Geez! I'm sorry I posted the damn solution now! ?
No good deed ever goes unpunished, I suppose. ?
But at least there's one good thing that's come out of it...
Finally! There's something Steven & I can completely agree on: Political Philosophy!
Keep the red flag flying, Mate. ?
(
Workers of the world unite! )
I note there has appeared a predeliction to include quotations in the 'discussion'; from Science Fiction no less (a worth genre no doubt, in its own right, of course) so I thought I might just take the opportunity to add a few quotes of my own preference...
"Capitalism is the creed of the dying present; socialism throbs with the life of the days that are to be."
"Socialism does not propose to abolish land or capital. Only a genius could have thought of this as an objection to Socialism. Socialism proposes to abolish capitalism and landlordism."
"Socialism makes war upon a system, not upon a class."
"The landlord, qua landlord, performs no function in the economy of industry or of food production. He is a rent receiver; that, and nothing more. Were the landlord to be abolished, the soil and the people who till it would still remain, and the disappearance of the landowner would pass almost unnoticed. So too with the capitalist."
"By capitalist, I mean the investor who puts his money into a concern and draws profits there from without participating in the organisation or management of the business. Were all these to disappear in the night, leaving no trace behind, nothing would be changed."
"If it could be shown that the great Trust magnate or the great Aristocratic landowner, apart from the advantages of his inherited wealth, was a more highly developed species of humanity than the poor struggling seamstress or the unemployed docker, then there might be some justification for allowing the docker and the seamstress as the representatives of a weaker class to die out in order to enable the more highly developed creature to survive; but one moment's reflection will show that the alleged superiority of the landowner or the Trust magnate rests on one fact alone, namely, that he owns certain material possessions, usually inherited, which enable him to dictate the terms upon which his less fortunate fellow creatures shall be permitted to live.“
"History is one long record of like illustrations. Must our modern civilization with all its teeming wonders come to a like end? We are reproducing in faithful detail every cause which led to the downfall of the civilizations of other days—Imperialism, taking tribute from conquered races, the accumulation of great fortunes, the development of a population which owns no property, and is always in poverty. Land has gone out of cultivation and physical deterioration is an alarming fact. And so we Socialists say the system which is producing these results must not be allowed to continue. A system which has robbed religion of its saviour, destroyed handicraft, which awards the palm of success to the unscrupulous, corrupts the press, turns pure women on the streets and upright men into mean-spirited time-servers, cannot continue. In the end it is bound to work its own overthrow. Socialism with its promise of freedom, its larger hope for humanity, its triumph of peace over war, its binding of the races of the earth into one all-embracing brotherhood, must prevail. Capitalism is the creed of the dying present; socialism throbs with the life of the days that are to be. It has claimed its martyrs in the past, is claiming them now, will claim them still; but what then? Better to "rebel and die in the twenty worlds sooner than bear the yoke of thwarted life."
"Almost without exception, the early Christian Fathers whose teachings have come down to us spoke out fearlessly against usury, which includes interest also, and on the side of Communism. They proclaimed that, inasmuch as nature had provided all things in common, it was sinful robbery for one man to own more than another, especially if that other was in want. The man who gathered much whilst others had not enough, was a murderer."
"By inherited instinct we are all Communists at heart; and if the isolated Ego of self gets the upper hand for a time he produces results so terrifying that the mistake of allowing him to rule is speedily made apparent, and we begin to seek a way whereby we may return to the kindly sway of the spirit of Altruism.“
James Keir Hardie (1856-1915)
A Scotsman much venerated to this day
and founder of the British Labour party
(which, regrettably, has lost its way
a mere century after he did so!)
and...
A Man’s A Man For A’ That (Excerpts)
A prince can mak a belted knight,
A marquis, duke, an’ a’ that;
But an honest man’s abon his might, (above)
Gude faith, he maunna fa’ that! (must not aspire to that)
For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
Their dignities an’ a’ that;
The pith o’ sense, an’ pride o’ worth,
Are higher rank than a’ that.
For a’ that, an’ a’ that.
Our toils obscure an’ a’ that,
The rank is but the guinea’s stamp,
The Man’s the gowd for a’ that. (gold)
What though on hamely fare we dine,
Wear hoddin grey, an’ a that; (Coarse, homespun, undyed woollen cloth)
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine;
A Man’s a Man for a’ that.
Then let us pray that come it may,
As come it will for a’ that,
That Sense and Worth, o’er a’ the earth
Shall bear the gree an’ a’ that. (triumph)
For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
It’s comin yet for a’ that,
That Man to Man the warld o’er
Shall brithers be for a’ that.
Robert Burns (1759 –1796)
( Scotland’s National Bard. )
Now there's a couple of men who had some really useful things to say! ?
(From the land that gave so much to the world!)
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