Michael P writes:
>Can't say I'm a very happy left social democrat,
Why ever not?
>but in the absence, of a mass, radical democratic left, I'll take working
>in the >less reality impaired precincts of the social democratic swamp.
Try draining it.
>At least they have read and thought and organized, more successfully in
>>bourgeois democracies than your crew has.
"Successfully" -- I like that. Presumably meaning they made it to the
fleshpots of government. Great intellects like Ramsey McDonald, great
killers of workers leaders like Ebert, great voters of war credits to
Prussian Junkerdom like Kautsky, great removers of civic rights from
colonial citizens like Harold Wilson, great drinkers like George Brown,
great witch-hunters like Willy Brandt, great defenders of public property
and welfare facilities like Lange/Douglas, great sellers of cannons to
India and concealers of bribes like Olof Palme.
With socialists like this, who needs tories?
I almost forgot that adorably well-read, well-thought and well-organized
connaisseur of the EU fleshpots, Neil Kinnock. And the defender of the
Greek Junta and the US slaughter in Vietnam -- oh dear, he was so memorable
I did go and forget his name -- the one with the eyebrows.
They've adapted so successfully to bourgeois democracy in fact, that
they're outdoing the bourgeois parties in their attacks on civic rights and
basic living standards, the unemployed and the poor.
Oh, and we really can't pass over the ethical Robin Cook, the butcher of
Kosova, and bugger-lugs, his master, or the ineffably pre-eminent Jack
Straw, who so successfully organized Gusano Pinochet back to his
carrionized nation and away from the bourgeois courts of Europe -- now that
was a reality-oriented measure if ever we saw one, not a single phrase of
fake leftist triumphalism from those lips.
Of course, if Gusano Pinochet had shot a few bourgies, in Doug's charming
words, we'd have never heard the end of it. But fortunately for the
Social-Democrats of the world, he didn't, only loony lefties and the odd
American political tourist.
Cheers,
Hugh
PS Doug's being castigated as a left authoritarian could have two reasons.
The first is understandable -- it's his history of tailing the CPUSA,
evidenced on this list by his defence of the good old days of the party in
the 1950s. The other is probably more relevant if MP is representative of
the intellectual milieu there, and is merely the fact that Doug does
occasionally make reference to Marx and his ideas in his arguments, and can
quote the man accurately enough to show he's read him.
PPS I'd like to hear what Mike's take on Market Socialism is, now that the
obligatory sparring is taken care of, and to learn what the deeply read,
thought and organized SoDs of the world were doing about introducing a
sensible, reality-friendly socialism in Russia and Eastern Europe in the
1990s. The Swedish SoDs, for instance, were only interested in getting
Swedish companies set up in the Baltic region as fast as was humanly
possible -- oh, and teaching the benighted heathen the mechanics of Swedish
bureaucracy -- how to swing a gavel at a meeting.
Hugh
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