In the Name of Peace

[truthman]

I won't insult, cuss or yell at anyone on this thread. Just answer my questions, because I've decided that I might as well see how this board interprets marxism.
I've read The Communist Manifesto. What I want answered is:

1)How does working for money, destroy individuality? How is this exploitation? How can Marx argue that the property of the proletariot, is actually the property of the Bourgeois?

2)Why is Private Property Bad?

3)How does paying wages for labor= exploitation?

4)Why in Proletarians and Communists does Marx want all children to be raised under the teachings of the society and society's beliefs, instead of their parents? Isn't this anti-individualism?

5)Explain to me how the Proletariot will decide on what to produce without leaders?

6)How does following Marx's Plan to Marxist Society, insituting a progressive tax, and centralization of all power in the state, lead to the destruction of the state? The moment all of that power is in the hands of the state, you get a totalitarian gov, because in order to protect its power, logically, the ability of the proletariot to resist and revolt would be destroyed. So how does Marx manage this leap? Absolute power in the state, as Marx proposes, will corrupt the state absolutely.

7)Currently, in the West, the great divison of rich and poor is non-existent for the most part. In many developing countries, the division of rich and poor is disappearing, as a middle-class arises. How will the great Proletarian Revolution be achieved if almost everyone is middle-class to upper-class and lives comfortable lives? Currently, most countries aren't getting poorer. They're getting richer.

8)Marx constantly makes reference to the power of the businesses being stronger than those of the nation, and increasing in power. If this were the case, how come we see no effects of this? Could someone prove to me, that this is actually happening?

9)Marx states that the West has enslaved the East. Could someone show this to me nowadays? And not of OMG they're getting cheap labor. Actual enslavement.

10) How can teachers, information and technology related specialities, and any other jobs, where people have some form of power and create dependency on each other, exist in Communism? If any form of economic dependency form one class to another is capitalist, is the dependency of factory workers, on blueprint makers, a relationship of capitalism, since the blueprint makes exercise a form of control on the workers?

11) Marx wasn't a feminist. He decried the fact that women were now equal and able to work in factorys in Bourgeois and Proletariot. How come he complained?

12)Finally, could someone explain to me why even with all these communist revolutions, none make the mark? And please tell which country in the world, you consider to be most Communist.

[encephalon]

I won't insult, cuss or yell at anyone on this thread. Just answer my questions, because I've decided that I might as well see how this board interprets marxism.


Wha..? A sane discussion? Right then. First off, let it be known that I may not speak for others on the board. Second.. these question require a lot of detail, some of which I may not be able to provide until I have more time.



I've read The Communist Manifesto. What I want answered is:

1)How does working for money, destroy individuality? How is this exploitation? How can Marx argue that the property of the proletariot, is actually the property of the Bourgeois?


this is essentially the same question as 3, and will be addressed there.



2)Why is Private Property Bad?


It depends on one's definition of private property. Personal property, such as things one is personally attached to, is not genereally included, though some do include such things. I will address mainly land.

The whole of society is dependent upon how you use "your" land. If you "own" 10,000 acres of healthy and ariable land, yet your neighbors are starving to death, there is something seriously wrong with this picture. If you own 10,000 acres of land and put nearly none of it to use, yet a few miles away people are homeless, there is something wrong with this picture. If you pollute "your" land, all land in the area is polluted. Everything you do with "your" land has direct consequences for the rest of the world. We do not own the earth, individually or as a whole. The earth owns us.

The resources on "your" land may very well be key to the rest of humanity's survival. Furthermore, how did you "acquire" this land? You bought it--from whom, and where did they get it from? At some point, it was taken from a people by another people, then distributed amongst the conquerors to the upper class. The concept of private property is actually rather rare in history, western civ being one of few cultures that resorted to this. Because of their technology, they were able to take the land of other cultures who didn't have the concept of private property. It is really a relatively new concept, at least as we think of it. Even in the Roman republic, conquered land was owned by the state, and then leased out to the aristocracy, who in turn charged the peasants that needed a place to live.

You bought the land, but taken outside of capitalism, how is it by any right "yours?" It is not.

If I own a ferrari while someone else is starving to death, then one question needs to be answered: am I worth more than the person starving to death? If a humans are to be valued by virtue of being human, then the resources that went into making that ferrari and the process by which I came to own it devalues the other person to that of a lesser being. It is a question of whether all people are inherently valuable, or just some. If the answer is all, then such a situation is in direct conflict with what is ethically right.



3)How does paying wages for labor= exploitation?


The value of the labor is more than the worker is paid in return. If this were not true, then profit would not exist. The capitalist, therefore, gains at the very least his initial wealth by parasitical means, continually; he then invests this wealth taken from the proletariat to create more wealth, which he uses to pay more workers to create more commodities, all of which increases his wealth. This capitalist, then, sells those same workers the basic necessities they need to live, regaining the amount he paid them which was less than the value of their labor in the first place.

So, I give you $10 to shine my shoes, but since I control production, you have to buy the shoe wax from me for $5, buy food with $3, and spend the rest on rent (this is not an accurate budget; the focus is on how the money comes and goes). So, here's what you're doing: you're paying me to stay alive enough to increase the wealth I gain by paying you less than your labor is worth.




4)Why in Proletarians and Communists does Marx want all children to be raised under the teachings of the society and society's beliefs, instead of their parents? Isn't this anti-individualism?


Ever heard "it takes a village to raise a child?" Unless your keep your kid locked in the closet, he/she is raise by society. We are all products of the age in which we live. This point, at least, has nothing to do with individuality, but who it is that indoctrinates the child: parents, or the society in which those children will play a vital role. A child is an individual only as much as the parent or society makes the child. The concept is the same regardless of whether it's a parent, foster-parent, grandparents, family friend or society at large.

That said, I personally don't think that the parents should be taken out of the equation. Others may disagree. If the parents are a product of said society, then said society could work just as easily than grouping children together as a whole. Parents are a product of this society, and they indoctrinate their children to the norms of this society.



5)Explain to me how the Proletariot will decide on what to produce without leaders?


Democracy. Plently of models already exist for this, although U.S. law puts severe limitation on the workings of a co-op, and usually makes it very close to a corporation. The workers--which would be society--vote on what is needed, much like true democracy (rather than representative). One example of a co-op that works in this fashion is The Mondragon Cafe, or many other worker-owned businesses. One could also site linux as a good example of socialist thought in action.



6)How does following Marx's Plan to Marxist Society, insituting a progressive tax, and centralization of all power in the state, lead to the destruction of the state? The moment all of that power is in the hands of the state, you get a totalitarian gov, because in order to protect its power, logically, the ability of the proletariot to resist and revolt would be destroyed. So how does Marx manage this leap? Absolute power in the state, as Marx proposes, will corrupt the state absolutely.

Those were only imediate measures from the communist manifesto, meant to benefit the immediate welfare of the working class still under a capitalist system. The disappearance of the state is based on the fact that the state is a device through which on class imposes its will on another. Once class disappears, government as we know it is no longer necessary.

The centralization of power would really be little more of the already centralized power being transferred into the hands of the working class, who makes up 95% of the poulation.

This part is largely debated, as many people have different interpretations of "dictatorship of the proletariat." The concept of a vanguard is only mentioned in passing, and not as an active force leading to revolution. That was developed by lenin. Most of the communists on this forum--though not all--generally think that such a "vanguard" party simply replaces the capitalist class system, based on property, to one based on political clout, and is entirely counter to the interests of the working class. I think of "dictatorship of the proletariat" in the same sense that I think of today as "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie." It will work in the interest of the largest class, the proletariat, and not that of the bourgeoisie.

I don't think anyone claims that all forms of standard intercourse between different communities will disappear, but that is not the definition of government. Groups that create standards (though not mandatory to follow)--such as the w3 does for web communication (which is entirely voluntary to follow)--will likely still exist, in my opinion, but that isn't government. Another communist will likely disagree with me on that point, though.



7)Currently, in the West, the great divison of rich and poor is non-existent for the most part. In many developing countries, the division of rich and poor is disappearing, as a middle-class arises. How will the great Proletarian Revolution be achieved if almost everyone is middle-class to upper-class and lives comfortable lives? Currently, most countries aren't getting poorer. They're getting richer.


You are sadly mistaken. The division of the rich and poor is huge in America. Here are the stats from 1996. The trend since WWII is that the schism between rich and poor is increasing. If you doubt this, you'll have no problem finding plenty of sources to back this up.

----------------------------------
The richest 20% of the world now have 85% of the world’s income; the poorest 20% share 1.4%.

The top 20% of America's wealthiest own 80% of all wealth. The bottom 20% own 5% of all wealth.

Between 13 and 18 million people die each year due to starvation or starvation-related causes. That constitutes more people dying per day from starvation than America lost in the Vietnam War in total.

More than 800 million people are malnourished in the world and routinely go without enough food to live in optimal health.

The people of the United States, who occupy only 6 percent of the world’s land area and who represent less than 7 per cent of the world’s population, own:

85 per cent of the world’s automobiles
60 per cent of the life insurance policies
54 per cent of the telephones
46 per cent of the electric power capacity
35 per cent of the world’s railway mileage
30 per cent of the improved highways
92 per cent of the modern bathtubs
Before the war, Americans consumed:
75 per cent of the worlds silk
60 per cent of the world’s rubber
50 per cent of the world’s coffee
40 per cent of the world’s salt.
-----------------------------------------------

also, go here.. it's the economist. (http://www.economist.com/world/na/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3518560)

I'm not sure where you're getting that the middle class is rising. The general trend is that the middle class has been disappearing in western countries, as the poor get poorer and the rich get richer. I'm unsure about the figures in third-world countries, although I do know that the schism between rich and poor is much greater (see labor aristocracy as to why the gap is less apparent in imperialist nations). I wouldn't be surprised if a middle class did arise in the third-world as it disappeared in imperialist countries. That makes perfect sense.



8)Marx constantly makes reference to the power of the businesses being stronger than those of the nation, and increasing in power. If this were the case, how come we see no effects of this? Could someone prove to me, that this is actually happening?


ever heard of global conglomerates, not under the jurisdiction of any particular country? These countries (or the upper class of the countries), under capitalism, want the wealth such businesses will bring to them; therefore, the nation bends to every whim of business. I honestly find it hard to believe that people out there don't see how large corporations control the great majority of government. Policies in favor of the working class have not been enacted since the depression. They have, in fact, worked in favor of the multinational corporations, which the slogan "good for business = good for the worker." Nevermind that the sole purpose of business is to leech profit from the worker.



9)Marx states that the West has enslaved the East. Could someone show this to me nowadays? And not of OMG they're getting cheap labor. Actual enslavement.


At the time, India was under british control. I believe this is what he was referring to, though even if not china was also a toy of the west. He should have mentioned Africa and South America, too. Note than none of us here see Marx as some kind of god, and that's an unfortunate view by people not used to communists. The large majority of us outright reject the cult of personality, and those that do deify any number of human beings can be ffound in much greater numbers on other boards.



10) How can teachers, information and technology related specialities, and any other jobs, where people have some form of power and create dependency on each other, exist in Communism? If any form of economic dependency form one class to another is capitalist, is the dependency of factory workers, on blueprint makers, a relationship of capitalism, since the blueprint makes exercise a form of control on the workers?


This is not capitalism, but the nature of production (although capitalism places an authoritarian tint to it). It is not control or exploitation, but cooperation. The blueprint makers "gain" nothing that the "laborers" don't gain. If the workers don't like the blueprint, they won't accept it. That is, provided the workers don't simply make their own blueprint based on what works best for their particular model.


11) Marx wasn't a feminist. He decried the fact that women were now equal and able to work in factorys in Bourgeois and Proletariot. How come he complained?


I'm not at all sure where you got this, and if you have a source please state it. In the communist manifesto itself, it calls for the liberation of women as a core principle and immediate aim of communists. What Marx abhorred was the manner in which women and children were treated in the factories. During this time, women and children worked naked in factories in Ireland, tied to machines with an average lifespan of 30. Though this kind of exploitation still happens today in sweatshops around the world, Ireland was pretty close to home (though marx had no *real* home), and starkly visible.


12)Finally, could someone explain to me why even with all these communist revolutions, none make the mark? And please tell which country in the world, you consider to be most Communist.

"communism" means no government. That's why it is an oxymoron. The difference between communism and anarchy lies mostly in methodology: communists think the path is through socialism, anarchists feel all forms of government are inherently exploitative, period.

None succeeded, mainly, because socialist revolution has to be largely global in order to work. Otherwise, those who control the resources will isolate the area until the people starve to death. That isn't the only reason, though. Take marxist-leninists out of it (and all that stem from it), and a basic tenant is that successful revolution must be had in a nation with fully developed capitalism. That has not happened. Russia tried to go straight from tsarist rule to socialism. The term "communist" has also been hijacked by many nationalists, which has led to much confusion.

A similar situation might be defining capitalism by the behavior of Mussolini.

-=-=-=-

I'd go on, but I've written too much already. Someone else will likely fill in more details that I've passed over. This is all a relatively simplistic explanation, and it's hard to answer questions like that for anything without writing a book. But hopefully that at least provides a general idea from me.. it may be quite different for others.

[NovelGentry]

Although I'm not sure all these answers can be founded in the communist manifesto, I'll do my best to answer them as I understand them from a number of Marx's writings.


1)How does working for money, destroy individuality? How is this exploitation? How can Marx argue that the property of the proletariot, is actually the property of the Bourgeois?

Marx argues that capitalism (and thus the construct of wage slavery) removes from labor the very essence of it's cause. The laborer under capitalism is set into a slot, he is a carpenter, or a steel worker, or a machinist, or a shoemaker, or a farmer, etc, etc. The capitalist mode of production, due to necessary personal financial stability, is unallowing of man to be free of this fact. We are not free laborers. We work for the money, not for the product itself. It alienates us from who we actually are and what are abilities are and gives us a simple label. In 5 years my label will be "teacher." To the capitalist I am no different than anyone else labeled "teacher." Aside from maybe a few more or less credentials.

This is NOT exploitation. Destroying individuality has little to do with the exploitation one faces under capitalism. If you'd like to learn about that it is addressed throghout the board in other threads. Search for things like "Surplus Value" using the boards search function.

Your last question is a bit confusing as I'm not sure from which perspective you're taking it. In general Marx feels that the property generated by the working class under capitalism belongs to the hole of the working class. It is their labor which produces it. It is their labor that produces the machines that help them to produce it. He expands it to the whole of society on the basis that society itself is necessary for this production. Example being, someone elses labor produced the metal in the machine you may use. Someone else produces the food for you to eat to sustain life, and the food for the person who produced that metal. Someone else produced the tools the farmer used to make that food. These links spread throughout society, and although you could certainly attempt to logistically keep track of them, you would probably only come to realize that indeed it is the whole of the working class who sustains the whole of the working class. Kinda like the idea that you know everyone in the world through 5 links. Except the idea is that all the world's worker's labor makes your product possible, even if only because other people's labor makes their labor products, and so on and so on.


2)Why is Private Property Bad?

It's no bad. "Bad" and "Evil" are supersticious terms for non materialists ;)

It's unnecessary and unjustified. Given my answer above about the whole of the working contributing to every laborer's product, Marx does not assume it is the property alone of that worker, nor does he assume it is the property alone of the person who hired that worker. In fact, he argues because of those links, that it is indeed the property of the working class as a whole.


3)How does paying wages for labor= exploitation?

The working class does not have the option to survive by another means. If you are born into capitalism and you are in a working class family (a family that needs to work to survive) you do not have the option of surviving outside of selling your labor to a capitalist. This is why we use the term wage slavery. You have no choice.

In order for wages to be exploitation, one must have to be unavailable to avoid those wages. If they were able to freely avoid selling their labor and survive outside of that system you could not consider it exploitation as they enter into that labor contract upon their own free will. However, for most people it is not their free will, they have to sell their labor, or die.

What makes it actual exploitation is what Marx calls the theory of surplus value. The working class buys their products from the very same capitalists that their ranks work for to produce these products. It is their labor they are forced to sell because of the concept of private property. Those who do not own such private property in the form of a means of production (for example land) have no means by which they could work for themselves and produce their own sustenence, whether or not that included working to produce a product on their own and selling it in the market to buy the means to survive, or whether that meant working their own land directly for what they need to survive.

The root of this control is of course land. However, I find it impossible for any single person to deem that they "own land" and that it belongs to no one else. No one has such natural authority, they must create the authority by physically defending it. If this idea alone was abolished we could as some capitalists wish us to do "go off and start our own commune." Farming on whatever land we find suitable, hunting where animal roam, and building shelter from the things nature provides.

But let's modernize this a bit. You claim I have private property, that the objects I've "bought" with with the money I got from selling my labor are mine. But without the means to produce my own sustenence they cannot be as such. This so called "private property" would serve me litte more than as a buffer to ensure my existence for a small period of time if I chose to stop working. I woudl have to sell these very objects in order to sustain my life. When I sold all of these objects, I would once again have to sell the only thing I have left, my labor power.

At the very least the "private property" of the working class, is nothing more than a temporary shift in "ownership." Unlike someone who owns land, who controls that land, who actually has private property. Or someone who owns a factory or a mine (which is in essence also land). If they own these things they can use them. The land owner can grow his own food and build his own shelter there from the trees and grass (once again, not a modernized example). The factory owner could "rent" his factory to make money he needs to survive.

What exactly is the capability of a member of the working class of doing any of this? What is their truly private property that belongs to no one else? Their house (assuming it's paid for).. their car (assuming it's paid for)? Indeed all of these are an illusion, upheld only on the condition that they continue selling their labor power.


4)Why in Proletarians and Communists does Marx want all children to be raised under the teachings of the society and society's beliefs, instead of their parents? Isn't this anti-individualism?

It's not to much that he "wants it." It is something of a condition of the society. Under communist society your "education" will probably come from formal institution, but only for the shared education that everyone receives. Basic history, math, literacy skills, etc. In that sence we are already "raised under the teachings of society." More, we are influenced by their beliefs that are all around us. Just like you were probably raised to believe communism was evil. You were raised to think capitalism was a fair chance, and maybe you had a fair chance. Not everyone does.

What Marx proposes would transform secondary school type education to actual labor education. If you wanted to become a teacher, you would work directly with teachers, progressing in your own ability to educate others. If you were going to be a doctor you would work directly with doctors.

This is a much more logical method of education, one where education is a function of society itself and you are are actually educated for what you wish to do. This is an amazing freedom which is attempted under capitalism with things like coop programs and internships or "go to work with your dad days" in grammar schools. But still it is a condition of money. In capitalism an unpaid internship for educational purposes is almost welcomed, you'll be contributing to work more than likely with "hands on experience." Creating products or services which you will see no benefits of.

Why must we follow the beliefs of our parents, is that not anti-individualism? Do you believe everything your parents believe? If we are going to be truly free thinkers we cannot confine ourselves to any single point of education, if it is indeed the whole of society from which we are brought up we will have a plethora of ideas from a number of existing individuals, and all of those will combine to create the very unique individuals who we are. Once again, this is not a thing capitalism leans on as an impossibility, but communist society would do it better. Individualism would be increased, not decreased.


5)Explain to me how the Proletariot will decide on what to produce without leaders?

These type of questions always amazed me. As if workers are so dumb that they cannot conceive of what is needed to get a certain issue solved. Is that not, in fact, some people's jobs? (and I don't just mean the CEO). Are some people not "research and development" workers? Engineers? Scientists? The working class is very capable of seeing what is needed and deciding on what road we take to fulfill that need.

Are you asking how something like the apple iPod would be produced under communist society? Or are you asking how something like an apple would be produced? Food is a necessity, we can all agree we need food to survive. If we are starving we need more food.

You should probably note a huge number of the starvation figures from the USSR were not because of the economic system of "communism" -- in fact it was a leftover of capitalism generated by Lenin's NEP. The peasants who then controlled a great percent of the land and food production were allowed to sell surpluses on the open market. When Stalin tried to take surpluses from the open market because urban factory workers were starving, the peasants disagreed and resisted. This is indeed why many were deported and sent to labor camps. They became what we call the petit-bourgeoisie -- something of a small capitalist. I'm not saying there wouldn't have still been starving, I wholely believe there may have been simply because lack of the advancements capitalism makes, but there would have been a lot less if it wasn't for this capitalist aspect of the so called "communist" USSR.

Back to my original statements though. We can all see when we are starving, and thus we can work to produce a necessity such as that which is needed nearly immediately. Something like the apple iPod would come out of sheer curiosity. Since the means of production is shared, anyone with such a curiosity could very much decide to develop that product.... if people saw it and really liked it, they could convince others to help produce these products and indeed start something of a technology commune to do so.

How do I know this is possible? I work for a project called Linux on the iPod. If you're not familiar with the open source movement, you should get familiar with it. We are an open source product who's goal is to replace and improve the capabilities of the apple iPod by creating an open source replacment for it's software portion. We've had great success, and some minor failures due to the fact that the iPod itself is not an open infrastructure. It's "specs" so to speak are not available to us, thus we have to tweak around until certain things work or attempt to reverse engineer it.

Things our project had BEFORE apple's firmware supported it: Image viewing, ogg vorbis playback, text editing, a host of games unavailble on the apple firmware, ability to run any text based application from a shell.

Some of these things are still not even available on apple's firmware. The capitalist mode of production is only holding us back. We could have been done the projects goals months ago if apple gave us the spects to how it was built. Why is it you think no other production can function like this?


6)How does following Marx's Plan to Marxist Society, insituting a progressive tax, and centralization of all power in the state, lead to the destruction of the state?

The aspects you speak of don't lead to the destruction of the state. What leads to the destruction of the state is the advancment of worker's control over the means of production. Political power is focused first in the hands of productive power. The state has no real control over us from the beginning of socialism. How could it? production and distribution is left up to the workers under socialism, that is what socialized production is.

The state itself is an abstract term, which we use in socialism to imply the workers themselves. What makes it is a state is that is it not the whole of society. Marx saw the state as a tool of class oppression, it is the same tool under socialism, except it is the tool of the working class. We "oppress" the bourgeoisie by pushing them to the same level as us, they will all the sudden need to work to survive. We "steal" their private property and make it open and available for all to use, and we take their excessive properties and use them to service anyone who needs it. For example, their cars may become public taxis. Their houses may become technology centers, activity centers for kids, educational centers, or even places to live for people without a home. They too will get a home, just not as opulent a living condition as they had.

We need the state at this point for two reasons: 1) suppress the possibility of a bourgeoisie uprising -- the state should exist so long as the remnants of the bourgeoisie and their ideology exist 2) defense of the revolution against invading forces. Until all nations are socialist we MUST protect ourselves from external capitalist threat (given capitalism imperialist nature).

If this sound overtly authoritarian, remember that all working class people are given direct democracy, legislative and executive veto power of the amdinistrative portions of the state. The administrative portion serves as little more than to direct and serve the working class in making whatever they decide on possible, and even it's members would be elected directly by the working class.

The idea is that once those two points above disappear the state will naturally disappear through worker's democracy. If those are it's two functions and there is no more class antagonisms, there is no more need for the state to protect against a bourgeois uprising. If there is no more capitalist nations to defend against, there is no more need for the state to organize that defense.


The moment all of that power is in the hands of the state, you get a totalitarian gov, because in order to protect its power, logically, the ability of the proletariot to resist and revolt would be destroyed. So how does Marx manage this leap? Absolute power in the state, as Marx proposes, will corrupt the state absolutely.

You're ignoring what the state is. The state IS the working class organized as a ruling class. The dicatorship of the proletariat is to be taken literally as a dictatorship of the entire proletariat (over the old bourgeoisie). It is workers democracy. I don't know how you suspect to see a totalitarian government when it is run through democracy by a huge majority of society's members, the working class.

There is no one put in absolute power, and no one who makes executive decisions, not even a small group to do that. Things are done slowly with direct democracy or vast representative democracy on executive issues alone, all executive decisions of course allowing to be overturned by the workers directly.

Say for example the US used this form of a state. The congress now becomes the executive brance, and the people become the legislative brance. So the executive branch wants to go to war with iraq and they ask the legislative brance (aka: the people). Unless a majority of the people want to go to war, you're not going to war.

Is this system perfect? No. No one ever claimed it to be. If all the people vote that no one is allowed to eat anything but rice, it gets a bit starchy, know what I'm saying? But this is the true price of democracy, and a risk I'm willing to take.

Might I ask where you got the idea that Marx proposes absolute power in the state? I'm not saying I disagree with this, I'm just trying to point out if he's talking about absolute power in the state, you're not taking into account that the state is in the form of democracy by the majority (the working class).

-- I will answer your other 6 questions after a short break.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

1. The current system is alienating, in that the money payed to an employee is, always (Given the nature of profit) less than the social value created by that employee (otherwise, the owner goes bankrupt :lol:). The atomization and anome that grows out of this basic contridiction (Which is, naturally, more complex than this individual driving force, just as a car is more than a motor, but dependant on it) of which wage labour is a key component, has outlived its usefullness.

2. Private property is the absurd idea that one might lay title to that which one does not possess. Private property rests not on any legitimate claim (I possess and use my tooth brush, I possess and use the grill at my place of employment) on the ability of owners to excert coercive force to defend their title (To rob me of the labour I manifest in grilling). Given current historical development, this sort of violent system seems savage and anachronistic.

3. Answered above.

4. I do not necessarily agree with Marx on this point, BUT, the child as individual, is no more violated by the collective than by his/her parents. In fact, allowing a child to be presented with a multipliciting of conflicting and challenging views by exposure to society, is arguably much more individualistic than the paternal (literally!) method of allowing a child's parents to be in sole control of that child's influences and development.

5. Presumably, according to demand and existing resources. It is likely that democraticly responsive federative bodies will co-ordinate production . . . e.g. Catalonia/Aragon under control of revolutionaries during the Spanish Civil War.

6. Agreed - that is why many posters is site rejects centralization in the hands of the state.
Some others take a position and argue that "state" as understood in the traditional sense should be done away with, and a state based on direct worker-control along autopnomous and responsive lines addresses this, and begins the diffusion of power which will continue toward a stateless society.

7. When you state "Currently, in the West, the great divison of rich and poor is non-existent for the most part." you're simply incorrect. A look at reasonable statistics will actually reveal a continually growing relative gap. Time to check yr facts.

8. Dewey called the government "The shadow cast over society by big business". When the democratic institutions of the state kill citizens in defense of the institution of private property, you see this in action. When monsanto's seeds drift into yr crop, and you're stuck with the bill, it's obvious which institutions are in the service of which other institutions.

