Sports. How do they work under communist doctrin.

[ahhh_money_is_comfort]

How does sports work under communist doctrine?

I don't imagine people will play soccer and keep a score. There has to be a winner and a losser in competitive sports. This kind of goes against the communist idealism of classless.

Why is this important? The behavior in sports competition is also the same behavior in businesses that compeat for profit.

Seems like if the spirt to compeat in sports is alive and well, then the spirt to compeat for profit is also alive an well.

[RedAnarchist]

People in communist societies will still play sports for health and entertainment purposes. The score isnt important, as sports encourage people to work together as well as giving them exercise. And they are good fun too! :D

Idealism? Communism is not meant to be a Utopia, so a ideal Communist society cannot exist, surely?

[PRC-UTE]

Personally can't stomach anarchist soccer and the like. I like competition, the intensity of representing your neighborhood/town/village/county/country and competing. I think it's taken too far and I would like to see the entire sports world be non-profit like the GAA, but I don't like the non-competitive hippie stuff.

[STI]

Sports competition is fine. Because, really, in a communist society, it wouldn't bloody matter who won outside of the game. Sure, there might be leagues and tournaments and winners and champions and such, but they won't be getting "endorsement contracts" and "prize money" and all that sport-destroying nonsense. They'd play their hardest because they love the fuck out of their sport and they want to win as an end to itself. Just like any good sportsman/sportswoman.

[NovelGentry]

I don't imagine people will play soccer and keep a score. There has to be a winner and a losser in competitive sports. This kind of goes against the communist idealism of classless.

What the hell does this have to do with classes?


Why is this important? The behavior in sports competition is also the same behavior in businesses that compeat for profit.

Unless you're the Brazilian soccer team, losing at sports doesn't mean the end of your life, losing at capitalism can and does for many.


Seems like if the spirt to compeat in sports is alive and well, then the spirt to compeat for profit is also alive an well.

There is a spirit of competition under communism, but unlike under capitalism failing to do well in that competition will not deprive you of food, a home, clothing, etc. I know this comes up a lot, but please look at the open source software world, for which you have a lot of examples of competing products, but all of those products are still distributed free and are accessible to all. Competing to make the most money does not always equal competing to make the best product. So under communism you're more likely to see an altruistic form of competition, one which is built on the general desire to make something the best it can be and as such truly help people. Sports will be much the same way, in that teams will compete for the love of the game and have a lot more team loyalty than you currently see in "professional sports." Yes, there will be winners, there will be losers, just like there will be good headache medicines, and not so good ones. The nature of winning and losing doesn't change, only the nature of how that relates to your social situation/class.

[cheka]

losing at capitalism can and does for many.

Generalized, stereotypical, and uneducated. The people losing at capitalism comes to 1/10000 of the people that would lose to a communist upheaval. Face it, if people really wanted classlessness, communism would have support of the masses, plain and simple. "Educating" them will only push them farther from Marxist theory.

[RedAnarchist]

Teaching them about something will make them reject it? Whats your idea of education - forcing them to either learn it or be shot? <_<

[Pawn Power]

There will be no professional sports teams, but people will paricipate in intermurL sports and will organize teams and leagues, which will be competative. I do not see a problem with keeping score our having tordament winners.


Yes, there will be winners, there will be losers, just like there will be good headache medicines, and not so good ones.
Why would society produce a headach medicine that is not so good if we can produce one that is better?

[Rasta Sapian]

sports will not change that is for sure, did the USSR or the peoples republic of China (communist nations) stop playing sports, I don&#39;t think so&#33;

They excelled in the olympics and placed alot of resources and funding into their atheletes.

People will always remain competitive regardless of their nations political regime.

[Pawn Power]

sports will not change that is for sure, did the USSR or the peoples republic of China (communist nations) stop playing sports, I don&#39;t think so&#33;

They were not true communist nations

[Karl Marx's Camel]

Sports, like in any society, is good.

The people in Cuba are very healthy, and are encouraged to join sports. I see no problem with competition in a socialist, nor in a communist society.

[YKTMX]

Anyone who thinks we can get rid of "competition" in the economy but still keep it in wider society is nuts.

[comrade_mufasa]

Capitalist are not trying to be competitive they are being greedy. a sports player who is passionate about the game is not trying to be better then the opponent they are trying to be the best of themselves thats why one plays the hardest. also, to say that people will no longer look at scores of a game in a communist society is stupid

[YKTMX]

Capitalist are not trying to be competitive they are being greedy

No, no. This is a common mistake. Capitalists aren&#39;t "greedy" because it&#39;s in their genes. It&#39;s because the drive for profits crucial to the system means they have to compete with other capitalists. This is economics, not psychology.


, to say that people will no longer look at scores of a game in a communist society is stupid

It may seem "stupid" to you but that&#39;s because you still believe the ideology that is promoted in society which says that competiton is "natural" and "healthy".

[Karl Marx's Camel]

Anyone who thinks we can get rid of "competition" in the economy but still keep it in wider society is nuts.


Are you saying we should abolish sports like boxing and bodybuilding?

[YKTMX]

We wouldn&#39;t "abolish" anything but the compulsion to "do them" would be gone.

[comrade_mufasa]

Originally posted by [email protected] 27 2004, 05:25 PM

, to say that people will no longer look at scores of a game in a communist society is stupid

It may seem "stupid" to you but that&#39;s because you still believe the ideology that is promoted in society which says that competiton is "natural" and "healthy".
i think you do not relize that there are many sports that we have now that were not created with capitalist mind sets. Lecoruse was a game created by the native americans and the paid very close attention to the score of the game. to bad the game has turned into a rich white man&#39;s football :(

[redstar2000]

Originally posted by cheka
The people losing at capitalism comes to 1/10000 of the people that would lose to a communist upheaval.

A perfect example of what passes for "intelligent debate" in this forum.

And ample justification for why the pro-capitalists will never be allowed in the rest of the board.

:redstar2000:

The Redstar2000 Papers (http://www.redstar2000papers.fightcapitalism.net)
A site about communist ideas

[NovelGentry]

Face it, if people really wanted classlessness, communism would have support of the masses, plain and simple. "Educating" them will only push them farther from Marxist theory.

This has little to do with what people want. Capitalism is not sustainable and in the end it will be replaced. The question has never been do we "want" communism. Whether most people want it or not at this current time in history will make little difference when the productive forces outgrow the current system.

[NovelGentry]

Why would society produce a headach medicine that is not so good if we can produce one that is better?

We shouldn&#39;t, at least not indefinitely. But there are certain periods of technological advancement where old technology and new technology overlap. More to the point, that does not mean people won&#39;t. Some people think Tylenol works better than Advil, I myself find Motrin works better than all of them. What do you think? If there is some cause for it&#39;s existence, even if that cause is that not everyone likes the same thing, then it may very well exist. Should we only have one kind of Cola too?

[Urban Rubble]

We wouldn&#39;t "abolish" anything but the compulsion to "do them" would be gone.

That&#39;s the most ridiculous thing I&#39;ve ever heard in my life.

So little kids aren&#39;t going to play games of kickball ? When we were kids we kept score sometimes. The loser wasn&#39;t ridiculed, it just makes it funner to try and win with your team. It&#39;s a fucking game, there is a big difference between games and the kind of competition we see in Capitalist society.

[PRC-UTE]

&#39;Competition&#39; doesn&#39;t exist under capitalism; if it did it would be bedlam. People are born into their lot in life. If workers who had to struggle for everything competed with those fat rich poshos they&#39;d win no doubt.

Competition between teams is good and a great way to bond. I coach GAA football and couldn&#39;t imagine not taking it seriously. Sure, many people take sports too far, but it is a good thing to compete fairly. I encourage everyone and try to nurture their abilities, I don&#39;t put them down.

Sports far predate the existence of capitalism and competition anyway. Historians have claimed that hurling was played in Ireland in 3000BC&#33;

Don&#39;t you think communes will want to compete in a post-communist society? Sure they will, and it will sharpen their abilities and keep things interesting.

[Pawn Power]

We shouldn&#39;t, at least not indefinitely. But there are certain periods of technological advancement where old technology and new technology overlap. More to the point, that does not mean people won&#39;t. Some people think Tylenol works better than Advil, I myself find Motrin works better than all of them. What do you think? If there is some cause for it&#39;s existence, even if that cause is that not everyone likes the same thing, then it may very well exist. Should we only have one kind of Cola too?

We are on the same page, variations goods that have support and that people want them will be produced but there will not be the great excess of varieties that we see under capitalism. There is no need for 40 different tooth pastes.

[encephalon]

you are equating simple competetion, as in sports or chess or video games, to what one finds under capitalism. There is a difference between exploitation and competition. One team is not subjugated to the other&#39;s whim. The losing team doesn&#39;t have to endure a lifetime of poverty while the winning team meambers dine their respective lives away.

If sports ran like capitalism, then the losing team would do the winning team&#39;s laundry for eternity, while the winning team kept on playing and enjoying their life.. that is, until the losing team gets fed up and revolts. But that would take a long time, if most members of the losing team are convinced by the referees (who would probably be the real capitalists) that the rules are human nature and cannot be changed.

Communism does not aim to supress individual achievment, nor rid of friendly competition. Actually, it would make more sense to say that communists would prefer the method of competition that exists in sports to that of capitalism, where each member is partaking in the activity for pleasure, as an equal, not from force or to simply stay alive.

[praxus]

Communism does not aim to supress individual achievment, nor rid of friendly competition. Actually, it would make more sense to say that communists would prefer the method of competition that exists in sports to that of capitalism, where each member is partaking in the activity for pleasure, as an equal, not from force or to simply stay alive.

Capitalism bans the initiation of force, but hey don&#39;t let that minor detail get in the way of your glorius revolution&#33; Afterall you can always ignore and supress the facts of reality&#33;

You mean that people have to work and produce in order to live? Do you honestly beleive that people as a whole wouldn&#39;t have to work and produce to stay alive in any economic system?

See this is the root of your problem, you don&#39;t have a problem with Capitalism, although you claim it every day of your life, no you have a problem with reality. In order to live and further your life, it is a requirment of reality for you to work and produce, if you choose not to you will live only by others good graces.

[redstar2000]

Originally posted by praxus
Capitalism bans the initiation of force...

The Ludlow Massacre (http://www.umwa.org/history/ludlow.shtml)


In order to live and further your life, it is a requirement of reality for you to work and produce, if you choose not to you will live only by others good graces.

There is nothing in "reality" that I know of that "requires" us to support a swollen blood-sucking class of thugs and thieves.

And the time will come when the whole world will refuse to do so.

:redstar2000:

The Redstar2000 Papers (http://www.redstar2000papers.fightcapitalism.net)
A site about communist ideas

[ahhh_money_is_comfort]

Originally posted by [email protected] 27 2004, 04:20 PM
[quote]I don&#39;t imagine people will play soccer and keep a score. There has to be a winner and a losser in competitive sports. This kind of goes against the communist idealism of classless.

What the hell does this have to do with classes?



If I beat you, I&#39;m better than you.

[NovelGentry]

If I beat you, I&#39;m better than you.

Maybe so, but in sports it puts you in no position to settle the existence of another human being. In Capitalism in order to make money you have to take it from someone else, if you beat me in soccer you&#39;re not stealing any of my skills or my ability to play the game again.

This gets particularly foolish when you look at how Marxist classes are defined, which have little to do with someone being "better than" someone else. In fact, nothing makes the bourgeoisie better than the working class, there&#39;s a whole lot that makes them worse, what gives them the position on top is their prexisting wealth which has been passed on since the days of nobility and royals. It&#39;s like you&#39;re playing a game of basketball and I&#39;m never allowed to get the ball unless I do a task that takes the entire game to complete. You will win every time, because only you have the ball until I complete that task, and I will never complete that task within the span of the game. A member of the working class never has the ball, and in order to try and get the ball they more often than not work their entire lives until the day they die.

[Karl Marx's Camel]

wouldn&#39;t "abolish" anything but the compulsion to "do them" would be gone.



The problem isn&#39;t competition: It&#39;s capitalism.

If you even think of discouraging sports based on your political ideology, you are in my opinion not only dogmatic, but intolerant and extremely dangerous.

It&#39;s like the Chinese banning the violin because it was "bourgeoisie".

[ahhh_money_is_comfort]

Originally posted by [email protected] 28 2004, 06:30 AM

If I beat you, I&#39;m better than you.

Maybe so, but in sports it puts you in no position to settle the existence of another human being. In Capitalism in order to make money you have to take it from someone else, if you beat me in soccer you&#39;re not stealing any of my skills or my ability to play the game again.

This gets particularly foolish when you look at how Marxist classes are defined, which have little to do with someone being "better than" someone else. In fact, nothing makes the bourgeoisie better than the working class, there&#39;s a whole lot that makes them worse, what gives them the position on top is their prexisting wealth which has been passed on since the days of nobility and royals. It&#39;s like you&#39;re playing a game of basketball and I&#39;m never allowed to get the ball unless I do a task that takes the entire game to complete. You will win every time, because only you have the ball until I complete that task, and I will never complete that task within the span of the game. A member of the working class never has the ball, and in order to try and get the ball they more often than not work their entire lives until the day they die.
If we beat you we better than you. We as a team are a class above you.

It is not just soccer.

Intelligence.

Good looking people.

Anything people measure themselves against other people.

The idea of people better than other people is going to be so prevasive in so many aspects of society.

So then sports is just the tip of the iceberg. This is the basis of class divisions. Someone is better than someone else.

[Professor Moneybags]

Originally posted by [email protected] 28 2004, 01:10 AM
People are born into their lot in life.
I&#39;mm sure Bill Gates would disagree with you.

[Professor Moneybags]

The Ludlow Massacre (http://www.umwa.org/history/ludlow.shtml)

Oh no. He&#39;s dragging that pathetic straw man out of the closet again.


There is nothing in "reality" that I know of that "requires" us to support a swollen blood-sucking class of thugs and thieves.

And the time will come when the whole world will refuse to do so.

You will be in trouble then, won&#39;t you ?

[Professor Moneybags]

In Capitalism in order to make money you have to take it from someone else,

False premise/non sequitur. Where was all the money we see today during the stone age ?

If the "static wealth theory" was correct, each and every one of us should be roughly 600000 times poorer than the average caveman.

[PRC-UTE]

prof moneyhag,

you can&#39;t use an example that defies the norm to disprove me. That doesn&#39;t work in science or basic logic.

Bill gates is a lazy ***** who made money of a publicly created technology. So I don&#39;t even see what he did to earn his way, anymore than any capitalist pos.

[NovelGentry]

If we beat you we better than you. We as a team are a class above you.

It is not just soccer.

Intelligence.

Good looking people.

Anything people measure themselves against other people.

The idea of people better than other people is going to be so prevasive in so many aspects of society.

So then sports is just the tip of the iceberg. This is the basis of class divisions. Someone is better than someone else.

No, and you are a fool if you think that&#39;s what classes are.

[Professor Moneybags]

Originally posted by [email protected] 28 2004, 02:02 PM
prof moneyhag,

you can&#39;t use an example that defies the norm to disprove me. That doesn&#39;t work in science or basic logic.

It doesn&#39;t defy the "norm" (whatever that is).


Bill gates is a lazy ***** who made money of a publicly created technology.

There is no such thing as publicly created technology; I certainly didn&#39;t play any part in developing it, did you ?

[NovelGentry]

False premise/non sequitur. Where was all the money we see today during the stone age ?

If the "static wealth theory" was correct, each and every one of us should be roughly 600000 times poorer than the average caveman.

It&#39;s not about static wealth. One of the primary means by which Marx defines capital is accumulated labor. As time progresses the accumulated labor of man always increases (unless no one works). The general wealth of the world can move forward, while the wealth of the individual stands completely still.

What has been done under capitalism (and yes, other systems aswell) is the theft of natural resources, which in turn makes commodity. Forcing other men to WORK for access to these natural resources (including land alone so that they may create the food they need to survive). Money was perhaps not the best word for me to use. Indeed money can be infinitely created, if you want your dollar to be worth shit.

Within the context of our individual relationships, however, theft is an every day occurance. What was produce is consitently worth more than we are paid, as such the general wealth of the world can increase massively. I have a car, for example. In my lifetime, with my labor, I could have probably produced a lot of cars -- yet I am unable to even afford the one without taking out a loan. Has someone not stolen some of my labor time? No? Well where did it go? If indeed my life could have created thus far, more products than I can even say I own (assuming I had the means of production in my hands), and yet I don&#39;t own anything, where did my labor time go? What have I gained from my work?

So no maybe you&#39;ll say, well YES, but you said "assuming you had the means of production." Well who made the means of production? workers. Who made the means for those means? workers. Feudal nobility could build their wealth on "natural" right alone, that they somehow were worth more than the peasants because of their nobility. It has created the wealth of generations to follow under capitalism. And the entire wealth of man has undergone shifts, and yet it has failed to truly shift into the control of those that bared it into existence.

[praxus]

The Ludlow Massacre (http://www.umwa.org/history/ludlow.shtml)


So any murders that happen under a semi-capitalist system are automaticly the fault of Capitalism? Could you explain this logic for me?


There is nothing in "reality" that I know of that "requires" us to support a swollen blood-sucking class of thugs and thieves.

And the time will come when the whole world will refuse to do so.

How about you answer the question, you just completly diverted it to something where you wrongly feel to have the moral highground. Then of course you are commiting the logical fallacy of Begging the Question (yet again).

Then of course you reject the idea of private ownership, but yet you insist on calling Capitalists "theives", may I ask why? If no body owns anything in your communist world how can anyone thieve something? Furthermore how can you declare that when someone of their own volition trades his labor for money he is being exploited? The only thing forcing him to work is reality.


It&#39;s not about static wealth. One of the primary means by which Marx defines capital is accumulated labor. As time progresses the accumulated labor of man always increases (unless no one works). The general wealth of the world can move forward, while the wealth of the individual stands completely still.

How about you examine reality and realize that Marx was wrong?

[redstar2000]

Originally posted by praxus
So any murders that happen under a semi-capitalist system are automatically the fault of Capitalism? Could you explain this logic for me?

Sure.

1. You asserted that the initiation of force was "banned" by capitalism.

2. I gave you an example (from 1915&#33;) of the initiation of force by capitalists.

3. Remember, this is back in the era of "unregulated capitalism"...much "purer" in your eyes than what exists now.

4. Therefore, you are empirically wrong.

Q.E.D.


Then of course you reject the idea of private ownership, but yet you insist on calling Capitalists "thieves", may I ask why?

That question does not admit of a "short answer". You must actually study the history of particular business enterprises.

"Thievery" is the mildest word to describe their activities.


Furthermore how can you declare that when someone of their own volition trades his labor for money he is being exploited? The only thing forcing him to work is reality.

Yes, but it&#39;s not reality in the abstract that&#39;s doing the forcing...it&#39;s a particular historical reality (capitalism) that&#39;s telling him he must labor for another&#39;s profit or give up eating.

That doesn&#39;t meet, in my view, any reasonable definition of the phrase "of their own volition".

:redstar2000:

The Redstar2000 Papers (http://www.redstar2000papers.fightcapitalism.net)
A site about communist ideas

[comrade_mufasa]

Originally posted by [email protected] 28 2004, 08:24 AM
If we beat you we better than you. We as a team are a class above you.
this is until next week were we have a better game plan or we trained our passing technique more. you see this is the diffrence between sport and capitalism. in sports the people on top are only as good as thier last win. in capitalism the people on top always win. capitalism is only compitition if you are on level with the winning team but the winning team is never going to let you rise up to be at thier level so one will never compete.

[praxus]

Sure.

1. You asserted that the initiation of force was "banned" by capitalism.

2. I gave you an example (from 1915&#33;) of the initiation of force by capitalists.

3. Remember, this is back in the era of "unregulated capitalism"...much "purer" in your eyes than what exists now.

4. Therefore, you are empirically wrong.

Capitalism the social, political, and economic system (in the Laissiez Faire sense of the word) does ban the Initiation of force, period. Just because someone who happens to own capital initiates force does not mean by any stretch of reality that Capitalism (Laissiez Faire) is responsible for it.

An example of what your doing is like this...

1.) You asserted that drugs are banned in the United States.

2.) I gave you an example of people doing drugs in the United States during the ban.

3.) Therefore, there is no ban.

But this is of course assuming the United States was a [pure] Capitalist country in the 19th Century, they weren&#39;t.



That question does not admit of a "short answer". You must actually study the history of particular business enterprises.

"Thievery" is the mildest word to describe their activities.

Why don&#39;t you answer the question?


Yes, but it&#39;s not reality in the abstract that&#39;s doing the forcing...it&#39;s a particular historical reality (capitalism) that&#39;s telling him he must labor for another&#39;s profit or give up eating.

That doesn&#39;t meet, in my view, any reasonable definition of the phrase "of their own volition".

So again you reject the idea that people as a whole in order to stay alive in any economic system have to work and be productive?

The capitalists(in the sense of someone who owns Capital) can not legally force someone at gun point to work for them (in a Laissiez Faire society). Therefore the only thing "forcing" them to work is the fact that they must work and be productive if they are to stay alive. This is metaphysical force, which is something completely different then physical force and coercion.

[redstar2000]

Originally posted by praxus
Therefore the only thing "forcing" them to work is the fact that they must work and be productive if they are to stay alive. This is metaphysical force, which is something completely different then physical force and coercion.

Ah, hunger is "metaphysical".

Knowing that, I&#39;m off to eat an imaginary pizza. :lol:

:redstar2000:

The Redstar2000 Papers (http://www.redstar2000papers.fightcapitalism.net)
A site about communist ideas

[praxus]

Metaphysics is the study of the nature of reality. Therefor "force" in the metaphysical sense is reality "forcing" you to do something in order to stay alive (because man as such has a specific nature). This as opposed to someone actually threatening or using physical force or coercian against you. The first is unchanging, and therefor occurs in every economic system. The later however is banned in only one system, that is Laissiez Faire, which sets man free from man, and thus allows him to live.

I can tell however that you have no interest in a serius debate.

[NovelGentry]

How about you examine reality and realize that Marx was wrong?

So you don&#39;t believe that capital has the aspect of it that it is comprised of accumulated labor... and you don&#39;t believe the wealth of the world moves forward with time, that is to say, you don&#39;t think the accumulated labor of the past effects the labor of today? So the man who made the wheel barrel... his accumulated labor in no way effects the labor of the person who&#39;s using it?

Saying Marx is wrong doesn&#39;t do much to show me that he is. Can you not at all accept that commodities of all types are the products of the labor of men? If so, how is this not an aspect?

[NovelGentry]

Also, what does a socio-economic system have anything to do with the initiation of physical force? Why do you in any way feel that this force reigns free in communism?

[Professor Moneybags]

What has been done under capitalism (and yes, other systems aswell) is the theft of natural resources, which in turn makes commodity.

Theft from whom ? Natural resources are not the primary centre of commodities.


Forcing other men to WORK for access to these natural resources (including land alone so that they may create the food they need to survive).

Forced ? Do we really need to go through this again ?


Within the context of our individual relationships, however, theft is an every day occurance. What was produce is consitently worth more than we are paid, as such the general wealth of the world can increase massively. I have a car, for example. In my lifetime, with my labor, I could have probably produced a lot of cars -- yet I am unable to even afford the one without taking out a loan. Has someone not stolen some of my labor time? No? Well where did it go? If indeed my life could have created thus far, more products than I can even say I own (assuming I had the means of production in my hands), and yet I don&#39;t own anything, where did my labor time go? What have I gained from my work?

Whatever you traded it for.


So no maybe you&#39;ll say, well YES, but you said "assuming you had the means of production." Well who made the means of production? workers.


Who made the means for those means? workers.

Erm. No. Totally false and a circular argument. Why is necessary that the workers seize the means of production if they created them ? Why are they not still in control of them, if they created them ? Why can they not just build more ? The answer of couse it that they never were and they can&#39;t. There was no cabal.


Feudal nobility could build their wealth on "natural" right alone, that they somehow were worth more than the peasants because of their nobility. It has created the wealth of generations to follow under capitalism.

This is a false anology. Feudal nobility siezed weath by force- literally. Most of the people who you call Capitalists did not. They created it. That&#39;s why conditions never improved for millenia.

[NovelGentry]

Theft from whom ? Natural resources are not the primary centre of commodities.

Well this is indicative of the point. They belong to no one, but "owning" land and not letting anyone else live on it or grow food on it would give you the ability to subjugate their labor for the "right" to do so.


Forced ? Do we really need to go through this again ?

Apparently if you can&#39;t grasp the concept of how people&#39;s labor can be subjugated by this.


Whatever you traded it for.

So we should all just die rather than take part in the capitalist mode of production? or a feudal mode of production? The agreement to exchange our labor for something less than what it produces is NOT an option. They have the means, we do not, what ever gave them the right to exclusively hold those means?


Erm. No. Totally false and a circular argument. Why is necessary that the workers seize the means of production if they created them ? Why are they not still in control of them, if they created them ? Why can they not just build more ? The answer of couse it that they never were and they can&#39;t.

Right, but before any of this industrialization the "means of production" included land. Land has been acquired at gunpoint and knife/swordpoint throughout history. From these points on production has spread into other forms, but those were certainly the first methods to secure a working force who is exploited, and the working class has been exploited ever since. From the days of slavery on up, the forced control of the original means has led to the control of the current means. It is about CLASS struggle, and it&#39;s position throughout history, not about the individual struggle of a single man.


This is a false anology. Feudal nobility siezed weath by force- literally. Most of the people who you call Capitalists did not. They created it. That&#39;s why conditions never improved for millenia.

Many of the first capitalists who maintained control of production were born out of these classes who owned the means of production prior. And this is false in many ways, conditions did improve throughout the millenia before, simply not at the rapid rate they have under capitalism (this is attributed to the technological advancements and new means of production). Systems have historically outgrown themselves.

[praxus]

So you don&#39;t believe that capital has the aspect of it that it is comprised of accumulated labor... and you don&#39;t believe the wealth of the world moves forward with time, that is to say, you don&#39;t think the accumulated labor of the past effects the labor of today? So the man who made the wheel barrel... his accumulated labor in no way effects the labor of the person who&#39;s using it?

No it absolutely does not move foward with time absent from the economic system. Would you argue that people were better off during the dark ages then they were in Athens during their Golden Age?


Also, what does a socio-economic system have anything to do with the initiation of physical force? Why do you in any way feel that this force reigns free in communism?

So shooting innocent people for trading money in exchange for other people&#39;s labor isn&#39;t the innitiation of force to you? The Capitalist didn&#39;t initiate force against the laborer so the laborer certainly isn&#39;t retaliating. The only thing forcing him to work is the fact that he must in order to survive, and in Capitalism you have no right to loot and pillage if you don&#39;t want to be productive, like you do in Communism.

