London-based writer. Often climbing.

  • 56 Posts
  • 173 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 29th, 2023

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  • I think if it’s true that he’s a racist - and it is - it’s worth saying it. In addition there are two instrumental reasons we should say it.

    First, Farage’s whole schtick has been to say: ‘You can oppose immigration without being a racist’ and the related argument ‘You shouldn’t be called a racist just because you want less immigration’. Proving that he is, himself, a racist makes both arguments deeply suspect.

    It also more broadly crystallises what’s evil about him for those of us who already hate him (most people!) and shows exactly why he needs to be kept out of power at all costs. If I’m in a swing seat at the next election (currently safe Labour but will there be anywhere safe by 2029?) this is the kind of thing that will make me go ‘I don’t have to like it - and I don’t - but I’m voting for Lib Dems/Greens/whoever is best placed to beat this guy’.
















  • Aside from your odd definition of capitalism and its outcomes, which other people have addressed, the answer to the headline question is: yes.

    Karl Marx, for example, believed that you could not have capitalism without exploitation and that it was therefore an unethical system that should be defeated. He also held that capitalism was inherently contradictory and that it therefore not only should be destroyed, but that it must be destroyed.

    However: Marx also believed that capitalism was an enormous improvement on the previously existing social system of feudalism, because it produced far greater wealth through the development of new technology. This is a key difference between Marxism and the earlier ‘utopian socialism’ (which his theories largely replaced), which saw technology itself as an evil.

    Marx also welcomed the fact that capitalism destroyed (as he saw it) some earlier forms of oppression (albeit while introducing new ones). Marx’s letter to Abraham Lincoln congratulating him on his re-election discusses the American Revolution and Civil War in precisely these terms.

    So, you can enjoy the greater (obviously not ‘infinite’!) abundance of goods that capitalism has produced, you can acknowledge its positive impact on technological development and its material improvements of the lives of millions of people and be not only a leftist but a fully orthodox Marxist… just so long as you also acknowledge that capitalism is also an exploitative and self-destructive force that should, can and must be defeated.