The Communist manifesto

[santiago]

Today i was watching Lord Monckton cut to pieces a room full of so called climate scientists and of course the idiotic journalists that most of the time dont know their own scrotum from their ballsack. I have to say that i was really really impressed with this Lord Monkton in the way he held himself and was able to look objectively at the issue of climate change without the political nonsense.

Speaking of politics i overheard him compare the greens party or australia to communists and that the greens have some agenda to bring down democracy............man i wish i wasnt daydreaming at the time and had been listening more carefully but ill keep an eye out for the repeat on tv from the national press club. Personally i have lost faith in democracy and i have alot of admiration for the chinese and this so called communism ideal besides their human rights issues which i understand nothing of and dont really want to judge them on. Anyway the Lord Munckton said to read the communist manifesto if i wanted to understand the Green party of Australia. Now that Bob Brown guy seriously does remind me of a smiling dictator, everybody thinks he is nice but i seriously think he would eat newborn baby livers. Alot of this goes against my newfound admiration of Monckton but i took his advice and looked up the communist manifesto which is a seriously old document but i must say it really did mirror alot of my feelings about where i see society heading and the failures, namely of the USA and of course its little lap dog Australia. The way i read it, the communist manifesto isnt about the world invasion of germany and china and all these global bogeymen the US will lead you to believe them in this democratic freedom they bullshit on and on about (only to shoot each other in the faces with their obsession with household guns, doesnt sound very free to me). Its about how the democratic system is ultimately doomed to fail and what can be done about it with prior knowledge to actually garner world peace. Interesting reading below. Thank you Lord Monkton for recommending the following reading.

The history of all hitherto existing society [2] is the history of class struggles.

Freeman and slave, patrician and plebian, lord and serf, guild-master [3] and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.

In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations.

The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.

Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other -- bourgeoisie and proletariat.

From the serfs of the Middle Ages sprang the chartered burghers of the earliest towns. From these burgesses the first elements of the bourgeoisie were developed.

The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape, opened up fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie. The East-Indian and Chinese markets, the colonisation of America, trade with the colonies, the increase in the means of exchange and in commodities generally, gave to commerce, to navigation, to industry, an impulse never before known, and thereby, to the revolutionary element in the tottering feudal society, a rapid development.

The feudal system of industry, in which industrial production was monopolized by closed guilds, now no longer suffices for the growing wants of the new markets. The manufacturing system took its place. The guild-masters were pushed aside by the manufacturing middle class; division of labor between the different corporate guilds vanished in the face of division of labor in each single workshop.

Meantime, the markets kept ever growing, the demand ever rising. Even manufacturers no longer sufficed. Thereupon, steam and machinery revolutionized industrial production. The place of manufacture was taken by the giant, MODERN INDUSTRY; the place of the industrial middle class by industrial millionaires, the leaders of the whole industrial armies, the modern bourgeois.

Modern industry has established the world market, for which the discovery of America paved the way. This market has given an immense development to commerce, to navigation, to communication by land. This development has, in turn, reacted on the extension of industry; and in proportion as industry, commerce, navigation, railways extended, in the same proportion the bourgeoisie developed, increased its capital, and pushed into the background every class handed down from the Middle Ages.

We see, therefore, how the modern bourgeoisie is itself the product of a long course of development, of a series of revolutions in the modes of production and of exchange.

Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance in that class. An oppressed class under the sway of the feudal nobility, an armed and self-governing association of medieval commune <A href="http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifesto.html#c1r4">[4]: here independent urban republic (as in Italy and Germany); there taxable "third estate" of the monarchy (as in France); afterward, in the period of manufacturing proper, serving either the semi-feudal or the absolute monarchy as a counterpoise against the nobility, and, in fact, cornerstone of the great monarchies in general -- the bourgeoisie has at last, since the establishment of Modern Industry and of the world market, conquered for itself, in the modern representative state, exclusive political sway. The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.

The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part.

The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his "natural superiors", and has left no other nexus between people than naked self-interest, than callous "cash payment". It has drowned out the most heavenly ecstacies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom -- Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.

The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honored and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage laborers.

The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation into a mere money relation.

The bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that the brutal display of vigor in the Middle Ages, which reactionaries so much admire, found its fitting complement in the most slothful indolence. It has been the first to show what man's activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions that put in the shade all former exoduses of nations and crusades.

The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real condition of life and his relations with his kind.

The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere.

The bourgeoisie has, through its exploitation of the world market, given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of reactionaries, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilized nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature.

The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilization. The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it forces the barbarians' intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilization into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.

The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life. Just as it has made the country dependent on the towns, so it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilized ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West.

