bunch of questions

[willowtooth]

gotta bunch of questions feel free too answer one, two, or all of them


1. How important is honesty, is deception a good quality, and should you deceive people if your honesty, might be considered deception?

2. How long does the dotp last?

3. What is the main difference between Marxists and anarchists? (if you can please explain in as little words as possible)

4. What are the differences between property, whats the difference between owning a dog and owning a farm?

5. How long would the labor credit system last?

6. If you had super powers how would you start the socialist revolution tomorrow?

7. Do you believe we need too burn churches?

[tuwix]

gotta bunch of questions feel free too answer one, two, or all of them


1. How important is honesty, is deception a good quality, and should you deceive people if your honesty, might be considered deception?


But important for what?



2. How long does the dotp last?


It does not as far as I know, but I hope it will last forever. However, after some time it just won't be even noticed.



3. What is the main difference between Marxists and anarchists? (if you can please explain in as little words as possible)


Attitude towards a state. Anarchists want to dismantle a state firstly and Marx wanted after some time.



4. What are the differences between property, whats the difference between owning a dog and owning a farm?


Usually both listed properties are form of personal property. And anarchists and communists aren't against it. We are against a private property which means a property that is used to exploit another man.


5. How long would the labor credit system last?


I hope it won't be ever introduced, for example, because it's just another form of money IMHO.


6. If you had super powers how would you start the socialist revolution tomorrow?


I'd just abolish capitalism. :)



7. Do you believe we need too burn churches?

I don't want who do you mean by 'we' but I don't think that anyone on this forum want to burn any church.

[willowtooth]

But important for what?



It does not as far as I know, but I hope it will last forever. However, after some time it just won't be even noticed.



Attitude towards a state. Anarchists want to dismantle a state firstly and Marx wanted after some time.



Usually both listed properties are form of personal property. And anarchists and communists aren't against it. We are against a private property which means a property that is used to exploit another man.


I hope it won't be ever introduced, for example, because it's just another form of money IMHO.


I'd just abolish capitalism. :)



I don't want who do you mean by 'we' but I don't think that anyone on this forum want to burn any church.

thanks for the response!:)

im trying to convert a freind of mine and he's being a bit stubborn, and has thrown out some brainteasers. I asked the question about honesty just in general, as a human quality, nothing in particular to do with communism.

my question about churches should be better worded as: how should we abolish all religions, and why?

[Zoop]

Just to elaborate on the property question:

It's important to make a distinction between possession and property. Property is used to control and exploit others. Possessions are things you own but do not use to control and exploit others. Possession is rooted in the concept of use-rights, while private property, or just property, is rooted in a divorce between the users and ownership.

So, if you occupy and use a house, that house is yours. If you own a house, but rent it out to others, thus extracting a profit from them, the house becomes a form of property.

Under anarchist-communism, there will exist a combination of individual and common possession/ownership.

Hope that clears things up regarding property. It's an important concept to understand.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

1. How important is honesty, is deception a good quality, and should you deceive people if your honesty, might be considered deception?

Socialists disdain to conceal their views or lie to the class, not out of any moral qualms but because the revolution and socialist construction require a class conscious proletariat aware of its historic mission and equipped to carry it out. The proletariat doesn't need people who would lie to it - self-proclaimed Messiahs from outside the class.

If we're talking about honesty apart from political considerations, n/a morality is crock.


2. How long does the dotp last?

I would need a crystal ball to answer that.

One thing I can say is that it needs to last as little as possible - as an isolated d.o.t.p. surrounded by hostile capitalist states and forced to compete on the world market is likely to degenerate.


3. What is the main difference between Marxists and anarchists? (if you can please explain in as little words as possible)

Nominally, Marxists uphold the need for a proletarian state or semi-state during the revolutionary transition, whereas anarchists stand for the immediate abolition of the state. In practice, it's not as clear-cut as that, as we Marxists don't want a state of the old, bourgeois type, and anarchists aren't opposed to all organisation. Obviously "soviet anarchists" like Zheleznyak or Sandomirsky had the same general idea as the Bolsheviks, and Lenin was attacked by the old guard of social-democracy as an anarchist.


4. What are the differences between property, whats the difference between owning a dog and owning a farm?

Most people don't use their dog to produce commodities for the market. Although undoubtedly some - dog breeders - do. Which is not to say that any form of property or possession will survive in socialism.


5. How long would the labor credit system last?

Again, this can't be answered without some sort of crystal ball. In fact it's not given that there will be a labour credit system in place at all. This was Marx's solution to what he considered the state of the productive forces in Europe in the nineteenth century; as you can imagine, the productive forces have changed somewhat from then. I also think labour credits allow people to be a bit lazy and imagine a "socialism" that is effectively a market system with funny accounting.


6. If you had super powers how would you start the socialist revolution tomorrow?

Unless one of my powers was being the most advanced layer of the proletariat, I wouldn't.


7. Do you believe we need too burn churches?

It would be emotionally gratifying but politically counterproductive.

[Luís Henrique]

gotta bunch of questions feel free too answer one, two, or all of them

1. How important is honesty, is deception a good quality, and should you deceive people if your honesty, might be considered deception?

You should tell the truth to those entitled to know the truth. Otherwise, you shouldn't. And if you are asked on whose authority we should base such flowchart, you can quote Thomas Aquinas.


2. How long does the dotp last?

Until the bourgeoisie is destroyed as a class (no, it doesn't mean taking them, individually, to the paredón; it means abolishing the relations that make them bourgeois).


3. What is the main difference between Marxists and anarchists? (if you can please explain in as little words as possible)

Superficially, the issue of the State, that others have explained above. However, neither Marxists nor anarchists are monolythic blocs. Generally, Marxists do not have dellusions in the possibility of restoring a situation in which each worker would receive the full products of his/her work; and anarchists do not have dellusions about State property being a first step in the direction of the abolition of property at large.


4. What are the differences between property, whats the difference between owning a dog and owning a farm?

The important difference is between the private property of means of production, and personal property of objects of consumption. Rule of thumb, if your friend is scared that we would make his toothbrush a collective property, no, we won't. If your friend wants to keep his toothbrush factory, no, he won't be allowed to keep it as his property.


5. How long would the labor credit system last?

As Xhar-Xhar Binks says, we shouldn't have a "cryptocurrency", ie, something that we pretend is not a currency, but in fact is (see under "Soviet Union" for details on why this is a bad idea). As long as we need money as a means of exchange, we should use money; as soon as we can get rid of it, we should get rid of it.

Part of the task of the DotP is exactly to put an end to currency.


6. If you had super powers how would you start the socialist revolution tomorrow?

The socialist revolution is either the collective work of the working class, or it is a farce. And having superpowers would probably change completely your worldviews, so I suppose someone with superpowers would not be interested in a socialist revolution either.


7. Do you believe we need too burn churches?

No, by no means. Those that are works of art should be turned into museums or similar institutions as the religious organisations that use them gradually fade into inexistence. Those that aren't should be either turned into general purpose public buildings, or orderly dismantled to make room for more useful constructions.

(Of course, "not burning churches" shouldn't be understood as a metaphysical principle, either: if there is a civil war, and churches become, out of the actions of our enemies, militarily valid targets, they shouldn't be spared out of non-political and non-military considerations.)

Luís Henrique

[The Idler]

Ian Birchall said about his time in the SWP 'Any revolutionary knows that lying is sometimes justified. The problem is who is being lied to.'
I prefer Marx 'The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.'