Great Quote!

[Stormin Norman]

"Competition brings about the only arrangement of social production which is possible. Otherwise what guarantee do we have that the necessary quantity and not more of each product will be produced, that we shall not go hungry in regard to corn and meat while we are choked in beet sugar and drowned in potato spirit, that we shall not lack trousers to cover our nakedness while buttons flood us in millions." - Friedrich Engels

This must have been before he converted to the communist religion. He is right. It appears that this quote supports the workings of a free-market economy. What do you think? Does this statement contradict Marxism?

[canikickit]

Does this statement contradict Marxism?

You know something? I don't give a shit what it does.



what guarantee do we have that the necessary quantity and not more of each product will be produced

By having quotas, and keeping an eye on what is being produced.
Competetion results in millions of brands of buttons.

It's all a big joke. Think about it.

[redstar2000]

SN, when one is playing the "embarressing quote" game, it's customary to give a source, in detail. Otherwise, your evil-minded opponent will simply accuse you of making it up.

[antieverything]

Are so thick as to not realize that Engels was being sarcastic, Norm?

[Stormin Norman]

"Are so thick as to not realize that Engels was being sarcastic, Norm?"

Believe what you want. It's funny how everytime I present you people with the words or theories of Marx or Engles you try to explain your way out of it, very poorly might I add.

[IHP]

SN, i agree with half of what you said. the key word here is explain. by explaining the quote, the true meaning then becomes evident. Therefore it is necessary.

--IHP

[Stormin Norman]

Explanation is crucial, but that might have been a poor choice of words, on my part. Perhaps I should have said rationalizing, or excusing. I don't think Marx was being sarcastic when he marvelled at the market system. Marx himself said the market system created "wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman Aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals". What kind of excuses do you suppose will be mustered to rationalize this statement?

[redstar2000]

Still waiting for the source of that "great quote", SN.

Your other point is valid, though out of context (a bad habit of yours). You can probably find hundreds if not thousands of words in Marx's writings "in praise of capitalism" AS OPPOSED TO FEUDALISM! Marx did indeed celebrate the REVOLUTIONARY aspects of the young capitalist system as it toppled monarchs, aristocrats, and clericals around the world.

He just didn't think that was the END of the story.

[Stormin Norman]

"There is no worthy alternative to the market mechanism as the method for coordinating economic activities."-Leonid Abalkin (Deputy Prime Minister of the Soviet Union, 1989)

"I place the economy among the first and most important virtues, and public debt as the greatest of dangers. . . . We must make our choices between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of people under the pretense of caring for them, they will be happy." - Thomas Jefferson


(Edited by Stormin Norman at 6:52 am on Nov. 12, 2002)

[Stormin Norman]

"If there existed the universal mind that would register simultaneously all the processes of nature and of society, that could forecast the results of their inter-actions, such a mind could draw up a faultless and exhaustive economic plan. In truth, the bureaucracy often conceives that such a mind is at its disposal; that is why it so easily frees itself from the control of the market." - Trotsky

"Why does public discussion of economic policy so often show the abysmal ignorance of the participants? Why do I so often want to cry at what public figures, the press, and telivision commentators say about economic affairs?"- Robert M. Solow

"Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul" - Henry David Thoreau

(Edited by Stormin Norman at 6:55 am on Nov. 12, 2002)

[vox]

I, too, would like to know the origin of the Engels quote. I looked it up online but could only find one unattributed reference to it.

In response to the Trotsky quote, what is SN's point? This has long been a part of socialist thinking. I'll give a quote, too, this one from Rosa Luxemburg:

"Socialism will not and cannot be created by decrees; nor can it be established by any government, however socialistic. Socialism must be created by the masses, by every proletarian. Where the chains of capitalism are forged, there they must be broken. Only that is socialism, and only thus can socialism be created."

Perhaps SN thought he was being shocking, but the idea that socialism MUST be created from the bottom up is old news.

