Well, I wouldn't put it that way. Rather, no alternative has yet to definitively overturn capitalism. And that's hardly surprising. — Sapientia

But that's obvious, and it wasn't my point, which was that there is, currently, no realistic alternative to capitalism--which in this context means that there is no widespread social movement with a definite plan for how to organize society in the absence of capitalism, or for how the necessary transition would take place.

Well, yes, I agree with you there. — Sapientia

Well that's what it means to say that "there is, currently, no alternative to capitalism".

I also don't agree that there's no alternative to capitalism. Of course there are alternatives - and that's plural, because there is not just a single alternative, but rather multiple alternatives. I'm guessing that you mean that there are no better alternatives, but I doubt whether you're justified in reaching that conclusion. You would have had to have done a heck of a lot of work to rule out every possible alternative. — Sapientia

You've interpreted me in an oddly literal fashion. I mean there is no realistic prospect of replacing capitalism and there is no good plan for how to replace capitalism or for what to replace it with. One can imagine things, speculate about what might work and how it might be achieved, but until there is a concerted and popular social movement with a good plan, it's utopian pie in the sky.

As for left and right, right-wingers will hang their positions on the referendum just as left-wingers do (like the SWP), but my point was that the core issue, that of sovereignty and democracy, is not left-right (even if it is treated that way).

What I think is stupid is a willingness to put national pride or historical respect above practical benefits. — Michael

But the concern "about British laws being overruled by EU laws", as you put it, is not a matter of national pride or historical respect. It's a matter of democratic control over legislation (which has progressed in Britain through various phases as the right to vote has been widened to accommodate class conflicts). The European Parliament does not come close to providing that, nor was it ever intended to. The European Commission and other unelected parts of the European bureaucratic executive hold the power.

It [the European Union] began life as a cartel of heavy industry (coal and steel, then car manufacturers, later co-opting farmers, hi-tech industries and others). Like all cartels, the idea was to manipulate prices and to redistribute the resulting profits through a purpose-built, Brussels-based bureaucracy.

This European cartel and the bureaucrats who administered it feared the demos and despised the idea of government by the people, just like the administrators of oil producers Opec, or indeed any corporation, does. Patiently and methodically, a process of depoliticising decision-making was put in place, the result a relentless drive towards taking the “demos” out of “democracy”, at least as far as the EU was concerned, and cloaking all policy-making in a pervasive pseudo-technocratic fatalism. National politicians were rewarded handsomely for their acquiescence to turning the commission, the Council, Ecofin (EU finance ministers), the Eurogroup (eurozone finance ministers) and the European Central Bank into politics-free, democracy-free, zones. Anyone opposing the process was labelled “un-European” and treated as a jarring dissonance.

This is, in an important respect, the deeper cause of the aversion that many in Britain instinctively harbour for the EU. And they are right: the price of de-politicising political decisions has been not merely the defeat of democracy at EU level but also poor economic policies throughout Europe. — Varoufakis

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/05/eu-no-longer-serves-people-europe-diem25

Also, don't dismiss the conservative case against the EU. There seem to be more conservatives than leftists making the same pro-democracy case against the EU that Tony Benn was making right up until his death. It's not really a left-right issue. And unlike the SWP, I don't think a specifically anti-capitalist campaign for exit is wise or realistic. There is, currently, no alternative to capitalism, and the best results for Europe will be founded on revitalized investment and growth.

The British Left was traditionally against the EU, but it has flipped over to the other side in recent years, which may be a legacy of New Labour's preference for bureaucracy over democracy. It shared a lot with the EU's own contempt for the demos.

The dilemma for the European Left in general is manifested in the person of Yanis Varoufakis, the finance minister of Greece in the first months of the left-wing Syriza-led government last year, and self-confessed "erratic Marxist". He witnessed first-hand the economic short-sightedness and anti-democratic nature of the EU--which has carried out what is effectively a "coup d’état by stealth" in Greece and enforced a destructive and futile impoverishment of the country--and has thoroughly critiqued it in books and talks since he resigned from that post (when he failed to get anywhere with either the troika or his own Prime Minister).

