Communism IS evil and it's NOT just because PEOPLE are evil because they AREN'T, it's the system that's evil!

Communism as practised did I suspect much the same thing, except 'work ethic' was replaced by 'socialist ethic' as the central myth/concept of the system, and the bribery and politics were generally real bribery and politics. And less people got to do the delegating and more the working.

I think what I'm saying is that it makes a lot more sense if you look at it from the bottom up. Here is a country, a patch of land with various natural resources. No citizen of the country deserves to own any piece of it any more than any other system; land ownership as we know it is, at root, based on someone at some point coming along and killing or threatening the people already on it. So we take all of this land which is all of ours, and we all work as hard as we're able to make it productive, and we all share in the fruit of that labor. That's the idea. And it's not really a bad idea, insofar as (a) it's one of few methods of thinking about socioeconomics that actually addresses the basic unfairness of how most of the world's wealth was acquired, and (b) it relies on the pretty valid assumption that a community's resources can, when pooled, more effectively improve the lives of that community than otherwise . . . it just happens to be a serious bitch to implement all at once.

Sorry for coming of angry and militant. I've got no real excuse.

Which, ultimately, isn't that far away from economic rationalism after all (change "equal" to "prosperous", maybe).

I suppose I see a lot of the problems in actually existing socialism as being caught up in scale and centralisation, from which flows an inevitable concentration of power and the need to set up the substitution of 'socialist ethic' for work ethic that Tom mentions because of the distance of the structure from the experiences on the ground. Plenty of people hostile to the ideology of technological progress and practice of industrialism would suggest that this too has profound and problematic effects on the way communism works.

The utopian who lives inside me says: preferred system = decentralised eco-anarchism.

On a vague sub-branch of this debate, are we as willing to feel sorry for the 5000-odd people about to be made redundant from Enron as we do for the four getting their books from Poptones? Or does ideology matter more than people's jobs (cue standard: "well-they-work-for-the- fascist-capitalist-India-polluting-enemy-so-they'll-get-what's-coming- to-them-ha-ha-ha" Pavlovian response)? One would hope not.

Actually, that's another uninteresting sub-thread I've just thought of: is it more ethical to work for Enron or for So Solid Crew?

Consistency and all that.

And don't lie that you're not, pal, because your last two posts could have come right out of the Littlejohn/Heffer bearpit.

And don't quote me Beatrice & Sidney about population control either. As with most IL* posters, it doesn't wash (HAHAHAHAHA).

Memo to fellow posters: bugger, didn't express regret re. four people on Poptones thread so can't nail him on hypocrisy. Any suggestions?

Actually, on this subject, did anyone see Ken Loach's "Navigator" on CH4 the other night, and if so what did you make of it?

A) Communism is a complete leveling of wages immediately. Marx in fact termed this the generalization of want, and did not particularly advocate that. Further, he advocated the expropriation of the large scale means of production, not everything.

B) Conversely, the myth that he considered there to be some sort of lsiding scale between capitalism and communism, on a level of "amount of social programs/redistribution". His critique of the gotha program makes his objection to this notion quite clear.

That is all.

they got nothing. except a boot out of the door.

this is what happens when you get addicted to radio 4.

nb: extreme viewpoints that are bandied about all over the place (cant get much wider distrubition than the internet) and possibly offensive to some need to be very well researched.

Bravo to Dave Q! What a fine thinker he is - reminds me of my days studying Milton Friedman which held me in such good stead when I retired from the army in 1985 and succeeded in convincing 20 young men I was working with that Thatcherism could only do them good. They kept muttering about "the Corby steelworks", "out of a job", and "don't care about the unlucky ones". You've got to WORK, I told them! Those who don't want to work deserve all they get.

Dave Q is my favourite poster on this forum by some way - I might well meet up with him when I am next in "the big smoke", as we still call it in Northamptonshire.

Marcello, there is nothing more unethical, or as disturbing of the values that should underpin this country, than working for So Solid Crew.

Yours against reds under the bed (they still exist!), Anthony.

The BBC is indeed run by a metropolitan clique who regard Tony Blair as a Godlike figure, but "The World At One" retains journalistic standards higher than any newspaper, even the excellent Daily Telegraph.