"I never had much faith in leaders. I am willing to be charged with almost anything, rather than to be charged with being a leader. I am suspicious of leaders, and especially of the intellectual variety. Give me the rank and file every day in the week. If you go to the city of Washington, and you examine the pages of the Congressional Directory, you will find that almost all of those corporation lawyers and cowardly politicians, members of Congress, and misrepresentatives of the masses - you will find that almost all of them claim, in glowing terms, that they have risen from the ranks to places of eminence and distinction. I am very glad I cannot make that claim for myself. I would be ashamed to admit that I had risen from the ranks. When I rise it will be with the ranks, and not from the ranks." --Eugene V. Debs.

Capitalism, however, always takes a top-down form of class warfare:

"Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men, for the nastiest of reasons, will somehow work for the benefit of us all. " --Economist John Maynard Keynes

But heck, that old socialist Abraham Lincoln didn't much care for corporate rule, either:

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavour to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed."

And I can match SN's Jefferson quote with another from him:

"I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country."

SN even trots out Thoreau in regards to money. I have a quote about money:

"The love of money as a possession--as distinguished from the love of money as a means to the enjoyments and realities of life--will be recognized for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semi-criminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease." --John Maynard Keynes

Of course, SN may dismiss all of this as being "anti_American." But then, Theodore Roosevelt would be considered anti_American today:

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."

As for Marx, it's true that he said that capitalism creates incredible wonders, and he also explained why and how. The cost of these "wonders" is the poverty of the many. Who here would say that a thing is worth more than a person besides SN? As Marx himself pointed out:

"The bourgeoisie of the whole world, which looks complacently upon the wholesale massacre after battle, is convulsed in horror at the desecration of brick and mortar."

So folks, when SN comes at you with these quotes, just remember one of my favorites by Marx: "The demand to give up illusions about the existing state of affairs is the demand to give up a state of affairs which needs illusions."

As for the "free market," take a look at my sig.

vox

[Iepilei]

"Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul" - Henry David Thoreau

Haha, it's funny you even put that quote. Thoreau was such an activist it's not funny. But again, the meaning has to be found through analysis.

What Thoreau is saying is that money does nothing for your soul - it's not intergrated part of you, nor your life. It's not necissary.

[Palmares]

Everybody certainly loves their qoutes, perhaps it is my turn;

"The collapse of the global marketplace would be traumatic event with unimaginable consequences. Yet I find it easier to imagine than the continuation of the present regime."
-George Soros

"Do not forget that this great free market capitalism we enjoy was founded upon stealing every inch of this country from the Indians and building a good share of it on slave labour."
-Taxation Resource

"With adequate profit, capital is very bold. A certain 10 per cent will ensure its employment anywhere; 20 per cent certain will produce eagerness; 50 per cent positive audacity; 100 per cent will make it ready to trample all human laws; 300 per cent, and there is not a crime at which it will scruple nor risk it will not run, even to the chance of its owner being hanged."
-T.J. Dunning

"When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint.
When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist."
-Dom Helder Câmara

What relevance does this have? Just as much as all the other quotes.

[Anonymous]

heres some REAL quotes:

you must be the change you want to see in the world"- Dalai Lama

"What you spend your life building someone can destroy overnight, build it anyway" Madre Teresa

"When there is state there cant be no freedom, when there is freedom, there can be no state"- Vladimir Ilitch Ulianov

"Workers of the world, unite!"- Marx

"It is not surprising that the USA has failed to keep up it's payments to the UN, when we spend most of our meager funds un-doing the destructive effects of their foreign policy."-Koffi Annan


"Natasha has just come up to the window from the courtyard and opened it wider so that the air may enter more freely into my room. I can see the bright green strip of grass beneath the wall, and the clear blue sky above the wall, and sunlight everywhere. Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression, and violence and enjoy it to the full. "- part of Leon trotsky's testament


"The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil. "
- Albert Einstein

"It is the very nature of imperialism turns men into bloodthirsty animals."- Che Gueverra

"The rich do not know hunger"- Fidel Castro

A spectre is haunting Europe-- the spectre of Communism." -Karl Marx

fanatism, violence, racism, this are the most extreme cases of capitalism"- dont remember who said this one!

"fascism is capitalism plus murdered"-dont remember

"Dont believe in comies when they say you capitalism is a big pile of shit, it has a cherry on top!" - ME!

