1/ One thing twitter taught me is not to RT something (or react to it in any way) without reading it carefully first. Headlines - often not written by or even approved by an author - are very often misleading & sometimes actually contradicted by the piece below.

2/ And so to @Dannythefink's https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/enemies-of-capitalism-have-no-place-in-school-tdr7wt6xs which many people on "my side" have reacted to angrily. If ever there were a piece where the head (and standfirst) need interpreting carefully in the light of the actual text, this was it.

3/ The piece is ostensibly about who "suitable" providers of teaching material for schools are and whether recent government guidelines are appropriate. We might wish to argue this point, but many are arguing a different point which Danny explicitly didn't make:

4/ As DF notes (approvingly) "Teachers are not being banned from teaching about the history and deficiencies of capitalism, nor from making students aware of the activists and dreamers who wish to abolish it."

5/ Now, I use the word "ostensibly" above, not to suggest DF was being disingenuous, but to suggest that DF is using the spat over the new guidelines as a vehicle for making a far more interesting and challenging point (which I shall make in my own words, and as a question):

6/ Could we can replace capitalism with an alternative system of ownership and control (viz socialism) and thereby make nearly everything (we want to make better) better?

7/ NB I use "socialism" in the same sense that DF uses it, as a description for the abolition of private ownership of the means of production; not simply as a synonym for left Social Democracy with high standards of healthcare, welfare, environment, social cohesion etc.

8/ For most of my life I was a socialist in the 1st sense. Though I am still a socialist in the 2nd sense (and DF probably isn't) I stopped being a socialist in the 1st sense partly because of the points DF raises.

9/ I explain some other reasons I changed my mind here: http://badreason99.blogspot.com/2019/11/how-living-behind-berlin-wall-cured-me_9.html (also with a deliberately provocative and misleading headline).

10/ But to come, finally, to the point: Before shouting at Danny, my comrades in arms on the left would (I submit) do well to read what he actually wrote and to consider carefully what "we" (on the left) actually mean in 2020 when we demand "alternatives to capitalism". /end