Sunday, October 09, 2005

A Wobbly Affair

Baron Bodisey of Gates of Vienna discovered a link for a far left fringe group and had great fun commenting on the contents.


This reminded me of when I was in graduate school and one of my left leaning friends and her husband invited me to their apartment warming party. She spent part of her afternoons volunteering at the “union.” She said there would be some friends from the union at the party. It turned out it party was also the May Day Party for the local chapter of the Industrial Workers of the World.

It was an interesting party, I got to talk to some people with whom would not normally of had a discussion. Some interesting comments stuck in my memory.

“I admire X’s revolutionary commitment, but taking a shower every a week or so would not be selling out.”

Two mothers talking about potty training.
“I don’t think I’m oppressing him enough, but I really hate to oppress him.”
“You have to oppress him, it is the only way.”

They, much to their surprise, actually organized an employer’s work force, however there reasonable demands convinced the employer to dissolve the business.
Person1 “I wonder if we have some obligation to the workers we represent”.
Person 2 “ this is good, it will increase discontent and advance the revolution.”


I am glad X has some friends who are tolerant of his lifestyle choices.

There is a theory in some extreme leftist circles that the only possible human relationship is oppression. A number of people there used a cognate of “to oppress” to describe relationships where oppression seemed completely out of place. That people are so convinced of this that they can only think of raising their children as oppressing them, if nothing else, convinces me that there is something basically wrong with this proposition. The obvious love of these mothers for their children disproves the proposition. And if such a group ever gets in power someplace; “oppression” is the only form rule they could implement

The genuine surprise they had that they could force an employer out of business was amusing, they are dedicated to helping the worker and they have little knowledge of work place economics. That some on them would consider the possibility that they might have an obligation to the workers they represent was refreshing. The suggestion that allowing or promoting opressive situations in order to promote the revolution goes back to at least Lenin. It seems to be an acceptable if not dogmatic concept in far left groups.


There is an old saw about the radical left that they love humanity, it’s people they hate. I would not doubt the sincerity in their love for an abstract proletariat, but their ideas would be the nightmare to the actual working people I know.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

You know Hank the Straw Man argument shows you have nothing to say. I imagine that would be wiser.

The "new" right wing is pretty sore right now and all manner of self serving lamness is appearing. Don't you follow that trend ... resist it.

TM is almost ridiculous these days.

PenGun
Do What Now ??? ... Standards and Practices !

Ronald Rutherford said...

Hank:
Some interesting points.
As you may know I have been posting over at ThomHartman's blog.
And discussing India which lead to a long discussion about Democratic Peace here.
After reaching nearly 100 postings I now realize that sunrise part two is a communist and that no matter what I said he would have to bring up that the US is an evil empire. The UK was the fault for the India Pakistan war of 1998?
His most recent from Lenin's Tomb of liberal imperialism.

hank_F_M said...

Pengun

It’s nice to hear from you again.

I have been pulling down my posts from Bruce’s old Flitters comment section. I was thinking I could rewrite some of them into posts though most are too much in the context of that discussion. But it was nice to be reminded of your commentary at it’s best. Have you started your own blog? And what do you think of the Miers controversy? I’m having trouble getting excited.


Well TM acts like TM, what can I say. I still learn something, often not what he intended to present, and he is fun to read. I am sure he would say he is a libertarian not a conservative.

hank_F_M said...

Ronald

I did follow the Thomas Hartman links from your blog. I read Clausewitz, de Saxe, Sun Tzu and several others. Sun Tzu is the weakest. And the most easily quoted to (mutually exclusive) purpose. Of course it is ironic, Engel’s, military history buff, was influenced by Clausewitz, and thus this indirectly influenced Marxist theory. But it is Sun Tzu who gets quoted.


Well if you think of the Partition as the cause of all trouble between India and Pakistan there might be a point, really I think the British daydream (or is it a nightmare) of having enough influence to have stared the 1998 incidents, though one would hope the school of hard knocks taught them to use it more wisely. The last time I looked the Pakistani Army is twice to three times, and the Indian Army close to five times the size of the British Imperial garrison. Most of this size is to fight each other. I gather the British were maneuvered into that when it wasn’t strictly necessary. Somehow I think there is a lot of resources in the Indian sub-continent that would have been better utilized without partition.

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