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Abu Ghraib, America, Babushkas, Bolsheviks, capitalism, Communism, Czar, Guantanamo, Lenin, Russia, Siberia, Socialism, Stalin, Trotsky, UNHCR
.May we just ponder what Trotsky said back in 1937 and Quote:
But all those for whom the word ‘Socialism’ is not a hollow sound but the content of their moral life – forward! Neither threats nor persecutions nor violations can stop us! Be it even over our bleaching bones the future will triumph! We will blaze the trail for it. It will conquer! Under all the severe blows of fate, I shall be happy as in the best days of my youth; because, my friends, the highest human happiness are not the exploitation of the present but the preparation of the future.”
— Leon Trotsky, ‘I Stake My Life’, opening address to the Dewey Commission, 9 February 1937 [60][61]
We know that the Socialist-Communist system of workers getting a fair share of the pie didn’t quite work out. The pie grew fatter and richer but the portions were still unequal. There wasn’t any tom- sauce with it either. Some did not get any pie. The mean Stalin and his gulags with Siberian winters and the Babushkas wheel barrowing the frozen bodies of sons and husbands out of trenches were not the rewards that Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin) promised the world’s peasants while he was roaming around London during 1902-1906. Nor did the highly idealistic Trotsky envisage coming to his end with an ice pick embedded in his brain many years later.
The failure of communism has been expanded upon by many historians, writers and students of political science. The general idea was that Russia would get rid of its Czars and that its long suffering peasantry would rise up, change and revolutionize the status quo. The poor would gain their share and the rich lose much of their share. They would finally chuck off the shackles of the Czar’s imposed grinding poverty, be given plots of land and everybody would share. The hammer and sickle, a symbol of the alliance of workers and peasants finally bringing riches and tickets to freedom.
The idea was noble but the execution of it was marred by wars and power struggles between those that meant well and those that didn’t. The result was the inevitable implosion of the ideals matched with an equal rise of opportunistic tyrants. The whole sorry saga of its failure was due to infighting and relentless squabbling by those seeking power and control. The counter revolution against the proletariat was taken over by power hungry future proletarians. And so it went.
In another part of the world, freedom of expression and the right to rewards for individual efforts were being trail blazed by cowboys on horses and cowboys behind the wooden steering wheels of T-.Model Fords. Westinghouse fridges soon followed. Everybody was also given the freedom of a gun to protect all that hard-won glorious liberty as well.
God bless America. Land that I love, Stand beside her, and guide her…To the oceans, white with foam…My home sweet home
. And so on… And America kept on dreaming. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_Bless_America
Millions still believe that today, but many more are getting a bit skeptical as well. Despite its Constitution enshrined freedom and the protection of that by gun and law, there are more prisons in the US than universities, more incarcerations per capita than anywhere in the world. America’s poverty is growing, expressed by the millions living in the over 35000 trailer parks and even more millions of sick and disabled without a health insurance.
Can we still say that democracy and capitalism is working in the US and other developed countries? Is it still the success it was so enthusiastically touted many years ago, today? Globally, there are signs that the promised wealth is getting bigger but into fewer and fewer hands. Somewhere I read that some individuals are so rich, they own as much as the GDP of entire countries. In fact, many probably own entire countries.
The level of poverty in many undeveloped countries is as bad as ever. Millions still have to walk for miles to get a bucket of water or scrape together enough food to keep their children from dying. The idea of rewards for individual efforts doesn’t seem to have spread to those.
In Australia the richest man now owns more than he could possibly ever spend or use up, even if he ate stone crabs at $60.- a claw, for breakfast, lunch and dinner with a 1952 Grange Hermitage (at $ 12.500 a 375mls bottle) and drove a brand new Ferrari every day.
What’s more, his riches have come compliments of resources that I thought belonged to Australia and therefore to all of us. How can that be right? This single individual could supply Australia’s entire Mental Health budget at present about 100 million a year for the next 40 years. That’s just one individual’s wealth against tens of thousands of sufferers with Mental Health problems for forty years. How did the spreading of goodies pan out in such an unfair manner>.
http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2011/s3164029.htm
Let’s not be jealous, but the top 10 wealthiest in Australia now have a kitty of over $27 Billion. Could we reflect also, that the richest man was also the most vocal in opposing the resource tax not long ago? A bit rich, don’t you reckon? The latest sad news for the majority of those on wages and paying fair taxation is that there is a promise in the air by the present Government for the big companies to even pay less taxation in the future. Hoorah, I can hear the top ten richest roar in unison; pop the champagne once more…
Is there an answer to this seemingly endless inequality in sharing that which we all own?