Thanks for your interest, Nitsuh!

Regards,

Anthony.

Last time I checked, neither the left nor the right had a monopoly on authoritarianism or utopianism -- two things which are more-or-less prerequisites for advocating "the destruction of family ties and nationalism", I think.

Ideology is meant to meet the needs of the many,

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The central problem with the soviet state capitalist system is it removed any incentive other than some kind of stankanovite heroism to do well other than within the 'party' system. Enterprise was tifle and the econnomy eventually collapsed because of the lack of foundations.

Engineers were measculated, being trained in narrower and narrowere specialisations so none had a breadth of techmoical knowledge and therefor power, again serving to stifle industrial creativity.

What stifled communism in russia, (china eatern europe aswell), was the lack of intellectual freedom and the fact that from very early on (from the october revoloution) the soviet system was allowed to become a rubber stamp on centralised power rather than the central power deriving its authority from its people through the soviets.

Essentially anarchy is the way forward since any socialism derived form fixed structures does not have the flexibility to adpat to the ever changing needs of the population. It also allows for the people to be ever vigialnt and to evict the corrupt, ineffective and inefficient from postions of power as the need arises and serves to keep the leaders on their toes

Oh yes, Celine wuz also praised by Trotsky for his stylistic innovation which constituted a breakthrough in itself.

Lenin: The proof of the pudding is in the eating of it.

Marx: History is made, but it is made by men.

Bored with this thread. Howzabout we mutate it into something more interesting, e.g. socialist credentials of Russell "The Voice" Watson?

(p.s. I am sending myself up there. To a certain extent.)

I fail to see how communism and anarchy have anything to do with morality. A communist government is just like a dictatorship, except instead of a single dictator telling individuals what to do, it is the entire country telling an individual what to do. Either way, the individual is enslaved by the decisions of others. The sole purpose of collectivism like that is to strip individuals of their rights. That is the most immoral action possible.

Anarchy isn't a moral thing either. If it existed, it would turn into a rule by brute force. Whoever has the biggest guns would do as they please because there would be no government protection to stop them from violating other's rights. Under anarchy, as it is with communism, man's life exists at the whim of others, with no freedom.

The constitution of the United States sets a form for the most moral government possible. Man has a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This doesn't mean a person is guaranteed to be happy and successful, just that each individual has the freedom to shape his or her own life and try. Capitalism is geared towards individual rights and that is why it is moral. It doesn't act as a dictator, with the sole purpose of enslaving its citizens. Instead, it allows people to act on their own, to produce, to realize their potential, and to live as they deem necessary.

I'm not saying that how we practice capitalism is perfect, because it's not. Just look at all of the ridiculous anti-trust laws that have been passed (I can give several examples, but it would take up way too much space. email me if you want me to list them). But even though the US isn't perfect, the framework is there. It was set over 200 years ago and if practiced as it was written, capitalism is the most moral government possible.

Sounds like democracy to me.

And about higher education, you couldn't be more wrong. Tuition isn't high taxes; it is a sum of the costs required that pay for a service provided. The services being paid for are food, lodging, and an education. The demand for highly trained people in the workforce is large, which means an advanced degree carries a certain value. College is trading one value (money) for another (degree). Education is simply another example of supply and demand, freely trading one thing for another.

I'm not too sure how to answer your third point. I think the government does "extend the same lifeline to individuals," through welfare and social security. Though I don't agree with these programs at all, they do exist. And I agree with you, these programs are uncapitalistic. They have no reason to be part of our government; we can survive without them.

As to your conclusion, a planned economy has no choice but to violate individual rights. I shudder to think what would happen if my government told me how much money I was allowed to make next year. People should rely on their own ability rather than a consensus. Anywhere where there is a minimum and maximum salary, there will always be people not making what they deserve, and other people making what they don't deserve. Motive to produce would be stifled because people would see that no matter how hard they tried, they could never raise above the limit. A system like that would produce a society of unproductive leaches who depend on the ability of others for survival.

