Firstly, before I deal in modern movements for change and democracy,I must talk briefly about dialectics. Dialectics as per Karl Marx teaches the interdependence and interrelationship of one to the other. Hegelian dialectics insofar as it stands in opposition to Marx preaches the permanence of certain social and political phenomena whereas Marx repeats after Aristotle that nothing is permanent and "All melts into the ether."
Marxism in our times is confined to small groups of political amateurs and sociologists so what has talk of Marxist dialectics led to other than rude and robust responses to oppression by the class conscious worker and poor man and talking shops for rich dilettantes?
It does well to remember the comely maidens and fireside generals and country wiseacres who pontificate,"Extremists cannot agree on anything for more than ten minutes together without it ending in catcalls or in them insulting one another." One anarchist agitator related to me if memory serves me right,"All of them including some democratic socialists like other people to do their job for them as they do in China but not in Vietnam. Vietnam is founded on respect, fair play and hard work. China and Vietnam came to blows for that very reason in 1978".
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Some advice then...
Readers,beware of the company you keep when you have an interest in the world beyond your door. Most people have such an interest. Beware of being used by the anti-Marx,anti-Hegel hurlers on the ditch. They are fit only to be shot with their own dung. They are everyone's friend and none.
Lenin in 1921-22 discovered the need for economic adjustments and that which the St. Petersburg famine of 1919 made clear and the collapse of nationalised trusts in April 1918 demonstrated even earlier. (Earlier again,the example of the War Industries Committee in England in April 1916 and the subsequent growing labour unrest in Britain. Ditto, the impossible demands made by German state capitalism on workers in August 1917 and early 1918).
The labour movement and trade unions in particular can not be bought off with flimsy promises and empty rhetoric. If Lenin had wanted to refresh his memory in 1919 he should have read his own oppositionist article "Soft words don't butter parsnips" (1905).
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A quick transition from revolutionary socialism (or 'War Communism', requisitioning) to democratic socialism (or,what I call revolutionary democracy and real communism) with that reform communism being understood as more advanced in the years from 1917 to 1922?
In 1922 in launching the New Economic Plan,Lenin acknowledged that which distinguishes revolutionary socialism from reform communism, namely real individual freedoms to breathe and possess in the latter scenario. This was not a step backward as he imagined,but a step forward. Socialism or the New Economic Plan has a private ownership dimension. War Communism, armed commonality,tried to ignore the desire to possess.
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The nationalised state industries of that period did not have a private property component and quickly collapsed.
According to Marx and Engels writing in their most famous pamphlet,The Communist Manifesto, communism is the maturation of society from socialism.
In my view,communism transmogrified into socialism at a certain stage brings multi-party democracy. Revolutionary socialism and communism instead instills brutal and barbaric methods in every area of public life,health and society. It degenerates into a new dictatorship,a cult of the Great Leader which creeps into all areas of society, particularly the medical profession and even invades private life....
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Socialism. Its basis? Advanced socialism?
The great truth underlying socialism of any variety is that we are all social beings. We should ignore politicians if we have adequate means of financial support and a social circle of compatible friends.
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Despite his blistering remarks on early types of socialists in The Communist Manifesto, Marx subscribed to the view, "Communists do not set up any sectarian principles of their own". ln Germany, the first land of Social Democracy, the doctrines of communality, communalism and communitarianism departed from revolutionary socialism in 1891 due to the experience of the Anti-Socialist Law of 1878-1890. The primacy of collective fear over historical experience and theory,I ask?
In Britain, revolutionary socialism and the British Labour Party have been separate since the Third International's 'class against class period' of 1928-1935 and the divisive party-political struggles of the early 1920's.
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The South of Ireland? Is there a material role for socialism in Irish mainstream politics?
In Ireland the Irish Labour Party has yet to reach its full flowering. It,not Sinn Fein,is the creation of James Connolly.
Avoid red herrings, young Southerners,when you are voting.
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The golden rule is always to vote for someone who is prepared to help you,not a shallow opportunist and speechifier like Mary Lou Mc Donald.
Young people of Ireland,have as little as possible to do with tiny, conspiratorial groups such as the groups run by Richard Boyd-Barrett and Eugene Mc Cartan or Southern Sinn Fein.