If I have a "right" to have my "needs" fulfilled under Communism then what way do you achieve them if not by trade? The answer is BY INITIATING FORCE.

[Elect Marx]

This is getting old; how long are you going to post these pointless questions? You obviously have the ability to do better.
I know you are a capitalist and all but that doesn&#39;t mean you should waste your potential and maybe you might even learn something useful.

[praxus]

A complaint is not an argument, how about you try again.

[PRC-UTE]

Damn, capitalists are an intellectually impoverished group. You have to explain simple words like &#39;public&#39;, &#39;coercion&#39;, &#39;metaphysical&#39; just to have a conversation with them. :lol:

[encephalon]

Originally posted by Professor Moneybags+Dec 28 2004, 01:49 PM--> (Professor Moneybags @ Dec 28 2004, 01:49 PM)
[email protected] 28 2004, 01:10 AM
People are born into their lot in life.
I&#39;mm sure Bill Gates would disagree with you. [/b]
bill gates was born into wealth. Read a biography, for fuck&#39;s sake.

[encephalon]

Originally posted by [email protected] 28 2004, 02:13 AM






Capitalism bans the initiation of force, but hey don&#39;t let that minor detail get in the way of your glorius revolution&#33; Afterall you can always ignore and supress the facts of reality&#33;

Capitalism bans the initiation of force no more than any other model. Opposition is banned, not force. Opposition is always banned, and in fact dealt with through force.


You mean that people have to work and produce in order to live? Do you honestly beleive that people as a whole wouldn&#39;t have to work and produce to stay alive in any economic system?

I did not claim once that nobody would have to partake in labor. The basic difference is who reaps the benefits of labor. I would seriously suggest reading Marx if you plan on attacking his theory further.


See this is the root of your problem, you don&#39;t have a problem with Capitalism, although you claim it every day of your life, no you have a problem with reality. In order to live and further your life, it is a requirment of reality for you to work and produce, if you choose not to you will live only by others good graces.

see above. Read marx if you want to make a real criticism of his work. You might want to actually know an ounce of political philosophy as well. Oh, and Capitalism&#33; You should probably brush up on how it works.

It&#39;s disturbing to see people attack something they know absolutely nothing about. You can&#39;t even form a cogent argument. You just berate people and hope the rest of the world doesn&#39;t notice.

[encephalon]

One would think it be a pre-requisite of being a capitalist to actually know how capitalism works. Even well-known economists who support capitalism know its basic nature, and fully agree with marx on most points. Adam smith, the great hero of capitalism, knew that labor was the source of all wealth, even. If you&#39;re going to support an inherently flawed and exploitative system, then by all means do so. But don&#39;t try to make it out to be something it isn&#39;t just so you feel better about yourself.

And, since the term has already been misused here, I&#39;m assuming that you have a knowledge of logical fallacies, but not a working knowledge.

http://www.datanation.com/fallacies/index.htm

[praxus]

Damn, capitalists are an intellectually impoverished group. You have to explain simple words like &#39;public&#39;, &#39;coercion&#39;, &#39;metaphysical&#39; just to have a conversation with them. laugh.gif

Actually I was the one who had to define what I meant by metaphysical coercion. The stupid commie who was talking to me was to busy talking about imaginary pizzas.



Capitalism bans the initiation of force no more than any other model. Opposition is banned, not force. Opposition is always banned, and in fact dealt with through force.

The nature of Capitalism is that it bans the initiation of force and fraud. That is it&#39;s defining characteristic.


I did not claim once that nobody would have to partake in labor. The basic difference is who reaps the benefits of labor. I would seriously suggest reading Marx if you plan on attacking his theory further.

This has nothing to do with what I said. We are talking about the fact that if you don&#39;t work and be productive you will die unless someone who is productive keeps you alive, either through his own volition or through you forcing him. Someone said that the laborers are forced to work because of the nature of the system of Capitalism. I refuted that by saying that they are "forced" to work by the nature of reality and that in any system people must work and be productive if they are to survive. This is a fact, no amount of reading Karl Marx would change it.


see above. Read marx if you want to make a real criticism of his work. You might want to actually know an ounce of political philosophy as well. Oh, and Capitalism&#33; You should probably brush up on how it works.

It&#39;s disturbing to see people attack something they know absolutely nothing about. You can&#39;t even form a cogent argument. You just berate people and hope the rest of the world doesn&#39;t notice.

Trying to insult my intelligence does not amount to an argument.

[redstar2000]

Originally posted by praxus
Metaphysics is the study of the nature of reality.

That&#39;s one of the traditional academic definitions.

There&#39;s a lot more to it than that...

METAPHYSICS:
MULTIPLE MEANINGS (http://websyte.com/alan/metamul.htm)

In common usage, it means "imaginary"...that which is "beyond physics".

Hence my reference to eating an "imaginary pizza" to satisfy my "metaphysical hunger".


I can tell however that you have no interest in a serious debate.

Funny, I have the same impression of you.

:redstar2000:

The Redstar2000 Papers (http://www.redstar2000papers.fightcapitalism.net)
A site about communist ideas

[encephalon]

Originally posted by [email protected] 29 2004, 02:21 AM



see above. Read marx if you want to make a real criticism of his work. You might want to actually know an ounce of political philosophy as well. Oh, and Capitalism&#33; You should probably brush up on how it works.

It&#39;s disturbing to see people attack something they know absolutely nothing about. You can&#39;t even form a cogent argument. You just berate people and hope the rest of the world doesn&#39;t notice.



The nature of Capitalism is that it bans the initiation of force and fraud. That is it&#39;s defining characteristic.

No, the defining characteristic of Capitalism is the accumulation of Capital. You couldn&#39;t possibly be saying that force nor fraud exist today, could you? And you are complaining about reality?


This has nothing to do with what I said. We are talking about the fact that if you don&#39;t work and be productive you will die unless someone who is productive keeps you alive, either through his own volition or through you forcing him. Someone said that the laborers are forced to work because of the nature of the system of Capitalism. I refuted that by saying that they are "forced" to work by the nature of reality and that in any system people must work and be productive if they are to survive. This is a fact, no amount of reading Karl Marx would change it.

People are forced to work by the nature of reality, yes, but they are also forced to work by the nature of the system as well, in ways by which their labor benefits . By saying "well everyone has to work" you are avoiding the argument. The argument is over the nature of capitalism or the nature of socialism, not the nature of labor in general.


Trying to insult my intelligence does not amount to an argument.

Indeed, it is not. Nor was I attempting to do so. I&#39;m simply stating that you have no idea what you&#39;re even criticizing on a regular basis, and if you did you&#39;d be able to form a much better argument. Arguing against something you have not actively studied is not only bad form, it&#39;s bad debate. You could easily reply to your own criticism of marxism if you simply looked into it. You could also find much better arguments against his economic theory that are much harder to dismiss.

Anyone who claims to oppose capitalism seriously, based on rational procedure rather than emotional, knows very well the ins ands outs of it. They would have no rational basis for their distaste of capitalism if not. The only way you can rationally object to anything is by knowing what it is, not because you simply accept something else that conflicts with it. That is the realm of religion, not philospohy.

[Exploited Class]

Originally posted by [email protected] 27 2004, 10:36 PM

[QUOTE]I don&#39;t imagine people will play soccer and keep a score. There has to be a winner and a losser in competitive sports. This kind of goes against the communist idealism of classless.

What the hell does this have to do with classes?



If I beat you, I&#39;m better than you.
Yeah we will have a new class system of people formed from sports champions. And if they beat you at one thing they will be better than you as a whole.

The spelling b champions will be better than you and form their own class.

The swimming champion will be better than you, although you beat them at long distance running (now what will you do, you both beat each other at something? How will we ever determine who is the better person?)

Yes that is how you determine who is a better person, from sports. Mother Terressa, not a better person than Brett Favre since he beat her at football.

Fucking Hell, only my 9 year old nephew would think somebody is better than somebody else just through competitive sport results.

[Professor Moneybags]

Well this is indicative of the point. They belong to no one, but "owning" land and not letting anyone else live on it or grow food on it would give you the ability to subjugate their labor for the "right" to do so.

Does that mean that you living in your house is somehow "subjucating" me because I don&#39;t have the right to use it ?


Apparently if you can&#39;t grasp the concept of how people&#39;s labor can be subjugated by this.

You can&#39;t graps concepts full stop. Especially true in your inability to tell the difference between the metaphysical and the man-made. Is the ownership of one&#39;s own labour subjucating those who do not own it ?


So we should all just die rather than take part in the capitalist mode of production? or a feudal mode of production? The agreement to exchange our labor for something less than what it produces is NOT an option.

It is.


They have the means, we do not, what ever gave them the right to exclusively hold those means?

The fact that they created those means.


Right, but before any of this industrialization the "means of production" included land. Land has been acquired at gunpoint and knife/swordpoint throughout history.

So what ? It&#39;s just that- history.


From these points on production has spread into other forms, but those were certainly the first methods to secure a working force who is exploited, and the working class has been exploited ever since.

The claims of expolitation have no validity. Work is done out of the choice to go on living to support one&#39;s self by contractual agreement i.e. by choice. It is not done by force, or being threatended with a whip or a gun.


Many of the first capitalists who maintained control of production were born out of these classes who owned the means of production prior. And this is false in many ways, conditions did improve throughout the millenia before, simply not at the rapid rate they have under capitalism (this is attributed to the technological advancements and new means of production).

These thechnological advancements are largely thanks to capitalism. It makes an inventor&#39;s life easier if his property and money are not subject to random siezure and given to some pet-group-of-the-moment.

[Professor Moneybags]

Originally posted by encephalon+Dec 29 2004, 12:35 AM--> (encephalon @ Dec 29 2004, 12:35 AM)
Originally posted by Professor [email protected] 28 2004, 01:49 PM

[email protected] 28 2004, 01:10 AM
People are born into their lot in life.
I&#39;mm sure Bill Gates would disagree with you.
bill gates was born into wealth. Read a biography, for fuck&#39;s sake. [/b]
He was born the richest man the world with 44 billion in the bank ? Where in his biography does it say that ?

[Professor Moneybags]

Originally posted by [email protected] 29 2004, 12:07 AM
Damn, capitalists are an intellectually impoverished group. You have to explain simple words like &#39;public&#39;, &#39;coercion&#39;, &#39;metaphysical&#39; just to have a conversation with them. :lol:
I don&#39;t see you explaining (or understanding) anything.

[Professor Moneybags]

Capitalism bans the initiation of force no more than any other model. Opposition is banned, not force. Opposition is always banned, and in fact dealt with through force.

Any chance you can provide quotes to back this up ? I&#39;m sure robbery, murder and rape were banned last time I checked.


It&#39;s disturbing to see people attack something they know absolutely nothing about. You can&#39;t even form a cogent argument. You just berate people and hope the rest of the world doesn&#39;t notice.

See above.

[Professor Moneybags]

Even well-known economists who support capitalism know its basic nature, and fully agree with marx on most points.

Please provide quotes to support this.

<snip the rest of the hypocritical nonsense>

[YKTMX]

Originally posted by Urban [email protected] 27 2004, 11:42 PM

We wouldn&#39;t "abolish" anything but the compulsion to "do them" would be gone.

That&#39;s the most ridiculous thing I&#39;ve ever heard in my life.

So little kids aren&#39;t going to play games of kickball ? When we were kids we kept score sometimes. The loser wasn&#39;t ridiculed, it just makes it funner to try and win with your team. It&#39;s a fucking game, there is a big difference between games and the kind of competition we see in Capitalist society.
No, there isn&#39;t. Even as children, what we view as "normal" or "good" is influenced dirctly by our upbringing. This will normally include things past on from our parents from a very early age i.e the urge to "win" or "get ahead". If it appears "natural" to you that children want to beat each other in "friendly games", at what stage in the development of a human being do they lose this natural "desire" to "win".

[Karl Marx's Camel]

For some people, competition feel natural. For others, cooperation feel natural. It&#39;s just a matter of preference.

[YKTMX]

Humans aren&#39;t born with "natural" tendencies. All emotions are the consequence of social experience.

[Karl Marx's Camel]

So, in other words, people become homosexual because of their social experiences?

[YKTMX]

Absolutely.

[Karl Marx's Camel]

Humans aren&#39;t born with "natural" tendencies.

And in other words, I am also heterosexual not because I am born like this, but because of my social experiences?



Humans aren&#39;t born with "natural" tendencies.

Hormones?

[Hate Is Art]

Seems like if the spirt to compeat in sports is alive and well, then the spirt to compeat for profit is also alive an well.

I don&#39;t see how these are related.

[Karl Marx's Camel]

Neither do I.

[YKTMX]

And in other words, I am also heterosexual not because I am born like this, but because of my social experiences?

Yes, partly.


Hormones?

We ARE born with the need for certain things. We need food, water, shelter and the need to interact with other human beings. All relationships eminate from these needs (including economic and sexual) and we are influenced by the ways in which we attempt to satisfy them.

[Professor Moneybags]

No, the defining characteristic of Capitalism is the accumulation of Capital.

This is a straw man. I&#39;m not advocating such a system and I&#39;m sure Praxus isn&#39;t either. Call what my system whatever you like; it&#39;s content won&#39;t change because you wish it to.


You couldn&#39;t possibly be saying that force nor fraud exist today, could you? And you are complaining about reality?

We&#39;re not living under capitalism now. We&#39;re living in a mixed system, a system that simultaneously supports and violates rights.


People are forced to work by the nature of reality, yes, but they are also forced to work by the nature of the system as well, in ways by which their labor benefits.

No, they are not.


By saying "well everyone has to work" you are avoiding the argument.

There was no argument. You are treating metaphysical force and man-made force as if it was the same thing.

[NovelGentry]

No it absolutely does not move foward with time absent from the economic system. Would you argue that people were better off during the dark ages then they were in Athens during their Golden Age?

It has little to do with being "better off" and a lot to do with material progression as a facet of technology and every day life. In this sense, YES, I would argue that people in the dark ages were "better off" than people in the Golden Age of Athens.


So shooting innocent people for trading money in exchange for other people&#39;s labor isn&#39;t the innitiation of force to you?

When did I say this was gonna happen? MONEY won&#39;t exist, so it should be very difficult to trade for labor. As far as the subjugation of labor through other means, inclusive of all other coersive forms, it will be a crime, and one which will more than likely leave you out of the loop of great society. If indeed the PEOPLE, believe further punishment is necessary, it&#39;s in their hands, not mine, not the states, etc.


The only thing forcing him to work is the fact that he must in order to survive, and in Capitalism you have no right to loot and pillage if you don&#39;t want to be productive, like you do in Communism.

Under communism it will be difficult to "loot" and "pillage" fellow workers. Technologically speaking the advancments necessary to make communism a reality would probably have advanced to the point that it takes very little labor, if any at all, to produce the necessities of man. Above and beyond that there&#39;s no reason to assume that someone wouldn&#39;t contribute to society under communism, in the sense of luxury. Even a simple painter contributes in a sense, and certainly his art may be much appreciated.

As far as socialism goes... it&#39;s impossible to survive if you do not work, period. Much like capitalism you work to gain the necessary labor time credit to acquire the things you need to survive. It&#39;s likely, however, that the amount of work would be far less. For example, the amount of time (accounting for the large scale of work that is done with machine assistence) that goes into creating a meal is probably miniscule. It&#39;s quite possible, although I&#39;m not a farmer, that hundreds and maybe thousands of carrots can be harvested within an hour. And this is much the same of other foods aswell. Yet I&#39;m willing to bet you that those people paid to harvest those carrots cannot buy much more than a few dozen of them with their hourly wage.

The advanced state of technology which has been brought about by the capitalist means of production is what makes this possible. It is more than likely theoretically possible to sustain life with less than 2 hours of labor a day.

What is being changed here is where this technology gets used. Prior to socialism this technology would be privately owned, and thus it&#39;s productive surplus beyond what is required to pay workers to operate it becomes little more than a bargaining chip to increase the wealth of the owner. It would be entirely possible under socialism for you to work only for YOURSELF, and produce only the things YOU need to survive. So if you want to mine the iron ore, create the nails, harvest the wood, and build your own house, you&#39;re more than welcome to, and no one will ever get a damn thing out of your labor other than you.


If I have a "right" to have my "needs" fulfilled under Communism then what way do you achieve them if not by trade? The answer is BY INITIATING FORCE.

No. The answer can be a lot of things, but specifically under communism it would be driven by your contributions back to society. If indeed no one wishes to produce food, no one will eat. Capitalism has given an abstract form to labor. It has converted every person into an extension of the machines they operator, we work so that we INDIVIDUALLY may survive under capitalism.

All communism does is broaden the perspective and make that work a far bit easier by changing the means of production from private hands to all hands. We work so that we AS A WHOLE may survive under communism. If you want to call it trading labor, then do so, but realize it&#39;s an unspoken trade. I work to provide the community with things so in turn the community works to provide me with things. If there were no teachers we&#39;d all be busy educating our children. If there were no people producing food, we then too would have to divert some of our time to that. And so on and so on. In the end we would all become independently sustained beings who would more than likely progress very slowly in terms of technology and advancments for the future.

You have every right to isolate yourself from society, and you have every right to barter whatever you so choose as a product of your labor. What you do not have a right to do is force that person to accept your trade in order to survive. I would gladly NOT take part in capitalist society if it were possible. I would go off and farm my own food, hunt my own animals, etc..etc. But how would I get this land to do these things on? How would I pay taxes on that land once I have it? Can I trade the state my excess harvest that I don&#39;t need instead of paying them money? I doubt it. The supposed RIGHT to this sort of freedom and the idea that this type of freedom (individual isolationism) is possible under capitalism is simply an illusion. I CANNOT live outside of capitalist society, no matter how hard I try. That is the initiation of force that comes along with the "right" to have needs fulfilled under capitalism, which simply doesn&#39;t exist under communism.

[Karl Marx's Camel]

Me: So, in other words, people become homosexual because of their social experiences?



YouKnowTheyMurderedX: Absolutely.



Why "absolutely"?

Do you have any proof?




Me: And in other words, I am also heterosexual not because I am born like this, but because of my social experiences?


YouKnowTheyMurderedX: Yes, partly.



Partly?

Why not "absolutely"?

Proof?

[Professor Moneybags]

As far as the subjugation of labor through other means, inclusive of all other coersive forms, it will be a crime, and one which will more than likely leave you out of the loop of great society.

It&#39;s not going to be much more difficult to trade for something other than money.


Under communism it will be difficult to "loot" and "pillage" fellow workers. Technologically speaking the advancments necessary to make communism a reality would probably have advanced to the point that it takes very little labor, if any at all, to produce the necessities of man.

So much for the importance of labour. By the time such advancements come around, the "working class" will be such a tiny minority that any chance of popular revolution will be slim.

[YKTMX]

Why "absolutely"?

Do you have any proof?

No, not proof as such. It&#39;s just a belief. Just as you believe that your "hetrosexuality" is "natural". Scientists have debated nature vs. nurture forever. I might point you in the way of some of books like &#39;Alas, Poor Darwin&#39;, and other books by socialist biologist Steven Rose to convince you of my belief.


Partly?

Why not "absolutely"?

Proof?

This is scientific discourse. There is not "evidence" I can point to you that can unequovically "prove" a certain thing to you.

The reason I say partly is because I do believe there is an underlying tendency in biological entities to reproduce. However, as we see when species become extinct, this isn&#39;t always overriding.

[PRC-UTE]

No, the defining characteristic of Capitalism is the accumulation of Capital.


Prof Moneyhag:
This is a straw man. I&#39;m not advocating such a system and I&#39;m sure Praxus isn&#39;t either. Call what my system whatever you like; it&#39;s content won&#39;t change because you wish it to.


Did I read that correctly? Is Prof Moneyhag denying that CAPITALism is the accumulation of capital???&#33;&#33;&#33; :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

[praxus]

It has little to do with being "better off" and a lot to do with material progression as a facet of technology and every day life. In this sense, YES, I would argue that people in the dark ages were "better off" than people in the Golden Age of Athens.

If you want to go by technology, the Greco-Roman had better technology. They had plumbing, they had indoor heating, advanced surgery techniques, they hade vast roads spreading across their Empires, all of which weren&#39;t common again until the 19th Century. Furthermore they were the firsts to build a mechanical computer which wasn&#39;t seen again for over 2 millenia.


When did I say this was gonna happen? MONEY won&#39;t exist, so it should be very difficult to trade for labor. As far as the subjugation of labor through other means, inclusive of all other coersive forms, it will be a crime, and one which will more than likely leave you out of the loop of great society. If indeed the PEOPLE, believe further punishment is necessary, it&#39;s in their hands, not mine, not the states, etc.

I wasn&#39;t aware money was the only thing you could trade. News to me.


As far as socialism goes... it&#39;s impossible to survive if you do not work, period. Much like capitalism you work to gain the necessary labor time credit to acquire the things you need to survive. It&#39;s likely, however, that the amount of work would be far less. For example, the amount of time (accounting for the large scale of work that is done with machine assistence) that goes into creating a meal is probably miniscule. It&#39;s quite possible, although I&#39;m not a farmer, that hundreds and maybe thousands of carrots can be harvested within an hour. And this is much the same of other foods aswell. Yet I&#39;m willing to bet you that those people paid to harvest those carrots cannot buy much more than a few dozen of them with their hourly wage.

Wait a second, didn&#39;t you say that labor produces wealth? Since people will be doing less labor won&#39;t they be producing less wealth as well?


The advanced state of technology which has been brought about by the capitalist means of production is what makes this possible. It is more than likely theoretically possible to sustain life with less than 2 hours of labor a day.


HOW?


What is being changed here is where this technology gets used. Prior to socialism this technology would be privately owned, and thus it&#39;s productive surplus beyond what is required to pay workers to operate it becomes little more than a bargaining chip to increase the wealth of the owner. It would be entirely possible under socialism for you to work only for YOURSELF, and produce only the things YOU need to survive. So if you want to mine the iron ore, create the nails, harvest the wood, and build your own house, you&#39;re more than welcome to, and no one will ever get a damn thing out of your labor other than you.

So now said person would have to not only labor more because there would be no division of labor but he would have to learn all these other skills which are required for building a house.


All communism does is broaden the perspective and make that work a far bit easier by changing the means of production from private hands to all hands. We work so that we AS A WHOLE may survive under communism. If you want to call it trading labor, then do so, but realize it&#39;s an unspoken trade. I work to provide the community with things so in turn the community works to provide me with things. If there were no teachers we&#39;d all be busy educating our children. If there were no people producing food, we then too would have to divert some of our time to that. And so on and so on. In the end we would all become independently sustained beings who would more than likely progress very slowly in terms of technology and advancments for the future.

So say "the people" decide that in order to preserve the society they have to massacre all Jews? Should it be done?


You have every right to isolate yourself from society, and you have every right to barter whatever you so choose as a product of your labor. What you do not have a right to do is force that person to accept your trade in order to survive. I would gladly NOT take part in capitalist society if it were possible. I would go off and farm my own food, hunt my own animals, etc..etc. But how would I get this land to do these things on? How would I pay taxes on that land once I have it? Can I trade the state my excess harvest that I don&#39;t need instead of paying them money? I doubt it. The supposed RIGHT to this sort of freedom and the idea that this type of freedom (individual isolationism) is possible under capitalism is simply an illusion. I CANNOT live outside of capitalist society, no matter how hard I try. That is the initiation of force that comes along with the "right" to have needs fulfilled under capitalism, which simply doesn&#39;t exist under communism.

This is complete non-sense, the only means to preserve your life without being productive is either to deprive someone else of their means of survival or to live by someone&#39;s good graces. Either way you become a parasite and lower the incentive for the few people who are productive to be productive anymore.


I CANNOT live outside of capitalist society, no matter how hard I try.

Move to North Korea, free of Capital for over 50 years&#33;

[ahhh_money_is_comfort]

Originally posted by [email protected] 28 2004, 02:09 PM

If we beat you we better than you. We as a team are a class above you.

It is not just soccer.

Intelligence.

Good looking people.

Anything people measure themselves against other people.

The idea of people better than other people is going to be so prevasive in so many aspects of society.

So then sports is just the tip of the iceberg. This is the basis of class divisions. Someone is better than someone else.

No, and you are a fool if you think that&#39;s what classes are.
It is the start of division between people.

More importantly it is division between people who are &#39;better&#39; and &#39;lesser&#39;.

[Karl Marx's Camel]

What is your view on the working class, ahhh_money_is_comfort?

[ahhh_money_is_comfort]

Originally posted by [email protected] 30 2004, 03:10 AM
What is your view on the working class, ahhh_money_is_comfort?
Big question. Can you be specific? Feel about what?

Don&#39;t you agree that any kind of sports competition, would show to all those involved that some people are better than others? In regards to sports?

How about school? Would school display to everyone involved who is better than others at academics?

How about labor in a factory? Would some, say, carpeters be obviously better than others?

Would this create a &#39;tier-ing&#39; in peoples minds? Would this make people consider &#39;worth&#39; in people?

[Karl Marx's Camel]

Big question. Can you be specific? Feel about what?

What you feel about them as a class.

Since they are the only class that is important in society, shouldn&#39;t they be the one to harvest the fruits of their labor?

[NovelGentry]

So much for the importance of labour. By the time such advancements come around, the "working class" will be such a tiny minority that any chance of popular revolution will be slim.

First off, the assumption that "working class" means the members are working is foolish. The working class are those, very simply, who have to work to sustain life. They will work in one form or another. It&#39;s arguably better to be in a service industry than in a manufacturing industry... and quite possibly there is some other "industry" that will develop (support industry maybe? as a faction of *services*) -- think, computer tech support, which is not a service in the physical sense.

Secondly, the idea is of course that revolution would happen long BEFORE this point anyway. Revolution, socialism can and should exist long before the technological capabiliities of society make communism a real possibility. What I am saying here is very simply that at this point communism is the only system that makes a whole lot of sense. If all such industry is automated, there will be no workers required to make these products, and these workers would thus not get paid, so who would really be there to buy these products? So what you see as a point where revolution becomes impossible, I see as a point where the sustainability of capitalism becomes a problem.


If you want to go by technology, the Greco-Roman had better technology. They had plumbing, they had indoor heating, advanced surgery techniques, they hade vast roads spreading across their Empires, all of which weren&#39;t common again until the 19th Century. Furthermore they were the firsts to build a mechanical computer which wasn&#39;t seen again for over 2 millenia.