The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralized the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands. The necessary consequence of this was political centralization. Independent, or but loosely connected provinces, with separate interests, laws, governments, and systems of taxation, became lumped together into one nation, with one government, one code of laws, one national class interest, one frontier, and one customs tariff.

The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of nature's forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalization or rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground -- what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labor?

We see then: the means of production and of exchange, on whose foundation the bourgeoisie built itself up, were generated in feudal society. At a certain stage in the development of these means of production and of exchange, the conditions under which feudal society produced and exchanged, the feudal organization of agriculture and manufacturing industry, in one word, the feudal relations of property became no longer compatible with the already developed productive forces; they became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder.

Into their place stepped free competition, accompanied by a social and political constitution adapted in it, and the economic and political sway of the bourgeois class.

A similar movement is going on before our own eyes. Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells. For many a decade past, the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeois and of its rule. It is enough to mention the commercial crises that, by their periodical return, put the existence of the entire bourgeois society on its trial, each time more threateningly. In these crises, a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises, there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity -- the epidemic of over-production. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation, had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed. And why? Because there is too much civilization, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand, by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented.

The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself.

But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons -- the modern working class -- the proletarians.

In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed -- a class of laborers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labor increases capital. These laborers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market.

Owing to the extensive use of machinery, and to the division of labor, the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character, and, consequently, all charm for the workman. He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack, that is required of him. Hence, the cost of production of a workman is restricted, almost entirely, to the means of subsistence that he requires for maintenance, and for the propagation of his race. But the price of a commodity, and therefore also of labor, is equal to its cost of production. In proportion, therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases. What is more, in proportion as the use of machinery and division of labor increases, in the same proportion the burden of toil also increases, whether by prolongation of the working hours, by the increase of the work exacted in a given time, or by increased speed of machinery, etc.

Modern Industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist. Masses of laborers, crowded into the factory, are organized like soldiers. As privates of the industrial army, they are placed under the command of a perfect hierarchy of officers and sergeants. Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois state; they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the overlooker, and, above all, in the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself. The more openly this despotism proclaims gain to be its end and aim, the more petty, the more hateful and the more embittering it is.

The less the skill and exertion of strength implied in manual labor, in other words, the more modern industry becomes developed, the more is the labor of men superseded by that of women. Differences of age and sex have no longer any distinctive social validity for the working class. All are instruments of labor, more or less expensive to use, according to their age and sex.

No sooner is the exploitation of the laborer by the manufacturer, so far at an end, that he receives his wages in cash, than he is set upon by the other portion of the bourgeoisie, the landlord, the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker, etc.

The lower strata of the middle class -- the small tradespeople, shopkeepers, and retired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen and peasants -- all these sink gradually into the proletariat, partly because their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale on which Modern Industry is carried on, and is swamped in the competition with the large capitalists, partly because their specialized skill is rendered worthless by new methods of production. Thus, the proletariat is recruited from all classes of the population.

The proletariat goes through various stages of development. With its birth begins its struggle with the bourgeoisie. At first, the contest is carried on by individual laborers, then by the work of people of a factory, then by the operative of one trade, in one locality, against the individual bourgeois who directly exploits them. They direct their attacks not against the bourgeois condition of production, but against the instruments of production themselves; they destroy imported wares that compete with their labor, they smash to pieces machinery, they set factories ablaze, they seek to restore by force the vanished status of the workman of the Middle Ages.

At this stage, the laborers still form an incoherent mass scattered over the whole country, and broken up by their mutual competition. If anywhere they unite to form more compact bodies, this is not yet the consequence of their own active union, but of the union of the bourgeoisie, which class, in order to attain its own political ends, is compelled to set the whole proletariat in motion, and is moreover yet, for a time, able to do so. At this stage, therefore, the proletarians do not fight their enemies, but the enemies of their enemies, the remnants of absolute monarchy, the landowners, the non-industrial bourgeois, the petty bourgeois. Thus, the whole historical movement is concentrated in the hands of the bourgeoisie; every victory so obtained is a victory for the bourgeoisie.

But with the development of industry, the proletariat not only increases in number; it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength grows, and it feels that strength more. The various interests and conditions of life within the ranks of the proletariat are more and more equalized, in proportion as machinery obliterates all distinctions of labor, and nearly everywhere reduces wages to the same low level. The growing competition among the bourgeois, and the resulting commercial crises, make the wages of the workers ever more fluctuating. The increasing improvement of machinery, ever more rapidly developing, makes their livelihood more and more precarious; the collisions between individual workmen and individual bourgeois take more and more the character of collisions between two classes. Thereupon, the workers begin to form combinations (trade unions) against the bourgeois; they club together in order to keep up the rate of wages; they found permanent associations in order to make provision beforehand for these occasional revolts. Here and there, the contest breaks out into riots.

Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lie not in the immediate result, but in the ever expanding union of the workers. This union is helped on by the improved means of communication that are created by Modern Industry, and that place the workers of different localities in contact with one another. It was just this contact that was needed to centralize the numerous local struggles, all of the same character, into one national struggle between classes. But every class struggle is a political struggle. And that union, to attain which the burghers of the Middle Ages, with their miserable highways, required centuries, the modern proletarian, thanks to railways, achieve in a few years.

This organization of the proletarians into a class, and, consequently, into a political party, is continually being upset again by the competition between the workers themselves. But it ever rises up again, stronger, firmer, mightier. It compels legislative recognition of particular interests of the workers, by taking advantage of the divisions among the bourgeoisie itself. Thus, the Ten-Hours Bill in England was carried.

Altogether, collisions between the classes of the old society further in many ways the course of development of the proletariat. The bourgeoisie finds itself involved in a constant battle. At first with the aristocracy; later on, with those portions of the bourgeoisie itself, whose interests have become antagonistic to the progress of industry; at all time with the bourgeoisie of foreign countries. In all these battles, it sees itself compelled to appeal to the proletariat, to ask for help, and thus to drag it into the political arena. The bourgeoisie itself, therefore, supplies the proletariat with its own elements of political and general education, in other words, it furnishes the proletariat with weapons for fighting the bourgeoisie.

Further, as we have already seen, entire sections of the ruling class are, by the advance of industry, precipitated into the proletariat, or are at least threatened in their conditions of existence. These also supply the proletariat with fresh elements of enlightenment and progress.

Finally, in times when the class struggle nears the decisive hour, the progress of dissolution going on within the ruling class, in fact within the whole range of old society, assumes such a violent, glaring character, that a small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift, and joins the revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in its hands. Just as, therefore, at an earlier period, a section of the nobility went over to the bourgeoisie, so now a portion of the bourgeoisie goes over to the proletariat, and in particular, a portion of the bourgeois ideologists, who have raised themselves to the level of comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole.

Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a genuinely revolutionary class. The other classes decay and finally disappear in the face of Modern Industry; the proletariat is its special and essential product.

The lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class. They are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative. Nay, more, they are reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history. If, by chance, they are revolutionary, they are only so in view of their impending transfer into the proletariat; they thus defend not their present, but their future interests; they desert their own standpoint to place themselves at that of the proletariat.

The "dangerous class", the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society, may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue.

In the condition of the proletariat, those of old society at large are already virtually swamped. The proletarian is without property; his relation to his wife and children has no longer anything in common with the bourgeois family relations; modern industry labor, modern subjection to capital, the same in England as in France, in America as in Germany, has stripped him of every trace of national character. Law, morality, religion, are to him so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests.

All the preceding classes that got the upper hand sought to fortify their already acquired status by subjecting society at large to their conditions of appropriation. The proletarians cannot become masters of the productive forces of society, except by abolishing their own previous mode of appropriation, and thereby also every other previous mode of appropriation. They have nothing of their own to secure and to fortify; their mission is to destroy all previous securities for, and insurances of, individual property.

All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority. The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole superincumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air.

Though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle. The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie.

In depicting the most general phases of the development of the proletariat, we traced the more or less veiled civil war, raging within existing society, up to the point where that war breaks out into open revolution, and where the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie lays the foundation for the sway of the proletariat.

Hitherto, every form of society has been based, as we have already seen, on the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes. But in order to oppress a class, certain conditions must be assured to it under which it can, at least, continue its slavish existence. The serf, in the period of serfdom, raised himself to membership in the commune, just as the petty bourgeois, under the yoke of the feudal absolutism, managed to develop into a bourgeois. The modern laborer, on the contrary, instead of rising with the process of industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class. He becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more rapidly than population and wealth. And here it becomes evident that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society, and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as an overriding law. It is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state, that it has to feed him, instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie, in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society.

The essential conditions for the existence and for the sway of the bourgeois class is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage labor. Wage labor rests exclusively on competition between the laborers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the laborers, due to competition, by the revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.

 

There is heaps more on the source below this really is just the proverbial tip of the iceberg but i will include what is seen as the mission statement of rules for a large communist country and it is no wonder that China is so ahead of the rest of the world with variants of modern society democracy rules such as these below.

Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.

2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.

3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.

4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.

5. Centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.

6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state.

7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.

8. Equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.

9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.

10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc.

When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organize itself as a class; if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.

