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Nov 16th, 2009 10:12 PM
VaporTrailx1 Nietzsche was wrong. God is not dead. Philosophy is dead.
Nov 16th, 2009 08:52 PM
Evil Robot
Nov 16th, 2009 01:02 AM
DevilWearsPrada

"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies."
Nov 13th, 2009 05:33 PM
kahljorn Yea, marx was really more of a historian/sociologist than a political theorist. Kind of like Nietzsche ;/
Nov 13th, 2009 03:45 AM
Zhukov Just because Socialism isn't something that come only come through voting hardly makes it irrelevant. Because voting IS relevant. Sure.

No, Marx never outlined what a communist society would look like. That would be stupid since it would depend on too many variables to be a concrete dogma to adhere to. Marx and Engels used dialectic materialism to show that like socio-economic revolutions of the past, the class that hold all economic power but no political power will revolt, and once this class is in power, society will change to reflect it's needs. The bourgeois class held economic power during feudal times, and they revolted once the feudal system became a fetter on them, and changed society to suit their needs. The proletarian class should do the same because capitalism is no longer a progressive force. A communist society isn't something Marx came up with one afternoon, and thought it would be nice if it was true, he just proved it's the innevitable ending to human development of society and the productive forces. Actualy, no, not totally innevitable, it's either "Socialism or barbarism".


It's not worth me typing out rebutals to the same, tired, old arguments such as "It works in theory/on paper..." "People are hard-wired to be greedy" or "it only works on a small scale". But anyway...

If something is theoreticaly sound then it logically follows that it is practically sound too. If it is not practically sound then don't say it "works in theory". If it doesn't work in "real life" then the theory is wrong. If you haven't understood the theory then you can't comment.

People are not hard wired to be greedy. There is no greedy gene. There is only something in the realm of 23 000 genes in a human; far too few to be taken up with things like greed or homosexuality. If humans are wired to be greedy, then how do you explain non-greedy people?

Socialism cannot work on a small scale as proven by the USSR, with Stalin's "Socialism in one country" theory. A city or even a country can never be entirely self sufficient, and has to rely on help and trade from around the globe. Small scale communes are just hippies living in poverty. Socialism requires mass industry and the means of production to provide nessecities for an advanced human culture. It is the industrialisation of society and the produced working class that leads to socialism. Yes, it can be broken up into a smaller scale; localised elections and communities running things for themselves. Communism is the death of the state, and if you still have the world divided up into countries and nations apart then you still have a state system.
Nov 12th, 2009 08:53 PM
kahljorn well, talking about Marxism is kind of a waste of time anyway since he said that : A) its not something that can jsut be voted ifor and B) Marx didn't really talk about communism, as a political system, that much anyway.
Nov 12th, 2009 10:24 AM
Dimnos Dont give up.
Nov 12th, 2009 07:05 AM
Zhukov Eh, why waste time typing.
Nov 11th, 2009 10:36 AM
Dimnos Yeah but you cant forget that there is Marxist communism then there is the real world we live in. When applied to a community about the size of a city it could work. Anything bigger than that and its just designed to fail.
Nov 11th, 2009 10:24 AM
kahljorn i was trying to stay away from historic communism since that's not a very good representation of marxist communism, but yea that's pretty much what I figured would happen
Nov 11th, 2009 10:21 AM
Dimnos
Quote:
Originally Posted by kahljorn View Post
anyway lets just leave it at this:

If democratic socialism could be completely transparent with people being both interested in that transparency and being capable of contemplating it while partaking in their democratic and socialist duties, it just might work out. PERFECTLY
oh and if they can not be greedy.

On the other hand, if democratic capitalism could be completely transparent with people being both interested in that transparency and being capable of contemplating it while partaking in their democratic and capatalist duties, it just might work out.
theoretically capalism doesn't require people to magically stop being greedy in order to function well, as long as it has the things above
In other words...

Nov 11th, 2009 10:17 AM
Dimnos
Quote:
Originally Posted by kahljorn View Post
During the revolution, what would happen to people, organizations, businesses and political parties which support bourgeois values or which support the bourgeois class?
What would the government do if people started talking about a return to bourgeois values?





http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/17168
Nov 11th, 2009 09:39 AM
kahljorn anyway lets just leave it at this:

If democratic socialism could be completely transparent with people being both interested in that transparency and being capable of contemplating it while partaking in their democratic and socialist duties, it just might work out. PERFECTLY
oh and if they can not be greedy.

