Why are the Irish afraid of the Hard Left?

[Baron von Biffo]

Charisma - well - Ganley had that page booked. Better off without it.

You can rest easy on that score at least.

[C. Flower]

You can rest easy on that score at least.

I don't think lack of charisma is their problem Baron. Joe Higgins had it by the bucketload in his early Dail laugh-a-minute days.

He was repeatedly voted TD of the year by his peers.

Clare Daly is a decent speaker.

It all depends on what rocks your boat

[Baron von Biffo]

I don't think lack of charisma is their problem Baron. Joe Higgins had it by the bucketload in his early Dail laugh-a-minute days.

He was repeatedly voted TD of the year by his peers.

Clare Daly is a decent speaker.

It all depends on what rocks your boat

Yes, eye of the beholder stuff. Personally, I always thought Ganley had the charisma of a rat.

[Nikolai Bukharin]

“To be blunt, despite everything, give me Seanie Fitzpatrick any day, if the only alternative is a one party dictatorship led by someone like Kevin McLoughlin, the real leader of the Socialist Party for which genial Joe Higgins is a mere front man, or Kieran Allen, chief guru and hatchet wielder of the Socialist Workers Party.”

from one of the articles in Kevin Higgins's book.

[fluffybiscuits]

Apart from Stalinism, which can deliver everything mentioned before, but based on continuous purges within public sector and as result hated by most of left whingers on state pay, none of mentioned before have been delivered by socialism
Cuba good healthcare and education from massive subsidies from USSR, now they switching back to capital;ism
China also turned capitalism
UK have been ruined by socialist policies and result was election Thatcher as only leader who could fix country after left wing rule

Are yu seriously claiming that Tatcher fixed Britian? When Tatcher came inmto power there was privatisation of the railwayus which lead to the railways system being one of the worst in the world. The amount o coal pits that she closed resulted in a huge amount of unemployment at the time which was the start of the collapse of jobs for the work force. Undert Tatcher there was an unemployment rate of around 7% compared to a figure of around 1.5% in the sixties. She made a balls up of providing jobs whcih should underpin the primary efforts of any government . You failed there with that point or is Tatchers successes subjective?

[bormotello]

Are yu seriously claiming that Tatcher fixed Britian? When Tatcher came inmto power there was privatisation of the railwayus which lead to the railways system being one of the worst in the world. The amount o coal pits that she closed resulted in a huge amount of unemployment at the time which was the start of the collapse of jobs for the work force. Undert Tatcher there was an unemployment rate of around 7% compared to a figure of around 1.5% in the sixties. She made a balls up of providing jobs whcih should underpin the primary efforts of any government . You failed there with that point or is Tatchers successes subjective?

"Crisis. What crisis?"

[C. Flower]

"Crisis. What crisis?"

The Thatcherite strategy was an offshoot of US policy. Wind up the unionised and well-paid sections of manufacturing and shift them to low paid unregulated states. Deregulate the City of London and turn it into Wall Street on Thames.
Creation of chav class.

What a triumph....

[bormotello]

The Thatcherite strategy was an offshoot of US policy. Wind up the unionised and well-paid sections of manufacturing and shift them to low paid unregulated states. Deregulate the City of London and turn it into Wall Street on Thames.
Creation of chav class.

What a triumph....

Unionised and well-paid sections of manufacturing were not capable to produce anything and lost competitiveness before Thatcher came to power. Labour were keeping manufacturing alive mostly by massive subsidies or nationalization

[bormotello]

Have you read any Marx at all? Socialism, and communism, are products of political control by the working class. What has what you are talking about to do with political reality at all then? Surely it is just the usual bourgeois propaganda, meaningless in terms of reasoned discussion?

Working class is majority in most of countries with democracy, but not controlling anything because it always will be elite and political establishment who will have real power. So socialism or capitalism is just question of choice for rhetoric

[C. Flower]

Working class is majority in most of countries with democracy, but not controlling anything because it always will be elite and political establishment who will have real power. So socialism or capitalism is just question of choice for rhetoric

The nub of the thread - the idea that human nature decrees that there will always be a corrupt elite, irrespective of what system exists - and that the majority of people will always be exploited by them.

What makes you certain of that? It was not the case in hunter gatherer society, which accounts for most of the existence of the human species. If it was not the case then, it can't be "human nature" that accounts for exploitative elites.

[Baron von Biffo]

The nub of the thread - the idea that human nature decrees that there will always be a corrupt elite, irrespective of what system exists - and that the majority of people will always be exploited by them.

What makes you certain of that? It was not the case in hunter gatherer society, which accounts for most of the existence of the human species. If it was not the case then, it can't be "human nature" that accounts for exploitative elites.

Are you perhaps a tad off course? That sounds like what's being discussed in the Communists missing the human factor thread.

[C. Flower]

Are you perhaps a tad off course? That sounds like what's being discussed in the Communists missing the human factor thread.

There is a certain amount of overlap.

[antiestablishmentarian]

Interesting thread. I dont know that fear is the right explanation for why people dont look to the hard-left for leadership. I would say the main reason is scepticism about their ideas, their.vague programmes and failure to specify what they stand for rather than what they're against.

[Kev Bar]

Interesting thread. I dont know that fear is the right explanation for why people dont look to the hard-left for leadership. I would say the main reason is scepticism about their ideas, their.vague programmes and failure to specify what they stand for rather than what they're against.

Yeah...perhaps fear is too strong for the lack of trust.

As has been said never before has there been a more compelling backdrop for the what they are against.

The fact that they don't make a compelling and coherent argument for what they are for often leaves the impression that they know what they are for but wont come out and say it.

And that can create suspicion, unease and possibly fear.

[C. Flower]

Interesting thread. I dont know that fear is the right explanation for why people dont look to the hard-left for leadership. I would say the main reason is scepticism about their ideas, their.vague programmes and failure to specify what they stand for rather than what they're against.

There is a lot of that in it. In order for people to take a radical step, and risk whatever they have, they need to have reason to believe there is an alternative that is worth trying for.

Historically, people en masse have gone for the hard left when they have little or nothing to lose by leaving the present system, and when the left has been very well organised and has presented as serious and practical programme.