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Russia? The experience of the past?
The New Economic Plan?
With hindsight,we see what it was back then..rapid recovery from chaos. Lenin's New Economic Plan goes to understanding Russia between 1921 and 1928.
Flexibility?
We see in the private ownership of personal property, the lease-holding of factories, trade union 'government' and State freehold ownership of factories the key to a rapid turnaround from the economic maladies of 1913-1921. Russian economic problems were formed by the war exhaustion of 1917 and its well-known historic backwardness. In 1928 Russia regained its 1913 economic level.
Somewhat unusually, I view the combination of public and private property as "actually existing communism" in the same way that one might refer to nationalisation as "actually existing socialism".
Ergo est...
Whether one is a bully like Irish or British and German politicians or a communist depends on your opinion on both national and world matters, particularly on problems of social development and economic affairs.
The nub of the matter for socialist and Communist?
It's not how big the cake is, it's how you divide it up.
The distinction between nationalised trusts and the mixed economy? Russia 1921-1928 or 1999 ff.?
An economy designed by economists,not political hacks,the mixed economy model to boost productivity was and is infinitely better. Whatever about its shortcomings,it recognised and recognises the basic human rights to private property and minimum social entitlements. Nationalised trusts/ monopolies did not recognise inalienable human rights to either private property or subsistence payments from the Bolshevik government.
The appearance of Stalin? A necessity?
By 1928,the problems had become abundant after the agricultural mixed economy became an object of mass speculation, hoarding and price-fixing. These problems were increased by rural stubbornness and obstinacy.
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Modern Russia? Its return to much nationalisation in a mixed economy?
The modern Russian economic system recognises the basic tenet of progress in normal existence that public ownership is irreversible to a very great extent.
Problems with a mixed economy in a democratic, multi-party polis?
Problems and "contradictions which arise from real life" can be ironed out by political debate and responsible well-informed leaders. Russia is a much better place than in 1989. What wishful thinkers in the Western media failed to report in 1991 was that the trade unions called time on the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
Today?
There is a balanced budget and a wise, learned and experienced man at the helm.
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13.11.21
The Danish monograph "Babette's Feast". Militarism and the petite bourgeoisie. A tale of the Paris Commune
How do we regard a butcher of armed militants such as General Galliflet? Same thing the supporter of militarism such as a shopkeeper,a tradesman,a hate-preacher,a short-seller,a bank clerk or a 'retread nationalist hood' . We remark that he is someone who doesn't have a good word to say about anyone. About each of these nationalist muckrakers,we could say,"He is a nasty piece of work or a curmudgeon with neither sense nor sensibility. If he is a jailbird,he is someone who associates with the Shylocks of the law."
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23.12.2021
Contemporary post-deluvian Communists? A personal insight.
The oddities of contemporary Irish extremism, Eugene Mc Cartan and Kevin Mc Corry,operate under the Creative Commons WordPress/ Google internet server.
Why so?
So,like Ben Chacko and juvenile members of the Communist Party of Britain they can hack other writers' websites and pirate content.
Extremists?
Sinn Fein do the same. These fascist and semi-fascist elements steal and bowdlerise other peoples' articles and ideas without payment. Amongst these people,we count notably the 'hungry' small farmer such as Gerry Mc Hugh and Murphy and Lynch. Those who take Sinn Fein seriously as a democratic political party deceive themselves that Sinn Feiners are socialists or democrats. They are a party of well-heeled charlatans in love with money. Sinn Fein politicians are lining their pockets at the taxpayers and the public's expense. Private gain is their only motive.
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21.3.2022
Contemporary Irish Communists of the reformed type?
Psychopaths!
Jim Brown, Geoff Palmer and Eugene Mc Cartan were never welcome in any intelligent company. Nor today are Communists in Ireland or Asia tolerated by sane,reasonable people. If one good thing can be said about the IRA,it broke up their so-called Soviets in 1922 and physically threw them out of the Rotunda,a maternity hospital not a bivouac for drunken dossers. Those louts were the people who wore their caps the wrong way around like the Army Rangers Wing,to stop the flies eating their shite. As I serenaded O Riordain in July-August 1988 (What is to be Done,the Sequel-"Ci sono barbari"),"Shitty pants,I want you,Shitty pants,I need you,Shitty pants,My whole world's wrapped up in you..."
