The BBC online Have Your Say tonight is a classic. A 1950’s classic. The BBC evidently consider it a relevant 21st century question to ask: “Have 20 years of capitalism been good for E Europe?”
The most recommended comment thankfully sets things a bit straight:
“What a typical topic here on HYS. Only the crypto commies and sofa socialists on this site (and apparently the HYS staff who pose these questions) would even come up with such an absurdity as this. Communism appeals only those who have never lived under it. And they cannot get their head around the fact that it’s not economics but human liberty and personal freedom that it cannot ever enable or tolerate. It’s as simple as that. Unless you live in Islington or Berkeley.”
Difficult to put it better than that.
Maybe we should ask President Havel ?
It seems though that some people seem to take the view that we in Britain are living in a capitalist country now – they think that PC and all its evils are a result of capitalism.
“Capitalism has wrecked Great Britain, a ONCE GREAT NATION HAS BEEN BOUGHT TO ITS KNEE’S by beurocratic strings, , P.C mania, and Globalisation if the Men and Women who died in two world wars saw it today, they would speak of the Horror of being ignored.
jim evans, BRIGHTON
Thanks to years of New Labour and BBC propaganda, jim evans thinks that “beurocratic strings, , P.C mania,” are the result of a free capitalist country – If only the British education system had not failed the likes of jim evans he would realise that free enterprise made Great Britain. The blurring of totalitarianism with capitalism is almost complete.
Perhaps beeboids have been jacking off to all the reports about the salt mine production figures that have been in the news for the last few days?
The free enterprise half of Great Britain is supporting the parasitic half, but as the socialist burden becomes bigger and heavier, the horse is slowing down.
This person gets it..
“I have been living in UK for one year now and will return home soon. As a 44 year old man who remembers very clear the communist regime I can say economically things are much better. But I cannot wait to get out of this country because it has become so very much like the communist state I used to live under. Britain is now a communist state where one word or even thought can have one arrested. Can the British people not see the fear all around them. people spy to tell on you and lose the job.
Pavel Tesar, Brno “
caveman | 06.02.09 – 10:10 pm |
Britain does not have free enterprise – we trade with who the EU tells us to.
David Vance
You can understand anything about the BBC or our current economic meltdown unless you fully and completely understand my following comments.
The BBC is a mouthpiece of the BRITISH ESTABLISHMENT, sure and simple. It is not this some, or even most of the time. It is this every second of every day of the year, including leap years.
The people who have long since controlled the BRITISH ESTABLISHMENT are not free market capitalists, and are certainly not libertarians or conservatives.
They are very real later day NAZI stile INTERNATIONALIST CORPORATE SOCIALISTS when not also being MARXIST COMMUNIST INTERNATIONALIST CORPORATE SOCIALISTS. One could simply sum them up as being despotic criminals that make the likes of Stalin look relatively sane. But that is being far too kind to these people.
They have a vision for the future of the entire world, which quite frankly does not include many of us even being alive in it too much longer.
The BBC is simply extreme EVIL working for even more extreme EVIL. Understand that or understand nothing worth knowing at all.
Jon | 06.02.09 – 10:19 pm
that guy gets it.
pity the rest of the proles in the country dont.
even if we had a fascist state with gas chambers, the vast majority would happily go along with it…
as long as they got their diet of “prolefeed”…
As opposed to what? To an economy based on cheesy hedgehogs? Will Young said they wanted him back but setting questions for HYS is a bridge too far perhaps.
Atlas shrugged | 06.02.09 – 11:22 pm
a friend of mine sent me an internal email about the beeboids attending a global warming meetup.
while the snow was falling outside.
that is how barking mad they are.
no doubt they think we’ll be growing vines while under 1 mile of icecap.
it is somewhat surreal that the bbc is suggesting that we return to communism – after all, communism killed far more people than Nazism. in the HUNDREDS of millions…
but what the heck – let’s give it another go..
(fucking idiots…)
so all these happy people where conned. They should really have stayed where they were and enjoy their miserable lives.
Many BBC types must be a bit confused about this matter. 20 years of capitalism hasn’t yet made Eastern Europe as prosperous and happy as the communist regimes claimed they were at the time, so it’s not surprising that the BBC, always notoriously uncritical of any vaguely socialist regime, can’t decide if things have improved or not.
The ‘analysis’ of which the BBC is so proud is mainly used to tell us how awful America and Israel are. Even now dreadful places like China and Cuba get an easy ride from the BBC.
Great post! I really enjoy reading your blog. Keep up the good work.
I recently started a new blog that will be highlighting the dangerous advances of the secular progressive movement (pro-gay “rights”, pro-abortion, anti-religious freedoms, etc).
