It's more of an example of a move away from simply recognising property rights and more recognising human rights.

If you think that all rights are based off property rights, then you must surely own your own body. That means you own half your child, as they're made of half of your property. If you own some slaves and they have kids, you own those kids too just as surely as you own a calf from your herd.

In fact the defendants of slavery before the US civil war argued that people should be free to be property.

We've moved on since then and we now recognise that there are human rights that are inalienable.

Your first point is entirely correct. Socialism means that everyone takes part in production and nobody gets a free ride. That means jobs for all; if there's not enough jobs to go around then that means the free time can be shared around too.

As to your second point, I disagree. The USSR had a system of democratic control - the Soviets - that was eroded and eventually disbanded because of Stalin. The problem of personality cults eroding democratic systems isn't unique to socialism.

As Marx said, socialism can only have a world historical existence. You can't build socialism in one country as, due to the global nature of production, you'll still need to trade with capitalist powers in order to have the resources needed for a modern way of life. Maintaining competitiveness with the capitalist market means that you'll be under the same pressure and end up organising production in a similar way.

Then your understanding of Marx's communism is completely wrong.

Marx was not a utopian nor an idealist. He was a materialist and his philosophy is concerned entirely with the material world.

The term scientific socialism was used to oppose Marx's idea of socialism against that of utopian socialism. The point is that we need to use the scientific method to gain an understanding of human beings, human society and the physical world. We should then try and arrange our government and our economic production in a manner that takes account of our scientific understanding of human nature in order to produce a better outcome.

Humanity doesn't need to evolve any more to achieve this. What's holding us back is a lack of political consciousness amongst average working people.

That's not true.

A proletarian revolution is, by definition, a revolution of those at the bottom of society. Most people from that class will die in that class; social progress is largely a myth.

On that basis, worker's government is actually a rational choice for most people. It makes sense from a purely selfish, self-interested perspective.

"Philosophers have interpreted the world in various ways, the point however is to change it" - Karl Marx

Marxism is a materialist philosophy. Marxist ideas only have value insofar as they can be implemented in the real world! Anyone who claims to be a Marxist and spouts impossible nonsense about how things should be, or what is to be done, (which is a large share of people who self-identify as Marxists, I'll admit) is just engaging in fake-left posturing.

Funnily enough, that's what Marx was all about too. His approach is characterised as Historical Materialism because it's only concerned with the realities of human nature and things that really happen here, in the material world.

The whole point of Marxism* is to build a political economy that's better/I. than Capitalism. Capitalism is the greatest, most innovative form of political economy devised by mankind but it comes at a terrible price. Marxism is about confronting the reality of the world, which developing a critique of Capitalism in its various forms, and trying to change things for the better.

The only way that struggle can be ultimately resolved is for the working class to gain the consciousness necessary to govern. That change has to come from the bottom up - you can't impose it from above. All attempts to create Socialism from above are doomed to create authoritarian, bureaucratic structures.

Basically, Capitalism as a game is rigged. It rewards making money over performing useful labour (e.g. using knowledge from a medical degree to figure out reasons to refuse insurance payouts rather than using it to treat patients) and results in a world I think most people are clearly unhappy with. The challenge as Socialists is to figure out a better game, a better system of incentives and discouragements to get people doing more useful things.

As to what things are useful, well, that's not a question for one person to answer. It should be decided democratically!

Marx called himself a Humanist. He once said, in reference the the French Marxists with whom he disagreed, "all I know is that I am not a Marxist".

I've just checked my certs in Chrome and DigiNotar isn't there. I've got the "check for server certificate revocation" option ticked, which I guess must be on by default.

No, you misread. It's 2,000km long, 80km up!

Now all we need is someone with $10b to spare to see if it works....

It wasn't a judge that imposed this sentence, it was a magistrate. The justices' clerk advised them ignore normal sentencing guidelines, so that most likely the basis that their sentence will be reduced.

Sounds like someone didn't find a decent corp to PvP with :)

Eve PvP is all about ship class. You can be competitive in t1 frigates within a month. Sure, someone who has all their skills trained to 5 will have a ~5% advantage over you with skills at 4, but if you know how to fly your fit then you can make up for that.

If you want to take down larger ships in t1 frigates, join up with other people. A t1 Rifter swarm is one of the most deadly and effective fleets in Eve; you can take down battleships with a Rifter swarm. You'll lose a few ships in the process, but as long as your side gets the odd kill it doesn't matter: their losses will massively outstrip yours.

As for getting ISK, you can run Incursions. Those things spit out ISK! I generally prefer to trade though as it's very little effort for quite decent rewards, if you know where to sell things!

Yea, I think I agree with what you're saying about the importance of having a plan. My understanding is that the protesters in Egypt were united behind a call for democratic elections, but there wasn't any clear ideas behind how that would work or how they would achieve that.

I realise you're just trolling, but still, here's another source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1381517/Royal-Wedding-security-Police-swoop-masked-anarchists-London.html

"Ten of the suspects were arrested at Charing Cross railway station carrying climbing equipment and anti-monarchy placards, police revealed."

The placards were in a bag and the "climbing equipment" was a bicycle helmet.

That act is a classic, it also banned "sounds wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats". It also introduced the other classic anti-dissent offence of "aggravated trespass", yet another law that only ever gets used against protesters.

The problem in Egypt is that the revolution lost momentum due to the army moving in and convincing people everything would be OK. As soon as people started leaving Tahrir Square, they started rounding up the ringleaders.

It was a big error of judgement on the part of the protesters, but hey, now they know to never ever trust the state.

As to how the Terrorism Act is used in the UK, most uses of section 60 are against demonstrators. Our judiciary hasn't lost the plot completely yet as generally, when people sue for wrongful arrest they find against the police and award damages. The coppers don't learn though.

I typed up a longer comment, but /. seems to have lost it. Anyway, here's the FB page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Justice-for-the-Charing-Cross-10/217674331578560?sk=info

So there you have it. Detained under section 60 of the Terrorism Act (which is almost exclusively used against protesters) and eventually released without charge - after the wedding was over and miles away from where they were picked up.