With regards to the main protagonists in the advance from ape to man in Western societies since the nineteenth century,two names stand out. Those names are Marx and Lenin. Also featuring prominently is Marx's literary executor, Friedrich Engels.
There are many other facts to be discovered about Marx and Engels which iconoclasts reject.
Marx and Engels hijacked the English labour movement in the 1860's. They were left behind by the Germans at the 1875 Unity Conference and Engels rejected the demands which have become the basic tenets of modern socialism in the discussions on the Erfurt Programme of the German Social Democratic Party in 1891.
In the 1840's Marx and Engels hoisted themselves up on the back of the Communist League and created what became a great schism by forcing out the Christians such as Weitling. Weitling's emigration to the US gave rise to a constant cycle of packing meetings, conspiracy, showboating,rigged ballots,political grandstanding,verbal abuse and rhetorical handstands in trade union circles,all the trademarks of sects not political parties of the working class.
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Ireland,today
Modern "scientific" socialists talk from ignorance, not knowledge of the economic, political, literary and moral life. These self-styled Communists are hostile to the real labour movement and its working class leaders,adrift on a sea of old ideological garbage.
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Britain,today
Trade unionists are usually middle-of-the-road in politics. While bolshy at times,they can be incentivised with higher wages to be more flexible and give way to employers demands for higher productivity.
Ireland,today
The "scientific socialists" attempt to hoist themselves up onto the back of workers and claim the credit for the actions of others. Each and every one of them is at least a backslider and a curmudgeon,the road to no town. The Pbp group are a case in point. Inspired by old books that should be thrown out, this group is moving into the place allotted to it in a slabbering contest in the South.
The rival groups. Populists
In the North Sinn Fein's vote fell from 227 000 in the Assembly elections to 175 000 in the last local elections. Their core vote has been declining since its highpoint in the 2010's.
PBP,Sinn Fein and the people who inspire them such as the Workers Party are the mortal foes of any democratic socialist government. (The opportunists and the populists never give the poor and working man his say in public affairs. They say that rival parties exist by and thrive on media spin. Sinn Fein are often accused of intimidation).
Only a minority of the traditional Irish party of opposition,the republicans, endeavour to help the thinking public with any success. Most of them resort to mob violence when their poverty of ideas is publicised.
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Why the marginalisation of ultraleftists?
It is their own doing. The democrats present themselves to the electorate regularly. Those who hope for a class-based revolution go by the name of modern-day Communists. They do not.
The active Communists number 11 throughout the island of Ireland. Barry Murray, Eugene Mc Cartan and Tommy Mc Kearney are irrelevant. In their perorations, they are blowing soap bubbles out of their backsides. In Ireland these Stalinists (or Communists) have always been irrelevant apart from to trade union officials.
The eccentricities of the Communists everywhere do not matter to anyone who is possessed of even a modicum of common decency. They go around trying to hook young people and send the disgruntled affiliate into the arms of the jailer when he refuses to supply them with information that they intend to sell to the Gardai.
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To bigger questions
What can be rescued from the body of Marxist pedagogy on capitalism?
Marx's studies brilliantly characterised the dawn of the industrial movement.
In his own lifetime, Marx's influence was dimmed by German Social Democrats and English trade unionists. On the anarchist spectrum,his legacy was largely obscured by Bakunin and Kropotkin.
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Marxism in the rearview mirror? Democratic socialism vs. Marx's political invention? The dictatorship of the proletariat?
History has shown that after much political debate and discussion,a law-governed state is not compatible with the dictatorship of the working class.
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31.5.2022
The big picture? Moscow literature?
Until the advocates of Marxism and sellers of Marxist literature in Ireland make a fulsome apology to those who they have insulted, threatened and had arrested- I am referring to Colm Bryce,Kevin Weinberg and Dickie Cusick,not forgetting Eugene Mc Cartan and the little Miss Red Riding Hoods of various parties and none-the real socialists,the democratic socialists,cannot mend their fences with these representatives of a past age.