9. Dig an Export Processing Zone, and tell me that again.

10. This relationship is horizontal and consensual. The blueprint makers and those who carry out the blue prints exist in a symbiotic, and non-exploititive realtionship, in which class is not a factor. Teachers, IT workers, etc. exist in a symbiotic relationship with society that has no class character. In a round of BDSM Role Playing, consenual interaction involving power exchange is carried out on a mutual and beneficiary level. Get the example?

11. Who cares what Marx did? He's rotting in the ground. I am a feminist.

12. Again, communist country is an oxymoron. The closest existing manifestation of meaningful direct democratic practice, however, may be among the Zapatista Autonomist Comunittees in Chiapas, Mexico. Despite encirclement and violence by the Mexican army and right-wing paramilitaries, they are able to retain a vibrant democratic and egalitarian practice.
As to past revolutions . . . what communist revolutions? Previous revolutions have been of a bourgeois character! In China, Russia, and so on, "Communist Parties" within pre-capitalist societies simply carried out the creation of [bureacratic-]capitalism.

[encephalon]

...In a round of BDSM Role Playing, consenual interaction involving power exchange is carried out on a mutual and beneficiary level. Get the example?


Hah. That's a novel example.

[NovelGentry]

7)Currently, in the West, the great divison of rich and poor is non-existent for the most part. In many developing countries, the division of rich and poor is disappearing, as a middle-class arises.

I disagree with this. It is not that the division of rich and poor is non-existent, it is that it has changed form. It used to be the case (before the brilliant idea of credit) that if you were poor that was extremely visible in your living conditions. It is now the case that you could be poor, worse than poor, $120,000 in the hole and look relatively the same as the bourgeoisie.

Look at the stats on rising debt, stagnant and lowering minimum wage, and what percentage of who owns what percentage of the wealth, then tell me the division is disappearing.

You bring up a great point though. It is "disappearing" much the same in developing countries. Marx had an answer for this, although he doesn't make it very clear. He never says it flat out, although he elludes to it, and if you read enough of his work all the pieces of the puzzle are there. Several within the manifesto itself.

Marx proposes that there are three ways capitalists can deal with their expanding market, conquest of profit and eventual overproduction. The first is to extend into a new market geographically (I see this as the inherent imperialist nature of capitalism). I won't go into the second because it is the first one which I want to concentrate on.

The market is first expanded in the productive aspects of the market only, supply. We ivade other land, not necessarily with armies (although that happens to), and we in essence convert their heathen feudal nature to our capitalist "freedom and liberty" (to quote Bush).

Upon doing so, bourgeoisie from our market, or very greedy aristocracy in their land become their bourgeoisie. This happened when Japan made it's decision to "modernize." This rich aristocracy still controlling the land and overall resources negotiates with the bourgeoisie on the global market, converting it's people to the same productive working class we were nearly 100 years ago in our early history. They are paid shit wages, in bad conditions, some of them even tied to machines -- this was all very common in the US from the birth of the industrial revolution all the way up to almost WWII. No one is free from this, women, children, men... all are pushed now to sell their labor power now. There is no more peasantry, or very little and it is being abolished as the land owners turn to bourgeoisie.

Thus the first expansion is of production. The second is of course consumption. This is where you see your so-called decrease in division.

Because of market saturation here they want to sell their products on a global market. Apple's got all the customers it can get here, as does Microsoft... so they sell to other nations. Eventually they have all the customers they're gonna get there... so they need new nations. These productive third world nations are now generating more overall wealth for their socities, and as such overally conditions improve. It becomes acceptable for the bourgeoisie to agree to taxes for social programs like public schooling etc. So now all the sudden schools are a market for these products. Remember when your school had a computer running DOS and you played Oregon Trail? (maybe that was just me). Now it seems everyone has a computer! Indeed, in order to sell these products to these consumers wages must increase or the product price must go down. So yes, wages do increase to a point, sometimes going beyond what they need to be... the market can "overestimate" how badly it can exploit while maintaining product sales.

However, for the capitalist to maintain constantly expanding profits, they have to find a new cheap source of labor. This creates ongoing imperialism until eventually there is no other country to "convert" to capitalism. Now the whole world is a market, both producer market and a consumer market. So their ONLY means by which to increase profit is to decrease wages... but wait, if they do that, less people will buy these products. So instead they begin to strip the social programs they created giving back tax money to "stimulate the economy." Does this sound like a world you're living in yet? It should. Tax's decrease, but now people need to uphold the things those old social institutions gave them... they need to buy books cause they're libraries are turning to shit and are underfunded... etc..etc... From this point on there is no turning back, there is no saving grace of capitalism.

This is why we say the destruction of capitalism is inevitable. It is NOT a sustainable system.

Marx's writinge of nearly 150 years ago contain all the pieces to this puzzle if you're willing to look hard enough.


How will the great Proletarian Revolution be achieved if almost everyone is middle-class to upper-class and lives comfortable lives? Currently, most countries aren't getting poorer. They're getting richer.

I'm hoping my previous answer made this question moot. Debt will increase exponentially and eventually the system will collapse on itself with overproduction, underconsumption, and no one really being able to actually afford what they're getting. Great Depression times several million. My only hope is that we can have our revolution before this needs to happen. No need to cause more pain than there needs to be.


8)Marx constantly makes reference to the power of the businesses being stronger than those of the nation, and increasing in power. If this were the case, how come we see no effects of this? Could someone prove to me, that this is actually happening?

It's called lobbying here in the US. It's the reason Halliburton gets contracts as opposed to any other company (if indeed they aren't a monopoly). It's the reason Microsoft's anti-trust case can be here one minute, and be dismissed the next minute during a change in presidents and a shift in who's running the congress. If you're not familiar with American politics and the roles buisnesses play, god help you. Whoops... God can't help you, he doesn't exist. Help yourself, JOIN US!


9)Marx states that the West has enslaved the East. Could someone show this to me nowadays? And not of OMG they're getting cheap labor. Actual enslavement.

My previous points about imperialism as well as why we call it wage slavery and how private property FORCES people to sell their labor power should suffice to answer this.


10) How can teachers, information and technology related specialities, and any other jobs, where people have some form of power and create dependency on each other, exist in Communism? If any form of economic dependency form one class to another is capitalist, is the dependency of factory workers, on blueprint makers, a relationship of capitalism, since the blueprint makes exercise a form of control on the workers?

These are not classes. They are all workers. There is a natural dependency on one another in any form of society. For example, under communism the ability for those to produce food to produce it will require that people are there to fix the means they use to produce it (whatever those tools may be). This is not avoidable, nor do we pretend it is. If no one is there to fix their tools, no one will eat. Or everyone will have very little to eat.


11) Marx wasn't a feminist. He decried the fact that women were now equal and able to work in factorys in Bourgeois and Proletariot. How come he complained?

Marx wasn't a lot of things, but his reasons for one form of "equality" particularly that among sexes is no justification for the lack of equality elsewhere, among classes.


12)Finally, could someone explain to me why even with all these communist revolutions, none make the mark? And please tell which country in the world, you consider to be most Communist.

There is no "most communist." I am unaware of any of these so-called communist countries ever even achieving completely socialized production.

Most of them, however, missed the mark because they jumped the gun on the material conditions necessary to make this. Marx spoke of the large technological change that comes from capitalism. Indeed some rather advanced technological change will probably help to take is out of capitalism, yet it will be born from capitalism. I theorize this will be the change from fossil fuel's to renewable energy. It makes the most sense, and it is our biggest dependence at the moment.

Examples of the USSR, China, Cuba, and a host of other nations failed to undergo their initial capitalist changes. This is why all of them needed to industrialize. It is capitalism that does the industrializing. They skipped over a phase and tried to surpass people's capitlaist revolutionary thinking, replacing it with socialist revolutionary thinking when these people could not even understand that perspective.

They were valiant attempts, some of them got a lot further than Marx probably would have theorized, but not without a great deal of authoritarian control. But even from the beginning, they were bound to failure.

The nation closest to communism should theoretically be the nation who has sufficed capitalism the longest. The nation closest in terms of how it functions to communism, would probably have to be Cuba. This does not mean it's communist, but you asked for the closest. Cuba is not even socialist.

[NovelGentry]

I suppose the only question left now is, did any of that change your mind?

[NovelGentry]

Fucking Christ... I forgot about the Zapatistas... I always forget about them. I'm switching my answer to the closest example to them as well. They need to make more noise so I can hear them when people ask me questions like that ;)

[encephalon]

this thread should be stickied, maybe with the name changed a little. It would save time in the future.

[NovelGentry]

this thread should be stickied, maybe with the name changed a little. It would save time in the future.

Maybe we should just create stickies of all of Marx's works from www.marxists.org -- oh, that's right, no one would bother to read it anyway. What makes you think this thread would be any different?

With the exception of truthman here, who I can only hope has the common courtesy to read all of our responses after we took the time to respond.

[encephalon]

this forum needs a button on it in which, when clicked, it will paste a standard "look here" response, and point to posts like this.

If too many people reply to this, they might as well read all of marx's works :P

I guess I didn't think about the whole not-reading-it part. I always make the mistake of thinking people don't read things, whether they agree with them or not, because they aren't exposed to them, not because they have an aversion to increasing their knowledge thereof. I should probably stop that.

[NovelGentry]

If these responses formulate any new questions, I fear I may not have the energy to respond to them.


If too many people reply to this, they might as well read all of marx's works

The problem isn't even that they read them, although that is a problem among many here... the problem is they read them and misinterpret them.

[encephalon]

true. I don't know how many times I've had to tell somone that marx knew well and stated that capital creates capital. Though that seems more a problem of the former rather than the latter, I'm guessing. Though rather dry in style, it's plainly stated nonetheless.

[NovelGentry]

I'm bumping this to the top with a new post... this is the most important thread made in this part of the board in the past week.

[Non-Sectarian Bastard!]

Suprise!

The cappies don't respond. It probaly hurts to their eyes. "BuT Bush IzT Not FreDoM?!"

[Publius]

Originally posted by [email protected] 5 2005, 08:57 AM




Marx argues that capitalism (and thus the construct of wage slavery) removes from labor the very essence of it's cause. The laborer under capitalism is set into a slot, he is a carpenter, or a steel worker, or a machinist, or a shoemaker, or a farmer, etc, etc. The capitalist mode of production, due to necessary personal financial stability, is unallowing of man to be free of this fact. We are not free laborers. We work for the money, not for the product itself. It alienates us from who we actually are and what are abilities are and gives us a simple label. In 5 years my label will be "teacher." To the capitalist I am no different than anyone else labeled "teacher." Aside from maybe a few more or less credentials.

This is NOT exploitation. Destroying individuality has little to do with the exploitation one faces under capitalism. If you'd like to learn about that it is addressed throghout the board in other threads. Search for things like "Surplus Value" using the boards search function.

Your last question is a bit confusing as I'm not sure from which perspective you're taking it. In general Marx feels that the property generated by the working class under capitalism belongs to the hole of the working class. It is their labor which produces it. It is their labor that produces the machines that help them to produce it. He expands it to the whole of society on the basis that society itself is necessary for this production. Example being, someone elses labor produced the metal in the machine you may use. Someone else produces the food for you to eat to sustain life, and the food for the person who produced that metal. Someone else produced the tools the farmer used to make that food. These links spread throughout society, and although you could certainly attempt to logistically keep track of them, you would probably only come to realize that indeed it is the whole of the working class who sustains the whole of the working class. Kinda like the idea that you know everyone in the world through 5 links. Except the idea is that all the world's worker's labor makes your product possible, even if only because other people's labor makes their labor products, and so on and so on.


Why should you work for the product itself when money is more useful? If I was a blacksmith, I would rather make money selling hammers and keeping my hammers. If I was a worker in a smithy shop, I would rather make a wage than a bunch of tools.

Workers are not entitled to their labor, regardless of what Marxists philosophy claims. Workers are entitled to what capitalists are willing to give them, and whatever wage they accept.

It is a mutual deal in which both parties gain.

The capitalist gets production, the worker gets a wage. There is no slavery involved.

Prove to me that a worker deserves what he creates. You can't merely state it as fact.

Yes, society is necessary for things to be produced, but this can only be achieved through capitalism as stated my Smith.



It's no bad. "Bad" and "Evil" are supersticious terms for non materialists ;)

It's unnecessary and unjustified. Given my answer above about the whole of the working contributing to every laborer's product, Marx does not assume it is the property alone of that worker, nor does he assume it is the property alone of the person who hired that worker. In fact, he argues because of those links, that it is indeed the property of the working class as a whole.[/quote\

Freedom is unessecary and unjustified?

[quote]
The working class does not have the option to survive by another means. If you are born into capitalism and you are in a working class family (a family that needs to work to survive) you do not have the option of surviving outside of selling your labor to a capitalist. This is why we use the term wage slavery. You have no choice.

In order for wages to be exploitation, one must have to be unavailable to avoid those wages. If they were able to freely avoid selling their labor and survive outside of that system you could not consider it exploitation as they enter into that labor contract upon their own free will. However, for most people it is not their free will, they have to sell their labor, or die.

What makes it actual exploitation is what Marx calls the theory of surplus value. The working class buys their products from the very same capitalists that their ranks work for to produce these products. It is their labor they are forced to sell because of the concept of private property. Those who do not own such private property in the form of a means of production (for example land) have no means by which they could work for themselves and produce their own sustenence, whether or not that included working to produce a product on their own and selling it in the market to buy the means to survive, or whether that meant working their own land directly for what they need to survive.

The root of this control is of course land. However, I find it impossible for any single person to deem that they "own land" and that it belongs to no one else. No one has such natural authority, they must create the authority by physically defending it. If this idea alone was abolished we could as some capitalists wish us to do "go off and start our own commune." Farming on whatever land we find suitable, hunting where animal roam, and building shelter from the things nature provides.

But let's modernize this a bit. You claim I have private property, that the objects I've "bought" with with the money I got from selling my labor are mine. But without the means to produce my own sustenence they cannot be as such. This so called "private property" would serve me litte more than as a buffer to ensure my existence for a small period of time if I chose to stop working. I woudl have to sell these very objects in order to sustain my life. When I sold all of these objects, I would once again have to sell the only thing I have left, my labor power.

At the very least the "private property" of the working class, is nothing more than a temporary shift in "ownership." Unlike someone who owns land, who controls that land, who actually has private property. Or someone who owns a factory or a mine (which is in essence also land). If they own these things they can use them. The land owner can grow his own food and build his own shelter there from the trees and grass (once again, not a modernized example). The factory owner could "rent" his factory to make money he needs to survive.

What exactly is the capability of a member of the working class of doing any of this? What is their truly private property that belongs to no one else? Their house (assuming it's paid for).. their car (assuming it's paid for)? Indeed all of these are an illusion, upheld only on the condition that they continue selling their labor power.

Why should the working class have another option? Many in the working class work their up. Many don't. Communists refer to this a lottery (Though it obviously isn't), but isn't a lottery where some get rich better than a rampant egalitarian society where everyone is equally as poor?

Private property exists because it's logical for it to exist. Just as this house is mine, this land is mine. Saying that none has the authority to say land is theirs is liking saying none has the authority to say a diamond is theirs. They're both naturally occuring. I realize you may very well say a diamond isn't yours but whatever.

All you're saying is that things cannot or should not be owned, I am saying they can and should.

Private property is more successful than public property. Always. John Stossel has an excellent article on this if you would like to read it:

http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=448934&page=3




It's not to much that he "wants it." It is something of a condition of the society. Under communist society your "education" will probably come from formal institution, but only for the shared education that everyone receives. Basic history, math, literacy skills, etc. In that sence we are already "raised under the teachings of society." More, we are influenced by their beliefs that are all around us. Just like you were probably raised to believe communism was evil. You were raised to think capitalism was a fair chance, and maybe you had a fair chance. Not everyone does.

What Marx proposes would transform secondary school type education to actual labor education. If you wanted to become a teacher, you would work directly with teachers, progressing in your own ability to educate others. If you were going to be a doctor you would work directly with doctors.

This is a much more logical method of education, one where education is a function of society itself and you are are actually educated for what you wish to do. This is an amazing freedom which is attempted under capitalism with things like coop programs and internships or "go to work with your dad days" in grammar schools. But still it is a condition of money. In capitalism an unpaid internship for educational purposes is almost welcomed, you'll be contributing to work more than likely with "hands on experience." Creating products or services which you will see no benefits of.

Why must we follow the beliefs of our parents, is that not anti-individualism? Do you believe everything your parents believe? If we are going to be truly free thinkers we cannot confine ourselves to any single point of education, if it is indeed the whole of society from which we are brought up we will have a plethora of ideas from a number of existing individuals, and all of those will combine to create the very unique individuals who we are. Once again, this is not a thing capitalism leans on as an impossibility, but communist society would do it better. Individualism would be increased, not decreased.

There is no individualism in a marxist society.

What marxism strives to do is take society back a thousand years, from a modern intellectual society full of arts and entertainment to a bare essential society where every action is designed for nothing but immediate survival.

By saying "Wannabe doctors should work with doctors" is merely stating the obvious.

But most people who want to be doctors don't decide this until they're nearly 20. Give them a standard education and let them specialize.

You have no individual rights so individual thinking is nonexistant.



These type of questions always amazed me. As if workers are so dumb that they cannot conceive of what is needed to get a certain issue solved. Is that not, in fact, some people's jobs? (and I don't just mean the CEO). Are some people not "research and development" workers? Engineers? Scientists? The working class is very capable of seeing what is needed and deciding on what road we take to fulfill that need.

Are you asking how something like the apple iPod would be produced under communist society? Or are you asking how something like an apple would be produced? Food is a necessity, we can all agree we need food to survive. If we are starving we need more food.

You should probably note a huge number of the starvation figures from the USSR were not because of the economic system of "communism" -- in fact it was a leftover of capitalism generated by Lenin's NEP. The peasants who then controlled a great percent of the land and food production were allowed to sell surpluses on the open market. When Stalin tried to take surpluses from the open market because urban factory workers were starving, the peasants disagreed and resisted. This is indeed why many were deported and sent to labor camps. They became what we call the petit-bourgeoisie -- something of a small capitalist. I'm not saying there wouldn't have still been starving, I wholely believe there may have been simply because lack of the advancements capitalism makes, but there would have been a lot less if it wasn't for this capitalist aspect of the so called "communist" USSR.

Back to my original statements though. We can all see when we are starving, and thus we can work to produce a necessity such as that which is needed nearly immediately. Something like the apple iPod would come out of sheer curiosity. Since the means of production is shared, anyone with such a curiosity could very much decide to develop that product.... if people saw it and really liked it, they could convince others to help produce these products and indeed start something of a technology commune to do so.

How do I know this is possible? I work for a project called Linux on the iPod. If you're not familiar with the open source movement, you should get familiar with it. We are an open source product who's goal is to replace and improve the capabilities of the apple iPod by creating an open source replacment for it's software portion. We've had great success, and some minor failures due to the fact that the iPod itself is not an open infrastructure. It's "specs" so to speak are not available to us, thus we have to tweak around until certain things work or attempt to reverse engineer it.

Things our project had BEFORE apple's firmware supported it: Image viewing, ogg vorbis playback, text editing, a host of games unavailble on the apple firmware, ability to run any text based application from a shell.

Some of these things are still not even available on apple's firmware. The capitalist mode of production is only holding us back. We could have been done the projects goals months ago if apple gave us the spects to how it was built. Why is it you think no other production can function like this?

Many workers are dumb. Many aren't. Are you going to vote for how many lightbulbs your plant produces? Is that the communistic method? Giving the the "equal" workers (Though many maybe stupid) "equal" say in what the company does?

What if the workers decide they don't want to make as many lightbulbs because that would require more work? That's a very logical conclusion for short sighted workers to make.

In the Soviet Union, when a factory was made to make a 1000 shoes, they would all produce the exact same kind, because that was most efficient. Collectivization does not work because people are not equal.

Most people wouldn't know their ass from an earnings statement, these people are kept away from here.

Capitalism allows for specialization.

If you're good at accounting, you become and accountant, not a lightbulb maker who is 1 of 253 votes on accounting decisions, though he is easily the best candidate to make all of those decisions.

This stems from the fact that people are not equal. This is communism's stumbling point. People are stupid oftentimes.


That's a great story. But do you know how to make an Ipod? Could you if you did? Did you code it originally? Did you come up with the original firmware? Your contribution is nothing compared to what Apple put into it.

Tell me how someone could just up and decide an Apple Ipod should be produced? It took a team of researches months to flesh it out and years to develop, just so people like you would have the chance to expand upon it.

The capitalist mode of production gave you that ipod and the means to modify it, maybe you should rescind your statement about it holding us back.

Maybe you could apply for a job at Apple if your ideas are so good.


The aspects you speak of don't lead to the destruction of the state. What leads to the destruction of the state is the advancment of worker's control over the means of production. Political power is focused first in the hands of productive power. The state has no real control over us from the beginning of socialism. How could it? production and distribution is left up to the workers under socialism, that is what socialized production is.

The state itself is an abstract term, which we use in socialism to imply the workers themselves. What makes it is a state is that is it not the whole of society. Marx saw thesame level as us, they will all the sudd state as a tool of class oppression, it is the same tool under socialism, except it is the tool of the working class. We "oppress" the bourgeoisie by pushing them to the en need to work to survive. We "steal" their private property and make it open and available for all to use, and we take their excessive properties and use them to service anyone who needs it. For example, their cars may become public taxis. Their houses may become technology centers, activity centers for kids, educational centers, or even places to live for people without a home. They too will get a home, just not as opulent a living condition as they had.

We need the state at this point for two reasons: 1) suppress the possibility of a bourgeoisie uprising -- the state should exist so long as the remnants of the bourgeoisie and their ideology exist 2) defense of the revolution against invading forces. Until all nations are socialist we MUST protect ourselves from external capitalist threat (given capitalism imperialist nature).

If this sound overtly authoritarian, remember that all working class people are given direct democracy, legislative and executive veto power of the amdinistrative portions of the state. The administrative portion serves as little more than to direct and serve the working class in making whatever they decide on possible, and even it's members would be elected directly by the working class.

The idea is that once those two points above disappear the state will naturally disappear through worker's democracy. If those are it's two functions and there is no more class antagonisms, there is no more need for the state to protect against a bourgeois uprising. If there is no more capitalist nations to defend against, there is no more need for the state to organize that defense.

So what you do is, instead of enriching everyone, you empoor everyone. Brilliant. If I can't have what he has, I'll steal it from him and we'll all suffer together. But that does fit in well with materialism, suffering with your fellow worker.

You're words disgust me, they really do. "We'll give him a house" How nice of you. It's like the thief robbing you and out of the niceness of his heart, letting you keep 5% of your belongings.

You think you deserve what other people earn. You don't.

You wonder why we're "scared" of your ideology? Because it proposes robbing everyone of their possessions and enslaving them with democracy.

The demos can die before they rob me.

We'll take you on any day of the week, pinkos.



You're ignoring what the state is. The state IS the working class organized as a ruling class. The dicatorship of the proletariat is to be taken literally as a dictatorship of the entire proletariat (over the old bourgeoisie). It is workers democracy. I don't know how you suspect to see a totalitarian government when it is run through democracy by a huge majority of society's members, the working class.

There is no one put in absolute power, and no one who makes executive decisions, not even a small group to do that. Things are done slowly with direct democracy or vast representative democracy on executive issues alone, all executive decisions of course allowing to be overturned by the workers directly.

Say for example the US used this form of a state. The congress now becomes the executive brance, and the people become the legislative brance. So the executive branch wants to go to war with iraq and they ask the legislative brance (aka: the people). Unless a majority of the people want to go to war, you're not going to war.

Is this system perfect? No. No one ever claimed it to be. If all the people vote that no one is allowed to eat anything but rice, it gets a bit starchy, know what I'm saying? But this is the true price of democracy, and a risk I'm willing to take.

Might I ask where you got the idea that Marx proposes absolute power in the state? I'm not saying I disagree with this, I'm just trying to point out if he's talking about absolute power in the state, you're not taking into account that the state is in the form of democracy by the majority (the working class).

Democracy is a joke. Democracy is mob rule, the masses robbing, murdering, plundering the minority. Jews the disliked minority? Kill 'em. Bougiouse the hated minority? Rob them.

Maight makes right is no moral sanction. If you support democracy, do you support the demos killing you in the name of democracy? Do you support the Nazis killing and imprisoning communists? That was populr during the '30s.

Or do you think you hold some kind of monopoly on democracy? If people popularly vote for capitalism (As they do daily with their money, their labor and their acitons), why do you wish to take up an undemocratic stance? You should convert to capitalism, everyone's doing it.

Oh but wait. The majority can be wrong because you are still a communist. You support direct democracy through the economy, yet when it's practiced in defense of capitalism, you ignore it's sanction?

If people support modern capitalism, through their own ignorance, how will they ever be perfect members of you society? Ignorance?

Face it. Democracy is the God that failed. Democracy is abhorrent. Thank God this is Representitive Republic.



If you support democracy, rebuke your communism now because the masses support capitalism, if you don't, get out of communism, because it's purely democratic.

[Publius]

I disagree with this. It is not that the division of rich and poor is non-existent, it is that it has changed form. It used to be the case (before the brilliant idea of credit) that if you were poor that was extremely visible in your living conditions. It is now the case that you could be poor, worse than poor, $120,000 in the hole and look relatively the same as the bourgeoisie.

Look at the stats on rising debt, stagnant and lowering minimum wage, and what percentage of who owns what percentage of the wealth, then tell me the division is disappearing.

You bring up a great point though. It is "disappearing" much the same in developing countries. Marx had an answer for this, although he doesn't make it very clear. He never says it flat out, although he elludes to it, and if you read enough of his work all the pieces of the puzzle are there. Several within the manifesto itself.

Marx proposes that there are three ways capitalists can deal with their expanding market, conquest of profit and eventual overproduction. The first is to extend into a new market geographically (I see this as the inherent imperialist nature of capitalism). I won't go into the second because it is the first one which I want to concentrate on.

The market is first expanded in the productive aspects of the market only, supply. We ivade other land, not necessarily with armies (although that happens to), and we in essence convert their heathen feudal nature to our capitalist "freedom and liberty" (to quote Bush).

Upon doing so, bourgeoisie from our market, or very greedy aristocracy in their land become their bourgeoisie. This happened when Japan made it's decision to "modernize." This rich aristocracy still controlling the land and overall resources negotiates with the bourgeoisie on the global market, converting it's people to the same productive working class we were nearly 100 years ago in our early history. They are paid shit wages, in bad conditions, some of them even tied to machines -- this was all very common in the US from the birth of the industrial revolution all the way up to almost WWII. No one is free from this, women, children, men... all are pushed now to sell their labor power now. There is no more peasantry, or very little and it is being abolished as the land owners turn to bourgeoisie.

