Double Dip Recession

It's a choice and most businesses fail and most people are pretty useless at building them up. I don't buy those products but it's a free world. People can buy them if they like (and do not forget his wife is the one who owns 99.9% of the businesss which is rather good as we want many more women billionaires. I think she is the 4th richest woman on the planet according to the interview with her in yesterday's papers)

'is it desirable to keep spending money that is hard earned and fought for on the frivilous crap this man sells'

But no one forces anyone to buy from his shops. They could just as well buy from a Sociailst Worker's enterprise if the Socialist Worker risked money to set up such a business. If people don't buy from one company and choose products from another, then the shares in the first company will decline. There is no such thing as guaranteed success for the capitalist.

" As far as I know he offers employment and good value products to people" he offer shit cheap products made off the back off cheap labour.

Honestly how many pillows does the average housewife need to keep plumping, how many cheap duvet sets do you need? is it desirable to keep spending money that is hard earned and fought for on the frivilous crap this man sells. As for top shop, it's poorly made rubbish made by impoverished workers who can't afford shoes for their own children. The man is a leach, a parasite like so many of his class.

But there is nothing wrong with people making it rich from a humble background. That is social mobility, which I am in favour of and which the communist and the aristocrat often wish to prevent through their hostility to the bourgeoius. It is they who kick the ladder from under the feet of the bourgeois and call him a 'barrow boy' made good, for daring to look towards the stars.

I don't think Philip Green is squeezing the bourgeois. As far as I know he offers employment and good value products to people.

I think nowadays there is far more opportunity for people to be successful than in Cromwell's day. In fact in his day, I don't think you could be an MP unless you were a landowner, and the same if you wanted to be a voter. So, I presume that Cromwell must have been wealthy.

Mayer Amschel Rothschild a money changer who had traded with the Prince of Hesse and went on to lend money to the british monarchy and the British nobility. In fact they liked the Upstart money man so much several members of the family have now been made nobility including being given hereditary baronies of the Habsburg Empire.

Never again was the little guy from the ghetto ever one of us, in fact his family become this elite that Claig talks about.

And the capitalist is just the same old merchant and trader and commercial entrepreneur whom the aristocrats despised back in Ancient Greece as well as medieval Britain. That is why teh communists' second enemy - after the bourgeois Daily Mail subscriber - is the capitalist, for that is what their aristocratic paymasters wish.

And there are one or two exceptions, now. One or two isn't very much, is it? Not much different from previous centuries, except you no longer need the title to keep the wealth in your family.

You think Philip Green came from a bourgeois background now, do you, claig? Or that he became bourgeois? Nothing seems to be stopping him from progressing and supporting policies that squeeze the middle, now.

rabbitstew, you make some good points - there were one or two exceptions.

The communists are tools of the elite. The communists' main enemy is the bourgeois - the dreaded reader of that fine organ, the Daily Mail - even more than the capitalist, and the aristocracy's main enemy is the bourgeois - the uppity aspirant to social mobility.

They both want to prevent the bourgeois rising, prospering and progressing. They both want to remove the middle, the bourgeois, which is why they both 'squeeze' the middle.

They both want a two class system with a proletariat and an aristocracy or ruling elite. The communists carry out the objective of stopping the bourgeois for their aristocratic paymasters.

"mini you are not the elite, but I fear that the elite may have done their work on you" but how do you know? might it be that the conspiracy theorists have had a whale of a time on you? we might never know.

However are we now at a crossroads where several different spheres of material fact and conceptual reasoning will bring about another great change. Life is not static and human development dictates we move forwards, this will not lead to feudalism but we have to ask ourselves if after 600 years of capitalism has it eradicated poverty, destitution and starving? Has it led to huge inequalities and even greater damage to the environment? what could replace it?

The real power behind the throne was always who had the money and who was best at keeping hold of it.

In fact, the aristocracy was always at the mercy of the merchants and business people. Banking was not invented in the industrial revolution. Nor was trade.