The availability of technology to people (majority or otherwise) does not rule out that it exists. The obvious exception would be when all working examples and all documentation of said technology have been destroyed, at which point I would argue that the accumulated labor of the past has been wiped away, and while this certainly means that moving forward in time does not always equate to accumulated capital, it is only in the instance when the work of earlier societies has been completely destroyed -- in this sense you&#39;re looking at a clean slate for things. Relative to the history of man, this happens only for specific things in specific times and is hardly the general trend. Split time small enough and you could make similar arguments for almost anything. Something more abstract but coinciding very much with the material advancements fits this bill: Knowledge. Would you argue that the knowledge of man kind does not consistently progress with time (apparently you would, and you would argue it pretty much the same way), but looking at history and the general progression of humans and our society, you&#39;d be a fool to do so.


I wasn&#39;t aware money was the only thing you could trade. News to me.

It&#39;s not, the point was is that it&#39;s an abstraction of what you are really trading, which is labor time and thus the products of your labor. So why shouldn&#39;t money, what you&#39;re given to "trade" for the products of capitalist society IN capitalist society, be the equivalent to buy all said products you&#39;ve produced? If I had the resources and means to produce a car I could easily do so and trade that car for something which someone else considers of equal value -- but given that I don&#39;t have these resources, I can&#39;t. And thus, in order to get a car I must sell my own labor power. The problem with capitalism is, in the time it might take me to make a car (assuming I had the knowledge and means), I&#39;d be paid much LESS than the cost of a car. Why? because someone is making profit and sustaining their own life (more likely a far more luxorious life) from my labor as well.

This goes back to private property and the control of the means of production. What gives them the right to the means of production to say I can&#39;t use it? Cause it&#39;s THEIRS? Well who build the machines that build the cars? Workers. Who built the tools to build those machines? Workers. Who ored the iron for the tools and parts of those machines? Workers. How did the capitalists get control of the land the iron is taken from? at gunpoint.


Wait a second, didn&#39;t you say that labor produces wealth? Since people will be doing less labor won&#39;t they be producing less wealth as well?

Individually, more than likely, but as a whole, no. They will more than likely produce more wealth. The working class is a majority, YES, but of those you have people who are laid off, can&#39;t find employment. Then above that you have the capitalist who don&#39;t need to produce weath because they exploit the working class. So these people would also be contributing their labor to producing the overall wealth of society. Let&#39;s use an overly simplified example.

Assume you have a society of 100 people, 75 of which produce all the food consumed by the 100. The other 15 are people who have been laid off because the 10 who "own the land" wanted to increase their profit margin. If these 75 people work 10 hour shifts to produce all the food necessary, it would take them 750 combined hours to produce that food. If all 100 people were contributing labor time to society, at 10 hour shifts what they produce would exceed the necessary consumption by 1/3 of it&#39;s original value. Thus these 100 people can no work 7.5 hours to sustain the necessary food production for that society. Rather than 75 people working 10 hours. Like I said, this is a simplified example, but it is the general idea of how it works, and when you look at each necessary market individually, increase laborers means less time working in the fields for the current unfortunate majority who don&#39;t have the pleasure of having their lives sustained by a working class.

Why don&#39;t these people just make their own food then and say SCREW the top 10? Well they don&#39;t "own" the land. And under capitalism they would be punished for trespassing, fined and possibly jailed while they attempted to grow food on land that wasn&#39;t "theirs."


HOW?

Well this was just a quick estimate. But take the simplified example I gave above and expand it to the whole of society/human existence. Once again, remember we&#39;re assuming that technology makes it possible for a single person to produce the needs of many. Of course time could decrease with even greater technological advancments, and it could be a lot higher too if that technology wasn&#39;t in existence. But think realistically for a minute. If you had land that was "yours" and no one taxed you, and you could do as you pleased with it, and it had all the resources necessary for making what you NEED (fertile ground for food, wood for shelter, fibered plants for clothing etc. How long do you think it would take you to make the things you need to make.

You can&#39;t fast forward nature, so you may gather food initially, but once you planted you could keep consistent crops going. A personal garden just to feed you could probably exist in a 5x5 area and would not take long to tend or harvest. So assume maybe 30 minutes a day there. That takes care of food. So now spread the time it takes to build your house and make your clothing over the course of the rest of it. A house may take you hundreds of hours to properly build, but it will last years to come and more than likely beyond your lifetime if built properly. So divide the time it takes to construct/produce by the life of the product, and you will find that it too will constitute very little time in the greater breadth of your life. Initially you may have to work FAST and frequent, building make shift houses, gathering food meticulously, etc... until you have a more sustainable way of life.

This paradigm is applicable to the history of man as a whole -- we have built up this wealth already. The people who came before us have built shelter that we can now use, they&#39;ve left us with the technology to produce clothing quickly and easily, and they&#39;ve developed the tools and knowledge to make our food supply consistent. Thus, our iniitial fast and frequent work is for the most part already done (maybe not completely done on a world wide scope, but within a capitalist society alone, it is). The working class, who throughout history has passed on that accumulated wealth to their followers is now as ready to retire as is the single individual in this example who has spent his early life constructing his own individual wealth necessary to retire. We are LONG over due. I don&#39;t see any reason why people like my mother have to spend their lives working two jobs sometimes 16 hours of work in a 24 hour period for the sake of putting food on a plate and keeping the roof over our head. There is indeed a reason, but it is not a valid one.


So now said person would have to not only labor more because there would be no division of labor but he would have to learn all these other skills which are required for building a house.

No. If you can&#39;t see why this is a foolish statement then I doubt there&#39;s any point in me talking much further. We contribute our individual skills to society, and in return, other people do the same, and we all progress together. My statements were to show you what would HAVE to be done assuming we didn&#39;t have society, thankfully we have people who can build houses and build them well, while others supply the other necessities of society to them, as well as themselves.


So say "the people" decide that in order to preserve the society they have to massacre all Jews? Should it be done?

If that is what they decide there&#39;s not much any single person who believes it&#39;s wrong can do. Democracy isn&#39;t about making sure we do the right thing, it&#39;s about doing the thing the majority of people believe to be right. I can only hope educated and fair people are the majority and such stupidity does not run rampant. But I&#39;d much rather take that chance with billions of people deciding what&#39;s right than a select few of their "representatives".


This is complete non-sense, the only means to preserve your life without being productive is either to deprive someone else of their means of survival or to live by someone&#39;s good graces. Either way you become a parasite and lower the incentive for the few people who are productive to be productive anymore.

When I first started to read this I thought you were going to say something intelligent, but that ended after the "without being productive part." I would agree, there is no way to sustain life without being productive, and society as a whole cannot sustain society as a whole unless society as a whole is productive. You still look at this as individual struggle, and why shouldn&#39;t you.. that&#39;s how you&#39;ve been told to see it your entire life. If you don&#39;t work, you die in capitalist society (assuming no social reform or safety net). I agree those who are not producing are LEECHING, so to speak off those who do in communist society, but this is not the same as depriving them of their means to survive. Nor is it required that you be in their good grace, in fact, you&#39;d probably be quite the opposite.

The plain and simple fact, however, is that with modern technology few people CAN sustain many. Does this mean they SHOULD? No. It will always be their decision. As I said, under communist society you would have every right to produce only what you NEED and personally consume it. But not everyone can build their own house, produce their own food, make their own clothes, etc..etc. So people give to society with the knowledge that society also gives to them.

With that said, it is the ASSUMPTION of most communists (including this one) that people living under a society where this is the norm will contribute to that society, because this is the norm, and we are social creatures. I wouldn&#39;t ever need to go to school or get a job, my mother is very kind and would be willing to support me as long as she lives. While this isn&#39;t the case for everyone, such cases do exist, yet we go to school and get jobs anyway? Why? Because if we don&#39;t we are social outcasts. No woman wants a man who lives with his parents his entire life. No person with any sense of dignity wants to live outside this norm, and such people who do are looked down upon as lazy, slackers, etc..etc. Once again, this doesn&#39;t mean it convinces EVERYONE, but the social unacceptability of such things convinces more than enough.


Move to North Korea, free of Capital for over 50 years&#33;

This is not what I meant by this. It&#39;s a given that all one has to do to escape the force of capitalism is to avoid capitalism, and luckily there are places on this earth where people can escape that to some degree. But then again, there are some who cannot. I personally cannot afford to travel to north korea, it is technically ILLEGAL for me to travel to Cuba, etc..etc. So my escape is not so easy or even a real possibility in the end. Nor is it for a number of people. But once again, this was not supposed to be taken in geological context. If the whole of the world was capitalist there would be no way for anyone to escape the force of capitalism. In short, there is no surviving outside of the capitalist method within capitalist society -- you may think this is a given, but many people who are OK with capitalism don&#39;t realize this. And I&#39;ve heard the argument before of "Why don&#39;t you go live out in the woods and grow your own food or something?" I was more or less refuting this on chance that you too were foolish enough to think such things are feasible.

[Professor Moneybags]

there is no way to sustain life without being productive

Those on welfare seem to be suceeding.

[Professor Moneybags]

Originally posted by [email protected] 30 2004, 12:54 AM
Did I read that correctly? Is Prof Moneyhag denying that CAPITALism is the accumulation of capital???&#33;&#33;&#33; :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
Yes, that is correct. No more straw men, please.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

You&#39;re a worthless cockhead with the debating skills of a stuffed iguana, Professor Moneybags.

[ahhh_money_is_comfort]

Originally posted by [email protected] 30 2004, 04:43 AM

Big question. Can you be specific? Feel about what?

What you feel about them as a class.

Since they are the only class that is important in society, shouldn&#39;t they be the one to harvest the fruits of their labor?
Sure. Everyone should prosper.

But.

In a communist system people measuring themselves, competition, and social dominance; don&#39;t you think lots of commuist are going to go around thinking: Hmmmm, I&#39;m better than those people I just beat?

[comrade_mufasa]

Originally posted by Professor [email protected] 30 2004, 06:04 AM

there is no way to sustain life without being productive

Those on welfare seem to be suceeding.
no were not :angry:

[praxus]

Individually, more than likely, but as a whole, no. They will more than likely produce more wealth. The working class is a majority, YES, but of those you have people who are laid off, can&#39;t find employment. Then above that you have the capitalist who don&#39;t need to produce weath because they exploit the working class. So these people would also be contributing their labor to producing the overall wealth of society. Let&#39;s use an overly simplified example.


The combined whole can never be more then the sum of it&#39;s parts. Even if wealth is being shared, with no concept of property rights, anyone who holds it at any given point can be said to be it&#39;s holder. If people aren&#39;t holding this wealth how could be of any use to them what so ever at any given moment?

By the way the "Working Class" is not being exploited, so please get over it.


This goes back to private property and the control of the means of production. What gives them the right to the means of production to say I can&#39;t use it? Cause it&#39;s THEIRS? Well who build the machines that build the cars? Workers. Who built the tools to build those machines? Workers. Who ored the iron for the tools and parts of those machines? Workers. How did the capitalists get control of the land the iron is taken from? at gunpoint.

This is all based on the FALSE Labor Theory of Value of which marx believed. Labor in itself can not ad value to an object. The value of an object is completly subjective. In order for something to have value it must first be valued. If it is not valued it does not matter how much labor someone does on it, it will not add value to it.

Then you of course ignore that the Capitalist is not forcing anyone to work for them. There is no way to avoid being productive, outside of looting and living on someones "good will" in ANY SYSTEM.


Why don&#39;t these people just make their own food then and say SCREW the top 10? Well they don&#39;t "own" the land. And under capitalism they would be punished for trespassing, fined and possibly jailed while they attempted to grow food on land that wasn&#39;t "theirs."

Your right it is not their land, to deny property rights you are denying man&#39;s means of survival.


Well this was just a quick estimate. But take the simplified example I gave above and expand it to the whole of society/human existence. Once again, remember we&#39;re assuming that technology makes it possible for a single person to produce the needs of many. Of course time could decrease with even greater technological advancments, and it could be a lot higher too if that technology wasn&#39;t in existence. But think realistically for a minute. If you had land that was "yours" and no one taxed you, and you could do as you pleased with it, and it had all the resources necessary for making what you NEED (fertile ground for food, wood for shelter, fibered plants for clothing etc. How long do you think it would take you to make the things you need to make.


This isn&#39;t anything, it doesn&#39;t prove anything, it doesn&#39;t demonstrate anything but your self-delusional dreams.


If that is what they decide there&#39;s not much any single person who believes it&#39;s wrong can do. Democracy isn&#39;t about making sure we do the right thing, it&#39;s about doing the thing the majority of people believe to be right. I can only hope educated and fair people are the majority and such stupidity does not run rampant. But I&#39;d much rather take that chance with billions of people deciding what&#39;s right than a select few of their "representatives".

Personally I&#39;d perfer a Government with checks and balances against all sections of Government in order to protect a Constitution. You on the other hand would support the majority in whatever arbitrary whim they choose to embark.


When I first started to read this I thought you were going to say something intelligent, but that ended after the "without being productive part." I would agree, there is no way to sustain life without being productive, and society as a whole cannot sustain society as a whole unless society as a whole is productive. You still look at this as individual struggle, and why shouldn&#39;t you.. that&#39;s how you&#39;ve been told to see it your entire life. If you don&#39;t work, you die in capitalist society (assuming no social reform or safety net). I agree those who are not producing are LEECHING, so to speak off those who do in communist society, but this is not the same as depriving them of their means to survive. Nor is it required that you be in their good grace, in fact, you&#39;d probably be quite the opposite.


News flash, property is the means of survival in society. Any other system requires the destruction of the lives of some for the many, ending up in a degraded self-destructive society.


This is not what I meant by this. It&#39;s a given that all one has to do to escape the force of capitalism is to avoid capitalism, and luckily there are places on this earth where people can escape that to some degree. But then again, there are some who cannot. I personally cannot afford to travel to north korea, it is technically ILLEGAL for me to travel to Cuba, etc..etc. So my escape is not so easy or even a real possibility in the end. Nor is it for a number of people. But once again, this was not supposed to be taken in geological context. If the whole of the world was capitalist there would be no way for anyone to escape the force of capitalism. In short, there is no surviving outside of the capitalist method within capitalist society -- you may think this is a given, but many people who are OK with capitalism don&#39;t realize this. And I&#39;ve heard the argument before of "Why don&#39;t you go live out in the woods and grow your own food or something?" I was more or less refuting this on chance that you too were foolish enough to think such things are feasible.p

Oh come on, move to North Korea, see how "productive" people are, outside of a Capitalist society and see how well off they are. You will quickly discover, the more CAPITAL, THE LESS SUFFERING.


no were not mad.gif

Blame the Government, it&#39;s their medling which causes unemployment.

[NovelGentry]

The combined whole can never be more then the sum of it&#39;s parts. Even if wealth is being shared, with no concept of property rights, anyone who holds it at any given point can be said to be it&#39;s holder. If people aren&#39;t holding this wealth how could be of any use to them what so ever at any given moment?

By the way the "Working Class" is not being exploited, so please get over it.

I didn&#39;t say that the combined whole is more than the sum of it&#39;s parts. Which maybe you realized later after further explaination. The working class grows. Former members of the bourgeoisie, and inactive members of the working class are set in motion. Thus your parts are now much more numbered than they used to be, and as such your whole WILL be bigger, if it is true that they must all work.

The people are holding the wealth. In what way are they not?


This is all based on the FALSE Labor Theory of Value of which marx believed. Labor in itself can not ad value to an object. The value of an object is completly subjective. In order for something to have value it must first be valued. If it is not valued it does not matter how much labor someone does on it, it will not add value to it.

No, the statement you quoted was based on hard truth. The working class of all previous societies created the wealth of those societies, just as the working class of modern society creates it&#39;s wealth. Whether you&#39;re a normal slave or a wage slave the products of your labor go elsewhere, and in return you are provided with the means to live.

In slave times, slaves WOULD have food, if they didn&#39;t they WOULD die, and then they couldn&#39;t work, so they were sustained. In capitalist society wage slaves are provided money in which the greater majority of the working class can afford the means to survive. It, however, is now the case that cars are part of the means of survival for most. Without a car, we can&#39;t get to work, and without being able to get to work we can&#39;t make money to get more things -- food, etc.

The value itself is not subjective, but what comprises value is, under capitalist society supply and demand is what determines "value." Thus, as you said, it&#39;s major component is when people value it (when there is demand for it). Let me ask you this then, what would be the value of an object that could be created infinitely within nearly an instant? Under such a system the demand for such objects is weened by the supply. Certainly the supply is SO great, that anyone "valuing" it for more would be a fool to do so.

As I&#39;ve said before, and since most anti-communist responders seem to value human nature, the moment we get the things we want, the value already decreases, and we "take them for granted." In this example where you have an infinite supply, it quite literally takes to the words "taken for granted." We know the product will be always available when we need it, and thus the value is little, if anything at all. If I&#39;m not mistaken capitalist theory adheres to this aswell, that supply & demand are mutually influential.

So if value is COMPLETELY subjective as you say, this shouldn&#39;t become an issue and when the worlds necessities can be machine produced within short periods of times to an almost infinite scale we will still have a functioning capitalist society based on how bad people want it. What is more likely is that value is primarily objective, and that subjective forces are only an illusion to the true objective force which is a great part a question of supply and availability (availability meaning more so that if it&#39;s there, if the supply is good, but you cannot afford it).

Given that, value CAN be deduced for each and every object. Is it easy to get the value? No, because there are always people who can afford it and who will spring the money to buy up at least a portion of the supply. When the company decides to drop the price to increase sales of their oversupply is not set in stone. But think for a minute about how labor time factors into supply. The more labor time placed on products the greater the supply, as such, the smaller the value. The only way to create a sustainable society, where the end result of advanced production may very well be infinite supply of something, is to create a society where the supply and hence, labor time, is directly related to the value of it. This way here, infinite production will never drive the value (and as such what people are willing to "pay") to 0. To put it in math terms, as production moves towards infinitely, the limit of value is 0. This is to say it will never actually reach 0 (because of your subjective forces that you claim to exist). But it will grow closer and closer and CLOSER based on the increasing supply of that product.


Then you of course ignore that the Capitalist is not forcing anyone to work for them. There is no way to avoid being productive, outside of looting and living on someones "good will" in ANY SYSTEM.

Are they holding them at gunpoint? no. But that&#39;s not the only means of force. I&#39;m not saying here that CEO&#39;s of companies walk down streets and say "You, you&#39;re coming to work for me&#33;" It is a condition of capitalism that we are forced to work. But indeed as you point out in your next response, they are and have in the past forced the working class out of the means to survive (land). And they will do so in the future as well. But as I&#39;ve pointed out before, and you still fail to see, there are two thefts. That of the resources (initially) and that of the products those resources created.

Let me put it in simple terms. The whole of the working class cannot afford what the whole of the working class produces. WHY? Because the bourgeoisie live off their labor, and not only do they live off of it, they live opulently. The only one on welfare here is the bourgeoisie. The reason they can be on welfare and people are so unaware to do anything about it is because of the illusion of private property. Someone "owns" the land. We have no right to use it to produce what we need unless we buy it off him, and probably pay taxes on it too. And from all the land on the earth has been ored all the iron that&#39;s ever existed, has come all the water that&#39;s ever existed, and has produced all the food that&#39;s ever existed. Thus owning the land means owning the necessities of man, and as such they have to give you NOTHING. But they will, if you work for them. If you produce these products for your own survival and theirs. They will let you use these means of production, but you will never own them (if they do it right).

Don&#39;t give me a "well people start small businesses argument, so they get the means of production." There are a lucky few who get this priveledge, and many of those who try to do it without that luck end up with massiv debt and a failed business simply because they cannot compete with the already existing capitalists. It&#39;s luck of the draw, and the only thing it shows is that the capitalists sometimes get a bit lax. They aren&#39;t thoroughly enough exploiting the working class.


This isn&#39;t anything, it doesn&#39;t prove anything, it doesn&#39;t demonstrate anything but your self-delusional dreams.

No, only the numbers would prove it. I took for granted that you would be smart enough to see that man COULD create their own means of survival individually if there was no one who controlled all this. You can&#39;t take it out of the context of history. The current society was born out of a previous one and that one a previous one as well. It will continue to do this until an equilibrium is sought and eventually reached. Capitalism would not have been able to exist without the products and material progression of feudal society.

Imagine trying to apply capitalism to man at the dawn of society -- who would employ who? And on what grounds would they do so? "You don&#39;t own this land, it&#39;s mine, I&#39;ll kill you if you use it without my permission... but you can work for me and with these pieces of paper I give you you can buy the land off me." -- sounds like it would of had a really bright future. (sarcasm)


Personally I&#39;d perfer a Government with checks and balances against all sections of Government in order to protect a Constitution. You on the other hand would support the majority in whatever arbitrary whim they choose to embark.

No, I wouldn&#39;t SUPPORT the majority in whatever they decide. This would destroy democracy. By that logic every vote would be unanimous. "Oh, look, the majority is voting for this, so I should just vote for it too, cause it&#39;s gonna win." That&#39;s not how it works, although granted it is the logic of a very reactionary amount of people. What I recognize is that if I don&#39;t support what the majority supports, I have no right to tell them the way it should be and make them do it that way. Do they have a right to do this to me either? No. I accept it willfully to be part of society. Under communism I have every right once again to ignore society, take my share of land and act how I please on it and produce my own means of survival. But I wouldn&#39;t... cause I&#39;d have shit for food cause I&#39;m no good at farming, a small branche leaned against a tree for shelter, piles of grass to keep me warm.

I recognize that society does things for me, and in return I too want to do things for society so that I can be an accepted member of it.


News flash, property is the means of survival in society. Any other system requires the destruction of the lives of some for the many, ending up in a degraded self-destructive society.

This has nothing to do with what I said. Your arguments have degraded into simple assertions that are relative to my arguments in the overall scope, but not in the specific thing I&#39;m talking about.


Oh come on, move to North Korea, see how "productive" people are, outside of a Capitalist society and see how well off they are. You will quickly discover, the more CAPITAL, THE LESS SUFFERING.

I already discovered the more capital, the less suffering. The question isn&#39;t whether we should decrease the amount of capital... in fact we should increase it. The question is how that capital is held in relation to society and those who produce it.

[NovelGentry]

In a communist system people measuring themselves, competition, and social dominance; don&#39;t you think lots of commuist are going to go around thinking: Hmmmm, I&#39;m better than those people I just beat?

Yes, and there&#39;s no reason they can&#39;t. If I beat you in basketball on a repeated basis I will certainly be able to say "Yes, I&#39;m better than him in basketball." Does this mean I&#39;m ultimately better than you, no. Does it mean I have any right to push you to do something because of that simple aspect of being better, no. Certainly you may WANT to trade me something in return for me letting you win a game. But there is no NEED, nor should it be considered right to do so. Would the fans of the NBA appreciate if a game was bought?

[NovelGentry]

I would like to add, as a simplification to a point I made earlier.

Under capitalism we can see the illusion that creates the statement "value is subjective."

If indeed capitalist economics presents any truth, it is found in half of what determines value.

Supply is objective. It is derived from the capability to produce a certain amount of product. The productive forces as a whole determine it. The theoretical maximum productive output of machines combined with the theoretical maximum output of human labor. Both of which are very objective things.

Demand is subjective. But just the same is influenced by supply and supply is influenced by demand.

The subjective power of "demand" is an illusion based on the desire for profit. Supply outweighs demand in the end when the desire for profit is removed. If there is no demand for a product it could be because the price is too high or it is truly NOT useful. Under socialism/communism, when the profit aspect is removed there is no other reason to cap supply other than that the product is not useful. And that will be determined VERY quickly. There&#39;s no need to limit productive forces for the sake of profit, and thus the value of a product is determined by a more true USE value. If indeed people NEED something more, say there is not enough food. It will become apparent immediately when food supply is in short, and thus there will be an attempt to increase supply. Unlike capitalism, overproduction is not "lost profit" -- it is lost labor time. If food is produced and no one eats it, labor was put into it and that labor goes to waste. Because of this, overproduction is an acceptable thing, so long as the people are willing to work. If they are not, hours can be cut (rather than laying off workers) and machines can be slowed rather than selling them off to get even more profit.

If you cannot see how this lends itself to a cleaner and more productive society as a whole, I&#39;m not sure how you ever saw how capitalism works to begin with. It would seem you&#39;re ignoring some portions of capitalism simply for the sake of arguing against communism. I&#39;m aware many of you call for a "mixed economy" -- but a welfare state does not equate to socialism/communism. Those things are determined very strictly by the means of production and their relation to society, under capitalism the welfare state is very simply a regulated redistribution of wealth, there is no increased wealth, it is simply bought with tax dollars and given to those who need it.

This goes back to something I said on another thread about the reactionary communists, who look for the moral aspects. It&#39;s only "right" to help your fellow man in that sense. But there&#39;s no reason why that needs to be forced upon the working class through taxes -- it can easily be solved by changing the design of the productive forces. As I&#39;ve said many times, communism is not about morality or what&#39;s "right" -- it&#39;s about material conditions.

[encephalon]

Originally posted by Professor [email protected] 30 2004, 11:06 AM



Yes, that is correct. No more straw men, please.

Christ, do you even know what a straw man is? Stating that capitalism is not the banning of force but instead is the accumulation of capital is *not* a straw man fallacy. For fucks sake, polish your logic if you&#39;re going to pretend to know it.

[Limbiko]

Comrades -

The spirit of pure amatuer sport has never lost its way...unfortunatley, the capitalist realized that he could make MORE &#036;&#036;&#036; off the talents of the "troubled working class peoples" (i.e. people of color, the poor and the like) and commercialized everything.

This became a better business proposal for the capitalist then say - having to worry about really "educating or clothing" those peoples the capitalist in the U.S. deemed as unworthy (i.e. non-whites).

So now we have college football bowl games - worth &#036;20 million to the school&#39;s playing in them (but not a penny going to the poor minority athletes actually risking their limbs) - sponsored by Fast-Food Titans, Drug Pushers (Big Phamacy Industry), and other bloated capalitist interests.

:ph34r: Limbiko

"When the rich wage war, it&#39;s the poor who die."
- Jean-Paul Sartre

[encephalon]

Originally posted by [email protected] 30 2004, 04:13 PM





Why don&#39;t these people just make their own food then and say SCREW the top 10? Well they don&#39;t "own" the land. And under capitalism they would be punished for trespassing, fined and possibly jailed while they attempted to grow food on land that wasn&#39;t "theirs."

Your right it is not their land, to deny property rights you are denying man&#39;s means of survival.