Thus the first expansion is of production. The second is of course consumption. This is where you see your so-called decrease in division.

Because of market saturation here they want to sell their products on a global market. Apple's got all the customers it can get here, as does Microsoft... so they sell to other nations. Eventually they have all the customers they're gonna get there... so they need new nations. These productive third world nations are now generating more overall wealth for their socities, and as such overally conditions improve. It becomes acceptable for the bourgeoisie to agree to taxes for social programs like public schooling etc. So now all the sudden schools are a market for these products. Remember when your school had a computer running DOS and you played Oregon Trail? (maybe that was just me). Now it seems everyone has a computer! Indeed, in order to sell these products to these consumers wages must increase or the product price must go down. So yes, wages do increase to a point, sometimes going beyond what they need to be... the market can "overestimate" how badly it can exploit while maintaining product sales.

However, for the capitalist to maintain constantly expanding profits, they have to find a new cheap source of labor. This creates ongoing imperialism until eventually there is no other country to "convert" to capitalism. Now the whole world is a market, both producer market and a consumer market. So their ONLY means by which to increase profit is to decrease wages... but wait, if they do that, less people will buy these products. So instead they begin to strip the social programs they created giving back tax money to "stimulate the economy." Does this sound like a world you're living in yet? It should. Tax's decrease, but now people need to uphold the things those old social institutions gave them... they need to buy books cause they're libraries are turning to shit and are underfunded... etc..etc... From this point on there is no turning back, there is no saving grace of capitalism.

This is why we say the destruction of capitalism is inevitable. It is NOT a sustainable system.

Marx's writinge of nearly 150 years ago contain all the pieces to this puzzle if you're willing to look hard enough.

You write to much.

You overestimate Marx's intelligence. No one man can see the entire world economy, much less the world economy of the future.

What is preventing this theoritical market you present, from merely existing as does, indefinitely?

It seems like communism answer to this "problem" is move the world back a few ages. Hardly ideal.

This theoritical market you present will never happen. It is true that if everyone were rich there would be no incentive to work, but not everyone will be or can be rich, only relatively rich.

They could have all kinds of nice things, live over 100 years, have an incredible life, but still be "poor" in comparision to someone else.

This is what will happen. Everyone will benefit from capitalisms advance, and since people are always being born (Which would happen at a much higher rate if everyone were exorbitantly rich) there will always be a market, there will always be new invention, there will always be new production.

It's true, everyone needs only 1 toaster, but you aren't taking into account the wonder devices of the future that everyone will surely want.




I'm hoping my previous answer made this question moot. Debt will increase exponentially and eventually the system will collapse on itself with overproduction, underconsumption, and no one really being able to actually afford what they're getting. Great Depression times several million. My only hope is that we can have our revolution before this needs to happen. No need to cause more pain than there needs to be.

The Great Depression was caused by the government, not the market.



It's called lobbying here in the US. It's the reason Halliburton gets contracts as opposed to any other company (if indeed they aren't a monopoly). It's the reason Microsoft's anti-trust case can be here one minute, and be dismissed the next minute during a change in presidents and a shift in who's running the congress. If you're not familiar with American politics and the roles buisnesses play, god help you. Whoops... God can't help you, he doesn't exist. Help yourself, JOIN US!


Lobbying wouldn't exist in the society I propose either.

Lessaiz-faire capitalism abhors government hand outs.

And Halliburton is the only company big enough to do the job in Iraq.

And the case against Microsoft was bogus.



My previous points about imperialism as well as why we call it wage slavery and how private property FORCES people to sell their labor power should suffice to answer this.

They should, but they don't.



These are not classes. They are all workers. There is a natural dependency on one another in any form of society. For example, under communism the ability for those to produce food to produce it will require that people are there to fix the means they use to produce it (whatever those tools may be). This is not avoidable, nor do we pretend it is. If no one is there to fix their tools, no one will eat. Or everyone will have very little to eat.

This happens in captitalism, very efficiently.


And Cuba is pretty socialist.

[NovelGentry]

Why should you work for the product itself when money is more useful? If I was a blacksmith, I would rather make money selling hammers and keeping my hammers. If I was a worker in a smithy shop, I would rather make a wage than a bunch of tools.

Money is not more useful under a system where money does not exist. But you misinterpreted what I meant by that. I meant you should work for the product, meaning, you should want to do what you are doing. You should not work "just to make money." But you should enjoy the aspects of what you actually produce. Having pride in what you do.


Workers are not entitled to their labor, regardless of what Marxists philosophy claims. Workers are entitled to what capitalists are willing to give them, and whatever wage they accept.

On what grounds?


It is a mutual deal in which both parties gain.

As I have shown, it is not a mutual deal. At least not fully. You could always die instead of working for a capitalist.


The capitalist gets production, the worker gets a wage. There is no slavery involved.

The plantation owner gets production, the slave gets to live in a shack on the outskirts of the land and gets to eat some of the food he helps to grow. Righteo... no slavery involved.

Slavery is forced labor, whether it be by gun point or by the illusion of private property. Physical, or metaphysical, the working class is still forced to give up their labor power, and if they don't, they die.


Yes, society is necessary for things to be produced, but this can only be achieved through capitalism as stated my Smith.

Capitalism generates Capital -- not just "things." Capital, in a portion is labor power, it s part of the "owned" force that the capitalist has to generate more capital. Their wealth buys labor power which then generates more capital, and thus, itself is a form of capital.

It is achieved yes, but it cannot last.

In order for capitalism to exist, the system must generate capital. To do this consistently it expands those employed under the system, currently in the form of third world labor. It cannot constantly expand.

So while it may achieve this, it only does so so long as there is the proper capital to extend the production, and thus create MORE capital. It is achieved, but hardly sustainable.


Freedom is unessecary and unjustified?

Where did I say that? He asked if "private property is bad" -- I said no, it's unnecessary and unjustified. Looking up the definition of private property I don't see: freedom.


but isn't a lottery where some get rich better than a rampant egalitarian society where everyone is equally as poor?

Yeah, it is. Good thing what I propose is something else.


Private property exists because it's logical for it to exist. Just as this house is mine, this land is mine. Saying that none has the authority to say land is theirs is liking saying none has the authority to say a diamond is theirs. They're both naturally occuring. I realize you may very well say a diamond isn't yours but whatever.

Oh, you own your own land? Who'd you buy it from? Where'd he get it? How'd the guy who sold it to him get it? I'm quite confident Native American's used to "own" the land under my feet. Strange how the idea of private property and inheritance was lost for them through the barrel of a gun. I think you'll find a lot more situations like this.

What cause did one man have to say to another the first time it was said "This land is my land, it is not yours," well?


All you're saying is that things cannot or should not be owned, I am saying they can and should.

The theory of communism can be summed up in a single sentence: Abolition of private property. Cheers for your new found discovery, but all you had to do was read the Manifesto to figure this out.


Private property is more successful than public property. Always. John Stossel has an excellent article on this if you would like to read it:

http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=448934&page=3

Ahh yes, John Stossel, the definitive authority on who owns what and why. His primary argument in that is that private property does not get abused and is thus "better" and thus people want it more and thus it is "more successful" (as you put it).

This may be all well and true in a system where some things are owned and other things are not. Under a system where this foolishness didn't exist, things would be different.

Take his example of the public toilet. And by the way, where IS there a public toilet (and no, a porto-potty is not a toilet)? I suppose he means a gas station's toilet for example, which is public to use, but not publically owned -- his first fallacy. But why would the gas station really care about the cleanliness of their toilet? It's not what makes them money.

Employee fridges is another one of his examples that are often filled with rotten food. Again, "public" (this is not actually public, but to give him credit his argument is about shared things, not public property really), privately owned. It is not functional to the business that the employee refrigerator be cleaned. Alas, I have worked in places where someone was assigned to clean the fridge. Are you saying it would be impossible for workers to get together and decide who's going to clean the fridge or the rest room? It's not as if it takes that long, and you'd only have to do it every now and then since you could rotate who does it.

In short, his ideas are based in a society where it is not the nature of that society to care about these so called "public" properties. They are not why money is made, they are not vital to the establishment, and they could just as easily not exist and no one could say anything about it. This is not the same.


There is no individualism in a marxist society

Well mere assertion won't get you anywhere. But while we're at it, there is no individualism in capitalist society. It's amazing you can think 90% shopping at the same stores and buying the same brands is individualism. Capitalism actually attempts to destroy individualism. Look at the music industry. The type of music you SHOULD be listening to is shoved down your throat left and right with the money they have to make that possible.


What marxism strives to do is take society back a thousand years, from a modern intellectual society full of arts and entertainment to a bare essential society where every action is designed for nothing but immediate survival.

Quite the contrary, Marxism attempts to put the freedom of arts and entertainment back into the individuals. It gives individuals (all individuals) the right to the things they need to secure that freedom and art. Are you a painter? Need more paint supplies? Go get them. The term "starving artist" had a lot of weight before capitalism, and it's great that one can now eat off their art, but would be even greater is if those two weren't link so that their art could be free of the influence of survival. This is what Marxism looks to do.


By saying "Wannabe doctors should work with doctors" is merely stating the obvious.

But most people who want to be doctors don't decide this until they're nearly 20. Give them a standard education and let them specialize.

That is a defect in the system that requires you to go through the normal runs first. You dont' get out of high school until you're 18, and high school does not have the proper programs to prepare you or even introduce you to what you might actually be interested in. Only college does that under capitalism, and thus college becomes the discovery phase.

In a society where people are free to be introduced to those things because they don't need a certain amount of wealth that whole concept changes. They can acquire books on all the things they're interested in, and freely read about those things, then they can go a step further and freely acquire what they need to practice those things.

I don't have a kid, but I take it you've never seen a child with a toy doctors kit. Does he not put the stephascope to his mother's chest, and bang her knees with that little hammer thing and proclaim "Take two of these and see me in the morning?"

You have a very bleek outlook on human existence and curiosity. I can only assume you've looked no further than the mirror for your supporting evidence.


You have no individual rights so individual thinking is nonexistant.

Hogwash, you've not actually read a damn thing I said. You mearly pronounced the word you saw.


Many workers are dumb. Many aren't. Are you going to vote for how many lightbulbs your plant produces? Is that the communistic method? Giving the the "equal" workers (Though many maybe stupid) "equal" say in what the company does?

Much like in any other system, light bulbs would be produced primarily by demand, but we'd probably have oversupply which could be stored (just as they are now).

But to answer your question, yes, you would vote on how many lightbulbs are produced. Although the way this would actually work is through a federation of producers. Thus you would work with the glass company to determine what kind of yield they could get you for the glass you need. You would work with a company that processes brass (that is brass on the bottom of a lightbulb yes? Or is it copper?) to determine what kind of yield they could get you for what you need.

You are not an isolated group of people, nor is your production isolated. That's the point, society produces the goods of society as a whole. And as a whole society will work together through a cross trade system of democracy which ensures a stable system. What would some worker gain by saying "I think we should make 75,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 lightbulbs a year!" He wouldn't gain anything, nor does he lose anything, except maybe a light bulb when he needs it by saying they should produce 75 a year.


What if the workers decide they don't want to make as many lightbulbs because that would require more work? That's a very logical conclusion for short sighted workers to make.

Then there is a lightbulb shortage, and those who need lightbulbs go to the plant and help out producing lightbulbs to make more. Under socialism this is regulated by the average social hour of labor, which would determine something of the "cost" of the lightbub. What it accounts for is if they produce say 10 lightbulbs across 10 hours of time. A lightbulb would then have a "cost" of 1 average social hour of labor (assuming it was an average across all factories that 1 lightbulb was produced every hour.) Does this account for if they only produce 10 lightbulbs in 10 minutes and call it a day? Indeed it does. Under socialism if they only work for 10 minutes a day they can only "afford" 10 average social minutes of labor. Get the drift?

Communism is able to occur materially when oversupply begins to happen on necessities. When this mode of production has become the "norm" and technology has advanced to make us more products with less time. It has not strict guidelines for production and consumption, and as such you may see that as a problem and a point of focus for it's inevitable collapse. However, as one paper points out, it is not that these guidelines have disappeared, it is simply that they are no longer noticed.

The whole of society can only consume what the whole of society produces.


In the Soviet Union, when a factory was made to make a 1000 shoes, they would all produce the exact same kind, because that was most efficient. Collectivization does not work because people are not equal.

Wow, that was some crazy logic. "they all produced the same kind of shoe because it was most efficient" so as you can see "it doesn't work cause people aren't equal."

If nike could produce all the same kind of shoe and still charge the money they do for it, they would. Yes, I know, they can't. The point is that capitalism too works on an efficiency principle. Instead, it is the efficiency in terms of profit. Is it COST efficient to do this, or not?

What you fail to realize is that the Soviet Union never had capitalism. There was never an overproduction or the development of the means to produce these things with the same ease as in capitalist society. Instead they had to play "catch up" to capitalism, because they decided they were going to jump over the majority of that phase and try and skip straight to socialism.

Unlike the USSR an advanced capitalist nation would not have such issues. Capitalism has already incurred the necessary creation of the proper productive forces. Because it is COST efficient for a capitalist to invest in a machine that can produce 100 yards of clothe where it used to produce 1 yard. It simply makes sense. They pay the single worker they paid before to operate the machine, yet increase their profit by 100 times! This is across many of the productive forces in Capitalism.

Unlike all existing examples of attempted socialist revolution and socialist production, an advanced capitalist country like the United States has no excuse for scarcity other society refusing to work.

Without scarcity, there's no need for that kind of foolish efficiency. Without that, people have the freedom to do much more clever things. If you don't like the shoes everyone else is wearing, go to the shoe shop and make your own pair of shoes! Remember, the means of production are available to all.


Most people wouldn't know their ass from an earnings statement, these people are kept away from here.

Capitalism allows for specialization.

If you're good at accounting, you become and accountant, not a lightbulb maker who is 1 of 253 votes on accounting decisions, though he is easily the best candidate to make all of those decisions.

Accountants... those are the guys who calculate profits, costs, taxes, etc...things like that, right? Say it with me now, MONEY DOES NOT EXIST.


This stems from the fact that people are not equal. This is communism's stumbling point. People are stupid oftentimes.

Right, cause without an accountant we don't know how many lightbulbs to make while maintaining cost efficiency and highest profit yield. Oh yeah... there's no money.

Am I saying everyone can be the same thing as everyone else? No, but they have a chance at it if they think they can. You may claim it's the same in capitalism. But I have no chance at becoming say... The President of the United States of America, I can guarantee you that.

I have a lot more chances than others because of where I live on the economic scale, I'll tell you that. Some people don't even have a chance at becoming what I am, middle class.


That's a great story. But do you know how to make an Ipod?

Actually I do for the most part, unless you're talking about engineering the main board. That I do not, but then again, I'm not an electronic engineer.


Could you if you did?

Not the hardware. I don't have the means of production for hardware. I got a computer here though, and that is the means of production for the software. Unfortunately the computer is not my private property.


Did you code it originally?

I didn't code apple's original firmware, no, I don't work for apple.


Did you come up with the original firmware?

No, once again I don't work for apple.


Your contribution is nothing compared to what Apple put into it.

My contribution is above and beyond what apple decided to contribute to their own product. In fact, if I had the money to buy the necessary parts, I'd show you just the same I could make a comparible product, on the contrary, a BETTER product.


Tell me how someone could just up and decide an Apple Ipod should be produced?

Well apple decides it should be produced cause it will sell good. Someone like me would decide it should be produced because it's something they want. For example... here I am pre-portable mp3 players sitting at my computer and I says to myself "Wouldn't it be great if I had the money to buy the smallest technology and put it all together in a small case so that I could play my mp3s anywhere!" Then I remember it's a pipe dream cause I don't have the money to buy those parts and it leaves my mind.

I take it you've never had such an idea? Shame -- they're quite fun to think about. Wish I had the ability to realize some of mine.


It took a team of researches months to flesh it out and years to develop, just so people like you would have the chance to expand upon it.

Is that so? I'm guessing you don't know much about the iPod itself, but it is not some genius idea. It's actually quit logical. It uss an ARM processor and a small mainboard with built in audio and and IDE controller (like any other embeded device). Then it attaches a hard drive to the IDE controller. Voilia, instant iPod. The hardware all existed long before, and much like any other idea that takes "months to flesh out" it was based on previous ideas. That is actually how technology progresses, a truly "original idea" probably doesn't exist anymore. What we see as original is just a combination of a bunch of different ideas from previous things.

I guarantee you the software took a LOT longer for them than the hardware. Hell, it took us a lot longer than it probably took them. Like I said, we don't have the specs, and there are quite a few "protection mechanisms" built in now to stop reverse engineers like us from doing anything.

I suppose you would argue Linux was just an "expansion" of the ideas laid down by windows, right? Well windows was just an expansion on the ideas of apple's OS, which was just an expansion of the ideas on what Xerox Parc had a the time, which was just an expansion on early attempts to object orient systems from the command line, which was just an expansion on object oriented programming, which was just an expansion on structured programming, which was just an expansion on "programmable machines," which was just an expansion on non-programmable complex machines. Do you want other examples of technological progression?


The capitalist mode of production gave you that ipod and the means to modify it, maybe you should rescind your statement about it holding us back.

I don't disagree with that. As I've said in other posts, the capitalist mode of production is a necessary step. But now it holds us back. While apple slowly progresses their firmware our software replacment moves at lightning speed, having features and ideas their firmware doesn't even touch upon. All we do is get threatened with lawsuits under the DMCA and things like that.

We are pushing it forward, and they do nothing but try and prevent us from doing that, is that not holding it back?


Maybe you could apply for a job at Apple if your ideas are so good.

Maybe apple wouldn't hire me because I have no formal programming experience what-so-ever. I'm not a programmer, I'm a network admin. My programming knowledge is EXTREMELY limited, and I'm very willing to admit to that.

Besides, my work is built on GPLed Code. If they wanted the work me and the rest of the guys on the project do, they'd have to keep it open source. That's bad for technology companies who hold "intellectual property" over most other kinds of property.


So what you do is, instead of enriching everyone, you empoor everyone. Brilliant. If I can't have what he has, I'll steal it from him and we'll all suffer together. But that does fit in well with materialism, suffering with your fellow worker.

You've ignored countless points I've brought up before, including the progression of the means of production and the oversupply caused by the capitalist mode of production. Maybe you don't understand this, but you cannot steal what does not belong to someone.


You're words disgust me, they really do. "We'll give him a house" How nice of you. It's like the thief robbing you and out of the niceness of his heart, letting you keep 5% of your belongings.

The way he got his house disgusts me. It's like the plantation owner telling his new African slaves that they can keep a small portion of what they produce so that they can survive.


You think you deserve what other people earn. You don't.

I think the working class deserves what the working class produces. End of story.


You wonder why we're "scared" of your ideology? Because it proposes robbing everyone of their possessions and enslaving them with democracy.

Enslaving them with democracy, AHAHAHAHAHAH.

I take it you have something to lose? The working class has nothing to lose... except their chains as Marx would say.


The demos can die before they rob me.

We'll take you on any day of the week, pinkos.

You squeel like a caged pig. I have no doubt that is what you are.


Democracy is a joke. Democracy is mob rule, the masses robbing, murdering, plundering the minority. Jews the disliked minority? Kill 'em. Bougiouse the hated minority? Rob them.

Yeah, why have majority rule when you can have minority rule. Let's not let a huge amount of people with differing opinions and civilized discourse decide what happens, let's let a small amount of people who have very much the same ideas and opinions decide what happens. Because unlike them, We hate Jews.

Give me a break. If you think the majority of people on this planet hate Jews you must be stuck in a timewarp inside Hitler's office. You fear the opinion of the every day working man because it is an opinion which contradicts what you feel is your safety and security. You fear that no one will be so enlightened as you to make the proper decisions. You'll tell them no human is capable of deciding what is right, so you, a human yourself, needs to decide it for them. The only thing that's a joke here is your shitty justification for monarchs, oligarchs, and representative democracies.

If the majority of people wanted to kill the Jews, why don't we have a presidential candidate run on a platform of "Kill all Jews!" Maybe you should inform Bush about your knowledge of what the majority wants, he'd probably like to hear your ideas on how to break the two term barrier and get a third slot in office.


Maight makes right is no moral sanction.

This is the exact same principle on which all other systems are built. The difference is, you're might is the size of your checkbook. Our might is the opinion of the people. No one here claims that the decisions under democracy will be right. They're not supposed to be "right." Right and wrong are subjective nonsense which differs greatly between cultures and ideologies (that's obvious here).


If you support democracy, do you support the demos killing you in the name of democracy? Do you support the Nazis killing and imprisoning communists? That was populr during the '30s.

Was it popular though? Or was it just made to look popular? There's a big difference. Current systems allow for what can be made to look popular to be mistaken for what is popular. For example, I was told by a Chinese man once that the majority of our country wanted Bush as it's president. I was shocked to find this out. Just so you're aware, it's not true.


Or do you think you hold some kind of monopoly on democracy?

I do not believe someone is free to choose, that is, I do not believe someone has a true freedom of vote until they are free of the pressures of class society. A few million dollars could probably get you the votes of hundreds of thousands of poor and/or homeless people. Not saying it did this for anyone, I'm just saying, there is no freedom when we don't first have the freedom to live.


If people popularly vote for capitalism (As they do daily with their money, their labor and their acitons), why do you wish to take up an undemocratic stance? You should convert to capitalism, everyone's doing it.

I don't wish to take an undemocratic stance. I don't ever wish communism to be forced upon anyone. That is your mindless creation of what we want. I want nothing more than for the workers to look to what we say, and if they understand it and agree with it, to fight for it on the same grounds that we do. We educate first, only once we have a majority would it even be POSSIBLE for us to win, let alone justified.


Oh but wait. The majority can be wrong because you are still a communist. You support direct democracy through the economy, yet when it's practiced in defense of capitalism, you ignore it's sanction?

I never said the majority couldn't be wrong. Once agian, "right" and "wrong" are very subjective. I am first a foremost a materialist. You will rarely see me banking on moral arguments alone. But I have done so frequently in the recent history of this board only because it seems people in the OI want to hear our moral arguments. They ask questions like "Do you think it's right" or "Why do you think capitalism is bad?" And then when I tell them that I don't think it's "right", "wrong", "bad", or "good" they are unsatisfied with that answer.

You need to hear it, so for your ear's pleasure only: Capitalism is EVIL! Democracy and communism are right!


If people support modern capitalism, through their own ignorance, how will they ever be perfect members of you society? Ignorance?

Well socialism would institute much better educational programs for people than capitalism. Libraries would not be deteriorating more and more each day, and kids in schools would have books that were newer than 1997, not to mention you wouldn't be seeing the kind of control over the media by the ruling class you see today. We need only to present the facts and reality, and I have every belief people will agree with what we have to say. It is your propaganda that they cannot let go of, not our propaganda they cannot accept.


Face it. Democracy is the God that failed. Democracy is abhorrent. Thank God this is Representitive Republic.

Yeah, like I said. I sure as hell want a few people deciding the direction of society than the whole of society.


If you support democracy, rebuke your communism now because the masses support capitalism, if you don't, get out of communism, because it's purely democratic.

You've made the poor mistake that "democracy destroys individualism." That supporting democracy means you have to support the outcome of every vote. You don't have to support it outcome, you need only to accept it's outcome. The great thing about democracy is that you can have an opinion that's different from the outcome, and more than that, your opinion matters because you and the people you talk to and try to influence are part of that outcome. This is simply not possible under representative democracy, you only have one decision, who you want to represent you (and even that's not even done right) after that all you have is the HOPE that he says he's gonna do what he said he was gonna do.

[NovelGentry]

You write to much.

The vice of being a writer.


You overestimate Marx's intelligence. No one man can see the entire world economy, much less the world economy of the future.

Actually, he didn't see it. A fortune teller told him, and he just analyzed it.


What is preventing this theoritical market you present, from merely existing as does, indefinitely?

I've explained this enough times already.


It seems like communism answer to this "problem" is move the world back a few ages. Hardly ideal.

In what way do we move backwards?


This theoritical market you present will never happen. It is true that if everyone were rich there would be no incentive to work, but not everyone will be or can be rich, only relatively rich.

Everyone were rich? Who said everyone was gonna be rich? Which theoretical market you talking about, the global market being caused by capitalism where the division supposedly decreases? The theoretical socialist market? That's not a market -- there's nothing about market theory that even applies to it.

Here you go with the "if you can't get rich there's no incentive to work crap again." Apparently old dogs can't learn new tricks.

Finally, you're right: not everyone will or can be rich. One cannot rise if someone else does not fall.


They could have all kinds of nice things, live over 100 years, have an incredible life, but still be "poor" in comparision to someone else.

It's not about "nice things" it's about freedom from wage slavery and exploitation.


This is what will happen. Everyone will benefit from capitalisms advance, and since people are always being born (Which would happen at a much higher rate if everyone were exorbitantly rich) there will always be a market, there will always be new invention, there will always be new production.

I have no fact, but are rich families generally not smaller than poor families? Anyone who can answer this, please do.

But there cannot always be capital. Capital begets Capital -- there's only so many people and products you can turn into a productive force before you run out. We don't have unlimited space and resources. If something does not generate more capital it is not capital, merely wealth.


It's true, everyone needs only 1 toaster, but you aren't taking into account the wonder devices of the future that everyone will surely want.

No, you're right, I do believe we should settle everyone's needs first before we look at a few people's wants.


The Great Depression was caused by the government, not the market.

The great depression was caused by oversupply by a shitload of market investors buying things like stock on margin, and consumers using credit for what they needed/wanted. Or is the freedom for a capitalist to supply stock margin and/or consumer credit not allowed in a free market?


Lobbying wouldn't exist in the society I propose either.

Lessaiz-faire capitalism abhors government hand outs.

And Halliburton is the only company big enough to do the job in Iraq.

And the case against Microsoft was bogus.

You don't write enough. Assertions get you no where with me.


They should, but they don't.

I never said I could account for stupidity.


This happens in captitalism, very efficiently.

It would need to happen less in socialism and can be handled with equal if not better efficiency. That is part of the point of it's economic organization.


And Cuba is pretty socialist.

In what way does cuba have socialized production? State controlled and owned production is NOT socialized production.

[Publius]

Money is not more useful under a system where money does not exist. But you misinterpreted what I meant by that. I meant you should work for the product, meaning, you should want to do what you are doing. You should not work "just to make money." But you should enjoy the aspects of what you actually produce. Having pride in what you do.

True. But we currently live under a sytem where money is useful.

Having pride in your work has little to do with communism or capitalism. You could hate your job in communism or love it in capitalism.



On what grounds?

It's a mutual agreement.



As I have shown, it is not a mutual deal. At least not fully. You could always die instead of working for a capitalist.

