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Since UNGAR 181 defined Jerusalem as a separate body administered by an international commission for the first ten years, the UN attempts to resurrect at least some part of UNGAR 181 after its rejection by the Arab world.The hypocrisy of the act can be seen in the lack of attempts between 1948 and 1967 to resurrect UNGAR 181 in any form, including completely ignoring the fact that the Israeli government declared that part of Jerusalem under its control as the capital city of Israel in December, 1949.I find it unconscionable that the UN should feel that it has the right to violate its own Charter by interfering with the purely internal matter of any country deciding what its own capital should be. How would such interference be met if the UN were to have told Germany that Berlin couldn’t be their capital city after the fall of communism, but that Bonn must remain their capital?It’s not punishment in the usual sense of the word; IMO it’s a pathetic attempt to reaffirm that the UN has any power by lording over a country they know can be marginalized as one of the few countries in the UN not belonging to one of the regional groupings of nations.That’s what happens when you have an international debating society with a membership of 57 self-declared Islamic states (Organization of Islamic Cooperation), only 2 of which are not in “a state of belligerency” with Israel and another 90 or so third world states who are still hostage to the energy supplies from some of those 57 OIC states, and therefore vulnerable to blackmail.The UN has strayed far from what the founders intended it to be, until it’s become the kind of farce that no satirical author could try to sell to his readers… not Voltaire, not Franz Kafka, not Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw or George Orwell.

Yes, but we have to be very clear about the term socialism and its definition. The word “socialism” has a long and confusing history, indeed connected to Marx in the beginning, and the word was often used in a communist context as a variant for communism. So in this acception (single party rule and abolition of private property), of course definite no. The thing is many people, especially American conservatives, voluntarily mix up socialism, communism and even national-socialism to discredit any alternative to laissez faire capitalism. Similarly, the world “liberal” is also ambiguous, as it can be used both as a pejorative term for the left, and also refer to various forms of laissez faire capitalism (neo-liberalism, libertarianism).If you understand by “liberal socialism” what is has been known as “social democracy”, a big YES. Understand by this a capitalist system which is regulated by the state in order to promote long term public interests and not just big short term and private ones. Beside the private sector which is predominant, a number of key sectors are kept public, at least in part (education, health, transportation, energy..). It is the same idea as insurance on a larger scale, you contribute and then benefit. In the mean time, yes, everybody pays for each other like for an insurance company, and that’s what a community is all about. So no, it’s not a “free lunch” since you actually pay.Actually, most Western democracies had adopted this type of government in the thirty years after WW2. Even when their governments were not “socialist” dominated, actually most were not, but there was a consensus about these basic principles, except maybe for the U.S.A. Laissez faire capitalism had enough shown its face with the industrial revolution, and although it seemed to work wonders in the U.S.A in the 1920’s, the 1929 crash has shown its dangers and limitations well enough. But the memory of that was cast away, as trends originating in the US and UK have altered the rules of international finance in the 1970’s, affecting how all developed economies function. So that even if you have a socialist type government nowadays in any given country, the global system has been altered in such a way that the government’s action will have very little effect on it.Just for info, I am too old to bullshit, you can do that with younger people but not with me, please. I have heard the lectures from the Reaganites and Thatcherites in the 1980’s, about making a larger cake rather than dividing it more equally. I was told that I was a young idealist who didn’t understand things. I understand them much better now indeed. I can see the results thirty years later, and my conclusions are very clear. Their policies have been toxic, and we never recovered from them. The generation after WW2 has witnessed changes for the better that usually take a whole century. I don’t think that can be said for the generations that came after, most unfortunately.Private sector has produced a few disastrous results, both for consumers and employees. Airlines that have been de-regulated in Europe, using the U.S as a model. We now have a a number of low cost companies that have the trashiest service imaginable, you have to pay extra for just anything .The low ticket prices are just a bait, and if you want to travel in decent conditions, you still use the national airlines, even if they had to