 

SOURCE-http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifesto.html

Edited July 19, 2011 by santiago

[Kee]

I believe a scrotum is a ball sack so perhaps you should choose another analogy

Edited July 19, 2011 by Kee

[chnt]

i only read the text before the first quote, not sure if i can be bothered reading the communist manifesto, but i just wanted to say i like how you referred to aus as usa's lapdog, i've been using that exact term for years, i guess it's more common that i thought but i never really thought about it.

i support the greens, i believe labor are only slightly less completely fucked than the libs, or coalition i should say, they can all get fucked really, i might have some more respect for labor if they actually do something about the media now that the new murdoch scandal is going on.

democracy seems to be pretty shit so i dont really care if the greens seem like they're emulating something else.

[Slybacon]

I liked this Mockton dude for a very short while, WD tears him to shreads tho. I'd like to see a debate between them as Woody holds himself pretty well. I fuckin hate the Greens tho. Brave New World , I would agree with the sentament, maybe they should stop bastardising the word green and swith to Communist Party Australia

Edited July 19, 2011 by Slybacon

[santiago]

I believe a scrotum is a ball sack so perhaps you should choose another analogy

 

yeh kee u that was my point, that they are the same thing and that journalists are idiots because they wouldnt know the difference....it wasnt an analogy but thank you for your intelligent contribution to the topic.

the difference between wooddragon and i have not read his input on climate change, the difference is lord M has to response in a matter of seconds to a national audience and scientists and journalist who prepare well in advance and try trap him, i would assume wooddragon probably has never had a national audience and tv cameras on him and had to respond to questions ad lib, replying to a topic with the world wide web at your fingertips and hours to thought a response is a totally different situation and i doubt he would have any credibility on the spot.

Edited July 19, 2011 by santiago

[Slybacon]

^^^ Probably wouldn't go as far as that, but I'd love to see the debate, even if it was over the internet.

[qualia]

are you guys serious when you say you have respect for christopher monckton (he's not a "lord", btw)?

i take you've never bothered to read what a charlatan he is?

Edited July 19, 2011 by qualia

[Slybacon]

like (ed).

[qualia]

hmm, i should take more notice of what i read,

ne'er mind....

[santiago]

i reckon the biggest issue with monkton regardless of what he says is the fact he has those googly weird eyes that make him look crazy, of course society the way it is with heavy sense of vanity judges him by looks before they have heard a word he says.

who would 99% of society believe do you really think based on first impressions

OR

my opinion is its a "judge a book by its cover situation"

i dont really think wether he is a lord or not really has any value here, its what he has to say as a scientist and going against the grain of conventional logic, the same sort of conventional logic that has an established war on drugs for example that really is the interest in the topic, not his upbringing.

[synchromesh]

Didn't you see the part where he brought his passport out?

[santiago]

Didn't you see the part where he brought his passport out?

 

do you mean at the press club? no i didnt...i was daydreaming until i started listening to his statement on our greens party. do tell...i got a funny feeling its got something to do with his looks.

[botanika]

Those with the Gold make the rules. Back to the days of Spartacus Weishaupt, The Russian revolution - Marx to Trotsky, Bela Kuhn, Rosa Luxenburg, the formation of the Chinese communist party, the building of the Goldman/Rothschild American empire...on and on... they all have something in common. Something I usually get into trouble for mentioning here so I wont mention it

Marx was an internationalist. Even if Marx understood the logic of capitalism, what he did not see was the emergence of a post bourgeois economy and the hyper modern colonisation of culture and language. Since the change in power relations expected by Marx (and Engel) did not happen, either in the west or in the Marxist/Leninist world, the globalisation of intellectual, cultural and informational production has fallen totally under the hegemony of the economic.

Im not sure how China is 'ahead of the rest of the world' though. A lot of the high level management, technology and creative levels of the 'new chinese empire' is actually being built up by expat expertise from the west, China gets things done rapidly and at enormous scale but the price to pay for that is poor and often dangerous quality, lack of creativity, lack of responsibility and vast environmental degradation. Australian banks are like Club med in comparison to Chinese banks. In Australia you need a OH&S vest just to put out the rubbish at night...in china a lot of people die or are injured because they are moving so fast, they'll take any short cut they can. Whole buildings fall over because the system ultimately is run on the foundation of corruption and selfish greed for money 'gong xi fa cai'. What goes up must come down. But I like their cheap dvd's and their women

Globalisation constructs itself on collective forgetfulness.

Edited July 19, 2011 by botanika

[Zen Peddler]

Im a socialist - was a serious socialist at university, now probably less so. Other than a social-welfare platform I dont really see the Greens as being that radically left, and I generally see comments like those as demonstrating just how far to the right the general media/political discourse has moved in the UK/USA/AUSTRALIAN anglo-celtic world.