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Hidden agenda. After the Deluge,1991
In all societies the tiny groups of rebels and revolutionary socialists are front-groups for diplomatic and economic espionage and technical theft. The PBP and CPI micro-groups are front groups for foreign predators such as British Military Intelligence and Chinese interests. These tiny organisations should be put under the strictest scrutiny since they trade information to their foreign sponsors for payment in drugs and guns. The latter they use to fund their activities,a pattern established by socialist republicans.
PBP/MI 6
If people who have entered this country under false pretences such as Kostick- in his case,to conduct financial and technical espionage- do not go back to where they came from,they must be interned. The greatest proportion of these agents of Britain come from the North of England and the Indian subcontinent.
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1.4.2023
The real working class movement
When we hear Communists and their fellow travellers such as PBP and listen to their collective criticisms of the real working class movement,we say,"Now we see you in your true colours,neither democrats nor socialists, but semi-anarchist and pro-imperialist elements intent on sowing the seeds of economic ruin. You are harbingers of a change which will never come not least because you in your tiny groups styling themselves political parties do not want real change or actual improvements in the lives of those who you purport to speak on behalf of. That change would render you irrelevant to their needs. Address your remarks to your diminishing band of followers and leave me and my friends out of your grandiose schemes. You do not speak for me or anyone who I know."
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12.2.2024
The Marxist project,1858
Marx in Foundations of Political Economy (see Introduction,Grundrisse,1856-8) set out to write six different works.
In the event he left only Volume 1 of Capital. That book focuses on the materialist conception of history, labour conditions,the origins and spread of industry,the profit motive,money and the accumulation of capital.
But regardless of the political, social and economic phantasmagoria of public life, there are many other dimensions of human life and social existence other than the former social Darwinism and historical materialism.
Many more?
Yes,but a salve for those who seek redemption and salvation in dusty old tomes....
The Old Mole (as he called himself) with his description of capital accumulation and writings which embrace the best working descriptions of political discontent and working class hostility to the rich,not forgetting his dialectical materialism, discovered many of the key aspects of modern social existence and historical development.
Just because he cannot sit on our shoulders to give us political advice today does not mean that his writings are wrong in economic, historical or philosophical terms. However,we must approach them with caution because they are deterministic.
The political legacy of Marxism has greatly diminished. People like myself believe in the legal and constitutional rights of man.The Rights of Man (with apologies to Tom Paine) are something the Germans and Russians might not respect but other countries put them at the centre of their way of life.
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An apologia pro vitae eius
Despite their heartless outlooks, practices and ideas some scientific socialists are good-hearted. I am thinking of seasoned old campaigners on the moderate spectrum such as Kieran Allen and Willy Cumming but we cannot get away from the fact that theirs is a callous, inhuman and degrading ideology no better in its workings than slavery.
A relationship of enslavement was precisely what the Russians found themselves in almost immediately after the consolidation of "the dictatorship of the proletariat". With the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly in November 1918 came the autocracy of first Lenin then the rabid dungmongering of Trotsky. That was succeeded by the Stalin Terror.
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Some words of advice
If you become entangled in the snares of Communists or the ideology of Stalinism and atheistic Bolshevism, consult a priest for guidance and absolution since it is a grave moral error requiring the Sacraments.
Revolutionary socialists and Communists sow division and hatred. Their enemy is the family and they seek to destroy the family and the church. They bring ruin not just to themselves but to others and to those who vote for them.
My advice is to vote Labour,social democrat or for a democratic candidate who stands for election regularly and at least goes to Mass or a place of worship occasionally.
Revolutionary socialism belongs to what is known as a place of rabid over-the-top shouting and bawling such as a marketplace. There the din of a thousand voices contend,a tower of Babel.
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28.4.2024
Amongst the dated concepts of revolutionary socialism is the inevitability of a dictatorship of the proletariat.
Why do we call out this joint aim of the dolemen,petite bourgeois intelligentsia and French and Irish cutthroats?