The second largest economy, China, seems to have propelled its population to a better life for hundreds of millions astonishingly fast. Yet, it has achieved this as a Communist country with a Communist Government. The people seem happy; they talk on mobiles, wear jeans and go to nightclubs. Sure, there are issues of human rights. We have our human rights abuses as good as anywhere. The unresolved, year in year out struggle we have dealing with boat people at detention and ex-army camps, the plight of indigenous people. The UNHCR points this out repeatedly. The US was no saint with the abuses at Abu Ghraib and the ongoing Guantanamo Bay detention camp with over two hundred people still languishing without trial for years. We are on shaky grounds if we cast stones or call for black kettles to Communist China on that ground.
Perfection is elusive, none more so than in political ideologies. In our own domestic world, the greens no doubt will offer some hope for a better future world. The liberals are hell-bent on sending the world into an environmental death throe. Labor will have to make up its mind to lead or dither.
Window Dresser's Arms, Pig & Whistle 
I was really taken with a radio interview I heard a few weeks ago on the ABC. They were talking about alternative energy sources, and the specialists’ opinion was that they were all viable, but would need a massive investment in infrastructure, and that was what the governments baulked at. Better to stick with the system you know than the emerging one.
It made me wonder if a great number of our systems operate in the same way; the existing one despite it’s flaws is already set up and therefore can keep running more cheaply than making a new one. Is democracy still here because of this resistence to change? Is the problem that we can’t think of a better system? Or that we don’t want to make the change necessary to move to another.
Good article Gerard. I can see that Unleashed leaves out a lot of excellent and interesting stories, and the selection of material is what makes it seem a little narrow.
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I agree, a great article, which should be shared with a larger audience, not just us amiable piglets. I think ABC has cut it’s nose orff to spite its face, by refusing to publish the writing of amateurs, such as Gez. I had emailed them last year offering to write something about health and disease, but they didn’t even bother to tell me to go and get f#^%ed!
Yes, Lehan, systems. They are weird things that seem to develop their own personas, sometimes good, but, almost always bad. Often the way things are done are based on someone’s personal choices or attitudes from long ago. Sometimes we need to break through and make a better system from within.
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Too much here. Some of the most scandalously rich people in the world are Chinese. Some of the poorest are too.
Some people are artists, some people are sporty……….And ……..http://listen.grooveshark.com/#/s/Some+People/1N1v1L?src=5
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Very thought provoking article, Gerard… Do you think it might get a guernsey over at the drum?
🙂
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Thank you for your kind praise.
Sending articles to the Drum is a brutal experience which only the most hardened of contributors might survive in or overcome. I did send this one twice, but know when the courtesy of a reply is denied, it will not see the daylight. It is their way of saying,”NO”. You don’t even get as much as a comma.
It is a strange manner or way of dealing with people.
I have on numerous occasions send articles to English editions of Dutch newspapers and ALWAYS get a reply and acknowledgement and a ‘thank you.’. It is far more normal.
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FWIW, The failure of common politenesses in modern business are a sign of the times, Gerard: the social element which used to be an integral part of any business dealing has now been deemed not worth the effort, even though something as simple as a ‘thank you’ or other minimal acknowledgement of your existance and your effort can mean so much to people… at the very least it means being treated as a PERSON, and not as a ‘money-making unit’… and that makes all the difference, I think.
😉
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I sure feel it a strange way of dealing with contributors. I suppose in the IT world, everything gets down to a minimum of words or symbols and a reply or a courtesy of reply is deemed as superfluous.
Many people are still nice though, the ABC Drum mob might just be somewhat exceptionally rude or insensitive.
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Re: Australia’s richest man, Mr (Twiggy) Andrew Forrest has somehow managed to come across as someone deeply interested in the welfare of indigenous people. I have never accepted his benevolence or kindness knowing his past adventures with alpaca importations and past history as director& chairman in previous mining companies. He has recently lost a court battle and is not allowed to chair his own FMG.