We’re looking to build a solid group of conservatives who’ll frequent our site regularly and contribute to some good discussions. The site gets updated daily with breaking news, so you’ll want to check back often, or you can just sign up for our News Feed.
If you’ll add us to your blogroll we’ll gladly add you to ours. Our blog is called Religion and Morality.
Thanks!
I posted the flwg comment, but I don’t expect it to be published until maybe 5 seconds before they close the debate:
Why do communist countries have to restrict freedom of speech and freedom of movement?
How many people sought asylum in the USSR?
How many people seek asylum North Korea?
Do people leave the USA to go to Cuba or are they leaving Cuba for the USA?
The facts speak for themselves.
There is one easy solution to all the ills that face Britain – people of the north of Britain and Scotland need to change their lifetime voting habits.
Unfortunately, they insist on voting along some strange notion of group loyalty to a party which they think represents them, even though, if only they would think about it, they are actually more in line with the right wing of the Conservative Party.
The proof of this is that they can go from supporting Labour to supporting BNP in one easy step without having to go through the Conservatives.
And I am not talking about the underclass, whose loyalties go without saying, and who probably do not vote in great numbers anyway; I am talking about the proper working class. (The non-voting amongst the underclass will soon be remedied by the use of incentive schemes – free lottery tickets at the polling station etc)
David Davis, brought up on a council estate, may have helped them to overcome their prejudices, but I doubt that Call me Dave will.
—Don’t worry, working class people who vote Labour, only joking! I know you cannot really change habits of a lifetime!
Atlas Shrugged
There is a grain of truth in what you say but only a grain and I am concerned that you are turning this site into exactly what our opponents accuse us of being.
Read Jonah Goldbergs Liberal Fascism, it will tell you where we are and why http://www.amazon.co.uk/Liberal-Fascism-History-Mussolini-Politics/dp/0141039507/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1234000167&sr=1-1
……and for a broader view (without any conspiracy theories) Cultural Amnesia by Clive James provides a very readable panorama of the Modern Age http://www.amazon.co.uk/Cultural-Amnesia-Notes-Margin-Time/dp/0330418866/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1234000530&sr=1-1
The front page of HYS at the moment (0955): the question is about snow, the two quotes underneath are about….CCTV.
The BBC – not staffed by amateurs at all.
Chris Schandevel:
You want a group of conservatives on your site? Why? They are just as pus filled and pc as the left. Why don’t you just post on a young Tory fan site or something.
The fact that any view contrary to the status quo is automatically referred to as right wing just shows how utterly deluded tories must be. Never met a Tory that thinks any differently about race, Islam, global warming or BBC bias then their counterparts on the left.
Pacific 9:35
Kim Philby sought asylum in the USSR.
The question in the article reads:
“Do you live in a former Soviet bloc country? What have 20 years of capitalism done for you? Do you think that your country has benefited from the end of communism?”
Now in my view HYS is a carnival of idiots, from all sides. But this is a moderately worthwhile and diverting exercise.
Caveman – you are among quite a few friends on B-BBC
And Libertarian | 07.02.09 – 10:01 am, there is no grain of truth in Atlas’s demented warblings. And The Pilsbury Pantload’s book is a disgrace, widely slammed by most serious commentators on the right.
To Chris Schandevel:
I followed the link to your site and, having looked only very briefly (so far) at its contents, find it very interesting. I have added it to my favourites list and will be able to study the contents in much more depth over the coming weeks.
Your site is very professionally laid out. Do you use a special software package to achieve this and if so, what is it called?
As you have found, this B-BBC site of David Vance’s is excellent but I feel it could do with a software makeover; gilding the lily, perhaps? They say that beauty is only skin deep but they also say that first impressions count! Anyway, congratulations on producing a great-looking site.
ed thomas
I don’t know what time you looked at the HYS page but the most recommended comments now (10:58 am) are not exactly paeans to capitalism. Ignoramuses though the “most recommended” commenters are, their comments illustrate the damage that at least two generations of BBC propaganda and 11 years of New Labour propaganda can do even with those who are apparently able to read and write. Those now coming out of school – 40% of which are functionally illiterate and innumerate but able to vote (if not work) – will be even more prey to spin and lies.
caveman | 07.02.09 – 10:00 am |
I think that when the votes are counted in the next general election (if we ever have one).
Many, many, once loyal Labour voters will be voting differently.
Even my fellow Tykes are sick of McMental and his corrupt gang of thieves.
sorry above 11:11 was me.
John, that was a great video to watch. Thanks for posting it.