And yet he is urging British people to vote to stay in the EU. He hates it, but seems to think it can be reformed from within. I think his position is based on fears of a destructive breaking apart of what unity is left in Europe, combined with the continued resurgence of reactionary xenophobic populist movements such as Golden Dawn in Greece, the National Front in France, and so on. He may be right about that, and a break-up of the EU precipitated by Brexit is a worrying prospect in some ways.

On the other hand, the divisions within Europe are intensifying as things stand, and this is partly because of the EU and the Euro. European unity built on a completely different foundation from the EU is an attractive prospect, but whether this requires a wholesale rejection of the EU or can be achieved in the way that Varoufakis envisages, I don't know. Personally I'm inclined to vote to leave (although I don't like the prospect of getting thrown out of France).

As for the UK in particular, as with many of the members of the EU I think it could see a revitalization of its political life if it leaves.

https://yanisvaroufakis.eu/
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/charlie-evans/eu-referendum_b_9638336.html
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/06/john-king-left-wing-case-leaving-eu

For whoever is interested, we have a section for reading groups that could do with more action.

http://thephilosophyforum.com/categories/reading-groups

And you can blame the education system of most countries for the young people being like they are. — Sir2u

In what way are education systems changing people for the worse? And when you say "the young people being like they are", what do you mean? What do you think is wrong with young people now that was not wrong with you and your peers when you were young? I take it you think they have a "total lack of ability to do anything else to impress people". Can you refer to any research that discusses this?

And the legal system is to blame for the schools not having the ability to enforce enough discipline to be able to teach the young. — Sir2u

I can't tell what you're getting at here. Maybe you could expand on it.

So many of the people on farcebook try so hard to imitate the medias idea of what is beautiful, that is painful to look at sometimes. — Sir2u

I have several accounts in each, plus a few other sites. I have them because I get bored sometimes and go there to have a laugh at the idiot that post pics of themselves doing the most stupid things and leave the accounts open to the public. — Sir2u

Are you saying that you are on Facebook and Twitter just to laugh at Facebook and Twitter users, who you think are idiots in some way? Can you go into more detail about this behaviour?

The reason I have several accounts is that the time between one visit and the next is sometimes so long that I forget the password.

All of these sites have a "forgotten your password" facility.

A song about getting too hot and then cooling down in the pool. Brilliant.

...with capitalism the power of the state is not utilized to oppress and control the masses. — Hanover

Sometimes it is, as in Franco's Spain, Pinochet's Chile (a military dictatorship in which neoliberalism was first tried out in earnest), and China today. Now don't try and "no true Scotsman" me. As it happens I would also argue that Hitler's Germany was, in practice, compatible with capitalism; the Nazis did not follow through on the "left" fascist anti-capitalist rhetoric. But I'll let that one slide.

And in the UK, liberalization of the economy (financialization) lived alongside social authoritarianism, under Thatcher's rule (it's no coincidence she was a fan of Pinochet). This is the distinction that "free-market" enthusiasts fail to make.

It's not coincidental that the existence of free markets coincides with free societies generally.

Probably not, but I think the two are ultimately independent. Liberal freedoms were surely crucial to the rise of capitalism, but it could be the case that it no longer needs them, as Zizek has pointed out. In any case, in the mid-nineteenth century, European governments were very slow to grant full democratic freedoms even while capitalist industrialization was well under way. Unlike 1789, it was not primarily the bourgeoisie that continued to press on for more freedom. It was the socialists (those were the days).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1848

Well, it's popularly known as a conservative publication and its strongest and longest affiliation has been to the British Conservative Party. But it's true that the party political affiliation is informal and traditional rather than dogmatic, and as it says of itself, it doesn't hold to any party line.

Because liberals have abandoned liberalism, it's sometimes left to conservatives to defend it, so there's often a confusion between conservatism and classical liberalism.

THE CRITICAL PROBLEM for leftist papers of all shades of pink and red is finding a strategy to achieve economic justice that has better than a snowball's chance in hell of succeeding. — Bitter Crank

Maybe, but note that it's not a problem for the Spectator, which is not Leftist. As Baden's been saying, it's a conservative publication.

There are no real arguments. It's just a poor attempt at satire that's vaguely flirts with half-truths while dancing self-congratulatory to the usual Tory tune. — Baden

There is nothing particularly Tory or right-wing about the article's observations.