Cop this:
Please cut and paste into your browser if the link below doesn’t take
you straight there.
This is an amazing video of a meeting called by Fortescue Metals Group
(“Twiggy” Forrest) where FMG “bussed in” a splinter group of Aborigine
people, not of the local (affected) Aboriginal people, to conduct a
carefully scripted “Meeting” to grant almost unlimited mining in a huge
area of the Pilbara (W.A.) for about 100 years. You will see the
‘outsiders’ (bussed in) being registered, the failure to allow frank and
open discussion, etc – including one of the white team not allowing an
Aboriginal spokesman to have access to the microphone. An
Anthropologist and a lawyer working with the local group protest at the
process being used and lack of discussion/transparency, but FMG take a
vote after nearly all the local people have walked out (and their lawyer
has declared this fact for the record). Then the FMG promotional team
declare it a successful process, after getting a show of hands from the
“outsiders” bussed-in group!
This is a film which could be of international interest, regarding how
some mining companies treat local aboriginal communities. It has it
all! – a 95 year old elder, a woman who appears to think that Jesus will
take care of it all (in essence), the Anthropologist, the company
representatives and the lawyers. The amount of land they are speaking
of having these mining rights over (without further recourse by the
local indigenous people who own the land), would make people in Europe,
say, who are unaccustomed to the scale of Australia, gasp.
Please pass on if you wish to. (SC: if you think appropriate, your
mailing list members may be interested, too?)
Sorry, this link might work better.
http://www.crikey.com.au/2011/04/13/video-of-twiggys-superb-meeting-with-native-title-group-taken-down/
> http://vimeo.com/21871850
>
>
>
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Just watched the video Gerard. They are trying to be a law unto themselves and what I saw there was shocking. Why isn’t this on the front page of The Australian and everywhere else for that matter.
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I doubt you’d see this on the front page of The Australian. The vimio link has been removed though there is a link to youtube via crikey. I’ve worked with a company that had very little difficulty dealing with Aboriginal people and respected their land when laying pipelines through their country.
THis was more a few Perth boofheads enforcing their way on a local comunity a offering a few beads in return.
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I know, Algernon, I know – but, it should be news everywhere. It got one mention on the ABC website and disappeared soon after. Pathetic.
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Well said Gerard
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According to a recent Princeton study, most of America’s millionaires and billionaires are most afraid for their wealth at precisely the time they are making the most money; and that this apparently unfounded fear drives them to even greater risks as they try to strive to keep their personal profitability chugging along in double digits.
It was the conclusion of the researchers that this seemingly illogical fear was a primary contributor to the onset of the GFC.
I watched that movie “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps” the other night. Not a bad flick at all, and it had one deathless line from Josh Brolin who plays a rapacious wall street robber baron. He was asked, having just made a killing in the market, a sum so mind bogglingly large, a googolplex of dollars that would satisfy a small nation’s aspirations, “What will you do now? What is there left to want?
He answers simply, “More.”
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It IS a well-written op piece, Gez. And it’s a problem.
For most of my conscious life I’ve seen dealing with inequality of the distribution of wealth as a political problem and I was disappointed that attempts to curb the excessive accumulation of wealth under massively-greed driven capitalism have failed as miserably as they have.
Maybe we should just accept that naked self interest is in everyone’s DNA and that good and ethical people manage to keep it under control. Important to remember that even organisations like St Vincent de Paul have massive internal power struggles – amongst people from whom we might expect better.
I dunno whether it’s better to view the field as Niall Ferguson does – the rise and fall of Empires. When things get so bad that fighting to the death is an option, then people will take that option, turn over the incumbent Empire – based on … personal greed and access to power. Surely history is littered with empires that rose over long periods and crashed over short ones. America is just the next in line.
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And the frozen soldier pic…. is stunning in the bad sense. It takes me back to the un-put-downable “Stalingrad” by Antony Beevor.
The gut wrenching story of a massive evil smacking up against an unmoveable resistance (itself a massive evil). Death, extreme cruelty, suffering and deprivation on a scale never seen before or since. IMHO the turning point of WWII in Europe.
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Very well written Gerard and comprehensively spot on.
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Viv, I liked this one too, he ought to send it to The Drum Opinion 🙂
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Now that IS a thought. Would certainly stir certain people up, good and proper.
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