"I dont think a atheist can be a USA citzen, it´s "one nation under god" isnt it?" - Good Ol´Dubya

"When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him whose." - Don Marquis

"From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs!" - Karl Marx


"Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communist Revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win."- Marx & Engels

[Anonymous]

Here you go:

"The envious man thinks that if his neighbor breaks a leg, he will be able to walk better himself." - Helmut Shoeck


"If taxation without consent is not robbery, then any band of robbers have only to declare themselves a government, and all their robberies are legalized." - Lysander Spooner

"But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime." - Frederick Bastiat


"It is strangely absurd to suppose that a million of human beings, collected together, are not under the same moral laws which bind each of them separately." - Thomas Jefferson


"It is self-evident that no number of men, by conspiring, and calling themselves a government, can acquire any rights whatever over other men, or other men's property, which they had not before, as individuals. And whenever any number of men, calling themselves a government, do anything to another man, or to his property, which they had no right to do as individuals, they thereby declare themselves trespassers, robbers, or murderers, according to the nature of their acts." - Lysander Spooner


"Taxation of earnings from labor is on a par with forced labor. Seizing the results of someone's labor is equivalent to seizing hours from him and directing him to carry on various activities." - Robert Nozick


"It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself." - Thomas Jefferson

"Socialism in its contemporary watered down form is little more than envy disguised as principle." - Martin Pot


"...The State is the organisation of robbery systematised and writ large. The state is the only legal institution in society that acquires its revenue by the use of coercion, by using violence and threat of violence on its victims. The state is, therefore, a centralized, regularised organisation of theft" - Murray Rothbard


"The compelling issue to both conservatives and liberals is not whether it is legitimate for government to confiscate one's property to give to another, the debate is over the disposition of the pillage." - Walter Williams


"The kind of man who wants the government to adopt and enforce his ideas is always the kind of man whose ideas are idiotic." - H.L. Mencken


"Martyrdom has always been a proof of the intensity, never of the correctness of a belief." - Arthur Shnitzler


"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." - H.L. Mencken


"Conservatives and liberals too often hope to use government to evade responsibility for their own problems. Just blame government for not using its power the way it should have." - Harry Browne


"There is perhaps no phenomenon which contains so much destructive feeling as moral indignation, which permits envy or hate to be acted out under the guise of virtue." - Erich Fromm


"What's *just* has been debated for centuries but let me offer you my definition of social justice: I keep what I earn and you keep what you earn. Do you disagree? Well then tell me how much of what I earn *belongs* to you -- and why?" - Walter Williams


"The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the Prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this country is closely connected with this." - Albert Einstein


"I cannot undertake to lay my finger upon an article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on the objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents." - James Madison


"You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer." - Abraham Lincoln


"It's not an endlessly expanding list of rights -- the "right" to education, the "right" to health care, the "right" to food and housing. That's not freedom, that's dependency. Those aren't rights, those are the rations of slavery -- hay and a barn for human cattle." - Alexis De Tocquiville

"When they took the 4th Amendment, I was quiet because I had nothing to hide.
When they took the 6th Amendment, I was quiet because I had never been arrested.
When they took the 2nd Amendment, I was quiet because I didn't like guns.
Now they have taken the 1st Amendment, and I can only be quiet." - Unknown


"In a society obsessed with arranging every detail of existence, the unintended is ominous." - Unknown


"The man who follows the crowd will usually get no further than the crowd." - Alan Ashley-pit


"Blind belief can be comforting, but it can easily cripple reason and productivity, and stop intellectual progress." - Dr. James Randi


"If you protect a man from folly, you will soon have a nation of fools." - William Penn


"A frontal assault on ignorance is bound to fail because the masses are always ready to defend their most precious possession, their ignorance." - Unknown




(Edited by Dark Capitalist at 5:27 am on Nov. 12, 2002)

[canikickit]

"The play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king"
- Hamlet

[antieverything]

"Competition brings about the only arrangement of social production which is possible. Otherwise what guarantee do we have that the necessary quantity and not more of each product will be produced, that we shall not go hungry in regard to corn and meat while we are choked in beet sugar and drowned in potato spirit, that we shall not lack trousers to cover our nakedness while buttons flood us in millions." - Friedrich Engels


Why would a serious man say anything about being "choked in beat sugar and drowned in potato spirits" or buttons flooding us in millions? Why would he say that noone starves under capitalism when, at the time, many people were in fact starving?
[hr]
You guys sure like your Jefferson quotes, don't you?
Try these one on for size:

"While it is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of property is derived from Nature at all… it is considered by those who have seriously considered the subject, that no one has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land… Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society."
-- Thomas Jefferson

"…legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property… Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions or property in geometrical progression as they rise. Whenever there are in any country uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right."
-- Thomas Jefferson (in a letter to James Madison), 1785

Why stop at TJ, why not quote another founding father?

