The NDP in one shocking word…

The fish

[url=http://www.democraticspace.com/canada2008/2008/10/worn-out-neoliberal-pr... out neoliberal propaganda targets Layton[/b][/url] 

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Dion and Harper repeatedly targeted Layton with an old and worn out quick blast about Laytons so called socialist ideas. Guess what, the cold war is long gone. The neoliberal agenda in the US proved economic failure. Ecuador and several countries in Latin America are understanding now that if they want to help middle and lower class people fight against corporate exaggeration they better unite against the establishment and board room parties.

Dion, is talking about social justice now, but we all know from the past liberal governments he won't be on the working class’ side. He will keep supporting right wing economic ideas, he will continue to give away our natural resources through disadvantageous trade agreements like the FTAA or WTO as they did with Chretien earlier.

The end of neoliberalism?

lt is certainly ill advised to believe our society is static, and  to be making grand predictions about the way capitalism will always be triumphant.

 No one looking at the stock market now really knows what is going on.  No one can predict what the obvously coming economic insecurities will bring us.

 Sure the corporate media can beat the drums for capitalism as they are now, keeping the  NDP slightly  below the Liberals and Tories in voter support. Yet they can't control reality. YOu can only fool most of the people when they have a job. Who knows how long that will last these days?

Stephane Dion's Liberals absained from voting, and in doing so supported the Harpers in 42 non-confidence votes,  and look where we are now.

Canada has de facto conservative majority in Ottawa. Meanwhile the NDP is the most consistent opposition party to the corporate U.S.A.-friendly Tory-Liberal agenda.

brookmere wrote:

 Do you think they should leave half the seats in Queens Park empty or something?

That might prove to be the best thing ever.

Also, I should add that not all leftists are supporters of Fidel Castro, and among those who are, a lot of them are very critical.

genstrike wrote:

Also, I should add that not all leftists are supporters of Fidel Castro, and among those who are, a lot of them are very critical.

So when did you undertake this world wide survey? Most UN countries have demanded that the vicious empire drop the repressive trade sanctions against Cuba amounting to medieval siege. And not all of those countries' leaders are socialist either - just fair minded about democracy and trade and human rights in general.

"Human beings in general and Canadians even more so are rightly seeing themselves much more as capitalists than as workers."

Nobody who understands what the words "capitalist" and "worker" mean could possibly say this, so I assume you aren't in that category. Let me help. "workers" are people who do work. "capitalists" are people who own the surplus value of the work done by others. The lines have blurred slightly in the past hundred years, precisely because of the various reforms won by the blood, sweat, and tears of those same opponents of capitalism that you bizarrely imagine don't exist. However, the distinction is still clear enough.

 If the majority of your income comes from your own labour, then you are a worker. If the majority comes from the work of others (so-called "investments"), then you are a capitalist. These two groups are in direct opposition as naturally as a hunter and its prey. When I take a log of wood and make it into a chair, I create value. I create wealth, but only so much wealth. My one action of making the chair is not infinite in its wealth-generating capacity. So the more a capitalist takes of that value, the less there is for me, the guy who actually made the chair. There is no win-win solution to this. I want as much of the value I created as I can get, and so does the capitalist parasite who owns my product. We will always be in conflict as long as these two groups exist and are competing for the wealth work creates.

Oddly enough, you are inadvertantly on the right track as to the real solution to this mess. We all need to be the same kind of economic creature so that this conflict can end. However, saying we are all capitalists is just ignorant. Obviously the vast majority of us are workers (make most of our money from our own labour) and always will be. It makes no sense to say we are all capitalists because capitalists exploit workers and without workers there couldn't be capitalists. The way of the future isn't no workers. That's nonsense for the hopelessly deluded. The way of the future is no capitalists. Once we are all workers and private corporations are replaced by collective worker-owned co-operatives and all surplus value comes back to the workers who created it, then we will see an end to this conflict.

Fidel wrote:

genstrike wrote:

Also, I should add that not all leftists are supporters of Fidel Castro, and among those who are, a lot of them are very critical.