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O Riordain? The chief historic ringleader of Irish Communists? My limited contacts with the lunatic?
In O Riordain's defence,only one thing can be said. He performed a sterling service to me on the occasion of his profession du foi. On 23 December 1991,he alerted me to five Free State government agents,Brian Gerard Mc Cartney of Holywood,Co. Down,Martin Hand of Newcastle,Co. Down,Sean Curran of Lisnaskea, Michael Mc Govern of Blacklion and Sligo Road, Enniskillen and Paul Cassidy of Irvinestown ( "The Judgement",23 December 1991,after Franz Kafka). In his oral tour de force speaking from a high stool in a public house where meaningless fripperies are often exchanged, O Riordain claimed that the named "friends" worked for "Parnell". While this epithet lends itself to a multitude of interpretations, I take him to have pointed to the head of the Free State government, Haughey. That claim's source was "Mad Mike" Maguire of the CIA (Teesside University),a US double agent who in actual real-life was a homosexual street-crawler.
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The Irish Communists?
Of Eugene Mc Cartan,it can only be said,after my father who died in 1995,"Have nothing to do with a c... called Eugene Mc Cartan . He's a thief like the rest of that bunch. Stick to what you know best,Joseph."
I rest my case against the nest of vipers and false traders known as Irish Communists (with a capital C-) and Free State revolutionary socialists. I remain a democratic socialist.
Sanity in life and democratic circles in the period 1988-1992 in Dublin called for only one form of progressive, A REFORMIST.
The difference between moderation and extremism?
Hard to draw a line in the sand at times. Myself? I believe in absolute and relative truth(s) and that is the difference with bullies and state socialists.
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28.7. 2022
Christian socialism?
Don't make me laugh!
In Britain recently we had the brutal police terror and rampant inequality of Blair's New Labour Britain. How so? I was one of the multitude deserted by the Sinn Fein hangmen. In my case,I was interned for five years three months by the English Catholic maniac after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement.For ten months of that period,I had to subsist on £12.25 per week. Another sociopath and cripple,Vincent Davidson, declared an income of £400 000 in the following tax year of 2008-9.
The rule of law in Blair's Britain? Good governance?
Blair's Britain was a society and country put on a path to ruin due to the lack of effective regulation of doctors, police and psychiatrists. We see in his ravings and tawdry legacy not a true democracy or Labour alternative to the Tories and,in Northern Ireland ,a hollow syncretism of opposing viewpoints. The Catholic Church created the Good Friday Agreement and a failed policing and judicial model.
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To return to real choices for most societies...
In its idealistic form,communism was superior to Blair's childish mish-mash of ideas, ideas he only half understood. Blair was a skin-deep type of politician who tried to ride two horses at once. Unlike Winston Churchill, he did not realise that you cannot please everybody all of the time. That is certainly a mistake Vladimir Putin has not made by the invasion of Ukraine.
Blair?
Ambivalent people such as Tony Blair make good politicians but bad judges of people. He was useless in his chosen field,law. He had to evacuate his chambers and enter politics once his Master realised that he was a clown,a fool and an imposter. He was well-known before he became involved in politics for not knowing a single topic of law properly. In politics,he wanted to give speeches,'lead from the front' and 'organise' intractable and irredeemable chaos.
Blair and Thatcher? The stiff upper lip? Neoliberalism?
Contemporary British society is an enduring reflection of Blair's and Thatcher's bizarre experiments,the opposites of good jurisprudence and good law. Even Boris Yeltsin could see that neither had a bull's notion about anything and were talking through their hat. He, Yeltsin,had seen enough of social market experiments and 'free-market' economics by 1997 to last him a lifetime. He handed over to someone who is destined to lead Russia to complete ruin if he does not realise that you never trust an opponent in an armed conflict. Those fighting at the frontline on both sides and those being called up to fighting are his mortal enemies. A dualist democratic-authoritarian government has taken over from the right-wing.
Whatever you might say about Gorbachev he kept within the law.
Blair and the rule of law?