"Private property… is a Creature of Society, and is subject to the Calls of that Society, whenever its Necessities shall require it, even to its last Farthing, its contributors therefore to the public Exigencies are not to be considered a Benefit on the Public, entitling the Contributors to the Distinctions of Honor and Power, but as the Return of an Obligation previously received, or as payment for a just Debt."
-- Benjamin Franklin


Or how about I show you the real face of another hero of the libertarian right...how does Adam Smith sound?

Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all."
-- Adam Smith

"All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind."
-- Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations

"No society can surely be flourishing and happy when part of the members are poor and miserable."
-- Adam Smith, Wealth Of Nations

"Our merchants and master-manufacturers complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price, and thereby lessening the sale of their goods both at home and abroad. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people."
-- Adam Smith, Wealth Of Nations

"People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices."
-- Adam Smith, Wealth Of Nations

"As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce."
-- Adam Smith, Wealth Of Nations

"The liberal reward of labor, therefore, as it is the necessary effect, so it is the natural symptom of increasing national wealth. The scanty maintenance of the laboring poor, on the other hand, is the natural symptom that things are at a stand, and their starving condition that they going backwards fast."
-- Adam Smith, Wealth Of Nations

"The rate of profit... is naturally low in rich and high in poor countries, and it is always highest in the countries which are going fastest to ruin."
-- Adam Smith, Wealth Of Nations

"The subjects of every state ought to contribute toward the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state ....[As Henry Home (Lord Kames) has written, a goal of taxation should be to] 'remedy inequality of riches as much as possible, by relieving the poor and burdening the rich.'"
-- Adam Smith, Wealth Of Nations

"Whenever the legislature attempts to regulate differences between masters and their workmen, its counsellors are always the masters. When the regulation, therefore, is in favor of the workmen, it is always just and equitable; but it is sometimes otherwise when in favor of the masters."
-- Adam Smith, Wealth Of Nations

"The interest of dealers, however,... is a always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public... The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes frm this order ought... never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it."
-- Adam Smith, Wealth Of Nations

"In a society of an hundred thousand families, there will perhaps be one hundred who don't labour at all, and who yet, either by violence, or by the more orderly oppression of law, employ a greater part of the labour of society than any other ten thousand in it. The division of what remains, too, after this enormous defalcation, is by no means made in proportion to the labour of each individual. On the contrary those who labour most get least. The opulent merchant, who spends a great part of his time in luxury and entertainments, enjoys a much greater proportion of the profits of his traffic, than all the Clerks and Accountants who do the business. These last, again, enjoying a great deal of leisure, and suffering scarce any other hardship besides the confinement of attendance, enjoy a much greater share of the produce, than three times an equal number of artizans, who, under their direction, labour much more severely and assiduously. The artizan again, tho' he works generally under cover, protected from the injuries of the weather, at his ease and assisted by the convenience of innumerable machines, enjoys a much greater share than the poor labourer who has the soil and the seasons to struggle with, and, who while he affords the materials for supplying the luxury of all the other members of the common wealth, and bears, as it were, upon his shoulders the whole fabric of human society, seems himself to be buried out of sight in the lowest foundations of the building."
-- Adam Smith, first draft of Wealth Of Nations

And the rest of these are just for fun.

"A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of others."
-- Albert Einstein

"we should be on our guard not to overestimate science and scientific methods when it is a question of human problems; and we should not assume that experts are the only ones who have a right to express themselves on questions affecting the organization of society."
-- Albert Einstein

"Injustice was as common as streetcars. When men walked into their jobs, they left their dignity, their citizenship and their humanity outside. They were required to report for duty whether there was work or not. While they waited on the convenience of supervisors and foremen they were unpaid. They could be fired without a pretext. The were subjected to arbitrary, senseless rules... Men were tortured by regulations that made difficult even going to the toilet. Despite grandiloquent statements from the presidents of huge corporations that their door was open to any worker with a complaint, there was no one and no agency to which a worker could appeal if he were wronged. The very idea that a worker could be wronged seemed absurd to the employer."
-- Walter Reuther (on working life in America before the Wagner act)


And here is one that I think does a good job of summing up my beliefs.