It's advantageous to both sides, perhaps moreso to one, but advantageous to both.




The plantation owner gets production, the slave gets to live in a shack on the outskirts of the land and gets to eat some of the food he helps to grow. Righteo... no slavery involved.

Slavery is forced labor, whether it be by gun point or by the illusion of private property. Physical, or metaphysical, the working class is still forced to give up their labor power, and if they don't, they die.

But slavery implies certain things, namely force and also a lack of freedom.

You are very free in todays modern, capitalist, society.

You aren't a slave unless you think you are. You are no more a slave under capitalism than communism.

At least in capitalism you agree to the terms, in communism, they are agreed upon by the majority.



Capitalism generates Capital -- not just "things." Capital, in a portion is labor power, it s part of the "owned" force that the capitalist has to generate more capital. Their wealth buys labor power which then generates more capital, and thus, itself is a form of capital.

It is achieved yes, but it cannot last.

In order for capitalism to exist, the system must generate capital. To do this consistently it expands those employed under the system, currently in the form of third world labor. It cannot constantly expand.

So while it may achieve this, it only does so so long as there is the proper capital to extend the production, and thus create MORE capital. It is achieved, but hardly sustainable.

It is sustainable, because the apex is never reachable. Just as you can keep adding "9s" to .99999, and never reach one, you can add production and capital to capitalism and never reach this point where it just stops growing.

It's impossible for a perfect economy to exist, and if this perfect economy (Which is what it would be) did exist, perfection would be reached and we could coast along just fine.



Where did I say that? He asked if "private property is bad" -- I said no, it's unnecessary and unjustified. Looking up the definition of private property I don't see: freedom.


Without private property, there is no freedom. You are at the will of the majority in communism. The only freedom you have is the freedom given to you by society.



Yeah, it is. Good thing what I propose is something else.

I'm sure you do propose something else, but your ideology would inevietably lead to this.



Oh, you own your own land? Who'd you buy it from? Where'd he get it? How'd the guy who sold it to him get it? I'm quite confident Native American's used to "own" the land under my feet. Strange how the idea of private property and inheritance was lost for them through the barrel of a gun. I think you'll find a lot more situations like this.

What cause did one man have to say to another the first time it was said "This land is my land, it is not yours," well?

If we trace it back, ownership went to the U.S. government, who took it from the Indians, who claimed it as their own.

This government of ours was designed to protect private property, it's in the Constitution, it's what it's based on.

It's part of the social contract, I pay taxes, they give me property rights for land they own (Or at least controll, if you prefer that term).

The land is "bought" from the government. The government owns the land because it conquered it, because it bought it, because it claimed it or for various other reasons.

I have a clear right to this land, at least, MORE of a right than any other person on earth.

And private property is advantageous to all as you may have read in the article I posted or in come capitalism books.

That man probably said that because the other man was using his land without his consent, thus, harming him.



Ahh yes, John Stossel, the definitive authority on who owns what and why. His primary argument in that is that private property does not get abused and is thus "better" and thus people want it more and thus it is "more successful" (as you put it).

This may be all well and true in a system where some things are owned and other things are not. Under a system where this foolishness didn't exist, things would be different.

Take his example of the public toilet. And by the way, where IS there a public toilet (and no, a porto-potty is not a toilet)? I suppose he means a gas station's toilet for example, which is public to use, but not publically owned -- his first fallacy. But why would the gas station really care about the cleanliness of their toilet? It's not what makes them money.

Employee fridges is another one of his examples that are often filled with rotten food. Again, "public" (this is not actually public, but to give him credit his argument is about shared things, not public property really), privately owned. It is not functional to the business that the employee refrigerator be cleaned. Alas, I have worked in places where someone was assigned to clean the fridge. Are you saying it would be impossible for workers to get together and decide who's going to clean the fridge or the rest room? It's not as if it takes that long, and you'd only have to do it every now and then since you could rotate who does it.

In short, his ideas are based in a society where it is not the nature of that society to care about these so called "public" properties. They are not why money is made, they are not vital to the establishment, and they could just as easily not exist and no one could say anything about it. This is not the same.

So you're saying there is no authority on who owns what and why? Good. Than stop pretending like you and/or Marx is said authority.

Public toilets in parks for example. They are often filthy because none cleans them. None cleans them because none has any incentive to.

I'm not saying it couldn't be done, it obviosly "could" be done, but it also obviously isn't. If it were such a logical thing, why isn't it being done? Why is your fridge so much cleaner by comparison?

The answer is you care about your stuff and you don't care about stuff that isn't yours. This a generality but as the article shows, is very often true.

It may be due to want of brevity that you ignored the other cases but I would say it's glaringly obvious, at least in those instances, for private property to exist as opposed to public.

Do you concede this?

It's of little consequence what "the nature of society" is. Society is what is.

And if you think society could exist (At least in it's current form) without forests for lumber, fish for eating and elephants for ivory (kidding), I don't think you know much about society.

Money is made off of all those things, you just choose to ignore it.



Well mere assertion won't get you anywhere. But while we're at it, there is no individualism in capitalist society. It's amazing you can think 90% shopping at the same stores and buying the same brands is individualism. Capitalism actually attempts to destroy individualism. Look at the music industry. The type of music you SHOULD be listening to is shoved down your throat left and right with the money they have to make that possible.

The mark of anti-individualist: Knowing what's better for other individuals.

I don't know what type is best and neither do you. It's up to the individual to choose that. I don't know what kind of clothes are "best" and neither do you.

You hate freedom, that much is clear. Whenever someone exerts their individuallity by making a choice, at least a choice you don't agree with, you decree that something is wrong with them and their decision.

This isn't the case.




Quite the contrary, Marxism attempts to put the freedom of arts and entertainment back into the individuals. It gives individuals (all individuals) the right to the things they need to secure that freedom and art. Are you a painter? Need more paint supplies? Go get them. The term "starving artist" had a lot of weight before capitalism, and it's great that one can now eat off their art, but would be even greater is if those two weren't link so that their art could be free of the influence of survival. This is what Marxism looks to do.

Name for me one good novel, painting, film, etc created in the Soviet Union.

Not that you like the Soviet Union, just that I cannot think of any.

I don't see how entertainment fits into Marxism at all.

Art (Of all kinds) is very successful in a capitalist economy (Though most artists are leftists).

I really fail to see how communism could improve upon this.

The art that is popular is the art that is demand. It provides a failsafe if you will, against poor artists (Poor meaning unpopular).

In communsim, you might have more art, but hardly better art.





That is a defect in the system that requires you to go through the normal runs first. You dont' get out of high school until you're 18, and high school does not have the proper programs to prepare you or even introduce you to what you might actually be interested in. Only college does that under capitalism, and thus college becomes the discovery phase.

In a society where people are free to be introduced to those things because they don't need a certain amount of wealth that whole concept changes. They can acquire books on all the things they're interested in, and freely read about those things, then they can go a step further and freely acquire what they need to practice those things.

I don't have a kid, but I take it you've never seen a child with a toy doctors kit. Does he not put the stephascope to his mother's chest, and bang her knees with that little hammer thing and proclaim "Take two of these and see me in the morning?"

You have a very bleek outlook on human existence and curiosity. I can only assume you've looked no further than the mirror for your supporting evidence.

Or it's that children are unrealistic and easily amused.

Perhaps it takes some age and some maturity to make decisions that effect you entire life. I don't think many 10 year olds know (Or even should know) what they want to do when they grow up.

Libraries exist in capitalism. One near me was funded entirely by Cornelius Vanderbilt.

Bleak outlook? Realistic outlook. All the problems with humanity are cause by people.



Hogwash, you've not actually read a damn thing I said. You mearly pronounced the word you saw.


So individual rights exist in a state where the majority decides everything? It seems like you want to have your cake and eat it too.

Give everyone individual rights and than give the majority all the rights.

Rights I have are rights the majority doesn't have, or more aptly, things they cannot take away from me.



Much like in any other system, light bulbs would be produced primarily by demand, but we'd probably have oversupply which could be stored (just as they are now).

But to answer your question, yes, you would vote on how many lightbulbs are produced. Although the way this would actually work is through a federation of producers. Thus you would work with the glass company to determine what kind of yield they could get you for the glass you need. You would work with a company that processes brass (that is brass on the bottom of a lightbulb yes? Or is it copper?) to determine what kind of yield they could get you for what you need.

You are not an isolated group of people, nor is your production isolated. That's the point, society produces the goods of society as a whole. And as a whole society will work together through a cross trade system of democracy which ensures a stable system. What would some worker gain by saying "I think we should make 75,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 lightbulbs a year!" He wouldn't gain anything, nor does he lose anything, except maybe a light bulb when he needs it by saying they should produce 75 a year.

This seems to work rather well in the current system.

Federation of producers? Kind of like corporations, only less efficient?

Voting? Kind of like making good decisions, minus the "good"?

Coops cannot work on a large scale because they are inefficient. There is no reason to make lightbulbs cheaper, better, faster to produce, because you don't gain anything.

When you hate a quota of 150 bulbs to make, you aren't going to get done with that and than stay in the plant for 4 more hours tweaking bulbs to make them better because all you would end up doing is making more bulbs.

It's self-defeating. If you make cheaper bulbs, more people will want them as more are available, so your production and work quota increases.

It's the failure of cooperatives and collectization.



Then there is a lightbulb shortage, and those who need lightbulbs go to the plant and help out producing lightbulbs to make more. Under socialism this is regulated by the average social hour of labor, which would determine something of the "cost" of the lightbub. What it accounts for is if they produce say 10 lightbulbs across 10 hours of time. A lightbulb would then have a "cost" of 1 average social hour of labor (assuming it was an average across all factories that 1 lightbulb was produced every hour.) Does this account for if they only produce 10 lightbulbs in 10 minutes and call it a day? Indeed it does. Under socialism if they only work for 10 minutes a day they can only "afford" 10 average social minutes of labor. Get the drift?

Communism is able to occur materially when oversupply begins to happen on necessities. When this mode of production has become the "norm" and technology has advanced to make us more products with less time. It has not strict guidelines for production and consumption, and as such you may see that as a problem and a point of focus for it's inevitable collapse. However, as one paper points out, it is not that these guidelines have disappeared, it is simply that they are no longer noticed.

The whole of society can only consume what the whole of society produces.

So because there aren't enough lightbulbs, I go the plant? Hell no. Joe down the street can. Unless he figures Dan will. Unless Dan thinks I will.

Shit. We're now screwed.

This reminds me of something I saw on the news: A woman was being stabbed to death in the middle of the street, between 2 apartments, with dozens of people watching and none called the cops becuase they all thought someone else did.

If that situation could allow that to occur, why woulnd't something as trivial as lightbulb production?

True. Society can only consume what it produces, but when people only want to consume, the system breaks down.

The social hour cost thing is fine, but money works just as well and is more logical. You get paid per hour or per bulb.



Wow, that was some crazy logic. "they all produced the same kind of shoe because it was most efficient" so as you can see "it doesn't work cause people aren't equal."

If nike could produce all the same kind of shoe and still charge the money they do for it, they would. Yes, I know, they can't. The point is that capitalism too works on an efficiency principle. Instead, it is the efficiency in terms of profit. Is it COST efficient to do this, or not?

What you fail to realize is that the Soviet Union never had capitalism. There was never an overproduction or the development of the means to produce these things with the same ease as in capitalist society. Instead they had to play "catch up" to capitalism, because they decided they were going to jump over the majority of that phase and try and skip straight to socialism.

Unlike the USSR an advanced capitalist nation would not have such issues. Capitalism has already incurred the necessary creation of the proper productive forces. Because it is COST efficient for a capitalist to invest in a machine that can produce 100 yards of clothe where it used to produce 1 yard. It simply makes sense. They pay the single worker they paid before to operate the machine, yet increase their profit by 100 times! This is across many of the productive forces in Capitalism.

Unlike all existing examples of attempted socialist revolution and socialist production, an advanced capitalist country like the United States has no excuse for scarcity other society refusing to work.

Without scarcity, there's no need for that kind of foolish efficiency. Without that, people have the freedom to do much more clever things. If you don't like the shoes everyone else is wearing, go to the shoe shop and make your own pair of shoes! Remember, the means of production are available to all.

But as you stated, profit encourages efficiency. Efficiency is good. It provides more shoes, cheaper shoes, better shoes and increased profit.

Why should they pay the worker 100 times more? The worker isn't 100 times more valuable. He just runs a machine. The wokers pay will go up, but not 100 times. Than the company wouldn't make any profit and couldn't lower the price of shoes, expand it's facilities, hire new workers, or improve efficiency even more.

And tell someone tomake me a car once their done with my shoes.



Accountants... those are the guys who calculate profits, costs, taxes, etc...things like that, right? Say it with me now, MONEY DOES NOT EXIST.


Sorry. I keep thinking we're talking about reality here. My mistake.



Right, cause without an accountant we don't know how many lightbulbs to make while maintaining cost efficiency and highest profit yield. Oh yeah... there's no money.

Am I saying everyone can be the same thing as everyone else? No, but they have a chance at it if they think they can. You may claim it's the same in capitalism. But I have no chance at becoming say... The President of the United States of America, I can guarantee you that.

I have a lot more chances than others because of where I live on the economic scale, I'll tell you that. Some people don't even have a chance at becoming what I am, middle class.

Wrong.

In a 25 year period (Starting in the 70s I do believe), fewer than 1% of the people in the study who started out below the poverty line were there by the end of the study.

If you get a job, you move up. It's very simple.

You can read How Capitalism Saved America by Thomas DiLorenzo for the exact specifications and all kinds of fun facts and figures.



Actually I do for the most part, unless you're talking about engineering the main board. That I do not, but then again, I'm not an electronic engineer.

Hmm.

So you don't know how to make an Ipod.



Not the hardware. I don't have the means of production for hardware. I got a computer here though, and that is the means of production for the software. Unfortunately the computer is not my private property.

You mean fortunately! Private property is bad!

So with the means of production available, you or someone else would have invented the Ipod?

So basically. You take someones invention, change it some (Even though you could never have produced it yourself) and than lambaste them for not using your ideas?



My contribution is above and beyond what apple decided to contribute to their own product. In fact, if I had the money to buy the necessary parts, I'd show you just the same I could make a comparible product, on the contrary, a BETTER product.

No. You can modify their product. You can't "make" anything. It took Apple months of to make an Ipod. You just fiddled around with some code.




Well apple decides it should be produced cause it will sell good. Someone like me would decide it should be produced because it's something they want. For example... here I am pre-portable mp3 players sitting at my computer and I says to myself "Wouldn't it be great if I had the money to buy the smallest technology and put it all together in a small case so that I could play my mp3s anywhere!" Then I remember it's a pipe dream cause I don't have the money to buy those parts and it leaves my mind.

I take it you've never had such an idea? Shame -- they're quite fun to think about. Wish I had the ability to realize some of mine.

Actually, I did have an idea that I thought could make me filthy rich.

Until I realized it had already be done.

But it was a good one.

The ability to exclude terms on a Google search. It was great until I looked and saw it already existed. But yeah, I know the feeling.

Steve Jobs and Wozniak could probably tell you about some of their ideas and about how it's impossible to work your way up starting out with nothing but an idea.

Something tells me the Woz would tell you to get off your ass if he wasn't such a nice guy.

If your ideas are good enough (Like theirs were), you'll succeed. Probably.




Is that so? I'm guessing you don't know much about the iPod itself, but it is not some genius idea. It's actually quit logical. It uss an ARM processor and a small mainboard with built in audio and and IDE controller (like any other embeded device). Then it attaches a hard drive to the IDE controller. Voilia, instant iPod. The hardware all existed long before, and much like any other idea that takes "months to flesh out" it was based on previous ideas. That is actually how technology progresses, a truly "original idea" probably doesn't exist anymore. What we see as original is just a combination of a bunch of different ideas from previous things.

I guarantee you the software took a LOT longer for them than the hardware. Hell, it took us a lot longer than it probably took them. Like I said, we don't have the specs, and there are quite a few "protection mechanisms" built in now to stop reverse engineers like us from doing anything.

I suppose you would argue Linux was just an "expansion" of the ideas laid down by windows, right? Well windows was just an expansion on the ideas of apple's OS, which was just an expansion of the ideas on what Xerox Parc had a the time, which was just an expansion on early attempts to object orient systems from the command line, which was just an expansion on object oriented programming, which was just an expansion on structured programming, which was just an expansion on "programmable machines," which was just an expansion on non-programmable complex machines. Do you want other examples of technological progression?

More like an expansion of Unix using some Windows ideas.

I know plenty about the Ipod and computers in general. Not as much you, very likely, but plenty.

MP3 players were a good idea. The Ipod is just the bets mp3 player.

I can't see how the software would be that complicated. Most of it already existed, they just had to port it to their (proprietary?) OS.

I don't need examples of technological progression. I know them. Isn't capitalism grand?




I don't disagree with that. As I've said in other posts, the capitalist mode of production is a necessary step. But now it holds us back. While apple slowly progresses their firmware our software replacment moves at lightning speed, having features and ideas their firmware doesn't even touch upon. All we do is get threatened with lawsuits under the DMCA and things like that.

We are pushing it forward, and they do nothing but try and prevent us from doing that, is that not holding it back?

I was thinking you were violating the DMCA. Horrible law. The government is not in the business of protecting businesses from guys like you.

Because they have a profit to make. They don't want more copies of Suse being used, they want people using MacOS and if they can do it with the Ipod, they will.



Maybe apple wouldn't hire me because I have no formal programming experience what-so-ever. I'm not a programmer, I'm a network admin. My programming knowledge is EXTREMELY limited, and I'm very willing to admit to that.

Besides, my work is built on GPLed Code. If they wanted the work me and the rest of the guys on the project do, they'd have to keep it open source. That's bad for technology companies who hold "intellectual property" over most other kinds of property.

If you don't program, how do you assist?



You've ignored countless points I've brought up before, including the progression of the means of production and the oversupply caused by the capitalist mode of production. Maybe you don't understand this, but you cannot steal what does not belong to someone.

But as you've ignored, it clearly does belong to someone.


The way he got his house disgusts me. It's like the plantation owner telling his new African slaves that they can keep a small portion of what they produce so that they can survive.

It's almost like that, except it isn't like that at all.

It's more like the plantation owner not using slaves, hiring workers, paying them, and using the money he makes to increase production and higher more workers and pay his current workers more.



I think the working class deserves what the working class produces. End of story.

Why? Because Marx stated they were tied to it?

Becuase they made it? They survive by the ideas of the capitalists as much as their own labor.



Enslaving them with democracy, AHAHAHAHAHAH.

I take it you have something to lose? The working class has nothing to lose... except their chains as Marx would say.

Democracy is slavery to the majority.

The working class is doing alright. They have everything to lose.



You squeel like a caged pig. I have no doubt that is what you are.

I squeel? I'm not the one clamoring for a revolution.



Yeah, why have majority rule when you can have minority rule. Let's not let a huge amount of people with differing opinions and civilized discourse decide what happens, let's let a small amount of people who have very much the same ideas and opinions decide what happens. Because unlike them, We hate Jews.

Give me a break. If you think the majority of people on this planet hate Jews you must be stuck in a timewarp inside Hitler's office. You fear the opinion of the every day working man because it is an opinion which contradicts what you feel is your safety and security. You fear that no one will be so enlightened as you to make the proper decisions. You'll tell them no human is capable of deciding what is right, so you, a human yourself, needs to decide it for them. The only thing that's a joke here is your shitty justification for monarchs, oligarchs, and representative democracies.

If the majority of people wanted to kill the Jews, why don't we have a presidential candidate run on a platform of "Kill all Jews!" Maybe you should inform Bush about your knowledge of what the majority wants, he'd probably like to hear your ideas on how to break the two term barrier and get a third slot in office.

Or you can have neither rule. Limit their power with a Constituion, have a balanced government, a smart electorate and privat property rights and you have a society that can succeed.

I was making an example. Way to take it literrally. It does much to further your point.

Democracy in no is better than oligarchy. That's why I support neither.




This is the exact same principle on which all other systems are built. The difference is, you're might is the size of your checkbook. Our might is the opinion of the people. No one here claims that the decisions under democracy will be right. They're not supposed to be "right." Right and wrong are subjective nonsense which differs greatly between cultures and ideologies (that's obvious here).

Moral relativism, great. I mean, not great. I mean, maybe great, who can tell?

I'm an atheist and even I don't buy your shit.

If your sanction is that you don't have a sanction and neither does anyone else, you may as well stop now.



Was it popular though? Or was it just made to look popular? There's a big difference. Current systems allow for what can be made to look popular to be mistaken for what is popular. For example, I was told by a Chinese man once that the majority of our country wanted Bush as it's president. I was shocked to find this out. Just so you're aware, it's not true.

Do I need to put on my tin foil hat for your anti-Bush speach?

I could have swore he won an election.

And it was popular. Germans who lived peacefully with the Jews absolutely revelled in the oppurtunity to kill them once the propaganda took effect.

It's a shame I don't have the article. Let's just say, it was disconcerting.



I do not believe someone is free to choose, that is, I do not believe someone has a true freedom of vote until they are free of the pressures of class society. A few million dollars could probably get you the votes of hundreds of thousands of poor and/or homeless people. Not saying it did this for anyone, I'm just saying, there is no freedom when we don't first have the freedom to live.

So you ignore the question. I see.



I don't wish to take an undemocratic stance. I don't ever wish communism to be forced upon anyone. That is your mindless creation of what we want. I want nothing more than for the workers to look to what we say, and if they understand it and agree with it, to fight for it on the same grounds that we do. We educate first, only once we have a majority would it even be POSSIBLE for us to win, let alone justified.

Your education didn't work. It still doesn't.




I never said the majority couldn't be wrong. Once agian, "right" and "wrong" are very subjective. I am first a foremost a materialist. You will rarely see me banking on moral arguments alone. But I have done so frequently in the recent history of this board only because it seems people in the OI want to hear our moral arguments. They ask questions like "Do you think it's right" or "Why do you think capitalism is bad?" And then when I tell them that I don't think it's "right", "wrong", "bad", or "good" they are unsatisfied with that answer.

You need to hear it, so for your ear's pleasure only: Capitalism is EVIL! Democracy and communism are right!


So your answer to whether it's moral or not is that morality doesn't exist.

Since morality is a concept, and we're talking about it, it very clearly does exist.



Well socialism would institute much better educational programs for people than capitalism. Libraries would not be deteriorating more and more each day, and kids in schools would have books that were newer than 1997, not to mention you wouldn't be seeing the kind of control over the media by the ruling class you see today. We need only to present the facts and reality, and I have every belief people will agree with what we have to say. It is your propaganda that they cannot let go of, not our propaganda they cannot accept.

I'm sure you would present reality. You're in no way biased.


Yeah, like I said. I sure as hell want a few people deciding the direction of society than the whole of society.


If the minority is better at it than the majority (Which it is) than what's the problem?



You've made the poor mistake that "democracy destroys individualism." That supporting democracy means you have to support the outcome of every vote. You don't have to support it outcome, you need only to accept it's outcome. The great thing about democracy is that you can have an opinion that's different from the outcome, and more than that, your opinion matters because you and the people you talk to and try to influence are part of that outcome. This is simply not possible under representative democracy, you only have one decision, who you want to represent you (and even that's not even done right) after that all you have is the HOPE that he says he's gonna do what he said he was gonna do.

Unless they vote to get rid of democracy.


Well this was fun.

I really don't think we're going to accomplish anything with this, other than improving our typing.

But carry on.

[Publius]

Originally posted by [email protected] 5 2005, 10:14 PM




The vice of being a writer.

Didn't you criticize Rand for being long winded?



Actually, he didn't see it. A fortune teller told him, and he just analyzed it.

...

So he didn't have any intelligence at all. I see.



In what way do we move backwards?

Modern luxeries give way to past necisites.

Entertainment and art take a back seat to not starving to death.



Everyone were rich? Who said everyone was gonna be rich? Which theoretical market you talking about, the global market being caused by capitalism where the division supposedly decreases? The theoretical socialist market? That's not a market -- there's nothing about market theory that even applies to it.

Here you go with the "if you can't get rich there's no incentive to work crap again." Apparently old dogs can't learn new tricks.

Finally, you're right: not everyone will or can be rich. One cannot rise if someone else does not fall.

Capitalism is not a no-sum game.

Both parties advance.

Say you buy a CD. You spend 10 dollars for it. You benefit because you have a new Rage Against the Machine CD, Capital Records benefits because they made 10 bucks.

Both parties gain.


It's not about "nice things" it's about freedom from wage slavery and exploitation.

Who exloits whom?



I have no fact, but are rich families generally not smaller than poor families? Anyone who can answer this, please do.

But there cannot always be capital. Capital begets Capital -- there's only so many people and products you can turn into a productive force before you run out. We don't have unlimited space and resources. If something does not generate more capital it is not capital, merely wealth.

Hmm. I would say that's right. The poor aren't the best at keeping their dick in their pants as I so eloquently put it.

But can this point where no more capital can be created ever be reached? I maintain it cannot. The market is always flawed.



The great depression was caused by oversupply by a shitload of market investors buying things like stock on margin, and consumers using credit for what they needed/wanted. Or is the freedom for a capitalist to supply stock margin and/or consumer credit not allowed in a free market?


The Great Depression was caused by the Fed lowering interest rates.

Read America's Greate Depression by Rothbard.



You don't write enough. Assertions get you no where with me.

I didn't see the need to write more.

It was all very clear.

Lessaiz-faire means hands off. The government stays out of the economy. Simple.

Halliburton is a very large company. The largest at what it does. Namely oil and contract work. Iraq is both.

The case against Microsoft was bogus. Nothing more needs to be said.



I never said I could account for stupidity.

Than set your society up for failure.




It would need to happen less in socialism and can be handled with equal if not better efficiency. That is part of the point of it's economic organization.

Collectivization is inherently inefficeint. There is no incentive to be efficient.



In what way does cuba have socialized production? State controlled and owned production is NOT socialized production.

Than what is it?

[NovelGentry]

True. But we currently live under a sytem where money is useful.

Yes, and that's very much part of my point. Your arguments do not apply to our system, so stop trying to bend what you consider "human nature" to a system where it would not be the nature of humans.


Having pride in your work has little to do with communism or capitalism. You could hate your job in communism or love it in capitalism.

Indeed you could, but under communism there would be nothing stopping you from changing it. Under capitalism you don't have much choice, particularly if you'd like to go from "uneducated labor" to "educated labor." You could of course, attend school and be retrained, if you can afford it. Or you could quit and train yourself, and sell your so called "private property" in order to survive while you attempt to have the freedom to do something different with your life.

