tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post4316101442395398254..comments2024-03-29T17:12:19.648+13:00Comments on Bowalley Road: One Cheer For Democracy.Chris Trotterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09081613281183460899noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-53702987867849348012020-06-18T14:06:10.894+12:002020-06-18T14:06:10.894+12:00Hi Jens, where did I say we could do without capit...Hi Jens, where did I say we could do without capitalism? More importantly can you define what is meant by capitalism as it seems to come in so many flavours such as financial, corporate, statist, petit bourgeois, merchantalist etc. Nick Jnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-65896404371708536872020-06-16T21:48:24.708+12:002020-06-16T21:48:24.708+12:00Hahaha Nick J - the truth is that no one not ai...Hahaha Nick J - the truth is that no one not aiming to be a parasite completely living "off the fat" of others and not wanting to produce any (surplus) oneself, can do without capitalism.<br />Can you please give us an example, or describe a way of life without the basics of capitalism ?<br />How could you survive without it?Jens Mederhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17304734497662325275noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-18482539594892014382020-06-16T16:05:53.238+12:002020-06-16T16:05:53.238+12:00To: Greywarbler.
My profuse apologies for inadver...To: Greywarbler.<br /><br />My profuse apologies for inadvertently deleting your comment on Rudyard Kipling.<br /><br />Please send it again.<br /><br />Chris.<br />Chris Trotterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09081613281183460899noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-9101331061503181662020-06-16T06:14:57.097+12:002020-06-16T06:14:57.097+12:00Extraordinary Chris. Caught between Scylla and Cha...Extraordinary Chris. Caught between Scylla and Charybdis were we? Did our freedom under a Keynesian reign rely upon the misery of those caught under totalitarianism? Very Faustian as a social calculation.<br /><br />Fukuyama declared the end of history with Liberalism as the final ascendancy. What I have seen is not the challenge of populism as you describe it leading the way. What I have seen is popular discontent amongst the classes impacted by open borders. What I have observed is popular discontent about the morphing of social / sexual boundaries from not only men but women as well, a Liberal trend that challenges what they see as normal. Is that toxic? Or is it a to be expected reaction to fundamental change being forced down their throat? <br /><br />When I hear accusations of sexism, homophobia, racism etc I'm old and wise enough to not jump to conclusions. Fast change I know causes reaction, resistance. Imposition causes resentment, opposition.<br /><br />To label opposition to progressive political movements as "populist" is to miss the point. They are popular for the good reason that they are not being listened to by the progressives nor the power structures. The irony of this is that capital as in the corporate empire who own the media etc are happy to go along with progressive politics because it doesn't threaten them in the slightest. Divide and conquer as ever. Capital had no problem getting into bed with fascism. Today they have no problem getting into bed with progressive politics. On your knee for BLM and Bill Gates everybody, it's today's raised arm. Nick Jnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-11240544206425947192020-06-15T11:15:16.777+12:002020-06-15T11:15:16.777+12:00Len Richarson - you still have not understood, ...Len Richarson - you still have not understood, that on the economic level - in a post hand-to-mouth surviving hunter-gatherer way of life - there is no way of life without capitalism, defined as saving and using capital for security reserves and useful (profitable) investment for trading and improvements in productivity.<br /><br />According to this basic physical, tangible and measurable truth (you are welcome to challenge that statement with evidence of an explained alternative) -<br /><br />on the economic level so called Communism is nothing but totalitarian State Monopoly Capitalism, subject to exactly the same natural laws of physics which cannot be altered by human action or ideology - as the most imaginary theories on speculative stock market trading capitalism.<br /><br />Universal individual participation in the creation and personal ownership of tangible capital (beside what we have through the investment in our education already) would help to overcome our socio-economic split into haves and have-nots more effectively than what social welfare alone can achieve.Jens Mederhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17304734497662325275noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-76786986719159818482020-06-13T18:08:48.633+12:002020-06-13T18:08:48.633+12:00This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.greywarblernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-62105699157814887462020-06-12T22:04:01.413+12:002020-06-12T22:04:01.413+12:00Some more details about Sutch and events in his li...Some more details about Sutch and events in his life.<br /><br />It should be noted that in 1940 German warships were in NZ waters and political sensitivity was high.<br />* 19 June: The liner RMS Niagara is sunk by a mine laid by the German auxiliary cruiser Orion off Whangarei. She was carrying British gold destined for America.<br />* German surface raiders operated in New Zealand waters in 1940 and 1941, sinking four ships.<br /><br />Sutch appears to have been too advanced in his thinking and foresight for the little-minded political seat-warmers. He was under surveillance for <br />anything to do with Russians and the spooks were paranoid about him. (It appears that the Brits were so vigilant to shift attention from their own failure to pot the spying of the 'Cambridge Five'. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/oct/23/mi5-mi6-coverup-cambridge-spy-ring-archive-papers<br /><br />From a Russian report: 'They describe how Burgess alone handed over 389 top secret documents to the KGB in the first six months of 1945 along with a further 168 in December 1949.' https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-28143770<br /><br />The intelligence sector and self-interest of our right-wing pollies and allies may crush the life out of us if we are not careful, seeing what happened to progressive moves in Sutch's time.greywarblernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-6355145633864253672020-06-12T22:02:57.788+12:002020-06-12T22:02:57.788+12:00I'm reading about William Sutch by Tim Bolling...I'm reading about William Sutch by Tim Bollinger. I think the article is relevant to now. The description of depression-era right-wing politician Forbes I think indicates why we cannot lift ourselves to first-world status as a people. After all we only manage to stay in the race now by selling off our collateral housing, and borrowing on paydays to enable those on deliberately depleted low wages to get by for another week.<br /><br />https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0806/S00104.htm | Jun.9/08<br /><i>New Zealand in 1933 was a simple, conservative society - about to undergo radical change. A weak coalition government held on to power by its teeth in the face of growing unemployment and a wave of popular dissatisfaction. Michael King describes the Prime Minister of the time, [United/Reform Coalition], George Forbes, as "the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time": "...a bull-necked farmer from Cheviot who had captained the Cheviot rugby team...tough and stubborn but not inspiring."...<br /><br />Oct.1933 The same month Sutch began working in Coates' office [2nd Minister of Finance], helping to devise the economic changes needed to bring New Zealand out of its slump. Sutch planned the milk in schools scheme and helped set up the Reserve Bank, allowing government to control the value and availability of the national currency. This enabled later reforms like the housing programme and the guaranteed price system.<br /><br />The measures were radical but could not save the Forbes-Coates administration. The Government was toppled by a Labour landslide at the 1935 election.<br /><br />The leaders of the first Labour Government were self-educated Socialists drawn from the ranks of the trade union movement. Prime Minister Michael Joseph Savage "radiated amiability" and became the acceptable public face of radical reform. His second-in-command, and Prime Minister on Savage's death in 1940, was Peter Fraser - a humourless Scotsman, intelligent and capable but "bereft of charisma"...<br /><br />Sutch travelled the world with Nash [Finance Minister Walter Nash]. On a Government mission to London in 1937 they attended a meeting of the Imperial Defence Committee from which it was later believed that information was 'leaked' to a Communist newspaper. The suspicions of Britain's security service, the MI5, fell on Sutch. While in London he was reported to have visited leading officials of the British Communist Party and joined in a street march in support of the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War.<br /><br />The New Zealand delegation disregarded Britain’s suspicions. Nash stood by his advisor, but from this time successive British governments are said to have supplied secret information to New Zealand with the proviso that Sutch not have access to it...<br /><br />Now well known as a writer, Sutch was asked to produce a history of New Zealand's social services for the centenary celebrations of 1940. The book was declined publication by Government on three separate occasions, despite one entire rewrite that the author completed in a matter of weeks. They were considered too political. <br />W B Sutch - Prophet Without Honour originally appeared in WHITE FUNGUS magazine.<br />Tim Bollinger is a Wellington, writer, painter, and comic artist.</i><br />greywarblernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-61762843136241768692020-06-12T19:50:50.405+12:002020-06-12T19:50:50.405+12:00Without freedom of speech we are finished. It wort...Without freedom of speech we are finished. It worth dying for. My father's (he was too young) brothers knew this when they put their lives on the line in Greece and Crete and the Pacific 80 years ago. They were fiercely independent and proud of their country until death finally took them 30 years ago. Marathonomachoi.<br />Trev1https://www.blogger.com/profile/00271717267778957672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-2611847417319601812020-06-12T16:03:49.316+12:002020-06-12T16:03:49.316+12:00The significance of the October 1917 Russian revol...The significance of the October 1917 Russian revolution has never been understood or acknowledged.<br />You are right to point that the existence of an alternative non-capitalist great power (Soviet Russia and the other "communist" countries) gave the workers in the West another arm and leg in their class-struggle for justice and better conditions of work and social welfare.<br />Fear of the possibility of capitalism being overthrown in Europe and America was the driving force for Keynesian "managed capitalism"; the great transformation described by Karl Polanyi. <br />The actuality and potential for worker-led revolution was the knee on the neck of capital. Len Richardsnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-3695740512687969552020-06-12T07:32:47.752+12:002020-06-12T07:32:47.752+12:00The woke war on human nature continues.The woke war on human nature continues.John Hurleynoreply@blogger.com