Well this was just a quick estimate. But take the simplified example I gave above and expand it to the whole of society/human existence. Once again, remember we&#39;re assuming that technology makes it possible for a single person to produce the needs of many. Of course time could decrease with even greater technological advancments, and it could be a lot higher too if that technology wasn&#39;t in existence. But think realistically for a minute. If you had land that was "yours" and no one taxed you, and you could do as you pleased with it, and it had all the resources necessary for making what you NEED (fertile ground for food, wood for shelter, fibered plants for clothing etc. How long do you think it would take you to make the things you need to make.


This isn&#39;t anything, it doesn&#39;t prove anything, it doesn&#39;t demonstrate anything but your self-delusional dreams.


If that is what they decide there&#39;s not much any single person who believes it&#39;s wrong can do. Democracy isn&#39;t about making sure we do the right thing, it&#39;s about doing the thing the majority of people believe to be right. I can only hope educated and fair people are the majority and such stupidity does not run rampant. But I&#39;d much rather take that chance with billions of people deciding what&#39;s right than a select few of their "representatives".

Personally I&#39;d perfer a Government with checks and balances against all sections of Government in order to protect a Constitution. You on the other hand would support the majority in whatever arbitrary whim they choose to embark.


When I first started to read this I thought you were going to say something intelligent, but that ended after the "without being productive part." I would agree, there is no way to sustain life without being productive, and society as a whole cannot sustain society as a whole unless society as a whole is productive. You still look at this as individual struggle, and why shouldn&#39;t you.. that&#39;s how you&#39;ve been told to see it your entire life. If you don&#39;t work, you die in capitalist society (assuming no social reform or safety net). I agree those who are not producing are LEECHING, so to speak off those who do in communist society, but this is not the same as depriving them of their means to survive. Nor is it required that you be in their good grace, in fact, you&#39;d probably be quite the opposite.


News flash, property is the means of survival in society. Any other system requires the destruction of the lives of some for the many, ending up in a degraded self-destructive society.


This is not what I meant by this. It&#39;s a given that all one has to do to escape the force of capitalism is to avoid capitalism, and luckily there are places on this earth where people can escape that to some degree. But then again, there are some who cannot. I personally cannot afford to travel to north korea, it is technically ILLEGAL for me to travel to Cuba, etc..etc. So my escape is not so easy or even a real possibility in the end. Nor is it for a number of people. But once again, this was not supposed to be taken in geological context. If the whole of the world was capitalist there would be no way for anyone to escape the force of capitalism. In short, there is no surviving outside of the capitalist method within capitalist society -- you may think this is a given, but many people who are OK with capitalism don&#39;t realize this. And I&#39;ve heard the argument before of "Why don&#39;t you go live out in the woods and grow your own food or something?" I was more or less refuting this on chance that you too were foolish enough to think such things are feasible.p




no were not mad.gif



The combined whole can never be more then the sum of it&#39;s parts. Even if wealth is being shared, with no concept of property rights, anyone who holds it at any given point can be said to be it&#39;s holder. If people aren&#39;t holding this wealth how could be of any use to them what so ever at any given moment?

This is flat out wrong. The whole is more than the sum of its parts. Read about emergence.


This is all based on the FALSE Labor Theory of Value of which marx believed. Labor in itself can not ad value to an object. The value of an object is completly subjective. In order for something to have value it must first be valued. If it is not valued it does not matter how much labor someone does on it, it will not add value to it.

Adam Smith also adhered to the labor theory of value, which is the basis for his entire pro-capitalist argument. Without labor, nothing has human value assigned to it, period.


Then you of course ignore that the Capitalist is not forcing anyone to work for them. There is no way to avoid being productive, outside of looting and living on someones "good will" in ANY SYSTEM.

If you read much history, you&#39;d know that capitalism is born straight from slavery, and self-propagates afterwards. Ever heard of sweat-shops? Children tied to machines in the industrial revolution? African children paid a dollar to climb in to unsafe mines and bring back diamonds, simply out of desperation? Third world exploitation by corporations?

Capitalists can easily make it impossible *not* to work for them, unless you want to die. Is that not force? Is choosing between having the value of ones labor taken or death really a choice?


Oh come on, move to North Korea, see how "productive" people are, outside of a Capitalist society and see how well off they are. You will quickly discover, the more CAPITAL, THE LESS SUFFERING.

So then the billions of dollars in South America doesn&#39;t really exist, because the great majority of them are so entrenched in poverty while only a few control most of the wealth? Oh, wait, maybe it&#39;s because the entire continent is just lazy, save for a select few capitalists.


Blame the Government, it&#39;s their medling which causes unemployment.

Yes.. the great depression was caused by government meddling. The great depression didn&#39;t really happen until FDR and The New Deal. It&#39;s all one big pinko commie lie. Keep on thinking that.

[ahhh_money_is_comfort]

Originally posted by [email protected] 30 2004, 07:54 PM
Comrades -

The spirit of pure amatuer sport has never lost its way...unfortunatley, the capitalist realized that he could make MORE &#036;&#036;&#036; off the talents of the "troubled working class peoples" (i.e. people of color, the poor and the like) and commercialized everything.

This became a better business proposal for the capitalist then say - having to worry about really "educating or clothing" those peoples the capitalist in the U.S. deemed as unworthy (i.e. non-whites).

So now we have college football bowl games - worth &#036;20 million to the school&#39;s playing in them (but not a penny going to the poor minority athletes actually risking their limbs) - sponsored by Fast-Food Titans, Drug Pushers (Big Phamacy Industry), and other bloated capalitist interests.

:ph34r: Limbiko

"When the rich wage war, it&#39;s the poor who die."
- Jean-Paul Sartre
This is not about making money. This is about children playing sports. Imagine children playing sports and they win. Lesson? I&#39;m better than the person I beat.

This is about good looking people. They know they different. They know I&#39;m better looking.

This is about people who are smart. They know they are different. They know they are smart.

Lesson learned? People will know. They will all know who is better and who is lesser. You can&#39;t have a classless society with &#39;better&#39; people.

[encephalon]

Originally posted by [email protected] 30 2004, 08:13 PM

This is not about making money. This is about children playing sports. Imagine children playing sports and they win. Lesson? I&#39;m better than the person I beat.

This is about good looking people. They know they different. They know I&#39;m better looking.

This is about people who are smart. They know they are different. They know they are smart.

Lesson learned? People will know. They will all know who is better and who is lesser. You can&#39;t have a classless society with &#39;better&#39; people.
if you truly believe that class is based on the fact that those on the bottom think that those on top are better than themselves and more deserving of **society&#39;s wealth** than they are, then I really do feel sorry for you. It&#39;s that basic statement which justifies any system, from aristocratic feudalism to capitalism to mock socialism to all out enslavement, and by believing as such no progress could have ever been made nor will any be made again. Capitalism wouldn&#39;t even exist now if people believed that. It&#39;s good to know, though, that Hitler and Stalin both deserved their special position in society, because they were indeed better than everyone else. For a minute I actually believed you were an advocate of equality.

[comrade_mufasa]

This is not about making money. This is about children playing sports. Imagine children playing sports and they win. Lesson? I&#39;m better than the person I beat.
as i said before. yes you will be better then me if you beat me but then next week when we play again i beat you. now whos better. or what if you beat me at soccer and then i beat you at basketball. now whos better. or how about if you beat me at something then i kick your ass. now whos better. its all relative


Lesson learned? People will know. They will all know who is better and who is lesser. You can&#39;t have a classless society with &#39;better&#39; people.
you see we are talking about different types of class systems. some of us are talking about economic classes that are real and not in the mind. while you are talking about classes that are only made by the mind and dont matter at all.

[Professor Moneybags]

Christ, do you even know what a straw man is? Stating that capitalism is not the banning of force but instead is the accumulation of capital is *not* a straw man fallacy.

Yes, using to a charicature to make my political views easier to attack. I&#39;m not saying that the guiding principle should be the "accumulation of capital", I&#39;m saying that it should be the non-initiation of force.

[Professor Moneybags]

Originally posted by comrade_mufasa+Dec 30 2004, 03:13 PM--> (comrade_mufasa @ Dec 30 2004, 03:13 PM)
Professor [email protected] 30 2004, 06:04 AM

there is no way to sustain life without being productive

Those on welfare seem to be suceeding.
no were not :angry: [/b]
Yes they are, unfortunately.

[Professor Moneybags]

Originally posted by [email protected] 30 2004, 12:04 PM
You&#39;re a worthless cockhead with the debating skills of a stuffed iguana,
Wow, what incredible debating skills...

[ahhh_money_is_comfort]

Originally posted by [email protected] 30 2004, 06:42 PM
Let me ask you this then, what would be the value of an object that could be created infinitely within nearly an instant?
What makes you think that such a thing can happen under communist/socialist system of supply, manufacture, and production methods?

[NovelGentry]

What makes you think that such a thing can happen under communist/socialist system of supply, manufacture, and production methods?

What stops it? It seems to me like you&#39;re just avoiding the question. Under capitalism new technology is surpressed by businesses who can still make a bunch of money off the old. Look at how slow we&#39;re moving towards clean and reusable energy.... did you think Bush just cut funding for that cause he found out it was scientifically impossible?

We&#39;ve already got the means to replace a decent amount of power sources using these forms of energy -- so why aren&#39;t we?

[praxus]

This is flat out wrong. The whole is more than the sum of its parts. Read about emergence.

So your going to have wealth all over the place but it&#39;s not going to be held by anyone? Or is it going to be shared based on "need". Tell me who determines this "need"?


Adam Smith also adhered to the labor theory of value, which is the basis for his entire pro-capitalist argument. Without labor, nothing has human value assigned to it, period.

Adam Smith is not a God to us, he can be wrong, and on some major issues he was.


If you read much history, you&#39;d know that capitalism is born straight from slavery, and self-propagates afterwards. Ever heard of sweat-shops? Children tied to machines in the industrial revolution? African children paid a dollar to climb in to unsafe mines and bring back diamonds, simply out of desperation? Third world exploitation by corporations?

This was all caused by the lack of capital which was caused by the previus system not by Capitalism. If you however read History you would find that the ammount of Child labor was significantly smaller in the late 19th Century then it was during the start of the Industrial Revolution, not because there was a ban, for there was none, but because the ammount of Capital raised increased. In fact most of the so called "children" were in fact teenagers who were working to keep their family feed, and prior to Capitalism, these children wouldn&#39;t have even exsisted in all likelyhood.


So then the billions of dollars in South America doesn&#39;t really exist, because the great majority of them are so entrenched in poverty while only a few control most of the wealth? Oh, wait, maybe it&#39;s because the entire continent is just lazy, save for a select few capitalists.

What are you talking about? I don&#39;t see how this has anything at all to do with my post.



Yes.. the great depression was caused by government meddling. The great depression didn&#39;t really happen until FDR and The New Deal. It&#39;s all one big pinko commie lie. Keep on thinking that.

Hmm, no Capitalist ever claimed that FDR started the Great Depression, just that he perpetuated it. This is completly true. This is shown by the fact that unemployment didn&#39;t reach below 12% during peacetime until after the second World War when taxes were drasticly cut. The Great Depression was caused by the newly created fed fiddeling with interest rates, making people invest wildly in capital goods, then they rose them again and everyone withdrew from the market realizing their investments were bad.

P.S. Since you had so much fun changing my title I guess I will have to tell you that since I have read Atlas Shrugged (Last Month) I have read Polybius (History of the Roman Empire), Frederic Bastiat, The Da Vinci Code, and The Gates of Fire.

[NovelGentry]

Praxus, I&#39;m dismayed you didn&#39;t address my new arguments and instead branched off to someone elses. Not much to say I take it?

[encephalon]

Yes, using to a charicature to make my political views easier to attack. I&#39;m not saying that the guiding principle should be the "accumulation of capital", I&#39;m saying that it should be the non-initiation of force.

That&#39;s a close enough definition.

Unfortunately, I&#39;m not doing that. The argument is: you think principle of capitalism is the non-initialtion of force, while I claim that it is the accumulation of capital. This is not a straw man argument, simply your argument against mine. You are claiming that my disagreement with your own premise is a fallacy, and not good practice.

Of course, now that you&#39;ve suddenly added "should be" in front of it, you&#39;ve changed your argument from being one of pure definition to one of pure morality. We are not, however, debating over whether or not people should or shouldn&#39;t force another to do their own bidding and reap the profits thereof, but rather that people are forced into labor under capitalism. It is not a question of ought, but a question of is.

Perhaps you&#39;d ilke to change your argument again.

[praxus]

Praxus, I&#39;m dismayed you didn&#39;t address my new arguments and instead branched off to someone elses. Not much to say I take it?

No I missed them and will now adress it.

[NovelGentry]

Good

[encephalon]

So your going to have wealth all over the place but it&#39;s not going to be held by anyone? Or is it going to be shared based on "need". Tell me who determines this "need"?

Under a truly communist society, the individual would decide this. This is exactly how it works in the few hunter-gatherer societies left. Under socialism, I would imagine it would be an extension of law. Much like America today, in fact, with the disabled. To the best of our ability, they are given what they need. We know people need food, water, clothing, shelter, etc etc etc, and some, such as the disabled, have special needs.

We do this now, and there is no reason to believe it cannot be done in the future.


Adam Smith is not a God to us, he can be wrong, and on some major issues he was.

Define "us." Capitalists? Libertarians? Republicans? Egoists?

Yet Adam Smith&#39;s theory is perfectly fine, even though he used labor as the source of all value (and thus based his entire capitalist theory upon it), yet because Marx used the same premise he is wrong? That&#39;s an interesting take, and doesn&#39;t even make sense.


This was all caused by the lack of capital which was caused by the previus system not by Capitalism. If you however read History you would find that the ammount of Child labor was significantly smaller in the late 19th Century then it was during the start of the Industrial Revolution, not because there was a ban, for there was none, but because the ammount of Capital raised increased. In fact most of the so called "children" were in fact teenagers who were working to keep their family feed, and prior to Capitalism, these children wouldn&#39;t have even exsisted in all likelyhood.


Strangely, I&#39;m a history major. So you&#39;re saying the depression was caused by feudalism? Because during American slavery, it was pure capitalism. That&#39;s why Europeans came to exploit the north american resources in the first place. America was colonized by a corporation. So that&#39;s an interesting take as well. I&#39;d like to see some evidence for that. It&#39;s funny, too, because Marx predicted the "poverty of abundance" that was the great depression, with all his faulty theories and logic and labor value and all such nonsense. As for the children: you are aware that there exist sweatshops today for children, don&#39;t you? And yes, the number of working children did decrease in comparison to the beginning of the industrial revolution. It surely wouldn&#39;t have to do with the booming birth rate at the beginning of the industrial revolution vs. the declining birth rate afterwards. Of course not. And they were mostly teenagers? I don&#39;t suppose that&#39;s because there were *more* teenagers than younger children because families could not afford more mouths to feed during the depression, while in the twenties--when those teenagers would have been born--was a decade of exploding prosperity. Mind telling me where you&#39;re getting this whole "the depression happened because there wasn&#39;t enough wealth" from? Because I&#39;m pretty damned sure inflation played a rather large role there, and there was actually an abundance.

Every economist knows that capitalism is by nature unstable. It has ups and downs. An abundance of wealth is followed by a lack thereof. This is accepted. It has been mathematically modelled. If you&#39;re going to say something contrary to that, then by all means provide evidence for that statement, as well. If you support capitalism, then fine, I&#39;ve no problem with that. But don&#39;t act like it&#39;s flawless in spite of evidence to the contrary.

Even so, the cause of the great depression doesn&#39;t even have anything to do with whether capitalism prevents the use of force. By your own admission, people have been actively forced into labor. They still are in many third-world countries. That statement is wrong.


What are you talking about? I don&#39;t see how this has anything at all to do with my post.

you said:

..You will quickly discover, the more CAPITAL, THE LESS SUFFERING.


You claimed that the more capital, the less suffering. Yet south american countries have a ton of wealth, yet still great poverty. Five of the richest 100 men on the planet live in Russia. Russians, too, are wealthy, yet once again live in more poverty than they did under stalinist state capitalism.

Simply acknowledging that there is a large amount of Capital does not mean that capital is distributed well enough to raise the people out of poverty. The very nature of capitalism encourages the capitalist to profit by the detriment of another. Business is based solely on profit for that business, not on the prosperity of those who provide the capitalist with his/her wealth. Or do you now suggest that business, too, is not concerned primarily with the accumulation of wealth?

A business gains profit by paying people less to produce a commodity than their labor is worth, meaning the wealth of the business increases at the expense of the laborer. This wealth, then, is invested to create more capital--once again, for the capitalist or business, not the wage laborer. The very nature of capitalism enforces the increasing wealth of the capitalist and the decreasing wealth of the worker, consolidating wealth to a small minority and, relative to the capitalist&#39;s wealth, a complete lack thereof by the working population. The only manner in which this can be countered is through siezure of the means of production, for it is the apex between the wealth of the capitalist and the wealth of the worker.


Hmm, no Capitalist ever claimed that FDR started the Great Depression, just that he perpetuated it. This is completly true. This is shown by the fact that unemployment didn&#39;t reach below 12% during peacetime until after the second World War when taxes were drasticly cut. The Great Depression was caused by the newly created fed fiddeling with interest rates, making people invest wildly in capital goods, then they rose them again and everyone withdrew from the market realizing their investments were bad.

Yes, capitalists have claimed as such. Good to know you aren&#39;t one of them.

Strange, because you said paragraphs ago that something else caused the depression. No matter, though. And you&#39;re quite wrong about why the depression ended. The war effort increased the demand for labor, which increased profits and lowered unemployment rates. Before that, America was entirely isolationist and had, in comparison to after the depression, very little capital interest in the rest of the world. The end of isolationism boosted the economy. During the twenties, taxes were cut rampantly, too. This did not prevent the depression, nor did it end it. War drove labor, which increased profits, which increased investment. Due to steel shortages, it also drove capitalists to find other materials in which to still make thier products, like plastic, which in turn gave rise to new industries altogether.

FDR&#39;s programs kept people alive during the depression. That said, his programs were dangerously close to fascism, funneling government funds into private industry to handle government programs in order to keep business profits steady.. you know, I think someone else is trying to do that.. what is his name..


P.S. Since you had so much fun changing my title I guess I will have to tell you that since I have read Atlas Shrugged (Last Month) I have read Polybius (History of the Roman Empire), Frederic Bastiat, The Da Vinci Code, and The Gates of Fire.

Who would have guessed Atlas Shrugged and the Da Vinci Code would be on your reading list.

[praxus]

I didn&#39;t say that the combined whole is more than the sum of it&#39;s parts. Which maybe you realized later after further explaination. The working class grows. Former members of the bourgeoisie, and inactive members of the working class are set in motion. Thus your parts are now much more numbered than they used to be, and as such your whole WILL be bigger, if it is true that they must all work.

The people are holding the wealth. In what way are they not?

They are not holding the wealth because it is not in their posession.



No, the statement you quoted was based on hard truth. The working class of all previous societies created the wealth of those societies, just as the working class of modern society creates it&#39;s wealth. Whether you&#39;re a normal slave or a wage slave the products of your labor go elsewhere, and in return you are provided with the means to live.

Labor created the objects, but did not impart the value. Like I said before value is subjective because in order for something to have value it must first be valued, and the value to each person is completly different.

A "normal slave" as you put it is forced to work against his will at the end of a gun (by force). A "wage slave" as you put it is not a slave at all, as he is not forced to do anything.


In slave times, slaves WOULD have food, if they didn&#39;t they WOULD die, and then they couldn&#39;t work, so they were sustained. In capitalist society wage slaves are provided money in which the greater majority of the working class can afford the means to survive. It, however, is now the case that cars are part of the means of survival for most. Without a car, we can&#39;t get to work, and without being able to get to work we can&#39;t make money to get more things -- food, etc.

Non-Sequitor.


The value itself is not subjective, but what comprises value is, under capitalist society supply and demand is what determines "value." Thus, as you said, it&#39;s major component is when people value it (when there is demand for it). Let me ask you this then, what would be the value of an object that could be created infinitely within nearly an instant? Under such a system the demand for such objects is weened by the supply. Certainly the supply is SO great, that anyone "valuing" it for more would be a fool to do so.

No, supply and demand does not determine value, it determines a rough approximation in dollar terms the average desire for a given product based on everyones individual valuations. Value is completly on the individual bases, how much value something has changes from one person to another.


As I&#39;ve said before, and since most anti-communist responders seem to value human nature, the moment we get the things we want, the value already decreases, and we "take them for granted." In this example where you have an infinite supply, it quite literally takes to the words "taken for granted." We know the product will be always available when we need it, and thus the value is little, if anything at all. If I&#39;m not mistaken capitalist theory adheres to this aswell, that supply & demand are mutually influential.

This is a complete generalization. It is not a fact of human nature that people value something less and less overtime.

Also there isn&#39;t an infinite supply of wealth (be it in the form of consumer goods or what have you). There is however an infinite ammount (for all practicle purposes) of resources that can be manipulated into things which humans value. But the idea first must be spawned on what to do with these natural resources, and even if we can at the moment do anything with them. Then finnally labor is applied and then the end result is an object which may or may not have value depending on each individual. Money however acts as a guage to measure the overall desires for a given product. Money does what no ammount of beuracrats can do, which I mentioned previously in this paragraph.


So if value is COMPLETELY subjective as you say, this shouldn&#39;t become an issue and when the worlds necessities can be machine produced within short periods of times to an almost infinite scale we will still have a functioning capitalist society based on how bad people want it. What is more likely is that value is primarily objective, and that subjective forces are only an illusion to the true objective force which is a great part a question of supply and availability (availability meaning more so that if it&#39;s there, if the supply is good, but you cannot afford it).

So your willing to support a revolution based on "what is more likely"?

Furthermore what determines nessecesities and why does anyone have a right to them?


Given that, value CAN be deduced for each and every object. Is it easy to get the value? No, because there are always people who can afford it and who will spring the money to buy up at least a portion of the supply. When the company decides to drop the price to increase sales of their oversupply is not set in stone. But think for a minute about how labor time factors into supply. The more labor time placed on products the greater the supply, as such, the smaller the value.

The supply of nearly everything sold today is greater then it was say 200 years ago, however the ammount of "labor-time" put into it is significantly less then it was 200 years ago.


The only way to create a sustainable society, where the end result of advanced production may very well be infinite supply of something, is to create a society where the supply and hence, labor time, is directly related to the value of it. This way here, infinite production will never drive the value (and as such what people are willing to "pay") to 0. To put it in math terms, as production moves towards infinitely, the limit of value is 0. This is to say it will never actually reach 0 (because of your subjective forces that you claim to exist). But it will grow closer and closer and CLOSER based on the increasing supply of that product.


This is non-sense, because nothing can be produced on an infinite scale, as it would require infinite resources and an infinite ammount of time to produce it.


Are they holding them at gunpoint? no. But that&#39;s not the only means of force. I&#39;m not saying here that CEO&#39;s of companies walk down streets and say "You, you&#39;re coming to work for me&#33;" It is a condition of capitalism that we are forced to work. But indeed as you point out in your next response, they are and have in the past forced the working class out of the means to survive (land). And they will do so in the future as well. But as I&#39;ve pointed out before, and you still fail to see, there are two thefts. That of the resources (initially) and that of the products those resources created.


How does someone steal something that you claim is owned by no one?

How is it theft to trade labor for money? You are trying to redefine everyone&#39;s arguments out of exsistence.


Let me put it in simple terms. The whole of the working class cannot afford what the whole of the working class produces. WHY? Because the bourgeoisie live off their labor, and not only do they live off of it, they live opulently. The only one on welfare here is the bourgeoisie. The reason they can be on welfare and people are so unaware to do anything about it is because of the illusion of private property. Someone "owns" the land. We have no right to use it to produce what we need unless we buy it off him, and probably pay taxes on it too. And from all the land on the earth has been ored all the iron that&#39;s ever existed, has come all the water that&#39;s ever existed, and has produced all the food that&#39;s ever existed. Thus owning the land means owning the necessities of man, and as such they have to give you NOTHING. But they will, if you work for them. If you produce these products for your own survival and theirs. They will let you use these means of production, but you will never own them (if they do it right).

Legal Rights (such as property) are requirments to live in a society, this is an unchangable fact of reality. They are not an illusion.


Don&#39;t give me a "well people start small businesses argument, so they get the means of production." There are a lucky few who get this priveledge, and many of those who try to do it without that luck end up with massiv debt and a failed business simply because they cannot compete with the already existing capitalists. It&#39;s luck of the draw, and the only thing it shows is that the capitalists sometimes get a bit lax. They aren&#39;t thoroughly enough exploiting the working class.

This is just completly wrong, the vast majority of poor people make their way up to the middle class and the vast majority of them "own the means" of production as you put it(stocks).


No, only the numbers would prove it. I took for granted that you would be smart enough to see that man COULD create their own means of survival individually if there was no one who controlled all this. You can&#39;t take it out of the context of history. The current society was born out of a previous one and that one a previous one as well. It will continue to do this until an equilibrium is sought and eventually reached. Capitalism would not have been able to exist without the products and material progression of feudal society.


You are confusing cause and effect. Feudal society created the material products of their age, just like Capitalist Society(to the limited degree that exsisted) created the products of our age.


Imagine trying to apply capitalism to man at the dawn of society -- who would employ who? And on what grounds would they do so? "You don&#39;t own this land, it&#39;s mine, I&#39;ll kill you if you use it without my permission... but you can work for me and with these pieces of paper I give you you can buy the land off me." -- sounds like it would of had a really bright future. (sarcasm)

Non-Sequitor.


No, I wouldn&#39;t SUPPORT the majority in whatever they decide. This would destroy democracy. By that logic every vote would be unanimous. "Oh, look, the majority is voting for this, so I should just vote for it too, cause it&#39;s gonna win." That&#39;s not how it works, although granted it is the logic of a very reactionary amount of people. What I recognize is that if I don&#39;t support what the majority supports, I have no right to tell them the way it should be and make them do it that way. Do they have a right to do this to me either? No. I accept it willfully to be part of society. Under communism I have every right once again to ignore society, take my share of land and act how I please on it and produce my own means of survival. But I wouldn&#39;t... cause I&#39;d have shit for food cause I&#39;m no good at farming, a small branche leaned against a tree for shelter, piles of grass to keep me warm.


Why the hell do you keep contradicting yourself. Your in a communist society, you can&#39;t own property&#33; So no you can&#39;t go on "your" share of land because it wouldn&#39;t be yours under communism it would be "societies".

[NovelGentry]

They are not holding the wealth because it is not in their posession.

We are talking about socialism/communism here yes? Under both these systems the wealth of the working class is held by the working class.


