XPost: alt.politics.socialism, alt.politics
Roger Johansson wrote:
>On Apr 20, 6:34 pm, "J.H.Boersema" wrote:
>-
>> You are probably right about these things. I did change the hammer and
>> sickle to something else BTW, to get rid of the plan-economy ...
>-
>People recognize old wellknown symbols, and associate them with their
>history. If you think you can modify them slightly and make them mean
>something else you are making a mistake. People react to such symbols
>in a certain way, and they do not look at the details, they do not
>analyze the differences and understand what you want to say.
>
>By using old symbols associated with violence you are scaring away
>most people before they have read a word of your text.
Ofcourse you are right, however I would say they associate the symbols
with the history that they /think/ they know. From before the Russian
communist revolution and in its first years the symbol of hammer and
sickle were all positive. From Stalin onward the camp splits between
those seeing a positive difference with pure capitalism combined with
the `communism on a national scale and not internationally' (very close
in theory to the theory of `national-socialism' isn't it) that Stalin
pushed, and the communist camp that currently calls post war USSR
State Capitalism (after the west attacked Russia and drained it of most
progressives). The Stalinists had a world super power behind them
which actively sought to infiltrate communist groups while at the same
time local capitalist propaganda was naturally untrustworthy,
and even the capitalists would prefer elements of this kindred rule
(dictatorship). The communists outside Russia were cought in a
trap, right ? I think both camps might have some truth to them,
though I feel that the revolution has to be international precisely
to prevent wars that destroy popular democracry. A top-down dictatorship
is the anti-thesis of everything that is communist.
Things seem to go even worse now under capitalism in Russia. However,
with the USSR gone, there is finally some room for the original
internationalist communist goals of removing capitalism and ending
war, enhanced by more experience and more time/effort we can put
into these things (since our working conditions are dramatically
improved). Understanding history then means that whatever bad happened
in the USSR, is first on the shoulders of the west who tried to
destroy the russian revolution which had already backed out of the
first world war. Hence, whatever blood is on the hammer and sickle,
is actually on the western national flags.
The problem I'm seeing is that in the long run, every time someone
does something bad waving whatever kind of good symbol, could then destroy
the original meaning of those symbols effectively cutting off a whole
cultural development. In the end we can not even talk to eachother anymore,
all words are dripping with blood of people who did bad things suposedly
in honor of them (or more likely attempting to deceive the public and/or
themselves). For instance what Bush is doing to "spreading democracy"
while he is actually spreading war and capitalism. Once he's done with
his rampage, how will I say "I'm trying to /spread democracy/ with my
computer program" ... that makes everyone see images of Fallujah and
Shock & Awe blitzkrieg campaigns, torture chambers etc. He is putting
blood on the word democracy, and in that is defeating democracy, which
is probably the goal to begin with (though that doesn't include
people who fall or have fallen for this political trap). In the
future can we still talk about "spreading democracy" or "democracy",
if we don't allow the acts of liars to poison our vocabulary. In
prison for instance the word "innocent" barely has a meaning, because
guilty people constantly claim to be innocent. It loses its meaning,
and the really innocent suffer the concequences, they can't say the
truth anymore. That is not what we need.
People need to get their heads out of non objective or one sided
readings of history, before they can recognize the original symbols
again. One sided history telling is extraordinarily damaging to social
progress. To clean the chaos, I'd say one needs to go to the root of
the symbol, and what it precicely represents, see what has happened
from beginning to end. Hammer, sickle and wheat are working tools and
food, they are inherently positive and stand for replacement of swords,
shields and lions of nobility which are inherently negative (violent).
The shield of the nation of Holland has lions, for instance. That isn't
just an erroneous association with violence, it is a celibration of it,
a symbol that should project violence and fear (power through violence).
The hammer and sickle was raised by the oppressed against Capital and
"nobility", later to be used by Stalin and much of the old Tsarist
bureaucracy ... probably in large part for propaganda purposes.
If people don't bother to know such elementary things about history,
I won't bother with them and they aren't bothered with me (since they
are gone). The system I'm proposing is not without challanges to its
users, you have to have a certain competence and intelligence. You have
to want to know the thruth if you expect to live in an absolute
democracy. People who don't care about the truth are not only not
worthy of direct democracy, they will make it fail. I don't need that
and they don't need it either. Then just join around the king, which
is less of a hassle then all the debating, campaigning and voting.
Not making the system too easy to accept could in the long run
be profitable for it. Take such an issue as nullifying all money,
that's not what you would want to entrust to a number of football
hooligans. Intelligent people are needed to operate the system,
and an intelligent public that makes at least no catastrophicly
wrong choices most of the time. To make good choices means a need
for objective truth must be pervasive in the public.
>> It also doesn't matter to me how people who listen to mainstream media
>> are preconditioned (in this century), it is their choice to listen
>
>To communicate with people you need to speak their language.
>For example, I do not speak swedish with you, because you would not
>understand anything. I have used years of my life to learn to speak
>and write in a language which a lot of people can understand.
>
>The language I speak consists of both words and symbols, and I am
>doing my best to not scare people away.
I did take away the word `communist' from the constitution, because
I felt like you are saying, that it would be too scary. Before I had
the real hammer and sickle, also changed that but only because it
seems that the plan-economy is inescapably linked to the hammer and
sickle. Also did put an introduction above the constitution prop, on
your advice.
>> I don't care about it. If that means my system will never be real,
[continued in next message]
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