By Anthony Andrews
After reading Kaye Lee’s article last week titled “How do you argue with that”, about the value of individuals countering LNP and far right narratives, I thought I’d share this exchange with you to highlight that extremist views are not exclusive to the radical conservatives and that these extremists are every bit as dangerous to the peace and prosperity of billions of us, non-extreme human beings as anyone front the far right.
SP is the original poster. AB is a comment contributor and AA is myself.
These exchanges took place on an unofficial Australian union page. I was not out trolling, but I guess to answer Kaye Lee’s question, how can you not argue with those that believe they have a right to force their will onto the rest of us …
SP – The working class of the world are objectively the only revolutionary force on the planet. What is required now is revolutionary leadership and political education of the workers and youth, to prevent the destruction of humanity by the 10% of the ruling elite for obscene private profit. Please study the wsws.org and help build the international party of the working class, the ICFI, SEP and the IYSSE.
AA – Actually SP, the most ‘revolutionary force’ today, and over the last 30 years, is the free market neoliberalists.
Capital has taken almost complete control over most of the world’s economies. The new meaning of the word ‘conservative’ is, ‘radical change that conserves nothing except profit for profits sake.’
It is proof that violent overthrow is not the most affective form of revolt.
AB – What nonsensical babble. Capitalism did not take over anything in some class upheaval or revolt. That Soviet Russia could not sustain a worker’s state in isolation was predicted by Trotsky long ago.
The nation state antagonisms have led to a ever growing trade war, the collapse of the EU and many countries in a state of economic collapse, i e Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Greece, Italy … This was not was not some new system of some neo liberals but an already existing market system in its degeneration and the most massive development of social inequality in history with a very few controlling 90% of the wealth. The rivalry fuels a future world war.
Your final conclusion is just reactionary garbage writing off the working class as a revolutionary force and that the only road is some form of bourgeois reformist pro capitalist agenda and not socialism. The only thing you have proven is that you have no clue what the term “revolution” means.
AA – AB, how long are you people going to keep dragging around the 4th international? Seriously, mate, there’s not that many uneducated peasants left to preach to … even Trotsky knew his audience was limited to the illiterate, hence, ‘why he moved from the cities and towns to speak to the farm workers’.
If you’re saying that neoliberalism hasn’t created dramatic and wide-reaching changes in conditions, attitudes or operations over the last 30 years then your definition of revolution is obviously limited. Was the ‘solar revolution’ violent?
Did we need to destroy all the pens, pencils, books and paper, to create the internet revolution? No, mate, we didn’t.
Your assessment of my “final conclusion” tells me quite a lot about you though, AB.
It tells me that you see only in black and white and that you are convinced of ‘your truth’, any other voices from within the collective that don’t agree with you are wrong. That you see no other road than socialism and my only hope is that you have never been, and will never be, a leader of a trade union because anyone that forces their will on the rest of us really isn’t qualified for the job. Be a boss somewhere else.
Is it coincidence that after 30 years of the neoliberalist agenda the conditions are almost ripe for the disillusioned and financially burdened mass of workers to be used for ‘social reform’?
How much have you, personally, contributed to our current situation by your blind adherence to strict ideological doctrine?
What draconian measures initiated by the capitalist system have you not resisted or fought to your utmost because it fits into ‘your’ plans and vision for installing a worldwide worker’s paradise based on the 4th international?
AB – Uniting the working class internationally is fighting in the proper manner. Pseudo left opportunism has stopped zero. Your contempt for the working class is unwarranted as millions engage in labor [sic] struggles and protest.
The key has always been leadership. The draconian measures come from the system’s decay. You have apparently not fought to the utmost based on the misery of mankind. What a piece of reformist reactionary scum you are.
AA – AB, ha! Classic answer, comrade!
You assume much, but say little …
By the way, I’m reserving my contempt for you and your Ilk, not the ‘working class’.
These men and women are not ‘your’ pawns in ‘your’ global struggle to overturn capitalism and seize the means of production.
You’re right though, the key is leadership. Not apparatchiks glued to the bible of Marx and that have actively contributed to the social and economic decay of working people.