Labor created the objects, but did not impart the value. Like I said before value is subjective because in order for something to have value it must first be valued, and the value to each person is completly different.

You&#39;re ruling out the fact that the object would not be created if it was not valued. As such it&#39;s creation does impart value, and it is an objective means to measure it. There is a section in the book title "Fundamental Principles of Communist Production and Distribution" that talks about the example of Robinson Crusoe on his island.

Robinson keeps a record of hist production. In doing so he not only relates exactly how long something takes him to build, but also it&#39;s relation to necessity, whether the time spent on it is even worth it&#39;s creation, keeping of course in mind that he must settle other necessities aswell.

The fact of the matter is, SOMEONE valued the product enough to put a certain amount of labor time into it, as such, that is it&#39;s objective value. No, not everyone would be willing to put the same amount of labor time to the same things, and that of course makes the value placed in such objects slightly subjective aswell. But this is why it is recommended we use a AVERAGE social hour of labor. This is to say, if one section of the market is underproductive, say producing 1 pound of ground beef every 15 minutes, and another produces 1 pound of ground beef every 7 minutes, the average labor time would be 11 minutes.

You may argue the value at sale time (and thus the COST) is subjective 100% to demand, however, it is foolish to base the value of items on this subjective portion, since the items have already been created. The value is indeed determined when it is created BY the person willing to create it. Nothing forces the consumer to acquire the product, and as such their subjective influence is a non-factor. Once again, we are not creating these products in socialism/communism for profit, thus whether they buy it or not is NOT a problem. Overproduction IS acceptable.


A "wage slave" as you put it is not a slave at all, as he is not forced to do anything.

This is now how I put it, and it&#39;d be helpful if you didn&#39;t misrepresent what I said. What I actually did was present the argument that they ARE forced to work. They simply aren&#39;t forced at gunpoint. The cost of failure to work is the same, their life.

As you I believe HAVE pointed out, however, this is the cost for anyone who is not willing to work in most societies. Individually speaking, that is, if there was no social interaction and we were all independent, if we did not work we would not survive. The problem with this is quite simply that we HAVE developed social interaction, and we do VALUE certain things that don&#39;t necessarily sustain life. More to the point, technology has moved beyond the point that we do have to all contribute. This isn&#39;t to say we SHOULDN&#39;T contribute, simply to say that we don&#39;t have to. At some point, it may very well be the case that no one has to contribute to the creation of food, and it will be 100% automated.

This is why I brought up the new markets. Capitalism looks to run away from this technology by finding new ways to put people to work. Once the manufacturing market was saturated here, the US began moving towards a services market, And the current manufacturing market of the third world will at some point also produce the goods of the third world when the capitalists look to expand their customer base. At which point the technology may be so far ahead that little manufacturing is even needed, and the necessary machines are ONLY serviced, and no longer manufactured.


Non-Sequitor.

Saying this only goes to show how weak your argument is. If this is truly the case you should be able to prove it with very little effort, DO SO instead of just trying to dance around the issue.


No, supply and demand does not determine value, it determines a rough approximation in dollar terms the average desire for a given product based on everyones individual valuations. Value is completly on the individual bases, how much value something has changes from one person to another.

Fair enough supply and demand argument. The second part, however, remains false. As I said before, value is inherent and objective in a product upon it&#39;s creation. Without that product being worth that value it would have never been made to begin with and thus would have never existed to be valued by the person consuming. Once again you ignore that the product itself is valued by the person creating it. As such the value they place in it&#39;s creation is inherent in the product itself, anything beyond that is subjective, and anything beyond that can be ruled out. This is why using average labor time is the most effective and stable measure for a products value. The value IS measurable, and easily measurable, and thus is objective.


This is a complete generalization. It is not a fact of human nature that people value something less and less overtime.

No, it&#39;s not a fact, nor was it ever intended to be said as one. It is, however, no less of a fact than the capitalist argument that it&#39;s human nature to need selfish incentive or to be greedy.


Also there isn&#39;t an infinite supply of wealth (be it in the form of consumer goods or what have you).

No, not yet there isn&#39;t. But there could be in the future.


There is however an infinite ammount (for all practicle purposes) of resources that can be manipulated into things which humans value.

As such and as I just said, there could be infinite wealth in the future.


But the idea first must be spawned on what to do with these natural resources, and even if we can at the moment do anything with them.

Of course. Any material creation of humans is created this way.


Then finnally labor is applied and then the end result is an object which may or may not have value depending on each individual.

Wrong. Before labor is applied to them the products must first be valued. As such, the amount of labor time put towards these products is an objective measure of their value.

No capitalist would ever pay workers to create a product that they didn&#39;t believe would sell, simpler said, that they didn&#39;t believe had the value in which they placed on it.

And no free man would create a product with not value, whether that value is to himself or someone else is irrelevant. Without SOMEONE valuing it, there is no need or desire to create it.


So your willing to support a revolution based on "what is more likely"?

No, I&#39;m willing to support a revolution that is willing, like myself, to realize the objective nature of value. You don&#39;t realize this, so I would never suspect you would support it. If I didn&#39;t believe that there was an objective nature to value I wouldn&#39;t be here debating it with you.


Furthermore what determines nessecesities and why does anyone have a right to them?

Necessity is determined by something that is needed to survive. This is of course relative to the time and society in which you live. If you live in a society where fights break out regularly then some form of martial arts training could be considered a necessity.

People don&#39;t have a right to necessities, what they do have a right to is the means by which to produce the necessities they need. If food is a necessity (which it is), you have a right to land which is able to produce such food. Where this right gets blurred with the necessity itself is when the means of producing that necessity become so technologically advanced that personal labor is no longer a factor in the production of that necessity. This is, however, again, another case of limits. Since the machine to produce that necessity itself was derived from the labor of men it&#39;s labor requirements can be seen as the labor requirements of what it produces. But if indeed it can produce infinitely then the use value of it&#39;s products infinitely decrease towards 0, with 0 being the limit.

Say for example a machine was constructed that took iron composites directly from the earth and from these produced steel fencing. Assume this machine itself took 8,000 labor hours to build and was completely self servicing. It then produces out of these 8,000 labor hours, infinite amounts of fencing (say measured value wise by each square yard). When the machine has produced 8,000 square yards of fencing, the fencing could be considered to be at one labor hour per square yard... but it doesn&#39;t stop there. It producing infinitely, as such, it moves on to 16,000 square yards, and now the value would have to be a half hour of labor per square yard. Well what about when it gets to 1,000,000 square yards? 1,000,000,000? As you can see the use value of the product grows infinitely smaller always approaching, but never reaching 0. So theoretically it should never be free, but at some point the value becomes so negligable that it&#39;s rather pointless to account for it anymore.

If indeed value were on the buying end, as you suggest, this would imply that these people who labored to create the machine have produced an infinite amount of value, and thus they should never have to work a day again in their lives. Unfortunately for them, assuming this is still a socialist society the value they created was 8,000 labor hours, whether or not that 8,000 labor hours solves some necessity or even luxury on an infinite scale does not matter.

Economically speaking communism makes sense when all necessities have this characteristic. It COULD happen earlier if indeed there are always a certain amount willing to work, but there is no guarantee. While I believe it will, simply based on how society and social acceptability have transformed, the only time in which it is provable to exist is when that characteristic exists.



The supply of nearly everything sold today is greater then it was say 200 years ago, however the ammount of "labor-time" put into it is significantly less then it was 200 years ago.

And? This doesn&#39;t disprove anything I said. If indeed the same amount of labor time or as I said MORE labor time was put into these products, even MORE supply would be produced. I didn&#39;t say supply COULD NOT increase with the same amount of labor time or even less, I simply said that MORE labor time equals MORE supply. This is 100% true unless technology has reverted to older means -- and still it is relative to the time.


This is non-sense, because nothing can be produced on an infinite scale, as it would require infinite resources and an infinite ammount of time to produce it.

You&#39;ve already admitted that for all practical purposes there is an infinite amount of resources. As far as an infinite amount of time to produce it, well yes, it&#39;s only logical that the whole of the amount something that can produce an infinite amount of product would take an infinite amount of time, but thankfully we don&#39;t need to actually produce an infinite amount of most things. We need only enough to satisfy the number of humans. And there has been little to nothing said about the speed at which it produces things infinitely, it could produce a billion a day and take less than a week to satisfy the population. It could move slower, it could move faster... but the only way in which it would be unable to economically make communism feasible is if the population grew at a faster pace than it produced.


How does someone steal something that you claim is owned by no one?

Well, I suppose it depends on your definition of steal. If it&#39;s owned by no one then everyone has equal rights to it, but no one has the supreme right to take the rights of others. In essence you&#39;re not so much stealing the land itself, you&#39;re stealing the rights of all other people to use this land.


How is it theft to trade labor for money? You are trying to redefine everyone&#39;s arguments out of exsistence.

It&#39;s not. Money itself has little to do with the theft. In fact there would be a very similar representation of labor time in socialist society, although it would probably be converted to an electric system using current credit card technology and thus would not allow for general circulation. The theft is not that money is traded for labor, it is that the exchange value (the amount of money the worker is paid to produce the product) is not equal to the use value (the amount of money the product then costs). After a days work, I know of no worker who can buy all of which he produced in that day.


*** I have a feeling I&#39;m about to lose power, so I&#39;ll make a second post with the rest of my response. Just want to make sure I didn&#39;t type all this for nothing.

[NovelGentry]

Legal Rights (such as property) are requirments to live in a society, this is an unchangable fact of reality. They are not an illusion.

What makes you say this? Just because you&#39;ve never seen society where property didn&#39;t exist? Can I get something a bit more than just mere assertion?


This is just completly wrong, the vast majority of poor people make their way up to the middle class and the vast majority of them "own the means" of production as you put it(stocks).

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

At least I know now that you&#39;re INSANE, rather than stupid... or maybe it&#39;s a bit of both.


You are confusing cause and effect. Feudal society created the material products of their age, just like Capitalist Society(to the limited degree that exsisted) created the products of our age.

No, much of what made capitalism was born out of Feudal society, in terms of technology that is. The technology had to first make it possible (overproduction for their given market) for the merchants to want anything beyond their current market. The Jacquard loom for example was publically destroyed in feudal society on two sides. First by the workers of the day (as it threatened jobs), and second by the aristocracy as it represented a threat to the controlled market.

Marx accounts very much for workers opposing such technology, aswell as one another, as a tool to the ruling class. We are set against ourselves... right now many US IT professionals blame Indians for their lost jobs, and haven&#39;t even begun to think to blame the corporations who are willing to ship their jobs away simply for increased profit margins.


Non-Sequitor.

Again, explain why. I take the time to explain my arguments, usually in moderate detail sometimes spanning multiple paragraphs. The only instance in which I&#39;ve yet to resort to such foolishly simplistic arguments is your insane belief that the vast majority of poor people end up stockholders in the end.


Why the hell do you keep contradicting yourself. Your in a communist society, you can&#39;t own property&#33; So no you can&#39;t go on "your" share of land because it wouldn&#39;t be yours under communism it would be "societies".

Fair enough it was badly worded. What was meant is very simply that no one has a right to remove you from the land. You can live independent of society without anyone to tell you that you can&#39;t. This is what I meant by "fair share." Not that land is divided and handed out and then owned by people, but very simply that they have fair share in the land, and yes it is indeed a "my fair share" as it is my right, which is equal the right of every other person to that land, and thus is indeed FAIR. At the time it seemed like a quick way to word it. In short, what I&#39;m saying is that it&#39;s not your share of land, it&#39;s your share of right to that land, which is of course not the total right to that land, as that is only held by all people as a whole.

[Professor Moneybags]

Under capitalism new technology is surpressed by businesses who can still make a bunch of money off the old.

How can businesses who want to make money from old technology surpress other businesses who develop new technology ?


Look at how slow we&#39;re moving towards clean and reusable energy....

I&#39;m afraid those conspiracy theories about 200mpg cars are hokum.


did you think Bush just cut funding for that cause he found out it was scientifically impossible?

I&#39;m afraid it is just that, most conventional forms of renewable energy are an unrealiable, expensive waste of time. We don&#39;t need Bush to fund anything anyway; scientific progress does not need govenment intevention or funding to achieve.

[Professor Moneybags]

Unfortunately, I&#39;m not doing that. The argument is: you think principle of capitalism is the non-initialtion of force, while I claim that it is the accumulation of capital.

Any you are attacking a straw man, as it is not what I am advocating. Call my system whatever you like, if capitalism doesn&#39;t suit you- it doesn&#39;t change the nature of my argument.


You are claiming that my disagreement with your own premise is a fallacy, and not good practice.

But you&#39;re not disagreeing with it, you&#39;re misrepresenting it. That is a fallacy.


Of course, now that you&#39;ve suddenly added "should be" in front of it, you&#39;ve changed your argument from being one of pure definition to one of pure morality

I haven&#39;t changed my argument; it&#39;s a question of both.


We are not, however, debating over whether or not people should or shouldn&#39;t force another to do their own bidding and reap the profits thereof,

I was. Plus, this is most definitiely a question of morality.


but rather that people are forced into labor under capitalism.

Thery&#39;re not anyway, so the point is moot.


It is not a question of ought, but a question of is. Perhaps you&#39;d ilke to change your argument again.

Is/ought is a false dichotomy.

[Professor Moneybags]

This is now how I put it, and it&#39;d be helpful if you didn&#39;t misrepresent what I said. What I actually did was present the argument that they ARE forced to work. They simply aren&#39;t forced at gunpoint. The cost of failure to work is the same, their life.

You once again demonstrate an inability to tell the difference between the metapysical and the man-made.


Well, I suppose it depends on your definition of steal.

To take rightfully owned property without permission is stealing.


If it&#39;s owned by no one then everyone has equal rights to it, but no one has the supreme right to take the rights of others. In essence you&#39;re not so much stealing the land itself, you&#39;re stealing the rights of all other people to use this land.

To witness the adsurdity of this claim, let&#39;s replace a few words :


In essence you&#39;re not so much stealing your house, you&#39;re stealing the rights of all other people to use your house.

Now tell me, what&#39;s stopping me from now replacing "house" with "labour" or "money" ?

[praxus]

Under a truly communist society, the individual would decide this. This is exactly how it works in the few hunter-gatherer societies left. Under socialism, I would imagine it would be an extension of law. Much like America today, in fact, with the disabled. To the best of our ability, they are given what they need. We know people need food, water, clothing, shelter, etc etc etc, and some, such as the disabled, have special needs.

We do this now, and there is no reason to believe it cannot be done in the future.

So in other words the individual would have the power of the state to force the productive to fill his "needs"?


Define "us." Capitalists? Libertarians? Republicans? Egoists?

Objectivists



Yet Adam Smith&#39;s theory is perfectly fine, even though he used labor as the source of all value (and thus based his entire capitalist theory upon it), yet because Marx used the same premise he is wrong? That&#39;s an interesting take, and doesn&#39;t even make sense.

I didn&#39;t say that Adam Smith is wrong because I think Marx is wrong, I said their both wrong because they are wrong.


Strangely, I&#39;m a history major. So you&#39;re saying the depression was caused by feudalism? Because during American slavery, it was pure capitalism.

Stop building a straw man, we both know that is not what I am refering to when I use the term "Capitalism". And no I&#39;m not saying feudalism caused the great depression I&#39;m saying intervention in the money supply caused the Great Depression.


That&#39;s why Europeans came to exploit the north american resources in the first place. America was colonized by a corporation. So that&#39;s an interesting take as well. I&#39;d like to see some evidence for that.

Evidence of what?


It&#39;s funny, too, because Marx predicted the "poverty of abundance" that was the great depression, with all his faulty theories and logic and labor value and all such nonsense. As for the children: you are aware that there exist sweatshops today for children, don&#39;t you?

Von Mises predicted and indentified it&#39;s cause.

Yup, and thoose Children are better off working then they are dying.



And yes, the number of working children did decrease in comparison to the beginning of the industrial revolution. It surely wouldn&#39;t have to do with the booming birth rate at the beginning of the industrial revolution vs. the declining birth rate afterwards.

So they could somehow afford to have more children out of no where? They just decided on a whim to have more children, right?


Of course not. And they were mostly teenagers? I don&#39;t suppose that&#39;s because there were *more* teenagers than younger children because families could not afford more mouths to feed during the depression, while in the twenties--when those teenagers would have been born--was a decade of exploding prosperity. Mind telling me where you&#39;re getting this whole "the depression happened because there wasn&#39;t enough wealth" from? Because I&#39;m pretty damned sure inflation played a rather large role there, and there was actually an abundance.


I&#39;m not talking about the twenties I am talking about the Industrial Revolution, you mixed two of my statements together.


Every economist knows that capitalism is by nature unstable. It has ups and downs. An abundance of wealth is followed by a lack thereof. This is accepted. It has been mathematically modelled. If you&#39;re going to say something contrary to that, then by all means provide evidence for that statement, as well. If you support capitalism, then fine, I&#39;ve no problem with that. But don&#39;t act like it&#39;s flawless in spite of evidence to the contrary.

Ups and Downs are caused by the fluxuatins in the money supply. Look at the money supply, you will find that during the booms it was inflated and then to keep inflation away they deflated the money supply and caused the market to crash because people pulled out of what they thought were good deals.


Even so, the cause of the great depression doesn&#39;t even have anything to do with whether capitalism prevents the use of force. By your own admission, people have been actively forced into labor. They still are in many third-world countries. That statement is wrong.


We aren&#39;t the third world, and our systems aren&#39;t remotely similar.


You claimed that the more capital, the less suffering. Yet south american countries have a ton of wealth, yet still great poverty. Five of the richest 100 men on the planet live in Russia. Russians, too, are wealthy, yet once again live in more poverty than they did under stalinist state capitalism.

The greatest accumilation of capital is the United States and Europe, BY FAR.


Strange, because you said paragraphs ago that something else caused the depression. No matter, though. And you&#39;re quite wrong about why the depression ended. The war effort increased the demand for labor, which increased profits and lowered unemployment rates. Before that, America was entirely isolationist and had, in comparison to after the depression, very little capital interest in the rest of the world. The end of isolationism boosted the economy. During the twenties, taxes were cut rampantly, too. This did not prevent the depression, nor did it end it. War drove labor, which increased profits, which increased investment. Due to steel shortages, it also drove capitalists to find other materials in which to still make thier products, like plastic, which in turn gave rise to new industries altogether.

The US didn&#39;t have any serius growth and gain in employment until 1948 when taxes were cut by a third.


FDR&#39;s programs kept people alive during the depression. That said, his programs were dangerously close to fascism, funneling government funds into private industry to handle government programs in order to keep business profits steady.. you know, I think someone else is trying to do that.. what is his name..


Stop pretending like Objectivists like George Bush, WE DON&#39;T.


Who would have guessed Atlas Shrugged and the Da Vinci Code would be on your reading list.

The Da Vinci Code sucked, IMHO.

[NovelGentry]

How can businesses who want to make money from old technology surpress other businesses who develop new technology ?

Well, they get a bunch of guys with calculators, and they say "hey, would it be cheaper for us to buy this company? invest it and influence them? or just let them build their product?" Then they decide which, if it is cheaper to do any of the others, they do that.


I&#39;m afraid those conspiracy theories about 200mpg cars are hokum.

I didn&#39;t say anything about 200mpg cars.


I&#39;m afraid it is just that, most conventional forms of renewable energy are an unrealiable, expensive waste of time.

What&#39;s your basis for this. Biomass and Landifill methane are shown to be cheap and widely available. Hydro power may not be that cheap, at it&#39;s inception, but it will last, and it is just as reliable as other forms. Windpower is also cheap for light needs, but can get more expensive, this is probably the worst in reliability. Solar power is THE most reliable, and within a few years it will be the cheapest.


We don&#39;t need Bush to fund anything anyway; scientific progress does not need govenment intevention or funding to achieve.

No, but we don&#39;t need him cutting it down by removing funding for EPA research either.


You once again demonstrate an inability to tell the difference between the metapysical and the man-made.

Force is force, how it&#39;s applied does not matter in the least. It may be metaphysical, in terms that you can&#39;t see the force, but that doesn&#39;t mean it&#39;s not man made.


To take rightfully owned property without permission is stealing.

How is it rightfully owned? It should be noted I&#39;m talking about property as in land, as that is what we were discussing before in terms of rights.


To witness the adsurdity of this claim, let&#39;s replace a few words:

There is no absurdity to this statement using the word land under socialism or communism. And there is no absurdity to it using the word house under communism. Under communism the social aspects of property have been changed. It is not inconceivable that this is possible, we&#39;ve seen such property relations in groups before including early indians and Jesuit&#39;s in South America. It is not impossible to realize that this can happen again.


Now tell me, what&#39;s stopping me from now replacing "house" with "labour" or "money" ?

Because very simply under communism your labour helps to sustain other life as well. It&#39;s not a one way street where half work and the other each have a buddy they have to support and do things for. Will there be those that don&#39;t work? yes, and it might take many of them to be expelled multiple times from communes until they realize that people don&#39;t like someone who&#39;s not pitching in.

But to actually answer your question. Nothing, depending on what society is. Money won&#39;t exist anywhere. A house as property will exist in both, but it&#39;s social nature will be changed. Labor is indeed useful, but what labor you provide society is given back in the labor which society provides you with.

[encephalon]

Any you are attacking a straw man, as it is not what I am advocating. Call my system whatever you like, if capitalism doesn&#39;t suit you- it doesn&#39;t change the nature of my argument.


But you&#39;re not disagreeing with it, you&#39;re misrepresenting it. That is a fallacy.



Thery&#39;re not anyway, so the point is moot.

Look: you are claiming that there is no force under capitalism, and denying that you claim as such at the same time. I disagree with you, and simply provide evidence--such as sweatshops, or children tied to machines--that in fact there is force. If you did not claim as such as a premise for your argument, then I would not be sitting here right now telling you it is wrong. If you claim that capitalism bans the initiation of force, then why indeed is there still force under capitalism?

This is not a straw man. I question the validity of your premise. Learn the difference.



Is/ought is a false dichotomy.

no, it is not. It changes the nature of your argument from concrete to abstract. Here&#39;s an example:

Ayn Rand is a dumb whore.
Ayn Rand ought not be a dumb whore.

This changes from being descriptive to prescriptive. You can say that the whole time you were saying both, but 1) you weren&#39;t, go back and read your posts, and 2) you are making two seperate arguments in one, which is not only bad practice but entirely useless to debate. If you don&#39;t understand the very basics of logic, and the fact that you can&#39;t change your premise from being descriptive to prescriptive without changing the conclusion altogether, nor can you claim someone&#39;s disagreement with an integral part of your argument is a straw man fallacy in order to play down the fault in your argument, then it is not your intent to debate your point, but to antagonize the opposition into submission to your argument rather than actually defend it. It may work with many people who don&#39;t know what a straw man fallacy is, but it will not work here. You are bending the very structure of logic to try to support your argument, and it is flat wrong. You are being further from objectivist by doing this, in the sense that it deifies objectivism, and trying to hide the fact that you are a relativist.

For fuck&#39;s sake, go take a philosophy 101 course. You need it. Hopefully, you&#39;ll be able to do that before you and your fellow "objectivists" get rid of nasty things like financial aid. Or hopefully not. Either way, as it currently stands, if you are indeed making sense to yourself, and not ignoring the true nature of logic purposefully, a logic course would do you well. There&#39;s much more to logic than a website filled with a list of fallacies that you don&#39;t wholly understand and neat little philosophy buzzwords like "moot point." I&#39;m hoping beyond everything that you&#39;ve never taken a logic course, because if so it accomplished nothing with you but small additions to your lexicon.

It is utterly pointless to debate with you if you do not even understand the structure of objective discourse.

[NovelGentry]

This is not a straw man. I question the validity of your premise. Learn the difference.

When they can&#39;t come up with any reasonable argument they yell straw man or non-sequitur. Never fails.

[praxus]

When they can&#39;t come up with any reasonable argument they yell straw man or non-sequitur. Never fails.

Did you ever think that we do that because you try to introduce things into the argument which have nothing to do with what we&#39;re talking about?

[encephalon]

Did you ever think that we do that because you try to introduce things into the argument which have nothing to do with what we&#39;re talking about?

I apologize, I was under the impression that the nature of capitalism had EVERYTHING to do with your argument, and that&#39;s why you stated such things. My mistake.

[Professor Moneybags]

Originally posted by [email protected] 1 2005, 08:36 PM
When they can&#39;t come up with any reasonable argument they yell straw man or non-sequitur. Never fails.
I&#39;ll stop yelling it when you stop doing it.

[Professor Moneybags]

Look: you are claiming that there is no force under capitalism, and denying that you claim as such at the same time.

No I haven&#39;t. Show me where I have done this.


If you did not claim as such as a premise for your argument, then I would not be sitting here right now telling you it is wrong. If you claim that capitalism bans the initiation of force, then why indeed is there still force under capitalism?

There isn&#39;t. That&#39;s why I say we&#39;re not living under capitalism now- force is being used. For instance It&#39;s not in the nature of a cat to bark. If it barks, then it is not a cat. If what you call capitalism initiaties force, then it is not capitalism.

You are attempting to define capitalism by non-essential characteristics (you&#39;re not alone, which would explain why so many here think that "Fascism" is a form of capitalism) and hoping that I will not notice. Capitalism is a system based upon individual rights, where the initiation of force is banned. That is the definition I used. These characteristics are non-contradictory and thus logically sound. What is your definition of it ?

So let&#39;s assume that you were right and that capitalism is "the accumulation of capital". Okay, so now we&#39;ll call my system "Moneybagism", as it differs from capitalism on principle. It is a system based upon individual rights, where the initiation of force is banned. You can rant about capitalism all you like, while "Moneybagism", which I support, remains untouched; you are attacking a straw man.


This changes from being descriptive to prescriptive.

The intrinsicist/subjectivist dichotomy is false, too. The actions of capitalism are determined by that entity&#39;s nature. It is in capitalism nature to respect individual rights; the use of force in relationships would contradict that (the existence of soicalist elements in society would explain it, though). Just as it is in the nature of collectivist systems such as communism and socialism to ignore individual rights and to thus embrace the use of force. The evidence for this needs little introduction; armed robbery, forced labour camps, massacres of "reactionaries" etc.

<snip the rest of the crap>


It is utterly pointless to debate with you if you do not even understand the structure of objective discourse.

Evasion of the argument noted. Now are we going to define our terms properly, or would that expose the fact that you were attacking a straw man ?

[Professor Moneybags]

Well, they get a bunch of guys with calculators, and they say "hey, would it be cheaper for us to buy this company? invest it and influence them? or just let them build their product?" Then they decide which, if it is cheaper to do any of the others, they do that.