cut costs (and therefore service quality) to remain competitive. YES, it was better before! I was there, so I know.Private customer service can be absurdly dysfunctional, more often than not. When you don’t have a robot on the phone, you talk to clueless people, sometimes in another country, who read their answers from a prompter, are closely watched by an invisible corporate police, and always try to sell you additional services, premium memberships and bonuses, and always wish you a great day, however bad your interaction has been. I have two bank accounts, one in a semi-public and one in a private one : guess where the service is better? You actually have humans on the phone trying to understand and solve your problem.Subscriptions to mobile or internet have introduced compulsory signup for one or two years, whereas billing is on a monthly basis. It is institutionalization of rip-off by using all possible legal loopholes, as it’s not even quite legal. If you are not satisfied with a service provider, you should be able to quit within a month, but no, customer is no king, as they try to make you believe. Even when you decide to quit in time, everything will be done to slow down the process in the most bureaucratic way. It can turn to a Kafka like nightmare, it sounds like communist bureaucracy, yet this is the product of laissez faire capitalism.Finally, if you think THIS is acceptable in a developed country, we don’t stand for the same values, and any discussion is probably pointless. This did not exist in my childhood, I remember very well that it burst out in the 1980’s, starting in the US and UK, and never withdrew ever since. If you think people deserve this, then I think you would deserve to be put in their place for one month, I’m pretty sure that would make things straight. If you cough once in a while, it can happen, but if you cough everyday, you are probably sick. Refusing to fight poverty is as relevant as refusing to fight pollution or criminality.In order to organize an economy, you need a state. No, the state is not necessarily Orwellian, and for your information, George Orwell was a socialist. He was just well aware of what the dangers of totalitarian states were about. The state is not necessarily good per se, as we have seen many times, but it just as necessary as the police. If you reduce the power of the police to minimal level, you will soon see the difference. Go and have a look at China to see if they don’t have a state. Even if they are not a reference for democracy, they maintain the world’s highest growth and productivity.It is the community’s interest to have a strong middle class, and social policies help maintaining balance within societies. Strong middle classes have actually been a characteristic of traditional Western democracies. If you take Latin America for example, they typically have small middle classes, wide gaps between rich and poor, little or no public services. I wish them good luck, but I don’t view them as a model for Western societies to emulate.If you don’t like the word “socialism”, you could change it of course, I just think it happens to be well chosen. It is not more relevant today to say socialism is necessarily “marxist” than to say psychology is necessarily “freudian”.

Marx’s vision of communism was society in which the workers owned the means of production. It was stateless, moneyless and classless. “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”The Soviet Union has been called “communist.” This is a colloquialism. Lenin said the Soviet Union was “socialism working toward communism.” The Soviet Union was Marxist Leninist.Lenin advocated the importance of centralized planning and control to resist imperial attack. Early democratic forms of socialism were destroyed by capitalists and imperialist forces. The most notable was the Paris Commune.The Paris Commune was a democratic socialist community set in the middle of Paris in 1871. There was no private property but communal ownership of the means of production. The workers managed themselves. It was a democratically ran community. It was classless. But it wasn’t long before the French Army slaughtered them. 20,000 people were brutally killed.“Influence on Marx and LeninVladimir LeninAlmost immediately after the defeat of the Communards, left-wing radicals analysed why the revolution had failed. These critiques were very influential. None more so than that of Karl Marx, the founder of Communism. He studied the reasons for the failure of the revolt and published his findings in his work the Civil War in France (1871). He believed that the Commune failed because it was not ruthless enough and that if it should have been led by some professional revolutionaries. Marx believed that the Commune was the first example of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’, that is a form of participatory government, where all power was in the hands of ordinary people. The Communards and their revolution were to have a huge influence on Lenin. The Russian Revolutionary studied the works of Marx on the history of the Communards. He came to the conclusion that professional revolutionaries were needed to ensure that a revolution would succeed and not be quashed as were the Communards. Lenin was also influenced by the organisation of the Communards and wrote extensively on their ideas and revolution. He modelled his Soviets or workers’ councils on the democratic councils established by the French Revolutionaries in 1871. The revolution of 1871 was to have an important influence on the Russian Revolution in 1917.”What was the impact of the Paris Commune of 1871 on Revolutionaries?