APEHEAD

Saturday, July 20, 2013

Giving Birth, Soviet-Style | Clarissa's Blog

Giving Birth, Soviet-Style | Clarissa's Blog

Rhodesia and Zimbabwe have not been so good regarding medical things either. For instance, health screenings in schools were like being lined up like cattle to undergo a horrible experience. Nothing medical had anything other than a punitive aura around it. Even animals did not receive anything other than rough treatment from the vets. The animal side of people was not well respected.

Friday, April 19, 2013

Dum dum dum

Ask a Stupid Question. . . | Clarissa's Blog

I prefer calculating and sly to stupid. Actually I think Robert Mugabe is in some ways a good thing for Zimbabwe, because much as he is holding the country back economically, he is also putting a dampener on the culturally and geographically corrosive effects of globalization. If you want African culture and scenery closer to its commercially untrammeled state, vote in Robert Mugabe.

Friday, March 8, 2013

What do class conscious socialists want?

The way we socialists see it, the wealth of nations rightfully belongs to the producers of that wealth and that is the working class.

There is a class struggle raging across the world right now, in real time over control of the collective product of labour, which, of course, includes ownership and control of the very means of producing wealth. Sometimes the working class manages to break off bits and pieces of their collective product from the control and ownership of the capitalist and landlord classes. This can occur if the workers in trade unions manage to achieve some semblance of dignity through attaining a better contract for better wages and working conditions. Sometimes, this happens as a political response via left politicians in government responding to workers demanding more of their product back through better funding of their health, education and welfare. It's all part and parcel of the class struggle. The point is that workers as a class resist the downward pressure of the capitalist and landlord classes on its standard of living. Otherwise, workers become broken wretches.

So yes, we socialists support workers in their class struggle with the capitalists and landlords over the collective product of their labour. We also tell whomever will listen, that the collective product of labour rightfully belongs to the producers--the working class.

When and if social ownership of the collective product of labour occurs, the working class who establish it, will no longer exist as a class. Instead, a free, democratically organised association of producers (formerly the workers and anyone who decides to join with them) will administer the collective product of their labour in a classless society. By definition, the State will cease to exist when a classless society is established. That's what we communist revolutionary workers call socialism*.

*NB: This is NOT what most people on the right or left call 'socialism'. Nevertheless, it is what Marx and Engels called socialism.