On the other hand, if democratic capitalism could be completely transparent with people being both interested in that transparency and being capable of contemplating it while partaking in their democratic and capatalist duties, it just might work out.
theoretically capalism doesn't require people to magically stop being greedy in order to function well, as long as it has the things above

I just edited my old post out cause it was going to end up turning into this, and I'm too tired to think properly.
Nov 11th, 2009 09:13 AM
Zhukov No, I think I know what you meant.

During "the revolution", what happens to people supporting the other side? Well, anything. Nothing. Whatever. There is no eternal communist law telling anyone how you should treat people with different views. During the Russian revolution the people that supported the counterrevolution started a civil war where millions of people where killed. The red army had a lot of white supporters executed. The Kronstadt uprising (a sailor rebellion against the bolsheviks) led to about 1500 or so getting executed, and maybe another 1500 being freed, or freed after several years in the gulag. Lenin stated that the whole affair made him very sad. Those were very harsh measures for harsh times. "to make an omelet you have to break a few eggs", ha, that's a Lenin quote from the time.

We live in more civilised times, perhaps, and there is no mass execution of people that don't support the bolivarian revolution in Venezuela.

I guess it depends on what you mean by "support". Supporting the bourgeois class often amounts to assassinating proletarian leaders, launching military coups, or invading a country.

What would the government do if people wanted a return to a capitalist economy? If people wanted that then they would vote for it.


OK. How would a commune function if everyone wasn't doing what they were told? Just like now, when nobody does what they are told. The "government" and the "commune" are one and the same, it's not a council of elders dictating how people have to run a factory; it's factory workers dictating how it runs. If it rund badly then they are out of a job. There is no clear layout for this - a socialist society - but it wouldn't be too far past how society functions now. People elected into positions of responsibility as far as roads, defense, budget etc, but their focus is on society rather than money because their interests don't lie with the bourgeois class. They are not paid anything over an average wage to be there, so anyone looking for a career with good money is going to have to change their ideals. Things smaller than national interest would be run locally, like they are now.

Allocations of resources and money... geez, I don't know, a minister for resources perhaps, and a hundred people to help him/her.

When things are run in the interest of society rather than corporations, that's where the difference lies, and in a more democratic and accountable system itself.

Democracy is essential. If you have a beuracracy running everything by itself, they get corrupted, they start to run things for themselves rather than for society. With no democracy then things get left undone or get out of control because a beauracracy can't control an entire nation without legitimate feedback and honest opinion from the peope that live there. You get a shop full of vinegar but no bread, and people get pissed off, and the whole thing falls apart.
Nov 11th, 2009 08:36 AM
kahljorn
Quote:
Marx never mentions a totalitarian or authoritarian rule. A "dictatorship of the proletariat" doesn't sound as harsh and nasty when you figure that most people are proletarian; it just means a rule of the working people.
I'm about to go to bed, so more in the morning:
During the revolution, what would happen to people, organizations, businesses and political parties which support bourgeois values or which support the bourgeois class?
What would the government do if people started talking about a return to bourgeois values?

How could a commune really function well unless everybody is doing what the commune says, with absolute obedience to it? And how will the commune, as a whole, do anything but have total control over everything? including the ideology of its constituents?

Really, I don't see how the government could manage an entire commune without it being a huge bureaucracy. How are they going to keep track of resources what needs to be produced and when and in what quantity and with which raw materials allocated to it?
It seems to me that communism requires such a drastic level control over the slightest details of economic and industrial control-- and such a high degree of cooperation between its individual parts -- due to the fact that they don't have a natural force such as the almighty hand influencing which things will be produced and why and when and for what purpose.
If communism doesn't have the level of control required to manage all of these things, then it will likely fail. As such, it needs to have absolute control in order to make all decisions, and each individual in the system needs to cooperate with these decisions absolutely.

Quote:

No, people don't get to choose their own job ("I want to be a pilot!") or live like a king... nobody is really promising that, are they?
No but what I'm saying is that this is an example of "total government control."

Quote:
The point is to lessen these things over time by putting the means of production in the hands of a democratically run state
Well, I'll just say it, since when has democracy really solved anything?