“The Paris Commune was a failed revolution. It attempted to fulfil the more radical ideas of the French Revolution in 1789. It was savagely repressed and there was to be no similar revolution in France until 1968. The repression of the Communards encouraged many left-wing groups to adopt more violent tactics and in the decades after the revolt, terrorism became a feature of European life. The ideas and the example of the Commune of 1871, were to have a decisive influence on both Marx and Lenin and continues to this day, in left-wing circles.” Id.Revolutionary CataloniaRevolutionary Catalonia was a democratic socialist society that had similar characteristics as the Paris Commune. It was also crushed by the fascist Franco. This happened in 1936.What happens when anarchists run a country? History has an answer.Anarchism in Action - The LandIt was in the countryside that the Spanish revolution was most far reaching. The anarchist philosophy had been absorbed by large layers of the downtrodden peasants and the outbreak of revolution was the opportunity to put these ideas into practice.“Collectivisation of the land was extensive. Close on two thirds of all land in the Republican zone was taken over. In all between five and seven million peasants were involved. The major areas were Aragon where there were 450 collectives, the Levant (the area around Valencia) with 900 collectives and Castille (the area surrounding Madrid) with 300 collectives.Collectivisation was voluntary and thus different from the forced ‘collectivisation’ in Russia. Usually a meeting was called and all present would agree to pool together whatever land, tools and animals they had. The land was divided into rational units and groups of workers were assigned to work them. Each group had its delegate who represented their views at meetings. A management committee was also elected and was responsible for the overall running of the collective. Each collective held regular general meetings of all its participants.If you didn't want to join the collective you were given some land but only as much as you could work yourself. Not only production was affected, distribution was on the basis of what people needed. In many areas money was abolished. If there were shortages rationing would be introduced to ensure that everyone got their fair share.Production greatly increased. Technicians and agronomists helped the peasants to make better use of the land. Scientific methods were introduced and in some areas yields increased by as much as 50%. Food was handed over to the supply committees who looked after distribution in the urban areas.However, slander was also thrown at the collectives. It was claimed that each only looked after itself. This was rubbish as in many areas equalisation funds were set up to redistribute wealth. Machinery and expertise were shifted to areas most in need. One indicator of the solidarity is the fact that 1,000 collectivists from the advanced Levant moved to Castille to help out.Federations of collectives were established, the most successful being in Aragon. In June 1937 a plenum of Regional Federations of Peasants was held. Its aim was the formation of a national federation "for the co-ordination and extension of the collectivist movement and also to ensure an equitable distribution of the produce of the land, not only between the collectives but for the whole country". Unfortunately many collectives were smashed by the Stalinists before this could be done.The collectivists also had a deep commitment to education and many children received an education for the first time. The methods of Francisco Ferrer, the world famous anarchist educationalist, were employed. Children were given basic literacy and inquisitive skills were encouraged.Anarchism in Action - IndustryAlthough the revolution didn't go as far in the cities as it did in the country, many achievements are worth noting.To give some idea of the extent of the collectivisation here is a list provided by one observer (Burnett Bolloten, The Grand Camouflage. By no means an anarchist book!). He says:"railways, traincars and buses, taxicabs and shipping, electric light and power companies, gasworks and waterworks, engineering and automobile assembly plants, mines and cement works, textile mills and paper factories, electrical and chemical concerns, glass bottle factories and perfumeries, food processing plants and breweries were confiscated and controlled by workmens's committees, either term possessing for the owners almost equal significance". He goes on "motion picture theatres and legitimate theatres, newspapers and printing, shops, department stores and hotels, de-lux restaurants and bars were likewise sequestered".In each workplace the assembly of all the workers was the basic unit. Within the factory workers would elect delegates to