This a direct result of the media monopoly of a certain mogul currently embroiled in some serious shit in the United Kingdom at this very moment.

Apparently when Tony Blair got into power, one of the first appointments he kept was with that certain mogul where a deal was done where the mogul's media empire would report favourably on Tony Blair's government providing his government facilitated the mogul's acquisition of an even greater monopoly.

So its news as a business rather than as fact.

When you consider that every major newspaper in Australia other than two are published by the same mogul in question, you realise the influence this person has.

As for socialism / communism, I cant really think of any practical examples of real socialism occuring anywhere outside latin and central america. The Chinese model is in name only, and the Russian experiement was more like animal farm.

Last comment Ill make is that Democracy in Ancient Greece lasted less than one generation...

[Seldom]

if i was to nominate 2 Marxist thinkers alive today worth listening to, it would be this man and Alain Badiou, Slavoj Zizek is a flamethrower, one of but a few living legends working in in philosophy today

 

 

Edited July 19, 2011 by humanzee

[synchromesh]

do you mean at the press club? no i didnt...i was daydreaming until i started listening to his statement on our greens party. do tell...i got a funny feeling its got something to do with his looks.

 

It says that he's a lord. The club's director or whatever read it out.

[rahli]

If your doctor told you that you had cancer and Lord Christopher Monckton told you to ignore their advice would you listen to him? What if he told you not to immunise your children or drink fluoridated water?

It's interesting how many people are unlikely to trust him for personal advice but who seem willing to trust him for planetary advice.

In preparing to debate the world's most vocal climate change sceptic many of his opponents appear to underestimate his communications ability and overestimate his scientific knowledge. In turn they enter the debate keen to set the scientific record straight when the debate format means the cards are stacked against them.

Let's face it, if the House of Lords can't convince him that he is not a member of that house then what hope does a sincere scientist have of convincing him, or the audience, that the complex science is right and the entertaining guy with some tricky questions is wrong.

The problem for the scientists is that while it only takes a minute to start a bushfire it can take a week to put one out. Monckton's rapid fire crazy questions and his demand for more and more specific details are a simple, but effective, device to ensure that scientists look anything but relaxed and comfortable.

And why, from the conspiracy theorists point of view, don't they look relaxed? Because they have something to hide!

According to NASA, the CSIRO and the international academies of science climate change is already happening, is caused by humans, and is going to get a lot worse. It's possible that they are all wrong and Lord Monckton is right. It is possible that it is all part of some giant conspiracy, but if it is one, it is a far bigger conspiracy than the sceptics usually acknowledge.

John Howard accepts the science of climate change and while he was adamant that he wouldn't ratify the Kyoto protocol he proposed the introduction of an emissions trading scheme in the lead up to the 2007 election. Warmist.

Ralph Hillman, the head of the Coal Association, Mitch Hooke, the head of the Minerals Council accept it and Marius Cloppers, the head of BHP not only supports the science of climate change, he supports the introduction of a carbon tax. Warmists.

The framing of climate change in Australia as a left-wing issue is as unhelpful as it is inexplicable. Around the world conservative governments have accepted both the science of climate change and the need to act. Most of them support the idea that a carbon price is an essential element of an efficient plan to do so.

Conservative governments in Australia have been obsessed with the need to repay public debt, ostensibly in order to leave a better future for our children. In order to repay such debts it is inevitable that societies must make some sacrifices today in order to deliver benefits in the future. But somehow, conservatives in Australia manage to argue that it would be unfair to ask today's taxpayers to pick up the tab for protecting tomorrow's environment.

It gets worse. Conservatives are, as a rule, conservative by nature. They don't like to take big risks. They insure their cars, they insure their homes and they insure their health. When they don't crash their cars or their house doesn't burn down they usually focus on the peace of mind they purchased rather than the money they wasted.

When it comes to national defence the same applies. We spend more than $20 billion per year on defence. We are currently planning to spend $50 billion to buy 12 new submarines. That is more than the cost of the National Broadband Network that the Coalition is so worried about. But where is the debate about our need for 12 new subs?

When it comes to national security, or protecting our homes, most people tend towards the 'better safe than sorry' frame of reference. But unfortunately in Australia it seems we are willing to bet our house that Lord Monckton is right.

Another argument against acting on climate change favoured by Australian conservatives is that we should wait because we can't save the world by ourselves. Lord Monckton, of course, goes so far as to estimate what he says is the tiny impact on the world's temperature associated with Australia reducing our greenhouse gas emissions. Such an argument is an obvious nonsense.

