I'll be glad when the flag goes up -- We'll sing new songs and invent new slogans.
There'll be a party and we'll burn the old pictures. I'll finally have some fun!
I'll be glad when the flag goes up -- New uniforms if they know my sizes.
I'll make new friends when I go to the meetings. It won't be better but I'll settle for different
I'll be glad when the flag goes up -- It will be clearer what is right and wrong.
I don't care about the leaders and the theories. But I know I'd just like a change
I'll be glad when the flag goes up -- There'll be new names for the streets and the cities.
Study the lives of the great new heroes. I won't be happy but I'll be relieved
Red Land, red, and my house is burning --
Red Land, red -- What took you so long?
Red Land, red -- Well it really won't matter (when it's)
Redland, Redland everywhere
from Redland
by The Waitresses
Wasn't Tomorrow Wonderful? (Polydor 1063) (1982)
copyright 1981 Future Fossil Musics (BMI)
Linguistically Challenged
by John Derbyshire
National Review Online,
April 24th, 2001
Derbyshire (who is, at his current age,
staunchly conservative;
in general paleoconservative)
attributes this to Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832).
He does not, however, say where he found it.
I don't consider myself a Marxist.
(And still less a Leninist, Trotskyist, Maoist, or least of all a Stalinist.) (Can one find an authentic and sincere Stalinist anywhere outside of North Korea these days?)
I find Marxism (and its descendents) a "Controllist" philosophy, which attempts to stretch-or-cut human lives to fit rather than adapting to them.
(I am interested in non-Marxist Syndicalism, however -- see the page on this site on / Anarchism, Syndicalism, Labor /.)
I include the page you are currently reading not so much because I agree with the Left, but because it is the designated bugaboo of ideologies with which I disagree.
Please note that this is one of the older pages on this site. If I had it to do over again I'd probably distinguish more strongly between "Marxist" and "more general 'Left-wing'" thought. I may in fact break this up in the future, but it'll be a bit of a job, and many links direct here now. So, for the nonce, this caveat.
"Generally ... socialism includes some notion that the economy should not just be under political control, but that that control should be exercised for the common good, and in the direction of eliminating destitution and minimizing inequalities. In the abstract, I think this is an excellent thing; but God and the Devil both are in the details, to which we socialists have, typically, given far less thought than they deserve, to the point, sometimes, of criminal folly."Which seems to me, if one is going to be a socialist, eminently fair.
"Proceeding from and developing the Enlightenment, Karl Marx did the most to show that there is now in fact a science of society, including a science of revolution -- even if that science is struggling for recognition relative to the "hard sciences" of physics and chemistry. Marxism is no less a science than the theory of evolution and biology are science (sic; I certainly don't agree with this assertion myself -- ed.); even though Christian creationists oppose them. There was even a time when people did not realize there is a science of nuclear particles. What we call physics was not always so well-conceived or even imagined.
Like earth sciences such as geology and evolutionary biology, the science of society has frequent recourse to the study of the historical record. What all sciences have in common is the practice of proceeding with the useful assumption that the world is independent of the consciousness of the observor. The trees in the forest exist whether any other individuals or species live or die. The existence of truths regardless of the individual's will is a frequent and important manifestation of science.
(True, but there's more to the definition of Science than this. Many non-verifiable belief systems insist they advocate rigorous adherance to "objective truth", sometimes going so far as to torture and execute heretics.
The keynote of Science is broad verifiability -- see the suberb An Introduction to Science : Scientific Thinking and the Scientific Method from Steven Schafersman.)
Many Liberals including those calling themselves "Marxist," criticize us for believing in struggle for a most scientific road to revolution. We believe there is a best way forward at all times. For saying this, the Liberals call us "sectarian," which is a word they misuse when they should say "committed" and "scientific." The Liberals and pseudo-Marxists exaggerate and caricaturize us as if we were saying there is only one progressive road in the world and it is MIM's. The Liberals oppose honing the best science, because science is frequently discomforting for established beliefs, so they stress how the world has many truths. In contrast, we Marxists do not say truth is not a matter of everybody being 0% and MIM being 100% correct, but the difference between knowing 25% of the world and 30% is not to be sneered at. We are very concerned with it and we form an organization of scientists called the vanguard party for the purpose of advancing the truths available to society even if just a little further than they would have been advanced without an organization for the promotion of science production.
It just so happens that the spread of science also undermines the rule of the strongest individuals. (?) The ruling class of the wealthiest individuals with private armies and government politicians at their disposal benefits from spreading relativism. (?) It stands to reason that if there are only billions of people with their own equally valid opinions, opinions that cross-cancel, the oppressed and weak will have no basis to unite against the ruling elite, so it is that relativism protects the ruling class, and that is not a matter of opinion! (?)
Relativism is the belief that everything is a matter of opinion. It underlies post-modernism, which is the fashion in academia today trying to replace Marxism as a systematic type of thought.
People who oppose science are superstitious or mystical. We Marxists may say they are pre-capitalist in having reactionary ideas dominant prior to those of the Enlightenment. The ultimate mystical ideas are religion, which cannot be falsified.
Science is partly production of falsifiable theses. "Falsifiable" in this context does not mean false or invented. It means that there is evidence conceivable that could disprove the thesis. "Falsifiable" means possibly proven false.
The belief in God as practiced by Christians, Muslims etc. is not falsifiable. It is simply a belief in authority."
"... is ParEcon is the only place, even on the left, that alternatives economic systems are being forwarded?
Well, no, that is not so. Historically there have generally been four tracks of visionary economic thinking....
(1) based on centrally planned models, ala the Soviet experience
(2) based on market models, ala the Yugoslav experience
(3) based on a very decentralized approach almost forgoing allocation in the name of face to face interaction and green localism
(4) based on council democracy and participation, but often not talking about allocation much or clearly.
Parecon is an extension of the 4th heritage, I would say.
The first is rather dormant right now. The third probably has its proponents but has never really gotten into any compelling detail, I think.
So the 2nd orientation and variants on the 4th are the ones where most of the action is now -- which is not all that much, to be sure."
"We anticipate enormous battles in every country against unemployment, low wages, austerity policies and violations of democratic rights. The World Socialist Web Site insists, however, that the success of these struggles is inseparable from the growth in the influence of a socialist political movement guided by a Marxist world outlook.
The standpoint of this Web site is one of revolutionary opposition to the capitalist market system. Its aim is the establishment of world socialism. It maintains that the vehicle for this transformation is the international working class, and that in the twenty-first century the fate of working people, and ultimately mankind as a whole, depends upon the success of the socialist revolution."
Shaw:
"I have always, since I got clear on the subject of Socialism, said: Don't put in the foreground the nationalisation of the means of production, distribution, and exchange: you will never get there if you begin with them. You have to begin with the question of the distribution of wealth."
