul Marshall

admitted he hadn't read the "very dull" Yellow Book until this summer and called it a "book of very narrow scope ... an intellectual retreat from economic liberalism."

The current Libs want to party like it's 1879.

Alan, this is all very interesting and coherent - I'm not really sure what you're saying, though.

I guess I'm trying to clarify what liberalism is, and what it isn't. But being interesting and coherent is enough; I don't have to present an alternative grand narrative.

Classical liberals did not give too shits about the poor. A better deal for the working classes came about for a few reasons - not least the realisation that most of them would not be fit to fight, if needed, in a war. Another was the Labour movement. The modern welfare state was created out of the unique opportunities presented by the aftermath of World War II.

The Germans had been building welfare programs in the 1840s (i.e. even before unification), partly out of paternalist ideology and partly to prevent immigration to America - but also partly to produce a nation capable of going to war.

America had the 'New Deal' in the 1930s, in response to the Great Depression (i.e. market failure). Neoliberals have been determined to prevent this happening again, with great success, so my inkling is that it will more or less take another world war to generate enough political will to rebuild social democracy - and I'm not even sure that it would be enough.

Alan Hill... I think we've got your number... I think we've got the alias... that you've been hiding under.

???

I've never pretended I'm not Alan Hill.

I don't run sock-puppet accounts. Mo thought I was joethelion, but it's not the case. Years ago, a bunch of people thought 'Alan Hill' was the creation of Dean Ayass.

Classical liberals were, and neoliberals are, at least somewhat suspicious of 'democracy'. Classical liberalism holds that individual rights are natural, inherent, or inalienable, and exist independently of government. This is the classic 'republican' position. They would balk at a system that taxes income at 52% above

Someone (and if it's who I remember it being, in light of his recent EVERYTHING IS CYBERBULLYING attitude, it's kinda funny) posted a thread that didn't stay up very long anyway, because a bunch of people - me included, it might surprise you to know - found the whole thing pretty mean-spirited, and the whole "internet detectives delve into real lifes" thing is shit, and frowned upon by mods anyway. This was roughly a billion years ago, and happened for about ten minutes, so I barely recall it.

Okay. Well that's interesting and illuminating, in a throws up as many questions as it answers sort of way. Ultimately there was a mod having a titter about it the other day.

Of course, it's the fetishisation of private property that is the sickest perversion of them all.

Yeah Stuart Millard, back for a Legends Run. I was back when I called you on slandering the recently deceased the other day too. I'm waiting for evidence of my bro hanging around foot fetish websites.

 

 

Posts that old don't exist anymore. But I remember it happening also. Not foot fetish specifically.. but some kind of fetish website. Him getting caught out was funny, because of his general intolerance.

Okay. What exactly is supposed to have happened, if you can recall? I'm fuzzy on how one would be 'caught' in the performance of such an activity.

But I'm not really interested in debating with you after that ludicrous outburst

 

Hey everybody, Alan Hill's back!

 

Ah.

It's AH.

Oh, and Bilderberg.

I'm actually happy to debate this with you, but you need to stop being a weirdo about it. You might make more sense if you stopped trying to be patronising at the same time. Fair enough if you're not a conspiracy nut, but for example I don't think its sociopathic to not think that society has failed.

 

From your last LOL I assume you disagree that our society is either 1) a democracy, 2) essentially liberal or 3) a capitalist economy. Perhaps you could explain which one, in your opinion, is wrong.

Loki, if you stop throwing epithets around like 'weirdo', 'loon' &c then I will discuss the matter sensibly. My wish is not to be patronising but when you come out with stuff like 'I don't see your point, so you must not have one' and call me communist, a conspiracy theorist and what not - it's asking rather a lot of me not to at the very least patronise you in response. When you act like a grown up, I will treat you like one.

Equally, if you go back and answer what your belief in the enduring stability of 'liberal-capitalist-democracy' is based on - then I will answer yours.

Or don't. It's cool, really.

Yeah Stuart Millard, back for a Legends Run. I was back when I called you on slandering the recently deceased the other day too. I'm waiting for evidence of my bro hanging around foot fetish websites.

The liberal tradition is alive as propaganda, it's completely dead as a serious grown-up ideology.

But I'm not really interested in debating with you after that ludicrous outburst

Our society is a combination of a democracy founded on liberalism, and a capitalist economy

I'm not trying to have it both ways but nor am I interested in you're false dichotomy. You say I'm taking a very black and white view of things, but then you're the one who has presented this dichotomy.

 

It's your.

 

I'm not sure what you're on about here, and I suspect you don't either. Thesaurus-swallowing sentences aside

 

Yeah I basically lost interest in anything you had to say at that point.

 

And I'll stop debating with you after this towel-throwing as well.

 

I was trying to be nice and allow you to discuss in a civilized manner, but you're displaying signs of being a loon. Underlying your point, I suspect, is a great big dollop of conspiracy-theory paranoia about "them" working to undermine society and turn the world into some sort of global-elite driven superstate. I expect you'll use the word "sheeple" at some point too. You're using the term "ideology" the same way people use the term "Bildesburg".