What&#39;s saying it wouldn&#39;t be more profitable to ignore them ? Or let them be bought out and then the new technology could then be used to further their profits ?


Force is force, how it&#39;s applied does not matter in the least.

Force is indeed conceptually neutral, but the context in which it is applied, in terms of morality, is not. Nature and inanimate matter is non-volitional and cannot be moral or immoral. Human beings are volitional and their actions (in this case, the use of force) can and should be judged morally.

A famine caused by crop failiure is a metaphysical disaster, a famine caused by someone deliberately burning down your crops is a man-made disaster. If you starve to death due to just sitting there doing nothing, that is metaphysical reality taking it&#39;s course. If someone locks you in a room and starves you to death, that is man-made.


It may be metaphysical, in terms that you can&#39;t see the force, but that doesn&#39;t mean it&#39;s not man made.

If a meteor falls from the sky and flattens your car, do you then look for someone to blame ? If a bolt of lightning strikes your house and burns it to the ground, do you call the police and demand that they find who&#39;s responsible ?


How is it rightfully owned? It should be noted I&#39;m talking about property as in land, as that is what we were discussing before in terms of rights.

I assume it was bought and before that, discovered. It&#39;s not of ant rea relevence that the land your family lives on was given to them a thousand years ago by King Dickhead the 23rd who stole it from someone else; it&#39;s too late to do anything about it. (That&#39;s why I&#39;m against reparations.) And how is land different from any other commodity ?


There is no absurdity to this statement using the word land under socialism or communism. And there is no absurdity to it using the word house under communism. Under communism the social aspects of property have been changed.

That wouldn&#39;t be a change in the social aspect of property, it would be an abolition of property.


Because very simply under communism your labour helps to sustain other life as well.

Oh really ? Wait a minute, isn&#39;t that what you claim the capitalist is doing to the worker ? Is the worker not sustaining his life ? Why is that arrangement wrong and this one right ?

Sound like exploitation to me.


But to actually answer your question. Nothing, depending on what society is. Money won&#39;t exist anywhere. A house as property will exist in both, but it&#39;s social nature will be changed.

You mean that property rights will be abolished and people will be free to use other&#39;s property as they see fit. The rest is just verbal acrobatics.


Labor is indeed useful, but what labor you provide society is given back in the labor which society provides you with.

How, exactly ?

[NovelGentry]

I&#39;ll stop yelling it when you stop doing it.

Well you&#39;re not the one who said it to me, if I recall correctly. It was Praxus who pulled non-sequitur bullshit twice in the same post. What he considered a non-sequitur were two general examples which I made to back up my points. The first was a comparison between the normal slave and the wage slave, which I was using to back up that just because money becomes an abstraction does not mean you&#39;re not being forced.

What really needs to be dropped is the foolish logic that metaphysical doesn&#39;t have to be non-man-made.

2. Based on speculative or abstract reasoning. (I used the secondary definition cause the first is a bit of a cop out using the word to define itself).

This is exactly what I&#39;m trying to show here. Money is an abstraction. There is no direct physical force except in certain instances. This does not mean there is no force which makes a person choose between work or death, more to the point, it doesn&#39;t mean it&#39;s not man made. It&#39;s just hidden a bit better than a gun.

The second supposed non-sequitur was yet another backup to a point I was trying to make. The overall point being that societies are born out of other societies and the material progression of those previous societies. The theoretical example I used was to show that capitalism could not have formed at the dawn of man.

The fact is, he could try all he wants to show that these are non-sequiturs, but they are backup points to statements I made directly preceding these two examples. Unless our friend Praxus here doesn&#39;t really know what a non-sequitur is. I&#39;m not ruling this out yet since he didn&#39;t even know how to spell it.


What&#39;s saying it wouldn&#39;t be more profitable to ignore them ? Or let them be bought out and then the new technology could then be used to further their profits ?

Nothing is saying this, nor did I ever claim it was. The point is, for the sake of profit they will go for whatever is cheaper. In some cases buying them out might be illegal (and yes, I&#39;m aware this is something that shows the US is not a truly FREE market). But this is simply a non-issue in communist society. If the technology exists and it is better, there&#39;s no reason for people not to use it, more to the point, there&#39;s no reason anyone not to use it. This accelerates growth and advancement by removing the very foolish profit motive from EVER limiting technology.

Not to mention, it would be kind of foolish for an oil company to buy out a company producing feasible renewable energy when oil still exists. They&#39;d be throwing away whatever they spent trying to acquire those oil resources. What is more likely if they buy the company is that they will patent all the technology, prevent others from doing it, and then hold off until their oil supply is gone. This way they maximize their profit on all levels. Whether they do it this way, or just by crushing the other company the technological advancement has been stifled.


Force is indeed conceptually neutral, but the context in which it is applied, in terms of morality, is not. Nature and inanimate matter is non-volitional and cannot be moral or immoral. Human beings are volitional and their actions (in this case, the use of force) can and should be judged morally.

A famine caused by crop failiure is a metaphysical disaster, a famine caused by someone deliberately burning down your crops is a man-made disaster. If you starve to death due to just sitting there doing nothing, that is metaphysical reality taking it&#39;s course. If someone locks you in a room and starves you to death, that is man-made.

Once again you go to redefine metaphysical as non-man-made. The word metaphysical has nothing to do with whether or not it is a man made effect, it only has to do with whether that effect is strictly physical or whether it is abstracted. If I stab you to death if you do not do what I say, that is a physical force which is man made and has caused your death. If I force you to work for me to survive by some weird abstraction (private property and money) it is metaphysical but it is also man made and will also cause your death if you do not do what I say.

I&#39;ll reiterate just so this doesn&#39;t happen again: METAPHYSICAL HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH BEING MAN-MADE OR NOT.


If a meteor falls from the sky and flattens your car, do you then look for someone to blame?

No, but just incase you&#39;re confused, this is not metaphysical. This is physical.


If a bolt of lightning strikes your house and burns it to the ground, do you call the police and demand that they find who&#39;s responsible?

No, and once again incase you are confused, this is physical.


I assume it was bought and before that, discovered. It&#39;s not of ant rea relevence that the land your family lives on was given to them a thousand years ago by King Dickhead the 23rd who stole it from someone else; it&#39;s too late to do anything about it. (That&#39;s why I&#39;m against reparations.) And how is land different from any other commodity?

No, who gave them the land, who they stole it from, and how they stole it is of no real relevance, you&#39;re right. What IS of relevance is the fact that no one should own land. Just like we can&#39;t change what happened to slaves in the US, but what remains relevant is the fact that we never should of had slave, and we never should again.


That wouldn&#39;t be a change in the social aspect of property, it would be an abolition of property.

I disagree. This is not like class where if everyone is one class then there is no real class, because there is no further definition. If only one class exists, it&#39;s simply not really a class as there is no other class that can exist to define either as a class itself. Property on the other hand differs in that if everyone owns the property, everyone has rights to it. If no one owns the property no one has rights to it. This is to say that if no one owned it (and then indeed was not property) no one could use it. Making everyone own it, and thus allowing everyone to have rights to it keeps it very much as property, simply not private property.


Oh really ? Wait a minute, isn&#39;t that what you claim the capitalist is doing to the worker ? Is the worker not sustaining his life ? Why is that arrangement wrong and this one right ?

Sound like exploitation to me.

Had you bothered to quote that in context you may have seen the difference. As I&#39;ve said on multiple occasions your labor does help to sustain other life. If you&#39;re a carpenter the houses you build help to sustain the lives of those people who cannot build their own houses. In return, the labor of farmers helps to sustain your life. The labor of clothing makers helps to sustain your life. The labor of doctors helps to sustain your life. IT IS NOT A ONE WAY STREET.

Unlike communism, capitalism sustains certain non-workers by force, simply because they "own" the resources. In communism there is no way for an individual who is not working to force people to support him, he does not own anything independent of the rest of society and therefore cannot subjugate their labor for it&#39;s use (assuming it is indeed a necessity). Thus, any support which non-working individuals is given is not exploitation, it is up to the people whether they are going to support this person, and in the end many people like this will be pushed out of the support of society, banned from one commune after another until they are willing to accept that in order to be accepted by society, they will have to help society. What society CANNOT do, however, is prevent this man from using the means of production to sustain his own life. In fact, that would surely be welcomed by those who disagree with his leeching. In the end that individual may find that he&#39;d be much better off working within society, as producing his own means of survival is a lot harder than producing part of other&#39;s in return for his own.

I suspect, and no, I have no proof, that this will be rare, if even existent. Socialism will have sorted this... it will be generally accepted that all people work by the time socialism goes to communism, as all people WILL work. Work will be a lot different than we see it today, however, and it may not seem like work at all. For example, people may only have to work about 2 hours a day to sustain society (due to technological advancments). I personally would work about 12 hours a day. I&#39;d want to spend at least 6 teaching. Two working on computers (in whatever aspect, networking, programming, tech support). Two writing possibly for a paper or a journal or something, but also social critiques and things of that nature. And two I would devote to wherever I work was strongly needed. This is not a far cry different from what I do now on a daily basis. With the exception of teaching, which I will be attending school so I CAN do in the future.


You mean that property rights will be abolished and people will be free to use other&#39;s property as they see fit. The rest is just verbal acrobatics.

Private property will be abolished. The products of society belong to society as a whole. Period.


How, exactly?

Well, what do you do for a living? Do you enjoy it? Would you like to be doing somethin else? What? Give me an example of what you do in a day (as I have given you that example above) and I will explain to you how your contribution to society plays out, and I will show you how society gives back to you.

With 12 hours a day spent on the things I explained above I wouldn&#39;t have a lot of time to grow food, build a house, make and fix a car, make clothing, construct whatever else I needed, etc. Thus I contribute to society by teaching children in what I&#39;m trained in. I help fix and advance computers, I provide entertainment through writing, etc.. and two hours given to whatever is needed (I do this because I respect that idea that there will be things NEEDED to be done, and I&#39;m more than willing to give up some of my time to help with these things). If what is needed is cleaning public toilets, I&#39;ll be there. If it&#39;s stocking shelves at a local distribution center I&#39;ll do that too. If it&#39;s making clothes (although I&#39;m no good at sewing) I can do that as well. If they need me on a farm, I can do that surely.

Do you not see yourself in a similar position? Why wouldn&#39;t you want to help society if in return society helps you... provides you with housing, food, clothing, and pretty much whatever else you need and in many cases whatever else you want.

[encephalon]

1)


The nature of Capitalism is that it bans the initiation of force and fraud. That is it&#39;s defining characteristic.

2)


Capitalism the social, political, and economic system (in the Laissiez Faire sense of the word) does ban the Initiation of force, period. Just because someone who happens to own capital initiates force does not mean by any stretch of reality that Capitalism (Laissiez Faire) is responsible for it.

and so on..

Now, you say that capital exists--how does capital exist without capitalism? A cow&#39;s milk doesn&#39;t exist unless there is a cow. Capitalism precedes the existence of capital, and by acknowledging that capital indeed exists, one must logically infer that so does capitalism within the given context.

Furthermore, whenever someone makes an argument against the current system, such as force, you defend your argument by stating that it is not capitalism, because it isn&#39;t entirely laissez-faire. Yet you fail to differentiate the current system from what you are trying to call capitalism in such terms, because it is not the state forcing children to work in sweatshops, but the capitalists. If the state is the problem, then by all means tell me why it is the capitalists forcing children to work. Or are they not capitalists now?

You continually circle around your own argument. Your definition of capitalism changes according to circumstance--when it suits you, and supports your argument, you use the current system as an example. When it works against your argument, you say the current system isn&#39;t capitalism. You change your premise depending on circumstance. This, sir, Ayn Rand would frown upon, and is not objective but subjective interpretation on the fly. Good for politics, I&#39;ll give you that, but unsound in the realm of philosophy.

It is pointless to debate with you because if something becomes problematic in your argument, you will provide a different definition.

And Alas, if you traverse the thread, my argument was with moneybags over his premise, and not directed towards you. You stepped in to his argument, and suddenly your arguments are combined. It&#39;s all the same, however: you are both providing subjective definitions of capitalism as it suits your need. You are committing the fallacy of converse accident, exclusion, complex question, equivocation and likely a host more if I cared to look it up. Your argument form is inconsistent and most of the time you end up begging the question rather than objectively proving or disproving anything.

I&#39;d love to continue this, but unless you come back with a new, fully defined and coherent argument, this is quite pointless and a waste of my energy.

This is inane.

[Professor Moneybags]

Once again you go to redefine metaphysical as non-man-made.

You know very well what I mean.

It&#39;s not a redefinition, anyway. The dictionary gives this under metaphysics :

The branch of philosophy that examines the nature of reality, including the relationship between mind and matter, substance and attribute, fact and value.

Unless you&#39;re of the school of "thought" that thinks that reality is affected by man&#39;s consciousness (in which case my participation in this debate ends here), my definition is correct.


What IS of relevance is the fact that no one should own land.

Why ?


Property on the other hand differs in that if everyone owns the property, everyone has rights to it.


If no one owns the property no one has rights to it.


This is to say that if no one owned it (and then indeed was not property) no one could use it. Making everyone own it, and thus allowing everyone to have rights to it keeps it very much as property, simply not private property.

The tragedy of the commons has shown a rather large flaw in these ideas.


Private property will be abolished. The products of society belong to society as a whole. Period.

No, it doesn&#39;t. There is no collective body or mind and thus no collective labour, only that of it&#39;s individual members. You&#39;re operating on a false premise.


Do you not see yourself in a similar position? Why wouldn&#39;t you want to help society if in return society helps you...

I do, indirectly. It&#39;s not a primary goal.


provides you with housing, food, clothing, and pretty much whatever else you need and in many cases whatever else you want.

I trade money I earn for those, thanks.

[Professor Moneybags]

Yet you fail to differentiate the current system from what you are trying to call capitalism in such terms, because it is not the state forcing children to work in sweatshops, but the capitalists.

I doubt they&#39;re being forced (i.e. coerced by people, rather than by nature). The pay is usually higher in a factory than on a farm. That&#39;s why they go there in the first place.


You continually circle around your own argument.

It isn&#39;t a circular argument. I didn&#39;t claim that children were being forced to work in sweatshops, you did. You&#39;re putting words into my mouth and then accusing me of contradicting myself.

<snip the rest of the garbage>

[NovelGentry]

You know very well what I mean.

No, I don&#39;t know what you mean when you explain one thing as meta-physical and then attempt to explain that the other is different because it&#39;s "man made." It makes no sense and offers no logical argument.

IS the force under capitalist society metaphysical? YES
IS it man made? YES

Agree? If not, explain that. Don&#39;t simply try and slip out with "It&#39;s not man made" or "it&#39;s not a gun being pointed at your head."


Why ?

Exactly what gives them the right to it? "I was here first?" Seriously, you must be joking or something, because we all know very well no one who seems to give a flying hoot about private property cares at all who was on land first.

Or maybe we should look to divine right? This is GODS LAND&#33; Oh but of course... and "you&#39;re God&#39;s people right?" .... "why&#39;s that again?"..... "Oh right, cause you said you&#39;re God&#39;s people."


The tragedy of the commons has shown a rather large flaw in these ideas.

Well there are obvious flaws in the simple logic of it. I&#39;m not going to deny that. For example... if no one owns it and thus no one has rights to it, who has the right to STOP anyone from using it because of their lack of rights? The whole thing is one big contradiction. I wasn&#39;t pointing it out as some sort of logical conclusion. It&#39;s semantics... what I was trying to point out very simply is that property is property because of ownership and thus inherent rights. But ownership does not have to mean ownership by one or even a few, nor should it in the case of something like land, but then why would it mean so for any other resources that are derived from that land?

Very simply, in order for it to remain property, someone must maintain ownership. But there is nothing which stops global ownership of that property, thus removing once again only the social aspect which keeps it PRIVATE. This is why I say we are abolishing private property, not property in general. To abolish property would require some extreme authoritarianism that contradicts itself a lot. Unless we abolish it phyiscally, in which case we all die.


No, it doesn&#39;t. There is no collective body or mind and thus no collective labour, only that of it&#39;s individual members. You&#39;re operating on a false premise.

But there is a collective body, and each individual physically is an extension of that body, we call it society. And there is a collective mind, and each individual person&#39;s beliefs and ideas are an extension of that mind, we call that democracy. Thus we can very easily have collective labor, we can collectively produce what we ALL need. We can collectively decide on the proper course of action for certain issues. Have you never hesitated on a decision and in the end part of you still wasn&#39;t happy with the decision you made? This is no different then democracy at large in society.

We are, however, not foolish enough to say that all issues are such a matter. It would be pointless for you to ask a friend whether or not you liked chocolate. But you may ask them if they think you should get a tattoo. Much the same it would be foolish for society to function if people did not have individual decisions about their own individuality. This does not prevent, nor should it be a case for, society focusing solely on the individual, whether we&#39;re talking about the products of society or the decisions society makes which effects the lives of all people in society.

Your system of thinking seems rather archaic and nihilistic if you ask me. There&#39;s little reason to assume it HAS to be the way you speak. Of course the same could be said about what I&#39;m saying, but man is a SOCIAL creature. To deny this for strict individual isolation will certainly cause the collapse of society. Afterall, why would it remain in existence if there was no point to it?


I do, indirectly. It&#39;s not a primary goal.

Nor does it have to be a primary goal in communism either. What will be much more OBVIOUS though is the obvious societal links between production and consumption. You may not NEED to be strictly conscious of it, but it becomes a goal embedded in much of what else you do.


I trade money I earn for those, thanks.

You trade labor time for those (assuming you&#39;re working class). The most annoying part is that all the labor time required to build those things is far less than all the labor time it took you to earn enough money to pay for them.

What exactly are you AFRAID of with abolishing money? Ignore some of the aspects of communism for a minute, and look at a socialist system (which I argue all would work in). We replace money with a credit system, you are credited an hour of labor for every hour of labor you do, and with that hour of labor you can buy an hour of labor? Are you losing something with this? Are you worried that you&#39;re gaining too much, that someone else will suffer -- because everyone else&#39;s credit would work the same way. The only way it makes sense for you to really worry about something like this is if right now you&#39;re not working class.

So let me ask bluntly, are you working class? or does your paycheck feed off the labor and subseuent products OF the working class? It would sure clear up WHY you&#39;re making some of these arguments.

[encephalon]

It isn&#39;t a circular argument. I didn&#39;t claim that children were being forced to work in sweatshops, you did. You&#39;re putting words into my mouth and then accusing me of contradicting myself.

I didn&#39;t say it was a circular argument.

<SNIP THE REST OF YOUR SENSELESS BULLSHIT>

[Professor Moneybags]

No, I don&#39;t know what you mean when you explain one thing as meta-physical and then attempt to explain that the other is different because it&#39;s "man made." It makes no sense and offers no logical argument.

I&#39;m not explaining it again.


Agree? If not, explain that. Don&#39;t simply try and slip out with "It&#39;s not man made" or "it&#39;s not a gun being pointed at your head."

You cannot tell the moral difference between being murdered and being struck by lightning ?


Exactly what gives them the right to it? "I was here first?" Seriously, you must be joking or something, because we all know very well no one who seems to give a flying hoot about private property cares at all who was on land first.

First come first served seems okay to me.


But there is a collective body, and each individual physically is an extension of that body, we call it society.

Individuals can work collectively, but there is still no collective body as such.


And there is a collective mind, and each individual person&#39;s beliefs and ideas are an extension of that mind, we call that democracy.

That&#39;s most definitely not a collective mind. We&#39;re not the borg.


Your system of thinking seems rather archaic and nihilistic if you ask me.

Your veneration of democracy is very naive. Dangerously so. I believe Praxus mentioned something about murdering a section of society being acceptable, providing it was decided democratically.


There&#39;s little reason to assume it HAS to be the way you speak. Of course the same could be said about what I&#39;m saying, but man is a SOCIAL creature.

The individual is to be protected from society, not to be a pawn it&#39;s game. This is why the non-initiation of force is such an important issue. Whether or not man is a social creature isn&#39;t really relevent.


To deny this for strict individual isolation will certainly cause the collapse of society. Afterall, why would it remain in existence if there was no point to it?

Isolationism/Communism is a false dichotomy.


So let me ask bluntly, are you working class? or does your paycheck feed off the labor and subseuent products OF the working class? It would sure clear up WHY you&#39;re making some of these arguments.

Yes I am a "worker". I work average hours and somewhat less than average pay. It&#39;s an easy job, so I&#39;m not bothered that much. Unlike some of the parasites who live around my area, with half a dozen children, claiming sometimes twice my salary in benefits. None of them have worked a day in their lives (make no mistake about it; their situations are self-inflicted and they have no interest in getting out of them). Whose paying for this ? Why, me and others like me of course. What about my boss "exploiting" me, you ask ? If he is, it&#39;s part of the contract I work under. What contract did I sign that gave these other parasites the right to my money ? None. So why do they do claim my money ? Because they can. How ? The government said they were entitled to it (more dependents = more power/votes for them). Would I refuse them help if there was no welfare state ? Perhaps, perhaps not. But that would be my choice and their need I would then have the right to question.

Do you see now ?

[Professor Moneybags]

I didn&#39;t say it was a circular argument.

You claimed it was a contradiction. I proved that it was not.


<SNIP THE REST OF YOUR SENSELESS BULLSHIT>

Evasion noted.

[NovelGentry]

I&#39;m not explaining it again.

Thank you for saving me from that. It would be dually nice if you decided never to imply metaphysical and man-made were opposites again as well.


You cannot tell the moral difference between being murdered and being struck by lightning ?

Of course I can. But it&#39;s not the same as the moral difference between the force we see in capitalism and being shot by colonialists as they steal your land and subjgate your labor.


First come first served seems okay to me.

Right, so what is that first come first served to every 1x1 meter piece of land? 3x3 meter? Now you need to define the size. Or can the first person who stands on any portion of land make claim to the entire world? How do we draw the borders between what one group or person find and what another one does? Or is it that you have to pass over every part of the land you own? In that case, the person with the rights to the most land, at least in the beginning (since now we&#39;ve just all inherited it) would have probably been the fastest runner&#33;

I like this idea for property rights. In fact, I think we don&#39;t need a credit system at all now to replace money... we&#39;ll just have it so the first person to everything gets it. No more food? Should have been quicker. Oh, looks like you need pain medication, next time you should have ran&#33;

This way we return to a more true darwinian nature and it will truly be survival of the fittest. Maybe we can have it so you can duel someone for it too if both of you agree and they want to snuff out future competition.


Individuals can work collectively, but there is still no collective body as such.

So what actually defines a collected body? See... I thought the collection of your fingers, thumb, and palm working together collectively made your hand. I can do a lot more with my entire hand than just my index finger. It&#39;s interesting though, cause there are still specialized cases where my entire hand WOULDN&#39;T be as good as just my finger. And those will exist, always, but for general purpose my hand offers more. What makes the actions of society any different than this?

We all act individually according to individual parts of the mind (our own and in some cases others when people tell us to do things and we&#39;re stupid enough to listen). Individually, we can call do very specific tasks which make specialized needs fulfillable, but then together we can generally speaking accomplish a whole lot more by working together. Combining our movement to be a stronger and more productive force.


That&#39;s most definitely not a collective mind. We&#39;re not the borg.

No, you&#39;re right. Democracy alone is not a collective mind. Democracy combined with other social interaction is though. What Democracy represents is the guiding power of that collective mind.


Your veneration of democracy is very naive. Dangerously so. I believe Praxus mentioned something about murdering a section of society being acceptable, providing it was decided democratically.

And as I responded to Praxus (to which I do not recall if he replied). Democracy isn&#39;t about what&#39;s doing absolute right. Would it be "acceptable" if it was democratically decided that such a thing was, acceptable. YES. This is the point of democracy. But as I believe I said to him, I would much rather have millions of people deciding on what is acceptable for society than dozens of their "chosen representatives."

There&#39;s nothing that necessarily makes a state senator a more reputable person and fit to make decisions about such things than the rest of the people in the state. Afterall, if what America calls democracy actually is democracy, the people could just as easily have a section of society murdered. All they would need to do is vote representatives who supported such useless massacre into all necessary positions.

What really makes you think that just because democracy is now direct that people are all the sudden going to vote for the worst of the worst things possible?


The individual is to be protected from society, not to be a pawn it&#39;s game.

You cannot be a pawn in anything&#39;s game that does not have a mind of it&#39;s own. As a MEMBER of society (this same society you apparently need to be protected from), you are part of that mind, and you have equal say as any other individual.

Apparently you seem to think society is some sort of dangerous creature that individuals should be protected from, but you fail to see that in the end society is these individuals working together. As such, what you&#39;re really saying is you need to protect the individual from the possible social repurcussions which can occur when these individuals work together.

So who is our great protector? And if society is such a dangerous beast, why have we not destroyed it yet and moved towards becoming independent isolated individuals?


This is why the non-initiation of force is such an important issue.

So who ensures again that this apparent "non-initiation of force" is kept? A force of some sorts, right? Police? Military? I suppose it&#39;s ok too that we stop the initiation of force before it actually happens yes?

So for example... say we think some country is a real threat to us. We think they&#39;re gonna be partaking in the "initiation of force" against us (certainly with no good reason too). We should certainly be given the right to take over that country and stop that form happening, right? So we can initiate force to uphold the non-initiation of force, yeah? Ok good, just making sure that&#39;s clear.


Isolationism/Communism is a false dichotomy.

I agree, the much more appropriate is Capitalism/Communism. This was not really at all what I was saying though. My point wasn&#39;t that these were at ends... in fact, I don&#39;t believe they are at ends. One day we may be SO technologically advanced that any person can create any THING they want. And there may very well be no material need for society anymore. I would say communism WILL feed into this, given the technological advancements which will occur throughout it&#39;s course.

What I was trying to show you is very simply that we have society for a reason. Society will collapse only when it is possible for it to. Let me clarify further. People make up society. People realize they need other people. I don&#39;t know how to build my own house, I need carpenters. People thus maintain social interaction and thus society.


Make no mistake about it; their situations are self-inflicted and they have no interest in getting out of them.

No, it&#39;s not self-inflicted. While I agree there are these cases, the overwhelming majority are not self-inflicted.

How would you suggest that they get out of them? Get a job? Who&#39;ll take care of the kids? Are they educated? Would the pay of their job even support their family? Would TWO jobs even do this?

I have a task for you, if you&#39;re willing. I&#39;d like you to talk to one of these individuals about their situation. Not in a condescending way, simply ask them what&#39;s caused them to struggle so badly. Ask them what kind of education they got. If they COULD have gotten better. Feel free to let one question lead to another, for example, if they say "well in my current state I&#39;m addicted to crack." Ask them when they first started using crack and why. Yes it may be their final decision to do such a thing, but for some people it&#39;s no more of a decision than is the decision to buy a car.


