to think wanting to overthrow capitalism is not an extreme political stance

[chomalungma]

New school guidance issued last week for education.

www.gov.uk/guidance/plan-your-relationships-sex-and-health-curriculum#choosing-resources

Issued last Thursday, the guidance reads: “Schools should not under any circumstances use resources produced by organisations that take extreme political stances on matters.
“Examples of extreme political stances include, but are not limited to: a publicly stated desire to abolish or overthrow democracy, capitalism, or to end free and fair elections, opposition to the right of freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of assembly or freedom of religion and conscience

There are alternatives to capitalism. People may not like them, I don't necessarily agree with them - but I don't think it's an extreme political stance to take.

Yet the Government think it is.

Are people who think that there alternatives to capitalism taking an extreme political stance?

With socialism, all legal production and distribution decisions are made by the government, with individuals dependent on the state for food, employment, healthcare and everything else. The government, rather than the free market, determines the amount of output, or supply and the pricing levels of these goods and services

Yes, and in order to do that everything is the same, because then production is cheaper so everybody ends up living in the same sort of flats and wearing size 7 black shoes.
Individuality is dangerous and can put you into In prison.

The state has the monopoly on everything, including news and education.

There is colossal waste of resources, just as there is in capitalism.

You may recognise the concept from 'democracy', which is perfectly compatible with socialism.

No, it’s not. Once you have a state monopoly on everything then there is no democracy.

GDP and life expectancy plummeted in ex ussr countries

Subject - I can’t speak for other ex USSR countries but do you honestly think life was better in the former GDR?
Huge Stasi presence invading every aspect of citizens lives with huge files kept - as was discovered when the Wall came down, despite the stasi’s best efforts to burn what they could.
East Germans shot by their own countrymen for trying to escape
Citizens tortured, sleep deprived and thrown into jail for long periods for merely speaking out against the regime.
Forbidden to see relations in the West
The ruling elite - Honecker, Mielke etc having privileges and access to travel, food etc way beyond the ordinary people.
Right at the end, when people rushed to the Wall having heard travel restrictions were to be lifted, the border guards managed a last spiteful fling:
They gave exit passes with a stamp which unbeknownst to the holders, refused them permission to return to the East.
I could go on.
However if you think that’s an acceptable way to run a country then maybe you should start a campaign to de-unify Germany. I’m sure there’s be a few ex Stasi who’d love to join you.

@Brioches1 - you appear to be talking utter bollocks. Clearly you can pick and choose, since nowhere whatsoever in the world has pure capitalism or pure democracy, yet most countries claim to be capitalist or democratic. In reality, most of these countries have adopted socialist ideas where it suits them, and no country that claims to be socialist or communist is purely socialist or communist, as they have retained elements of capitalism.

What people seem to forget when they talk about the USSR is that it had a revolution in the first place because life was so utterly shit for the vast majority of the population already... You don’t get revolution until life is mostly shit for the people doing the revolting.

abolish or overthrow democracy,

Like lying to the head of state about the legality of proroguing parliament.

Signing international agreements which they cannot possibly or politically keep to, so repudiate them less than a year later

Allow special advisors (who are not supposed to become the story) to break law and then hold a press conference in the grounds of No 10 to explain how they got away with it

Yeah, I can see how they would not want schools to be exposing covering that sort of thing.

Capitalism tends to favour those in power. Democracy can not necessarily dies possibly provide some protection from its worst excesses. The important thing is to have people knowledgable and aware.

Banning anything is always less powerful than exposing the impacts, good and bad.

NB, I’m talking about the Russian revolution which led to the USSR.

The problem capitalism has at the moment is that it is proving to be abjectly incapable of dealing with climate change and massive abuses of power by private enterprises that are wealthier and more powerful than democratic states. If capitalism ever ends, it will be because it destroyed itself.

Looks like democracy will be destroyed first.

Article here:

www.theguardian.com/education/2020/sep/27/uk-schools-told-not-to-use-anti-capitalist-material-in-teaching

What I find extremely, overwhelmingly telling, and horrifying, is that the one thing we ARE at risk of now is fascism, of a new and exciting sort that uses technology to divide people and spread information and which wraps itself in capitalism but ONLY for the benefit of the super-rich. But these guidelines and the examples they provide do not once mention fascism.

I'm not surprised, considering that this very thread is filled with cluelessly misinformed fascist pawns (or bad actors pretending to be cluelessly misinformed in order to spread incorrect information about socialism and democracy). But I'm still horrified and so very scared of what Britain (and the rest of the world) will look like ten years from now.

Indeed @Wroxie

I've found observation and analysis by Prof Danny Dorling very interesting

@FinallyHere do you have any links or titles I can have a look at?

Do you support democracy? Do you support free and fair elections? Do you support freedom of speech, association and assembly, freedom of religion and conscience? Do you think these are preserves of "capitalism"? What are the alternatives to supporting these things

Yes I do support those things.

I also think that it seems strange to put capitalism amongst those things.

I would be interested to hear from a Government Minister why it has been included in that statement along with the others.

@Wroxie

http://www.dannydorling.org

In his own words. I've only read a few things so far, and watched his YouTube lecture called 'Brexit and the End of Empire'

Clearly a year or so ago now and I'll be looking for more up to date material to see how his analysis developed. He makes the most sense of anyone I have recently read on the way for example history is taught now and in previous generations in UK schools.

@chomalungma

Unbridled capitalism is seen as problematic by the Pope and he’s spoken against it more than once

That's true - and I guess that capitalism is on a spectrum, just like other forms of society.

It's not just capitalism or communism. There is a whole spectrum of systems. So yes - what does 'abolishing' capitalism even look like - considering we don't have pure capitalism in the UK.

Capitalism is a system of production and distribution based upon.....the exploitation of labour. Without labour creating surplus value (profit) for the capitalist, capitalism could not exist. For anyone interested, the starting point for understanding what capitalism is, is the labour theory of value.

There is some debate within academia and between Marxists as to whether the LTV is still in operation. My area of interest is as previously stated immaterial labour, ie labour that doesn't produce physical commodities. If through increased automation, technology, AI, and what labour (work) is left is emotional, social, intellectual, cognitive etc.....it may well be that capitalism will fall into its last long crisis. At that point we have 1) already created the communism within capital 2) have the conditions for revolution, which depend upon (and history bares witness to the fact) a revolution to the Mode of production.

There are no different types of capitalism, only political systems adopted by states in order to mitigate and minimise the inequalities it creates. Inequalities that is absolutely essential to capitalisms perpetuation.

You don’t get revolution until life is mostly shit for the people doing the revolting
That is true and in 1989/91 people in the Soviet Union decided they’d had enough of the regime which replaced the previous regime.
Life under the Tsars May have been appalling but I don’t think life under Stalin was a piece of cake either.

I was brought up by a socialist.

It's never socialism's fault as it hasn't been done properly yet.

It's never socialism's fault as it hasn't been done properly yet

SallySeven - why not?

This is about school guidance that puts organisations that want to abolish capitalism in the same 'domain' as groups who want to overthrow democracy and those who don't want free and fair elections.

Can you give an example of a group that wants to ‘overthrow capitalism’ democratically?

Oh god don't ask me.

Can you give an example of a group that wants to ‘overthrow capitalism’ democraticall

You seem to have misread 'abolish' and 'overthrow'

Can you give an example of a group that wants to ‘overthrow capitalism’ democratically

If there was a group that wanted to change the way we function through democratic means, should resources from that group be allowed to be used in class?

Probably because the oiks misread the instruction manual.

But I'm just speculating on that one.