Actual lefties 1

[Coolfonz]

You don't get shit from politicians except war, theft and blame.

You only change things with political mass movements and the threat of the violence which the state is only to happy to deploy against you.

To be left wing you have to value the lives of people in other countries on a par with those in your own (it's called internationalism).

You have to want to roll back the influence of the market which is by it's very nature, an attack on democracy.

You see the ownership of huge resources in private hands as theft but you see the ownership of your own property as part of what makes you you.

Anyone else here or are you just a bunch of Harriet-loving Guardian-reading lentil-munching wide-girls ?

thought so

Can you get on with the felt pens please? When you've finished can you count up the paperclips and see if you need to ask your manager to order any more.

Yes I'm anarchist. Not a lifestyler though.

Sexism: hmm...I do kind of think I'm posting with loads of women. So Guardian-reading and lentil-munching isn't what you mean I take it. You mean...

Harriet-loving? Well there seems to be a lot of love for her from the folk on MN on the Labour side. I think she's awful. Her alibi for approving the slaughter in Iraq disgusts me to this day.

And Wide-Girls is a reference to what I (maybe mistakenly) see as a 90pc women's board. Just a niggle, a wind-up, not rudeness i hope (it's not a very nasty insult is it?)

I'm also not going to say oh some of my best friends are women to justify myself...

Seriously, i'm not fucking with anyone here because they are women, I'd post the same way anywhere. The only difference I can see from other boards here is that its a better quality of debate...

Catinthehat2 - ...apart from you that is. Insults tend to mean two things, you've been insulted first or you just lost the argument.

Tbh cf I doubt you'd get more than about five MNers to sign up to this particular programme (and two of them would probably be posting on the wrong thread by mistake).

I used to go along to Schnews meetings in Brighton, and while I thought some of the individuals there were great, I realised after a bit that I just can't get along with people who deliberately tool up to go to a demonstration. Not because the police don't behave like violent fascists sometimes, but because it's an utterly hopeless way of changing people's minds IMO.

and also because that makes them no better than the police. Or football hoolies.

Is it OK to send your children to private school so long as they do a gap year in Tanzania and volunteer at Oxfam Books on Saturdays?

Ker chinnngg!!

Tanzania no way, but a voluntary outreach co-ordination post working with difficult kids in Irkutsk, yes.

Polwonkers - Tooling up on a demo is indeed, almost always, entirely futile. But that isn't anarchism. Nor is it hunt sab/squat etc, life-styling. Anarchism is about a left that doesn't have the problems the Soviet model had, centralisation, militarism, imperialism etc. About a kind of good left. But everyone reserves the right to violence in the end. It's just a human thing.

Proleswth - Yeah so if Labour doesn't really do it for you...what are we doing all this (voting/parliament/bollockx etc) for?

I agree Prolesworth that the leftie threads are really anti-Tory. I think we were just trying to be polite and inoffensive to other MNers by calling them something else.

Coolfonz I agree with these two sentiments wholehearedly;

"To be left wing you have to value the lives of people in other countries on a par with those in your own (it's called internationalism).

You have to want to roll back the influence of the market which is by it's very nature, an attack on democracy."

Yes beach those were the two bits I can wholeheartedly sign up to. Well, and also agree with 'political mass movement' - just not the violence.

yup, the violence tips it over the edge for me too.

"But everyone reserves the right to violence in the end. It's just a human thing."

Lots of anarchists would disagree strongly with you on that one, I would say - there are plenty of anarchists around who don't take the black bloc approach.

More seriously:

"You don't get shit from politicians except war, theft and blame." - yes, but with the caveat that some are worse than others (no doubt we could argue that one all night)

"You only change things with political mass movements" yes
"and the threat of the violence which the state is only to happy to deploy against you." - what about mass non violent non-co-operation?

"To be left wing you have to value the lives of people in other countries on a par with those in your own (it's called internationalism)." Yes, absolutely, though as Orwell pointed out way back when, its never been something that the British left has been that strong on

"You have to want to roll back the influence of the market which is by it's very nature, an attack on democracy." Yes - and I think plenty of the left of all shades on here would agree with you on that one

"You see the ownership of huge resources in private hands as theft" Yes, no problem with that one
"but you see the ownership of your own property as part of what makes you you." not sure exactly what you're getting at there, perhaps that we should be controlling our own means of production, if so, I'm with you wholeheartedly.

I read your comment as "volunteer at Oxford Brookes"

"Anyone else here or are you just a bunch of Harriet-loving Guardian-reading lentil-munching wide-girls"

Are you calling me fat?

Mao-se-tung said change will come....

CaptainNancy Lol at Oxford Brookes.

Everybody, bar a very few genuine pacifits, believe in violence as a means to political change. The ANC? Should they have signed online petitions? Vietnam? "Dear France/USA, please dont partition our country and deny us elections you will lose, yours Ho Chi Minh. PS: I wont do any nasty fighting." Etc etc.

Labour, the Tories also believe in violence, Labour even explicitly said it believed in its right to kill innocent civilians in Iraq to achieve political goals.

Anarchists in the modern era have nothing on governments in terms of violence, but i do concede the black block can be wild and tactically naive when in full flight...

Our personal property is an inalienable right, something that stands anarchism out from communism, certainly Soviet communism. But all major resources should be in the hands of the state, fiscal, hydrocarbons, land etc...

Democracy is only possible under anarchist sentiments (I don't think you can ever have an anarchist state as such) such as ordinary people doing a lot of voting (we have the technology) on issues that could be super-local, regional, national or international...

We don't need career politicians. Just look at the world as it is. Do you think we would would do a worse job?

Coolfonz. Have you got a job? or am I keeping you in your anarchist ways?......

Why would you even ask that?

Goodness, complimentary, what an interesting question. Please expand.