Under communism it is likely that people will contribute to multiple areas. For example, and I've said this before. Someone like myself would probably do a lot of work on computers to help the community run. But I'd also enjoy teaching English and writing in my spare time for journals or something of that nature. I would also be more than willing to devote a portion of my labor time, equal to any other separate portion, to necessary labor, such as working on a farm to produce food or helping to build houses or something.


It's a mutual agreement.

So what of the working class person who does not agree to work for the capitalists gain?


It's advantageous to both sides, perhaps moreso to one, but advantageous to both.

It would be just as advantageous, in fact, moreso for the working man to build those products himself so he could sell them. Oh, but he doesn't own the means of production. Once again, the illusion of private property is the only thing which upholds this so called "mutual agreement." Indeed that illusion is what forces this "mutual" agreement on people.


But slavery implies certain things, namely force and also a lack of freedom.

Right. There is force and lack of freedom. A working class man does not have the freedom to NOT sell his labor (not I didn't say, not work) to the capitalist. The force is a question of life or death, much like being forced at gunpoint is a question of life or death.


You are very free in todays modern, capitalist, society.

Ok then, Imma go down to where you live and set up a small collective on "your" land so that we can farm and produce for ourselves. I'm sick of working for these people who just exploit my labor. The agreement is no longer mutual.


You aren't a slave unless you think you are.

Wow, African American's could have saved themselves a lot of time and trouble.

"Hey Tom, I thought you used to be a slave, but today you look like a free man."
"I was a slave, brother, but all you gotta do is stop thinking you're one. Look at it this way, we enter into mutual agreements with our owners. See, they put the gun to our backs in Africa, and we mutually agreed to get on their boat. Now we mutually agree to work for them in their fields and they in turn give us this shack and some shimmy clothes and let us keep a part of what we're producing for them."
"Oh wow, you're right, not to mention, it's for the benefit of both of us. He might get a little more, but we're both benefitting."


You are no more a slave under capitalism than communism.

On the contrary, under capitalism if I don't work for the capitalist, I die. Under communism I don't even have to work.


At least in capitalism you agree to the terms, in communism, they are agreed upon by the majority.

I never agreed to the terms of capitalist society, nor am I free to escape them.


It is sustainable, because the apex is never reachable. Just as you can keep adding "9s" to .99999, and never reach one, you can add production and capital to capitalism and never reach this point where it just stops growing.

You're right about adding 9s. Unfortunately, human resources and the natural resources of earth are not infinite like theoretical number values. Thus there IS a limit, not so much on natural resources if you can reuse and recycle, but there is a limit on human resources, and that is where the profit comes from, by paying them less than what you sell their products for.

The only way to avoid this, is of course to completely automate all production, or a great majority of the production. In which case the workers of the world might be a very small minority. But then there is a problem with the capitalist method. If the workers are a minority, no one can afford to buy their products. Only a minority. It simply doesn't balance.

We need to get paid if we're going to buy this stuff. We need to work for them if we're gonna get paid. They need to pay us less than what our products are sold back to us for in order to make profit. Their goal is to maximize profit to grow their business so they don't die off to competitors. Where is there any balance in this? One thing just continually feeds another, and it appears to "go up at first" because there is an abundance of potential cheap labor. Once you've used all that up though, it's only downhill from there.


It's impossible for a perfect economy to exist, and if this perfect economy (Which is what it would be) did exist, perfection would be reached and we could coast along just fine.

So you're saying if a perfect economy did exist, it would be perfection. You truly must be the most brilliant man on earth.

Like I've said before. I'm not saying communism is perfect, I'm saying it's better than this one, and has a greater chance at being more equal and more sustainable, not to mention it is seemingly inevitable with technological progression. If there is a better system beyond that, it is one I cannot see it, but it's quite possible.

The only thing that disappoints me about communism is that I won't be around to see it. If there is but one selfishness that I will never be able to abandon, it will be that.


Without private property, there is no freedom. You are at the will of the majority in communism. The only freedom you have is the freedom given to you by society.

You are at the will of the majority in any system. Don't ever think you can stand up to the majority -- you're simply outnumbered. Unless you kill enough of them that they're no longer a majority, but then you're not really standing up the majority anymore, are you?

The only freedom you have in any society is the freedom which it grants you, that is our nature as a social creature. In order to change that you must abandon society.


I'm sure you do propose something else, but your ideology would inevietably lead to this.

You know nothing of my ideology. What you would have to do to prove this, and I doubt you could do it with anything less than a life's work of writing in the fields of philosophy, economics, and science, is prove that regardless of how it is achieved or what people think a democratic egalitarian society destroys freedom.

I'm not so sure it is possible to prove. Because your entire argument falls back on whether or not "human nature" permits us to be good enough to one another not to sustain freedom. Who exactly under democracy would ever vote against their own freedom?

You like to use absolute freedom when you talk about communism, and freedom relative to society when you talk about capitalism. It suits your argument nicely. But if the freedom from society's majority was possible on the simple idea that you don't give control over society to the majority (democracy) then the Monarchs of feudal times never would have been overthrown.


If we trace it back, ownership went to the U.S. government, who took it from the Indians, who claimed it as their own.

Actually the Indians didn't claim it as their "own." Many peaceful and non-territorial Indian tribes had no concept of land ownership and in fact allowed whoever to share that land with them.


This government of ours was designed to protect private property, it's in the Constitution, it's what it's based on.

I'm well aware what this government and the constitution was designed to do. I simply disagree with what it was designed to do.


It's part of the social contract, I pay taxes, they give me property rights for land they own (Or at least controll, if you prefer that term).

So you can never own that property, only control it. You pay your taxes, and that is your monthly rent on the land. So it is in fact their ownership of it, the fact that it is their private property (the government's) that disallows you to own it. Once again, you accept your illusion of private property and don't even realize your very own yard is only temporarily in your hands so long as you agree to work under their system.

It would not be possible for you to stop working and only provide for yourself off that land. You would HAVE to take part in their system. You would have to sell the oversupply you produce (if any) on the market in order to pay your taxes, not likely to happen. You won't have nearly enough surplus to make enough money on that market to pay the taxes, remember you're competing with the likes of Stop and Shop. You will be forced back to wage slavery in a matter of months if not weeks. Go ahead, give it a shot, I'm watching to see you prove me wrong.


The land is "bought" from the government. The government owns the land because it conquered it, because it bought it, because it claimed it or for various other reasons.

The land is not bought from the government, it is rented by the government, and where it is bought from the government, it is bought by those with the existing wealth to do so, which is not and never will be th working class. We're not saying there's no freedom from wage slavery, there is freedom from wage slavery, become a member of the bourgeoisie.

Well one day we will conquer it, then it will be our land (the working class), and we will conquer it from the hands of the bourgeoisie and their protective state so that we may make it available to all equally and publically. But that's not OK for us to do, because those people "earned" it. They earned it because a previous peoples conquered it and established this government to rent or sell it to them. The minute we try and do the same though we're "stealing" it from it's rightful owners. Give me a break.


I have a clear right to this land, at least, MORE of a right than any other person on earth.

Right, by who's authority? Your government's, who protects your "right" to that land so long as you pay your taxes. But that's OK, cause they have a right to it, by who's authority? Their own, they enforce it and it is there's by simple assertion that they can enforce it.


And private property is advantageous to all as you may have read in the article I posted or in come capitalism books.

Private property doesn't exist for all, as you may have read in some of my posts or in some communist books. For the working man it is little more than an illusion, for the bourgeoisie it does indeed exist and is SUPERBLY advantageous.


That man probably said that because the other man was using his land without his consent, thus, harming him.

What made it his land? I'm saying, and for the sake of clarity and simplicity assume a portion of creationism is right -- God makes two humans and sticks them here on earth. For years and years these two humans wander the land, gathering and making food for themselves, making shelter where they go or where they settle for portions of that time. Then all of the sudden they bump into each other one day.

One looks at the other and with some god given language says: "This is my land, what are you doing here?"

By what authority does he say that? The only thing that makes it his land is if he enforces it, and he may very well do so by beating the other person's head in with a rock. You, you capitalists, you bourgeois, you bible thumbers, you alone have perpetuated bloodshed as what defends a right to land. You will indeed fight us if we attempt to free it, so do not be surprised when we're willing to kill you in order to free it to all.


So you're saying there is no authority on who owns what and why? Good. Than stop pretending like you and/or Marx is said authority.

Only on the condition you stop pretending there is any authority. Remember, I'm coming to set up a small farmers collective on "your" yard.


Public toilets in parks for example. They are often filthy because none cleans them. None cleans them because none has any incentive to.

Actually, people do clean them. Not as well as they should be cleaned, but I guarantee people go in there wet some toilet paper and wash it down a lot more often than you think. Their incentive is that they use it and that they need it at the time and they don't want to sit on some grimey toilet. This will be the same incentive you see under communism.

The problem, of course, is that it's not their toilet, so they don't see it as their obligation. Under communism it is not "their" toilet, but society's toilet, and thus it is an obligation of society.


I'm not saying it couldn't be done, it obviosly "could" be done, but it also obviously isn't. If it were such a logical thing, why isn't it being done? Why is your fridge so much cleaner by comparison?

For the same reason I noted above. You're changing the way society has to look at things, not just the property relation. You see it as if it belongs to no one, I see it as if it belongs to everyone.


The answer is you care about your stuff and you don't care about stuff that isn't yours. This a generality but as the article shows, is very often true.

You care about your environment, and your environment alone. But if someone lives there, it is their environment. If people use the toilet regularly, it is their environment, or at least part of it. This will be the only incentive necessary, for those people who's environment it is, to clean it.

As I said, the article attempts to apply the property relations we see under the current system to a completely different system where the property relations themselves have changed. It is wrong from the start in it's assumption that people would not see a "public" restroom (which would be every restroom under communism) as something they are obliged to clean.

Like I said, a public restroom does not make it public property. It is not their obligation to maintain someone elses property, even if the person is letting them use it. You're taking the idea of private property and relating it to private use. They are not one in the same. Private property can be publically available under capitalist society. It's rare, but that is often the case with the types of things you're talking about.


It may be due to want of brevity that you ignored the other cases but I would say it's glaringly obvious, at least in those instances, for private property to exist as opposed to public.

The article is baseless for the reasons stated above. There is no need to tackle any other examples, or to even bother reading the rest of it once that is discerned. I will readily admit I did not read the whole piece. The minute I realized the stupidity of using his examples as an argument against communism I stopped bothering. If you'd like me to read it as a rant of why some guy doesn't like public restrooms I can read the whole thing, but for what you wanted it as, it was useless and isignfiicant.


Do you concede this?

Apparently not. "Tell me Don Miguel... tell me... tell me of el diablo, confesss CONFESS!"

Do you concede this?


It's of little consequence what "the nature of society" is. Society is what is.

Society changes forms. Which indeed determine the nature of a given society at any given point in time.


And if you think society could exist (At least in it's current form) without forests for lumber, fish for eating and elephants for ivory (kidding), I don't think you know much about society.

That's like saying "if you think society could exist in it's current form without humans." I'm a materialist, I realize the material existence of society -- in turn I realize that it's material existence plays an effect on it's economic, political, sociological, and psychological existence.

Material realities will never cease to exist. The other things will change, and they will change rapidly in the when you look at the world in the whole scope of human history, but they will do so based first and foremost on material reality, which as a reality itself, does not change.


Money is made off of all those things, you just choose to ignore it.

I forgot how when the earth was forming it said "I'm not going to give these trees up unless they make money!" Sorry. Money is man made, I don't ignore where money is made, I ignore the idea that it needs to be made.


The mark of anti-individualist: Knowing what's better for other individuals.

If you're implying I'm anti-individualist, the answer is yes I am. If you're implying I'm against individual freedom the answer is no I'm not.

What I fail to recognize as a freedom is the right to take freedom from others. Individualist philosophy recognizes this as a freedom if I'm not mistaken.


I don't know what type is best and neither do you. It's up to the individual to choose that. I don't know what kind of clothes are "best" and neither do you.

Yes, it is up to the individual to choose what effects himself. It is not up the individual to choose what affects others. Thus an individual choosing capitalism is fine, but capitalism requires a bit more than a single person, it requires society, and thus, the person who chooses to be a capitalist can only manifest his desire by choosing the fates of other people as well, unless of course others willingly decide to be part of that system. So did you willfully choose to be working class? Are you working class? Can you escape being working class? Why haven't you yet?



You hate freedom, that much is clear. Whenever someone exerts their individuallity by making a choice, at least a choice you don't agree with, you decree that something is wrong with them and their decision.

I must be a terrorist. "They hate us cause our freedom." - George W. Bush

I have no problem if the bourgeoisie all want to get together and play capitalist pigs together with one another on a small area of land. But I'm not sure of any working class person who has ever willfully chose their position. I'm sure there are a few, such as yourself, who are crazy enough that they'd "love to be working class" in a capitalist society even if it was a choice, but that doesn't mean it is a choice.

I've never had a choice. Most of the other people here have never had a choice. And the large majority of the world have never had a choice. Nor will we ever get one without revolution.


Name for me one good novel, painting, film, etc created in the Soviet Union.

Soviet union was not communist, nor was it socialist, nor was it a free society. You'd be hard pressed to find anyone who knows what they're talking about saying otherwise.


Not that you like the Soviet Union, just that I cannot think of any.

Well there is a whole "type" of realism named after it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Realism


I don't see how entertainment fits into Marxism at all.

The same way it fits into Smithism, or any other ism. It's there to entertain us, for some of us, making entertainment it is also entertaining.


Art (Of all kinds) is very successful in a capitalist economy (Though most artists are leftists).

Imagine what kind of art could be created of the economy wasn't a factor! Just imagine if someone who is an artist and that's what he wants to do doesn't have to stop and say "Will this painting sell or make me famous?" before painting it. Imagine if Basquiat wasn't "discovered." Imagine what art could have been lost if he was never funded by rich capitalists to produce it. Not because he didn't make it, or wasn't able to think it up, but because without any money he wouldn't of had the means to make it, the paint, the canvas, etc.


I really fail to see how communism could improve upon this.

That's fine, you fail on a lot of things. But to try and help, in the simplest terms. It isn't until we are free to do nothing, that we are free to do anything.


The art that is popular is the art that is demand. It provides a failsafe if you will, against poor artists (Poor meaning unpopular).

Right, poor meaning unpopular. Cause people are always unpopular because their stuff sucks. It has nothing to do with the fact that they can't press enough albums, buy advertisements in magazines, tv, and radio. It's always just cause they suck. That's why Modest Mouse is all the sudden popular, they stopped sucking, right? It has nothing to do with the fact that they simply weren't pushed by the capitalist exposure machine.

But now they are, so their new album and of course their #1 hit single now "Float On" is their BEST SONG YET! All their previous work/albums sucked, because they were poor, poor.


In communsim, you might have more art, but hardly better art.

Yeah, cause without money there'd be no way to tell what good art is. We'd be fucking lost!


Or it's that children are unrealistic and easily amused.

Perhaps it takes some age and some maturity to make decisions that effect you entire life. I don't think many 10 year olds know (Or even should know) what they want to do when they grow up.

Perhaps that decision should not need to affect your entire life. "What I want to be when I grow up" is exactly the type of slot Marx was talking about that we get placed in. You do nothing more than express our lack of freedoms under the current system with a statement like that.


Libraries exist in capitalism. One near me was funded entirely by Cornelius Vanderbilt.

And has not been updated since he died. :lol:


Bleak outlook? Realistic outlook. All the problems with humanity are cause by people.

So you're saying that without people (humans) humanity wouldn't have any problems?

http://www.evula.org/dragoon/pics/captain.obvious.jpg

I'm sorry, I'm laughing too hard to finish the rest of these responses... I'll get back to you later.

[NovelGentry]

So individual rights exist in a state where the majority decides everything? It seems like you want to have your cake and eat it too.

Of course, cause no one would ever vote for something that took away their rights, at least no freedom loving person... and aren't we all freedom loving. Oh no, apparently not, cause I'm a terrorist.

The point of democracy is for functioning rules and economic decisions. Things like "should we look ot have a new bridge built in place of this one that's falling apart." That doesn't step on your individual rights. Why do you assume the decisions have to trample individual rights? That fact is, I doubt it would even come up. There'd be little reason for it to, and if it did there'd be little support from it... oh no wait there, I'm wrong on that too, I forgot the majority of people hate Jews. So of course, human rights are trampled.

(I hope none of this sarcasm is mistaken for concessions)

But seriously, how do you expect me to make anything out of your idea of "individual rights" when all you do is blabber on about how people need to be lead and represented because they don't know what's good for them. As a not so great man once said, "The mark of anti-individualist: Knowing what's better for other individuals."


This seems to work rather well in the current system.

Federation of producers? Kind of like corporations, only less efficient?

Yeah, kinda like corporations. Except they don't make profit, money doesn't exist, things are decided on democratically by workers, there's no exploitation of a labor force, there is no person with more authority, power, or ownership. Oh, that's right, nothing like corporations. And no, not less efficient. What I think you meant to say was slower, but slower does not mean the same thing as less efficient. Efficiency accounts for the quality with relation to speed. In no way is the output of either of these systems the same, and thus their speed cannot even be compared. It's impossible to tell whether one is more or less efficient at this point.


Voting? Kind of like making good decisions, minus the "good"?

If you vote to kill me and have all of my wealth turned over to you. Is that good or bad? Good for you, bad for me. There is no way to determine something like that. "How can I rise if you don't fall?"


Coops cannot work on a large scale because they are inefficient. There is no reason to make lightbulbs cheaper, better, faster to produce, because you don't gain anything.

Cheaper doesn't exist. If someone needs a better lightbulb, they're more than welcoem to find a way of making it and start producing those, if they are indeed better, people will do use those instead. Why exactly does it need to be faster to produce? That's driven by profit motive. It wouldn't change a damn thing for the workers in capitalism except a couple of them might get laid off cause now they can produce it faster, so they can compensate by having less workers and still supply the same or possibly greater amounts for sale on the market.

If you're in the lightbulb making industry you gain a lot by making lightbulbs faster to produce. You have less to do at the light bulb factory every day. Remember, oversupply is OK, but it's not a requirement. I doubt anyone ouside the light buld production business today thinks about how to make light bulbs faster to produce.


When you hate a quota of 150 bulbs to make, you aren't going to get done with that and than stay in the plant for 4 more hours tweaking bulbs to make them better because all you would end up doing is making more bulbs.

First off, there would be no quota. You don't even have to work, let alone work there, let alone work to produce that much. And just for the record, I'm not sure lightbulbs are made by people, i'm pretty sure it's an automated process, but I could be wrong.

The point is very simply that if you were there, because you knew people needed light bulbs, and you wanted to supply those lightbulbs but also save some time, you would learn how to do it faster. And why the hell should anyone waste 4 extra hours a day tweaking lightbulbs. Do what needs to be done and get the hell out of there.


It's self-defeating. If you make cheaper bulbs, more people will want them as more are available, so your production and work quota increases.

We all know how important prices are when money doesn't exist.

You're still thinking of a capitalist market in communism. You can't really realistically discuss socialist/communist production when you're thinking about market dynamics.


It's the failure of cooperatives and collectization.

Sure, if they're trying to do it within capitalism. But we're not talking about doing it within capitalism. We're talking about overthrowing capitalism and turning ALL production over to this method. Then capitalism's requirement for "cheap" production can go to hell.


So because there aren't enough lightbulbs, I go the plant? Hell no. Joe down the street can. Unless he figures Dan will. Unless Dan thinks I will.

I'll go. I have no problem with producing what is necessary. I'm not a very selfish man, despite what you may believe.


Shit. We're now screwed.

Unless of course this type of society creates less selfish people like myself. I believe it will. But hey, if you're screwed you have no one to blame but yourselves.


This reminds me of something I saw on the news: A woman was being stabbed to death in the middle of the street, between 2 apartments, with dozens of people watching and none called the cops becuase they all thought someone else did.

No one jumped in? How reactionary of them. Communal policing under communism would make something like that, much more difficult. See, everyone helps each other. If I see a lady being stabbed to death it is my obligation to help that lady. While you may not agree with this, it's probably because you believe that lady did nothing for you and that it's "not your problem." You're willing to protect indiivdual rights so long as all you have to do is sit there and say "I like individual rights." Yet you wouldn't jump in an protect her individual right to life?


If that situation could allow that to occur, why woulnd't something as trivial as lightbulb production?

Well for one, lack of a light bulb doesn't end your life. But I don't believe that situation would occur under communism. Nor do I feel a light bulb situation would occur, or a food situation. Capitalism has created the means we need to uphold society, and there are people willing to work to do that. You don't have to be one of them, I am.


True. Society can only consume what it produces, but when people only want to consume, the system breaks down.

Back to human nature arguments eh? I guess all of us here, and all of the past communists, and all of the future communists, and all those in the free software movement just aren't human. I have little doubt such alturism would exist in other places of production as well, if it were possible. But as someone else pointed out, material production comes at a far greater price than virtiaul production under capitalism.


The social hour cost thing is fine, but money works just as well and is more logical. You get paid per hour or per bulb.

Actually it doesn't, because it does not regular price. I suggest you read up on the Average Social Hour of Labor before you assume it's simply a replacement for money. It's a replacement for your capitalist dynamics in their entirity.


But as you stated, profit encourages efficiency. Efficiency is good. It provides more shoes, cheaper shoes, better shoes and increased profit.

Profit encourages cost efficiency. If it was more efficient for all of Microsoft's programmers to shit on some guy's lawn until he gives them money to stop that is the business Microsoft would be in.

Communist society has no money, thus no need for cost efficiency, thus no need for profit. As far as productive efficiency, well like I said, efficiency is not just speed, however, I have no reason to think the speed of production would be decreased, that would require some technology to be lost as technology is what helps us produce what we need faster. As does more men.

Socialism would provide vast increases in the work force, because unemployment is no longer a matter of cost efficiency, because there is no cost. You'd probably see production increase ten fold at first, and thus working time could be cut back, rather than cutting back employees. So for example, if twice as many people are producing twice as much product as before, you can cut the time everyone has to work in half. This is why we talk about a decrease in work shifts under socialism.


Why should they pay the worker 100 times more? The worker isn't 100 times more valuable. He just runs a machine. The wokers pay will go up, but not 100 times. Than the company wouldn't make any profit and couldn't lower the price of shoes, expand it's facilities, hire new workers, or improve efficiency even more.

They? there is no "they" under socialism/communism. There is no pay under socialism/communism. There is only what the workers produce, and what the workers consume.

Again, you're applying capitalist dynamics to socialized production. You need to abandon that, because you're not arguing against socialist production right now, you're arguing against some weird hybrid that I don't think any of us support.


And tell someone tomake me a car once their done with my shoes.

No one tells anyone to make anything. If you want a car, go to where they distribute cars and get one.


Sorry. I keep thinking we're talking about reality here. My mistake.

How funny it would be if you fell asleep and woke up in a society that did not have money, you're fragile mind could not handle it as reality.


In a 25 year period (Starting in the 70s I do believe), fewer than 1% of the people in the study who started out below the poverty line were there by the end of the study.

All they need now is another study to see how many people dropped below the poverty line form declaring bankruptcy and facing their raging debt.


If you get a job, you move up. It's very simple.

I have no doubt people get raises, but raises alone do not account for social mobility. Nor does just looking at wages show you any of the stastistics on how many people get laid off and lose just about everything they have when they can't get a comparible job.

Highest credit debt ever. If you get laid off and can't find a job that pays comparible to your job of 13 years, you have to work two jobs to pay that credit debt now. What if you already had two jobs and got laid off from one and could not find another? If you can't aford the monthlies the repo-men come and take your "private property" from you.

Social mobility works in both directions. In fact, search the board fo the term "social mobility" someone posted and interesting article on it here in OI not that long ago.


You can read How Capitalism Saved America by Thomas DiLorenzo for the exact specifications and all kinds of fun facts and figures.

I suggest reading the bank and credit history of those who weren't as fortunate. All kinds of fun facts and figures there too.


So you don't know how to make an Ipod.

No, but people who put computers together for dell don't know how to make computers either. I didn't know what you meant by make, which is why I said "Unless you're.." I wouldn't expect someone who produces plastic or metal widgets for an iPod to know how to make an iPod either.


You mean fortunately! Private property is bad!

No, I mean unfortunately. Fortune is like another work for luck. Unlucky for me, I don't have the privilege of owning private property. And again "bad" and "good" arguments won't get you very far.


So with the means of production available, you or someone else would have invented the Ipod?

No, we would have invented a portable mp3 player with similar features to an iPod. We probably wouldn't have called it an iPod either. We probably would have called it a portable mp3 player.


So basically. You take someones invention, change it some (Even though you could never have produced it yourself) and than lambaste them for not using your ideas?

No, I wouldn't want apple to use our ideas to be honest. I'd like people to use our firmware instead of apples. The iPod is in a faily unique position as one of the "kings" of the mp3 player markets. Given it's smooth interface and large hard drive sizes. We had support to view photos for probably two years before they did.

You've change this argument to my personal bout with apple. Your original argument was that new things would not happen without businesses and CEO's calling the shots. I've proven your argument wrong by presenting you with a case where something new occured without the business or the CEO.


No. You can modify their product. You can't "make" anything. It took Apple months of to make an Ipod. You just fiddled around with some code.

Actually all my code was written from scratch, with the few exceptions to the original work I did on the original Podzilla. But you're missing something here. Apple did not make the ARM processor in the iPod, nor did they make the board for it, nor did they make the hard drive in it. These were all components they bought from other companies. So in that sense I could have made the iPod in the same way apple did, had i had the money to buy these components. The only thing apple actually did for the iPod was the overall design on what it should look like and the software. I can draw a picture of my idea mp3 player if you'd like, and I already have the software coded.

I can do the same thing apple did. Can I make the hard drive? No, but neither could apple without buying people who know how to make hard drives and the means to produce hard drives.

I could do the same if I had the money. So, your question is, could I have made the iPod? No. Could I have made the iPod with the means of production? Yes.


Actually, I did have an idea that I thought could make me filthy rich.

Until I realized it had already be done.

But it was a good one.

The ability to exclude terms on a Google search. It was great until I looked and saw it already existed. But yeah, I know the feeling.

Oh for a minute there I was thinking you were the guy on that "get a patent" commercial who's holding the perfectly designed pair of roller blades while the guy skate's by and it narrates over "Did someone steal your idea?" and then he throws them in the trash.

"Steal your idea" :lol: :lol: :lol: Only in a country with private property (aka: freedom) right?


Steve Jobs and Wozniak could probably tell you about some of their ideas and about how it's impossible to work your way up starting out with nothing but an idea.