I’m in my thirties and remember the soft Communism in Hungary. You could lead a good life, financed by state debt, you could enjoy material prosperity to some extent (job, car, a bungalow by the lake, travel to other Communist countries) but only at the expense of freedom of speech and freedom of conscience. As long as you kept your head down, you were safe. You could even have a private business using the tools of the factory that employed you. You kept the profit, paid no tax on the moonlighting, gave no money back to the factory for using their (state owned) tools and infrastructure. And you were happy. Happy, but morally compromised. The legacy? Corruption, tax evasion, a sizeable black economy.
These are the factors that hinder the East’s economic development.
Anyone wanting to live in a socialist stae is right out of their mind!
Libertarian
I do not have the power to do anything of the sort, to this or any other site.
I only wish people, especially people interested in real TRUTH and true liberty, to start thinking for themselves for possibly the first time in their entire lives.
The most fundamental thing the people must preserve within any system, is their individual property rights. With out which all else is ultimately pointless.
Your comment is by definition not LIBERTARIAN.
Any system that does not preserve property rights in general is a bad system, waiting to very soon get a whole lot worse. If you are a REAL libertarian you should KNOW this, without me having to remind you.
The ‘trick’ is to disregard propaganda from both left and right, while concentrating your mind on what is really important to yourself, your family, and the entire rest of common humanity.
Corruption is bad.
Murder is bad.
Dishonesty is bad.
Repression is bad. etc
Truth is good.
Compassion is good.
Freedom is good.
Ordinary human life is good. etc
This is the thinking that must start to dominate ordinary peoples minds and spirit.
This is also the thinking which the BBC in particular seeks to radically confuse, by doing so destroy forever.
Tribalism is the way of the football hooligan, not the intelligent human being. It is the method by which our media assists its owners and controllers to divide and rule the common people.
The world has politically changed in a most fundamental way, but at the same time NOT really changed at all, for literally thousands of years.
In the past the world has controlled by mind control of various types. For example our ruling elites contrived Cold War. When this most recent system of people control was deliberately collapsed in 1989, our ruling class moved to their next planned stage of world control.
This usually goes by the name of The New World Order. You may have a different name for it.
Which is a cross between Communism and Corporate Capitalism. The ruling class will try to sell it too the people as the best parts of both. However in my opinion it could very well turn out to be a combination of the worst bits of both.
This certainly WILL be the case if the people do not finally start to WAKE UP, to what is happening all around them, every second of every day.
We must collectively and individually start thinking outside the prison stile ‘left right’ boxes that our ruling class continue to imprison us in. Or we will be collectively and individually sunk without trace.
The longest and most criminally murderous war of them all,was not the second world war or any war given an establishment label.
It was and still is the never ending WAR between the ordinary people and their OWN government controlled by their own Ruling Class elites. This War has been going on since the dawn of Civilization itself. It has claimed the lives and freedoms of more people then all of the inter-national or inter-state wars put together, by a very very long way indeed.
Although this WAR is constantly with us, it moves in fits and starts. At this moment it is progressing with a sense of almost extreme urgency.
If you have ever wondered why for example Stalin and Churchill seemed to have far more in common with each other, then either of them ever did with their ordinary conservative minded citizenry. Then I hope I have given you a very serious clue as to why they not only seemed to be the case, it was indeed the case.
An interesting contrast between the communist system and the capitalist one was demonstrated by Jeremy “Brown lover” Clarkson and his pals.
They road tested soviet bloc cars against their free western contemporaries, and showed the huge gap between engineering in the free and communist worlds.
It’s an given that the Nanny State stifles ingenuity and ambtion, a fact the BBC will never grasp.
frankos – Quite. But why are american cars so bad?
Of course, the BBC is one of the last surviving nationalised industries whose origins lie in the totalitarian mindset of the 1930s.
Cheers Atlas. Have you got a google account as someone’s registered it and are using it on Guido but i’m not convinced it’s you. Have a good weekend buddy.
Ricky Martin
The key feature of nationalised industries is that they quickly dumped the idea that they were owned by the public and served the public – they were taken over by the management and staff, and run strictly to what they wanted, to hell with the rest of us.
mikewineliberal | 07.02.09 – 12:21 pm
You’re right of course, American cars are sooo bad, like Mustang, Charger, Trans Am etc, up against the stiff competition from the east, like Lada, Yugo and the excellent Trabant… yep real bad
Atlas Shrugged:
If you would like an example of a real left-wing (of course) conspiracy, then I would urge you to look at the following linked video:
This video is an interview between Edward Griffin and Yuri Bezmenov a former Novosti/KGB operative who was so disgusted with the Soviet communist system that he escaped to the West in 1970. In the video, Yuri Bezmenov speaks about Soviet propaganda, disinformation, “ideological subversion” or “active measures” and how the Soviet communist system’s intention is to destroy Western culture and moral values etc and replace them with a left-wing totalitarian utopia.