When John Howard committed a small number of Australian troops to the war in Iraq he obviously didn't believe that even if we only provided less than 1 per cent of the troops we couldn't really make a difference. Indeed, rather than wait for the sanction of the UN John Howard pursued the course of action that he felt was right. Given the imagined threat of weapons of mass destruction, delay, we were told, was not an option.

As for Lord Monckton's mathematical modelling of the impact of Australia's emissions on the world's temperature, suffice it to say that it falls at the first hurdle of 'garbage in garbage out'. The underlying premise of Lord Monckton's 'modelling' is that if Australia is the only country to act, how much would our actions achieve. Given that his own country has recently announced their intention to reduce emissions by 50 per cent by 2027 his 'results' are obviously irrelevant.

The world's leading scientific bodies tell us that the world is warming, that it is caused by our pollution and that unless we reduce those emissions the world will get a lot hotter in the next century. Just as a cancer patient could shop around until they found a doctor who assured them they were well, so too can we trawl the internet to find the conspiratorial claims of Lord Monckton.

There is of course a chance that Lord Monckton is right. Maybe NASA, CSIRO, BHP and John Howard are wrong. Maybe, as Lord Monckton suggests, scientists are simply motivated by grant funding to find evidence of climate change. Or maybe Lord Monckton is wrong.

The question for us as citizens is do we accept the diagnosis of climate change and the prescription of emission reductions. Or do we trawl the internet for a conspiracy theory and the global equivalent of a herbal remedy for cancer? Do we bet our houses and our children's future that Lord Monckton is right, or do we take out some carbon price insurance in case he is wrong?

 

Link

[synchromesh]

What if he told you not to immunise your children or drink fluoridated water?

I would say that he's a wise and intelligent old man.

[Seldom]

actually i hear that what they call 'fluoride' is really a telepathic enzyme developed by the Soviets designed to steal your mind

[synchromesh]

Nah, just roach poison... just roach poison...

[Quill]

i reckon the biggest issue with monkton regardless of what he says is the fact he has those googly weird eyes that make him look crazy

 

These are obviously a result of centuries of inbreeding, you are correct in identifying this as his biggest issue. Actually it is more a case of the conditions that promoted inbreeding being what is wrong with him.

[rahli]

I'm sure Monckton is as inbreed as a mule, but his eyes are the result of Graves ophthalmopathy

[synchromesh]

Very mature. And I thought it was only meant to be the deniers who resorted to petty insults...

[rahli]

Very mature. And I thought it was only meant to be the deniers who resorted to petty insults...

 

So in your honest opinion synchromesh is this immature debating style reflective of climate change deniers or deniers in general??

[The Dude]

If your doctor told you that you had cancer and Lord Christopher Monckton told you to ignore their advice would you listen to him? What if he told you not to immunise your children or drink fluoridated water?[1]

It's interesting how many people are unlikely to trust him for personal advice but who seem willing to trust him for planetary advice. [It is interesting, has the author got the figures of how many are unlikely? What a totally made up argument!]

In preparing to debate the world's most vocal climate change sceptic many of his opponents appear to underestimate his communications ability and overestimate his scientific knowledge. In turn they enter the debate keen to set the scientific record straight when the debate format means the cards are stacked against them.

Let's face it, if the House of Lords can't convince him that he is not a member of that house then what hope does a sincere scientist have of convincing him, or the audience, that the complex science is right and the entertaining guy with some tricky questions is wrong.

The problem for the scientists is that while it only takes a minute to start a bushfire it can take a week to put one out. Monckton's rapid fire crazy questions and his demand for more and more specific details are a simple, but effective, device to ensure that scientists look anything but relaxed and comfortable.

And why, from the conspiracy theorists point of view, don't they look relaxed? Because they have something to hide!

According to NASA, the CSIRO and the international academies of science climate change is already happening, is caused by humans, and is going to get a lot worse. It's possible that they are all wrong and Lord Monckton is right. It is possible that it is all part of some giant conspiracy, but if it is one, it is a far bigger conspiracy than the sceptics usually acknowledge.[2]

John Howard accepts the science of climate change and while he was adamant that he wouldn't ratify the Kyoto protocol he proposed the introduction of an emissions trading scheme in the lead up to the 2007 election. Warmist.

Ralph Hillman, the head of the Coal Association, Mitch Hooke, the head of the Minerals Council accept it and Marius Cloppers, the head of BHP not only supports the science of climate change, he supports the introduction of a carbon tax. Warmists.

The framing of climate change in Australia as a left-wing issue is as unhelpful as it is inexplicable. Around the world conservative governments have accepted both the science of climate change and the need to act. Most of them support the idea that a carbon price is an essential element of an efficient plan to do so. [plan for what?]

