baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Would say you are exactly right about that. The thing with Reich is that he never had the luxury of doing a career end retrospective summing up, 'cos of the FDA case. So you have to kind of piece it together. I get most of this from my friend Peter Jones - he has a book out, I'll send round a PM, see if you're interested. Part of it is also is that he was incredibly intellectual restless and kept moving at a pace that ouutsripped everyone around him, for all of his life.

Was listening to this last night - the podcast is put together by a guy I started following 'cos of Syria stuff. Was pleasantly surprised to hear, in the talk he plays, Reich's Mass Psychology evokved as essential for understanding Trump. It's absolutely germane to this thread in that "what the Right gets right" is an intuitive understanding of the affective, emotional power of politics, the theatre of discourse:
Not really, cos I've been so busy with MA. One striking thing to me is EDMR - the techniques are exactly the same as the beginnings of classical Reichian therapy - eye movement. The founder has turned it into a whole discipline in itself, though Reich's work implies a "repatterning" of the whole body. It's suggested that you begin with the eyes first and gentials last as the sexual fear we all have is so strong it can really fuck things up if unleashed too quickly. My therapist described the eye work as kind of developing an "anchor" into reality that you could hold onto, when some of the heavier stuff is unleashed.

Sorry Danny, I only just saw this. Definitely interested in hearing about that book from Peter Jones. Following on from what you say, there aren't many thinkers who are that interested in being inter-disciplinary, so those that are tend to be incredibly important.

Will take a listen to that podcast, sounds interesting, thanks.

I didn't know about the link between EMDR and Reich, makes a lot of sense. I'd always veer towards the more generalist/holistic approach in that situation - concentrating solely upon one area of the body seems very useful but not sufficient, and presumably EMDR is far more effective for some people than others, hence some of the criticism of the approach (from a quick internet search)
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
Cheers dude. I'll do a post in the sales section and perhaps PM a few likely candidates and get some sort of order together.
 

vimothy

yurp
Here we are, 1986 study based on 1983 data of pretty much every socialist country at the time.

All the metrics are better. Staggeringly so in some cases.[/TWEET]

this study has a couple of flaws

the first is that there may be some relationship between being high income and not being socialist (a relationship which seems common sense to most people)

the second is that this study is a snapshot comparing differences between countries at a particular point in time and ignoring differences between a country and itself over time

e.g., consider a country that yesterday was high income, today is medium income and tomorrow is low income (or vice versa) ...
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
the first is that there may be some relationship between being high income and not being socialist (a relationship which seems common sense to most people)

(i) I think there are far more obvious issues that bind together countries with high income than their system of government [uninterfered-with wealth in natural resources, or colonial wealth/advantages].
(ii) There's a very obvious thing that binds together those countries with the lowest levels of income in the world. Again, nothing to do with their internal systems of government.
 
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Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
In response to Tea, you might also like to look at what the world's most underdeveloped countries have in common, and then get back. It ain't communism.

Well obviously, but I wasn't talking about the difference between the third world/global south and Europe - I was talking about different countries within Europe. My point is that "Why is Denmark richer than Poland?" is still a reasonable question, and "Because imperialism" is not an adequate answer. Ditto the difference in level of economic development between Austria and Hungary, which were part of the same polity until 100 years ago and fought on the same side in WWII, or, even more starkly, between the former West and East Germany.

(Actually, "Because imperialism" is perfectly cogent answer if you consider that imperialism is by no means something that only Western and/or capitalist countries engage in, and that central and eastern Europe was subjected to Soviet imperialism for nearly half a century.)
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Well obviously, but I wasn't talking about the difference between the third world/global south and Europe - I was talking about different countries within Europe. My point is that "Why is Denmark richer than Poland?" is still a reasonable question, and "Because imperialism" is not an adequate answer. Ditto the difference in level of economic development between Austria and Hungary, which were part of the same polity until 100 years ago and fought on the same side in WWII, or, even more starkly, between the former West and East Germany.

(Actually, "Because imperialism" is perfectly cogent answer if you consider that imperialism is by no means something that only Western and/or capitalist countries engage in, and that central and eastern Europe was subjected to Soviet imperialism for nearly half a century.)