And when being accused of being a communist doesn't stick, you get called a conspiracy theorist. Lame.

John Harris is more eloquent than me:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/20...st-common-sense

If you haven't read Sir Ian Blair's Guardian article endorsing plans to privatise many of the functions of the police, you ought to. It reflects two iron rules of the relentless drive to outsource and marketise the parts of the state that have so far been left alone: first, that mindboggling policy extremes tend to be recast as matters of simple common sense; and second, that nothing suits those who would dissolve the barrier between state and market like a crisis, which is the essence of what Naomi Klein famously called the Shock Doctrine.

 

I am not accusing Blair

I'm not trying to have it both ways but nor am I interested in you're false dichotomy. You say I'm taking a very black and white view of things, but then you're the one who has presented this dichotomy.

 

It's your.

 

I'm not sure what you're on about here, and I suspect you don't either. Thesaurus-swallowing sentences aside

Yeah I basically lost interest in anything you had to say at that point.

Yes, the government interference is part of the system - it's just not part of the ideology. And as the ideology slowly but surely eliminates the government interference from the operation of our society, so the systems collapses. The system doesn't continue, it gets replaced. It's a very simple point really. If you don't get it, that's cool and all, but you might want to entertain the idea that there are people who have thought this stuff through a little more than you.

The only state in recent history to operate without significant government interference is Somalia. I'd rather live in Cuba than Somalia, but its an academic point really. I'm not a communist sympathiser. The fact that Russia has been so extensively brought up illustrates exactly the reason that liberal ideology triumphs over social democracy and thus destroys the (broadly) successful mixed economy. You even suggest that liberal ideology is vaguely flawed, and you get called a communist. That's the basic problem, in a nutshell.

I admit the liberal-capitalist era has brought significant accomplishments, but the contribution of state interference to those accomplishments is denied (or at least completely underplayed) by neoliberal ideology. The success of neoliberal ideology therefore leads to the failure of neoliberalism, or at least failure as somebody who isn't a sociopath would define it.

I'm not trying to have it both ways but nor am I interested in your false dichotomy. You say I'm taking a very black and white view of things, but then you're the one who has presented this dichotomy.

The world hasn't started having free and open markets. That's all just rhetorical bullshit. Liberalism is alive as an ideology, it's just crap at explaining how things really get done.

Russia, China, Cuba????? Black-and-white views you say?

But seriously, what makes you think that the correction will see a return to social democracy? Other than blind faith?

I am not interested in labelling myself as left-wing, or right-wing, or liberal or socialist or anything else. I just see which way the wind is blowing.

That's almost entirely due to state and inter-governmental intervention though, fuck all to do with capitalism really. Markets did not build that infrastructure, though the money-men, their friends and useful idiots will lobby to get it placed in the hands of capital once it has been built. In the future, people will have access to clean water - lots will just not be able to afford it. Neoliberalism fails to recognise this as an issue.

Markets are good at doing certain things, but they're actually pretty rubbish at long-term investment and research. That's been okay (sort of, well not really for a lot of people but nevermind that for the moment), because the forces of social democracy, organised labour etc have checked (and so in actuality, enabled) the markets. But as market ideology rids itself of its shackles, this is becoming less and less the case (e.g. market deregulation causing the whole thing to fuck up). And the market will destroy itself or enable a very dystopian future. Not that the former scenario will be pretty in the least of course.

Oh you should. Bizarre mixture of antique shops and chavs. Never seen anything quite like it.

No doubt, but

How much has capitalism done in terms of providing people with easy access to clean water, Gladstone?

 

I never said it was clean. Never been to Dorking, have you?

Never had the pleasure. Apologies if I've missed your point, it's just that I'm not aware of the free-market creating a working water supply and sanitation system. I am also aware that water scarcity will become an increasingly hot topic in the coming decades.

Oh dear.

The era of capitalism did not start when people starting trading.

Obviously 'failure' is a subjective term. Capital-Liberalism was a progression from the feudalism that preceded it, Marx very explicitly recognised that. It's a failure in the sense that it cannot succeed as a permanent, stable 'end of history' system. I think that's becoming abundantly clear.

How much has capitalism done in terms of providing people with easy access to clean water, Gladstone?

David Starkey is a cunt but he didn't really say too much that I disagreed with there.

Zizek is right to say that we need to completely revisit our simple, often rather childlike notions of freedom if we're ever to progress from the failed capitalist system. Not sure how likely that is though. The liberal tradition is alive as propaganda, it's completely dead as a serious grown-up ideology.

The reason why I wonder about whether it's really a sectarian thing, rather than sectarianism being used as a pretext to continue an inexplicably venomous rivalry in football, is because of the Edinburgh clubs.

 

As I understand it, Hibs are Catholic and Hearts are Protestant, right? Can someone in the know elucidate as to why the Edinburgh rivalry doesn't seem to be anywhere near as hateful?

Celtic and Rangers are usually competing over the prizes? Anyone who's read some Irvine Welsh knows there is definitely tension there.