Here is a little bit of a transcript of the interview to whet your appetite:
ED GRIFFIN: Well, you spoke before about “ideological subversion” and that’s a phrase that I’m afraid some Americans don’t understand. When the Soviets use the phrase “ideological subversion” what do they mean by it?
YURI BEZMENOV: Ideological subversion is the process which is legitimate, overt and open. You can see it with your own eyes…. It has nothing to do with espionage… in reality the main emphasis of the KGB is NOT in the area of intelligence at all. According to my opinion, and the opinions of many defectors of my caliber, only about 15% of time, money, and manpower is spent on espionage as such. The other 85% is a slow process which we call either ideological subversion, or active measures, or psychological warfare. What it basically means is: to change the perception of reality of every American to such an extent that despite the abundance of information no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interest of defending themselves, their families, their community, and their country. It’s a great brainwashing process which goes very slow and is divided into four basic stages. The first one being “demoralization”. It takes from 15 to 20 years to demoralize a nation….The result? The result you can see … the people who graduated in the 60’s, dropouts or half-baked intellectuals, are now occupying the positions of power in the government, civil service, business, mass media, and educational systems. You are stuck with them. You can’t get through to them. They are contaminated. They are programmed to think and react to certain stimuli in a certain pattern [alluding to Pavlov]. You cannot change their mind even if you expose them to authentic information. Even if you prove that white is white and black is black, you still can not change the basic perception and the logic of behavior.
frankos – Quite. But why are american cars so bad?
mikewineliberal
Some are OK, but it was really a comparison between East and West Germany
Dick the Prick:
“Cheers Atlas. Have you got a google account as someone’s registered it and are using it on Guido but i’m not convinced it’s you.”
Oh don’t get him started!
I am currently in the process of having my kitchen replaced. The builder is Slovakian and during a chat about living in the Uk he mentioned that over here we have so much choice. Under communism the only choice you had was take it or leave it.. Yes they had access to western goods but these could only be purchased in government shops where only foreign currency could be used.
And Al beeb salivates for such a society.
David A
Yes; one could call this Leftist, because this word is associated with radical change, and the complete destruction of ordinary mankind’s natural conservatism.
The point I am making is that this radical change is being, and was being done in conspiracy with our own establishment. This because to a very large extent indeed, our own establishment ran and financed The Soviet Union, from 1917 onwards. We were allies during WW 2 for a reason. The Romanov’s when they way they did, for a reason.
The reason was to gradually bankrupt and undermine national governments, by steeling, and therefore monopolizing the worlds GOLD. therefore enabling the gradual installation of corporate banking control over the entire world. A one world banking system some call internationalist Communism or indeed world Fascism. At which point democracy would and could be abolished all over the entire planet. All pyramids have a point at the top, except this one. Therefore ultimately a one world dictator will one day BE EMERGED. He, ( and you can be absolutely certain it will be a HE,) will of course be secretly controlled by our ruling elites, as usual.
It is very possible, in fact extremely likely, that not even Mr Bezmenov was fully aware of this, while working for The KGB. Only the people at the very very top need to know what exactly the ultimate plane actually is.
“The lie is different at every level.”
Hitler correctly called this the Zionist/Communist conspiracy. Others know this as The Great Conspiracy. We will all know this one day, as The New World Order.
Nazism is a esoteric religious ideology posing as atheism. It has little intrinsically to do with jack boots and panza’s. While having very little to do with anything exclusively German. Still less then that ultimately with nationalism in general. It involves preparing the entire planet for the next stage of its development into the truly cosmic family. REAL Nazi’s like Himmler, George Bush, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and most likely David Cameron etc believe that only when the world is completely controlled by a single system of control, can this planet move on to its new spiritual and material level.
The lives and welfare of ordinary people have nothing to do with anything these people get up to, as surly the reality of our real history has shown us, time and time again. They are frying a much larger FISH, while Preparing themselves for the predicted FLOOD.
Virtually everything is driven from the TOP, virtually nothing is driven from the bottom, even when it seems that it is. What seems like bad/good luck or simple coincidence is nothing more then BBC type establishment propaganda or pitifully unwitting disinformation.
As you indicate.
Even if you prove that white is white and black is black, you still can not change the basic perception and the logic of behavior.
Which is very much why LEFTISM seems to the normally sane, highly productive and creative ordinary people, like the completely insane politics of the murderously psychopathic mad house. It does so, because it very much is the politics of the psychopath, daily dictating to the cruelly and systematically BBC/MSM radically brainwashed ordinary citizenry.