So when did you undertake this world wide survey? Most UN countries have demanded that the vicious empire drop the repressive trade sanctions against Cuba amounting to medieval siege. And not all of those countries' leaders are socialist either - just fair minded about democracy and trade and human rights in general.

I didn't take any survey.  First, I know some leftists personally who are not supportive of Castro.  Therefore not all leftists are supportive of Castro, especially in the anarchist community.  And I know a lot who give very critical support, supporting him against capitalism but criticizing him, particularly in Trotskyist circles.  If you want to find criticism of Castro from the left, it's out there.

genstrike wrote:

  And I know a lot who give very critical support, supporting him against capitalism but criticizing him, [b]particularly in Trotskyist circles. [/b] If you want to find criticism of Castro from the left, it's out there.

The anti-Castro rhetoric is Trotskyite mythos surrounding perfect revolutionaries standing opposed to revolution that has been hijacked and betrayed by unsavoury power mad monsters (Stalin being the Trotskyites’ whipping boy and who rarely ever mention the "civil" war or Hitler's grand plan for corporate-sponsored lebensraum of Asia and Europe, and eventually global fascism) In their view, all violent and bloody revolutions must be led by corrupted powermongering madmen – that is, all but those perfect revolutions which never seem to happen.

Trotskyites have always been useful to hawks in the US and Britain in that they are reliable allies set against the same revolutions and serving a role to chip away at support for the left in general.

the regina mom wrote:

As have the NDP, at least in SK, where the NDP government garnered front page headlines for its "historic transformation of economic policy." What did it transform?  Well, it got rid of Keynesian policies and policy wonks which effectively shut down the Women's Secretariat.  And who gave it the praise?  The one and only, Fraser Institute.

But the big ticket neoliberal items, FTA, scrapping FIRA, signing NAFTA, GATS, privatization of money supply to bailout our deregulated banks,  and our big five banks financing foreign takeovers of 30-some key sectors of Canadian economy - all that was down to Liberals and Tories in Ottawa where federal purse strings are. 

Benoit wrote:

Work is only a painful distraction from politics. Work has been invented by the wealthy to keep the mass out of the real game. The real game is the politics of rent-seeking and rent-sharing. The little gains unions of workers have made were by mimicking capitalist rent-seeking monopolies. The gains made by unions are therefore gains made in a "zero-sum" game where the consumers are the losers. 

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking

Okay, first off, some work is necessary in order to make society function.  Even after the revolution, people will still have to work (although probably with much reduced hours) in order to provide for our needs, keep the water flowing, the food coming in, the sewage going out, and the healthcare system operating.  

The reason work under a capitalist environment was invented by wealthy capitalists was to enrich themselves by exploiting the labour of others.  That is all there is to it, and it is the basis of our system of exploitation.

And I find it funny that you mock the gains made by working people organizing into unions.  Like weekends?  Thank a union.  The problem is that these gains are getting constantly rolled back.

And consumers are the losers?  Give me a break.  Are you arguing for the elimination of the gains made by workers in order to benefit the consumers, when the consumers are workers themselves?

genstrike wrote:

Whether you agree with the criticism or not, my point was that it is out there and not all leftists uncritically support Castro.

And my rellies once grew green roses for market gardening. So what?

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And I'm talking to the only person who uncritically supports both Fidel Castro and Gary Doer.

I think there are people who try to blur the line between uncritical support and those opposing points of view shared by right-wing ideologues. I find those "centrist" and "pragmatic" views tend to be influenced by the political right for the most part. 

 So from your point of view, Canada's rightwing federal Liberals of 1993 to 2006 get a free bus pass for robbing billions from social transfers, and signing us all up for neoliberal agendas like GATS, and even though they signed us all up for the dumbest free trade deal in the history of the world placing restrictions on public ownership and "unfair subsidies."  Because in spite of all that recent history, things could be peachy in Manitoba if it wasn't for Gary Doer's provincial NDP. Doer will be your whipping boy regardless of the facts.  No need for you to to attempt any more feeble explanations. We get it now.