Whose paying for this ?

Well if the system was proper it&#39;d be the top 10% paying for it. I agree, working class tax is foolish in general. We&#39;re already exploited trying to make money, and then still more is removed. Most of this is the problem the ruling class has bestowed upon society, and it should be their job to fix/help it.

But there&#39;s a better way than making them fix/help it. STOP IT.


What about my boss "exploiting" me, you ask ?

No I didn&#39;t. But it&#39;s interesting you brought this up. I know in most of the small cities I am near, and many of the large, that a great majority of these people are minorities. Many of these minorities are exploited from the start, and this is HOW (over time) people are driven into the position you see them in. They are exploited FAR worse than us.

This is a side effect partly of unequal wages. There are of course other "side effects" to unequal wages, which include the always growing "immigrants are staling our jobs issue." Maddox addresses this one quite clearly on his website: http://maddox.xmission.com/hatemail.cgi?p=1 -- scroll down until you see a pirate, then read the comic that grows from it.

If you&#39;re willing to sell your labor at less than it&#39;s worth because you have to and not care about the situation it puts you in the most I can do other than try and get you to see the other side is feel pity for you. I&#39;ve said before that class struggle cannot be taken out of the context of history. These problems have been built up, and much of the welfare systems alone are a holdover from the great depression (thus some would argue we never actually fully recovered). It&#39;s deeper than just what you see now. The answer is class struggle, but you can&#39;t see that answer just by looking at individual people and how they "leech" off your taxes. You have to look in their past, in your past, and the past of society as a whole to find the answers.


What contract did I sign that gave these other parasites the right to my money ?

You didn&#39;t sign a contract you "elected" someone who put that signature on that contract for you (abstractly so to speak). But that&#39;s the price you pay. Because if this were direct democracy, no one would be there to protect you from society. :lol:


The government said they were entitled to it (more dependents = more power/votes for them).

Actually, you&#39;re not given more votes just because you have dependents. You&#39;re always given one vote, and you don&#39;t get it until you&#39;re 18. And still then, you don&#39;t really have a vote.

But once again, as you&#39;ve pointed out, the troubles of direct democracy are far worse&#33; I&#39;d much rather have my representatives pass some laws that I don&#39;t agree with and maintain social welfare to curve the agitation of people than have everyone vote to kill me&#33;


Would I refuse them help if there was no welfare state ?

If there was no welfare state this beast would have been taken down a long time ago. Not sure by what force. Arguments could be made that most people were still reactionary around the time of the depression, although there were certainly more revolutionary. But given that the majority were still reactionary it could have equally been fascism to communism.


But that would be my choice and their need I would then have the right to question.

You have a right to question now. You also have a right to lobby for welfare reform (good luck). Maybe you should vote in people who feel the same way as you. Looks like the countries headed in that direction, so hold out there, you may have your way sooner or later.


Do you see now ?

Oh I&#39;ve always seen. The better question is, do you? I suspect not.

Let me first say that your consequent disagreement with communism seems founded on this idea that welfare runs rampant without certain things already being addressed. You ignore history and human progress and assume that our nature and social relations are always static it seems. You assume that if the revolution happened tomorrow, and we had socialism for say 150 years, which then evolved to communism that there&#39;d still be people with six kids sitting on their couch refusing to do any work.

Maybe it would make you feel better if you knew that most of us don&#39;t see "welfare" (as in a check every month with no set purpose) as being reasonable or good. Socialism would seek to create welfare, yes. In the sense that it would provide people with free education, and if they needed free daycare while they got that education. This of course means they&#39;re working towards something, or so we would hope.

I personally don&#39;t believe that things like free food (foodstamps) will be necessary under socialism. There would be no reason for them to exist, no job would necessarily supply less money than is needed to buy food, as well as other things. Under capitalism, such positions exist. Even with JOBS (and I emphasize there&#39;s an S on that) some families still need food stamps. I know this because my family was like this for several years during my youth. My mother worked two jobs, and my father one. Welfare made it possible for my family to do better... but a true family we are/were not (my father is now dead). Some of us have a problem with a system where the only way to become middle class from someting lower is to work three jobs and be on welfare for a family of four.

Is every example like mine? No. Some are better, some are worse. Some explain more how the system doesn&#39;t work, some make people look like simply greedy and lazy beasts. It&#39;s not difficult to see the failings of the system though, even without looking in the past really. But if you&#39;re going to fully understand what we&#39;re talking about you have to realize there&#39;s more to the story of that 6 kid family than lazy parents. It may be drugs, poor education, disability, etc. And behind all those is another story.

[Professor Moneybags]

You cannot tell the moral difference between being murdered and being struck by lightning ?

Of course I can.

Evidently not :


It would be dually nice if you decided never to imply metaphysical and man-made were opposites again as well.


But it&#39;s not the same as the moral difference between the force we see in capitalism and being shot by colonialists as they steal your land and subjgate your labor.

Yes it is. "Work or starve" is not a capitalist idea, it&#39;s a fact of reality.

<snip the straw man arguments/darwin garbage>


So what actually defines a collected body?

Nothing. It doesn&#39;t exist.


See... I thought the collection of your fingers, thumb, and palm working together collectively made your hand.

False anology. Try eating for someone else.


We all act individually according to individual parts of the mind (our own and in some cases others when people tell us to do things and we&#39;re stupid enough to listen). Individually, we can call do very specific tasks which make specialized needs fulfillable, but then together we can generally speaking accomplish a whole lot more by working together. Combining our movement to be a stronger and more productive force.

Yes, but at the end of the day, we&#39;re still individuals and therefore we should still have individual rights.


And as I responded to Praxus (to which I do not recall if he replied). Democracy isn&#39;t about what&#39;s doing absolute right.

Then it&#39;s wrong, isn&#39;t it ? Especially when people&#39;s rights and freedoms are at stake.


Would it be "acceptable" if it was democratically decided that such a thing was, acceptable. YES.

Then anything is potentially acceptable. You&#39;re a moral relativist.


This is the point of democracy. But as I believe I said to him, I would much rather have millions of people deciding on what is acceptable for society than dozens of their "chosen representatives."

Dictatorship/democracy is another false dichotomy. What is "acceptable" and what isn&#39;t is not a social phenomenon to be decided by any particualr individual or group. It&#39;s the decisions that matter, not who, or how many of us are making them.


What really makes you think that just because democracy is now direct that people are all the sudden going to vote for the worst of the worst things possible?

If everyone has the ability to murder/rob their neighbour by vote, then everyone you meet and live with is a potential murder/thief; they vote for the person wanting to rob their neigbours before their neighbours vote for different person who is promising to rob them. Society then turns into a "cold" civil war, run by pressure groups. This is what we see happening today on all socio-economic levels.

Secondly, with most people, their policial beliefs change the same way as their fashions in clothing change. No guiding principles whatsoever. We also have an education system in place to ensure that remains the case.


You cannot be a pawn in anything&#39;s game that does not have a mind of it&#39;s own. As a MEMBER of society (this same society you apparently need to be protected from), you are part of that mind, and you have equal say as any other individual.

Oh no I don&#39;t; I can be robbed/killed by them at whim (see above). What does my "say" count for then ? I&#39;m not protected from them.


Apparently you seem to think society is some sort of dangerous creature that individuals should be protected from,

If you were a Jew living in Nazi Germany, you&#39;d probably agree.


So who is our great protector? And if society is such a dangerous beast, why have we not destroyed it yet and moved towards becoming independent isolated individuals?

Because we have failed to identify it as such. I would again say that your use of the term "isolation" is incorrect. Independence and isolationism are not the same things.


So who ensures again that this apparent "non-initiation of force" is kept? A force of some sorts, right? Police? Military? I suppose it&#39;s ok too that we stop the initiation of force before it actually happens yes?

Yes, that&#39;s correct.


So for example... say we think some country is a real threat to us.

That depends on the accuracy of the threat.


We think they&#39;re gonna be partaking in the "initiation of force" against us (certainly with no good reason too).

You&#39;re rendered your own argument irrelevent by saying there is no good reason for it (see below).


We should certainly be given the right to take over that country and stop that form happening, right? So we can initiate force to uphold the non-initiation of force, yeah?

No you can&#39;t. That would make you the agressor.


How would you suggest that they get out of them? Get a job? Who&#39;ll take care of the kids?

Who has them in the first place ? Did they consider the consequences (i.e. being unable to work as a result) ? It is self-inflicted.


I have a task for you, if you&#39;re willing. I&#39;d like you to talk to one of these individuals about their situation. Not in a condescending way, simply ask them what&#39;s caused them to struggle so badly. Ask them what kind of education they got. If they COULD have gotten better. Feel free to let one question lead to another, for example, if they say "well in my current state I&#39;m addicted to crack." Ask them when they first started using crack and why. Yes it may be their final decision to do such a thing, but for some people it&#39;s no more of a decision than is the decision to buy a car.

Turnig to mind-altering drugs is often a sign of an unbearable inner state. Just because one lives in such a state does not mean that the person knows it cause. Let&#39;s take this one slapper who appeared on the news the other day. Never married, never worked, wit either six or seven kids (I forgot the number, but that&#39;s close enough) from a few different men. Appearently, she didn&#39;t think the situation was her fault at all &#33; To her, the fact that she had so many kids was just a freak accident, like tripping over and unseen crack in the pavement. I already know the nature of such concrete-bound minds. I&#39;ve come in contact with many of them.


Well if the system was proper it&#39;d be the top 10% paying for it.

Why should they pay for it ? They shouldn&#39;t have to any more than anyone else.


I agree, working class tax is foolish in general. We&#39;re already exploited trying to make money, and then still more is removed. Most of this is the problem the ruling class has bestowed upon society, and it should be their job to fix/help it.

"Most" ? Do you know how much is spent on social secutiry annually ?


But there&#39;s a better way than making them fix/help it. STOP IT.

That is down to the individual.


This is a side effect partly of unequal wages.

How is the example I gave a result of unequal wages ?


There are of course other "side effects" to unequal wages, which include the always growing "immigrants are staling our jobs issue."

Sorry, I&#39;m not on that bandwagon.


The answer is class struggle, but you can&#39;t see that answer just by looking at individual people and how they "leech" off your taxes.

Oh yes I can. There&#39;s no deep meaning to this- they&#39;re just lazy and irresponsible.
I&#39;ve seen people so lazy they&#39;ve shit themselves rather than get out of bed. (No, I&#39;m not making that up.)


You have to look in their past, in your past, and the past of society as a whole to find the answers.

Where abouts in past society am I going to find the answer for Mr Potty-pants and the tart I mentioned earlier ? Or the professional couch potatoes ?


You didn&#39;t sign a contract you "elected" someone who put that signature on that contract for you (abstractly so to speak).

No. I don&#39;t really giving any politician a licence to rob me. Which is funny, because the last person who robbed me ended up in jail for six months.


But that&#39;s the price you pay.

Price I pay for what ?


Actually, you&#39;re not given more votes just because you have dependents. You&#39;re always given one vote, and you don&#39;t get it until you&#39;re 18. And still then, you don&#39;t really have a vote.

The government that robs Peter to give to Paul can always count on getting the vote of Paul.


But once again, as you&#39;ve pointed out, the troubles of direct democracy are far worse&#33; I&#39;d much rather have my representatives pass some laws that I don&#39;t agree with and maintain social welfare to curve the agitation of people than have everyone vote to kill me&#33;

Kill you ? Unlikely; you&#39;ve just found out the dark side of parasitism- it makes them dependent on their victim/s. When they kill their victim/s (or they leave/remove the parasite) they&#39;re screwed. I&#39;m sure some of them are stupid, but not so stupid that they&#39;ll burn their meal tickets.


You have a right to question now.

No I don&#39;t; I&#39;ll be thrown in jail. Not because of something I&#39;ve done or something I&#39;ve stolen, but because someone is demanding something of mine that I am refusing to give. Picture a "justice" system where you get jailed for resisting someone who is trying to rob you. (If you&#39;re British, you&#39;re already literally living under such a system. In which case, my condolences).


You also have a right to lobby for welfare reform (good luck). Maybe you should vote in people who feel the same way as you. Looks like the countries headed in that direction, so hold out there, you may have your way sooner or later.

I doubt it.


You ignore history and human progress and assume that our nature and social relations are always static it seems. You assume that if the revolution happened tomorrow, and we had socialism for say 150 years, which then evolved to communism that there&#39;d still be people with six kids sitting on their couch refusing to do any work.

Why, what&#39;s going to stop them ?


In the sense that it would provide people with free education, and if they needed free daycare while they got that education.

Really ? Which trees do those grow off ?


Some of us have a problem with a system where the only way to become middle class from someting lower is to work three jobs and be on welfare for a family of four.

Some of us have a problem with a system where those who don&#39;t have a job are better off than those who do.

[NovelGentry]

Yes it is. "Work or starve" is not a capitalist idea, it&#39;s a fact of reality.

Yes it is true, "work or starve." In a system where society doesn&#39;t exist it&#39;s true for the individual, in a system where society DOES exist, it doesn&#39;t have to be. More to the point, the nature of capitalism is not "Work or starve." It is "Work for these people who are going to take advantage of your labor... or starve."

Most of the time under capitalism people are pushed into work they don&#39;t even want to do. Not cause they made a mistake, but because they don&#39;t have an option. They need money, and they need money now, so they do whatever makes money no matter how minute the amount. This is why we&#39;re able to claim with bold affirmation that work under communism will be enjoyable, because, YOU will be given the choice of what you want to do, and nothing should be out of your reach so long as you are mentally and physically capable. A REAL choice, not the bullshit pseudo-choice under capitalism that says, "If you&#39;ve got the money you&#39;ve got the education."

I&#39;ve taught myself everything I know with computers, and despite a long list of things I&#39;d done with my knowledge (everything from programming to system administration) I had to get a degree for it to mean anything to employers. I paid 35,000+ dollars for a piece of paper. After having gone through two years of school and learning nothing, I decided to stop with a 2 year degree -- I wasn&#39;t going to continue going and paying for something that did me no real service.

<Notes that you can&#39;t defend your First Come First Serve ideology>


Nothing. It doesn&#39;t exist.

Wow, answering a rhetorical question to make it look like you&#39;ve got more of a point... you truly are a master debator. (sarcasm)


False anology. Try eating for someone else.

You claim my analogy is false (simple affirmation), and then base a weak argument on that simple affirmation. I never said what effects one part of the body doesn&#39;t effect another. If we as individual humans combine to make the collective body of society killing one of us will not kill us all, the same as killing (cutting off circulation, severing, freeze burning) one of your fingers doesn&#39;t destroy your entire hand.

My hand cannot accept nutrients for my foot. I can, however, feed both. Just like I cannot eat for another member of society, but I can feed them.


Yes, but at the end of the day, we&#39;re still individuals and therefore we should still have individual rights.

We do have individual rights. What made you think we don&#39;t?


Then it&#39;s wrong, isn&#39;t it ? Especially when people&#39;s rights and freedoms are at stake.

It&#39;s not right or wrong, sometimes it may be right, sometimes it may be wrong. But things that are right and wrong can be extremely relative to culture. Democracy is about ensuring the majority of people decide what is acceptable and what is not. Whether it is "absolutely" right or wrong is not part of the question, at all, nor should it be. According to most bible thumping Christians being gay is wrong.

As of now they seemed to have a majority here in the US, at least of those who turned out and voted. And now we have a government which is blatantly anti-gay rights. So we will yet again miss the possibility of federal law legalizing gay marriage and thus bringing gay couple&#39;s rights to the level of others. Had this been a true democracy though, and the issues of gay rights came up for direct votes I have little doubt it would be passed by a majority. So who&#39;s right and who&#39;s wrong? And why does it matter? And yes, people&#39;s rights and freedoms are at stake.


Then anything is potentially acceptable. You&#39;re a moral relativist.

Not for me personally, no. I have a very strict list of what&#39;s acceptable and what&#39;s not. And I would vote accordingly on the issues. But I don&#39;t claim that the rest of humanity is exactly like me, or thinks like me... I don&#39;t even claim all of what I believe in is "right." In fact I would say some of it is "wrong."

So do I personally believe anything is potentially acceptable? no. Do I believe that&#39;s possible in the eyes of society? yes. It&#39;s kinda tough not to. Whether you have to classify as both to be a "moral relativist" or not, I don&#39;t know... nor do I really care.


Dictatorship/democracy is another false dichotomy.

First off I didn&#39;t say dictatorship. I was referring to a Republic. Although some argue, myself included, such representation becomes a dictatorship of the ruling class, theoretically speaking it is supposed to be representative of all. And whether or not it is or isn&#39;t a false dichotomy does not change at all what I was pointing out.


What is "acceptable" and what isn&#39;t is not a social phenomenon to be decided by any particualr individual or group.

You&#39;re right. It&#39;s not to be decided by an individual or group, unless it only affects that group. It is to be decided by EVERYONE. Once again, this is the point of democracy. Or were you implying that such things are to be decided by God?

Let me ask you another blatant question. Do you think God decides what&#39;s right and wrong? If people as a whole do not decide, who does?


It&#39;s the decisions that matter, not who, or how many of us are making them.

The decisions that matter, and who judges whether these decisions were good or not? You?

Here&#39;s a list of 10 things, please tell me which ones are right, which are wrong:

- Gay people should have the same rights as everyone else.

- Young and old people who are unable to work should be provided with the means to survive and survive comfortably. (this doesn&#39;t mean comfortably like comfortably wealthy, it means without pain or problems).

- All communists should be oppressed more than the rest of society, so that their ideas may not spread.

- Murder is punishable by death.

- Abortion should be legal.

- Rape should be punishable by death.

- All right and wrongs should be determined by the moral decisions of previous societies.

- Every person should have a right to decide on issues that change or influence the way they live.

- Every person should have a right to vote for a person to represent a portion of them and decides on issues that change or influence their way of life.

- All right and wrongs should be determined by Jesus and the Bible.

I agree it is the decisions that matter, and who judges whether these decisions were good or not is the people, because they are who these decisions affect. So why would we have them have to wait till after such decisions, and thus law, are put in place for them to decide whether things are going the right way or the wrong way? Put the power in their hands and then they push it in the direction they believe is right.


If everyone has the ability to murder/rob their neighbour by vote, then everyone you meet and live with is a potential murder/thief; they vote for the person wanting to rob their neigbours before their neighbours vote for different person who is promising to rob them.

This is the dumbest thing I ever heard. First off, neighbor goes both ways. If law is put in place that allows you to murder and rob your neighbor both sides have just as much to worry about and just as much to conduct if they&#39;re going to do it. I&#39;m not sure what you&#39;re talking about "they vote for the person." Are you talking about a Republic here? I&#39;m talking about democracy. They don&#39;t vote for a person who then decides whether robbing and murdering of neighbors is ok... they vote directly whether or not robbing and murdering your neighbor is ok.


Society then turns into a "cold" civil war, run by pressure groups. This is what we see happening today on all socio-economic levels.

Yes, this is the flaws of a republic, or a democracy under any system which is not equal. I don&#39;t suggest a democracy under capitalism would be any better than a republic. In fact, it may be worse. Individuals who are poor and in mass might sell out for millions less than upscale representatives.


Secondly, with most people, their policial beliefs change the same way as their fashions in clothing change. No guiding principles whatsoever. We also have an education system in place to ensure that remains the case.

Do you have any proof of this? I am very aware people change. That&#39;s what happens over time and usually it comes with a bit more maturity in general. I have no reason to think that people change their political beliefs like fashion in clothing though. I do admit there are trends, and some people hop on the trends, but not a majority -- and once again, it&#39;s the majority we&#39;re focused on.

On the issue of education, once again, I don&#39;t promote democracy under an unequal society. So along with the rest of the world, the education system would be revamped after the revolution. Unless that&#39;s the educational system that you&#39;re talking about. In which case I ask you, what about a socialist education system ensures someone&#39;s politics changes rapidly?



Oh no I don&#39;t; I can be robbed/killed by them at whim (see above). What does my "say" count for then ? I&#39;m not protected from them.

Well if your neighbor did indeed want to rob and murder you, that is one person. You are one person who does not want to rob or murder him, and does not want him to rob and murder you. Thus if you were to exercise your right to vote, his vote would effectively not matter, as yours would in essence cancel his out. See how it works?

By the way, you can be robbed and killed by your neighbor regardless of the system of government. You&#39;re not protected from them now in any different way that you would be if that law was passed.


If you were a Jew living in Nazi Germany, you&#39;d probably agree.

I&#39;m not Nazi Germany buff, but I&#39;m not sure when they took the vote to section of Jews, if ever. Then I&#39;m not sure about when they took the vote to kill Jews, if ever. I am aware of a movie called "Conspiracy" that is supposed to be factual if I&#39;m not mistaken which shows that the question of whether or not to kill Jews, and more strange, HOW. Was decided by a very few high ranking people. A mix of SS, Lawyers, and Doctors, all held in high regard.

Had the Germans had true democracy under the Nazi&#39;s, maybe things would have turned out different. Maybe not. I can&#39;t really say for sure. But I do know one thing, the 6 million Jews who were killed would have been voting against the killing of Jews, as would have the rest of the Jews who were not.

It&#39;s strange to see you equate the Nazi and Reactionary German&#39;s outlook with the whole of society. I would argue that THEY were what was to fear, not the whole of society.


Because we have failed to identify it as such. I would again say that your use of the term "isolation" is incorrect. Independence and isolationism are not the same things.

Ok, so say we do identify it as such, answer the first question, who protects us from it?

Also, if I believed isolation and independent were the same thing I wouldn&#39;t have used them both in that sentence, that would have been redundant.


Yes, that&#39;s correct.

Ok. Who commands (has final executive power) over this army? AKA: What&#39;s the equivalent of the Commander in Chief (although more accurate would be a five star general or supreme commander, as Commander in Chief for the most part has become little more than status symbol).


That depends on the accuracy of the threat.

So who decides whether the threat is real?


You&#39;re rendered your own argument irrelevent by saying there is no good reason for it (see below).

My argument wasn&#39;t meant to sustain itself. It was to point out the idiocy of saying that we have a right to protect ourselves from a perceived threat (initiation of force) by using (initiation of force) when we supposedly have a system that makes the initiation of force WRONG or if I&#39;m not mistaken, you&#39;ve argued as far as not possible.


Who has them in the first place ? Did they consider the consequences (i.e. being unable to work as a result) ? It is self-inflicted.

Well some poor people grow up outside of schools with proper sex education. Other poor people can&#39;t afford means of avoiding pregnancy (Condoms, birth control, etc). Even still, there are many people who have kids and do OK, and then something happens and they can&#39;t really pull themselves out. Like they get laid off from their job, and then have difficulty finding another job that can pay well enough to support the children as well (this includes with enough to cover daycare). Then they find out that if they stay home, and don&#39;t work, they can collect welfare, this gives them enough money to buy necessities, and they don&#39;t have to cover daycare cause they are home. This is more frequently a problem with single parents who don&#39;t have someone else who can go and work while they take care of them.

There&#39;s a number of other reasons, and maybe I&#39;m making a mistake by assuming so, but I think you are smart enough to figure out some others. Or better yet, like I said, talk to people, you might be surprised.


To her, the fact that she had so many kids was just a freak accident, like tripping over and unseen crack in the pavement. I already know the nature of such concrete-bound minds. I&#39;ve come in contact with many of them.

Like I said, poor schools do not always provide proper sex education, if they do at all. This can be further curved by the fact that in many poorer sections kids go to work fairly early to try and bring home money and then fall behind in school, so even if certain things are provided, they may not be learning to their potential.


Why should they pay for it ? They shouldn&#39;t have to any more than anyone else.

Well it goes back to whether or not you believe that the ruling class exploits the working class. I do, I believe their profit gain is taken from paying us less than our labor is worth. You do not, so obviously you&#39;re not gonna agree with it. So if you want to know specifically why, just check out another thread... but I&#39;m sure people have tried in the past to explain to you how it works and you just didn&#39;t accept it. That is, how the exploitation works.

The way I figure it, the top 10% exploits the other 90% more than likely in some way or another... the exact numbers would probably be a bit different. So you take that top cut, and give back what they&#39;ve exploited from the others. If the LTV even has some properness as a critique for capitalism (which I think it does, but not directly as a critique, so I&#39;m not sure this WOULD work here), then the wealth being returned to the working class would be for the most part equal to what they were exploited for. As such, they would then be able to afford the products they create.


"Most" ? Do you know how much is spent on social secutiry annually ?

Yes, Most. I&#39;m referring to the problem, not the solution. You wouldn&#39;t really need social security if the economy and thus the ruling class was a far cry different.

And no, I don&#39;t know how much is spent anually. I also don&#39;t know how much is removed anually. What I&#39;m fairly sure of is that what the current President has pulled out of social security has made it so that we remove more than is floating in the system now, and more than is added in, thus we are eating away at it, and rather rapidly from what I understand.


That is down to the individual.

Your extreme desire for individualism (both materially and otherwise) seems to all point to the destruction of society as we know it, in all forms. It seems like you&#39;re downright batshit, like some really extreme US Libertarian. You believe in money, you believe people have a right to do what they want with their money, you bellieve no one should make decisions which affect someone elses life, even if it&#39;s a democratic decision by the whole of society.... and above all you see all this as workable so long as there is a police/military to protect us from society and to ensure the non-initiation of force by perceiving threats and responding to them preemptively... blah blah blah. You really are fucking nuts. I must say I think this will be my last response.

I was talking with someone on the channel the other day about you. And I said I thought someone like you had more of a chance at understanding what we communists are talking about, compared to people like Counter Corporate Jujitsu and NotWeirdOnlyGifted, but after this response you&#39;ve really gone to prove that person&#39;s point that you are truly crazy.


How is the example I gave a result of unequal wages ?

I didn&#39;t say it was. I said the results presence of it is PARTLY DUE TO unequal wages. That&#39;s different than THE RESULT OF.


Sorry, I&#39;m not on that bandwagon.

Good. I&#39;m sure there are other bandwagons you are on that are also partly or wholly due to unequal wages so those more than make up for it.


Oh yes I can. There&#39;s no deep meaning to this- they&#39;re just lazy and irresponsible.
I&#39;ve seen people so lazy they&#39;ve shit themselves rather than get out of bed. (No, I&#39;m not making that up.)