Blair believed firmly in using extra-judicial measures up to and including physical torture and false imprisonment for long periods. Those were the tactics he directed at his opponents who had no union membership card,something Jim Brown, Derek Parton,Brendan Heuston and the local trade union official tried to deny myself. Even SIPTU or a democratic trade union officer or official never denies a subscription-paying member a membership card. Members of tiny, insignificant left-wing groups such as the Communist Party of Ireland are not democrats or interested in anything other than the next expenses cheque from the Department of Education or union central office.
Crimes against humanity in Ireland? My solution?
Indict Tony Blair,Robin Cook's widow and Jack Straw for crimes against humanity and bring them in handcuffs before the International Criminal Court in the Hague. Seize Blair's twelve luxury houses. Alternatively,he could present himself voluntarily for trial to the International Criminal Court.
Likewise,let us not forget Jack Straw,that is,the main culprit in mass murder by the British and US governments. Whatever one thinks about Putin's war against Ukraine,he has stopped NATO dead in its tracks, something which any responsible Russian leader should have done decades ago rather than chasing after the elusive rainbows of Peace and 'foreign treasure' .
One-Brain-Cell people and thugs got the main gist of their criticism of Mikhail Gorbachev and his coterie of Western admirers and camp followers correct. They were only bandits like our shoneen republicans in long black cars.
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10.1.2023
Socialism made easy
It's not how big the cake is, it's how you divide it up.
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12.1.2023
" One thing you can be sure of is that Communists wherever you go in the world will be connected to criminals and drugs gangs because those are the people who do their dirty work for them. The others are the people who they smuggle in drugs for, particularly the women of them in their knickers....."
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24.3.2023
Modern times
The impression cannot be avoided-and the reader is invited to read the Communist Manifesto and compare Communism to socialism-that contemporary socialism is a lot more left-wing and democratic than historic communism and that system which Stalin called the "first stages of Communism".
Unquestionably, Labour-type socialism but not German Social Democracy, has gained a lot more for ordinary, down-to-earth, grounded people than airy-fairy geniuses such as Marxists could ever hope to. We count idiots such as Eddie Carroll and pedantic nuisances such as Claire Daly,Mick Wallace and the People Before Profit headcases on both sides of the Border amongst these "misunderstood geniuses".
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1.4.2023
Kathedersozialisten?
When we listen to the caustic remarks and ignorant pretentious waffle of university chair socialists,we quickly understand the background to the course taken first by a large minority of revolutionary socialists.
That Communist throng has been reduced to a tiny, insignificant fraction,a discontented ginger group of idle hangers-on with no connection to ordinary people,people lacking any grasp of workers' real concerns for homes,jobs and certainty.
Labour in all its forms has recovered but it left the Communists and their esoteric literature and irrelevant concerns behind at least fifty years ago.
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4.7.2023
The French Communist Party was essentially subsumed into the French Presidency and British Labour Party in the 1960's and Marchais dragged Bertolucci into the German-French nexus in the 1970's and both dragged Carrillo and the Spanish Communists into the menage-a-trois in the 1980's .
People in Ireland such as Mc Cartan,O Murchu and O Riordain and Palmer-they all indulged themselves with Moscow rhetoric -are bar-room spoofers and work for the Department of the Taoiseach.
Bar-room spoofers,I hear you ask?
Yes because that is the final destination of all jilted lovers,men and women both....why so?
Because the only person who they ever loved was themselves....
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25.8.2023
We say of those such as Eaman Mc Cann,those who are devoid of critical intelligence,give over your speechifying since you are only trying to create a rumpus.... someone,such as Mc Cann,who takes the side of the gaoler against the youthful detainee and agrees with a law graduate being detained as a patient in a psychiatric hospital,is not an independent witness and is certainly no socialist.
Anyone who takes the claims of agitators and rabble-rousers such as Mc Cann seriously,does not see things as they really are. People such as Mc Cann and Boyd-Barret are mob orators looking for a crowd to lead onto the police guns and Adams and Mc Guinness were no different. Very few Provisionals had a proper grasp of their enormous undertaking.
The Irish filibustering pamphleteers are only spectators,not actors in recent dramas and their claims to be working class or democratic leaders have been categorically and conclusively refuted and disowned.
People such as Mc Cann live in the shadows of others such as myself who took the bull by the horns and went to war at a younger age.
