As Azzjoni Nazzjonali departs stage right, the Communists enter stage left
The Communists make a dramatic re-entrance to the Maltese political scene, with a dental problem.
The Malta Independent, yesterday
Communist Party of Malta deplores government’s strategy
The Communist Party of Malta deplored the government’s strategy of closing down the public dental service given in the community in polyclinics, and centralising all the service at Mater Dei Hospital.
The party said it is aware that the intention behind this is to dismantle slowly primary health care which is given free in the community. The logic of this move is to make it difficult for the citizen to make use of the public health service, and indirectly is privatising the public health service in the community.
“The government’s policy to close down dental clinics is moving in parallel with the continuous propaganda in the form of advertisements in the local media, stating that the private sector is offering the same service in the community.
“This is another Machiavellian strategy by the right wing government to push forward the privatisation of the primary health service,” the party said.
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And I was thinking of retiring soon.
Privatising the public health service? When did you last see a polyclinic up for sale?
The quoted parts of the press release are written in surprisingly good English which, together with the bombastic, old-fashioned ideas, makes me guess that they were written by an elderly or middle-aged person.
There’s been more this week from the loony left:
‘Fees for public toilets use a shame’ – Zminijietna
“Zminijietna beliefs that this is a measure which would create further division between the social classes. The duty of a Local Council is to ensure equality, social justice and accessibility of public places and facilities. It is also regrettable that the Valletta Local Council accepted the introduction of fees, when the project was financed by public funds.”
http://www.maltastar.com/pages/r1/ms10dart.asp?a=8431
It would do the champions of the proletariat no harm at all if they were to immerse themselves in worthwhile causes for the good of the nation rather than meddle in issues such as public health. We all remember what our health services looked like when the other extreme socialists were about.
Here’s an item for the agenda at their next meeting: educating the public to clear up dog-mess from the nation’s pavements and other public places.
I won’t promise them my vote but would gladly send in the occasional small donation to help them on their way.
“This is another Machiavellian strategy by the right wing government to push forward the privatisation of the primary health service,” the party said.
Right wing government? We have two centre-left parties as an alternative to one another.
We wouldn’t have the current massive deficit if we truly had a right-wing government.
Here come the Communists, showing their teeth.
Apart from Malta, could anyone tell me where there is still a communist party? I thought that all that stopped when the Berlin Wall came down – but please enlighten me further.
Who are the secretary-general and president of the Maltese Communist Party?
China? North Korea? Cuba?
I believe India had a Maoist party before it was made illegal last year. I’m not sure if they have a “Classic” Communist Party.
Having once been a fervent communist myself in my teens, and having since then evolved into a committed libertarian, here’s some advice to the exhumed Communist Party of Malta (which I suspect is still in the familiar 70s mold): collectivism is what the Western global elite have promoted since before the Russian Revolution, because collectivism is the best form of control when you sit atop the pyramid and you own global corporations. This is a well documented fact.
So the first question communists should ask is: Who are we fighting? The capitalists? Free marketeers? Neo-Liberals Who is ‘the enemy of the people’?
In this confused, topsy-turvy world, this may sound strange, but if you want the working/middle classes to thrive and perhaps become entrepreneurs themselves, then you must be for the free market and a smaller government. If you want to support the global elite and supra-national feudalism, then support big state welfarism, central planning, bureaucracy, socialism and its communist variation (which is no longer trendy). In other words, you can support today’s status quo.
Confused? You should all be – communists, social democrats, neo-liberals and GonziPNites alike. Let me confuse you even further. What we today call ‘free market capitalism’ is in reality corporatism of the Mussolini type.
But before coming back to Mussolini, this being an exercise in confusion to meet the needs of the confused, here’s some cutting edge politics from across the pond. It’s more relevant to us in Lilliput than you might ever imagine.
Here, MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan gives a rare glimpse of reality on the mainstream media. Keep in mind that within the US left-right paradigm MSNBC represents the “extreme left” – or ‘liberal’, as they call it in the States. Yet Ratigan gives us the same arguments used by the libertarian, free-market movement – the very same arguments that the naively oblivious and the mainstream media have been calling “radical”, “paleo-republicanism”, or plain “conspiracy theories”:
Dylan Ratigan Exposes Federal Reserve Con – Part 1 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACm1ntw_4dM
So that was about one important aspect of corporate fascism, which we have been led to believe is actually ‘free-market capitalism’.