As an editor I similarly might make the decision not to run with such a headline, for the reasons you state. But that's not what I meant by suppression. It's about context. What concerns me is the misguided liberal wish to deny the facts.

If you refuse to bake a cake with a decoration you find immoral, aren't you discriminating against the cake rather than against the person who wants you to bake it? Surely to be discriminatory against gay people is to refuse to serve gay people just because they are gay, no matter what kind of cake they want?

I'd like to say I'm shocked, but of course I'm not at all.

In hiding facts from people you consider less enlightened than you, you only make things worse. Open discussion is the only thing that can help here. Not only that, but in trying to sweep facts that you find embarrassing under the carpet you disarm the Muslim critics of conservative and extremist Islam. They are the only ones who can lead the internal attack on the likes of ISIS, and against the spread of its ideology. You are suggesting that we pretend that the Islamist ideology is not spreading. That's not a great start for fighting against it.

And yet it's largely accurate, so it seems to me. At least if we take "Left-wing" in one of its ordinary, current senses.

I know you're not denying any of this, but for the record:

• The Spectator opposed American slavery in the 1850s and 60s and came into conflict with the conservative establishment because of this.
• In the late 1920s it ran a campaign to raise money for the miners of Aberdare, where unemployment was 40%.
• It opposed Britain's involvement in Suez.
• It has supported the decriminalization of homosexuality since 1957 (perhaps before).
• It opposed America's involvement in Vietnam.

And in general it's always been a promoter of liberty against authoritarianism, has always questioned power, and has always had good, interesting, original writers, not all of whom are Tories or even sympathetic to them (Nick Cohen and Rod Liddle are Old Labour, and it's saying something that they've found a home at the Spectator).

Of course, I'm not saying it's a Marxist journal in disguise or anything like that, and I'm not even denying it's a pillar of the establishment. What makes it particularly interesting now is that it is a pillar of the old, fading establishment, which has largely been ousted by a new one since the 90s. This gives it a refreshing, contrarian attitude. The New Statesman, by contrast, is quite boring, for some of the reasons given in the Spectator's light-hearted piece.

But let me ask: if it were shown that sympathy for ISIS and Islamic ultra-conservativism were significantly higher among Muslims than among other people, would you want to suppress this fact for fear it would cause bigotry?

You must have misunderstood, because what you are saying is absurd. Using an adjective to qualify a noun in no way implies that other nouns correctly qualified by that adjective are also associated with that noun. To say "Swedish knife" does not imply that all Swedish things are knives.

This is the problem with political correctness. People are not thought to be able to understand or use language properly, or the risks are thought to be too great in letting them do it freely, so all ambiguity is pre-emptively removed.

The problem you're concerned about--and I would have thought this was obvious--is the idea that all or most Muslims are terrorists or are sympathetic to terrorism. Focussing on a usefully descriptive term like "Islamic terrorism" is silly.

Funny how the second most used language to look up gay porn is Arabic. Making something taboo, the stronger the powers that be attempt to enforce an unreasonable restraint the more interesting it will become. The reason areas like Japan don't have as progressive LGBT rights is arguably because it was never opposed as strongly as it was in the west. There are 1.3 billion Muslims, to paint this as "Islamic" is obviously highly simplistic, and promotes the racism and terrorism many middle easterners experience everyday, just trying to live there lives, and not even suicide bomb anyone at all. — Wosret

As far as I can make sense of this it looks like you might be responding to my use of the term "Islamic terrorism". On that assumption...

If I talk about Christian fundamentalists, will you tell me that there are billions of Christians who are not fundamentalists? If I talk about Hindu terrorists, i.e., those who terrorize Muslims and Sikhs in the name of Hinduism and precisely because they are not Hindus, will you tell me that it's got nothing to do with Hinduism? Or more generally, if I talk about, say, a Ugandan dictator, will you tell me that most Ugandans believe in democracy and that I'm encouraging anti-Ugandan prejudice?

I think you've forgotten how language works. ISIS and al Qaeda are religious fundamentalist organizations (or loose affiliations if you prefer) committed to the use of terror to enforce a strict version of Islam, thus it's Islamic terrorism. There's nothing Islamophobic about saying so. The charge of Islamophobia is often effectively now an attempt to stifle debate. Some of the those who are currently being most vocally accused of Islamophobia are Muslims and ex-Muslims who are speaking up against Islamic conservatism and extremism, like Raheel Raza and Maajid Nawaz.