represent them on day-to-day issues. Anything of overall importance had to go to the assembly. This would elect a committee of between five and fifteen worker, which would elect a manager to oversee the day-to-day running of the workplace. Within each industry there was an Industrial Council which had representatives of the two main unions (CNT and UGT) and representatives from the committees.Within workplaces wages were equalised and conditions greatly improved. Take for example the tramways. Out of the 7,000 workers, 6,500 were members of the CNT. Street battles had brought all transport to a halt. The transport syndicate appointed a commission of seven to occupy the administrative offices while others inspected the tracks and drew up a plan of repair work that needed to be done. Five days after the fighting stopped, 700 tramcars, instead of the usual 600, all painted in the black and red colours of the CNT were operating on the streets of Barcelona.With the profit motive gone, safety became more important and the number of accidents was reduced. Fares were lowered and services improved. In 1936, 183,543,516 passengers were carried. In 1937 this had gone up by 50 million. The trams were running so efficiently that the workers were able to give money to other sections of urban transport. Also, free medical care was provided for the work force.In 1937 the central government admitted that the war industry of Catalonia produced ten times more than the rest of Spanish industry put together and that this output could have been quadrupled if Catalonia had the access to necessary means of purchasing raw materials.”1936-1939: The Spanish civil war and revolutionGeorge Orwell wrote about Revolutionary Catalonia and the Spanish Civil War in his book “Homage to Catalonia.” Homage to Catalonia - WikipediaRevolutionary Catalonia - WikipediaConclusionMarx’s vision of communism was not authoritarian. But Marx also recognized the problems associated with socialist communities under threat of imperial attack.Lenin advanced these theories further and developed Marxism Leninism. His answer to imperial attack was to have vertical power structures where the Communist Party represented the interests of the workers by exercising a dictatorship of the proletariat. This was to ensure that bourgeois enemies do not corrupt the system and destroy it from within and from outside. Lenin talked about how liberal democracy is actually bourgeois democracy, a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, built for the rich and ran by the rich. Politicians would be bought by campaign contributions and laws would be passed for those who owned property, not the public. This system worked well in the Soviet Union so long as the high ranking party members in the government did not develop into their own class of bourgeoisie. To prevent this there was a regular rotation of leaders based on ideological commitment, job performance, and dedication. During the Brezhenev period this stopped. It wasn’t long that the party elites decided they would rather dissolve the Soviet Union and outright steal the public goods. China has done the opposite and the state is strong. This is quite apart from socialism vs market capitalism.In the modern day there are communities ran by the Mondragon Corp model. These are democratically managed, cooperative communities that build socialism from the ground up. Using open source software, non hierarchical management systems, and sharing they have achieved success by leveraging cooperation and community solidarity to become successful.Mondragon: Spain's giant co-operative where times are hard but few go bustCo-operatives in Spain - Mondragon leads the way"The Mondragon Corporation is based on a commitment to solidarity and on democratic methods for its organisation and management," says Mikel Lezamiz, director of Mondragon's c-ooperative dissemination unit. Mondragon demonstrates an alternative to the 'business as usual' mantra of shareholder-owned companies, he maintains: "Our mission is not to earn money, it is to create wealth within society through entrepreneurial development and job creation."Mondragon has grown to be the tenth largest business in Spain and it certainly dominates the Basque economy, historically one of the industrial powerhouses in the Spanish state. Having begun with the manufacture of domestic appliances, it continues to have a strong presence in the white goods industry (mainly under the brand name Fagor). It also has major interests in other areas of manufacture as diverse as bicycle production and lift manufacture (the latter including its UK Quality Lifts subsidiary, based in Wiltshire). It counts as its competitors firms such as Hitachi, Mitsubishi, GE and LG. Mondragon also has major interests in retailing, in finance (where it operates a savings bank and an insurer) and in education, where it operates schools, technical colleges and a cooperative university. There are also 14 research and development centres.Given this breadth of activity, there are obvious questions to ask in relation both to Mondragon's overall strategic management and corporate governance. Mondragon, in fact, operates less as a single corporate entity of the kind familiar from conventional