I&#39;m aware you&#39;re not making it up. But you have to understand this isn&#39;t about making life better for these people, it&#39;s a side effect we need not ignore. Communism is very much aimed at making your life better (assuming you are actually working class like you said you are). It&#39;s about making you receive what you actually deserve from the job you do because there&#39;s no CEO making thousands an hour off your labor while he plays golf. It&#39;s about emancipating the working class from that, and showing them that they are the producers of the goods of society, and that if they take up control of the means and produce for society, freely, they can recieve from society freely. It is about respecting that technology will progress eventually, and at some point it will outgrow the capitalist mode of production and require something that fits it.

If you want to give up all of what communism offers to the world and what it will eventually have to reach for anyway because you&#39;re afraid that some guy who shits himself in bed might get more food to shit himself again, you&#39;re not worth my time anymore.

In the words of the sad sad sad man Professor Moneybags

<SNIP the rest of your arguments for the rest of time for being based on FEAR, UNCERTAINTY, AND DOUBT>

[Professor Moneybags]

Yes it is true, "work or starve." In a system where society doesn&#39;t exist it&#39;s true for the individual, in a system where society DOES exist, it doesn&#39;t have to be.

If you don&#39;t work, then someone else is going to be forced to do it for you. Are going to start arguing in favour of that again ?


More to the point, the nature of capitalism is not "Work or starve." It is "Work for these people who are going to take advantage of your labor... or starve."

They&#39;re not taking advantage of you any more than you&#39;re taking advantage of them. Besides, there&#39;s always working for yourself.


Most of the time under capitalism people are pushed into work they don&#39;t even want to do.

Too bad. I don&#39;t want to work at all. I have to though, because I don&#39;t want to live as a parasite.


Not cause they made a mistake, but because they don&#39;t have an option.

Reality doesn&#39;t give you one.


<Notes that you can&#39;t defend your First Come First Serve ideology>

I don&#39;t need to refute straw man arguments. I was talking in the context of land ownership. You then began babbling on about food and some irrelevent references to Darwinism.


We do have individual rights. What made you think we don&#39;t?

The fact that you&#39;re a collectivist. Very few people here have any regard for indiviudal rights.


It&#39;s not right or wrong, sometimes it may be right, sometimes it may be wrong. But things that are right and wrong can be extremely relative to culture.

Moral relativism is self-contradicting.


Democracy is about ensuring the majority of people decide what is acceptable and what is not. Whether it is "absolutely" right or wrong is not part of the question, at all, nor should it be. According to most bible thumping Christians being gay is wrong.

And while the christian mobs got their way, gays were being murdered. Is this okay with you ?


As of now they seemed to have a majority here in the US, at least of those who turned out and voted. And now we have a government which is blatantly anti-gay rights. So we will yet again miss the possibility of federal law legalizing gay marriage and thus bringing gay couple&#39;s rights to the level of others.

This is puzzling. Why are you saying this is wrong ? The majority have spoken; homosexuality is wrong. Why should gay rights concern you ? The majority clearly don&#39;t believe in them, so why are you complaining ?


Had this been a true democracy though, and the issues of gay rights came up for direct votes I have little doubt it would be passed by a majority.

Why ? Five minutes ago, you said it was "direct democracy", now you&#39;re saying it isn&#39;t.


First off I didn&#39;t say dictatorship. I was referring to a Republic. Although some argue, myself included, such representation becomes a dictatorship of the ruling class,

Your system is a "dictatorship" of the "ruling class". The only difference is the method (most dictators prefer to use violence, you use voting) and the size of the ruling class (one single dictator, as opposed to several million of them).


You&#39;re right. It&#39;s not to be decided by an individual or group, unless it only affects that group. It is to be decided by EVERYONE. Once again, this is the point of democracy. Or were you implying that such things are to be decided by God?

No, objective law.


Let me ask you another blatant question. Do you think God decides what&#39;s right and wrong? If people as a whole do not decide, who does?

No one. No "rulers". Hence : "rule of law", as opposed to "rule of men". Now that might sound a little strange seeing as it&#39;s men that make the laws, but it&#39;s not like that; force should banned by law and should not to be reinstated by anyone, nor open to vote or debate. Not by any member of the public or the government.


- Gay people should have the same rights as everyone else.

To have a right, one must first posess a rational faculty and be able to respect the rights of others. Do gays lack this ? No.


- Young and old people who are unable to work should be provided with the means to survive and survive comfortably. (this doesn&#39;t mean comfortably like comfortably wealthy, it means without pain or problems).

At whose expense ? People who are unable to work can be supported by charities, by their families or by those willing ot support them. No initiation of force remember.


- All communists should be oppressed more than the rest of society, so that their ideas may not spread.

It depends what you mean by oppressed. The initiation of force should be banned, so putting the revolutionary variety into practice would be near impossible, except for voluntary communes. There would be nothing wrong with it if no one was forced to participate in it. A communist has a right to freedom of speech as much as anyone else.


- Murder is punishable by death.

Maybe. Not really much of an issue for me.


- Abortion should be legal.

Yes, it should.


- Rape should be punishable by death.

See comment on murder.


- All right and wrongs should be determined by the moral decisions of previous societies.

I don&#39;t follow. What do you mean by this. Be specific.


- Every person should have a right to decide on issues that change or influence the way they live.

Yes, within reason. The NIF principle still applies.


- Every person should have a right to vote for a person to represent a portion of them and decides on issues that change or influence their way of life.

See above.


- All right and wrongs should be determined by Jesus and the Bible.

No. Why do you keep thinking that I&#39;m a religioinist ?


I agree it is the decisions that matter, and who judges whether these decisions were good or not is the people, because they are who these decisions affect. So why would we have them have to wait till after such decisions, and thus law, are put in place for them to decide whether things are going the right way or the wrong way? Put the power in their hands and then they push it in the direction they believe is right.

The Germans did that in 1933. Look what happend to them (and us).


This is the dumbest thing I ever heard. First off, neighbor goes both ways. If law is put in place that allows you to murder and rob your neighbor both sides have just as much to worry about and just as much to conduct if they&#39;re going to do it.

I don&#39;t think so. The law permits the government to rob me and hand the goods over to someoen else, but does not permit me to rob them. Who decided this ? Why the people who voted in favour of the government doing this, of course.


Are you talking about a Republic here? I&#39;m talking about democracy. They don&#39;t vote for a person who then decides whether robbing and murdering of neighbors is ok... they vote directly whether or not robbing and murdering your neighbor is ok.

The difference is hardly one of principle.


In which case I ask you, what about a socialist education system ensures someone&#39;s politics changes rapidly?

In what way ?


Ok, so say we do identify it as such, answer the first question, who protects us from it?

The police and the legal system.


Ok. Who commands (has final executive power) over this army? AKA: What&#39;s the equivalent of the Commander in Chief (although more accurate would be a five star general or supreme commander, as Commander in Chief for the most part has become little more than status symbol).

The government.


So who decides whether the threat is real?

The government. That&#39;s its job.


My argument wasn&#39;t meant to sustain itself. It was to point out the idiocy of saying that we have a right to protect ourselves from a perceived threat (initiation of force) by using (initiation of force) when we supposedly have a system that makes the initiation of force WRONG or if I&#39;m not mistaken, you&#39;ve argued as far as not possible.

We wouldn&#39;t be initiating force if the threat was genuine. We would then be retalliating or defending ourselves.


Well some poor people grow up outside of schools with proper sex education.

Education is "free", so as to speak. Where&#39;s the excuse ?


Other poor people can&#39;t afford means of avoiding pregnancy (Condoms, birth control, etc).

The best form of birth control involves not having sex.


Well it goes back to whether or not you believe that the ruling class exploits the working class.

How is it possible to exploit someone who does not/has never worked ?


The way I figure it, the top 10% exploits the other 90% more than likely in some way or another... the exact numbers would probably be a bit different. So you take that top cut, and give back what they&#39;ve exploited from the others.

Same question again.


Your extreme desire for individualism (both materially and otherwise) seems to all point to the destruction of society as we know it, in all forms.

No, just the destruction of mob rule. The purpose is to set man free from other men.

<snip the ad hominem>


<SNIP the rest of your arguments for the rest of time for being based on FEAR, UNCERTAINTY, AND DOUBT>

People do not advocate capitalism and independence out of "fear", "uncertainty" or "doubt".

[ahhh_money_is_comfort]

Originally posted by [email protected] 30 2004, 08:24 PM
if you truly believe that class is based on the fact that those on the bottom think that those on top are better than themselves and more deserving of **society&#39;s wealth** than they are, then I really do feel sorry for you. It&#39;s that basic statement which justifies any system, from aristocratic feudalism to capitalism to mock socialism to all out enslavement, and by believing as such no progress could have ever been made nor will any be made again. Capitalism wouldn&#39;t even exist now if people believed that. It&#39;s good to know, though, that Hitler and Stalin both deserved their special position in society, because they were indeed better than everyone else. For a minute I actually believed you were an advocate of equality.
That is not what I said. The point is that communist theory totally ignores the fact that people sort themselves out. We all &#39;know&#39; just walking around in our daily business who is &#39;better&#39; and who is &#39;lesser&#39;. We take tests and we test each other every day in every possible way, we all do it. We all take mental notes of who is better and who is lesser in certain attributes. These mental notes we take of each other is a fundmental mammalian behavior. We measure each other vs other people just like dogs, chimps, whales, and cats. The only species I can think of where members DON&#39;T measure themselvs against thier follow members is INSECTS. Specifically ant colonies. To me that would be the ultimate nightmare. humans becomming more ant-like inorder to become communist.

[ahhh_money_is_comfort]

Originally posted by Professor [email protected] 5 2005, 10:24 PM
Your extreme desire for individualism (both materially and otherwise) seems to all point to the destruction of society as we know it, in all forms.


What ever form it is? I am sure humans are going to seriously change some of ther fundamental behaviors which makes us human; in order to form a communist paradise. It may be a paridise suitable to some future human form or species, but not to current humans. Humans want to be individual. Humans don&#39;t form classless societies.

[NovelGentry]

That is not what I said. The point is that communist theory totally ignores the fact that people sort themselves out. We all &#39;know&#39; just walking around in our daily business who is &#39;better&#39; and who is &#39;lesser&#39;. We take tests and we test each other every day in every possible way, we all do it. We all take mental notes of who is better and who is lesser in certain attributes. These mental notes we take of each other is a fundmental mammalian behavior. We measure each other vs other people just like dogs, chimps, whales, and cats. The only species I can think of where members DON&#39;T measure themselvs against thier follow members is INSECTS. Specifically ant colonies. To me that would be the ultimate nightmare. humans becomming more ant-like inorder to become communist.

And yet again you ignore that ant colonies have a queen. Even still you ignore that believed superiority does not convert to class superiority without the use of force. If I know I look better than you given the standard ideas of what people find attractive, this does little to create classes until I can somehow use this to force out of you something which I want/need. We don&#39;t want everyone to be the same, we want the fact that we&#39;re not the same not to decide whether we live fulfilling and comfortable lives or not.

[ahhh_money_is_comfort]

Originally posted by [email protected] 8 2005, 09:21 PM

That is not what I said. The point is that communist theory totally ignores the fact that people sort themselves out. We all &#39;know&#39; just walking around in our daily business who is &#39;better&#39; and who is &#39;lesser&#39;. We take tests and we test each other every day in every possible way, we all do it. We all take mental notes of who is better and who is lesser in certain attributes. These mental notes we take of each other is a fundmental mammalian behavior. We measure each other vs other people just like dogs, chimps, whales, and cats. The only species I can think of where members DON&#39;T measure themselvs against thier follow members is INSECTS. Specifically ant colonies. To me that would be the ultimate nightmare. humans becomming more ant-like inorder to become communist.

And yet again you ignore that ant colonies have a queen. Even still you ignore that believed superiority does not convert to class superiority without the use of force. If I know I look better than you given the standard ideas of what people find attractive, this does little to create classes until I can somehow use this to force out of you something which I want/need. We don&#39;t want everyone to be the same, we want the fact that we&#39;re not the same not to decide whether we live fulfilling and comfortable lives or not.
Let me ask you this:

Do you walk around with your buddies and say to yourself,

"I am smarter than one buddy, this buddy is smarter than me, etc"

"This person is good looking, this person is better looking, this person is ugly"

"This person is a &#39;higher value person&#39; than this person"

"This person is better than that person"

"This person is a better athelete"

"This person is better at math"

"This person is a better artist"

etc

If you do, then your stratifying people. Ant colonies work. They work because of a system. What ever that system is? It works, right? It certainly is not capatialism. It certainly not individual and every man for himself. It certainly is not competitive? Maybe it is more like.....possibly......communism?

Does that mean humans need to approach an ant like existance and behavior?

[NovelGentry]

It certainly is not capatialism. It certainly not individual and every man for himself. It certainly is not competitive? Maybe it is more like.....possibly......communism?


And maybe it&#39;s not. Just because it&#39;s NOT a bunch of other things, does not mean it has to be communism. Once again you ignore the queen. I don&#39;t even know why I bother to continue to say this if you&#39;re just going to ignore the fact that the worker ants are consistently sustaining the life of the queen.

And once again your examples of competition which you believe to create classes have no basis for justifying the existing class distinction, which is ONCE AGAIN (since you obviously forgot) the fact that the working class is subjugated as a labor force which upholds the wealth of the world. No reasonable human being, particularly after what we&#39;ve seen class society to consist of, would recreate classes based on who&#39;s better at basketball. The fact that you may be better at basketball than me puts you in no position to oppress me materially.

[ahhh_money_is_comfort]

Originally posted by [email protected] 14 2005, 06:16 AM

It certainly is not capatialism. It certainly not individual and every man for himself. It certainly is not competitive? Maybe it is more like.....possibly......communism?


And maybe it&#39;s not. Just because it&#39;s NOT a bunch of other things, does not mean it has to be communism. Once again you ignore the queen. I don&#39;t even know why I bother to continue to say this if you&#39;re just going to ignore the fact that the worker ants are consistently sustaining the life of the queen.

And once again your examples of competition which you believe to create classes have no basis for justifying the existing class distinction, which is ONCE AGAIN (since you obviously forgot) the fact that the working class is subjugated as a labor force which upholds the wealth of the world. No reasonable human being, particularly after what we&#39;ve seen class society to consist of, would recreate classes based on who&#39;s better at basketball. The fact that you may be better at basketball than me puts you in no position to oppress me materially.
Competition happens. It happens between every human today in every matter great and small. I&#39;m not guessing it happens. It happens and many behaviorialist confirm it.

But your ideas on human behavior and what humans will do is a guess.

The rich think they are better than everyone else. Period. Do you believe me? That they think thier blood is more blue and refined that regular people? If you can not remove "i am better than this person" thinking from the whole human race, you have the seeds of class divisions. Class devision fundamentaly is &#39;i am better than those people&#39; thinking.

Common you do it don&#39;t you? You walk down the street and measure yourself every day. I do. It is natural. You sit in a bar and measure yourself against other people in the bar just by looking around. Hey that girl is more attractive and better than this girl. Hey that person is dumb. I am smarter than this person, etc. I know you do it. If you don&#39;t your probably not a mammal.

[NovelGentry]

Competition happens. It happens between every human today in every matter great and small. I&#39;m not guessing it happens. It happens and many behaviorialist confirm it.

I&#39;m not disagreeing with this. What I am disagreeing with is that competition is the root of class society.


But your ideas on human behavior and what humans will do is a guess.

No, they&#39;re not.


The rich think they are better than everyone else. Period. Do you believe me? That they think thier blood is more blue and refined that regular people? If you can not remove "i am better than this person" thinking from the whole human race, you have the seeds of class divisions. Class devision fundamentaly is &#39;i am better than those people&#39; thinking.

Indeed it is, but there is a large difference between "I am better than you." and "I am better than you in the center forward position in soccer." One has strong roots in various forms of reactionary thought, such as religion and racism. The other has roots in reality.


Common you do it don&#39;t you? You walk down the street and measure yourself every day. I do. It is natural. You sit in a bar and measure yourself against other people in the bar just by looking around. Hey that girl is more attractive and better than this girl. Hey that person is dumb. I am smarter than this person, etc. I know you do it. If you don&#39;t your probably not a mammal.

Well you certainly seem more prejudice than most open minded mammals. "That person is dumb cause ... look at them." Yeah, you&#39;re reasoning&#39;s right on the money. But yes, I do think some girls are prettier than others, I do think others dress better than others, hell, I think some people have better taste in beer than others. But my opinion does NOT, nor do I think it, gives me the right to tell people what to do or to have some special right to property/means of production and thus to subjugate their labor.

When your belief that one person is better than another turns into oppression of the one you believe isn&#39;t as good, you cross the line from preference and individual opinion to things like divine right and racism.

[ahhh_money_is_comfort]

Originally posted by [email protected] 15 2005, 07:13 AM

But your ideas on human behavior and what humans will do is a guess.

No, they&#39;re not.

Where have you observed this communist human behavior?

Yes you are right that your lesser value of people does not give you the right to dictate the destiny of lesser people.

Flash. It happens all the time. It is not right. It is not in keeping with idealistic political concepts. Flash. It happens all the time. You see it every day. Don&#39;t you? I&#39;m not guessing about this behavior. I see it.

As long as people sort themselvs and make judgements about other people. Your going to have value judgements about the worth of people. It is a fundamental human behavior in mammals you can not stop. People do it. I&#39;m not guessing about it. It is repeatly observed so many times by behaviorialist that is not even debatable that if it exists or not. It does.

As long as one group of people consider themselves better. They are not going to take orders from lesser people. Why should they? They know what is better than dumb and lesser people. It is only logical that you don&#39;t listen to stupid people. Right? Well that is what is going on inside our monkey brains. We don&#39;t listen to the &#39;lesser monkey brains&#39; nor do we want to follow the lesser monkey brains. Guess what? If better people are not going to listen and do what the lesser monkey brains want? Do you think they are going to start TELLING the lesser monkey brains what to do? Do you think the better monkey brains are going to invite the lesser monkey brains to birthday parties, dinner, art shows, and back yard barbaques? Do you? Do you hang out with the lesser human monkeys. Do you want to date the lesser human monkeys? Do you want to take orders from lesser human monkeys? Are you a good and dedicated communist? I know you don&#39;t take orders from lesser human monkeys or hang out with lesser human monkeys. If you don&#39;t why should less dedicated communist or regular people be expected to practice communism better than you?

[Latifa]

<_<

[ahhh_money_is_comfort]

Originally posted by [email protected] 16 2005, 02:53 AM
<_<
Textbook example of social dominant behavior by Latifa. Your doing textbook mammalian posturing behavior. You have set yourself above me. Not very communist of you commrade.

Plus Mr. Jackson has too much finger on the trigger. He should only have the pad of his first finger on the trigger. When he squeezes he is going to miss to the left and low; and he is going to miss by a lot.

[NovelGentry]

Where have you observed this communist human behavior?

I&#39;m not repeating my examples yet again.


Flash. It happens all the time. It is not right. It is not in keeping with idealistic political concepts. Flash. It happens all the time. You see it every day. Don&#39;t you? I&#39;m not guessing about this behavior. I see it.

I&#39;ve never seen it born of basketball competitions. Religion and Race have been the two major historical examples, and those are foolish and reactionary examples that have not practical reality of saying one person is better than another, basketball does, and yet such issues with a practical reality do not feed this type of bullshit. You may be better than me, you&#39;re not better than everyone, nor will you always be. THIS DOES NOT EQUATE TO THE TYPE OF CLASSES WE ARE TALKING ABOUT, OR CLASSES AT ALL. If you can&#39;t understand why, then I find it impossible to believe you even understand what we&#39;re fighting for.


As long as people sort themselvs and make judgements about other people. Your going to have value judgements about the worth of people.

And no forward thinking society, no matter how much everyone individually makes these "value judgements" is going to think that relates to the worth of the entire human being. Once again, being better at basketball doesn&#39;t mean you&#39;re better at everything, nor would it justify someone getting unfair treatment. What you&#39;re talking about is very simply reactionary behavior... if it was truly something which was embedded in all of us that is unable to be removed then none of us would be sitting here arguing you about it.


They are not going to take orders from lesser people. Why should they?

They shouldn&#39;t. NO ONE should take such orders.


They know what is better than dumb and lesser people.

Being worse in basketball doesn&#39;t mean I&#39;m dumber than you. Just like a painter being shitty at surgery doesn&#39;t mean he&#39;s dumber than the doctor and vice versa the doctor being shittier at painting doesn&#39;t mean he&#39;s dumber.


Do you think they are going to start TELLING the lesser monkey brains what to do?

They might try. Good luck trying to make it happen though.


Do you think the better monkey brains are going to invite the lesser monkey brains to birthday parties, dinner, art shows, and back yard barbaques?

No, and I wouldn&#39;t expect the "lesser monkey brains" to invite these people to their birthday parties, dinners, art shows, and back yard BBQs. We&#39;re not talking about destroying personal attributes and preferences, nor are we saying that someone who doesn&#39;t like art has to start inviting artists to his BBQs.


Do you hang out with the lesser human monkeys.

Of course. Hell, I&#39;m even taking time out of my day to discuss this with someone as dumb as yourself.


Do you want to date the lesser human monkeys?

I&#39;m very picky about women intellectually. I&#39;ve never gone to a mildly retarded girl, however, and told her that she now belonged and served me because I&#39;m smarter than her, nor would I.


Do you want to take orders from lesser human monkeys?

I try not to take orders from anyone who has not earned my respect, and usually giving orders is a good way to lose my respect.


If you don&#39;t why should less dedicated communist or regular people be expected to practice communism better than you?

"practice communism better than me" ? Practicing communism is not a skill you develop, it is a consequence of a style of thinking, one which refutes the idiocy of your preceeding statements and realizes it&#39;s nothing more than reactionary babble.

While you&#39;re into admitting that some people are worth more than other people, why don&#39;t you just take the easiest route and head back to feudal times. Certainly the nobility will thank you for your protection of their worth with your words. Maybe they&#39;ll even invite your "lesser monkey brain" to a dinner party.

This conversation is over. When you&#39;ve decided to step into civilization, send me a PM and we can resume discussion. I no longer want to discuss with your "lesser monkey brain."

[Wiesty]

lol.................. <_<

[Latifa]

Textbook example of social dominant behavior by Latifa. Your doing textbook mammalian posturing behavior. You have set yourself above me. Not very communist of you commrade.

:lol: I only asked you if you used paragraphs.


You have set yourself above me.

No, your bouts of stupidity have set yourself below me.



Plus Mr. Jackson has too much finger on the trigger. He should only have the pad of his first finger on the trigger. When he squeezes he is going to miss to the left and low; and he is going to miss by a lot.

When I get a gun to your face I&#39;ll find a much more inventive way to splatter your lame ass over the pavement :D

[FarfromNear]

Originally posted by [email protected] 27 2004, 02:25 PM
How does sports work under communist doctrine?

I don&#39;t imagine people will play soccer and keep a score. There has to be a winner and a losser in competitive sports. This kind of goes against the communist idealism of classless.

Why is this important? The behavior in sports competition is also the same behavior in businesses that compeat for profit.

Seems like if the spirt to compeat in sports is alive and well, then the spirt to compeat for profit is also alive an well.
Communist countries basically pay their athletes. Athletes are usually given priviledges. The reason for that is that sports is the only way that communist countries can say that their system really does work. Cuba has been doing it for years. Ive met many of them in the panamerican games in Central America. It&#39;s funny to see it. They usually send proffessionals to play amateurs. Sports is their attempt to show that they have a good system. Everybody else in the country gets screwed. But the military, politicians, and people who work for they government(athletes), live better lives.

[Professor Moneybags]

Originally posted by [email protected] 21 2005, 02:03 AM
When I get a gun to your face I&#39;ll find a much more inventive way to splatter your lame ass over the pavement :D
You&#39;re going to put a gun against his face and splatter his ass over the pavement ?

Someone is in desperate need of a basic course in anatomy as well as a reminder that death threats (even over the internet) are illegal.

[Vinny Rafarino]

Someone is in desperate need of a basic course in anatomy as well as a reminder that death threats (even over the internet) are illegal.

Nerd.

[Professor Moneybags]

Originally posted by Comrade [email protected] 22 2005, 07:24 PM
Nerd.
Flattery won&#39;t get you anywhere.

[no_logo]

well, everyone is free to play sports... there&#39;s no stopping that. The only difference is nobody would make 10 000&#036; each time they threw a baseball.

[ahhh_money_is_comfort]

Originally posted by [email protected] 21 2005, 02:03 AM

Textbook example of social dominant behavior by Latifa. Your doing textbook mammalian posturing behavior. You have set yourself above me. Not very communist of you commrade.

:lol: I only asked you if you used paragraphs.


You have set yourself above me.

No, your bouts of stupidity have set yourself below me.



Plus Mr. Jackson has too much finger on the trigger. He should only have the pad of his first finger on the trigger. When he squeezes he is going to miss to the left and low; and he is going to miss by a lot.

When I get a gun to your face I&#39;ll find a much more inventive way to splatter your lame ass over the pavement :D
That is more textbook mammalian dominance behavior. Your not trying to work with me, your trying to assert superiority over me. If you can not be a good communist, then why should you expect others to do so?

[ahhh_money_is_comfort]

Originally posted by Comrade [email protected] 22 2005, 07:24 PM

Someone is in desperate need of a basic course in anatomy as well as a reminder that death threats (even over the internet) are illegal.

Nerd.
Another textbook mammalian domiance behavior. Instead of working with Moneybags and comming to a mutual and equal solution, your responding with a posturing gesture.

[Latifa]

Originally posted by ahhh_money_is_comfort+Jan 25 2005, 04:32 AM--> (ahhh_money_is_comfort @ Jan 25 2005, 04:32 AM)
[email protected] 21 2005, 02:03 AM

Textbook example of social dominant behavior by Latifa. Your doing textbook mammalian posturing behavior. You have set yourself above me. Not very communist of you commrade.

:lol: I only asked you if you used paragraphs.


You have set yourself above me.

No, your bouts of stupidity have set yourself below me.



Plus Mr. Jackson has too much finger on the trigger. He should only have the pad of his first finger on the trigger. When he squeezes he is going to miss to the left and low; and he is going to miss by a lot.

When I get a gun to your face I&#39;ll find a much more inventive way to splatter your lame ass over the pavement :D
That is more textbook mammalian dominance behavior. Your not trying to work with me, your trying to assert superiority over me. If you can not be a good communist, then why should you expect others to do so? [/b]
The last statement was a joke, ok? Calm down and actually read my fuckin&#39; post.


Your not trying to work with me, your trying to assert superiority over me.

Well you haven&#39;t done anything particularly fantastic on your own, so I&#39;m not exactly compelled to work &#39;with&#39; you.