Quote:
A group of ex-soviet citizens living in America is hardly a great basis for your study
From what I saw, since it was just an abstract, they arrived at their data by extrapolating it from soviet documentation/statistics (although obviously they weren't directly related to unemployment). i would respond to some other stuff you said, but since you conceded, i suppose its unnecessary.

anyway that turned out longer than i thought and i dont even know if it made sense. Good night. lol nm i edited shit
Nov 11th, 2009 06:47 AM
Zhukov
Quote:
Originally Posted by kahljorn View Post
That may be the case, but that isn't what Marx thought.
Marx never mentions a totalitarian or authoritarian rule. A "dictatorship of the proletariat" doesn't sound as harsh and nasty when you figure that most people are proletarian; it just means a rule of the working people. We currently have a "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie". The "transitional period" mentioned there is Socialism. Marx doesn't actually coin the term, it was used later. Talking about not wanting a "Free state", he is talking about an unfetted state, a free market, a state or a government that rules the people with freedom, rather than the other way around. The state can't be free, it has to be run and ruled by the people that live in it. This in no way means that oh shit we have to live in a dystopian reality with no freedom. It's a state run by the dictatorship, a dictatorship of working people.

No, people don't get to choose their own job ("I want to be a pilot!") or live like a king... nobody is really promising that, are they? Money still exists and people can still die of hunger and preventable illness. There is still a huge difference between rich countries and poor countries. The point is to lessen these things over time by putting the means of production in the hands of a democratically run state, rather than private individuals.

As far as no unemployment goes, I am not going to download your link, but I guess it was pretty dumb to say "no unemloyment". I guess "officialy no unemployment" is closer. A group of ex-soviet citizens living in America is hardly a great basis for your study, but I can concede the point. You can have a massive city where everyone would be put to work, and then you could have a village where nobody had a job. You could have an East German town built around a tire factory where everyone had a job, and you could have a town built around a tin mine in Kazakhstan that just closed, and people would be out of work for months. I'd be pretty certain though, that it was easier to have and keep a job in the USSR than in the USA at the same time period. Especially since if you didn't deem yourself useful you would have just been conscripted into the army. Anyway, I retract my comment.

As far as "greed is hard wired into our brains and genes"... I would have thought that that argument would have died once scientific learning into DNA and the human genome became mainstream.
Nov 11th, 2009 02:14 AM
Tadao Heh, tonight's Daily Show on this subject (the John Oliver part) was rather funny/sad.
Nov 11th, 2009 12:40 AM
kahljorn Filthy Bourgeoisie.
Nov 11th, 2009 12:21 AM
Tadao
Nov 10th, 2009 09:40 PM
Evil Robot I work with a guy who grew up in Poland. He said he could remember going to a store and there would be nothing but vinegar or some other obscure item and nothing but that. When I asked him why that's all they could get from a store he said "people were all like, eh fuck it I don't hive a sheet!". He said that was a popular communist phrase when something was awry, "eh, fuck it".
Nov 10th, 2009 09:33 PM
george communisim is the dumbest idea ever.

it has the same problem that every sword and sorcery, or book about kings and queens has. on paper it sounds great, everyone shares the wealth and no one has to be sad cause everyone is taken care of.

until someone has to dig a ditch. or work at the sewage plant.

everyone thinks they'll be the king, or live a life of dignity, they wont be the ditch digger cause they are oh so fucking smart and wonderful.

but no, in the end a bunch of assholes end up kings, enough to support the system get dignity, and the rest get fucked with digging ditches with no hope of a better life.

it has taken less than a generation for people to forget the horrors that communisim unleashed on the world. go ask the lithuainians how much they liked being commies, or the vietnamese, or the chinese. communisim has been shown a fraud in every society that has ever tried to REALLY institute it.

and the socialism that europe enjoys is only cause the US picked up the tab for building their infrastructure after WW2.

unchecked capitalism is a bad thing, there have to be rules, but it butt fucks being a commie and leaves it in a ditch.
Nov 10th, 2009 06:29 PM
kahljorn No.

lolimsuchacoolguy
Nov 10th, 2009 05:03 PM
Fathom Zero Greed is good.
Nov 10th, 2009 04:29 PM
Tadao Paranoid of the future.
Nov 10th, 2009 04:15 PM
kahljorn greed is kind of a loaded term. How about, "Profit-motivated."
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