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And the DDR is not the third reich.

And now that we know about western intelligence services and what they do to our communications, I'm not so sure the DDR was a bad state, comparatively. At least everyone had a job.

I think maybe people on the liberal left, social democrats and the like, need to take a deep breath and realise their ideology is bankrupt, the only thing giving them successes in the past veing the pressure from real existing socialism in state form and the fear that put into Capital. Now that fear is gone, and we see how bankrupt the liberal left in Europe really is.

Kudos to Munchau, an honest man if nothing else, for calling a spade a spade.

The Hun is always either at your throat or at your feet. Winston Churchill

by r------ on Thu Aug 29th, 2013 at 03:45:32 PM EST
[ Parent ]
I think maybe people on the liberal left, social democrats and the like, need to take a deep breath and realise their ideology is bankrupt, the only thing giving them successes in the past being the pressure from real existing socialism in state form and the fear that put into Capital.

I'm not generally a fan of permitting effect to precede cause in my models of reality, and by the time the first world war rolled around the Danish social democrats had had the power to affect a months-long general strike for fifteen years. And had used that power to gain substantial concessions in terms of the right to strike and organize.

I think a more serious problem for the social democrats is that they need an active, credible domestic communist threat, or they go off script. And after the communist parties wedded themselves to what was even then quite obviously the losing side in the Great Game, it was all over bar the shouting.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Thu Aug 29th, 2013 at 04:13:03 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Hm, but pre-wwI was there even a communist (or revolutionary socialist) organisation in Denmark? In Sweden there wasn't, the revolutionary socialists and reformist socialists was in the same unions and the same party.

So I think treating the soc-dems as something static over a hundred years are wrong.

Then the effect of the cold war and the communist bloc, I think was that the right by and large in the anglo world and western Europe (with exceptions) turned left and accepted soc-dem governments and social reforms. Without threatening civil war or coups.

Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se

by A swedish kind of death on Thu Aug 29th, 2013 at 05:11:57 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Hm, but pre-wwI was there even a communist (or revolutionary socialist) organisation in Denmark? In Sweden there wasn't, the revolutionary socialists and reformist socialists was in the same unions and the same party.

Yes, they were organized around different unions.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Fri Aug 30th, 2013 at 06:25:08 PM EST
[ Parent ]

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