The less we care

There appear to be a growing number of WordPress blogs sporting this tshirt design. “Communism killed 100 million people and all I got was this lousy tshirt.” As a Socialist, this instantly grabbed my attention.

Communism has killed no one. Communism, like Capitalism, has never been achieved. Different degrees of Socialism have been achieved, but never the extreme of either wing. Stalin’s Russia, Mao’s China, or Castro’s Cuba are all Totalitarian Dictatorships. Marx talked of a Classless, Stateless system as true Communism. Anything short of this is not Communism. When the Right Wing uses Communism to suggest responsibility for millions of innocent lives lost, they take the blame away from the crazed dictators like Stalin and Mao, and into the hands of an ideology that never existed in the first place.

But if they insist on suggesting that Communism is responsible for millions of deaths, using their very logic, let’s examine the alternative, Capitalism.

Millions die every year in parts of Africa, because parts of Africa don’t have natural resources that the Americans can use as a reason to invade and free the country.

AIDs and other disease victims throughout the third world who are denied access to the much needed treatments and drugs, because the Pharmaceutical companies might lose a bit of money.

Every victim of the Iraq war. Including British and American soldiers.

In fact, every victim of a war waged by America against any nation that isn’t Democratic or isn’t allowing McDonalds to set up shop, since the 1950s.

The miners and the child chimney sweeps of the Industrial Revolution.

The local tribes who were displaced so that Coca Cola and other such companies can use the Water supply, which they then contaminate, causing untold dreadful mutations and deaths.

The wiping out of the left wing of Chile, under Pinochet, supported by America and Britain.

Opposition to Organised Crime backed candidates for Political positions in “liberated” Eastern Bloc nations, who happen to have connections to the US and UK intelligence quarters. Proving that justice and politics is just as much a commodity as the rest of the World.

Famine and extreme poverty victims. We can afford to feed all of these people. But it isn’t profitable, so we don’t. Inexcusable.

Anti-Communist waged wars.

The people who die in fuel poverty every year because E-on and British Gas quite like the idea of giving their bosses huge bonuses.

The forgotten people of the poor undeveloped nations, who are used for profit and then slung out into the mud the moment they aren’t valuable any more.

Over the next century, millions more, due to the frenzied, animal like chase for natural resources, slowly killing the planet. The very essence of an unplanned economy.

It is easy for me to blame all those deaths, on Capitalism. But that isn’t intelligent. Much like blaming Communism itself for millions of deaths, isn’t a well thought out logical argument. Capitalism did not cause the deaths of the people mentioned above. Terrible regimes, and failures of Government caused those deaths. In much the same way as Communism is not responsible for the extreme amount of deaths under the dictatorship of Stalin. In much the same way that Islam is not responsible for 9/11.

There is no justifiable way to explain away the deaths of those under Dictatorships using the cover of “Communism” such as the deaths of….
20 million in the Soviet Union, 65 million in the People’s Republic of China, 1 million in Vietnam, 2 million in North Korea, 2 million in Cambodia, 1 million in the Communist states of Eastern Europe, 150,000 in Latin America, 1.7 million in Africa and 1.5 million in Afghanistan. However, us Left Wingers, can freely and happily denounce the Right Wing propaganda attempts to suggest that the ideology of Communism itself is responsible for those deaths, because it isn’t, any more so than Capitalism is responsible in some part, to the billions of deaths since the early 1900s throughout the World.

Only today, The Observer ran a story about Primark using a range of products from a producer who use illegal immigrants paid at just under half the minimum wage. The workers, who naturally come to the West for a better life, for a better chance for their families, are used for cheap labour (£3 an hour they’re paid, not a living wage) for 12 hours a day, for seven days a week. We all know Primark exploits. We all know the only reason clothes are disturbingly cheap in Primark is because poverty stricken men, women and children throughout the third World are exploited every hour of every day. And the majority of us don’t care. The less we think about it, the less we care. The less we care, the more ignorant, oblivious, greedy and self important we become. This is the result of the Capitalist way of thinking.

Long Live Socialism.

Hypocritical Britain

More and more, I find my head shaking, my eyes rolling, unable to comprehend the apparent level of hypocrisy shooting through the veins of Britain over the past few months.

First we had the Brand and Ross affair, Sachsgate. The general level of hypocrisy of The Daily Mail struck new highs. They spent about two weeks describing how disgusting it was for the BBC to exploit the private lives of Manuel and his Granddaughter in the way that they did. Let me rephrase that just incase you missed the hypocritical part.
The Daily Mail, a cog in the works of an exploitative media, who’s Entertainment Photographers spend their time laid out in pavement gutters, waiting for Britney Spears to emerge from her car, so they can get an upskirt shot, the Daily Mail, who willfully supported Oswald Moseley, and didn’t think Hitler was all that bad just after he became chancellor, The Daily Mail who are, in effect, the British Fox News, are now taking the moral high ground because of a prank phone call? The Daily Mail, who called “Fonejacker” (A program where prank calls are made for entertainment purposes) a “comedy gem”?

And then of course, more recently, the arrest of Conservative Front Bench MP Damien Green. His home and offices were raided, he was arrested by anti-terrorist agents. The same anti-terrorist agents who arrested a group of Greenpeace activists not too long back. Damien Green was arrested for leaking “sensitive” information. Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said she didn’t know Green was going to be arrested. My first response to that, is Why? Why didn’t she know? She’s the fucking Home Secretary and she has no idea that police are about to storm Parliament? Could she be any more useless if she tried?
Of course she could.
One of the leaks surrounded 5,000 illegal immigrants known by Jacqui Smith to have been on the Security Industry Authorities list of licensed security guards working sensitive posts, that she tried to keep concealed from he public. I applaud Green if he indeed leaked this.
She went on to explain that leaking “sensitive” information is wrong. Now my understanding of leaking information, is that it’s vital for democracy to shine? Especially if it holds the government to account for wrong doing? What the hell are Labour playing at, affectively telling us all that leaking information, is entirely wrong? No it fucking isn’t. Nick Clegg said it beautifully “It is about defending a simple principle: that anyone wanting to unearth information about the way we are governed should not live in fear that they are going to have the anti-terror police on their doorstep.”
And here comes the hypocrisy of Labour. During the 90s, Brown used to stand up in the Commons waving leaked documents at the then Tory chancellor, to embarrass the Tories into admitting faults. Under his own principles, Brown should now be held for nine hours under Anti Terror laws?

The very dealings of Primark. Now i’m in two minds about Primark. I refuse to shop there because they’re ethically disgusting. They know they exploit. They know children are used in very poor working conditions paid very little, and some reports suggest beatings occur, all so Brits can afford cheap shirts. It’s wrong. No matter what the economic benefits are, it’s wrong.
However, the economic benefits cannot be overlooked. The rate of pay for Primark employees abroad is competitive in their markets. If they were to be paid the same as workers in Western markets are paid, every surrounding business in their neighbourhoods wouldn’t be able to compete, they’d go out of business, meaning many many more unemployed people struggling to find money to feed their families. It’s a delicate balance. But that of course, doesn’t make it right. The people forced to work long hours for relatively no money in poor conditions are still human beings, and so deserve the right to dignity and respect.
I was stood waiting for the train at Marble Arch Tube Station not too long ago, and two women with Primark bags were stood next to me talking about how disgusted they were by Shannon Mathews mum, how she exploited her children for extra benefits, how she exploited her children for her own gain. I stood thinking “Ok, you’re complaining about a woman who exploited children, whilst shopping for clothes made by exploited children. Yeah, good one”. Hypocrisy at it’s best.

Double standards. The way of the Western World.