If one thinks that the terrorists are going by a questionable interpretation of Islam--as today's Popes think about much of what the Spanish Inquisition did--then it is of no help in promoting a peaceful interpretation to deny that the extremist interpretation is an interpretation at all, i.e., to deny it has anything to do with Islam.

On the other hand I do agree that the American media generalizes far too much, and encourages a fear and suspicion of Muslims in general, and can be very propagandist in nature.

Even if I don't think Islamic terrorism can be seen as anti-Imperialist resistance, the West is crucial to the Islamist narrative. In that narrative, Islam has been humiliated (militarily) and overtaken (in terms of success, wealth and power) by a morally degraded culture.

Yes, I've been readng Burke's excellent New Threat from Islamic Militancy, and I don't have any serious issues with what he says.

the incentives that initially drove the proliferation of terrorist organizations and attacks on Western cities — Saphsin

Do you mean the incentives of the people who did it? Again, if you look at the history of al Qaeda and ISIS you'll see that the incentive was not centrally to resist Western military interference.

If you read that research more carefully you'll see that what it shows is that recent Western intervention has opened up space for the spread of terrorist activities that have a special character owing to the historical development of Islamic culture and ideology. Throwing gay people off the top of buildings, destroying pre-Islamic cultural heritage, trying to wipe out non-conformist sects, or executing boys for listening to pop music, are not ordinary, general, knee-jerk reactions to destructive foreign inerference. Indeed they are not primarily attacks on the West at all, except insofar as it is seen to represent modernity and pluralism.

And your story about peasants rising up against the West by joining terrorists is too simplistic to be a useful general characterization of what has been happening.

Since you argued that the alternative narratives to the mainstream media were equally shallow — Saphsin

I did not argue that. Although I would argue that many of the competing narratives are equally shallow, I specifically described the particular narrative I was criticizing.

like at all — Saphsin

Speak English boy.

Otherwise, those links don't contradict what I said, and I've been very impressed with Scott Atran's analysis in particular.

While I'm talking about crazy narratives, a lot of what I hear about the Middle East follows a pretty shallow narrative. "Moslems in X country are blowing up women and children in markets, parks, etc." It's all religious bigotry. They're all crazy." (They don't say they are all crazy -- one infers that.) Take Assad in Syria. They never tell us why people are against Assad. Why is Assad doing what he is doing? These people are not (possibly) all crazy. Presumably there is more at stake than just petty religious bigotry.

It is difficult for people to make sense of what they hear when news stories about real events are structured in such a way that the active agents involved don't seem to have apparent and rational reasons for behaving the way they do. — Bitter Crank

One of the very common alternative narratives has the same effect, structures real events in the same way, and is equally shallow. The idea is that the acts of ISIS, al Qaeda, the Taliban, and Palestinian terrorists are the rage of the oppressed, that the West (and its allies) has made them crazy. It ignores the logic of Islamism and how it fits historically in the specific circumstances of the Middle East.

Agreed. Do you think illegal immigrants should be allowed to freely come in whenever they want? — Agustino

As a general principle, I think people should be able to go where they want.

Unless you subscribe to some totalitarian pseudo-morality, @Agustino, laws are not necessarily good or right, and the most interesting political debates are about how the law should be changed.

I think if you read over that again you might see the humour in what you've written particularly the part about me smearing accusations of antisemitism. — Baden

I started out by saying I thought there was an anti-Israel bias outside America, then went on to say I thought antsemitism was very relevant to a discussion of anti-Israel sentiment, and then defended the notion that antisemitism underlies some anti-Israel movements as a legitimate, serious position that cannot be dismissed. I don't see the humour, unfortunately.

No, I am saying that the accusation of antisemitism is not always a "cudgel used to stifle debate", as you are implying it always is. And I am saying it is relevant. I am responding to your rhetorical attempts to smear all accusations of antisemitism. It's the very thing at issue, and would need to be debated. I recognize that I would have to actually argue that much of the anti-Israel sentiment of recent years is inspired partly by antisemitism. Likewise, you have to argue that it is not--rather than throwing spitballs.

Just read my posts.