"The argument for laissez-faire capitalism is built on a contradictory view of liberty. Right-wing libertarians understand that state control of all economic activity is tyrannical: that the power to determine if and how people make a living is the power to enforce conformity. But they don't see that the huge transnational corporations that own and control most of the world's wealth exercise a parallel tyranny: not only do these behemoths unilaterally determine qualifications, wages, hours, and working conditions for millions of workers, who (if they're lucky) may "choose" from a highly restricted menu of jobs or "choose" to stop eating; they make production, investment and lending decisions that profoundly affect the economic, social, and political landscape of communities and indeed entire countries -- decisions in which the great majority of people affected have little or no voice. Murray defines economic freedom as "the right to engage in voluntary and informed exchanges of goods and services without restriction." Fine -- but if an economic transaction is to be truly voluntary and informed, all parties must have equal power to accept, reject, or influence its terms, as well as equal access to information. Can anyone claim that corporate employers and employees have equal power to negotiate their exchange? Or that consumers have full access to information about the products they buy? And if we're really interested in freedom, the right to voluntary and informed engagement in economic transactions has to be extended beyond their principals to others affected -- whether by plants that reduce air quality or rent increases that chase out shoe repair shops in favor of coffee bars. The inconsistency of the belief that economic domination by the state destroys freedom, while economic domination by capital somehow enhances it, is often rationalized by attributing the self-interested decisions of the corporate elite to objective, immutable principles like "the invisible hand" or "supply and demand" -- just as state tyranny has claimed to embody the laws of God or History. But the real animating principle of a free society is democracy -- which should include a democratic economy based on enterprises owned and controlled by their workers."
-- Ellen Willis

But, these are just quotes...lets get back to the issues!

[canikickit]

"From this time forth, my thoughts be bloody, or nothing worth."
- Hamlet

[redstar2000]

3rd Request

Still waiting for the source of that "great quote", SN.

[Iepilei]

"in regards to removal of personal appropriations of man's own labour: surely you do not honestly believe that the whole of the Soviet Union actually shared 1 toothbrush." -- Not Remembered

"It's said that the US government would like to colonise mars; yes, we're going to go to Mars - then we'll colonise deep space. With our microwave hotdogs, fake vomit, plastic dog shit, cinnamon dental floss, lemon-scented toilet paper, and sneakers with lights in the heels - and all the other terrific things we've done down here.
But how are we going to explain to the intergalactic counsil of ministers the first time a teenage mother throws her newborne baby in the dumpster? How will we explain that the Earth's Ambassador was only 30min late because his breakfast was cold and he had to spend and hour beating his wife around in the kitchen? How will we explain that, it's just a local tradition, but how over 80 million women in the 3rd world have had their clitoruses forcibly removed to destroy their sexual pleasure so they will not cheat on their husbands.
Can't you imagine how much the rest of the universe anticipates US to show up?" -- George Carlin

(Edited by Iepilei at 9:40 pm on Nov. 12, 2002)

[Jaha]

"OUR TRUE NATIONALITY IS MANKIND."
--H G WELLS

[canikickit]

"though you can fret me, you cannot play me"
Hamlet to Guildenstern.

[redstar2000]

You've had a while, SN, to produce the source for your "great quote by Engels" and you have not done so.

So, put up...or bear the label: LIAR!

[Stormin Norman]

That sounds likely. I would create such a truthful statement, and then attribute it to someone I despise. No, I give credit where credit is due. Like all my other quotes it comes from the stated source - Engels himself. Call me what you want, it still won't change facts.

[antieverything]

I'm not questioning the validity...I just question Norm's sanity when he says that Engels was serious when he refered to us all getting drunk and drowning in buttons.