Pounce, I had the same experience. And in the Gorvernment shop you had to pay with dollars or German Marks. Not joking. My friend and I used to ask for 1 German Mark coin from our parents so we could go get a can of Coca Cola 🙂
Say you wanted furniture for the bedroom, there were about 5 different kinds for sale in the “Furniture Shop”. It was surreal.
Everyone remembers the tv advert which goes like “Shoes from the Shoe Shop”. Kinda sums up the whole surrealist state of affairs.
I remember in the mid 80-s during the morning radio show they read out the articles and products that were not available that week in the shops. The joy of planned economy…
Are there people who believe that Socialism can do well, really? It wouldn’t last a day in Britain anyway because people are very particular about their preferences (like buy wine by preferred region and if you present them with something else they pour it down the sink when you don’t look – my mother-in-law did that with a bottle of Tokaji Aszu).
Which 20 years of Capitalism are they talking about? It’s only 20 years since Communism heard the two-minute warning before the end of the game. Capitalism didn’t magically shift into gear the day Rostropovich showed up to play Bach at the remains of the Berlin Wall. It took years to get things going even in Poland. At best there may be 20 years of fully functional, reasonably honest Capitalist activity collectively amongst the former Soviet-controlled countries.
This question is based on a false premise from the beginning. And still the answer is “Yes!” Because it’s 20 years of Democracy, not Capitalism, ignorant Beeboids.
what David Preisler said.
frankos | 07.02.09 – 1:55 pm
Ok. a good comparison. You’d buy a german car over an american one any day.
mikewineliberal | 07.02.09 – 6:04 pm |
I’m sorry mike – but the BBC are talking about the good old communists not about cars. Are you trying, like a good BBC presenter would, to steer things away from the topic that cannot be defended onto trivialities?
One of the best accounts I have seen of how capitalism and socialism compare is in Nevil Shute’s autobiography “Slide Rule”, where he describes the development of the R100 and R101 airships.
These airships were built at the same time as part of a two-ship competition to develop new techniques for a projected larger airship for British military use. R100 was built by private enterprise (NS working as Chief Calculator under Barnes Wallis) and R101 was built by the UK Air Ministry.
NS recounts in fascinating detail how throughout the projects R100 went right while the R101 project was mucked about by bureaucracy and politics.
The final result is illuminating(!). R101 crashed and burned and consequently R100 had to be dropped to save face.
PS NS wrote that whenever they changed the design and had to recalculate the stresses in all the structural members, it took his team 3 weeks of slide rule work. Today, it would just be a mouse click and wait a few seconds, of course.
David A, thanks for your compliments about my blog. I just use one of the standard WordPress themes for my blog. The theme is called Tarski.
Thanks again for checking out my blog atReligion and Morality!
David Preiser (USA):
It took years to get things going even in Poland. At best there may be 20 years of fully functional, reasonably honest Capitalist activity collectively amongst the former Soviet-controlled countries.
As you say, they still have the corruption left over from the previous system.
When the communists take over, the old rulers need to be very fearful of their lives.
When there is a counter revolution nothing much seems to happen to the communists. So the same (bad) people still keep their jobs.
If the communists are ever on the receiving end of a purge, like in Chile, we never hear the end of it on the BBC.
The BBC coverage of communism over the decades has been disgraceful. It has always been obvious where their sympathies lie.
Jon | 07.02.09 – 8:04 pm
See my first post. Just straying off topic elsewhere. No menace intended
Jon – I agree that your video clip is a good one about the collapse of communism. I remember watching the BBC covering the collapse of the Berlin Wall – the BBC must have been in tears (of sadness) having to broadcast it.
Also, interesting contributions from Hettie – why is someone like her not the subject of a documentary on the BBC?
The scary thing is that the people in the government and BBC pushing the socialist agenda do know all the aspects of communism mentioned above, but it makes no difference to them and they still work away at taking us there. They are truly bad people.
I think it must be something in their genes that drives them. Some urge to get the bad people into power. Very strange. What goes on in their heads to have such a hate-based and destructive way of thinking? That is good – attack it. That is bad – promote it. And I think they even realise that they, and their children, will all be worse off if they get their own way.
Grant:
Pacific 9:35
Kim Philby sought asylum in the USSR.
Grant | 07.02.09 – 10:41 am |
And there was a film out a couple of years ago about a family that admired communism and went to live there in the 60s(?) – but they came back
in the next general election (if we ever have one).Many, many, once loyal Labour voters will be voting differently.rightofcentre | 07.02.09 – 11:13 am |
I hope you are proved right