Because social and working conditions are immeasurably better today in Britain and Ireland than in the nineteenth century. The recidivists fall down in non-engagement with the political process, that being organised elections. True socialists (German socialists) sit on the fence and talk vaguely about trade unions,a topic they have little knowledge of. They claim to see themselves as in solidarity with every Tom,Dick and Harry who ever lifted a spade but have little knowledge of the working life. Nihilistic ideaisation leads to contempt for real politics. These people are part of an endangered species of rarefied old fairy godmother.
Syndicalism and the Irish Communists
The CPI version of syndicalism in the 1930's gave way to the hole and corner reformism of the Irish Labour Party. This labour stew ferments into fringe journalism noone other than Indian fakirs take as coming from the heart.
Bon litterateurs!
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The heart of the matter is that...
...the business of the Communist Party of Ireland is espionage,not politics. Even the fickle substance of Dick Spring's rhetoric appears potent in contrast to the silly grandstanding and idle nitpicking.
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The Communist model for Ireland of the type of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has nothing to commend it. The Communists spend their long hours in public houses gathering titbits to be fed to the Gardai and British Embassy in Dublin.
The financial mainstay of these Stalinist irredentists is payment for informing MI 6 and the British Army about republicans and dissidents. Mc Cartan has been doing so since 1969. Rarely does the truth become clear so practiced are the 'scientific socialists' in covering their tracks. In the case of O Murchu he stooped to murder on behalf of British Military Intelligence in 1974.
The British Army and their friends do not want political engagement by Irish people or civil rights protests or working class democracy. Irish nihilists perpetuate their apolitical views.
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The current crop of "socialist" vanguardists?
We say to a bast... like Mc Cartan and his Garda handlers and the ex-British Army sergeant majors,"Not even you believe your empty rhetoric. You and the members of your tiny group are threatening and menacing corner-boys whose idea of politics is having someone evicted and sent back to the North,put out of a job or attacked with a cutthroat razor, knuckle-duster or breeze block. You'll die with your tongue hanging out for want of a drink. That is all you were paid for your proletarian exertions on behalf of British Military Intelligence and the dogends of society attracted to you and your affiliates."
As regards the other end of the CPI who claim the mantle of Connolly,democrats say that they are semi-anarchists drawn from the scum of all classes.
The game has moved on past even the Irish trades unions to a society based on the primacy of politics,The Just Society.
Political engagements deliver social security, pensions, education, policing,roads,social supports, public and private housing and regulation.
We say to the tinpot dictators and honorary proletarians,"The German statist model has been superceded and abolished in the West and East respectively."
Trade union government?
Very desirable BUT trade unionists don't give a hoot about the poor. When the levels of absolute poverty reached critical levels under Thatcher,Bush and Blair, real politicians had to step in and regulate the body politic by ironing out social differences.
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Trade unions
Always good but the classic totalitarian model of "scientific socialism" was a society largely run by trade unions.
Sane people say that the totalitarian model ignores the poor. It has bitten the dust in every country in the world.
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Scientific socialists are people with no proper grounding in any field. They are people who do not know who their fathers were. Because of having had no authority figure in early life they have no standards to measure themselves by. They are cast adrift early and usually come a cropper early on in life. Those who were their role models are long dead.
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1.7.2024
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9.7.2024
Wherever you find 'scientific' socialists or communists,you find also a client affiliate or focus group for the native police. They cannot live without police approval because it is the police who have the power to curtail their activities and force them to dissolve their group and to hand over their assets to their creditors. Their creditors invariably are many and include the taxman.
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2.2.2025
So-called Communists have done irreparable harm to the working class cause in Ireland by tying workers interests to the coattails of national democracy.
They do not see that national unity will come and old reactionary influences and out-of-date social formations fade with time.
Every time Communists are given the spotlight and allowed on to a podium and handed the microphone,they go off at a tangent to back groups which are semi-criminal and resort to thuggery, groups which are modelled on the Italian mafia.
Ignore Communists in Ireland,both them and those who they tell you to vote for. Tiny groups of ultra-leftists such as the Communists don't support anything objectively true and socially progressive.