[Stormin Norman]

"Perhaps SN thought he was being shocking, but the idea that socialism MUST be created from the bottom up is old news." - Vox

Why don't you tell me how that epifany of yours is even relevant to any of the quotes that I posted. I think both you and antieverything missed the point.

As for Keynes, his economic theories have been discredited since the failure of England's socialist state. Even the most liberal Englishmen have moved away from Keynesian thinking.

[vox]

"Why don't you tell me how that epifany (sic) of yours is even relevant to any of the quotes that I posted."

Poor SN, proving once again that critical thinking is alien to the right. See, I already DID tell him, for I related it to the quote by Trotsky. Methinks that perhaps SN didn't understand the quote he posted. I'd be shocked, but it's not the first time that's happened.

vox

[Stormin Norman]

Ah, but I quit reading your posts long ago. Now you are lucky if I even scan them over once.

[Stormin Norman]

Besides I don't see how you jumped from the Trotsky quote to your newly invented topic. Talk about irrational. I think you are the one who does not understand the quote. That;s obvious because you support socialism/communism. By default you have no clear understanding of economics.

(Edited by Stormin Norman at 12:41 am on Nov. 21, 2002)

[vox]

First SN says that he doesn't read my posts, so one would think he'd have nothing to say, but, in SN's time-honored fashion, he is once again simply lying. How do I know this? Because he quoted me in his post! I have to think that would be pretty hard to do without reading what I wrote. Again, SN's lack of critical thinking provides amusement for the rest of the board.

As for the quotes, go read SN's post and then read mine. You can decide for yourselves who is right and who is wrong.

vox

[Stormin Norman]

Of course I skimmed your post the first time. However, I did not go over it with a fine tooth comb, nor was I mesmerized by your durge. Therefore, I thought that maybe you had related the two and it was my mistake. Upon further investigation, I found out it was you who was doing the lying. What you said had nothing to do with that quote. You switched topics and attributed it to what I had originally quoted. You were the one being dishonest. That's the last time I give you the benefit of the doubt. Now I see why you are so quick to call people liars. It's in your nature. Therefore, you believe everyone else is the same.

Trust me, it is no lie when I say I do not read every last bit of your garbage, Vox. Maybe if I am in a good mood or we are engaged in a debate.

[redstar2000]

SN, simply claiming "it comes from Engels" will not do. When did he say it? In what book, article, letter? What was the context?

If I post "a great quote from Stormin Norman"---"Goats make great sex partners", for example---you would be understandably outraged. You would thunder: when and where did I say that??? Produce the evidence!!!

And if I tried to slide by with a fast shuffle--"oh, he said it all right"--you'd call me a fucking liar. And you'd be right.

The same applies to you: tell us specifically where that quote can be found...or admit that you made it up and apologize to the board. Or be known hereafter as Stormin Norman the Liar.

[vox]

Redstar,

Like I said, when I did a Google search for it, I got ONE result (and not from the Internet Marxist Archive, either).

On the one page where I found the quote, it did cite where it came from. Here's all it said: FRIEDRICH ENGELS (THE FRIEND AND CO-AUTHOR OF KARL MARX)

I have to wonder who the other "author of Karl Marx" was. Hee!

Credible? Not in my book.

Anyway, the page it appears on is hosted by South-Western (http://www.swcollege.com/front.html), which appears to be some sort of business school/training center. I wonder if Sally Struthers does commercials for it?

vox

[canikickit]

Norman, you are always waffling on about "the burden of proof", don't you feel like a schmuck now? :biggrin: Laugh it up Norm. The game is up. You are slipping up more and more these days. It is quite funny. Laugh it up.


(Edited by canikickit at 2:48 am on Nov. 21, 2002)

[Capitalist Imperial]

it seems to me that SN is as strong as he ever was. he is a highly relevant and experienced member of this forum

[canikickit]

In the land of the blind, a one eyed man is king.

[Stormin Norman]

I got the quote from an economics text, namely, "Microeconomics: Principles and Policy"; Seventh Edition; Baumol and Blinder.