As for democracy - a separate but related question: can democracy work in an economic system in which all individuals have democratic rights? Athens required a slave class to guarantee the rights of its citizen class. 18th-19th century Britain democratised rapidly but did not extend those rights to its colonies. 20th-21st century America relies upon domination of a global economy for its success but can this global economy only work when large proportions of it are unfree? America's great advantage over previous world leaders, it seems to me, is in moving a massive portion of its unfree producer class out of its direct government - this is the actual reason the right wing there are so scared of international and 'world government' bodies, surely, not because of the risk of America being forced to have a freedom-hobbling constitution but because of the risk of its producer countries getting the American one.

And about people having to forfeit their ability to strike for the national good, nothing was there to keep them from quitting. If you are not happy with your job, you leave and find a different one. People should be paid for the value of the work they provide. If an employer won’t do that, then his employees will leave and find another employer who does pay for their value. Striking isn't a constitutional right, but freedom to choose is. Nothing kept them from finding new jobs during WWII.

Then you go on to say that intelligence isn't a valued skill in Capitalism. If a businessman didn't rely on intelligence to succeed, then what else is there? Faith? Simply having faith that you will succeed isn't enough to actually succeed. You can't expect to get things just because you want them really badly and have faith that they will mystically come to you one day. That rarely happens. Intelligence is what makes people successful in Capitalism. It's the rational minded approach to business and trade that makes fortunes; the ability to analyze complex systems of supply and demand; to know when to buy and when to sell -- all of this comes from intelligence. So think twice next time you say that capitalism doesn't value intelligence.

crazy dave stop waving Free Market Theory #101 at us: yes yes it's always exciting when you discover something that explains the entire world to your satisfaction — rationalism is now sitting down and wondering why the Solution to Everyone's Problems (first suggested 300 yrs ago) has in fact *failed* to appeal to large numbers of people for so long.

(b) No thanks, Dave.

(c) The "intelligence" sub-debate above will forever be meaningless without some semantic digging: in Dave's Orange County free-market fantasia, there is actually no such thing as intelligence, only profitability. Leave alone the issue of education, the process of using someone else's profitability to purchase your own. I hope Dave doesn't walk into job interviews expecting an IQ test rather than a resume.

(d) Saying "we can survive without" welfare and social security is really, really hilarious, insofar as Dave doesn't seem to realize that by "we" he means maybe himself, and not people who actually collect welfare or social security. Or maybe his worldview will culminate in a stirring request that we abolish child labor laws so that impoverished children can go find a new job that pays them what their labor is worth!

(e) Northwestern really does spawn a ridiculous number of students who get exposed to free market theory during their second year and just go absolutely nuts at finding a pithy little idea that cuts through their suburban political apathy and justifies to them why they shouldn't care about anything at all. University of Chicago students are at least forced to gain some technical understanding of it, what with the prestigious Nobel Prize history and all. And I say that as a Northwestern grad, not a U of C one.

(f) The reason Dave's free-market solipsisms will always tempt others to smack him in the face is that they pretend Baby A born up in Winnetka is somehow "competing" evenly with Baby B born down here in the Robert Taylor homes -- a lie of morbid and sickening magnitude, a lie that could only come from someone with basically no mental concept of a world beyond his own class. It's the sort of lie that can only come from a recent convert with a half-assed idea of how free-market theory actually works; even the most laissez-faire economists know enough about sociology to see where the safety rails need to be put up. Dave's half-assed grasp of the very gospel he preaches is pretty clear in his line about "ridiculous anti-trust laws," wherein he momentarily forgets the issue of how crucial competition is meant to be to his precious money-talks fantasy.

The US became the most successful country in the world in large part because it has an incredible plenitude of natural resources and because its closest competitors during the period of its rise spent that time tearing each other to bits. This isn't to belittle the USA's remarkable historical achievement, just to point out that its economic and political system probably had less to do with it than you think.

That would explain the Crystal Cathedral and TBN around here along with Disneyland -- the fact that TBN is right across the freeway from South Coast Plaza is especially hilarious.

And now this, you see, this is Crazy Dave.