“Reformist” isn’t an insult mate, but you and your ilk’s habit of only getting off your arse when ‘reacting’ to direct attacks on workers, instead of formulating long term strategies that don’t rely on lock outs and years of bitter unemployment for the millions of us workers around the world, is an insult.
You’re not all to blame I suppose …
It’s not your fault that you have no imagination of your own. That ‘Pheep! Everybody out’ is as far as you ever progressed in industrial relations techniques.
Like I said earlier though, I just hope you’re not a trade union leader.
AB – AA, The SEP and wsws site has countless articles that oppose the ISO and others that back reactionary union corporate sell outs. WE fight successfully to create rank and file committees to oppose the current trade union leaders that keep each struggle isolated. You denounce the fight for revolutionary leadership, the basis of the founding of the 4th international, yet seem to see reactionary leadership as an issue. So your answer is what? To replace these corporate union leaders with what??? while the owners still control all the productive forces and hammer the worker force and national rivalries rage and a new world war is in the making. France just announced a draft. Social democracy has never historically stopped any fragment of the draconian economic program of Imperialism diverting social program funds into the war machine.
Your “imagination” calls up very old and historically bankrupt policies refuted a thousand times: reformist nonviolent. You are going to stop the relentless drive for profit, national bourgeois antagonisms and war by transforming capitalism into some benevolent humane system.
Talk about allowing every atrocity to continue.
You sound like the ultimate opportunist. You do the work of a union bureaucracy 10 times over. Reactionary slime.
You reject the science of Marx and the validity of the Communist manifesto which reads as if it was written yesterday.
You are lass [sic] collaborationist – join Syriza [sic], DSA. I just hope you are not a fascist. Maybe fascists will have the industrial relation techniques you seek.
AA – one thing I wouldn’t be “seeking”, AB, is your input into industrial relations policy.
To you, the communist manifesto may “read like it was written yesterday”, but to me it was written with chalk on slate. Interesting concepts and ideas, but just another example of one man’s opinion being thrown as a lifeline to save us all. Not like Mein Kampf, but not so different either. Just another text book used as an absolute truth by enthusiastic followers that expect us all to adhere to their superior guidance.
If you don’t agree, or dare question the narrative, you’re labelled “scum” or “reactionary slime”…
For bloke’s like you it’s ‘my way or the highway’ and that’s a problem.
Collective action requires input from the collective, not just like minded ‘committees’ that control the agenda and see themselves and their opinions on ‘class’ as Uber allies (above others). My union book holds no less value than yours or anyone else’s, regardless of what our individual role is within our collective.
You, and others with the same training base as yourself, see everything adversarially. You don’t negotiate, you demand. You want heads to roll, not social justice and a fair distribution of the profits from labour.
You want to overthrow the system and the workers belonging to trade unions are the tool you use to turn the screws.
The majority of union members globally are not extremists like yourself. Neither are we just passive bystanders awaiting the moment YOU decide to throw us in front of the tanks.
I wasn’t going to post a link to what I really think about all this because I don’t believe I have a monopoly on the truth, but I’m going to.
If you care to give your ‘analysis’ on my writings, go for it mate, but I’m still waiting for one of my own highly paid elected officials to do that, like he said he would, so I won’t hold my breath sport.
https://www.facebook.com/pointlessPR/
AA – AB, where have your comments gone, comrade? Where’s the courage of your convictions?
SP – We are simply exposing to the workers, who may be trapped in your Pseudo-left, anti-working-class outfit, and to point them to the independent mobilisation of the worlds working class for the revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist system. We have nothing more to say to you. The workers will get the picture. Most workers hate the Unions which you wholeheartedly support.
SP – The above was final reply to Anthony Andrews.
SP – You are the last line of defense for the Capitalists.
SP – You and the Unions are in bed with the capitalists and just throw around a few radical sounding phrases to hoodwink the working class!!
AA – SP, then get out of the unions, mate, simple. Don’t use us for your extremist agenda, do it on your own for a change.