Conservative governments in Australia have been obsessed with the need to repay public debt, ostensibly in order to leave a better future for our children. In order to repay such debts it is inevitable that societies must make some sacrifices today in order to deliver benefits in the future. But somehow, conservatives in Australia manage to argue that it would be unfair to ask today's taxpayers to pick up the tab for protecting tomorrow's environment.

It gets worse. Conservatives are, as a rule, conservative by nature. They don't like to take big risks. They insure their cars, they insure their homes and they insure their health. When they don't crash their cars or their house doesn't burn down they usually focus on the peace of mind they purchased rather than the money they wasted.[3]

When it comes to national defence the same applies. We spend more than $20 billion per year on defence. We are currently planning to spend $50 billion to buy 12 new submarines. That is more than the cost of the National Broadband Network that the Coalition is so worried about. But where is the debate about our need for 12 new subs?[4]

When it comes to national security, or protecting our homes, most people tend towards the 'better safe than sorry' frame of reference.[5] But unfortunately in Australia it seems we are willing to bet our house that Lord Monckton is right.

Another argument against acting on climate change favoured by Australian conservatives is that we should wait because we can't save the world by ourselves. Lord Monckton, of course, goes so far as to estimate what he says is the tiny impact on the world's temperature associated with Australia reducing our greenhouse gas emissions. Such an argument is an obvious nonsense.

When John Howard committed a small number of Australian troops to the war in Iraq he obviously didn't believe that even if we only provided less than 1 per cent of the troops we couldn't really make a difference. Indeed, rather than wait for the sanction of the UN [or the Australian publics consent] John Howard pursued the course of action that he felt was right. Given the imagined threat of weapons of mass destruction, delay, we were told, was not an option.[6]

As for Lord Monckton's mathematical modelling of the impact of Australia's emissions on the world's temperature, suffice it to say that it falls at the first hurdle of 'garbage in garbage out'. The underlying premise of Lord Monckton's 'modelling' is that if Australia is the only country to act, how much would our actions achieve. Given that his own country has recently announced their intention to reduce emissions by 50 per cent by 2027 his 'results' are obviously irrelevant.

The world's leading scientific bodies tell us that the world is warming, that it is caused by our pollution and that unless we reduce those emissions the world will get a lot hotter in the next century. Just as a cancer patient could shop around until they found a doctor who assured them they were well, so too can we trawl the internet to find the conspiratorial claims of Lord Monckton.

There is of course a chance that Lord Monckton is right. Maybe NASA, CSIRO, BHP and John Howard are wrong. Maybe, as Lord Monckton suggests, scientists are simply motivated by grant funding to find evidence of climate change. Or maybe Lord Monckton is wrong.[7]

The question for us as citizens is do we accept the diagnosis of climate change and the prescription of emission reductions. Or do we trawl the internet for a conspiracy theory and the global equivalent of a herbal remedy for cancer?[8] Do we bet our houses and our children's future that Lord Monckton is right, or do we take out some carbon price insurance in case he is wrong?

 

Link

This article is most definitely geared towards those wanting to distance themselves from conspiracy theory like it was the diagnosis of insanity.

[1] I'm not too sure about immunisation, mercury injections can't be good though, and don't get me started on fluoride. Colgate ads that market the fact it's still trusted by Australians and their dentists, they market the trust! Since when is toothpaste such a hazard we need to know we can trust it!?! Unless the conspiracy theories are right?! Unless they're compensating for the fact so many distrust "fluoride toothpaste" - It doesn't say "contains fluoride" fluoride is it's market appeal! Trust it, it's good!

Winfield Nicotine Cigarettes, now with extra flavour!

[2] Watched Sin City last night, thought this was apt:

Pulling that trigger make you feel powerful?

Power don't come from a badge, or a gun

Power comes from lying

Lying big and getting the whole damn world to play along with you

Once you got everybody agreeing with what they know in their hearts ain't true, you get them by the balls

There's what, maybe 50 people in this hospital

I could pump you full of bullets right now and I wouldn't be arrested

Everyone would lie for me, everyone who counts

Otherwise all their own lies, everything that runs Sin City, it all comes tumbling down like a pack of cards

The whole facade is a house of cards, everybody (who counts) will do their bit to uphold this illusion. You do not need total collusion by all involved parties, only those who count, the rest will fall in line, I mean if all the data and models say one thing, who are they and their identity as pillars of truth in society to take down the whole illusion? (group mentality seems to go against the inquisitive mind of a scientist, maybe not a career scientist though) I guess we still believe them after doctors market cigarettes and dentists still say fluoride is safe. To trust a scientific authority nowadays is tough to do, they've sold out their credibility far too many times, it is little wonder why scepticism is so prevalent in todays age of hyper-communication and information.

