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27% of Spaniards are out of work. Yet in one town everyone has a job
As Spanish unemployment reaches another record high, the residents of rural Marinaleda could be forgiven for feeling a little smug.
In the small village in deepest Andalusia, the joblessness remains firmly – and almost certainly uniquely within Spain – at zero. . .
. . .Marinaleda’s mayor, Juan Manuel Sánchez Gordillo, has gained national notoriety and has even been dubbed the “Robin Hood of Spain” after he and a group of labourers refused to pay a supermarket for 10 shopping trolleys filled with food, which they distributed to the area’s food banks, sparking headlines in countries as far away as Iran.
“That was to draw attention to the fact there are so many people in Spain who have a hard time getting enough to eat right now,” says Mr Sánchez Gordillo. “We wanted to say, in the 21st century in Spain, ‘this problem exists’. Gandhi would have supported it.”
But the supermarket “raids” were just the tip of the iceberg for Mr Sánchez Gordillo, who has spent more than 30 years fighting for wealth redistribution via land occupations, cheap housing and co-operatives. In Marinaleda, he has promoted equal wages policies, scrapped the police force and offered mortgages on previously state-owned properties, which cannot be sold on for profit, of just €15 a month.
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While I don’t support communism primarily because the only examples we’ve seen (in countries) are/were oppressive governments with little freedom of speech, and certainly no freedom to criticize the government, it would be nice to see this type of effort pull the ‘free market/austerity’ types back toward reality.
What nobody seems to understand is that the lopsided trend in the distribution of wealth is not sustainable. Neither is the lax enforcement of laws for wealthy criminals who enriched themselves at the expense of the non-wealthy. Either work to fix these problems now, or suffer a nasty revolution later.
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Communism always ends in Mao, Stalin, the Kims of N. Korea and the Castro Bros. of Cuba. Some of the most heartless and diabolical regimes in the history of man, all in the name of equality. Animal farm tells you all you need to know about it.
Fascism and communism are two sides of the same coin. Far right or far left it’s only ever about self-interest. Political philosophies that recognise self interest are more honest than those that pretend that we all love each other, like communism. When it comes down to it, there’s nothing communists enjoy more than liquidating “counter-revolutionaries”.
I despise all authoritarian ideologies but I can’t help noticing that right-wing regimes like Pinochet in Chile gave way to multi-party democracy, but left-wing regime’s like Castro’s end up in a type of bronze-age monarchy, the family in power for ever.
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@Mark wrote:
I despise all authoritarian ideologies but I can’t help noticing that right-wing regimes like Pinochet in Chile gave way to multi-party democracy, but left-wing regime’s like Castro’s end up in a type of bronze-age monarchy, the family in power for ever.
But there is a huge difference, not that I believe either system is valid. For example, the literacy rate under communism is very high. In right-wing regimes, not so.
Regardless, not wanting to see communism or fascism, it is critical to tackle the issue of wealth disparity now.
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In Cuba they teach you to read and write but not to think.
Left or right, authoritarian regimes are all the same, but it always astonishes me how eager our left wingers are to forgive the monstrosities of left wing regimes. It seems the comrades can trample over every human right there is so long as they claim to be doing it in the name of solidarity or the “workers”. That makes it all okay.
But I agree that inequality of wealth is becoming a serious problem in the west (it’s rampant everywhere else, especially in communist countries like China 😕 ). Who want’s to live in a society where the wealthy have to live under guard, like Mexico? It’s in the interests of the very wealthy to make sure the crumbs keep falling under the table, or end up like Cuba and Venezuela.
Growing inequality of wealth makes me nervous, but I’m not sure what the best way to tackle it is.
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I don’t mind the idea of anything that is voluntary as long as it’s kept in that way. When you steal stuff from others it’s not voluntary and the same goes with taxes which is just a form of socialism lite. It’s one thing if there was such a concept as a social contract which one could accept or denounce. I can actually see it work in small projects and families are in a sense working in micro models of a socialistic system. The bigger the nation and the less homogenic it is the worse it works.
When it comes communism it’s often just a label that has been used by other systems to describe for example USSR, China and Cuba etc. Though they didn’t even themselves label their own systems as such. They had communist parties but they saw themselves as being in a transitional state of socialism which strived for communism. It’s an utopian dream society and all “countries” that have tried it has in the end become totalitarian shit holes.
Nationalsocialism, Fascism, socialism all are very similiar in many regards though they weirdly have a lot against each other “officially” and they all become totalitarian..
http://mises.org/daily/1937 “Very interesting essay on this topic from an economic stand point and how it affects the freedom of everyone”
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