tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6263577133333272085.post3306939704601047354..comments2024-03-28T11:04:16.315+00:00Comments on Boffy's Blog: Mandela MadnessBoffyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08157650969929097569noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6263577133333272085.post-90879768333992401712008-07-02T21:25:00.000+01:002008-07-02T21:25:00.000+01:00But, what an indictment of the Left! As a Marxist...But, what an indictment of the Left! As a Marxist I accept my share of the blame for the fact that the Labour Movemement is in such a terrible condition. As I have written elsewhere in the 19th century under pretty poor conditions Marx, Engels, William Morris, Julian Harney and other socialists paved the way developed ideas - imagine trying to develop an entire new economc and scoial theory when for large parts of the day all you could read by was a candle! - and by concentrating their attention on the working class were able to bring together and lay the basis of powerful working class organisations all over the world. Organisations that by the beginning of the twentieth century had membership running into millions, and votes running into millions more, when workers took up socialists ideas like milk from their Mother, who attended meetings, and educationals through the Workers educational Association and other such organisations, that had created the Co-operative Movement as a living expression of how a society could work without Capitalists, and which nearly eery worker looked to to supply their basic needs - even when I was a kid everyone went to the Co-op, had their milk delivered by the Co-op and even used the Co-op Laundry. And in the last 100 years instead of taking that Movement forward, we have managed to destroy and udnermine all that work.<BR/><BR/>The Majority of marxists exist in tiny irrelevant sects, that are increasingly remote from the working class they claim to place at the centre of their politics. The idea of Co-operatives which Marx and Engels put at the centre of their vision of how workers could reclaim the means of production and transform society is disdained by most Marxists as "Utopian", because they cling to a vision of revolution a la 1917. <BR/><BR/>We need to go back to those basic lessons and begin again.Boffyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08157650969929097569noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6263577133333272085.post-51879762486899344232008-07-02T20:55:00.000+01:002008-07-02T20:55:00.000+01:00Unsurprisingly, I agree with you. I remember a com...Unsurprisingly, I agree with you. I remember a comrade telling me the real tragedy of Mandela was his spending 27 years breaking rocks for ideas that could never do the job of liberating black South Africans.<BR/><BR/>As for ignorant celebrities, well they're par the course I'm afraid. Set adrift from any kind of "real" existence, is it any wonder they fall prey to crap like Scientology and the Kabballah?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com