We tackled the problem of gaolers and the various other sorts of hangmen head-on.
I and many others regard people such as Mc Cann and his associates as unreliable and unstable observers who are profoundly hostile to the cause of human freedoms and national independence as a basis for Progress.
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4.9.2023
Irish Communists and other political dwarves are doubly handicapped because,as people,they think that their paltry learning and stock of phrases amounts to an education and that they know better than people who are educated in the arts or humanities.
They do have one thing in common with the bourgeois materialists-they would sell their mother for a sixpence and people such as Eugene Mc Cartan and Tommy Boyle and Liz Anderson were no different.
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14.2.2024
Socialists of any type particularly the socialist republican type have as their sole aim the breakdown of religion and the family and the construction of what they refer to as "a just,equitable society" but equity is one thing and socialism another. Most people know that fact.
The grip of Irish republicanism-it too in prosperous times is a type of communism-has been the grip of personal ruin and the destruction of anything which is akin to real solidarity. Behind their haughty claims, republicans are crass and vulgar opportunists who "destroy the things they love the most",the things that most people cherish,peace of mind,a leisurely existence and mercy for the cripple and the lame.
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15.8.2024
A lot of Russian Communists, particularly Trotsky and the Jews,spoke out against revolutionary injustice and harsh measures but the juggernaut of repression rolled on. Not even Stalin failed to see ('Dizzy with Success ',1938) but not even he could quell the Jacobin Terror launched by Yezhov and Yezhov alone.
Death by execution was the usual response to rebellion, democratic views and insubordination in the workplace or in the factories.
The British and Germans had already adopted the same tactics in their home countries,in their armies and in their colonies and it does well to remember that Northern Ireland is a COLONY.
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27.12.2024
"Everyone in Dublin knows Mick O Riordain is a drugs baron,him and the International Socialists or whatever they call themselves now...they learned their tricks from the anarchists who import heroin and give it to rock musicians like Bono and to the poor to fire them up with false enthusiasm and if you mix with them you'll get the Afghan tonic too to build a modern, fighting army that would knock spots off the Russians,Joe... it's the British and American governments that are behind most fringe groups in Dublin. When you see what heroin and crack cocaine and crystal meths do to people,you understand the origins of the National Health Service because those intoxicants were around even then. Chemists are basically junkies who describe themselves as scientists but they can't contain their appetite for women and young girls...they meet them at hash parties... that's what they call them but there's no hash at them, it's something stronger...hash is all you need to kill someone... soldiers are full of it whether they are smoking it or getting it from Army doctors...their officers set them up like Sean Mc H. and Martin Mc G. wants to set you up because the first thinks you're too proud to be of any use to anyone and the other thinks you have no friends in this country but you have a friend here after what you did to the people who killed those two little girls in West Belfast. Slow the tempo after that for a while, what's called a big hit,and start it up again after a decent interval. Remember what I told you,'Don't shit in your own nest'. You've turned your enemies into your friends and put manners on your real enemies in the Unionist Party who wanted to put you out of the university without a degree. Be careful what you say to that old bollocks Greer about me and others. He knows that Jenny Mc Curry-that's not her real name and she lives in Templepatrick-is a call-girl who works for MI 5. A lot of women are attracted to prostitution because feminists believe that they can manipulate men better than way. Leave Phyllis Bateson to me. She's not attending to her duties and doing what she's paid for. She's more interested in recruiting people into the Workers Party. I warned you about those vicious,pro-British bastards who'd skin a fly for a halpenny and Gerry Mc Manus and Mick Mc Manus are typical of the type. I work for the Irish Government, not the CIA. They regard you as a madman and their representative in Fermanagh is Sean Lynch who receives a retainer from the British and Irish Government for arrests and seizures of guns and explosives...he drinks most of the money but spends some on gambling and wants you put out of your house or flat wherever you are living and openly refers to you as a dirtbag and a tramp wherever he goes. If you withdraw your support for Carron,I'll have Lynch shot because that's what you do with someone who gives information to the police about the IRA,the Provisionals that is not the shower of shitebags running the Law Faculty at Queen's. Most of them were recruited from the dole queue to spread what is known as disinformation and false reports of deaths and disappearances. Church-going students pass them on their stories like wildfire. I might be wrong but I think that you will do very well at your chosen profession when you stop listening to your father who is getting his information from the very people who want to kill you and your family,the police and Irish Army because I have had your reputation amongst your peers in law shot to bits in association with Megan Watts and Lee "Hazelwood" (Ron Keegan,FBI, Boston/Moira). The Irish Army are only a self-defence force and they're not very good at that. There are only about twenty or thirty of them who are dangerous and you meet them all the time. Avoid Pat Doherty. He is a police informer who helps out at funerals and cremations because most of the IRA wants nothing to do with the Catholic Church." (Brian Gerard Mc Cartney,1985).