To truly understand global politics one needs to differentiate between true free-market capitalism and corporatism. A free market is only free as long as government is small and money is sound. When big government and big corporations act in collusion to ‘regulate’ the market (killing competition, establishing monopolies and cartels, manipulating and milking the market, keeping everything and everyone under control), the result is not free-market capitalism but managed-market corporatism. In a truly free and fair market, without big government propping them up, large corporations fall like dinosaurs unless they are in perpetual transformation. This is because the dynamics of social change and the need for innovation act largely in favour of smaller, more flexible enterprises.
So when you hear Obama being criticised (or praised) for being a ‘socialist’, keep in mind that corporatism and the ‘socialist’ discourse go hand in hand. Obama, in fact, is a corporatist par excellence, surrounded by former Wall Street apparatchiks, mostly from the Goldman Sachs branch of the global banking and financial cartel (which manages the US Federal Reserve). And yet, he speaks the ‘social democratic’ language, which is why many Europeans still think highly of him (take the new health bill – he sold it as a social measure when in fact it is a corporate-bureaucratic takeover of the US health system by the federal government and the insurance/financial cartel that designed the bill).
This brings us back to Mussolini’s brand of what he himself called “corporate fascism” – the rule of large corporations through the government of the state. Now, as we all know, Mussolini was a self-styled socialist, as were the National Socialists in Germany, who, in their early years, classified their politics as ‘not very different from Bolshevism’ (Goebbels). That’s right – what has been fashioned by the globalists as the ‘far right’ effectively comes from the socialist left. From this perspective, it becomes clear why socialism has historically had strong backing from the elite, such as members of the Fabian Society…
Historically, socialism has led to the consolidation of elitism – be it the Soviet pyramid or its seemingly benign corporate version in the ‘social democratic’ West. (Forget Malta for a while, since Malta’s corporations do not come close to what I’m talking about. And also forget Malta’s brand of socialism – that was in fact Mintoffism and it is dead, but for some residual elements. Moreover, our parliament no longer legislates in principal areas; it adopts and implements continuously emerging EU laws and regulations, while our government administers and executes those laws. The same with major policy, including economic and fiscal policy.)
Mainstream socialists, social democrats, conservatives, centre-right-of-centre people’s parties, neo-liberals, the little greenies (with their agenda taken over by the globalist, climate-change clan)… they are all confined within a corporatist framework of big government, FIAT currency and economies based on the accumulation of debt that ultimately enslaves whole nations.
The EU, of course, is an emerging supranational government that’s tailor made for, and by, special interests of the highest corporate order.
So I again ask the Maltese Communists: who are ‘the enemies of the people’? GonziPN, the current administrators of this EU protectorate?
I suppose you have to make a complex and confusing argument like the above to justify your change from communist to libertarian. And I am not being cynical or naive.
I suspect that you are trying to simplify a complex world, and I think I have seen other attempts like the one above from you before.
Who would negate that there are massive interests in politics, the economy and the financial system?
No one would negate that modern economies depend significantly on the banking and central banking systems – you refer mainly to the Fed, probably an apt name since many seem to be fed-up with it! But this is how the financial world developed in the last 500 years, and for the time being we do not have an alternative.
Are you suggesting that, in the interest of libertarianism, it would have been better for Gordon Brown to let the Royal Bank of Scotland collapse, or for Bush to let AIG, Fannie May and Freddie Mac, Merryl Lynch, and other banks go down?
One of the challenges of the financial system is that there are not only the interests of the owners, but also the interests of savers on the one side, and the borrowers (small businesses or home buyers, for instance) on the other side, as well as the close knit of the financial players themselves (e.g. inter-bank transactions).
In fact, during this global crises, one of the main conditions, or reasons, for public assistance to banks was that they keep lending money, whilst protecting savers’ deposits.
In actual fact, it was the bankruptcy, not the propping up, of Lehmans that brought about the unprecedented global financial crisis. Of course, one can agree or disagree, but this is now history.
On the other front, since you suggest that the EU is the equivalent of a communist, or the promoter of corporatism, how would you see Malta’s interests protected under a libertarian model as opposed to Malta being in the EU?
You also seem to have ignored that one of the emerging roles of the EU is that of standing up for European interests against other global forces, such as the US (e.g. air transportation), Russia (e.g. energy supply), Asia (e.g. fake products).
I think the arguments you raise are so complex, that they cannot be dealt with in this blog without making some major fallacies, omissions and at the risk of confusing the readers.
What can I say, ciccio1910? Try placing the cart behind the horse.
The resident bore is back.
