[Pants-of-dog]

@The Immortal Goon
@Decky

Can you please provide links discussing the role of militancy in trade unions. Thanks.

Specifically, did US trade unions have armies? Were these armies corrupt and dictatorial?

[Decky]

How about you learn your own history Spaniard? I never mentioned the US. Once again you prove you are not great at replying to what people actually type.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Civil_War

[Pants-of-dog]

How about you learn your own history Spaniard?

Good idea.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolut ... ent_(Chile)

So, looking at that article, we see that the trade unions did not have their own armies but did ally with militant leftists after capitalist government forces attacked trade unions.

I never mentioned the US. Once again you prove you are not great at replying to what people actually type.

That is true, you never mentioned the US, despie the fact that One Degree clearly implied that he was discussing the US when he said trade unions had armies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Civil_War

Not really a big fan of European experiments with socialism.

[The Immortal Goon]

@Pants-of-dog

There are three examples off the top of my head, but certainly more:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaconda_Road_massacre

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_Labor_Wars

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Virginia_coal_wars

I think it's important to note that the workers never fired the first shot. This period of history was where James Connolly—who later formed a workers' militia in Ireland—cut his teeth working with the IWW. He later observed:

One great source of the strength of the ruling class has ever been their willingness to kill in defence of their power and privileges. Let their power be once attacked either by foreign foes, or domestic revolutionists, and at once we see the rulers prepared to kill, and kill, and kill. The readiness of the ruling class to order killing, the small value the ruling class has ever set upon human life, is in marked contrast to the reluctance of all revolutionists to shed blood.

The French Reign of Terror is spoken of with horror and execration by the people who talk in joyful praise about the mad adventure of the Dardanelles. And yet in any one day of battle at the Dardanelles there were more lives lost than in all the nine months of the Reign of Terror.

Should the day ever come when revolutionary leaders are prepared to sacrifice the lives of those under them as recklessly as the ruling class do in every war, there will not be a throne or despotic government left in the world. Our rulers reign by virtue of their readiness to destroy human life in order to reign; their reign will end on the day their discontented subjects care as little for the destruction of human life as they do.

The workers are always slower to react in these cases, and as a rule after the authorities have already started dropping bodies. So @One Degree One Degree's whining about the big scary union is, of course, completely insincere and not grounded in reality.

However, it is incorrect to give the impression that unions never armed or formed militias. Since facts are on our side, there is no reason to run from them or smooth them over. And as mentioned, I don't think you were doing it with malicious intent.

[Decky]

Just to clarify I absolutely do think he does it with malicious intent.

[Hindsite]

How, nutter? They call up their private armies from the moon? Somebody's been washing someone's brain, I see. How the shit do you have a dictator without a state, you noodle?

Haven't you ever heard of the Soviet Union?

[Pants-of-dog]

There are three examples off the top of my head, but certainly more:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaconda_Road_massacre

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_Labor_Wars

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Virginia_coal_wars

Thank you for the links.

I was aware of Anaconda's propensity for violence againt leftists outside of the US, but I had no idea they did the same at home. Which is obviously not surprising. There does not seem to be any mention of any organised militant faction in the Anaconda strike, which is too bad, since that may have prevented the workers from being shot in the back by Anaconda security forces.

I am too busy renovating two bedrooms for the ongoing horde of daughters to read the Colorado link carefully, but the West Virginia link shows that the unions did not actually have armies, but instead armed and mobilised their own workers. In my opinion, this is preferable to hiring an army.

I think it's important to note that the workers never fired the first shot. This period of history was where James Connolly—who later formed a workers' militia in Ireland—cut his teeth working with the IWW. He later observed:

There is some truth to that.

The workers are always slower to react in these cases, and as a rule after the authorities have already started dropping bodies. So @One Degree One Degree's whining about the big scary union is, of course, completely insincere and not grounded in reality.

However, it is incorrect to give the impression that unions never armed or formed militias. Since facts are on our side, there is no reason to run from them or smooth them over. And as mentioned, I don't think you were doing it with malicious intent.

No, I was not, but this goves Decky a chance to tease me, and he obviously enjoys that.

[AFAIK]

@Pants-of-dog
Requiring people to get licenses in order to cut hair or paint nails is an example of onerous regulation. The license requires many hours accreditation so the colleges make bank, the colleges require student loans so the banks make bank, the colleges and banks pay politicians to pass and enforce these laws so they make bank and working class people live in debt bondage because students loans follow you forever ever through bankruptcy. Those who endanger the public by painting nails without a license are attacked by SWAT.

[Pants-of-dog]

@Pants-of-dog
Requiring people to get licenses in order to cut hair or paint nails is an example of onerous regulation. The license requires many hours accreditation so the colleges make bank, the colleges require student loans so the banks make bank, the colleges and banks pay politicians to pass and enforce these laws so they make bank and working class people live in debt bondage because students loans follow you forever ever through bankruptcy. Those who endanger the public by painting nails without a license are attacked by SWAT.

How many places have this?

For example, British Columbia has deregulated hairdressers many years ago and seems to be no problem.

But even if we accept that hairdressers need not be regulated, and it would be hard to argue that they do, and we accept that they are regulated in most places, this would be at most an example of how regulatory systems are imperfectly used rather than an example of how regulations are inherently onerous.

Eran liked to use florists as an example.

[mikema63]

Imagine my shock at wandering into a thread to discover that hindsite doesn't understand either capitalism or socialism.