Crazy Dave: This place is quiet! Is there anyone here? *Calls*
*Silence*
Crazy Dave: Then I can say my spell!! Huzzah!!
*mumbles mantra he found in overlooked document in college library, voice low at first but rising to a shouted climax* CD: .... [fill in to taste] .... So Solid Aliyaah J-Zay Nas Pinkreton roXor!! FIAT!! FIAT!! FIAT!!
*suddenly he is no longer alone*
Mewlip: "You have called us. What do you want?"
CD: "To state my beliefs and call on my gods! Who are you?"
Mewlip: "I think you know, In your heart you know."
CD: "B-but..."
*voice choked off*
*mewlips feed*

Nitsuh: In (c) you said there is no such thing as intelligence. Where do the new ideas come from? Without intelligence, how was the light bulb invented? It certainly didn't just show up one day. In (e) you imply that Northwestern has brainwashed me. It hasn't. I am in the engineering school, and have not taken a politics class or econ class while being here. The school has nothing to do with my thoughts on these matters. In (f) you brought up my comment on the ridiculous anti-trust laws. That's just what most of them are; ridiculous. If you had read anything at all of their history you would see what I'm talking about. The whole idea behind these vague and poorly written laws is to give the government the power to say "Competition is good, it's what makes us work," while at the same time condemning it. What, so competition is good but too much competition is bad? Why is there a line there? It's all right for a smaller businessman to do certain things to improve his conditions and profitability, but at the same time it is offensive when a bigger businessman does the same actions? Suddenly, the most competitive people become the most hated simply because they were successful. That is why I said the anti-trust laws were ridiculous.

Ok, about the whole mark s thing, yes in my haste I mis-interpreted what he wrote. I thought he was saying rationalism has failed. My bad.

And the evil dave thing was before my time. I never knew about him till now.

Though I could respond to the rest of the posts, it would take more effort than I am willing to give you all. Because even if I did answer everything, it wouldn't change any of your stubborn, collectivist views. A society based on communism or socialism will never work. It hasn't in the past, and it never will in the future. It's been documented, and the books are closed. It simply doesn't work. Collectivism in any form exists to take away an individual's rights, and that is the flaw. Such a system would never flourish because individual liberty is what makes people productive. You can't chain a person down to a collective and then tell him to work as hard as he can so everyone but him can be happy. Nobody would excel in that kind of environment. In a system where nobody gets the fruit of their efforts, no effort would be made.

Might not. But I fail to see exactly where that proves your vision of unfettered capitalism *will*, see. Personally I'm suspicious of most baldly stated ideologies by boosters when it comes to economics, as they rarely allow for actual humans in them. Then again, I could say the same about my suspicions regarding religion.

I know I've been guilty of egregiously skim-reading this forum in the past, but I can't think of anyone here who has said that it would. I have seen a lot of thought-experiments and bandying about on how an idealized version of capitalism/communism/socialism would work.

Personally, I think the reason capitalism has been more successful than communism is because human beings are inherently selfish and a captialist system rewards selfishness. That's my grand economic theory in its entirety.

"Nitsuh ... you said there is no such thing as intelligence." No, I said nothing of the sort. I said that in this free-market fantasy you subscribe to, there is no such thing as "intelligence," because the only measure of anything's worth is its market value. To pretend that that high market value necessarily implies intelligence or goodness or morality is downright utopian.

"[Y]ou imply that Northwestern has brainwashed me." I said nothing of that sort, either: I simply said that you seem to be part of a large group of students across the country -- and at Northwestern maybe in particular -- who get their paws on two scraps of free-market ideology and then walk around thinking they've found the key to the greatest secrets of the universe. As for your engineering program, I'd respectfully point out that if confronted with any intensive study in sociology, political science, of world history, your mind-boggling dedication to what is basically a cartoon oversimplification of laissez-faire ideology would be forced to take on a little more nuance.

"In (f) you brought up my comment on the ridiculous anti-trust laws. That's just what most of them are; ridiculous." And that's just how you sound: ridiculous. The free-market ideologies you so ardently admire and champion are entirely based on a spirit of competition -- without it, none of these magical everything- works powers ascribed to laissez-faire philosophy can actually exist, which is why just about every free-market ideologue in existence recognizes, at least in theory, the necessity of maintaining competition. To put it another way, to have only one option in a given field is either (a) a monopoly, which you don't seem to have any problem with, or (b) a socialistic centrally-directed publically- owned industry, which you do seem to have a problem with, despite the fact that the socialistic model is at least nominally accountable to taxpayers. A lot of the opinions you're expressing here are practically incompatible with one another, much less the world as it actually works, and I think it'd be to your benefit to sit down and work through these issues in a bit more detail.