multinational corporations and more as a network of more than 120 separate co-operative ventures, each of which are managed semi-autonomously. This means, for example, that workers in individual businesses within the Mondragon framework have the sort of rights of membership and control more often found in smaller workers' cooperatives. Co-operative membership – and with it the right to benefit from profits - is usually open to employees after an initial six or twelve month period.Mondragon has also explored some interesting models of stakeholder co-operative governance, an area where its ideas may prove to be valuable elsewhere in the world. Its retailer Eroski, for example, is jointly run by representatives of consumer members and employee members. Its schools and universities give formal governance roles not only to staff and students, but also to a wider group of stakeholders, including other co-ops and local authorities.The individual co-operatives within Mondragon contribute financially to the Corporation's development, exchange staff (particularly as an alternative to redundancies in one business) and jointly establish Mondragon's strategy. This is done through the Co-operative Congress (650 delegates, representing each member firm) and the General Council it appoints. One interesting issue which Mondragon has begun to address is the way in which staff working in overseas subsidiaries can be included in the internal cooperative democracy. Mondragon was historically criticised by some for leaving these workers disempowered.This is becoming more important as Mondragon Cooperative Corporation increasingly becomes a global business. International sales now represent 65% of total turnover. Its President José Maria Aldecoa talks of the cooperative's " firm commitment to reinforcing Mondragon's international business", both in Europe and in the BRIC countries of Brazil, Russia, India and China.Mondragon also has something to teach other cooperatives in its approach to capital, always an issue for businesses not using equity-based capital markets. Employee members are required to make a financial investment in their business, typically of €14,000, which is automatically deducted from salary over the first three or five years of their membership. Profits paid across to members are also retained in the cooperative, being distributed only at retirement or if a member of staff leaves. Interest on members' capital is paid, however, when businesses are profitable.If Mondragon is a unique creation, the impulse which led to its development has also been at work elsewhere within Spain, particularly in the Basque country and Catalonia. The Basque coop confederation KONFEKOOP represents over 800 coops operating in the Basque autonomous region, whilst the equivalent Catalan body is the active Confederació de Cooperatives de Catalunya. Catalonia has over 5000 coops, in broad terms one in five of the total for Spain, and although they are predominantly small ventures (on average, employing about seven staff), they operate in many sectors, especially services and construction, but also in industry and agriculture. Proponents of cooperative schools in the UK may be interested in the Catalan experience, where about forty cooperative schools are currently operating.Workers' cooperatives– there are about 18,000 across Spain, together employing 300,000 people - have their own organisation in Coceta. Coceta, which has just celebrated its 25th birthday, points proudly to recent data from the Spanish state suggesting that coops have in total created 19,000 new jobs in the last quarter of last year. Coceta's president Juan Antonio Pedreño says that coops are providing a valuable solution to Spain's current chronic unemployment problems. "In moments of crisis, coops are capable of creating jobs while other forms of business are destroying them," he says.More generally, cooperatives in Spain are seen as an important constituent part of the broader social economy, which also brings in not-for-profit associations and foundations. "The concept of the social economy is relatively strong in Spain, and cooperatives are seen as one of the key actors," says Klaus Niederlander, Director of Cooperatives Europe. The Spanish social enterprise association Cepes, analogous in some ways with Social Enterprise UK, is a member organisation of the International Cooperative Alliance.” Id.Yes, there is an alternative to capitalism: Mondragon shows the way | Richard Wolff“MC is composed of many co-operative enterprises grouped into four areas: industry, finance, retail and knowledge. In each enterprise, the co-op members (averaging 80-85% of all workers per enterprise) collectively own and direct the enterprise. Through an annual general assembly the workers choose and employ a managing director and retain the power to make all the basic decisions of the enterprise (what, how and where to produce and what to do with the profits).As each enterprise is a constituent of the MC as a whole, its members must confer and decide with all other enterprise members what general rules will govern MC and all its constituent enterprises. In short, MC worker-members collectively choose, hire and fire the directors, whereas in capitalist