Hi Kev,
I hope you don’t mind but I’ve been dying to ask another Maltese these three questions. I’ve never met anyone who had read into the American brand of Economic-Liberalism (Liberterianism) as much as I have.
I should mention that I’m still in a transitional stage. I’m not quite sure what my beliefs are. I used to have deep Anarcho-socialist beliefs, but with each bitter swallow of the real World I soon found myself attempting to gravitate towards something more sound. Liberterianism has always been attractive to me, but for reasons which will soon become apparant, I never fully accepted it as a Political and Economic ideology.
First question: Do you agree with the Liberterian Dictum that the Welfare state has no place in a free society? Or do you believe that there should be “safety net” provided by the Government, just as it should provided national infastructure and civil protection?
While I see certain indulgences of the Maltese welfare system as wasteful and manipulative; I can’t help but find myself agreeing with it’s key concept, which is to provide equality of opportunity to every Citizen of this country — regardless of Race, Gender, or perceived Class identity. I am also extremely proud of our Health Care System, and am eager to brag about it to foreigners.
I am also well aware, however, that historically the Welfare system has been used as a means to increase civil dependence on the central Government — one striking historical example would be the Bismarkian system in Germany during the second Reich.
Second Question: Do you believe that an ideology which holds personal liberty and responsibility above all else, also encourages social apathy and egoism?
In my eyes, but aparantly not in the eyes of most people, Liberterianism — particularly of the American variety — has a very clear “dark side”. If you’ve been following Dylan ratigan’s show, I’m sure you haven’t missed some of the people who call themselves “Conservative Liberterians” over there — Most of the time they turn out to be the American brand of Fundamentalist Conservative Christian, whose narrow-minded world view would make any proud European Christian embarassed, and whose political ideology can be summarized as follows:
* Wealth trickles down, ergo if the rich get richer, the poor are better off.
* Poor people are poor because they are morally weak.
* Never show a single sign of weakness or compromise in Foreign affairs.
* Anything said against the soldier, the country, or the republican party is an affront to God.
* Socialism should be for the rich, not the poor — they may never say that, but that’s pretty much is the direction they’re taking their country towards.
I do realize most real American Liberterians don’t hold these beliefs, but in my opinion they don’t do enough to disassociate themselves from them. Ron Paul (Pratically the only Liberterian politician in America) is -still- a member of the Republican party, and he has never questioned people like Glenn Beck for calling themselves “Conservative Liberterians”. In fact, Ron Paul appeared on Glenn Beck’s show, and seemed more than happy to play along with Glenn’s twisted fantasies.
In short Liberterians in America seem more interested in attacking a nigh-fictional Socialist straw man than doing anything concrete.
I also can’t stomach some of the more anti-Humanist ideas. I’ve been reading Heinlein’s (Considered a Liberterian author by many) “Time Enough for Love” recently, and some of his more radical ideas (Particularly his cold description of settlers starving on an alien planet) literally made me cringe, more with the way he said them than anything else. I feel the same way about Ayn Rand’s work, and Neitzche’s work, and most publications by most Liberterian philosophers for that matter.
I don’t know, to me there just seems to be a general apathy and resentment of people in those scholars, which I didn’t gague from Socialist Philosophers like Chomsky — Altough to be honest, I only saw a few of his interviews and never read his formal work.
Third Question: Do you believe there’s any merit in the Austrian Shool of Economics?
Perhaps it’s because I have a scientific, and engineering background, but as I have grown older, I have slowly been losing faith in the use of discourse and philosophy to reach meaningful conclusions to life’s many questions — The Austrain economic system relies purely on these concepts.
I realize that economic theory isn’t straightforward, and that reducing the behavior of something as complex as human society to a system of equations may be an inexact science, but at least it’s science. I don’t believe that we should turn our back on emperical evidence simply because “the actions of human beings are too complex for this ‘numerical’ treatment as passive non-adaptive subjects” (Taken from the wikipedia article on the Austrian School of Economics).
Those are my questions. Sorry for the huge wall of text, I have a habit of going on and on when talking about Political ideology.
P.S. If you have an iTunes account, you should check out “History: A struggle for Liberty” on iTunesU. It’s a series of lectures given by a follower of Murray Rothbard. They did a lot to change my outlook on life.
[Daphne – Oh god. Why don’t you two exchange email addresses and leave the rest of us out of it?]
Robert – I’ll try to be brief. Such talk is not welcome in the political world of Tweedledee and Tweedledum.
1. The bottom line is that government is inefficient, costly, wasteful and often counterproductive. Big government leads to the perceived need for more government in order to solve the problems it creates. People grow accustomed to the nanny state and expect it to deliver – in even more areas. Economically, it all spirals out of control, eventually leading to financial collapse when production fails to meet the atrocious needs of big government (because, among other things, too much taxation sponges out real growth).
Governments’ main concern should be the basic infrastructure, as well as ensuring that private contracts are honoured, that corporate fraud is detected and violence deterred. Today, we cannot even start to imagine how small a government can actually be – and civil society would lose nothing; on the contrary, it would boundlessly prosper and mature.
As for the welfare state, I believe a free society prospers beyond the need of state handouts, especially in this productive age. In any case, the ‘welfare net’ takes up a relatively small proportion of the costs of government.
2. I don’t think personal liberty and responsibility create social apathy and egoism. I have seen more apathy and egoism in the Soviet Union than anywhere else. Freedom and responsibility translate into knowledge, incentive, creativity, motivation and growth. A meaningful society is one that is allowed to evolve organically, not one that is made to depend on the manipulations of central planners and their corporate mentors.
Forget about the false libertarians like Beck. You cannot be a libertarian and at the same time applaud perpetual ‘preventive’ wars based on lies and charades like the ‘war on terror’. Many of them, like the Sarah Palin (neo)type, act ‘libertarian’ only through political expedience.
Also, it’s not about trickle-down economics; Reaganomics is still a product of Keynesianism.
I’m not much into Ayn Rand and her ilk, either.
Ron Paul comes closest to applying libertarianism to today’s context, incorporating an anti-war stance (‘war is a racket’) with sound fiscal policies, real money and personal liberty, lambasting the federal takeover, the emerging police state and the falsity of the ‘war on terror’ (and drugs). Paul follows the US Constitution – which is essentially a libertarian document derived from the European Enlightenment. You say Ron Paul did not contradict Beck. Well, Beck is a Fox News front-man showman. I would expect Ron Paul to just say his thing and not argue with Beck’s subtle inaccuracies in the few minutes available.
You also mention Chomsky. That man is at his best when dissecting the media (‘Manufacturing Consent’) otherwise, in his later years he seems to have lost the plot and is misreading the current political text from a leftist angle. Leftists are traditionally ignorant in economic matters.
3. There is a lot more merit in the Austrian School of Economics than in Keynesianism. The former is a true science that lays down the organic rules and mechanisms of real money and free economies, and, most importantly, what NOT to do – this, so as to prevent fiddlers from destroying whole economies and nations to the benefit of the very few. Keynesianism is the ‘science’ of big bankers and state bureaucrats fiddling with the money supply and the economies of whole nations, inflating currencies, accumulating deficits, managing markets and creating financial bubbles – then applying their own ‘solutions’ to the problems they create.
You mention Murray Rothbard. He’s written everlasting classics, particularly on the true nature of money (‘What has government done to our money?’ is one such classic – available at mises.org and elsewhere)
The problem is, Robert, there is so much to write about that I give up. This lack of patience (and space) is evident in my earlier ‘confusing the confused’ post. It’s next to impossible to dismantle the illusion and lay out, layer by layer, what has been researched over many years. And all this to justify our interpretation of unfolding events. We are passing through historic times – yet the ‘know-it-alls’ are still totally oblivious. Take Ciccio1910. Where do you start with such an educated person? It’s like explaining the motions of the planets to a medieval flat-earther.
I can state as a fact that Ron Paul’s brand of libertarianism is the ideology that’s gaining most ground globally (in less than three years). It’s the only movement that’s spreading exponentially (although the so-called ‘far-right’ is also gaining ground). Left-right politics is in decline, but this is a gradual process and Ron Paul had to stay within the Republican fold as otherwise he’d have no chance on a third party ticket. But he is neither a neo-con nor a fundamentalist Christian. He is actually very secular, and his political grievance on abortion is that such a decision was taken federally by eight supreme judges when he believes that according to the US Constitution the states should decide on such matters individually. Notwithstanding his personal beliefs on abortion – his only flaw, some would say (he’s a gynecologist by profession) – many pro-choice Democrats are joining his ranks because after waking up to the emerging truth they sense how right and genuine this congressman has been throughout his long political career. Check latest Rasmussen polls: Obama vs Paul.
I’ll stop here. The subject is too vast and this has all been touch and go. Good to meet someone who’s peeped over the fence. An open mind is still a rarity.
If you need to reply, you’ll best email it to Daphne and she’ll forward it to me.
@Kev.
