My Views (This one's for you Triceramarx)

[Komrad]

In response to Triceramarx and Emmanuel Goldstein,
My utopia is basically the United States from about 1800 to 1913, with the exception of slavery and poor treatment of people based on race. We basically enjoyed a time of almost no taxes and very few rules imposed by government. People could do business as they chose with whom they chose. People were free to keep the fruits of their labor. If people made bad decisions, they suffered the consequences. If people made good decisions, they reaped the benefits.

I think Socialism is great on the scale of a family unit. I have cousins who are completely lazy and worthless, but if I have $100 and they need $100, I'll give it to them cheerfully. They're my family. I'll also cheerfully donate to charity. I get real upset though when thugs from the government threaten me with prison or death if I don't hand over almost 50% of what I produce. They then proceed to use most of that production for things I believe range somewhere between reprehensible and useless. If some old lady in New Jersey is suffering, that is sad, but her family and her neighbors should help her out. I shouldn't have my property confiscated here in Colorado to help out someone I've never met.

I believe that government has a role, but that it should be a very small role. I don't want the government indoctrinating, uh, I mean educating my kid, so public schools are unnecessary. Social Security is nothing more than a Ponzi scheme so that should go too, before it collapses. The military is necessary, but we could adequately defend our nation with a military that is about 25% the size of what we have now. This is the issue I differ with conservatives on. They want to spend a fortune on the military and cut social spending. I want to cut both. Any form of transfer payments allows government officials the power to punish those they don't like and award those they do. Witness the last election and the auto company bailouts. I do like roads and bridges so the government can spend my money on that. Police and Firefighters are overpaid and they get to retire way to early. Also if we would legalize drugs and get rid of a lot of other stupid rules there wouldn't be such a need for so many police.

Basically I want a government that enforces only three rules:
1. Don't murder
2. Don't rape
3. Don't steal

Other than that, let free people choosing to trade with one another or not decide who gets what.

[Ostrinski]

Here's to bringing back the past, because it's totally possible :unsure:.

[Manic Impressive]

That's so silly and the bourgeoisie would never let it happen most importantly because it's not in their interests. When I'm asked what the nature of the state is I usually just answer that it is a means by which the propertied class protects it's property from the class who produce. In short the state is a means of class control. However, it does have a secondary function. It also regulates competition between the bourgeoisie itself which if left unchecked would threaten bourgeois interests.


Here's an explanation of the effect of monopolies in the US during your Utopian period


Certain monopolised industries, indeed, delivered up to the greed of private companies, become instruments for the exploitation of other sections of the capitalist class, and so powerful that they disturb the whole bourgeois system.
Here are a few examples. The electric telegraph, on its introduction into France, became a state service because the political interests of the Government required it. In England and the Unites States, where the same political interest did not exist, the telegraphs were established by private companies. The English Government was compelled to buy them out in the interests of all, particularly the speculators, who in the transformation found means of obtaining scandalous profits. In the United States the telegraph service is still in private hands. It is monopolised by a gang of speculators who control the entire Press of the country. Those speculators communicate telegrams only to newspapers in vassalage to them, and which must pay such a heavy tax that many, being unable to bear such a burden, do without telegraphic news altogether. In America telegrams are the most important part of the newspapers; to deprive them of these dispatches is to condemn them to languish and die. In that republican Republic, which individualist Liberals take as the ideal of their most daring dreams, the liberty of the Press is at the mercy of a handful of speculators, without government force and without responsibility, but in control of the telegraph service.
The railway monopoly is so exorbitant that a company can ruin at will an industry or a town by differential or preferential tariffs. The danger to which society is exposed by the private ownership of the means of transport is so keenly felt that in France, England and the United States, many capitalists in their own interests demand the nationalisation of the railways. In capitalist society a private industry only becomes a State service in order to better serve the interest of the bourgeoisie. The advantages which the latter obtain are of different kinds; we have just spoken of the social danger created by the abandonment of certain industries to private exploitation, dangers which disappear or are attenuated as soon as the State directs them but there are others.
The State, by centralising administration, lessens the general charges; it runs the service at a smaller cost. The State is accused of paying everything more dearly than private enterprise; nevertheless, such is not always the case when there is a question of the establishment of means of communication, one of the most difficult and complex enterprises in modern society. Thus the tramways constructed in France have, with rare exceptions, cost an average of 250,000 to 300,000 francs per kilometre as a first establishment charge. The railway from Alais to the Rhone has eaten up per kilometre of line a sum of about 700,000 francs. M. Freycinet, who is not a bourgeois director for fun, has established upon positive grounds that the State could construct railways at a cost of 200,000 francs per kilometre. The State can therefore sensibly diminish the prices of the services it exploits. It is the capitalists who profit by the reduction, because it is they, principally, who make use of them. Thus, what a number of workmen only use the postal service once or twice a year! And how very numerous are the commercial houses and industrial concerns which send out over ten and twenty letters a day!
State services become a means to politicians for placing their tools or dependants, and for giving good, fat sinecures to the sons-in-law of the bourgeoisie. M. Cochery has accorded lucrative posts to Orleanists; among others, to the son of Senator Laboulaye, the man of the inkpot.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lafargue/1882/06/socnat.htm

So even for wannabe bourgeois arseholes it's a silly notion.

[TheRedAnarchist23]

'Cause I wanna be minarchy?

[Thelonious]

My utopia is basically the United States from about 1800 to 1913, with the exception of slavery and poor treatment of people based on race.

But slavery and racism were what the United States was all about between 1800 to 1913. You say you would like to go back to that time minus the two aforementioned ills, but slavery and racism basically created the "utopia" that you claim to long for. It would be like saying, "I would love to go back to the political climate of the early 1980's minus the Reagan administration."

[#FF0000]

What about the horrific working conditions people were made to live with?

