The National Party

Sending people to gulags is a sign of respect?

You're cherry picking the parts of Socialism that suit you.

If there was a fascist on here extolling the virtues of Mussolini making the trains run on time you wouldn't put up with it.

Defence of fascists?

Show where I've once defended fascists then...

'Cherry picking the parts of Socialism that suits you' is not in itself a bad thing. Things like social housing, free healthcare, free education, water and sanitation, common use of roads and infrastructure, parks and lands to protection of human and civil rights. If you think that all Socialism leads to dicatorships and genocides you are wildly and fantastically wrong. In fact, it is the Socialists who continue to fight for these things that you take for granted when Capitalists see them as either barriers to trade or assets to be leveraged and sold.

One of my beefs with Marx was his belief that a strong vanguard state was needed to implement a socialist system, which would then dissolve as it became unnecessary. No Karl, it isn't and it won't.

Well, that was Marx's "revolutionary period" necessity, as part of the transition to Socialism and then toward Communism. He believed that a period of controlled stability was a "necessary evil", but one which had to be closely observed by the proletariat, lest it turn into a ruling class of a slightly different flavour than the one it replaced. Unfortunately, it depends one whose hands are at the tiler as to whether they would allow the reins to, eventually, be handed over and to whom. Also, the proletariat in Russia was quite small, the largest being a subjected peasant class. So the required checks and balances from the workers, in Marxist thinking, rested on a relatively small amount of shoulders. That allows a nefarious political body to thrive.

I don't think Marx would have had huge problems with Lenin or Trotsky. Stalin would have horrified him no doubt. But Marx's hands aren't as clear as you describe, when it comes to the USSR.

Hmmm, having read quite a bit about the figures concerned, I wouldn't be so sure that Marx would have been all that fond of the Leninist view, while probably agreeing with where Lenin wanted Russia to eventually go. Trotsky would be a different matter, though, and he's a figure that I could imagine would share a lot of common ground with Marx. There's certainly a case to be made that Marx would have viewed the Bolshevik revolution as an interesting and welcome experiment, especially considering the awful state of affairs that preceded it and he would have been very welcoming of the end to the Tsarist rule in Russia. But I cannot see that warm reception lasting too long myself. Certainly if Marx had lived to see 1920/21 or a little bit beyond, I think he would have rejected the revolution altogether. But it isn't a clear cut thing, I'll grant you that.

But, as you say, once we get to Uncle Joe, there would have been no dithering about Marx's feelings on where it all went.

However, Marx and Russia are very uneasy bedfellows. Marx thought very little of Russia and considered it a backwards nation. He wouldn't have thought that a workers revolution would have been even possible there, because there was a lack of industrialisation and therefore a lack of a working class. Marx's idea of Socialist revolution was a workers revolt against the ruling classes and nobility. He never thought that Russia would have even been ready for such a thing, because it was a bottom heavy agricultural system. Remember, serfdom in Russia was only ended 20 years before Marx died. He also would have viewed Russia's revolution as a bit of an unnatural one, because it was born out of war with a foreign nation, Germany, and the conditions that Marx viewed as the "right" ones just weren't present. In other words, the October revolution has a lot of its roots in the fight against outside actors and not solely ones that were within.

Lets take sick leave as an example, an idea that predates socialism yet you say socialism ushered it in.

No, but I will state that the benefits for society from collectivist thinking far outweigh those driven by profit.

3. Opposition to Mass Immigration and a Commitment to Remigration

The National Party supports the ending of all mass immigration into Ireland. Further, we support a positive policy of remigration in order to secure Ireland as the homeland of the Irish people.

Central to this commitment to remigration is the Party’s focus on encouraging and incentivising the return of exiled members of the Irish nation, as well as primarily utilising the diaspora as a source for any potential labour shortfalls.

The National Party - discuss how this isn't the most crazy thing ever?

Not everyone in a union is a socialist. I spent years as part of a large union and fought for fair treatment of people I worked with.

Collective bargaining isn't the preserve of socialists. Not all of what goes on the within unions is amazing either.

I'm focusing on the extremes because this is a thread about extremes. Notions like "Jesus was a socialist" are just complete waffle.

We do live in a democracy, the democratic process has been the first thing to be disposed of in all purely socialist regimes.

Having moderate left and right wing people in a democracy works, having a fully right or left wing regime ends in disaster every time. That's my point.

You see it a lot with those that actually support the likes of the national party etc stand for but won't come out and say so and go with the both sides routine.

Thing is they often slip up and are fairly fast to comment with speculation on threads about the young lady stabbed in Kerry back in March or stating that the reason for the knife attack in Sydney was probably because the area has a large Jewish community (also incorrect) and then not seen for dust when details of the attacker come out.

Yeah, but to some people, that's everything from center-right to complete Anarchy.

What is your take on the thread? The Nationalist Party? The point of the thread. Good or bad? Will you be voting for them?

Everything else is just bluster and deflection.

And yet...

This thread is not about "the left". Far from it.

At 8.17 pm I posted that you'd use the "Oh, I can't possibly be expected to respond to all of the replies to my nonsense." Yawn. Again.

Because they were not socialists . They were communists . And dictators .

Apology from Big Phil

Did you win a prize?

I'm guessing you were extremely disappointed when I didn't throw my support behind the National Party.

Downplay the National Party?

I've called them all sorts of unflattering names.

Just for reference, I have one of the most thanked posts in this thread taking the piss out of Justin Barrett...

(should I expect to see this thanks count decrease in light of questioning Jesus's socialist credentials?)

Plenty of people here want to blow the National Party up into some massive existential threat when they're nothing of the sort, the same people who excuse the crimes of the far left and have no idea what socialism is.

Actually, they weren't Communists at all GG. They weren't even near to being Communists. The fact that Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot (you can throw the Kim dynasty in there too) believed in the centralisation of their own power structure and their own attempts to solely broker that power excludes them from any kind of Marxist/Communist ideals.

They were, however, as you say dictators who used a form of Socialism to further their own aims. But even by that very fact, they separate themselves from any kind of Marxist definition of Communism (or even Socialism), which centres on a system that eliminates dictatorial power, other than the "dictatorship of the proletariat" which is, merely, government of the people, by the people, for the people, to borrow Lincoln's* words.

*a man with whom Marx had many disagreements and agreements with.

Yeah, you did - you accused everyone on the left of reading Marx and Engles non-stop.

Then you invaded Poland.