Well, like I've said there are the lucky ones who slip through the cracks. But for someone who couldn't even afford college, it'd be kinda difficult to do what Jobs did. Not to mention someone who didn't have a car to sell to raise money. I'm actually surprised he even got the rest of the money he needed, afterall he went to the bank with no job and no collateral and magically got a loan. Maybe it was because he had connections? Maybe it was because his parents cosigned? Maybe it was because he had a brilliant idea?

I don't know exactly what happened where, so I can't tell you exactly how much of it was luck and exactly how much of it was because he was already in a position to make it to the top. It's a different story for people who don't have the freedom to quit a job and build computers in their bedroom with the college education they got, I'm guessing paid at least in part by parents.


Something tells me the Woz would tell you to get off your ass if he wasn't such a nice guy.

Something tells me Woz would respect my work in the open source community. Something tells me Woz would have no clue about what I do with my life, certainly not enough to tell me to "get off my ass." Something tells me Woz probably understands the problems of capitalism a lot more than you do, regardless of the position he got himself to.


If your ideas are good enough (Like theirs were), you'll succeed. Probably.

This is a great line. The "Probably" at the end really hits it home with force too.

If my ideas were as good as his (which is completely subjective), I think I'd have a ***** of a time getting a loan to fund them. I've already got enough debt piled up. My credit might be "good." But in light of school loans, car loan, etc... I wouldn't stand a chance. Of course I could always sell my car, but I don't really have anyone who would let me use theirs to help me start up my business. Afterall, I'd have to get back and fourth to get whatever I needed to create the product. If I had a big enough loan to get an office, I'd have to get back and fourth the the office. This isn't 1979 Palo Alto California (or wherever the hell they were) where my local electronics shop (RadioShack) is interested in, or is even allowed to sell my products without violating Franchise terms.

You've failed to see how times have changed. Mom and pop shops have been replaced by big business -- granted, not ALL of them have, but let's be realistic. It wasn't Radioshack that bought the apple, and compusa wouldn't touch an ugly piece of shit like what they were selling.


More like an expansion of Unix using some Windows ideas.

I didn't think you'd be aware of what Unix was. Although I disagree with both statements. Linux is not an expansion on Unix, it is a replacement for it with some general compatibility. I'm not sure of any ideas it has taken from Windows that weren't Window's ideas taken from Unix.


MP3 players were a good idea. The Ipod is just the bets mp3 player.

I can't see how the software would be that complicated. Most of it already existed, they just had to port it to their (proprietary?) OS.

Errr... maybe you're not understanding what I'm saying. The replacement software I'm talking about is the software on the iPod itself. That does not run an apple "OS" -- at least not to my knowledge. I have no clue what their software on the iPod actually is, I imagine it's based on a light version of BSD or something, like NetBSD which is extremely portable.

But the software itself, is very complicated. Porting the OS to the device alone can be complicated, at least for us. They are in a much better position because they know what kind of events their hardware triggers, so they can deal with that in the software. You know the scroll wheel on the iPod? It's not exactly "easy" to figure out how to write a driver for something like that without having any hardware specs.


Isn't capitalism grand?

Yes, like I said, it's done more than all the previous systems combined.


I was thinking you were violating the DMCA.

Technically, I am. Other primary developers aren't even in this country though, so depending on how internatnal law sees it, they might not have a problem.


Because they have a profit to make. They don't want more copies of Suse being used, they want people using MacOS and if they can do it with the Ipod, they will.

This is the case because of our unique position. And in fact, there are Linux nuts out there who probably buy an iPod JUST to run our software on it. So certainly we are helping them. But as I'm sure you well know, this is not how it is for any such development. If they sold the OS on the iPod seperately, as Microsoft does for computers, they would be attacking our development the same way Microsoft is attacking Linux development. Is that not holding back the possible progress being made?


If you don't program, how do you assist?

I do program. But I'm not a programmer. It's not "what I want to be when I grow up." Nor is it what I want to be right now. It's a skill I have, one that would be ignored by a capitalist company, and RIGHTFULLY so, because I don't have any formal education in it, and I'm not extremely good at it.

But it's enough to program a User Interface and toolkit for keyboardless embedded devices. Now watch what would happen to me if I went for a position as an embedded software developer.


But as you've ignored, it clearly does belong to someone.

And this is our most fundamental disagreement, and what will remain a fundamental disagreement between capitalists and communists until the day we all die. Or at least one of the other groups dies.


It's almost like that, except it isn't like that at all.

It's more like the plantation owner not using slaves, hiring workers, paying them, and using the money he makes to increase production and higher more workers and pay his current workers more.

Where does he get the money to pay his initial workers?


Why? Because Marx stated they were tied to it?

Because people have a right to the products of their labor. Society is a product of the previous society's labor. We cannot escape how we are tied to it, regardless of whether or not Marx points it out or not.


They survive by the ideas of the capitalists as much as their own labor.

Of course. That's the only way to survive in capitalism.


Democracy is slavery to the majority.

The working class is doing alright. They have everything to lose.

Mere assertions again. How can the working class lose everything it has by the working class gaining control of the means of production and sharing the wealth of the old society?


I squeel? I'm not the one clamoring for a revolution.

I'm clamoring? You're the one who came to this board to destroy our evil communist freedom hating ideologies.


a smart electorate

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

You really are that blind of a patriot?


I was making an example. Way to take it literrally. It does much to further your point.

I was making an example too, one which you also took literally. Although I didn't take your example literally, I simply used the same type of example to counter your figurative points.


Democracy in no is better than oligarchy. That's why I support neither.

I've got some idea you don't know what you support.


If your sanction is that you don't have a sanction and neither does anyone else, you may as well stop now.

On the contrary, mine is materialism. I'm simply telling you moral arguments don't get anywhere with me, nor are they something I turn to unless someone asks for my moral perspective.

You've asked and implied that I think things are "bad" "good" "right" "wrong" -- I do think certain things are bad and certain things are good, but I don't think that's anyway way to win an argument. Unfortunately, you along with every other capitalist on here, always reduces your argument to that.

It is always "Why is capitalism bad?" "What makes communism right?"


I could have swore he won an election.

Yeah, he did win an election, an election of a fraction of a fraction of the people in the country. Crunch the numbers, I don't know where to find them. I guarantee he got less than 50%. Remember to factor in the following. How many people can be registered to vote? How many people of those are registered to vote? How many of those voted? How many of those voted for Bush? That is how you find the true percentage of whether he has majority support.


And it was popular. Germans who lived peacefully with the Jews absolutely revelled in the oppurtunity to kill them once the propaganda took effect.

Just like Palistinians hate Israelis, right?


So you ignore the question. I see.

I'm not going to answer a foolish question who's answer can easily be derived from what I said. Monopoly on democracy is foolish in itself for other obvious reasons.


Your education didn't work. It still doesn't.

Just because it doesn't work on you, don't assume it doesn't work.

I think it's rather funny. The first lengthy post you made to try and argue here died after my first refute. You backed down to a single line of assertion after only one rebuttal by me. Then you sorta just didn't want to post anywhere else for a small period of time, then you came raging back with more of these wilde assertions, with more single line justifications and no real argument. It makes me wonder if you were rethinking your strategy and you thought that this one would be competent, or maybe you just don't respond well to pressure.


So your answer to whether it's moral or not is that morality doesn't exist.

No, my argument is that democracy itself cannot be right or wrong, only the decisions made under democracy can be right or wrong.


Since morality is a concept, and we're talking about it, it very clearly does exist.

I never said morality doesn't exist. I said it's subjective. You seem to have trouble understanding words, is there something I can do to help?

Morality itself exists, relative of course. But what is absolutely moral does not, because morality itself is a relative subject.


I'm sure you would present reality. You're in no way biased.

Well, even without the bias, I'm not so foolish to run around screaming things like "THE USSR IS EVIL" "DEMOCRACY IS WRONG"


If the minority is better at it than the majority (Which it is) than what's the problem?

The problem is I don't believe it is and you've yet to show me proof. Remember communism is a global socio-economic system, that focuses on local democracy. There is no "Nation wide" or "world wide" ruling so to speak. You've said (and not proven) that only in certain areas at certain times in history has the majority had any truly "morally objective" beliefs, namely the desire by Germans to kill Jews in Nazi Germany.

And out of curiosity, do you not think it would have been fairer for the Jews had they had a say in it?

I'm not saying they would have gotten out of it, but at least they would of had a say.


Unless they vote to get rid of democracy.

If it's what a majority wants, it'll happen one way or another.


I really don't think we're going to accomplish anything with this, other than improving our typing.

But carry on.

I don't tend to respond here for your sake. When I answer your questions and respond to this type of trash it's beneficial to others on the board who are here to learn about communism. Plus it gives me loads of ideas for my book. So maybe you're not accomplishing anything here aside from that, but I feel I am.

Nice attempt to subdue counter arguments though.

[ernie]

"Hey Tom, I thought you used to be a slave, but today you look like a free man."
"I was a slave, brother, but all you gotta do is stop thinking you're one. Look at it this way, we enter into mutual agreements with our owners. See, they put the gun to our backs in Africa, and we mutually agreed to get on their boat. Now we mutually agree to work for them in their fields and they in turn give us this shack and some shimmy clothes and let us keep a part of what we're producing for them."
"Oh wow, you're right, not to mention, it's for the benefit of both of us. He might get a little more, but we're both benefitting."
:lol: I laughed my fucking ass off with this one. :lol:
Genial...

[truthman]

Originally posted by Non-Sectarian Bastard!@Feb 5 2005, 08:06 PM
Suprise!

The cappies don't respond. It probaly hurts to their eyes. "BuT Bush IzT Not FreDoM?!"
Yeah man, I got a whole ton of time to come up with responses. Much appreciated though :D

[Professor Moneybags]

Originally posted by [email protected] 5 2005, 10:36 AM
the problem is they read them and misinterpret them.
Many of you have similar problems.

[Professor Moneybags]

Communism is able to occur materially when oversupply begins to happen on necessities.

Correct. Theft can only occur when there's something to steal.


Enslaving them with democracy, AHAHAHAHAHAH.

You know, the 51% voting to enslave the other 49% ?


Yeah, why have majority rule when you can have minority rule.

Bring up false dichotomies as a diversion isn't going to fool anyone. Majority rule does just that. So can minority rule, although a minority can be "disposed of" easier than a majority if it gets out of hand. Here's a good idea : How about a system where no-one "rules", where we have laws that protect our rights and give definite legal lines that neither the government nor the majority can cross. No lobbying.


Let's not let a huge amount of people with differing opinions and civilized discourse decide what happens,

The problem comes when the majority hold opinions that are not civilized and then decide to put them into practice. Communism, for instance.


You fear the opinion of the every day working man because it is an opinion which contradicts what you feel is your safety and security.

...Because the majority of people (not just the "workers") are ignorant and/or evasive of what most of their ideas entail.


This is the exact same principle on which all other systems are built. The difference is, you're might is the size of your checkbook.

No, having a large checkbook does not entitle you to "rule" anyone. The best it grants you is purchasing power, and even is useless without voluntary transactions.


Our might is the opinion of the people. No one here claims that the decisions under democracy will be right. They're not supposed to be "right." Right and wrong are subjective nonsense which differs greatly between cultures and ideologies (that's obvious here).

This is the problem with moral relativists; they don't say what they think they say. Is killing Jews wrong ? Yes, you'll say. No, the Nazis will say.

What makes your opinion any better than theirs ? Nothing, because : "Right and wrong are subjective nonsense which differs greatly between cultures and ideologies". You have absloutely no power or any rational moral basis to oppose Nazis or anyone else other than appealing to "common belief", which, if you'll do a search, is a logical fallacy. It's also circular reasoning too.


Was it popular though?

And it would be okay if it was ? :rolleyes: People can be fooled and mislead, for instance, the majority of people believe in some sort of "god", despite the lack of evidence to suport their views.


I don't wish to take an undemocratic stance. I don't ever wish communism to be forced upon anyone. That is your mindless creation of what we want.

You're in the minority, I'm afraid, looking at all of the "revolutionaries" here. I guess that makes you wrong.


They ask questions like "Do you think it's right" or "Why do you think capitalism is bad?" And then when I tell them that I don't think it's "right", "wrong", "bad", or "good" they are unsatisfied with that answer.

Because it isn't an answer; it's an evasion.


You need to hear it, so for your ear's pleasure only: Capitalism is EVIL! Democracy and communism are right!

By what standard ?


Well socialism would institute much better educational programs for people than capitalism. Libraries would not be deteriorating more and more each day, and kids in schools would have books that were newer than 1997, not to mention you wouldn't be seeing the kind of control over the media by the ruling class you see today.

All talk, unfortunately.


You've made the poor mistake that "democracy destroys individualism." That supporting democracy means you have to support the outcome of every vote. You don't have to support it outcome, you need only to accept it's outcome.

What if it's outcome destroys individual rights ?


The great thing about democracy is that you can have an opinion that's different from the outcome, and more than that, your opinion matters because you and the people you talk to and try to influence are part of that outcome.

Assuming that you're still alive to issue it. You're trying to play eveything down to "just talk", well it isn't. If the majority vote themselves access to the property of the minority, then is it no longer "opinion", it is action.

[Professor Moneybags]

He says :


Here you go with the "if you can't get rich there's no incentive to work crap again." Apparently old dogs can't learn new tricks.

And then follows it with :


Finally, you're right: not everyone will or can be rich. One cannot rise if someone else does not fall.

How many times must we refute this "static wealth theory" that you lot repeat like a mantra, until you realise that it's toast ?

(But then admitting that would throw the whole idea of "class oppression" out of the window, without which communist theory doesn't have a leg to stand on.)


It's not about "nice things" it's about freedom from wage slavery and exploitation.

See above.

[Professor Moneybags]

Right. There is force and lack of freedom. A working class man does not have the freedom to NOT sell his labor (not I didn't say, not work) to the capitalist. The force is a question of life or death, much like being forced at gunpoint is a question of life or death.

You mean you can't tell the difference between sitting on your ass all day and starving to death (your fault) and being shot for refusing to become a slave (someone else's fault) ?

Your enemy isn't capitalism; your enemy is reality (see below).


The force is a question of life or death, much like being forced at gunpoint is a question of life or death

Yeah, just like accidental death and murder are the "same thing". (The difference here is a question of ethics, not metaphysics. To tell the difference would require morality, a concept which appears to be beyond your comprehension.)


On the contrary, under capitalism if I don't work for the capitalist, I die. Under communism I don't even have to work.

Yes, under communism, food, clothes, cars and houses will just fall from the sky at your command; there's no need to work or make for any of these things, like under capitalism.

I have a feeling that there are going to be some very dissapointed people, come the revolution.

[NovelGentry]

Most of what you brought up I already argued throughout the thread. So those arguments stand. Despite the fact that I did say I was going to stop arguing you because of you&#39;re "non-sequitur" "<snip>" and "circular argument" garbage that you throw out even when that&#39;s not the case, I&#39;ll do it one last time for the road.


You know, the 51% voting to enslave the other 49% ?

"issue: Majority who vote for enslave minority who vote against, yes or no?"

What would you vote for?

(yes, I know that&#39;s not what you&#39;re talking about, but it&#39;s funny)

Again, a very bleak view on humanity and the idea that someone would want to enslave someone else in such a society. It&#39;s not a very good argument once again, because if a majority wishes to rule over a minority, they don&#39;t need a vote to make it OK. They&#39;ve got strength in numbers, maybe not something like 51% to 49%, but you&#39;re also disregarding the fact that this society, much like any other society, will hold the ideals born out of it&#39;s revolution very much to heart.

If this wasn&#39;t the case with people, you wouldn&#39;t be sitting here arguing for the ideals of the current system.


Bring up false dichotomies as a diversion isn&#39;t going to fool anyone. Majority rule does just that. So can minority rule, although a minority can be "disposed of" easier than a majority if it gets out of hand. Here&#39;s a good idea : How about a system where no-one "rules", where we have laws that protect our rights and give definite legal lines that the government cannot cross. No lobbying.

Who ever said it was a dichotomy? It&#39;s a simple point. I would rather have 1,000 people voting on an issue than 10 people. Because out of those 10, for some stupid vote to pass only 6 need to be convinced. Out of 1,000 you&#39;re gonna need 501 to be convinced.

Once again, if a majority wishes to institute rule over a minority, they don&#39;t need a vote to do it.

While a system where no one rules is a good idea, it&#39;s not something that makes too much sense under a developing society, more particularly under a system like socialism where things will need to be worked out, and final decisions will have to be came to.

There is of course in the end, no final way to ensure everyone respects whatever system is in place, even your system. This is precisely why democracy needs to exist. What IF someone breaks that system? How is it decided that they&#39;ve infringed on those rights, how is their punishment determined.

What if there was say for example a "terrorist attack" how would any decision become to on how to respond?

There has to be some method set up to handle the always unforseen. You cannot simply gurantee freedoms and then press your constitution and be done with. Unless you&#39;re going to include all instances of what is to be done when these freedoms are infringed upon. What if the issue is dodgy, what if it&#39;s "unsure" whether someone&#39;s freedoms have been infringed upon? What then?

Your system works only when there is an idea of absolute law, and that absolute law is perfect and binds every person to that law without any need for enforcement other than that law existing. And yet we are called the idealists.

It&#39;s also interesting that you brought up the government, as if they are the only ones who can infringe upon your rights.

Worker&#39;s democracy serves a purpose beyond political control, in fact, I don&#39;t see political control being much of an issue at all for the most part... particularly once society has advanced into communism. Once again there are always those "unforseen events." But really, the primary function of the workers democracy is economic control. Of course you don&#39;t see this as necessary because capitalism has all these dynamics that take care of things, and it respects the illusion of private property. Etc... so I don&#39;t expect or require a response to this. I already know you don&#39;t agree with it, and I&#39;m very much aware of your reasons why.


The problem comes when the majority hold opinions that are not civilized and then decide to put them into practice. Communism, for instance.

Again, not much can be done in the way of stopping it if the majority wants it and wants it bad enough. No system can protect against this. At the very least, however, pure democracy can attempt to make it civil first. There&#39;s little argument to subvert the system violently if you can do it democratically (if indeed you have a majority).


...Because the majority of people (not just the "workers") are ignorant and/or evasive of what most of their ideas entail.

Unlike yourself. An educated man from Oxford, who goes by the name of Professor Moneybags, and grasped the whole of the universe within two subjects: objectivism and individualism.


No, having a large checkbook does not entitle you to "rule" anyone. The best it grants you is purchasing power, and even is useless without voluntary transactions.

I never said it entitled you to do so, I said under the current system it allowed you to do so. And yes, it does grant you purchasing power, you can purchase all kinds of nifty things like votes, government contracts, competitors, law, and order.


What makes your opinion any better than theirs ? Nothing, because : "Right and wrong are subjective nonsense which differs greatly between cultures and ideologies". You have absloutely no power or any rational moral basis to oppose Nazis or anyone else other than appealing to "common belief", which, if you&#39;ll do a search, is a logical fallacy. It&#39;s also circular reasoning too.

I&#39;m not sure if you can classify me as a moral reltivist first off. I don&#39;t believe that no one&#39;s opinion is right, quite the contrary, I believe my opinion is right, if I didn&#39;t, I wouldn&#39;t believe it. However, you will not find me using terms like "right" and "wrong" to justify MY particular ideology and to denounce any capitalist one.

The reason I denounce it is not because one cannot say something is right or wrong, but because it is a foolish way to argue, as everyone&#39;s idea of right and wrong differs depending on ideology and culture and things of that nature.

"Communism is right, capitalism is wrong" is not an argument. Nor should it ever be treated as such by someone with more than half a brain.

When I say "saying something is right or wrong." I literally mean SAYING something is right or wrong. One must argue outside of simple subjective reasoning, or else there is no real argument.

But indeed, right and wrong are subjective, and they are indeed nonsense in the context of an argument. That doesn&#39;t mean there&#39;s no such thing as right and wrong, but saying so alone does not make it so. Under no circumstances can simple assertion be said to make a valid argument.

For example:


I guess that makes you wrong.

another example:


Because it isn&#39;t an answer; it&#39;s an evasion.

all such useless arguments.


By what standard ?

Now you&#39;re getting it&#33;


All talk, unfortunately.

Yes, it is all talk. What did you expect me to point out the non-existent socialist nations of the world and say "look at their education, see how good it is?" Lots of things are all talk before they happen. For example, in high school, I used to have a teacher who would always say (before every class, never failed), "I&#39;m gonna give you homework tonight, so don&#39;t run off when the bell rings." All talk until he actually does it.


What if it&#39;s outcome destroys individual rights?

Why would someone vote for something that destroyed individual rights? I don&#39;t know too many people who would vote to revoke individual rights, as they&#39;d be losing rights. You must think people are so dumb that they can&#39;t feed themselves, huh?

Revoking individual rights makes sense when you, as a single person, maintain political power, or when you and a select few maintain power. Or when you and only others who think like you maintain power -- but then the downside to that is you can never change your thoughts.

It&#39;s not a realistic thing that people would vote for in a pure democracy, there&#39;s no way to ensure they will always be in the majority. Of course, then there&#39;s the question of "Can they revoke democracy itself." I suppose they could, but once again, what is really changed here? If a majority don&#39;t want democracy giving them the option to vote for it democratically or not isn&#39;t going to change that.

Again, you seem to ignore that this system too is founded on principles and that a majority of people have to be fighting for those principles for this system to even come about. Why would they risk their life for these principles just to vote them away after? "Maybe their kids will" you say. Doubtful. Society&#39;s effects on you are a lot greater than you seem to admit.

But then again, that&#39;s why you&#39;re reactionary in the first place.


Assuming that you&#39;re still alive to issue it. You&#39;re trying to play eveything down to "just talk", well it isn&#39;t. If the majority vote themselves access to the property of the minority, then is it no longer "opinion", it is action.

Again, a bleak outlook which ignores the means by which the system itself is created and what is already the change in human mindsets. If a majority of people are that selfish you&#39;re going to have a lot more problems than them voting to acquire the "property" of the minority.

Also funny, you&#39;re maintaing capitalist ideals here. It is not the minority&#39;s property now is it. There is nothing that they don&#39;t already have access to.

[NovelGentry]

Yeah man, I got a whole ton of time to come up with responses. Much appreciated though

I don&#39;t need particular arguments/responses to things that have been said. I&#39;m simply curious to know answers to the following questions:

1) Did we change your mind on anything, anything at all, even one tiny bit?

2) Did that help in showing you what Marx was actually saying and help you destroy some of your foolish ideas about what communism is?

If the second one has a positive answer, I have a third question.

3) Can I stop hearing the following terms/statements come from your mouth?

"communist state"
"communist country"
"paid in communism" (as in: what would a doctor get paid in communism, or would everyoone be paid equally in communism?)

There&#39;s probably more terms I&#39;d like to add to this list, but I just can&#39;t think right now, I&#39;ve been up for awhile.

[NovelGentry]

How many times must we refute this "static wealth theory" that you lot repeat like a mantra, until you realise that it&#39;s toast ?

(But then admitting that would throw the whole idea of "class oppression" out of the window, without which communist theory doesn&#39;t have a leg to stand on.)

It&#39;s not a static wealth theory. It&#39;s relative to the wealth within the system at the given point. More it&#39;s relative to the idea that wealth is something of an abstraction. Money itself is an abstraction. Private property is an illusion. What is really left of wealth after that? There is the general "wealth" of a nation, yes. But the statement implies not simply to the material wealth changing hands, but the fact it&#39;s changing.

If you own land, as most land is owned by someone (if not all land), the working class cannot gain right to land without someone losing land. This is a change in ownership as you see it. We don&#39;t consider this to be the proper change to look at though. Instead you have to look at it in terms of control. Even if you lose nothing materially, if you don&#39;t actually say have your car taken away, you lose something. You lose that car as private property, you lose your wealth as a way to subjugate labor. All of these things will be lost by all men who had them in the previous system under socialism. Like I said, you may not lose the item itself, but you lose something, as it&#39;s social properties change.

Another example, say you are in some crazy world where there&#39;s only two people (for simplfication), and you are the capitalist, and someone else is the worker (the system is capitalism obviously).

If he is to rise in the social structure, obtain private property, gain control of means of production, etc, you lose something. You may not lose material wealth, as that&#39;s not static. But you lose your ability to subjugate his labor so easily. You lose him as a wage slave, because the minute he has that capability to produce for himself, or the minute he has private property (owns something you do not), he has an extra bargaining chip which is equivalent to yours. So you do lose something, whether you like to think so or not.

One final example. Same system But now you are his "democratic representative" in the 1 person government, that rules over the 1 person rest of society. If he gains a vote within that government system, you do not have to lose your vote, but once again, you lose power over him, in fact, in this system, you lose all power over him, as there&#39;s no way for you to build a majority against him.

Get it now? The working class cannot rise if the ruling class does not fall. Nor can a single working class man rise, without the power of the ruling class falling. If everyone rose up into the ruling class there would be no class that it is ruling over, and thus the ruling class would no longer have any power what so ever over that class. Every person that rises up, is less power for the ruling class on the basis alone that there is one less person to rule, and one more person to compete with on their own level.


You mean you can&#39;t tell the difference between sitting on your ass all day and starving to death (your fault) and being shot for refusing to become a slave (someone else&#39;s fault) ?

Your enemy isn&#39;t capitalism; your enemy is reality (see below).

This is your problem. You think anyone not working for a capitalist has to be sitting on their ass all day. Could I not be jogging all day and starving to death? Could I not be building a time machine all day and starving to death?

Do I think they are the same? Yes. Here&#39;s why.

One could easily farm a piece of land and not starve to death, if he had the right to farm that land, if the land was his "private property" under capitalism. Since, however, private property does not exist for the working class (and I&#39;ve already shown why on multiple occasions. It is impossible for the man to do so. Thus he is FORCED, whether you like to believe so or not, he is FORCED WITH THE THREAT OF DEATH if he does not work for the capitalist.

You see this as OK because when he goes to work he gets a wage. But when slaves went to work they were fed and given what was needed to survive.

The only difference in the two examples is that one uses a gun, while the other uses starvation/freezing to death/whatever else can get caused by having no money, as the method of murder.

Once again, we call it wage slavery for a reason. You don&#39;t have to agree that this is the case, or agree with the term. But you wanted an answer to the question, so you got one.

As far as my enemy. My enemy is he who tells me I have no default right to a portion of the earth, that by being equally human to them I get no automatic right to live on earth by being a capable and able human who would be able to produce his own food had he the means to do so (land). So far as I can see that is every capitalist and their belief in private property.


Yeah, just like accidental death and murder are the "same thing". (The difference here is a question of ethics, not metaphysics. To tell the difference would require morality, a concept which appears to be beyond your comprehension.)