"Semitic" as an ethnic group is more expansive than "Jewish", isn't it? The Palestinians, Lebanese, and Syrians are all Semites. The Arabs are semitic. Then there is language. Arabian is spoken in parts of northern Africa whose people are not ethnic Arabian. French and English are spoken by people who are not remotely European. Multiple cultural influences have cross hatched the Middle East, flowing from Arabia, Turkey, Iran, Greece, Rome, and farther afield.

Antisemites, as a group, really shouldn't like Saudis any more than they like Jews, if they are going to be consistent. — Bitter Crank

Anti-semitism is prejudice against Jews. That's what it means, and it's what it has meant since it was coined. You might argue that it was mis-named, of course.

But as it happens there used to be (I'm not aware if it's still around, except for in Iran) an anti-Arab prejudice that was similar to antisemitism, Arabs being portrayed as avaricious and untrustworthy (I found an example of this just recently in a hideous sci-fi book by Larry Niven).

Christianity's deepest roots are Semitic--one of those inconvenient truths.

Why is this inconvenient for Christianity? Christianity transcends ethnicity doesn't it? Christian anti-semitism is (or was) about the religion. It was only in the late nineteenth century that anti-semitism became racialized.

But my point about poisoning the well stands. It may be that anti-Semitism comes into the conversation somewhere but it shouldn't be used as a cudgel to stifle debate. — Baden

Well, nothing should be used as a cudgel to stifle debate. Portraying the accusation of anti-semitism as a debate-stifling cudgel is partly what these authors are taking issue with. It's the crux of the biscuit.

But in so far as it does, it bleeds in from the right. It's almost exclusively right-wing morons... — Baden

I think you'd need to argue for this, not only because left-wing anti-semitism is a very well-known phenomenon going back to the nineteenth century, but especially because it contradicts numerous recent commentators who have brought our attention to the modern variant, e.g., Owen Jones, Nick Cohen, Simon Schama and Howard Jacobson--few if any of whom are uncritical of Israel (Jacobson being the least critical, I think). And these are respected independent writers making their cases in a calm and reasonable way--they're not idiots, trolls, propagandists, or loonies.

And there's also the testimony of people formerly involved with pro-Palestinian campaigns, like Alex Chalmers.

Whether you agree with their assessment or not, the fact that it's not just an oddball claim demands that you do more than flatly deny it (if you're up for continuing the discussion, that is).

Incidentally, which debate you regard as the real one is probably a matter of taste: some of us might prefer to talk about left-wing anti-semitism than about whether Israel's actions are justified. In any case, I think the two can be hard to separate.

I was just pointing out that it was relevant, and I was aware you didn't say it wasn't. As for your last statement, there are serious thinkers who suggest there's an underlying resurgence in anti-Semitism that accounts for much of the recent anti-Israel stuff. Is such a position necessarily pernicious? I can't tell if you would say this counted as "branding every critic of Israel an anti-semite", but if not, and you meant it literally, then of course I agree.

In my view, anti-Semitism is crucial to a discussion about the current political campaigns against Israel and the general attitudes towards it (though I have no special interest in accusing you personally of anti-Semitism).

Thankfully not everyone on the Left falls for it.

Well, there's certainly a rabid bias against Israel infecting the rest of the world right now so I suppose you're kind of right.

Long fuel lines at gas stations, weak foreign policy resulting in Iran hostages, double digit inflation, double digit interest rates, Russian wheat debacle, and I'm sure there's more, but just can't remember. America was weak, which made room for Reagan, much like Obama has made room for Trump (a joke, only sort of). — Hanover

Doesn't sound all that bad to be honest, but what do I know?

His more recent positions on Israel have been atrocious, although I'm sure you disagree with my assessment. — Hanover

Now wait just a minute. I don't recall saying anything about Israel on this forum or the last one.

I mean if our position is reactionary, you're going to have to come up with some new vocabulary for those who would force a woman who had been raped and is suicidal to carry a pregnancy through its full term, which is another form of cruelty which I would oppose as much as you would. — Baden

If this woman only managed to get to the abortion clinic in the third trimester, would you still oppose a law that forced her to go through with the birth? For the sake of argument let's say she's not suicidal or at risk otherwise.

And just because you're not extreme (or should I say consistent?) doesn't make you non-reactionary.