New to this all, and shocked

[Luís Henrique]

Sotionov & The Idler, the issue you are discussing is interesting and important, but it doesn't help in the context of this thread. How about starting another thread for it?

Luís Henrique

[RA89]

Hi guys, finally back. Hopefully the people who posted in this thread still use this forum lol.

Thanks for all the replies and suggested reading, I got through some which I will have questions on later.

Btw was there ever a "thanks" button that has now been removed or do I just need to rep people for it to come up?

Well, I might be coming from a different angle of seeing the indifference in practice of Liberalism - for example, in the Bay Area, there is uncontested Liberal political dominance and a very liberal-leaning culture, and yet voters passed things like "Sit/Lie" laws in San Francisco and Berkeley to stop homless people from... being in public basically.

Doesn't that mean that those liberal's in that area have gone against liberal values as opposed to this being an example of a flaw in the liberal system?

Or was that the point you were trying to make?

Being paid more does not make you part of a different class. Your class is defined by your relation to the means of production. If you own them, then you are bourgeois or a capitalist. If you don't own them, then you need to sell your labor to someone who does, which makes you proletarian or a worker. When you are talking about salaries, you are usually talking about workers. There are, of course, some exceptions, but I don't think we should discuss them here.

I have a feeling you would very well be for socialism, if you only knew what it was. There's no shame in not knowing this, though. Not too long ago, I had very confused ideas about socialism too. This is because capitalists deliberately propagate confused and harmful ideas about socialism, and make capitalism itself seem necessary, fair and natural, despite the contrary being the case. As has been said, you still have a lot of deprogramming to do, but you already seem to be well on your way by coming here.

Welcome btw.

That clarified a lot. To make things easier to understand can I provide a scenario-

100 people on an Island, if they were follow socialism would I be right in saying that:

- they would work to improve and maintain everyone's state of living
- they would collectively make important decisions regarding the community
- there would be no wages/money, they did the required jobs, and were provided food/shelter by the community

Please add to and/or correct this (anyone).

Thanks for reply + the welcome.

[RA89]

It depends on what you define as difficult. Hedge fund managers are not necessarily doing anything difficult. People who plow fields are not there because it's easy, and people don't wait tables because they are lazy. People don't automatically take the path of least resistance in the absence of financial incentive. The argument is illogical.

We live in a society of wealthy people who reward themselves for being wealthy and spent a lot of effort convincing the rest of us that they deserve it. It's also an illogical argument when you understand that people in our society are fundamentally unequal, that capitalism perpetuates this and that bootstrapping is absolute bullshit. Inequality exploits people, forces them into drudgery and stifles socially useful innovation and investment.

People are motivated by all kinds of things. Some go into fields because of their family, others because they are interested in the subject, some because it's all they feel they can do, some because they are talented, others out of social pressure, some for perceived stability, while some, and I would argue - very few, go into careers solely for money.

That depends - it will mostly drive the average wage/benefit down...unless we are talking about capitalist innovation that mainly seeks to turn excessive bullshit into a commodity. Once a trade, skill or racket is no longer protected, it's typically not as individually profitable.
Take medical doctors for example - there are a lot of them and they don't typically make as much money as they expected and acquire tons of debt in school. However out of those doctors, there is a small elite of plastic surgeons who are making money hand over fist peddling a mostly unnecessary and unethical service.

Yes, I think people fill vacuums. The average capacity of human cognition and labor is pretty narrow.

This is a fair response and makes sense, so does the other post by Skyhilist which provides an argument for why people would still go after all sorts of jobs. I don't have an answer/rebuttal.

Thanks for the reply.

[SmirkerOfTheWorld]

Hi guys

I've on and off read about politics for the past few years.

But it's only this year I've realised how outrageously selfish conservatives are.

Who's to say who's selfish? I'm hugely self-interested and perhaps selfish in my desires and aspirations. Revolutionary socialism isn't about altruism or 'helping the poor' that's very much a liberal idea. It's about establishing a better world for me and mine. A world where a tiny fraction own the majority of the wealth and where I am not free to live my life as I would see fit is something I don't want. That could be selfish I suppose - I'm definitely not thinking about the feelings of the ruling class...

[Red Commissar]

Btw was there ever a "thanks" button that has now been removed or do I just need to rep people for it to come up?

I'll let other users answer your political questions, but as for this-

The thanks button is still here, it's just that you can't thank posts that are old. I don't remember the exact cutoff limit (I think it's once a post is more than two months old or somewhere in that neighborhood). In any event once a post is old, it can no longer be thanked or repped.

[RA89]

Who's to say who's selfish? I'm hugely self-interested and perhaps selfish in my desires and aspirations. Revolutionary socialism isn't about altruism or 'helping the poor' that's very much a liberal idea. It's about establishing a better world for me and mine. A world where a tiny fraction own the majority of the wealth and where I am not free to live my life as I would see fit is something I don't want. That could be selfish I suppose - I'm definitely not thinking about the feelings of the ruling class...

So if you managed to become a huge success under capitalism then you wouldn't support communism?
Because if you did become a success under capitalism you would be free to do whatever you want whilst others earn you money (which shouldn't be an issue if you're selfish).