Thomas Cromwell was, apparently, the son of a blacksmith, fuller, cloth merchant and owner of both a hostelry and a brewery. Clearly a good business background. He became first Earl of Essex. He didn't start out posh. Merchants of the past didn't have to start out posh to be successful, provided they tried to join the elite, rather than beat them - somewhat like now. The first Duke of Marlborough started out as a page boy (male servant in the royal household). Nicely placed, but really not posh to be a servant. The aristocracy has never been averse to letting in a few clever, manipulative, business-minded, war mongering people to join its ranks, if they are willing to try hard enough - it was, after all, from amongst those ranks that the aristocracy first started out. Then the age-old desire to benefit your children and hold onto your wealth and power for eternity got in. Philip Green is no more immune to that than anyone else. He has joined the elite. He is not one of "us."

"The Victorian indistrialists and the industrial revolution were part of the capitalist system when the ingenuity of the masses, the industriousness of the workers" I give up at this point claig, you really need to read Engles and come back again. www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/condition-working-class/ch03.htm

"Manufacture, on a small scale, created the middle-class; on a large scale, it created the working-class, and raised the elect of the middle-class to the throne, but only to overthrow them the more surely when the time comes. Meanwhile, it is an undenied and easily explained fact that the numerous petty middle-class of the "good old times" has been annihilated by manufacture, and resolved into rich capitalists on the one hand and poor workers on the other"

"Since capital, the direct or indirect control of the means of subsistence and production, is the weapon with which this social warfare is carried on, it is clear that all the disadvantages of such a state must fall upon the poor. For him no man has the slightest concern. Cast into the whirlpool, he must struggle through as well as he can. If he is so happy as to find work, i.e., if the bourgeoisie does him the favour to enrich itself by means of him, wages await him which scarcely suffice to keep body and soul together"

and that is the way it remains to this day the working man must sell his labour and it is at the whim of his master whether he should work 5 hours or 50, eat bread or have ham in his sandwhiches.

Zero growth deserves zero votes

When you hear sustainability, climate catastrophe and other songs that the elite sing, remember valiant Osysseus and remember that all dangers must pass.

Block up your ears and sign a loud tune just as Odysseus once did, when the elite were trying to sell him a pup too.

'If you take that to mean I am one of your elite, so be it'

mini you are not the elite, but I fear that the elite may have done their work on you and sold you a pup as they so often do.

'Yes the same little people that are paying the price for the recent crash. The same little people that are invited to join the celebration and the rejoicing when the stock markets climb but have no real reward when it does.'

You are right. The austerity is the revenge of the elite. It is the return of the elite with their green Trojan horse offering the gifts of zero growth and even negative growth. If only Thatcher were back, oh how we need the return of the Mummy!

Yes the same little people that are paying the price for the recent crash. The same little people that are invited to join the celebration and the rejoicing when the stock markets climb but have no real reward when it does.

Capitalism requires a compound 3% growth rate as I pointed out before. To achieve this the elite must invest to the tune of $3 trillion (by today's standard) it isn't possible or even desirable unless you believe that capitals race to invest and acquire should lead to a Mcdonalds in every tribal village in Africa and the complete deforestation of south America. If you take that to mean I am one of your elite, so be it but the fact is that Capitalism is destroying nature, it has subjugated human nature and now it packages it up in wind turbines, unmet social/welfare needs and sells it back to us at a profit.

The monarchs don't call their crowns bling. They say that bling is what the council estate kid wears.

'Victorian industrialists didn't tend to come from the top public schools - some even rose through the ranks from poor backgrounds'

Exactly. I was talking about centuries before, in the middle ages when there was zero growth and even negative growth.

The Victorian indistrialists and the industrial revolution were part of the capitalist system when the ingenuity of the masses, the industriousness of the workers, and the capital of the capitalist changed the face of the planet. As the people's wealth rose, some of the nobles' estates closed, privilege was in decline and all in the land was fine.

I know - the monarchs and lords weren't the real elite. It was the awful middle classes.