NationStates Jolt Archive

I would think Lenin was a pretty good commie too...


I am the walrus? I am the walrus?

(SOrry had to get the obligatory The Big Lebowski quote out of the way. Sorry if I didn't read on and see someone else already do the same :)

(Heh. Might be time to give it up, now, comrade. They called themselves communists... contrary to what I said? When what I said was a quote by their foreign minister, stating that they were not communists. Woah. Well. There you go then.

This is a stupid, stupid argument.

Communism is an economic theory.
I believe that it will follow capitalism, but I'm not personally all that bothered.

Democracy is a political theory, and democracy has not been realised on earth in any serious fashion, never mind communism.

The core issue that must be recognised, the one about which I care far more than any economic issue, is one of democracy. Democracy is, as one of my characters said, popular rule, not popular representation.
What makes communism relatively appealing is that it sits well with direct democracy, where only representative democracy has yet been shown to sit well with capitalism. Representative democracy denies the common person direct access to the political struggle, and makes him or her a slave to the economic issue of the day, be it capitalist, communist, or something far more primitive.

Does nobody understand? This isn't me trying to take credit for anything, these are pre-existing conditions that have stuff all to do with the Khmer Rouge... I don't give a damn about the Khmer Rouge, they're a pointless tangent, like fascism. The fact is that communism is an economic issue, not a political one, and that the Khmer Rouge were neither communist in economics nor democrat in politics, and as such really fricking boring and a waste of time and lives. If you think they were communist, you're only wasting your own time, and I'm done lending you mine.)


*applause*

Great post.

(directed towards author)
Did you ever grow up in a communist country? I did. The big honcho to be exact; USSR. Tell me, do people escaping from USSR and fleeing to America sounds like a good systems? And YOU only said the pros. Not the cons! Rember when Stalin killed millions of innocent people? