Do the Labour Party have Communist policies?

I'm am sorry you feel that way about your capabilities Caleo. I am sure you are more able than you suggest. Belittling creates an unhealthy relationship, even when you do it to yourself.

"Lip-service" doesn't relate to to free speech. It basically means people who say one thing but do another. Hope that helps.

The UK is still a long way from being properly socialist.The great mass trespass at Kinder Scout was nearly a hundred years ago, but land ownership in 2025 still hugely favours the rich. This is not equality of opportunity when some people own huge tracts of countryside but most children have nowhere to play.

I cannot agree that most children have nowhere to play. Caleo. Many may not, but not most, and therefore we should ensure that playgrounds and parks be preserved and maintained as a priority.

Grantanow

History shows that true Communism is never achieved but is hijacked by a despotic ruling elite: Stalin, for example.

And elite they were with their dachas, while millions of peasants starved. Landowners were disposed of in one way or another, doctors were murdered.

It sounds idealistic in theory but is brutalist and elitist in practice.

PoliticsNerd

Caleo

The Welfare State is socialist.

The NHS is a socialist concept.

Equality of opportunity is socialist concept.

The UK is still a long way from being properly socialist.The great mass trespass at Kinder Scout was nearly a hundred years ago, but land ownership in 2025 still hugely favours the rich. This is not equality of opportunity when some people own huge tracts of countryside but most children have nowhere to play.

It is also very easy to give lip-service to a far-right right economy when you live in a mixed economy with some socialist policies keeping us all afloat at times.

It is also easy to give lip-service to a far left economy when you live in a mixed economy with some radical right policies that allow us to maximize free-market forces, minimize state intervention, uphold traditional social structures, and prioritise national sovereignty.

You can see the out-come of supporting the extreme, right-wing policies in America currently, where the very people who are loosing out are often those who did not see what a mixed economy meant to them but rather believed the tropes of the hard-right

PoliticsNerd, is free speech "lip service"? Is freedom of assembly "lip service".

Would you please edit your message, as I am too thick to make sense of it.

Caleo

The Welfare State is socialist.

The NHS is a socialist concept.

Equality of opportunity is socialist concept.

The UK is still a long way from being properly socialist.The great mass trespass at Kinder Scout was nearly a hundred years ago, but land ownership in 2025 still hugely favours the rich. This is not equality of opportunity when some people own huge tracts of countryside but most children have nowhere to play.

It is also very easy to give lip-service to a far-right right economy when you live in a mixed economy with some socialist policies keeping us all afloat at times.

It is also easy to give lip-service to a far left economy when you live in a mixed economy with some radical right policies that allow us to maximize free-market forces, minimize state intervention, uphold traditional social structures, and prioritise national sovereignty.

You can see the out-come of supporting the extreme, right-wing policies in America currently, where the very people who are loosing out are often those who did not see what a mixed economy meant to them but rather believed the tropes of the hard-right

Whitewavemark2

MaizieD

Caleo

The Welfare State is socialist.

The NHS is a socialist concept.

Equality of opportunity is socialist concept.

The UK is still a long way from being properly socialist.The great mass trespass at Kinder Scout was nearly a hundred years ago, but land ownership in 2025 still hugely favours the rich. This is not equality of opportunity when some people own huge tracts of countryside but most children have nowhere to play.

I can't remember, but wasn't 'socialism' a stage on the way to achieving 'communism'? Or is it the other way round?

First comes the Revolution and then socialism is the precursor to a fully communist state, which is a continuous process.

But tbh I’m don’t think Marx ever fully developed the idea, and so it is a bit amorphous.

To each according to need and from each according to ability" is amorphous like God's love is amorphous. It's our human responsibility to make the concept actual by hammering it out in real life.

For many of us on Gransnet and elsewhere the shape we give to the Marxist motto is the shape of Jesus.

MaizieD

Caleo

The Welfare State is socialist.

The NHS is a socialist concept.

Equality of opportunity is socialist concept.

The UK is still a long way from being properly socialist.The great mass trespass at Kinder Scout was nearly a hundred years ago, but land ownership in 2025 still hugely favours the rich. This is not equality of opportunity when some people own huge tracts of countryside but most children have nowhere to play.

I can't remember, but wasn't 'socialism' a stage on the way to achieving 'communism'? Or is it the other way round?

First comes the Revolution and then socialism is the precursor to a fully communist state, which is a continuous process.

But tbh I’m don’t think Marx ever fully developed the idea, and so it is a bit amorphous.

MaizieD

Voltaire might well have said I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it, but I don't think it ever stopped him disagreeing with 'what you say' and saying why he disagreed.

Exactly

RosieandherMaw

Don’t mention it nanna8 (oh, you didn’t)

Yes - thanks to you as well ( sorry, phone rang and I was sidetracked) 🍷

Caleo

The Welfare State is socialist.

The NHS is a socialist concept.

Equality of opportunity is socialist concept.

The UK is still a long way from being properly socialist.The great mass trespass at Kinder Scout was nearly a hundred years ago, but land ownership in 2025 still hugely favours the rich. This is not equality of opportunity when some people own huge tracts of countryside but most children have nowhere to play.

I can't remember, but wasn't 'socialism' a stage on the way to achieving 'communism'? Or is it the other way round?

"From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" is a view that is put forward in most cultures, as far as I can see. You can see it in Christianity, as has been said but also Plato, Aristotle and more recent philosophers discuss the idea in depth.

The difference is when it is systematised. The hard left believe it's the state; that the state must control all that your ability creates and what your needs are. The hard right see "ability" and "need" very differently but still systematise there beliefs.

For the right "Ability" is often seen as a result of individual effort, talent, and hard work. People are regarded as responsible for their own circumstances, and success or failure is largely attributed to personal choices and abilities. The emphasis is on self-reliance; policies that assume individuals can improve their situation through effort, education, and entrepreneurship. That the education can only be what you can afford and the entrepreneurship may be legally flawed is, for the hard right all part of their view of personal responsibility and merit. "Need" is seen as a moral concern that should be addressed through voluntary means rather than institutional redistribution.

History shows that true Communism is never achieved but is hijacked by a despotic ruling elite: Stalin, for example.

Whitewavemark2

mum2three

Surely Jeremy Corbyn is a Communist, and this is the main reason why he was so unpopular.

Communism sounds good in theory, but there has to be people in control, so it doesn't work in practise.

No Corbyn isn’t a communist

He is a socialist.

The difference is enormous.

First he is operating in a capitalist economy and second he has never ever talked about anything other than a mixed economy.

Concerning Whitewavemark on Corbyn: most of us have a deeply felt need to be good persons. Narcissists. are a minority.

Corbyn is not to be swayed by populism i.e. fishing for votes. However he is also practical ; as WWM wrote "First he is operating in a capitalist economy and second he has never ever talked about anything other than a mixed economy."

Caleo

The Welfare State is socialist.

The NHS is a socialist concept.

Equality of opportunity is socialist concept.

The UK is still a long way from being properly socialist.The great mass trespass at Kinder Scout was nearly a hundred years ago, but land ownership in 2025 still hugely favours the rich. This is not equality of opportunity when some people own huge tracts of countryside but most children have nowhere to play.

Hear, hear Caleo.

That inequality is also evident when some people own many properties whilst others have nowhere to live.

Oreo

Whitewavemark2

Oreo

And as we saw with Russia, some comrades were more equal than other comrades.😠

That has never been a communist state.

Are you serious?
A Communist State since 1917 and the revolution.Only stopped being so in the late 1990’s.The USSR ended and Communism there collapsed.

Yes of course I am serious.

Communism is a Marxist concept.

The USSR was never a communist state if you accept the Marxist description of a Marxist state.

As I said the nearest long term I can think of is the Amish.

My (true blue) father used to say the Labour were communists without the courage of their convictions. But this was well before the centre-left and Blair.).

The Welfare State is socialist.

The NHS is a socialist concept.

Equality of opportunity is socialist concept.

The UK is still a long way from being properly socialist.The great mass trespass at Kinder Scout was nearly a hundred years ago, but land ownership in 2025 still hugely favours the rich. This is not equality of opportunity when some people own huge tracts of countryside but most children have nowhere to play.

Although the leaders of Workers Collectives would have in theory filled that role, I think that the decision making would be too diffuse.

Starmer is a Stalinist, not a communist.

MaizieD

Another feature of communism which I think you missed, Wyllow, was the 'command economy'. Decisions on what was needed by the state and in what quantities, (e.g machinery, agricultural produce etc.) were made centrally and the workers in those industries were allocated quotas of what they had to produce.

Yes, I did miss it, top point.

Galaxy

So the right, certainly if you look at the podcasts that have emerged tend to explore the issues more at the moment, and some attempt to have views from both sides.
I don't think Corbyn is a communist, I think he has become a vessel for whatever is the idealist cause of the day.

I think he’s always been a mish mash of causes dear to his heart.🫣 Rebel with a cause like an eternal teenager.Possibly arising from his childhood and never quite doing as well as was expected of him.

Elegran

Caleo

If "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need," defines a 'communist' then I am a communist .

I call myself socialist , not communist, because Marx's famous slogan is never going to be absolutely actualised due to human greed.

These basic tenets of Communism are in fact very near to the basic tenets of Christianity (or any of the caring religions) but in both they are in danger of being altered as people get more and more attached to all the other baggage that accrues in the process of turning them into the rules and legislation of running a whole nation or society. The need to control the baser urges of the population sabotages the high pronciples of the theorists.

Exactly.
George Orwell wasn’t wrong with his book Animal Farm.

So the right, certainly if you look at the podcasts that have emerged tend to explore the issues more at the moment, and some attempt to have views from both sides.
I don't think Corbyn is a communist, I think he has become a vessel for whatever is the idealist cause of the day.

Whitewavemark2

Oreo

And as we saw with Russia, some comrades were more equal than other comrades.😠

That has never been a communist state.

Are you serious?
A Communist State since 1917 and the revolution.Only stopped being so in the late 1990’s.The USSR ended and Communism there collapsed.

Caleo

If "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need," defines a 'communist' then I am a communist .

I call myself socialist , not communist, because Marx's famous slogan is never going to be absolutely actualised due to human greed.

These basic tenets of Communism are in fact very near to the basic tenets of Christianity (or any of the caring religions) but in both they are in danger of being altered as people get more and more attached to all the other baggage that accrues in the process of turning them into the rules and legislation of running a whole nation or society. The need to control the baser urges of the population sabotages the high pronciples of the theorists.