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The Anti-Water Alliance Is A Bourgeois Movement.
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bin tax / household tax / water tax |
opinion/analysis
Tuesday October 14, 2014 11:40 by Paddy Hackett
One Issue Campaigns Are Not A challenge To Capitalism Single issue demands such as the movement against water rates hold back the class struggle by suggesting that capitalism can continue in the absence of these charges or taxes. This is because such demands are not embedded in a programme of an interlinked series of demands that challenges the capitalist system.
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Comments (8 of 8)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8Good luck going toe to toe matching propaganda with the capitalists Paddy!!
They own/control all the newspapers, most of the main internet sites and the state broadcaster
(and pretty much every other broadcaster on the sky EPG. They got rid of Press TV and RT is under pressure.)
Western capitalist military exceptionalist propaganda permeates everything in society. Every episode in every tv series, every video game, every advertisement, every blockbuster movie. Even the very use of language in every newspaper article and most of the books printed. We are immersed daily from dawn to dusk in a veritable bath of propaganda. How can you hope to match that Paddy?
Like I say, best of luck there. I believe it's just not possible to have either revolution or for that matter anything even approaching real democracy as long as the propaganda is so all pervasive and strongly controlled by the capitalist / militaristic elites. In fact these days, it's hard to even have a conversation about this kind of thing without being quickly slapped down by one of your brainwashed fellow slaves as a "conspiracy nutter" or some similar witty epithet. After a certain time we begin to repeat and reinforce the propaganda memes amongst ourselves. We become our own jailers and the lies become the fabric of our very own Orwellian false reality. You could probably even refer to it as "the matrix"
So Paddy (or is it neo?) are you "the one"? ;-)
I jest, but the reality is grim. Our environment which sustains us and our very lives are at stake here and it's actually not funny at all.
Now I don't have much time for disinformation jockeys like Alex Jones but the term "Prison planet" often seems rather apt.
Paddy never had a connection with ordinary day to day struggles of workers.
He is totally divirced from the reality of class struggle and how engaging in that battle wins you an audience for your ideas.
Time to reform the Revolutionary Trotskyist Group .
Most people who were there at the water march would probably not want to read your article, it's too high-brow and as previous comment suggested - the not very real world analysis of a theoretical dissident. Most people know that Capitalism is only serving a small minority, but they don't expect to bring the system crashing down. They will settle for what they can actually achieve instead of dreaming about a non-capitalist world. |t would be great if the whole system was gone, but how do you get rid of it? What do you replace it with - anarchy?
The Fourth International, like the First, Second and Third that preceded it, has run its course. It seems that polemicists can't catch the attention of the general public. Maybe it's time to consider a Fifth International? For such a new enterprise to gain clout with the punters, the small scale farmers and low income wage earners, the language of its vociferous promoters would have to avoid split infinitives, hair splitting and sectional ideological splits. Splittists end up as tiny mutual admiration clubs, generating loud noise and getting a deafening response from a bored public.
some info on 4th international for those who don't know what this is:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_International
What are your views on this Paddy?
Paddy founded the Revolutionary Trotskyist Group, now lost in the mists of time. It had 3 or 4 members. Amazon has a copy of their paper on sale.
Workers' Action Unknown Binding – January 1, 1981
by Revolutionary Trotskyist Group (Author)
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Unknown Binding
Publisher: Revolutionary Trotskyist Group (January 1, 1981)
ASIN: B009A6RMFQ
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It's not that I disagree with Paddy about the need to usurp capitalism before it's too late
if the ecosystem and the human race are to survive at all longer term in a dignified way.
I'm just pointing out that they control the means of propaganda as well as the means of production
with an iron fist at the moment, and that makes educating the masses about the true nature of capitalism
as a system an extremely difficult if not hopeless task for small groups of revolutionaries. And those small groups
squabbling amongst themselves and undermining each other seems all the more stupid and frustrating in the face of this.
The people are getting some information leaking out through the internet but even that is liberally mixed up with misinformation
and disinformation, (often planted by the paid agents of capitalism) which helps to discredit anything embarrassing that may emerge. Of course they can rely on a loyal media to ignore, spin or attenuate damaging facts and stories too.
It's not that a communist system working in the best interests of the people and the environment instead of serving the greed of the 1% as is currently the case for capitalism is not a more desirable state of affairs. It just seems a distant fantasy at this moment in time.
@ KM
That's useful footnote stuff for the curious. I call it political archaeology, the slow digging up of shards and other relics from a long lost political miniculture.