You're flitting between arguments here. My point was in response to this:

"if you look outside the UK, there are countries like Ireland and Finland that are also highly economically developed - more so than the UK, in some respects - and which not only didn't have empires of their own but were the imperial possessions of other countries until only about a century ago. What the most developed countries have in common, whether they were colonisers or colonies, is that they weren't under the control of communist governments for much of the last century."

You say "well obviously", but it doesn't seem obvious to you at all that it is precisely (neo)imperialism and economic/political pressure that has made Western countries rich (and as we've discussed, not just those who were direct imperialists, but those who benefited indirectly). Because you keep denying, in various ways, the magnitude of the impact of Western imperialism, and just how much it has benefited from destroying growth elsewhere in the world. This is why it's maddening to have this conversation. You spent ages alleging that immigration to rich countries happens because those countries are somehow run in a superior way, without seemingly any knowledge of how poor countries have undergone a systemic regime of impoverishment at the hands of those very same rich countries.

What is your position, exactly? State it clearly and then we might get somewhere.

Re the US and USSR: The US bloc and USSR bloc were at war with each other, for goodness' sakes, economically as well as politically. The US won. That doesn't prove anything about the relative efficacies of capitalism and socialism or communism as systems for internal national governance. Might as well argue that the US system is better than Sweden's because one could pulverise the other in a fight.
 
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baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Um, only if you believe that simple income figures are the only metric on which you can compare. That's like believing that Trump is a business genius because he's the son of a billionaire (or whatever it is). Or that Qatar must be a wonderful place for all because it has the highest GDP/capita in the world.

All the study was purporting to show was that the idea that capitalism leads to a higher (physical, in this case) quality of life, is specious. Of course, dividing nations into socialist and capitalist is only a broad guide, given the massive, life-changing differences between many societies dubbed capitalist, for example.

All I was saying above is that the richest countries in the world are all either (i) systematically profiting (directly or indirectly) from the plundering of poorer countries, both in the past and in the present [the latter much less publicised, obvs] (ii) recent beneficiaries of natural resource wealth that has not been subject to colonial plundering (or only marginally), for various reasons. You can't draw any conclusion from that about the value of internal systems of government, although plunder and systematic bullying of poorer nations (especially by supposedly 'international' bodies) massively clouds the issue of what constitutes 'success'.
 
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baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
It would help things enormously if people were to declare what they actually believe rather than skirting around the issue.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
What is your position, exactly? State it clearly and then we might get somewhere.

OK, to boil it down to one sentence:

"Capitalism is fuelling massive economic inequality, erosion of human rights and an environmental crisis, but historical reality shows that communism is not preferable as an alternative, so we need to think past this simplistic and unhelpful binary."

That simple enough?
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Um, only if you believe that simple income figures are the only metric on which you can compare. That's like believing that Trump is a business genius because he's the son of a billionaire (or whatever it is). Or that Qatar must be a wonderful place for all because it has the highest GDP/capita in the world.

Clearly that would be very simplistic and unhelpful. A good alternative might be a measure of income inequality, given the importance of wealth levels relative to other people to perceived quality of life. Most of the countries with the low values for this parameter are in central, eastern or northern Europe, and are either social democracies with a mix of nationalised and private industry or are ex-Soviet member states (but notably not Russia, which has higher inequality than the UK), although these are also less wealthy in general. Whereas Cuba, for instance, has a Gini index of 38, ahead of the UK's 34 and not far off the USA's 41 - so what wealth they do have is about as unequally distributed as it is in any given (much wealthier) developed capitalist economy. And Venezuela scores 47.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
OK, to boil it down to one sentence:

"Capitalism is fuelling massive economic inequality, erosion of human rights and an environmental crisis, but historical reality shows that communism is not preferable as an alternative, so we need to think past this simplistic and unhelpful binary."

That simple enough?

Ffs! Spoken like a true centrist. I didn't ask what you don't believe in - I asked what you do believe in.