Just cause I said I didn&#39;t even want to talk to you again for such nonsense and because I can I&#39;ll play the role of you for a moment: FALSE DICHOTOMY&#33;&#33;&#33; <snip rest of bullshit argument based on false dichotomy>

But seriously now. I don&#39;t agree with your comparison, it is not accidental that private property exists and works as a means to subjugate labor, if it did not capitalism would have no real grounds for survival. Just because you don&#39;t realize WHY people starve to death under capitalism does not make it accidental.


Yes, under communism, food, clothes, cars and houses will just fall from the sky at your command; there&#39;s no need to work or make for any of these things, like under capitalism.

Right. :P

[Publius]

Most of what you brought up I already argued throughout the thread. So those arguments stand. Despite the fact that I did say I was going to stop arguing you because of you&#39;re "non-sequitur" "<snip>" and "circular argument" garbage that you throw out even when that&#39;s not the case, I&#39;ll do it one last time for the road.


How hilarious of you, pretending you have something better to do than debate him or I.



"issue: Majority who vote for enslave minority who vote against, yes or no?"

What would you vote for?

(yes, I know that&#39;s not what you&#39;re talking about, but it&#39;s funny)

Again, a very bleak view on humanity and the idea that someone would want to enslave someone else in such a society. It&#39;s not a very good argument once again, because if a majority wishes to rule over a minority, they don&#39;t need a vote to make it OK. They&#39;ve got strength in numbers, maybe not something like 51% to 49%, but you&#39;re also disregarding the fact that this society, much like any other society, will hold the ideals born out of it&#39;s revolution very much to heart.

If this wasn&#39;t the case with people, you wouldn&#39;t be sitting here arguing for the ideals of the current system.

But ideals are relative.

I mean, what good are ideals when you&#39;re starving? If you say, vote to enslave 20% of the population and make them farm for you, you could survive.

You didn&#39;t betray your ideals; your ideals betrayed you.



Who ever said it was a dichotomy? It&#39;s a simple point. I would rather have 1,000 people voting on an issue than 10 people. Because out of those 10, for some stupid vote to pass only 6 need to be convinced. Out of 1,000 you&#39;re gonna need 501 to be convinced.

Once again, if a majority wishes to institute rule over a minority, they don&#39;t need a vote to do it.

While a system where no one rules is a good idea, it&#39;s not something that makes too much sense under a developing society, more particularly under a system like socialism where things will need to be worked out, and final decisions will have to be came to.

There is of course in the end, no final way to ensure everyone respects whatever system is in place, even your system. This is precisely why democracy needs to exist. What IF someone breaks that system? How is it decided that they&#39;ve infringed on those rights, how is their punishment determined.

What if there was say for example a "terrorist attack" how would any decision become to on how to respond?

There has to be some method set up to handle the always unforseen. You cannot simply gurantee freedoms and then press your constitution and be done with. Unless you&#39;re going to include all instances of what is to be done when these freedoms are infringed upon. What if the issue is dodgy, what if it&#39;s "unsure" whether someone&#39;s freedoms have been infringed upon? What then?

Your system works only when there is an idea of absolute law, and that absolute law is perfect and binds every person to that law without any need for enforcement other than that law existing. And yet we are called the idealists.

It&#39;s also interesting that you brought up the government, as if they are the only ones who can infringe upon your rights.

Worker&#39;s democracy serves a purpose beyond political control, in fact, I don&#39;t see political control being much of an issue at all for the most part... particularly once society has advanced into communism. Once again there are always those "unforseen events." But really, the primary function of the workers democracy is economic control. Of course you don&#39;t see this as necessary because capitalism has all these dynamics that take care of things, and it respects the illusion of private property. Etc... so I don&#39;t expect or require a response to this. I already know you don&#39;t agree with it, and I&#39;m very much aware of your reasons why.

Argumentum ad numerum

I would rather have 10 economists voting on economic policy than 1000 musicians. Wouldn&#39;t you?

You haven&#39;t read the Constitution have you? The Constitution is unique in what it says. It details what the government CANNOT do, moreso than what it can do.

When the country is attacked, they attack back. That&#39;s why they are charged with in the Constitution.



Again, not much can be done in the way of stopping it if the majority wants it and wants it bad enough. No system can protect against this. At the very least, however, pure democracy can attempt to make it civil first. There&#39;s little argument to subvert the system violently if you can do it democratically (if indeed you have a majority).

Who cares if you subvert it violently when your goal is violent nihilism to begin with?

On a side note: How does communism differ from nihilism? No social order and no morality leads to nihilism. What&#39;s the difference?



Unlike yourself. An educated man from Oxford, who goes by the name of Professor Moneybags, and grasped the whole of the universe within two subjects: objectivism and individualism.

I would say this qualifies as avoiding the question.


I never said it entitled you to do so, I said under the current system it allowed you to do so. And yes, it does grant you purchasing power, you can purchase all kinds of nifty things like votes, government contracts, competitors, law, and order.

But we (I assume), as true capitalists are against this because we support lessaiz-faire capitalism.


I&#39;m not sure if you can classify me as a moral reltivist first off. I don&#39;t believe that no one&#39;s opinion is right, quite the contrary, I believe my opinion is right, if I didn&#39;t, I wouldn&#39;t believe it. However, you will not find me using terms like "right" and "wrong" to justify MY particular ideology and to denounce any capitalist one.

The reason I denounce it is not because one cannot say something is right or wrong, but because it is a foolish way to argue, as everyone&#39;s idea of right and wrong differs depending on ideology and culture and things of that nature.

"Communism is right, capitalism is wrong" is not an argument. Nor should it ever be treated as such by someone with more than half a brain.

When I say "saying something is right or wrong." I literally mean SAYING something is right or wrong. One must argue outside of simple subjective reasoning, or else there is no real argument.

But indeed, right and wrong are subjective, and they are indeed nonsense in the context of an argument. That doesn&#39;t mean there&#39;s no such thing as right and wrong, but saying so alone does not make it so. Under no circumstances can simple assertion be said to make a valid argument.

He says: "Under no circumstances can simple assertion be said to make a valid argument."

Wait a second? Isn&#39;t that a simple assertion being used to make a valid argument?

Not only are you a moral relativist, you&#39;re a poor one.


Why would someone vote for something that destroyed individual rights? I don&#39;t know too many people who would vote to revoke individual rights, as they&#39;d be losing rights. You must think people are so dumb that they can&#39;t feed themselves, huh?

Revoking individual rights makes sense when you, as a single person, maintain political power, or when you and a select few maintain power. Or when you and only others who think like you maintain power -- but then the downside to that is you can never change your thoughts.

It&#39;s not a realistic thing that people would vote for in a pure democracy, there&#39;s no way to ensure they will always be in the majority. Of course, then there&#39;s the question of "Can they revoke democracy itself." I suppose they could, but once again, what is really changed here? If a majority don&#39;t want democracy giving them the option to vote for it democratically or not isn&#39;t going to change that.

Again, you seem to ignore that this system too is founded on principles and that a majority of people have to be fighting for those principles for this system to even come about. Why would they risk their life for these principles just to vote them away after? "Maybe their kids will" you say. Doubtful. Society&#39;s effects on you are a lot greater than you seem to admit.

But then again, that&#39;s why you&#39;re reactionary in the first place.

So your argument as that democracy is founded on princeaples? But those are subjective.

And people vote to take away their own rights all the time.

People allowed Hitler to ascend to power. People allowed the DMCA to be passed. People allowed the PATRIOT ACT to be passed.

People are stupid as fuck.



Again, a bleak outlook which ignores the means by which the system itself is created and what is already the change in human mindsets. If a majority of people are that selfish you&#39;re going to have a lot more problems than them voting to acquire the "property" of the minority.

Also funny, you&#39;re maintaing capitalist ideals here. It is not the minority&#39;s property now is it. There is nothing that they don&#39;t already have access to.

Bleak outlook?

It&#39;s a realistic outlook.

They have their lives and their freedoms.

[Publius]

It&#39;s not a static wealth theory. It&#39;s relative to the wealth within the system at the given point. More it&#39;s relative to the idea that wealth is something of an abstraction. Money itself is an abstraction. Private property is an illusion. What is really left of wealth after that? There is the general "wealth" of a nation, yes. But the statement implies not simply to the material wealth changing hands, but the fact it&#39;s changing.

If you own land, as most land is owned by someone (if not all land), the working class cannot gain right to land without someone losing land. This is a change in ownership as you see it. We don&#39;t consider this to be the proper change to look at though. Instead you have to look at it in terms of control. Even if you lose nothing materially, if you don&#39;t actually say have your car taken away, you lose something. You lose that car as private property, you lose your wealth as a way to subjugate labor. All of these things will be lost by all men who had them in the previous system under socialism. Like I said, you may not lose the item itself, but you lose something, as it&#39;s social properties change.

Another example, say you are in some crazy world where there&#39;s only two people (for simplfication), and you are the capitalist, and someone else is the worker (the system is capitalism obviously).

If he is to rise in the social structure, obtain private property, gain control of means of production, etc, you lose something. You may not lose material wealth, as that&#39;s not static. But you lose your ability to subjugate his labor so easily. You lose him as a wage slave, because the minute he has that capability to produce for himself, or the minute he has private property (owns something you do not), he has an extra bargaining chip which is equivalent to yours. So you do lose something, whether you like to think so or not.

One final example. Same system But now you are his "democratic representative" in the 1 person government, that rules over the 1 person rest of society. If he gains a vote within that government system, you do not have to lose your vote, but once again, you lose power over him, in fact, in this system, you lose all power over him, as there&#39;s no way for you to build a majority against him.

Get it now? The working class cannot rise if the ruling class does not fall. Nor can a single working class man rise, without the power of the ruling class falling. If everyone rose up into the ruling class there would be no class that it is ruling over, and thus the ruling class would no longer have any power what so ever over that class. Every person that rises up, is less power for the ruling class on the basis alone that there is one less person to rule, and one more person to compete with on their own level.

That&#39;s just incorrect.

Both the working class and the ruling class improve.

Your argument just has no basis in reality. It&#39;s true that not everyone can be a capitalist, but communism&#39;s approach to this non-existant problem is to make everyone equally poor.



This is your problem. You think anyone not working for a capitalist has to be sitting on their ass all day. Could I not be jogging all day and starving to death? Could I not be building a time machine all day and starving to death?

Do I think they are the same? Yes. Here&#39;s why.

One could easily farm a piece of land and not starve to death, if he had the right to farm that land, if the land was his "private property" under capitalism. Since, however, private property does not exist for the working class (and I&#39;ve already shown why on multiple occasions. It is impossible for the man to do so. Thus he is FORCED, whether you like to believe so or not, he is FORCED WITH THE THREAT OF DEATH if he does not work for the capitalist.

You see this as OK because when he goes to work he gets a wage. But when slaves went to work they were fed and given what was needed to survive.

The only difference in the two examples is that one uses a gun, while the other uses starvation/freezing to death/whatever else can get caused by having no money, as the method of murder.

Once again, we call it wage slavery for a reason. You don&#39;t have to agree that this is the case, or agree with the term. But you wanted an answer to the question, so you got one.

As far as my enemy. My enemy is he who tells me I have no default right to a portion of the earth, that by being equally human to them I get no automatic right to live on earth by being a capable and able human who would be able to produce his own food had he the means to do so (land). So far as I can see that is every capitalist and their belief in private property.

So private property doesn&#39;t exist?

Stop the presses boys&#33; No need for this revolution, it&#39;s already happend&#33;

Lot&#39;s of poor people have land. Lot&#39;s of poor people farm the land.

Drive your ass up to Appalachia and see the self-sustaining farmers who live and survive on their private property.



Just cause I said I didn&#39;t even want to talk to you again for such nonsense and because I can I&#39;ll play the role of you for a moment: FALSE DICHOTOMY&#33;&#33;&#33; <snip rest of bullshit argument based on false dichotomy>

But seriously now. I don&#39;t agree with your comparison, it is not accidental that private property exists and works as a means to subjugate labor, if it did not capitalism would have no real grounds for survival. Just because you don&#39;t realize WHY people starve to death under capitalism does not make it accidental.

Let me simplify: People who contribute nothing to society (Namely labor), get nothing from society (Food and shelter).

Is that correct?

People starve to death because they don&#39;t work (Contribute to society) and therefore, don&#39;t deserve anything from society.

[Professor Moneybags]

One could easily farm a piece of land and not starve to death, if he had the right to farm that land, if the land was his "private property" under capitalism. Since, however, private property does not exist for the working class (and I&#39;ve already shown why on multiple occasions. It is impossible for the man to do so. Thus he is FORCED, whether you like to believe so or not, he is FORCED WITH THE THREAT OF DEATH if he does not work for the capitalist.

Forced by whom ? Who is issuing this threat ?


The only difference in the two examples is that one uses a gun,

...and initiates force.


while the other uses starvation/freezing to death/whatever else can get caused by having no money, as the method of murder.

...which isn&#39;t murder and does not involve the initiation of force. Murder is an agressive action. You cannot murder someone through inaction.

The inability to tell the difference between the two would explain why many communists see nothing wrong with firing sqauds and grand theft. The NIF priniciple is completely alien to you people and none of you are particularly shy about using the initiation of force to achieve your goals. That would explain why there are milliions murdered in communist countries.


You see this as OK because when he goes to work he gets a wage. But when slaves went to work they were fed and given what was needed to survive.

Weak anology. The slave has a gun pointed at his head (see above).


As far as my enemy. My enemy is he who tells me I have no default right to a portion of the earth, that by being equally human to them I get no automatic right to live on earth by being a capable and able human who would be able to produce his own food had he the means to do so (land). So far as I can see that is every capitalist and their belief in private property.

You&#39;re not being human, though. You are advocating the initiation of force and expressing a desire to live at a sub-human level by undercutting this idea of the voluntary transaction.


But seriously now. I don&#39;t agree with your comparison, it is not accidental that private property exists and works as a means to subjugate labor, if it did not capitalism would have no real grounds for survival. Just because you don&#39;t realize WHY people starve to death under capitalism does not make it accidental.

People starve to death far less under capitalism than any other system.



Yes, under communism, food, clothes, cars and houses will just fall from the sky at your command; there&#39;s no need to work or make for any of these things, like under capitalism.

Right. :P

I take it you agree, seeing as you think that you can live without working.

[Professor Moneybags]

Despite the fact that I did say I was going to stop arguing you because of you&#39;re "non-sequitur" "<snip>" and "circular argument" garbage that you throw out even when that&#39;s not the case, I&#39;ll do it one last time for the road.

The use of logically fallacious arguments do not bother you, then ?


Once again, if a majority wishes to institute rule over a minority, they don&#39;t need a vote to do it.

No, but you seem to think that a vote makes it okay.


What if the issue is dodgy, what if it&#39;s "unsure" whether someone&#39;s freedoms have been infringed upon? What then?

How can you be "unsure" ? Either force had been initiated or it hasn&#39;t. If it has, the punishment should be dealt according to the legth to which force has been initiated. I don&#39;t pick these things arbitarily.


Your system works only when there is an idea of absolute law, and that absolute law is perfect and binds every person to that law without any need for enforcement other than that law existing.

When did I say no enforcement ? I&#39;m not an anarchist.


It&#39;s also interesting that you brought up the government, as if they are the only ones who can infringe upon your rights.

No, they are certainly not the only ones, but the government has a far greater potential to violate upon my rights and everyone else&#39;s than, say, the CEO of the company I work for.


Why would someone vote for something that destroyed individual rights?

They have in the past and they still do.


I don&#39;t know too many people who would vote to revoke individual rights, as they&#39;d be losing rights. You must think people are so dumb that they can&#39;t feed themselves, huh?

They&#39;re dumb enough to believe that taking money from other people (threatened with jail for non-compliance) isn&#39;t stealing and isn&#39;t coercive.


Society&#39;s effects on you are a lot greater than you seem to admit.

But then again, that&#39;s why you&#39;re reactionary in the first place.

It&#39;s ironic that you mention that. The success of socialist theory has largely come about by posing as something "new" and "revolutionary", with people following it because they are afraid of being "left behind" (it is nothing of the sort, but that&#39;s an argument for another day). That&#39;s why so many teenagers follow it. They choose their ideologies like they choose their clothes; according to the latest fashion.

That&#39;s why people followed Hitler too- willingly.

[ernie]

Forced by whom ? Who is issuing this threat ?
Sorry to barge in your argument guys, but I have an example that might clear things up for Professor Bags. My uncle works 12 hours a day, 7 days a week. He is in debt up to his ass, and his living conditions are shit. He is FORCED to work at a job he HATES, because if he doesn&#39;t work there, he DIES (no, there is no gun) of starvation/cold/disease, so don&#39;t fucking tell me it&#39;s a mutual agreement. He does not agree to work there, he has to. Samething with the gun thing. Bottom line is, if you don&#39;t work THERE, you DIE (and your children too). He is FORCED by the system. He can&#39;t do any recreational activities because he doesn&#39;t have time. So, his life basically is his job (which, again, he hates). How is that different from the slaves? I can see why it&#39;s so difficult for you to understand, because I doubt you&#39;ve ever been (or known someone) in such a position.
Anyway, that is all...carry on...

[Publius]

Forced by whom ? Who is issuing this threat ?
Sorry to barge in your argument guys, but I have an example that might clear things up for Professor Bags. My uncle works 12 hours a day, 7 days a week. He is in debt up to his ass, and his living conditions are shit. He is FORCED to work at a job he HATES, because if he doesn&#39;t work there, he DIES (no, there is no gun) of starvation/cold/disease, so don&#39;t fucking tell me it&#39;s a mutual agreement. He does not agree to work there, he has to. Samething with the gun thing. Bottom line is, if you don&#39;t work THERE, you DIE (and your children too). He is FORCED by the system. He can&#39;t do any recreational activities because he doesn&#39;t have time. So, his life basically is his job (which, again, he hates). How is that different from the slaves? I can see why it&#39;s so difficult for you to understand, because I doubt you&#39;ve ever been (or known someone) in such a position.
Anyway, that is all...carry on...[/quote]

Is any of this his own fault?

Why is he in debt?

[ernie]

Is any of this his own fault?

Why is he in debt?
What&#39;s the difference? No, not his own fault...I mean, it&#39;s rent and credit and stuff like that. I mean, it&#39;s not like he owes a bookie or anything like that.

[Publius]

What&#39;s the difference? No, not his own fault...I mean, it&#39;s rent and credit and stuff like that. I mean, it&#39;s not like he owes a bookie or anything like that.

So he made decisions that left him with debt?

Those were poor decisions.

You don&#39;t run up debt if you can&#39;t pay it off. That&#39;s basic.

Rent? Rent a cheaper apartment or live with someone.

Credit? Credit cards are bad.

Basically, he tried to live beyond his means.

That sucks, but it&#39;s the truth.

[NovelGentry]

How hilarious of you, pretending you have something better to do than debate him or I.

Right, cause all communists have nothing to do. I&#39;ve already explained my reasons for being here, and why I argue as frequently as I do here. The reason I stopped arguing him is very simply because he doesn&#39;t actually argue. His arguments, much like the ones you put fourth consist of single line assertions nor terms like "non-sequitur", "circular argument", "strawman fallacy", "false dichotomy", etc, regardless of whether they are or not.

I think the majority of us are convinced he took some sort of debate logic course and just uses a bunch of buzzwords without really understanding what&#39;s going on. What he forgot to read in the book was that throwing out a technical statement does not make the argument false.

For example, when I say "better to rule by a majority than a minority" and he yells out "false dichotomy." It may very well be a false dichotomy, but I never claimed it was a dichotomy. That doesn&#39;t change whether one is better than the other.


But ideals are relative.

I mean, what good are ideals when you&#39;re starving? If you say, vote to enslave 20% of the population and make them farm for you, you could survive.

You didn&#39;t betray your ideals; your ideals betrayed you.

Why do you assume anyone would be starving. If you say vote to enslave 20% of the population there&#39;s nothing which says you won&#39;t be in that 20%. You&#39;re voting away your own rights. Just like if you vote to destroy, say, the right to vote for construction workers. How do you know you would never be a construction worker?

Furthermore, you&#39;ve still created no base on why someone would vote for this. You&#39;re saying this is why communism is bad and why it leads to oppression and things like that, but you still can&#39;t address the fact that if a majority wants to oppress a minority, they can do so.

This could happen under any system, regardless of voting, regardless of a constitution, regardless of a lot of things. Anywhere in the world a many can rise up to oppress a few. Unless they are "outgunned" so to speak, which is completely possible, but in that very same right a minority could fight the majority rule and attempt to outgun them to avoid this.

You&#39;re trying to tell me that people with a revolutionary consciousness will stand for the very same oppression they risked their lives for to do away with. I&#39;m not buying it, and I don&#39;t see how you can logically sell it.


Argumentum ad numerum

I would rather have 10 economists voting on economic policy than 1000 musicians. Wouldn&#39;t you?

This only shows your ignorance of the economic organization under communism.


You haven&#39;t read the Constitution have you? The Constitution is unique in what it says. It details what the government CANNOT do, moreso than what it can do.

Actually I have a small version of it I carry around in my back pocket. That&#39;s not a joke. I&#39;ve read it a number of times. Where the constitution fails is in allowing the government to change it. Where the system in general also fails is allowing the same kinds of rich white guys that make the laws, decide whether it&#39;s unconstitutional.

Jefferson was aware of this problem, as was Ben Franklin, as I&#39;m sure many other well respected old dead white guys were who had something to do with the formation of this nation.

Also, you must remember that we are not fighting to free the working class of the US. We are fighting to free the working class of the world from the exploitation that is inherent in capitalism. Burn the constitution, rip it up, put it through a paper shredder, it&#39;s only a piece of paper with words on it. There are far more dangerous "contracts" out there and "mutual agreements."


When the country is attacked, they attack back. That&#39;s why they are charged with in the Constitution.

Which country was it that attacked us again?

I&#39;m not justifying pointless wars here. If terrorists attack I think you deal with the terrorists, not set up false targets on countries that had nothing to do with them.

The point is very simply that things do happen. And a constitution cannot account for ALL situations. We were not attacked by a country, so if we had a constitution that "allowed" us to attack a country in defense when that country attacks us, which country would we be attacking in a situation like 9/11?

Oh, and as a more important question, how would the rights guaranteed in this constitution be chosen? The all knowing Publius and Professor Moneybags I presume? Maybe with the backing of texts by Ayn Rand?

Because it&#39;s obvious some people don&#39;t agree with you on the right to things such as "private property."


Who cares if you subvert it violently when your goal is violent nihilism to begin with?

On a side note: How does communism differ from nihilism? No social order and no morality leads to nihilism. What&#39;s the difference?

Mere assertion again. Our goal is violent nihilism... who said that? There are other ways to achieve social order than classes, and why do you assume there&#39;s no morality?


I would say this qualifies as avoiding the question.

No, it answers the question quite clearly. No single man is able to decide these things, nor should they. This is the point of democracy.


But we (I assume), as true capitalists are against this because we support lessaiz-faire capitalism.

Laissez-faire capitalism is not the only form of capitalism. These are certainly arguments we can hold against a regulatd capitalism like in the US, there remains still a number of arguments to hold against Laissez-faire capitalism, including the supposed right of private property (which cannot exist for the working class if it is to function), the exploitation of the worker based on wage slavery which they are forced into because of that private property, and of course, it&#39;s eventual destruction based on it&#39;s consistent need to expand in order to generate capital. Remember, if capital is not generated, you can&#39;t call it capitalism.

Now, all these points have been proven, and when I asked you multiple questions that relate very much to the real world, or what the real world would be like under Laissez-faire capitalism, you avoided those questions. I assume you don&#39;t have any answers to them. If you cannot tell me how a working class person can disagree to work for a capitalist and still survive, you got nothing on the wage slavery aspect. And I do mean every working class person needs to be able to do this, saying some can and some can&#39;t only shifts who is actually a slave it does not abolition slavery alltogether.

Lastly, I&#39;m not sure how you expect me to take you seriously as a Laissez-faire capitalist when you can&#39;t even spell it properly, but surely you&#39;re argument will be something like "Why should I know Spanish?" -- to answer that in advance, it&#39;s French.


He says: "Under no circumstances can simple assertion be said to make a valid argument."

Wait a second? Isn&#39;t that a simple assertion being used to make a valid argument?

Not only are you a moral relativist, you&#39;re a poor one.


I&#39;ve been calld far worse things than a "poor moral relativist." Quite frankly, it&#39;s not a valid argument, it&#39;s one I presumed you&#39;d be willing to accept under the light that saying something such as "water is blue" would be completely and utterly foolish. But really, I wouldn&#39;t be surprised if you&#39;ve argued such things in your life.


So your argument as that democracy is founded on princeaples? But those are subjective.

You either don&#39;t read what I&#39;m saying or simply don&#39;t know how to properly read what I&#39;m saying. Is English your first language?

If this is what you think my argument is, then refute it, there&#39;s no need to ask.


And people vote to take away their own rights all the time.

Oh yeah, who does that aside from congressmen?


People allowed Hitler to ascend to power. People allowed the DMCA to be passed. People allowed the PATRIOT ACT to be passed.

Allowing something to pass does not mean you voted for it. I don&#39;t know anyone that voted for the DMCA or the Patriot Act, do you?


People are stupid as fuck.

Those people who voted for it? Yes, they are. But that&#39;s exactly my point. If you have a minority voting on something, you need only a small amount of people to be "stupid as fuck." If the whole of the US population were to vote on these things, you&#39;d see a lot more oppositon in the voting record. Does this mean it wouldn&#39;t pass? No, there&#39;s no way for me to determine that. But at least some of us would take the time to read the bills before we vote for it rather than just taking the word of the person speaking on the floor. Ever watch C-Span when they pass some of this legislature? It&#39;s disgusting.


They have their lives and their freedoms.

Right, just like anyone who "mutually agrees" to be exploited because if they don&#39;t mutually agree they will die.


Both the working class and the ruling class improve.

Improve what? Once again, this is not a static wealth theory, this is not about material improvement. However, material improvement does play a part. Once again, in a two person system where you&#39;re the capitalist and the other guy is the worker, if the other guy gains private property you lose a bargaining chip. He can spend all the time he spent working for you and just work for his own needs directly.


It&#39;s true that not everyone can be a capitalist, but communism&#39;s approach to this non-existant problem is to make everyone equally poor.

This is an interesting quote, because you&#39;re actually admitting that it&#39;s not possible for everyone to be equal under capitalism. "Not everyone can be a capitalist?" Well why the hell not? We&#39;re all equal right? We got all fair and equal chances right? So shouldn&#39;t we ALL be able to be that? Even if it&#39;s at the same time? I WANT answers to these questions.

