quibbler247@yahoo.com (quibbler) wrote in
news:MPG.1f974fde53007fda989773@news.readfreenews.net:

Well duh, the government makes decisions for people all the time.
It can draft you into the army.

And you see no problem with that?

You're just another wannabe authoritarian thug.

Good luck.

In article <1160676323.553288.324730@m73g2000cwd.googlegroups.com>,
drkangel666@hotmail.com says...

quibbler wrote:

In article <1160571334.725928.61570@k70g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
drkangel666@hotmail.com says...

StarbladeEnkai@Excite.com wrote:

Since the rich are always at war with the poor and middle class,

* P L O N K *

Avoiding reality?

The sad thing is that this guy is probably poor or middle class
himself,

Possibly, but most of them tend to be in the managerial class, and they
have a vested interest in the status quo even though they are only the
servants of capitalist owners. You would probably call that 'middle
class'. As such I have no problem understanding their ideological bias.

That doesn't really explain the situation because the interests of the
middle class are still very different than that of the rich. Sure, they
might be used to kissing the big boss man's *****, so I can understand them
pretending that they give a ***** whether their boss's boss up top gets
his wages capped. But seriously, how would it affect middle management,
except positively, if the wages of CEOs were capped at several hundred
times minimum wage levels?

What I don't understand is why someone who claims to be on the Left

You mean me? I have sympathies for the Left in many cases, but I'd
describe myself as a pragmatic centrist.

It just so happens that most of
the policies of the theocratic reichwing are so ridiculous that one must
support Democrats, for example, to get things done politically at the
moment. But what I would like to see is for the moderate centers of the
democrats, republicans and greens, etc to break way and form a "Centrist"
party in the US leaving the other, traditional parties out on the
fringes, where they belong.

would run into the arms of the state when history has shown
continuously that the state has always been on the side of the rich,

The rich always squeeze certain concessions out of the state, but many
states, particularly in scandanavia, have not been overly solicitous to
the rich.

that in fact the rich are rich because they ARE the state

No, usually they first have to bribe and co-opt the state, which takes
money to begin with. In any event, even if there were a general
historical trend, that doesn't mean it has to continue that way. Reform
is possible and even half measures are often better than nothing at all.
You might we trying to build some utopian society, but I'll settle for
just making it a bit better than I found it.

, and that
every time someone came about with plans for a political (read:
electoral) solution to the poors' needs (instead of the social
revolution) the poor have been betrayed,

Again, that hardly makes it inevitable, even if your generalization were
true (which hasn't been established). We can do better this time. We
have freer forms of communication and more educated people than ever
before. It's just a matter of setting prudent, doable goals and
anticipating ways they can become co-opted, so that this doesn't continue
to happen in the future. One general strategy is to keep the
establishment off guard by not trying the same tactics they are
expecting. For example, I believe that the US should allow popular
referendums on federal laws. For example, if people want pot legalized,
then we would just have a ballot item at the next election cycle that
asked the people to choose. Despite the fact that pot is very safe and
has many medicinal benefits, legislators are too cowardly to overturn
marijuana prohibition on a federal level.

Only the people can do that.

the people they brought in
power became the new upper class, and nothing changed.

Because you are relying upon a representative democracy which can be more
easily co-opted than say plebicites.

Big business exists BECAUSE of the state.

All businesses need the state to exist. Big business eventually tries to
use its money and power to control the apparatus of the state, to win
special concessions for itself. But the state can control big business
and make sure that they don't get too powerful (or too rich) in the first
place. That's what things like anti-trust legislation are about.

The welfare state was
designed entirely to fulfill the needs of big business. I have known
enough people on welfare to see the daily indignities visited upon them
by state bureaucrats, because welfare in general is not designed to
resolve the social question but as a way to stave off popular
discontent and to provide a cheap pool of labor to business interests.