It's all very well to say "Capitalism is fuelling massive economic inequality, erosion of human rights and an environmental crisis", but then maybe you shouldn't act like a cheerleader for the status quo, and so perturbed at a study that suggests that relative standards of wellbeing might be better under other arrangements (rather than saying that's interesting, not sure whether I believe it all, but worth a conversation where I don't damn it in the first sentence)?!

Moreover, capitalism is not merely fuelling massive economic inequality, it is constructed on it, indistinguishable from it.
 
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baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Clearly that would be very simplistic and unhelpful.

That was my point! Jesus wept.

And of course Russia has higher inequality than the UK...how could it possibly be otherwise given the recent historical context of open theft on an unimaginable scale?

And as for Venezuela (Gini coefficient there is from 2006, presuming we're looking at the same stats) - of course it's really high, and this predated Chavez. One or two elections won't change the fundamental wealth inequalities in a country. However, during Chavez's presidency, things did get better on a number of metrics - massive reductions in extreme poverty, reductions in child malnutrition, etc.

Maduro seems to be pretty fucking awful, operating a kleptocratic presidency, but installing a US-backed president just gives power back to the rich whose awfulness triggered the Chavez victory in the first place, with an imperialist role for America to siphon off wealth.
 
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Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Ffs! Spoken like a true centrist. I didn't ask what you don't believe in - I asked what you do believe in.

Lol, well let me just write a manifesto for a totally new political and economic ideology that solves all the problems of capitalism while avoiding the drawbacks of authoritarian state-socialism in my lunch break. Maybe you can do the same and we can compare notes? :rolleyes:
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
Lol, well let me just write a manifesto for a totally new political and economic ideology that solves all the problems of capitalism while avoiding the drawbacks of authoritarian state-socialism in my lunch break. Maybe you can do the same and we can compare notes? :rolleyes:

But that's why you're frustrating to read. There isn't any kind of prexisting position or set of interests that you're building on so what you write, when you are arguing with people who do have those interests, it comes over as just glib dismissals. It does kind of read like it's written on your lunch break tbh. "Can argue tediously on Dissenus 'til 1 - then back to the grindstone.." I haven't even been involved in the poltical arguments in this thread but I just find, even as a bystander, replies like the one I quote incredibly exasperating.
 

john eden

male pale and stale
Lol, well let me just write a manifesto for a totally new political and economic ideology that solves all the problems of capitalism while avoiding the drawbacks of authoritarian state-socialism in my lunch break. Maybe you can do the same and we can compare notes? :rolleyes:

You've been doing this for years though. At this rate the icecaps will all have melted before you have anything positive to propose.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Well I wrote down a bunch of stuff that I think is good a couple of pages ago, didn't I?

"Can argue tediously on Dissenus 'til 1 - then back to the grindstone.."

Come one now, Dan. We all cope with the tribulations of capitalism in our own way.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Lol, well let me just write a manifesto for a totally new political and economic ideology that solves all the problems of capitalism while avoiding the drawbacks of authoritarian state-socialism in my lunch break. Maybe you can do the same and we can compare notes? :rolleyes:

Again totally and determinedly missing the point. And indeed, any kind of honest discussion. No point rolling eyes either if you can't understand a simple request - I didn't ask for a solution to the world, but instead for you to declare what is at stake for you in this discussion. And that seems like a request that you can't answer.

Ironically of course, what you allude to above (a readymade solution to the world) is precisely what you're demanding of anyone else before you'll engage, and have been for the past 20 pages.
 
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DannyL

Wild Horses
Inventing a time machine so we can travel back to 1945?

But I'd respect this more. If Tea was in the Ken Loach Re-enactment Society, at least that would be a position!

You did indeed mention what you liked a few pages back, and it's not dissimilar to some of poitions I find myself arriving at. But I'm first to admit, I have no real "skin in the game" here, and this is largely "reactionary" in the sense that I'm reacting against/appalled by the Left and the Right in this country so find myself yearning for some kind of sensible politics - I wouldn't be surprised to find out it was the same for you. Are you deeply committed to this position? If so, why? Who have you been reading? What experiences have inspired it? Or is it just that you are are smart enough to cobble together a position under a bit of rhetorical pressure but that's about it?
 
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