Your basis for this "equally poor" argument is hilarious. First off, it depends on money. You&#39;re right, no one will have any money under communism, so they must be poor. Well, they may be poor, but I wouldn&#39;t mind being poor if poor meant I could get healthcare, food, clothing, homegoods, the home itself, a car, fuel, entertainment, heat, water, electricity, whenever I need it.

Poor in money, not in quality of life.

Certainly you&#39;re argument now will be "LOOK AT THE USSR&#33;&#33;&#33;&#33;&#33;&#33;&#33;111111 YOU COMMIE SCUM STARVE PEOPLE&#33;#%" I&#39;ve already explained a vast amount of the starvation in the USSR which came not from their attempt to create working socialism, but from their recess into capitalism called the NEP. Starvation in the USSR was caused by the same system that causes starvation in the US. Only difference is, they&#39;re counting the numbers on the wrong side.

Did Stalin kill people? Yes. I don&#39;t apologize for what Stalin did, but you don&#39;t seem to know a damn thing about the USSR or it&#39;s economic ups and downs throughout it&#39;s existence.


So private property doesn&#39;t exist?

It does under capitalism. It exists for the bourgeoisie. It does not exist for the working class, for them it is an illusion. And in general terms private property cannot be upheld by any other means than physical enforcement -- which is precisely the same way it&#39;s upheld for the bourgeoisie under capitalism.


Lot&#39;s of poor people have land. Lot&#39;s of poor people farm the land.

Maybe it&#39;s because you&#39;ve never read a single page of Marx, maybe it&#39;s just because we&#39;re not making ourselves clear. This has nothing to do with "helping poor people." There used to be a boatload of farmers who were poor as a rock that owned their own land (until corporate farms bought most of it out, but that&#39;s not even the point I&#39;m making). These people are NOT working class. You can be the poorest fucker in the world and if you own a chunk of land enough to sustain you&#39;re life you&#39;re not as fucked over as the working class.

Are a number of working class people poor? Yes. But we aren&#39;t fighting for the poor. We&#39;re fighting for the working class. Peasants are poor, peasants are reactionaries that turn petit-bourgeoisie the minute the land is actually theirs. You can be piss poor and be petit-bourgeoisie -- it&#39;s not extremely likely under this advanced stage of capitalism, but it&#39;s possible.

Our classes are by relation of the means of production. Not by wealth or monetary well being. Is that clear?

There might be a certain correlation, often times those with the most wealth or monetary well being control the means of production, but this is NOT, how we base those classes. If some guy works his ass of his whole life and becomes a millionaire after working 120+ hours a week and only buying what he needs to survive, he&#39;s cool in my book. What is not cool is when he converts that wealth to capital, because from that point on he is subjugating the labor of another to his benefit.


Let me simplify: People who contribute nothing to society (Namely labor), get nothing from society (Food and shelter).

Is that correct?

Yes, and no and obviously depending on the system. I don&#39;t think anyone suspects a 3 month old baby to contribute any labor to society -- should that three month old baby get nothing from society? Not if society wishes to continue existing. So let me pose this question, what about someone who contributes something to society and is still starving? Say a third world laborer getting paid 3 dollars a day on a 12 hour shift to produce clothes for Tommy Hillfiger, alone this woman can sustain herself, but then she gets raped by her boss and gets pregnant. There&#39;s no local abortion clinic because there&#39;s no such progressive social institutions where she is. Morally speaking she simply cannot kill the child once it is born, she doesn&#39;t have the heart to do it, so now she must care for it. What of her situation?

I&#39;m not saying you support this type of action, but it exists under capitalism, and it&#39;s something you have to take into account when a working class is oppressed and alienated from the ruling class. We become nothing more than extensions to the machines we work for. Nothing more than an extension to their property which produces their products. "But that could never happen here you say&#33;" How about a wealthy businessman who rapes his house cleaner who happens to be an illegal immigrant? If she goes to the cops, she&#39;s got nothing. First off, she&#39;s an illegal immigrant to which the business man can certainly claim she lied to him and produced proper identity when he employed her, and even if that fails he can buy off the cops. What of a situation like this?

Does this happen to all workers? No. And once again, I&#39;m aware you don&#39;t support this action directly, but by supporting a system which pushes for that kind of control and alienation of an entire class you indirectly support the actions that come along with it.

Certainly you may say this is a people problem. If people weren&#39;t selfish and greedy it wouldn&#39;t happen, of course people are "naturally" selfish and greedy according to you. It has nothing to do with the system which they live under which SHOWS them that those who are most selfish and most greedy are the most "successful."


People starve to death because they don&#39;t work (Contribute to society) and therefore, don&#39;t deserve anything from society.

People starve to death for all kinds of reasons. A vast majority of those people contribute far more to society than wealthy business owners could ever hope to. Whether you want to accept the examples I gave above, or maybe just take a gander at the ~41,000,000 of them starving in your own country, for them starving indefinitely might be more painful than just starving to death.

[NovelGentry]

You cannot murder someone through inaction.

So if I take someone off the street and throw them into a cell and don&#39;t feed them and they starve to death I shouldn&#39;t be charged with Murder? Only say assault and kidnapping?

Indeed that is what is implied. My action only went so far to throw them in the cell, it was because of my inaction that they starved to death. And you cannot murder someone through inaction.

It&#39;s been real, but my time dealing with this kind of idiocy is coming to an end.



When did I say no enforcement ? I&#39;m not an anarchist.

Yet another statement that only shows your ignorance of some of the ideologies held here. There is enforcement for say the right to live under anarchism, whether that be enforced by the person who&#39;s life it is that&#39;s being attempted to be put to an end, or whether it is by someone else who intervenes in this action or by a council of people after the action has happened.

Really, I&#39;m not even sure why I started to argue again with you Professor Moneybags. As I&#39;m sure you and publius are both aware, these arguments go no where. They boil down to simple disagreements on things like the idea of private property etc, to which neither of us is going to change sides.

In short, I agree to disagree. It&#39;s been real, but you can have this section of the board to yourselves. I&#39;ve gotten whatever development I felt I could get out of arguing your idiocy and ignorance, my purpose here is gone.

[Don't Change Your Name]

Originally posted by [email protected] 5 2005, 07:28 AM
2)Why is Private Property Bad?
Because the means of production are in the hands of a minority, and the rest of the people has to end up working for them for wages. Also, it was created by force, and is defended by force.


3)How does paying wages for labor= exploitation?

The boss pays the worker a smaller amount of money than the one he gets thanks to the worker&#39;s labour, and that&#39;s where his profits come from.


5)Explain to me how the Proletariot will decide on what to produce without leaders?

There are tons of ways in that this can be achieved, from local meetings to the use of technology.


6)How does following Marx&#39;s Plan to Marxist Society, insituting a progressive tax, and centralization of all power in the state, lead to the destruction of the state? The moment all of that power is in the hands of the state, you get a totalitarian gov, because in order to protect its power, logically, the ability of the proletariot to resist and revolt would be destroyed. So how does Marx manage this leap? Absolute power in the state, as Marx proposes, will corrupt the state absolutely.

Well that&#39;s what we anarchists argue against leninists and other authoritarians. Supposedly, according to them, there will come a point when the state becomes unnecessary and people is ready for living in such a society.


7)Currently, in the West, the great divison of rich and poor is non-existent for the most part. In many developing countries, the division of rich and poor is disappearing, as a middle-class arises. How will the great Proletarian Revolution be achieved if almost everyone is middle-class to upper-class and lives comfortable lives? Currently, most countries aren&#39;t getting poorer. They&#39;re getting richer.

You don&#39;t seem to understand the difference between "bourgeois" and "proletarian". Some proletarians are richer than others and vicerversa.


10) How can teachers, information and technology related specialities, and any other jobs, where people have some form of power and create dependency on each other, exist in Communism? If any form of economic dependency form one class to another is capitalist, is the dependency of factory workers, on blueprint makers, a relationship of capitalism, since the blueprint makes exercise a form of control on the workers?

I don&#39;t get the question...you mean they are exploiting them? I don&#39;t think so


12)Finally, could someone explain to me why even with all these communist revolutions, none make the mark? And please tell which country in the world, you consider to be most Communist.

Because leninism sucks...and they happened in third-world countries full of peasants, when according to Marx this would happen in industrialized countries.

The "most communist" was probably all the collectivization that happened in Spain during the civil war.

[Publius]

Originally posted by [email protected] 6 2005, 10:46 PM





Right, cause all communists have nothing to do. I&#39;ve already explained my reasons for being here, and why I argue as frequently as I do here. The reason I stopped arguing him is very simply because he doesn&#39;t actually argue. His arguments, much like the ones you put fourth consist of single line assertions nor terms like "non-sequitur", "circular argument", "strawman fallacy", "false dichotomy", etc, regardless of whether they are or not.

I think the majority of us are convinced he took some sort of debate logic course and just uses a bunch of buzzwords without really understanding what&#39;s going on. What he forgot to read in the book was that throwing out a technical statement does not make the argument false.

For example, when I say "better to rule by a majority than a minority" and he yells out "false dichotomy." It may very well be a false dichotomy, but I never claimed it was a dichotomy. That doesn&#39;t change whether one is better than the other.


Or perhaps you&#39;re commiting all those fallacies and just refuse to accept it.

And that was a false dichotomy you were trying to present.


Why do you assume anyone would be starving. If you say vote to enslave 20% of the population there&#39;s nothing which says you won&#39;t be in that 20%. You&#39;re voting away your own rights. Just like if you vote to destroy, say, the right to vote for construction workers. How do you know you would never be a construction worker?

Furthermore, you&#39;ve still created no base on why someone would vote for this. You&#39;re saying this is why communism is bad and why it leads to oppression and things like that, but you still can&#39;t address the fact that if a majority wants to oppress a minority, they can do so.

This could happen under any system, regardless of voting, regardless of a constitution, regardless of a lot of things. Anywhere in the world a many can rise up to oppress a few. Unless they are "outgunned" so to speak, which is completely possible, but in that very same right a minority could fight the majority rule and attempt to outgun them to avoid this.

You&#39;re trying to tell me that people with a revolutionary consciousness will stand for the very same oppression they risked their lives for to do away with. I&#39;m not buying it, and I don&#39;t see how you can logically sell it.

Why do you keep taking my examples literally? They&#39;re meant to be examples, analogies, not real life situations. Do I need to clarify the difference?

If the majority of the people wish the enslave a minority to their benefit, they are allowed to do it.

I don&#39;t think most people hold their ideals above their comfort. They&#39;ll sell you down the river for their own benefit if given the chance. So don&#39;t give them the chance.


This only shows your ignorance of the economic organization under communism.

This was yet another example you took literally.

I wasn&#39;t talking about communism at all, merely the fact that you an economist should make economic decisions as a gardner should make gardening decisions for the most part.




Actually I have a small version of it I carry around in my back pocket. That&#39;s not a joke. I&#39;ve read it a number of times. Where the constitution fails is in allowing the government to change it. Where the system in general also fails is allowing the same kinds of rich white guys that make the laws, decide whether it&#39;s unconstitutional.

Jefferson was aware of this problem, as was Ben Franklin, as I&#39;m sure many other well respected old dead white guys were who had something to do with the formation of this nation.

Also, you must remember that we are not fighting to free the working class of the US. We are fighting to free the working class of the world from the exploitation that is inherent in capitalism. Burn the constitution, rip it up, put it through a paper shredder, it&#39;s only a piece of paper with words on it. There are far more dangerous "contracts" out there and "mutual agreements."

The Communist Manifesto was just some paper. It&#39;s only a piece of paper with words on it. Surely becuase it&#39;s just a tree and some ink, it can&#39;t possibly have any abstract meaning beyond it&#39;s physical form.

Yes, I understand it&#39;s this meaning you so detest, but if you don&#39;t like the Constitution, you aren&#39;t forced to live under it. You are free to move.

And how does race play any role in this?


Which country was it that attacked us again?

I&#39;m not justifying pointless wars here. If terrorists attack I think you deal with the terrorists, not set up false targets on countries that had nothing to do with them.

The point is very simply that things do happen. And a constitution cannot account for ALL situations. We were not attacked by a country, so if we had a constitution that "allowed" us to attack a country in defense when that country attacks us, which country would we be attacking in a situation like 9/11?

Oh, and as a more important question, how would the rights guaranteed in this constitution be chosen? The all knowing Publius and Professor Moneybags I presume? Maybe with the backing of texts by Ayn Rand?

Because it&#39;s obvious some people don&#39;t agree with you on the right to things such as "private property."

Afghanistan.

How would they be chosen? The way they were chosen. We have a good document already.

You&#39;re free to revolt here or elsewhere and create your own.

But I wouldn&#39;t do it here, you&#39;d lose.


Mere assertion again. Our goal is violent nihilism... who said that? There are other ways to achieve social order than classes, and why do you assume there&#39;s no morality?

I asked, in what way does communism differ from nihilism?

You answer my question with more questions.



No, it answers the question quite clearly. No single man is able to decide these things, nor should they. This is the point of democracy.

The amount of people making said decision bears no impact on whether said decisions is correct or incorrect.

None at all. There is no correlation. Blue isn&#39;t the "best" color, regardless of what 9 out of 10 doctors think.


Laissez-faire capitalism is not the only form of capitalism. These are certainly arguments we can hold against a regulatd capitalism like in the US, there remains still a number of arguments to hold against Laissez-faire capitalism, including the supposed right of private property (which cannot exist for the working class if it is to function), the exploitation of the worker based on wage slavery which they are forced into because of that private property, and of course, it&#39;s eventual destruction based on it&#39;s consistent need to expand in order to generate capital. Remember, if capital is not generated, you can&#39;t call it capitalism.

Now, all these points have been proven, and when I asked you multiple questions that relate very much to the real world, or what the real world would be like under Laissez-faire capitalism, you avoided those questions. I assume you don&#39;t have any answers to them. If you cannot tell me how a working class person can disagree to work for a capitalist and still survive, you got nothing on the wage slavery aspect. And I do mean every working class person needs to be able to do this, saying some can and some can&#39;t only shifts who is actually a slave it does not abolition slavery alltogether.

Lastly, I&#39;m not sure how you expect me to take you seriously as a Laissez-faire capitalist when you can&#39;t even spell it properly, but surely you&#39;re argument will be something like "Why should I know Spanish?" -- to answer that in advance, it&#39;s French.

Lessez-faire capitalism is capitalism. Anything different is not capitalism or more accurately, is less capitalistic and more socialistic.

Anything other than lessez-faire capitalism does not deserve to be called capitalism, at least in my opinion.

I don&#39;t see how you say private property doesn&#39;t exist in capitalistic society. Private property is what allows capitalism to exist. They are one in the same. Your capital is your property and your property can be your capital.

Nothing has been proven by you, merely asserted.

A working class person cannot because the term "working class" implies that they work for a capitalist.

That&#39;s like saying, tell me how a man can have a child. The term "man" implies that they cannot birth a child.

Once the person is able to subsist without working for a capitalist, he is no longer working class.

Your premise is flawed.

Tell me how everyone in capitalism could refuse to work and still not starve to death? Your point is non-point. People have to work for things like food to be produced. It&#39;s obvious.


I&#39;ve been calld far worse things than a "poor moral relativist." Quite frankly, it&#39;s not a valid argument, it&#39;s one I presumed you&#39;d be willing to accept under the light that saying something such as "water is blue" would be completely and utterly foolish. But really, I wouldn&#39;t be surprised if you&#39;ve argued such things in your life.


You can&#39;t spell "called" correctly. You probably thought it was swahili or something. It&#39;s english. How can I take you seriously?

So, you contradicted yourself? Simple arguments can prove things. That was a waste.



You either don&#39;t read what I&#39;m saying or simply don&#39;t know how to properly read what I&#39;m saying. Is English your first language?

If this is what you think my argument is, then refute it, there&#39;s no need to ask.

I understood the argument, I was questioning you on it.


Oh yeah, who does that aside from congressmen?

The people who voted for them. You said you carry around a Constitution? You should know we are a representitive democracy, not a direct democracy.


Allowing something to pass does not mean you voted for it. I don&#39;t know anyone that voted for the DMCA or the Patriot Act, do you?

See above post.

And there is more to it than simple voting. If there were mass demonstrations, letters, activism, for certain causes, things can be revoked.


Those people who voted for it? Yes, they are. But that&#39;s exactly my point. If you have a minority voting on something, you need only a small amount of people to be "stupid as fuck." If the whole of the US population were to vote on these things, you&#39;d see a lot more oppositon in the voting record. Does this mean it wouldn&#39;t pass? No, there&#39;s no way for me to determine that. But at least some of us would take the time to read the bills before we vote for it rather than just taking the word of the person speaking on the floor. Ever watch C-Span when they pass some of this legislature? It&#39;s disgusting.


But the people voting on it are generally less stupid. They are (At least in theory) well informed on what they are voting for. I would trust somone who&#39;s spent months examining something to make a decision over Joe 6-Pack who heard something about it at the bar. Wouldn&#39;t you?

I try to avoid that stuff on C-Span. I prefer BookTV when they have a decent author.


Right, just like anyone who "mutually agrees" to be exploited because if they don&#39;t mutually agree they will die.

You are free to do other things. You are free to work, free to start your own business, free to farm, free to move, free to starve. The decision is yours.


Improve what? Once again, this is not a static wealth theory, this is not about material improvement. However, material improvement does play a part. Once again, in a two person system where you&#39;re the capitalist and the other guy is the worker, if the other guy gains private property you lose a bargaining chip. He can spend all the time he spent working for you and just work for his own needs directly.

No, he can have private property and still work for me. Sure, he could do that. Or he could work for me because I can pay him, supply him with products he wants or needs, and allow him to exist in a better manner.

That&#39;s another false dichotomy.


This is an interesting quote, because you&#39;re actually admitting that it&#39;s not possible for everyone to be equal under capitalism. "Not everyone can be a capitalist?" Well why the hell not? We&#39;re all equal right? We got all fair and equal chances right? So shouldn&#39;t we ALL be able to be that? Even if it&#39;s at the same time? I WANT answers to these questions.

Your basis for this "equally poor" argument is hilarious. First off, it depends on money. You&#39;re right, no one will have any money under communism, so they must be poor. Well, they may be poor, but I wouldn&#39;t mind being poor if poor meant I could get healthcare, food, clothing, homegoods, the home itself, a car, fuel, entertainment, heat, water, electricity, whenever I need it.

Poor in money, not in quality of life.

Certainly you&#39;re argument now will be "LOOK AT THE USSR&#33;&#33;&#33;&#33;&#33;&#33;&#33;111111 YOU COMMIE SCUM STARVE PEOPLE&#33;#%" I&#39;ve already explained a vast amount of the starvation in the USSR which came not from their attempt to create working socialism, but from their recess into capitalism called the NEP. Starvation in the USSR was caused by the same system that causes starvation in the US. Only difference is, they&#39;re counting the numbers on the wrong side.

Did Stalin kill people? Yes. I don&#39;t apologize for what Stalin did, but you don&#39;t seem to know a damn thing about the USSR or it&#39;s economic ups and downs throughout it&#39;s existence.

I mean that not everyone can be the CEO of a company making toasters. It&#39;s simple logic. Everyone CAN however, live an easy, relaxed, rich life under the capitalist system.

And it isn&#39;t possible to be equal as none is equal. Two people can put in the same effort and get different results. Some people are smarter, some are stronger, some are faster, etc.

Your answer is: You&#39;re perfectly free to be a capitalist, everyone is, you just aren&#39;t guranteed to be a capitalist. You have you succeed.

Of course you shouldn&#39;t.

By "poor" I meant, "impoverished" meaning, "starving to death". Yes, I know wealth doesn&#39;t exist but I was pointing out that a communistic society would fail becuase of starvation caused by laziness.

Poor in quality of life. Working all day just to subsist, knowing that no matter what you do, you&#39;ll be working 20 years from now in the exact same conditions. Sounds great.

Wow. That mind reading was impressive.

Actually, it wasn&#39;t. That was pitiful.


It does under capitalism. It exists for the bourgeoisie. It does not exist for the working class, for them it is an illusion. And in general terms private property cannot be upheld by any other means than physical enforcement -- which is precisely the same way it&#39;s upheld for the bourgeoisie under capitalism.

I own private property.

Private property can be upheld not through force but through the lack of initiation of force and defense if necessary. If you try to rob me, I&#39;ll stop you. If you don&#39;t, no force is necessary.



I don&#39;t really see the need to respond to your rant. Basically your saying that even if everyone were insanely well-off, you would still want to cast off the capitalist mode of production?

Pragmatism over idealism my friend.




Yes, and no and obviously depending on the system. I don&#39;t think anyone suspects a 3 month old baby to contribute any labor to society -- should that three month old baby get nothing from society? Not if society wishes to continue existing. So let me pose this question, what about someone who contributes something to society and is still starving? Say a third world laborer getting paid 3 dollars a day on a 12 hour shift to produce clothes for Tommy Hillfiger, alone this woman can sustain herself, but then she gets raped by her boss and gets pregnant. There&#39;s no local abortion clinic because there&#39;s no such progressive social institutions where she is. Morally speaking she simply cannot kill the child once it is born, she doesn&#39;t have the heart to do it, so now she must care for it. What of her situation?

I&#39;m not saying you support this type of action, but it exists under capitalism, and it&#39;s something you have to take into account when a working class is oppressed and alienated from the ruling class. We become nothing more than extensions to the machines we work for. Nothing more than an extension to their property which produces their products. "But that could never happen here you say&#33;" How about a wealthy businessman who rapes his house cleaner who happens to be an illegal immigrant? If she goes to the cops, she&#39;s got nothing. First off, she&#39;s an illegal immigrant to which the business man can certainly claim she lied to him and produced proper identity when he employed her, and even if that fails he can buy off the cops. What of a situation like this?

Does this happen to all workers? No. And once again, I&#39;m aware you don&#39;t support this action directly, but by supporting a system which pushes for that kind of control and alienation of an entire class you indirectly support the actions that come along with it.

Certainly you may say this is a people problem. If people weren&#39;t selfish and greedy it wouldn&#39;t happen, of course people are "naturally" selfish and greedy according to you. It has nothing to do with the system which they live under which SHOWS them that those who are most selfish and most greedy are the most "successful."

The infant is the ward of it&#39;s parents. That&#39;s pretty clear.

What of her situation? You&#39;re commiting a non-sequitur. That has NOTHING to do with the point I presented. Did you even read it?

How does a woman being raped have anything to do with benefitting society?

Those are crimes that are as irrelevent to capitalism as they are to communism.


People starve to death for all kinds of reasons. A vast majority of those people contribute far more to society than wealthy business owners could ever hope to. Whether you want to accept the examples I gave above, or maybe just take a gander at the ~41,000,000 of them starving in your own country, for them starving indefinitely might be more painful than just starving to death.

41,000,000 people are starving in America?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Wrong.

And the essay I posted earlier shows you who benefits society, the capitalist or the laborer.

[NovelGentry]

You&#39;re lucky your arguments suck and it only takes me two seconds to refute them.


And that was a false dichotomy you were trying to present.

Again, whether it was or not does not argue my point.


Why do you keep taking my examples literally? They&#39;re meant to be examples, analogies, not real life situations. Do I need to clarify the difference?

You continually take my responses literally, you&#39;ve taken this literal instead of looking at the points being made with it as an analogy. I never took your example literally, you&#39;re taking this one literally. I already pointed this out.


I wasn&#39;t talking about communism at all, merely the fact that you an economist should make economic decisions as a gardner should make gardening decisions for the most part.

Well unfortunately I was. So if you&#39;d so kindly like to point out how my original statements are flawed because of this, please do so. I don&#39;t suspect you know anything about socialist/communist production/consumption models and thus you know nothing about socialist/communist economics. You&#39;re presumed basis that economists won&#39;t be guiding things has no grounds. More, you&#39;re presumed basis that an economist of capitalist society would have any use in a socialist society is wrong as well.

The economic balance is much more strict. It is a simple balance which wages to ensure consumption never increases over production. You know nothing about the mechanism which ensures this, as such, you assume a role like an economist is even necessary.

The question then becomes something like, "Why should car manufacturers be deciding how to run a car factory?" But of course you think the person who builds the car would be far too stupid to help decide how the production line is set up, only the CEO could do that, right? Afterall, it&#39;s not like the guy making the car has worked within a production line for god knows how many years. Oh wait....


You are free to move.

Everyone who doesn&#39;t like the way things are to you is always free to get out. I&#39;m not exactly free to do so though. Moving would cost money, money I don&#39;t have. Moving to certain places, say Cuba for example, would cost even more money because there&#39;s no way for me to legally go directly from this country to that country. This doesn&#39;t even account for the fact that moving to pretty much any other country on earth would not change that I&#39;m living under capitalism. It&#39;s not really something I can be free from just that easily.


And how does race play any role in this?

It&#39;s a figure of speech.


Afghanistan.

Oh yeah, that time Afghanistan decided to attack us. Then there was that other time Iraq decided to attack us... oh wait, that never happened.


How would they be chosen? The way they were chosen. We have a good document already.

Well once again, we disagree on some of those rights.


You&#39;re free to revolt here or elsewhere and create your own.

Well that&#39;s the plan, now isn&#39;t it, as it is for every other nation.


Lessez-faire capitalism is capitalism. Anything different is not capitalism or more accurately, is less capitalistic and more socialistic.

Again, I can&#39;t take you seriously until you learn how to spell. Your idea that Laissez-faire capitalism is the only form of capitalism is completely unfounded. Maybe it&#39;s the only form you&#39;ll accept, but there are a number of other forms despite what Friedman might say. (ahaha Fried - Man, great)


Once the person is able to subsist without working for a capitalist, he is no longer working class.

But he was never able to subsist without working. That&#39;s the point. He can work his ass off at the bottom of the barrel and then use his wealth all at once. It does not mean his new found conditions of life were not born out of his working. And UNLESS he turns that wealth into capitalism, he will have to return to work upon it being used up.

The definition of working class is not "The people who are currently working."

Again, only your ignorance prevails.


You can&#39;t spell "called" correctly.

Cause a typo is obviously the same as rearranging several letters of a word. Hell, this time you even left some letters out. Here&#39;s the letters -- L s z s e a i -- see if you an unjumble them for the proper spelling.

Really now, this thread has degraded from serious questioning by truthman into your blatant desire to prove you can&#39;t even spell a term you seem to know is the ONLY true version of capitalism.

I&#39;m gone from this thread until someone starts making intelligent points or comes up with some more intelligent questions.

[Publius]

And the pinko capitulates.

He rattles of diatribe after diatribe then has the gall to pretend like he has anything better to do than respond to this thread?

Hilarious.