I was also referred to in "Basic Economics: A Citizen's Guide to the Economy", by Thomas Sowell (p. 15).

http://www.mises.org/misesreview_detail.as...sortorder=issue (http://www.mises.org/misesreview_detail.asp?control=192&sortorder=issue)

If you still don't believe me then check this out.

http://www.libertarian.co.uk/lapubs/econn/econn016.pdf

It was footnoted here as #6; Frederick Engels, "Preface to the 1st German Edition", Karl Mark, "The Poverty of Philosophy", (p. 19)

Jesus Christ, someone needs to teach you guys how to use a library.

(Edited by Stormin Norman at 2:59 pm on Nov. 21, 2002)

[antieverything]

Well Norm, one can't look up a quote in a library.

And you still haven't answered me [not to mention the asswhoopings I gave you where you just abandoned the whole fucking threads!] Why would a serious person refer to getting drunk and drowning in buttons?

[Stormin Norman]

"Well Norm, one can't look up a quote in a library."

Now that's a sign of stupidity.

As for the "ass-woopings", ever heard of giving someone a false sense of security. Your loud mouth antics and premature proclamations of victory might just have a way of backfiring in your face, my friend. We may soon see who has been rendered irrelevant. Just remember you did it to yourself.

Now you must excuse me, as I have an important exam that I must get back to studying. You know, there are more pressing matters than some loud mouth little punk. I can just as easily deal with you later.

[antieverything]

[at this point I direct everyone to the "Democratic Companies" topic...judge for yourself :)]

[Stormin Norman]

Judge for yourselves! AE suggests that Spain represents a socialist economy something that I proved him wrong on. Any other questions. Besides what makes you think that I have not delivered you the death blow you are so vocal in asking for. You never did answer the question, nor did you alleviate my concerns that socialists, like yourself, know the slightest thing about operating an economy. After all wasn't that what I asked you to prove? I'd say your posts speak for themselves as they represent your miserable failure to tackle the tough questions that I asked of you. Quite simply, you bore me.

[redstar2000]

SN, I hereby withdraw any aspersions I have cast on your personal honesty. Sure enough, it's a real, though partial quote.

Engles is polemicizing against a now obscure German "left" economist named Robertus--who apparently wanted to retain a society of independent producers similar to capitalism but not allow them to compete on price. Engels was pointing out that in such a hypothetical society, we would indeed run short of pants while being flooded with buttons. In any society with a multitude of independent producers, competition among them IS the only way to regulate production so that it even approximates what the society needs.

See, SN, when you give a reference, then it's perfectly possible to check on it and make sure it actually exists.
So now that I've learned how to use the marxist archives, can you learn to quote IN CONTEXT?

[antieverything]

AE suggests that Spain represents a socialist economy something that I proved him wrong on. Any other questions. Besides what makes you think that I have not delivered you the death blow you are so vocal in asking for. You never did answer the question, nor did you alleviate my concerns that socialists, like yourself, know the slightest thing about operating an economy. After all wasn't that what I asked you to prove? I'd say your posts speak for themselves as they represent your miserable failure to tackle the tough questions that I asked of you. Quite simply, you bore me.
Uh, Norm, I never asserted anything like that. I said that there are worker-run companies in Spain which are highly succesful! Lately, I've found that there are also a few here in the US. You were going off on some wild tangent about Spain being a leading European economy and crap like that. Just goes to show how ignorant you are when it comes to understanding the most basic principles of socialism: worker control and the elimination of the owning class. Socialism doesn't have to have anything to do with state control!

The reason I didn't answer your question is that your question was stupid...I believe that it was something to the effect of, "tell me everything that one must know about in order to run a company." I told you in a post why I didn't answer the question and why what I had said was adequate to prove what your question was asked in an attempt to disprove!

But like I said, let everyone else decide...you did notice that none of your friends came to your rescue, didn't you? You were an embarasment to them in that argument.

[Stormin Norman]

Redstar2000,

Now why would I want to go and ruin what is a very wise statement with the rest of Engels's mired thought? Like all the other economists who quoted it, I used only the fragment that shows great insight into the nature of markets. This statement should be taken by itself, for it is the only bit of truth that Engels ever spoke. After all, isn't deriving the truth what discourse is all about?

(Edited by Stormin Norman at 5:50 am on Nov. 23, 2002)

[antieverything]

So, how are you holding up against this humiliation that you've handed to yourself?

Maybe you should consider re-targeting that death blow that you had aimed for me!

[antieverything]

Hmmm...