I am hoping Daphne will publish this, as I suspect I will be abusing her patience with these long posts.
I suppose you were referring to me as ciccio1910 in your reply to me any your statement: “We are passing through historic times – yet the ‘know-it-alls’ are still totally oblivious. Take Ciccio1910. Where do you start with such an educated person? It’s like explaining the motions of the planets to a medieval flat-earther.”
As far as my education goes, insulting is the weapon of last resort, but I see you use it as some form of elitism. Since you seem to know a lot about libertarianism to which you subscribe, would you kindly tell us if insulting people is typical of libertarians by any chance?
In my previous reply, I did of course engage you with real world questions, which I see you averted.
I very carefully avoided any statements that would make me sound like a “know-it-all” person. Contrast that with your outstanding statements in your first post:
– “Let me confuse you even further.”
– “…here’s some cutting edge politics from across the pond…”
– “To truly understand global politics…”
– “Now as we all know…”
– “So I again ask ”
Are all libertarians that blind to their own arrogance?
Strangely, though, in the following quote, I see that you naturally come to a conclusion which is not far from mine above after all: “I’ll stop here. The subject is too vast and this has all been touch and go.” Hey, seems like I knew that.
Thank you for your time Kev — And thank you Daphne for publishing my previous post — I really appreciate it.
No hard feelings, Ciccio2010 – as I said, I lack the patience. You brought up good points, but to reply would have taken me too long. You see, the ‘bailout’ saga, which is not over yet, is a very complicated matter. It has been designed to happen, but as I said, there’s too much to explain. Every phrase would need to be justified because we’re dealing with lies upon lies upon lies over decades.
@Kev,
That sounds better, thanks.
If we were to compete about patience, I am sure Daphne will win hands down, judging by her handling of our exchanges!
I actually agree with a number of the points you make. I fully support the idea of small government, and that, if you look around, a lot of right wing governments are anything but small. I am a firm believer in private initiative.
But, whilst theories are interesting to say the least, one must live in reality. I guess that was the point I was trying to make.
Besides, despite the appeal of conspiracy theories, it is impractical to build a political philosophy and deliver solutions based on them. Karl Marx built a whole philosophy on his theory of alienation, but a good look at Eastern European countries is telling about the reality from the implementation of Karl Marx’s philosophy.
And yes, no one can exclude that the global financial crisis is a “once-in-a-lifetime” (Alan Greenspan) adjustment in a larger process of wealth redistribution, but I have no concrete evidence for that claim. My more realistic explanation for the crisis is that Central Bankers failed to raise interest rates in the past decade to reflect the inflation of prices, including and mainly property prices.
If interest rates were raised, the world economies would not have inflated, but then a feel-good factor would not have been created for some years. So I start to suspect that it was the governments that put pressure on Central Bankers to keep interest rates low. But then, did someone put pressure on the governments?
Well said, Daphne! They are boring us to death.
Read Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism.
Kev, read the book “What’s left? How the liberals lost their way” by Nick Cohen, an ex-correspondent of The Guardian. It has simpler English and you might learn something new.
ciccio2010 – in a couple of years much of this truth will become self evident to most. I would say you are already two step ahead of the rest. Actually, you’re ready to start digging. Get your news from http://www.infowars.com – they link to the (mainstream) press pages that only the few read. Do your research and always get to the primary source.
‘A liberal is a socialist with a wife and two children’.
Can’t remember who said it.
New slogan for the Communist Party of Malta:
THINK LOCAL, ACT PROVINCIAL
hi kev
Ever since i’ve started to follow Ron Paul during the last US election, i found myself experiencing a completely new political philosophy that has as its pillar the freedom of the individual.
Since then, I’ve been reading articles and books by great minds such as Henry Hazlitt, Ludwig von Mises, FA Hayek, and many others.
Reading what is regarded as the Austrian school of economics, I’m more than confident that such philosophy is the cure for the ever crumbling economies of our present day world, and our little country is no exception. Moreover, such as small country like Malta can truly become the showcase of what limited government intervention in people’s life can actually achieve.
Reading your posts gave me a great sort of satisfaction that the idea of freedom is also developing in our country too.
Please send me an email, as I would like to set up a correspondence with you.
[email protected]
vonmises – “No army can stop an idea whose time has come,” as Ron Paul likes to say. He also says “there’s something going on,” and we know what that is. What’s incredible is that there are so many across the globe who realise what’s cracking, yet millions in the US are still in Cloud Cuckoo. And it’s everywhere in their media, but of course who reads page 44?