And I'm not sure you know how american public schools work. You realize school boards get to make pretty major decisions about the curriculum, right? There really isn't much centralized about it so I'm not sure why you'd be worried with "government indoctrination" when the federal government has hardly anything to do with it.

[JPSartre12]

3. Don't steal

Wouldn't this reinforce property relations, and lead back the re-establishment of capitalism? If one of the fundamental rules of this "socialist" society is that we respect the property of each other and don't steal it, then we can't have socialism, because having / respecting property is inherently anti-socialist.

[Manic Impressive]

Wouldn't this reinforce property relations, and lead back the re-establishment of capitalism? If one of the fundamental rules of this "socialist" society is that we respect the property of each other and don't steal it, then we can't have socialism, because having / respecting property is inherently anti-socialist.
I don't think he said he wanted socialism. He wants the wild west. Although he is willing to share wealth with his cousins.....

[Manic Impressive]

I get real upset though when thugs from the government threaten me with prison or death if I don't hand over almost 50% of what I produce. They then proceed to use most of that production for things I believe range somewhere between reprehensible and useless.
But you have no problem with your boss doing the same? If you try to withhold the produce of your labour from him that's stealing and they will lock you up.

[Art Vandelay]

Reactionary nonsense. That is all.

[Domela Nieuwenhuis]

But slavery and racism were what the United States was all about between 1800 to 1913. You say you would like to go back to that time minus the two aforementioned ills, but slavery and racism basically created the "utopia" that you claim to long for. It would be like saying, "I would love to go back to the political climate of the early 1980's minus the Reagan administration."

When nice tries go bad...

[JPSartre12]

I don't think he said he wanted socialism. He wants the wild west. Although he is willing to share wealth with his cousins.....

Ah yes, you are right

[Thug Lessons]

My utopia is basically the United States from about 1800 to 1913, with the exception of slavery and poor treatment of people based on race. We basically enjoyed a time of almost no taxes and very few rules imposed by government. People could do business as they chose with whom they chose. People were free to keep the fruits of their labor. If people made bad decisions, they suffered the consequences. If people made good decisions, they reaped the benefits.

You're a middle-class libertarian yuppie and you would get eaten alive in the Gilded Age 'utopia' you dream about.

[Thug Lessons]

Hmm being a white American was pretty great back in the 19th century, except for the little bits about slavery, genociding the native population and settling their land, conquering half of Mexico then expelling the Mexicans, and heavy reliance on woefully underpaid Chinese labor. Wonder if that had anything to do with how great being a white in 19th century America was? Nah, probably not, I bet the secret to success there was that we didn't have big government coming in with their so-called "social security", "minimum wage" and "public schools".

[Yuppie Grinder]

You've got an Adamite complex, buddy. Don't romanticize times of hardship.

[GiantMonkeyMan]

I think Komrad is right. I mean, I wouldn't ever want my kids to be indocrinated by the government so I'd go back to a system where they'd be put to work in factories instead... :rolleyes:

[PigmerikanMao]

My utopia is basically the United States from about 1800 to 1913, with the exception of slavery and poor treatment of people based on race.

What does this mean for the indigenous peoples that were pushed off their land due to their unproductive use of it (ie not agriculture)? How about the various acts of imperialist aggression long before WWI (especially concerning Latin America, as these were not technically acts motivated by overt racism).


People were free to keep the fruits of their labor. If people made bad decisions, they suffered the consequences. If people made good decisions, they reaped the benefits.

These benefits- did they relate to the exploitative nature of a person and their employees? Wouldn't this contradict the right to keep the fruits of ones labor and not have it siphoned off by a member of the bourgeoisie?


I get real upset though when thugs from the government threaten me with prison or death if I don't hand over almost 50% of what I produce.

Top tax rate is much lower than 50%- you must be making a fortune in the speculations market.


I believe that government has a role [...] Social Security [...] the auto company bailouts [...] roads and bridges [...] Police and Firefighters

"Promote the general welfare" ring a bell here? Also- interesting that you mention the auto bailouts but not the banking bailouts. At least the auto industry produces something. As for the firefighters, I don't mind them retiring early... not when taking into consideration what they do for a living.


3. Don't steal

Define "Steal."


We could adequately defend our nation with a military that is about 25% the size of what we have now.

Much less actually.


I don't want the government indoctrinating, uh...

Get out.

[Decolonize The Left]

You guys is getting trolled. Hard.

And to the OP, Mr. Komrad, how are those Broncos doing? (ouch.)

[PigmerikanMao]

You guys is getting trolled. Hard.

Probably, but people with views like this are everywhere in the political world, especially America, so why not practice how to respond to them?

[Popular Front of Judea]

So if 19th century America was the best of all worlds why were people willing take on state and federal troops to simply ask for a living wage? Libertarians envision a 19th America without unions or populist farmers -- much less African Americans or indigenous peoples. Oh and no business cycles either:

Panic of 1819 – pervasive USA economic recession w/ bank failures; culmination of U.S.'s 1st boom-to-bust economic cycle
Panic of 1837 – pervasive USA economic recession w/ bank failures; a 5 yr depression ensued
Panic of 1857 – pervasive USA economic recession w/ bank failures
Panic of 1873 – pervasive USA economic recession w/ bank failures, known then as the 5 yr Great Depression & now as the Long Depression
Panic of 1884
Panic of 1890
Panic of 1893 – a panic in the United States marked by the collapse of railroad overbuilding and shaky railroad financing which set off a series of bank failures
Panic of 1896 – an acute economic depression in the United States precipitated by a drop in silver reserves and market concerns on the effects it would have on the gold standard(!)

(Libertarians are almost as willfully ignorant about macroeconomics as they are about history.)

So how does the OP plan on supporting himself during this historic period?