The same magic bus makes stops in other threads as well. Apparently everything wrong in Canada can be traced to Gary Doer's Stalinist NDP, and now the docs Duvalier, Fidel, and even Batista. He can red bait all he wants, and I won't deny anything under torture of his banal notes.

Benoit wrote:

- The work that would still be necessary in a sane society is so little that it's pathetic to speak about it. I don't tell everyone when I clean and maintain my body.

There is actually a lot of work by other people that goes into just cleaning and maintaining your body.

Lets start with cleaning your body.  So, you step into the tub which was made by workers, and turn on the showerhead which was made by workers.   You reach for the soap, which was made by workers.  The plumbing in your house was installed by a worker.  The city's water system was made by public sector workers.  And workers are working at the water treatment plant making sure that water is clean.  And don't forget the wastewater treatment plant either, to get rid of the used water.

And what if you are out of shampoo?  You have to get in your car or on your bike, which was made by workers, get on the road which was made by workers, go to the store built by workers, grab the soap which was stocked by workers, go to the checkout... you get my drift.

I do agree that we would see vastly reduced hours (I hope a 4 hour day and 4 day week isn't too optimistic),
but unless you are a primitivist, it is difficult to argue that that
work is going to be so little it is pathetic to speak about.  And even
if the work is a very small amount, it still needs to get done, and it
will still be an important part of our lives.

Benoit wrote:

- Consumers include everyone, children and adults,
non-worker and workers. A revolution has to benefit everyone without
forcing everyone to become workers.

I agree.  And a revolution which eliminates the exploitation of the working class will benefit everyone (well, except for the bourgeoisie, whose gravy train will come to a sudden halt).  Furthermore, nearly everyone is a worker at some point in their life, generally for at least 35 years, so a revolution would benefit nearly everyone.

Benoit wrote:

Fidel wrote:

And Canada's two oldest political parties have acted as enablers of the rent-seeking neoliberal agenda for almost 30 years with: FTA, NAFTA, GATS, and 175 repressive pieces of labour legislation enacted since 1982.

Seeking a regulation to protect a national industry from foreign competition is a classic case of rent-seeking.

We know. The Americans violate trade agreements all the time, especially when they tell us to shove our softwood lumber where the sun doesnt shine.

And what of these bank nationalisations and bailouts in the US and around the world? What about unfair subsidies affecting trade? We might as well abrrogate NAFTA now for all its worth. Six months later Canada and Canadian companies could be free to trade with the rest of the world as per truly free market rules.

And since FIRA was scrapped, over 30 key sectors of Canada's economy are now foreign-owned and controlled, and mostly by Americans. Mel Hurtig estimates that Canada's banksters financed perhaps two-thirds of the nearly 12, 000 foreign takeovers of Canadian industries and valuable crown assets since 1985, and using Canadians' savings in the process. 

And Canada does have a national energy policy, except that it's being dictated to us from corporate America, that most wasteful and most oil-dependent economy in the world. 

And no other rich country has allowed a third as much foreign ownership in manufacturing as Canada has - a point of neoliberal ideology being driven home to Canadians as we continue to bleed good paying jobs, and estimates of several hundred thousand more full-time jobs will be lost in the next few years to look forward to. What's afta the Liberals' NAFTA? SPP? TILMA? Deep disintegration with that basket case of an economy south of us? God help us.

Benoit wrote:

Because humans are inventors much more than workers, we have to say that there are a lot of alternative methods to produce and distribute paper tissues and, more importantly, there are a lot of alternative ways to clean one’s nose than paper tissues.

Hate to break it to you benoit, but everyone is a worker whether they are an inventor or other. Unless of course one has inherited wealth and has done nothing but be waited upon.

Ya, we could use a hankerchief, but of course then we would just transfer all those workers hands to the production, creation, manufacturing, and dispersing of them too. There really is no other alternative way to clean ones nose, as frankly leaves and bark make my nose break out into sores.

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"watching the tide roll away"

Iran?

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"watching the tide roll away"

LMAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, you are just too funny and inconsequential benoit, entertainment value is high, though at first I made the mistake of thinking you were actually serious.

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"watching the tide roll away"