Your mate deleting his exchange with me only proves that your whole worldview and agenda doesn’t stand up to the light of day.
He obviously reread it and thought “wow! I’m really coming across as a megalomaniac here, I better delete it all, before people realise just how crazy my belief system is …
Then this exchange a day later on a post from SP:
VF – Australian politicians/ governments have always done whatever the American governments tell them to do.
AA – VF, SP does whatever the politburo says, how’s that any different?
SP – What politburo you falsely referring to, Andrews?
AA – SP, that’s right, Soviet Russia no longer exists, my condolences comrade … The roubles must be harder to get now.
SP – You are a liar, you know the ICFI is the world Trotskyist Party, who have always been opposed to the Soviet Stalinist bureaucracy. Come clean with your slanders, agent of Imperialism.
How many Bolshevik workers died in a river of blood under the Stalinist Moscow Trials, including Trotsky and his family and supporters. Workers please study this history, which you can find in the wsws.org website. The truth is a slow starter but will win out in the end.
AA – but what about before the 4th international, mate?
Firstly, there’s no doubt that Trotsky was a passionate and brave man. After devoting himself to the teachings of Marx in uni, his efforts to build a secretive trade union and the gaoling’s and exile that followed were proof of his zeal.
After he left Russia and hung out with Lenin (a Bolshevik) for a while, he then became a Menshevik. Which, correct me if I’m wrong, is more of a ‘socially democratic’ outfit compared with the more radical bolshies.
But he wasn’t stupid. When the Bolsheviks looked like seizing power, he took up Lenin’s cause again.
If Lenin hadn’t died in the early 1920s, it’s arguable that Trotsky would’ve never left the motherland … except to further the global revolution of course.
He loved Russia, he didn’t identify as a Ukrainian where he was born, he was Russian.
After Stalin got the top job Trotsky’s views on the boss suppressing ‘democracy’ and not wanting Leon to go out warring against everyone else for a while (to further the glorious revolution of course), got him expelled from the politburo, then the USSR itself …
He was right but, obviously Stalin was ‘suppressing democracy’😉
Lenin’s methods were no less violent than Stalin’s and, as they were all ‘students of Marx’, who had no qualms about using ‘terror’ and insisted that revolution can only come from standing over everyone that opposes you.
(He tried nonviolent, but after defeat, got the shits and decided killing those that didn’t agree with him (and millions of people didn’t agree with him by the way) was a better option.)
All to be forgiven after the proletariat rewrote the rule book on morals and principles.
Trotsky didn’t give a shit about ‘the workers’ either, they were always just tools to be used as he saw fit … he was just another man driven by blame, hatred and revenge.
As you are so dedicated to Karl’s bible, I see no reason why you would think any different, but you mentioned something about me ‘coming clean with my lies or slander’.
Was that about the roubles?
If it was, all I can say is that the USSR secretly financed many trade unions and federations around the world and as you stated yesterday, you use the trade union movement to further your ends, so I reckon your trots definitely had your hand out and filled your pockets. After all, aren’t ‘morals’ a bourgeoisie concept?
SP – You know nothing of the real history of Lenin and Trotsky and the Russian working class. You are either a liar to workers or a sad ignorant soul. I shouldn’t really give you the benefit of the doubt. You are hostile to the Bolsheviks and the working class, and that’s why you support the corporatist unions today!!
AA – SP, I’m certainly not hostile to workers, mate, I just reckon your views on ‘class’ are a bit dated, that’s all.
Thank you for giving me the “benefit of the doubt”, mate, I am a “sad, ignorant soul”, that’s very generous of you.
But I’m definitely not lying to workers, this is just how I see it and it’ll take more than slogans of a worker’s utopia after the glorious overthrow of capital to convince me otherwise.
No reply as yet … I’m just hoping that the next exchange isn’t, as the Stranglers would say, with “an ice pick, that made his ears burn”.
[textblock style=”7″]
Like what we do at The AIMN?
You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.
Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!
Your contribution to help with the running costs of this site will be gratefully accepted.
You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969
[/textblock]