If that were true, then why does big business fight it so much? I think
you have your causality a little off-kilter. Big business does exploit
people on the lowest social rungs because they know these people are easy
to manipulate. But, to a large extent, the social safety net, minimum
wage, collective bargaining, college financial aid and other programs get
in the way of big business's desire to make these workers utterly
subservient and dependent upon them. Clearly it hasn't been enough,
largely because these safeguards have been eviscerated in the last few
decades. But that is correctable by aggressive and innovative policy.
Think of public policy as a form of technology which seeks to make
society run more smoothly. The right technology can solve just about any
problem, but it's tricky to find the right technology to do the job and
to prevent unintended side-effects.

That's always the balancing act.

Every time a so-called socialist (or worse, a 'progressive', i.e. a
technocratic free-market liberal with a guilt complex) has been elected
in the history of the Western world, his or her first act has been to
betray the workers and compromise with the business elite to make them
understand that no real change was going to occur.

They will often say that, to ease the concerns of the monied classes, but
there have been many reformers who still improved the general conditions
for the middle and lower classes. From the new deal to people like
Caesar Chavez (or Hugo Chavez) there have been plenty of times that
people have made positive social changes without betraying the working
classes.

The reason for that
was, of course, the constant threat of a business-sponsored coup

And or assassinations. But the government can provide reasonable
security to politicians, if they are careful.

Your own scheme for a maximum wage is a ludicrous form of compromise,

No, it's a first step in the right direction. What I find ludicrous is
the "all or nothing" thinking so common on the left and right fringe.

as you still bow down to the masters to acknowledge their rights to own
the commons as their private fiefs.

It's swinging the pendulum back. It's more symbolic than anything, to
remind these assholes that they really don't have the kind of control
they think they do.

You are going to go to them and ask
them politely to refrain from *too much* thievery, and they're going to
laugh you out of the building because there is no way that you are
going to win an electoral victory when the very machinery of state is,
and always has been, in the hands of the very robber barons you want to
put on a leash.

But you make several faulty assumptions. First you assume that these
folks are always carefully watching. Often times they are not that
vigilant. They are content to let the little peons elect whomever they
wish in the belief that it won't make much difference one way or another.
But charismatic leaders, like FDR, can change that. Secondly, you assume
that these people are competent. So are, but many are congenital morons
like George Bush or Paris Hilton who inherited their money and aren't
worth a ***** in terms of personal merit.

The solution is revolution.

And Fabian revolution comes from within, using the system against itself,
brother.

It involves creation of a libertarian and
anti-hierarchic alternative organisation to state power

By any name it will amount to the same thing. It will still be
government. Libertarianism is well-intentioned, but utterly hopeless
nonsense. It's primary problem is that it mistakenly assumes that it is
possible to have an economic system independent of any political system.
In fact, no economic system would be workable without some prior
apparatus of the state.

(neighborhood

councils, workplace councils, unions, community groups),

I.e. a government, more pluralistic and decentralized perhaps, but still
a government.

and its
(armed) protection against the inevitable strike from reactionary
forces.

Yet another standard unit of government: police and military forces.
Just accept the fact that bad government, not government in general, is
the problem. By moving in the right direction we will pull others with
us and perhaps then some form of revolution will have a chance of
succeeding. But it will only usher in another type of government,
hopefully more benevolent than the original.

In article <1160676323.553288.324730@m73g2000cwd.googlegroups.com>,
drkangel666@hotmail.com says...

The welfare state was
designed entirely to fulfill the needs of big business. I have known
enough people on welfare to see the daily indignities visited upon them
by state bureaucrats, because welfare in general is not designed to
resolve the social question but as a way to stave off popular
discontent and to provide a cheap pool of labor to business interests.

If that were true, then why does big business fight it so much?

From the new deal to people like
Caesar Chavez (or Hugo Chavez) there have been plenty of times that
people have made positive social changes without betraying the working
classes.

(neighborhood

councils, workplace councils, unions, community groups),

I.e. a government, more pluralistic and decentralized perhaps, but still
a government.

and its
(armed) protection against the inevitable strike from reactionary
forces.

Yet another standard unit of government: police and military forces.