Now here's where I get annoyed with you: "If you had read anything at all of their history you would see what I'm talking about." I'm not even going to get into that statement. I'll instead go with your thoroughly confused analysis of anti-trust: "The whole idea behind these vague and poorly written laws is to give the government the power to say 'Competition is good, it's what makes us work,' while at the same time condemning it. What, so competition is good but too much competition is bad?" Please, Dave, do us a favor and dig deeper into the core reasoning behind anti-trust legislation, because the point you're missing strikes me as too obvious to even bother explaining here.

Let's close up with your most dangerously reductive statement: "A society based on communism or socialism will never work. It hasn't in the past, and it never will in the future. It's been documented, and the books are closed."

All of which is stupid, insofar as are and long have been nations on this earth with socialist or Marxist governments, and none of them have evaporated or sucked into giant black holes or really done provably worse than the non-socialist governments adjoining them -- to pretend otherwise is to put way too much focus on European history and ignore the rest of the world entirely. And, leaving that aside, it's even more stupid because you seem to think the "failure" of straight-out communism necessarily proves the preferability of a fast-and-loose anarchic free-market system (and yeah, note that despite your anti-anarchist comments above, the radical market deregulation you crave is just anarchy of a different sort) -- as if there's some unbreakable dialectic between the two, as if countries like Sweden aren't "working" just peachy with their capitalistic but highly-socialized governmental systems.

You're pretending, Dave, that the world can be arranged on a single theoretical trick, such that everything is sensible and coherent for ever and ever. The world doesn't work that way. And until you stop setting up this argument as a misunderstood 2-d cartoon of socialism versus a half-assed 2-d understanding of free-market ideology, winner take all, there's really no point in either of us even having thid discussion.

I say all of this not to be mean or even to say that you're entirely wrong, actually: I just think it'll be to your benefit (and make your arguments much more convincing) if you actually dig beyond the wee scrap of market-ism that you're clinging to and look at what those tidy little homilies actually mean for the real world.

"Anarchy isn't a moral thing either. If it existed, it would turn into a rule by brute force. Whoever has the biggest guns would do as they please because there would be no government protection to stop them from violating other's rights."

If you substitute "an entirely free market" for "anarchy," and insert "economic" before "force" and before "guns" ... you'd have a damned lucid explanation of what's wrong with Dave's whole laissez- faire argument!

A bit of background (I've just finished a SE-Asian course and couldn't resist): The Singapore/ Malaysian East Asian capitalist model was, in fact, predicated upon state intervention to assist business, but not the individual (the US economic model taken further?). The state ran cartels with favoured business interests.

The ruling elite in these countries have shown an ambiguous relationship with capitalism; when the ec. collapse occurred in '97 Mahathir denounced Jewish financiers as responsible. Since these gov'ts couldn't stimulate their economies by upping social security, much of the attempted IMF assistance went to cronies (ie the Soeharto family in Indonesia), and was later withdrawn, actuating further credit squeezes, and ultimately depression and revolution in Indonesia. Basically, this is the problem with business monopolies: it promotes patronage and collusion with gov't, subverting democracy and autocracy alike (see Thailand for a good example of a democracy completely run for business for the past 50 years).

http://i.imgur.com/KcFrTwR.jpg
1.0 out of 5 stars
Long live children killing the rich!
By Rich Peacock on April 13, 2017
I'm pleased to see the cover of this book contains pictures of children smashing things with hammers. It is reminiscent of the time Chinese Communists trained school children to kill their bourgeois teachers and a number were beaten to death.

https://www.amazon.com/product-reviews/0262533359/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_viewopt_rvwer?k=Communism+for+Kids&showViewpoints=1&reviewerType=all_reviews&pageNumber=1

140 people died on the inner-German border during the Cold War and each death is treated as an official tragedy that preaches the unspeakable evil of the Communist “Unrechtsstaat.” Meanwhile uncountable thousands are drowned by EU goons in the Mediterranean to resounding silence. https://t.co/dIKeQQQJQB

— Ben Miller (@benwritesthings) June 15, 2023