...having said that, the sheer volume of information may mean the investigation itself has less depth. I'm undecided on our role in climate change, I dare say stopping the few football fields deforestation per second would have a greater impact on mitigating c02 evils than a new wealth redistribution plan. Balance is and always has been the key.

[3] Conservatives are as a general rule conservative, They're all about sustaining their grip on control with all our wealth they've conserved. They are afraid of risks, such as investments in green technology and decentralised (read: no control of supply and demand and profit) power. At the core of it it is the necromancy of ideas that have long ago had their flesh rot away that we keep on consuming which is the cause of our illness. Here's some food for thought, grow your own! You might have nutrition, or try the new shit burger at McDonalds!

[4]...good question, why is there no public debate? Why doesn't the media cover this issue?

It's better to be safe than sorry, It's a good "insurance" policy to arm yourself to the teeth lest the billions of oppressed people around the world thanks to you try to take the power back. An insurance policy against our own projected mistrust through our own manipulative, coercive and outright violent actions; if we can't trust ourselves to be civil, we cannot trust them. If we have the ability to destroy then by golly so do they, so lets just remain in a high tension stale mate state instead of throwing down our arms and working together.

Instead of playing country against country and population against population and class against class, so that some players enjoy themselves and we're left up shit creak, INSTEAD of that... I dunno, comradeship? community? anarchy? I don't know, just a few ideas because these dead ideas are making me feel sick. Oh and on that note fuck Communism! In the form of autocratic dictatorship and centralised state control... um no thank you, I mean it's a nice offer but I've got all my friends who want to work together without being forced to... oh shit nope, you've suckered them in too with your fear mongering. It's good to collect nuts for the winter but the kids don't want to share! Why?... Fear of lack of abundance. Fear, it can fuck right off!

[5] There was a time we didn't lock our doors.

[6] "rather than wait for the sanction of the UN [or the Australian publics consent] John Howard pursued the course of action that he felt was right. Given the imagined threat of weapons of mass destruction, delay, we were told, was not an option."

LOL great argument there! Does that mean we should do something against this imagined threat too? They had expert intelligence, even though many a crackpot conspiracy theory website knew the deal before any plane hit any tower, iraq was always part of "the plan".

The world population was also very aware of the injustice of said war and marched en masse in protest against it, only to have it go ahead anyway ...because of Howards and co's gut feeling? give me a break! So some massive corporations made some money (a killing!) through the suffering of helpless innocent people, based on a hunch. It's good that now we have expert scientists with their expert advice to guide us. Inconclusive as the issue may be, we're told it's settled, there is no question. I recall some newscasters with the same conviction about WMD's.

I'm a bit baffled that a pro-trust-government article would throw in such an argument that just says "trust them even if history shows us they're full of shit" I'm a bit lost on the logic used there. The most recent public example of data being twisted to suit the needs of the controlling military industrial complex, is used as an argument to trust their conclusions again now?

[7] To be honest just because they're massive research institutions, a self serving politician and a massive raper of natural resources, I don't feel they have any extra implied trust. I also probably have less trust in anyone that agrees to have the label of Lord, self righteous fucks think they're better than me!? Pisses me off as much as "Honourable" politicians. ...Oh wait that's right, it's not who they are or what they call themselves, it's what they're saying!

I haven't bothered listening to the lord yet, I just felt compelled to respond to this right wing article about left wing ideas with a middle finger fuck off

[8]

I'm a stoner so feel free to dismiss this as I don't have a suit and tie on as I'm typing this...

I'm serious, If c02 saturation in our atmosphere is such a life and death issue it might be high time to legalise hemp (which would remove the need to remove trees). Maybe a society of stoner growers won't feel the need to jump through the hoops of the system, thereby reducing the carbon footprint of the costly distraction from real life that is capitalism, maybe tending the garden would be more life affirming then being a cog in a machine? These are some real green solutions, good for sustainability and conservation, not good for sustaining the conservatives control, so you won't hear it from them. The most obvious god-given solution is the devil to them, even though they'll admit to smoking it to get your votes.

I think the biggest deniers are conspiracy deniers, coincidence theorists is the term of derision I tend to use to tell myself I'm right. The dots are everywhere hidden in plain sight, it seems connecting them is the scary part. Ignorance is the result of actively ignoring scary things.

Buy up the patents to novel technologies so that they're never released. Suppress herbal medicines through restrictive legislation, tire away your populace with economic slavery, dumb them down and weaken their resolve with bad food and television. = Profit for some and slavery for many. The only economic solution is to turn over the tables of the money changers!

Edited July 24, 2011 by The Dude