Election Media coverage. Disgraceful as usual.

[zac]

Hurray!!! About time too.

My parents in the 50s worked in factories. They were not enterprising though they were not unintelligent. They and we were happy with our family lot though we lived in the most modest of circumstances and there were millions in Australia just like us. There are still.

Without Capitalist propaganda, they would have been happy in a Communist society as would most of their contemporaries who had little interest in politics (as is the case today) but would have had the essentials provided by the State - guaranteed employment, free health, housing and education and a rich cultural experience for those intelligent enough to appreciate it. Sport too and recreation facilities would be provided by the State for the rest and if you were a member of the Party you could participate in election of members to the Party Congress.

Of course the wealthy and those with property and capital would be unhappy but they, as ever, are/were in the minority. Who counts most?

China now has mixed the pot as did Lenin in 1920 and there is a Capitalist economy minus political power of course - ordinary people have the freedom to shop which, let's face it, is all they want really.

fair enough. we're proudly a mixed economy country but we like our freedoms and introducing communism wouldn't work here, but in countries like china which don't have a democratic tradition, it hasn't been all bad.

[Paddo Colt 61]

But Zac do the masses "like our freedoms" and what exactly are those freedoms? If voting was voluntary 60% wouldn't bother as in the USA. Is our democratic tradition the freedom to vote just to see a government dismissed at the hands of real power in the country? Is it the freedom to go to gaol if you don't want to be conscripted into a war on behalf of a foreign hegemon? Is it the freedom to sit by watching while our national assets are sold off to foreign corporations to the point where we can't afford heating or fuel?

I don't buy "our freedoms" claptrap nor "our Democratic values" but I do agree that it wouldn't work here because people are sheep - deeply conformist, fractious and fearful like all heard animals. We also have an Anglo culture, aware and deeply respectful of our "betters" - see the "ruler's" 70th.

[zac]

yeah, the myth of freedom is greater than the reality.
other people, what can you do about them eh? always a battle between people finding out what's what and intellectuals telling them what they should want. there's a definite place for education but it shouldn't be mixed with control freakery.
i reckon lenin was the main culprit - he was a smart guy but the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat ruined communism and when it was combined with stalin's cruelty and control freakery it was hard to see the soviet union as a force for real progress.

[Paddo Colt 61]

Well the D of the P is a Marxist concept and a necessary element in the revolution . There is always going to be vicious counter revolution. The Civil War didn't help nor the Western intervention. The paranoia which followed is understandable given the reactionary determination of the West.

I had dinner with a 40 something Czech - Oz female the other night who kept saying that she had "escaped" in the 80s. When pressed on the word it turned out that she simply got on a plane and left. Further questioning revealed that her unhappiness and that of her family was rooted in her background. They were Sudetenland landowning German- Czechs who were never gonna be happy but such stories influence sheeple who imagine that the whole thing was a nightmare. Not so for the ordinary drones of every society.