This piece by Vandana Shiva lucidly sums up much of what I feel; but then so did Russell Brand's so called 'irresponsible' polemic in favour of a somewhat vague revolution which i find speaks for me as well ....
it does seem to me that socialist and communist ideas and values have been very successfully blackballed by the Right, the Plutocrats and their Financial and Corporate chums .... politicians who in the 1950s or 60s would have been , though left wing, be seen as mainstream would now be 'branded' [pun intended] as dangerous loonies or worse .... the great irony of the 21C is that with the Cold War done with a people centred ideology is no longer even permissible in our politics .... it is also my view that the left of the 70s and 80s trashed the cause so successfully that it remains a truly daunting prospect to revive socialist ideas ...
but my chum in the USA says, and he has a point, that reviving reall capitalism is truly daunting; the markets are rigged, the corpocrats and plutocrats control the politicians and the flow of thinking; the rich scare the political discourse with gay marriage'abortion/gunss [and in uk the european/immigrant/ stuff] in order to not pay tax essentially; the Tea Party is as much a Front Organisation as any in the grim times of the Cold War, it exists and is funded to keep a few billionaires' $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ in their pocket not the State's .... er ditto here i think
the current Free Thinking looks and sounds like a distraction from the real world for the intelligentsia ... the freest thought in the UK right now would be a 95% tax rate on all income over £150k! imagine the reaction to any such proposal seriously made by a politician ... [never mind the deficit/bank perils/social need/&c] the freedom of thought is only tested in our present moment by how dangerous it is for the plutocrats and elites ... ecstasy and mogadon don't cut it, never mind how well those two oxymoronic terms encompass the current Radio 3!
it does seem to me that socialist and communist ideas and values have been very successfully blackballed by the Right, the Plutocrats and their Financial and Corporate chums .... politicians who in the 1950s or 60s would have been , though left wing, be seen as mainstream would now be 'branded' [pun intended] as dangerous loonies or worse .... the great irony of the 21C is that with the Cold War done with a people centred ideology is no longer even permissible in our politics .... it is also my view that the left of the 70s and 80s trashed the cause so successfully that it remains a truly daunting prospect to revive socialist ideas ...
but my chum in the USA says, and he has a point, that reviving reall capitalism is truly daunting; the markets are rigged, the corpocrats and plutocrats control the politicians and the flow of thinking; the rich scare the political discourse with gay marriage'abortion/gunss [and in uk the european/immigrant/ stuff] in order to not pay tax essentially; the Tea Party is as much a Front Organisation as any in the grim times of the Cold War, it exists and is funded to keep a few billionaires' $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ in their pocket not the State's .... er ditto here i think
the current Free Thinking looks and sounds like a distraction from the real world for the intelligentsia ... the freest thought in the UK right now would be a 95% tax rate on all income over £150k! imagine the reaction to any such proposal seriously made by a politician ... [never mind the deficit/bank perils/social need/&c] the freedom of thought is only tested in our present moment by how dangerous it is for the plutocrats and elites ... ecstasy and mogadon don't cut it, never mind how well those two oxymoronic terms encompass the current Radio 3!
Comment