I'll let other users answer your political questions, but as for this-

The thanks button is still here, it's just that you can't thank posts that are old. I don't remember the exact cutoff limit (I think it's once a post is more than two months old or somewhere in that neighborhood). In any event once a post is old, it can no longer be thanked or repped.

Oh I see, thanks.

[Slavic]

So if you managed to become a huge success under capitalism then you wouldn't support communism?
Because if you did become a success under capitalism you would be free to do whatever you want whilst others earn you money (which shouldn't be an issue if you're selfish).

It is ultimately up to the individual. Most people make up the working class, yours truley, so naturally we would seek to implement policy/action that is in the interest of our class. Usually when one is aware of class struggle one sympathizes if not supports the working class due to its unfair treatment in the capitalist system. So you can have situations where people of the petite or bourgeoisie class support the proletariat cause regardless of their own class.

[AmilcarCabral]

RA89: And you know something, there is really no way in this world to change the behaviour of most ultra-right wing, self-absorbed, family-narcissists, stuck-up, egocentric, mysanthropist, social phobic people with zero social manners, zero social skills, zero courtesy for others, zero consideration for others (the way most americans behave), into a totally brand new way of living (unknown in USA) without a dictatorship, without a dictatorship of the communists in power, without a dictatorship of the communists, and the working class, destroying the old ultra-right wing philosophy of life using the powers of the new communist state.

Because that's the most scientific and powerful way to destroy the right-wing mental viruses ingrained in most americans and most europeans, in order to be replaced by a left-wing philosophy of life (which is thinking about others, love, solidarity, scientific thinking, social skills, courtesy, compassion, humility and other positive traits)

Because I think that privately, on our own the most we can is to maybe change a group of people, a minority, but it is impossible to change the 310 million americans from an ultra-right wing philosophy of life, toward an ultra-left wing philosophy of life without the left-wing seizing state powers.

As long as USA will be ruled by Democrats and Republicans, UK, Spain, Germany, Italay and other european countries by capitalist parties most people will love capitalism and will hate communism.

Unless there is a revolutionary situation, that would force most poor people to become communists. But since capitalist governments like USA can control people so easy, I see that crisis very far from right now, because humans are very conformists, humans can conform to any slight rise in wages done by capitalist governments.

So a more realistic solution would be for a minority of left-wing heroes in USA and Europe to overthrow capitalist states by force, and then once in government power, it would be a lot easier to use the economic and media power of the state to propagate the communist ideology thru the nationalization of CNN, FOX news and other TV news modern powerful stations and modern newspapers. But we have to be realistic, right now there are only 3 small progressive TV stations (Russia Today, Free Speech TV and Link TV) competing against very power TV news stations. So it is very hard for americans to digest and welcome the communist political ideology as a solution for their economic crisis




.

Hi guys

I've on and off read about politics for the past few years.

But it's only this year I've realised how outrageously selfish conservatives are.

I was arguing with some about welfare. A few of them were delusional about there being a level playing field and suggested poor people have the same chance of success and rich people.

A few honest ones admitted there were disadvantages though, but stuck with the "they should stop being lazy" argument. So I mentioned how there are more unemployed people than there are jobs available, so there would also be people out of work thus unable to earn and needing help. Without help they'd live in poor conditions or worse starve.

Their response was basically "why is it my problem?" or "why should I be forced to help them?"

So people should suffer because they were unfortunate to be born into a bad situation?!

Are these people unable to empathize? How selfish can someone be where they ignore vulnerable people and just focus on themselves.

Any discussion I have with conservatives tends to turn into them justifying their selfishness.

I then tried to research why so many of them thought this way. Surely this is some kind of personality disorder?

I found these articles (I'm guessing the bits of info are possibly common knowledge but thought I'd share to provide an insight into what bothered me). edit: will provide links when I have enough posts to do so

<link coming soon> - interesting experiment, people who given money for doing a test, and either told to spend it on themselves or given a choice to donate to charity or spend it on themselves.
People were happy when told to spend it on themselves. Similar to conservative ideology which forces people to adhere to this selfish mindset, thus alleviating the guilt of not helping the poorer people.

<link coming soon> - this one shows that the ideology they have basically rationalizes social inequalities.

<link coming soon> - "Participants were happier with self-interest when they believed that it was externally chosen."

These people say what they believe with such conviction that I find myself wondering if I was wrong to believe humans naturally create societies to HELP EACH OTHER???

Anyway I wouldn't say I'm a liberal or leftie (not yet anyway). Just came here to learn and ask questions. All responses are appreciated, even if it is a link to another post/article. All I ask is that they are not too complicated to read because I am far from an expert (or intelligent lol).


1] Difference between communism and socialism?

2] In a society, I believe that there shouldn't be large gaps between classes. However I do think gaps should exist because I believe someone who builds spaceships or does brain surgery deserves to be paid more than the retail worker (who should be paid fairly of course but nonetheless in proportion to the education required for the role, the value of the job etc they should be earning less). Does this make me against socialism or communism?

Thanks