[Ned Lud]

You are being abusive while ignoring the history of unions. Yes, they had their own armies. Yes, they were dictatorial and corrupt. In the US, their downfall was mainly due to the abuses of their leaders.

Well, clearly, in an anti-worker and anti-human society, that can happen, just as you get Stalinism if you send eighteen armies to destroy workers attempts at democracy. I do tend to be abusive when I see nonsense - clearly the unions you are talking about were working in a semi-fascist state.

[One Degree]

Well, clearly, in an anti-worker and anti-human society, that can happen, just as you get Stalinism if you send eighteen armies to destroy workers attempts at democracy. I do tend to be abusive when I see nonsense - clearly the unions you are talking about were working in a semi-fascist state.

The US was very pro union. Yes, there was a deliberate attempt to destroy unions but it never would have succeeded without the corruption of the union leaders themselves. The leaders continued to support the Democratic Party after the workers saw the party no longer represented them. They were sold out for identity politics. Combined with pension funds disappearing etc, unions contributed to their own defeat.

[Ned Lud]

Haven't you ever heard of the Soviet Union?

Yes - that was the form of capitalism the eighteen armies produced, silly, murderous buggers.

[Ned Lud]

The US was very pro union. Yes, there was a deliberate attempt to destroy unions but it never would have succeeded without the corruption of the union leaders themselves. The leaders continued to support the Democratic Party after the workers saw the party no longer represented them. They were sold out for identity politics. Combined with pension funds disappearing etc, unions contributed to their own defeat.

You should have insisted on an elected leadership, clearly.

[AFAIK]

Regulations impose fixed costs on businesses and promote economies of scale, they also deter small businesses from growing in order to avoid crossing over the threshold that would require them to follow various regulations. There are many businesses in France with 49 employees because they don't want to endure the regulatory burden that businesses with 50+ employees endure.

[The Immortal Goon]

Regulations help move things a little easier. One can be reasonably sure, for instance, that when you buy a new house it's not a festering shithole that's literally going to fall in on you and your family-like used to happen.

But this said, let's not kid ourselves and think that there is some kind of grand dialogue between exploiter and exploited with the government as a neutral arbiter. These kinds of regulations largely exist because your Georgia-Pacific can afford them, while any competition that might pop up can't usually even start.

And it's no coincidence that they went into effect as the world's economy shifted and that, after the war and the universalization of the dollar, and fiat replacing gold, a lot of them were viciously killed off.

This world-market, at first, was composed of a number of chiefly or entirely agricultural countries grouped around one manufacturing centre — England which consumed the greater part of their surplus raw produce, and supplied them in return with the greater part of their requirements in manufactured articles. No wonder England’s industrial progress was colossal and unparalleled, and such that the status of 1844 now appears to us as comparatively primitive and insignificant. And in proportion as this increase took place, in the same proportion did manufacturing industry become apparently moralised. The competition of manufacturer against manufacturer by means of petty thefts upon the workpeople did no longer pay. Trade had outgrown such low means of making money; they were not worth while practising for the manufacturing millionaire, and served merely to keep alive the competition of smaller traders, thankful to pick up a penny wherever they could. Thus the truck system was suppressed, the Ten Hours’ Bill [2] was enacted, and a number of other secondary reforms introduced — much against the spirit of Free Trade and unbridled competition, but quite as much in favour of the giant-capitalist in his competition with his less favoured brother. Moreover, the larger the concern, and with it the number of hands, the greater the loss and inconvenience caused by every conflict between master and men; and thus a new spirit came over the masters, especially the large ones, which taught them to avoid unnecessary squabbles, to acquiesce in the existence and power of Trades’ Unions, and finally even to discover in strikes — at opportune times — a powerful means to serve their own ends. The largest manufacturers, formerly the leaders of the war against the working-class, were now the foremost to preach peace and harmony. And for a very good reason. The fact is that all these concessions to justice and philanthropy were nothing else but means to accelerate the concentration of capital in the hands of the few

[Hindsite]

Imagine my shock at wandering into a thread to discover that hindsite doesn't understand either capitalism or socialism.

Well, at least, I do understand that capitalism is better than socialism.

[Hindsite]

Yes - that was the form of capitalism the eighteen armies produced, silly, murderous buggers.

No, the Soviet Union that I was referring to was not a form of capitalism. It was a form of socialism and communism. It failed and no longer exists. Here is an excerpt from the Wikipedia article on the Soviet Union:

The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR, Russian: СССР) also known unofficially as Russia, was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991. Nominally a union of multiple equal national Soviet republics, its government and economy were highly centralized. The country was a one-party state, governed by the Communist Party with Moscow as its capital in its largest republic, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union

[Ned Lud]

No, the Soviet Union that I was referring to was not a form of capitalism. It was a form of socialism and communism. It failed and no longer exists. Here is an excerpt from the Wikipedia article on the Soviet Union:

The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR, Russian: СССР) also known unofficially as Russia, was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991. Nominally a union of multiple equal national Soviet republics, its government and economy were highly centralized. The country was a one-party state, governed by the Communist Party with Moscow as its capital in its largest republic, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union

Did the workers control it? Did they buggery. It was a big, inefficient firm in the world capitalist market, as you know.

[SolarCross]

Did the workers control it? Did they buggery. It was a big, inefficient firm in the world capitalist market, as you know.

If you want "worker" control then why root for socialism or communism at all? Capitalism is about private (non-gov) enterprise, ie: civilians. Socialism is all about nationalising and centralising everything, ie: putting more control in the hands of government and usually without any democratic influence either.

You are a turkey voting for Christmas.