enterprises the reverse occurs. One of the co-operatively and democratically adopted rules governing the MC limits top-paid worker/members to earning 6.5 times the lowest-paid workers. Nothing more dramatically demonstrates the differences distinguishing this from the capitalist alternative organization of enterprises. (In US corporations, CEOs can expect to be paid 400 times an average worker's salary – a rate that has increased 20-fold since 1965.)Given that MC has 85,000 members (from its 2010 annual report), its pay equity rules can and do contribute to a larger society with far greater income and wealth equality than is typical in societies that have chosen capitalist organizations of enterprises. Over 43% of MC members are women, whose equal powers with male members likewise influence gender relations in society different from capitalist enterprises.MC displays a commitment to job security I have rarely encountered in capitalist enterprises: it operates across, as well as within, particular cooperative enterprises. MC members created a system to move workers from enterprises needing fewer to those needing more workers – in a remarkably open, transparent, rule-governed way and with associated travel and other subsidies to minimize hardship. This security-focused system has transformed the lives of workers, their families, and communities, also in unique ways.The MC rule that all enterprises are to source their inputs from the best and least-costly producers – whether or not those are also MC enterprises – has kept MC at the cutting edge of new technologies. Likewise, the decision to use of a portion of each member enterprise's net revenue as a fund for research and development has funded impressive new product development. R&D within MC now employs 800 people with a budget over $75m. In 2010, 21.4% of sales of MC industries were new products and services that did not exist five years earlier. In addition, MC established and has expanded Mondragon University; it enrolled over 3,400 students in its 2009-2010 academic year, and its degree programs conform to the requirements of the European framework of higher education. Total student enrollment in all its educational centers in 2010 was 9,282.” Id.Mondragon Corporation - WikipediaThe Mondragon model: how a Basque cooperative defied Spain's economic crisis“The essentials of the Mondragon story are simple. What arose in 1956 as a handful of workers in a disused factory, using hand tools and sheet metal to make oil-fired heating and cooking stoves is today a massive conglomerate of some 260 manufacturing, retail, financial, agricultural, civil engineering and support co-operatives and associated entities, with jobs for 83,800 workers, and annual sales in excess of $US20 billion.Mondragon co-operatives now own or joint venture some 114 local and overseas subsidiaries, and are committed to their conversion to employee ownership on a case-by-case basis, consistent with local laws, customs and other cultural and economic considerations.As equal co-owners of their workplaces, members enjoy job security together with individual capital holdings, equal sharing of profits on a proportionate basis and an equal ‘one-member one vote’ say in their governance. Remuneration within the cooperatives is egalitarian, with the highest rates payable other than in exceptional circumstances being no greater than six and a half times the lowest.And members share at one remove in ownership of a unique system of secondary support co-operatives, from which the primary or frontline co-operatives draw resources including financial services, social insurance, education and training and research and development.For example, capital for expanding existing businesses and establishing new ones is drawn in part from the group’s bank and social insurance funds and workers are skilled to high levels at a university of technology, which is itself structured as a co-operative and attracts students in disciplines such as engineering and metallurgy throughout Spain.Reflective of the high priority attached by the primary co-operatives to the competitive advantage of intensive research and development is the augmenting of the original Ikerlan research and development support co-operative with thirteen sister bodies, specialising in the needs of particular aspects of manufacturing activity and product development.Faced repeatedly over their 50-year lifespan with cyclical economic downturns, the co-operatives have been able to avail themselves of significant flexibilities. For example, non-members employed on a temporary basis can be put off until conditions improve.Members can agree to forfeit or postpone entitlements such as one or more of their fourteen per annum pay packets or the payment of interest on their individual capital accounts, or in extreme circumstances authorise individual capital account draw-downs.Co-operatives experiencing reduced demand are able to transfer members to ones where it is increasing, without detriment to their rights or entitlements. And supplementary capital can be accessed from centrally held inter-co-operative solidarity funds.”The Mondragon model: how a Basque cooperative defied Spain's economic crisisDocumentary about Mondragon