After I had been poisoned with opiates and amphetamines by his MI 5 collaborators, Patricia Gallagher and Linda Kowalski (alias Patricia Sharkey) and put in a psychiatric hospital,Brian Gerard Mc Cartney was more forthright about his guilt,"You've been shit upon from a great height." He lived at 7 Ardmore Avenue in Holywood in County Down.
Many years later, another voice spoke up in
defence of reason,"That fellow in Belfast who you used to consort with was high on drugs since he was a teenager and wasn't to be believed. He must have had a friend in the police or played the lost soul since he was reported by many people for taking drugs and spreading rumours against the government and elected representatives. He was definitely involved in one murder because he admitted it in court. Old Greer reported back everything you said and regarded you as a good witness but the makings of a bad barrister because you always tell the truth. He let you graduate but he shouldn't have because you failed all your exams apart from two subjects and they were very important subjects which the rest of the students ignored. Don't mix with people who take drugs or the police will think that you take them too. Brian Mc Cartney and Manus Maguire got together to put you in your box for outing them as spies. Manus Maguire heard it all back from Donal Billings. But,they used what the government describes as "non-lethal force" and got away with their game. Both of them wrecked any chance of employment for you because Mc Cartney and all of the Maguire breed are poisoned with hatred of you and your family and they know where and when to find you because you can get that sort of information if you have a friend in the police."
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5.11.2025
As I say elsewhere in this series of articles (or 'posts') there is nothing radical about nationalism but that there can be some residual interest for a politically-minded person if you are interested in national democracy of a semi-socialist kind or you are on the left.
That is the popular direction of social democracy since the Fall of the Soviet experiment of nationalist socialism.
This Stalinism or national democracy or nationalist socialism scorned by Lenin was what ran the Soviet Union in the 1930's.
In 1937-8 widespread disenchantment set in at the rapid pace of state capital accumulation and reckless disregard for human life and legal freedoms in many countries which had fallen under the spell of this nationalist socialism.
Communism because of isolation had never pursued a truly Marxist path of equality but rather had run with the idea of deprivation of the former rulers of all rights.
In fact the 1935 Constitution restored those rights only to meet with widespread opposition from the Old Bolsheviks (Atheistic Communism,The Vatican,1937).
Socialism on the German model or statist type limited democracy was the option favoured by Lenin after the collapse of the industrial trusts in April 1918. German or 'True' socialism is not universal state ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange but rather "nationalisation of the commanding heights of the economy". A mixture of private and state ownership of same.
When Socialism of the Stalin type faced fascism in every country in Europe after 1919,the international association of communist parties supported coalitions with those formerly disenfranchised by the Leninists. That was a search for progressive forces to unite with and put in the driving seat.
The latter policy only changed when in the 1970's Russia was threatened with industrial obsolescence and industrial bit part player in Europe.
The United States emerged as the main threat to Russian sovereignty in the 1950's and was in that role until its supersession by the Chinese in recent years.
However,China is an insular society as was Germany before the War and can never in its traditions or outreach to other countries project its culture as did the Russian monolith and as did US hegemony in response.
Both Russian geographic expanse and American tyranny are an existential threat to China in its primordial state as it finds itself.
Neither Modern Russia nor antediluvian China want anything to do with Marxism and legality in the former instance and anything with even a tinge of constitutional democracy or parliamentary representation as it exists in fair and egalitarian societies in the latter instance.
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"Communist parties dealing in drugs? Where do you get your information from anyway. They want to sell you some old book that's as old as Methuselah to judge by that book you got an educated person to put on display in his shop. His trade comes from selling cigarettes and magazines about sport."
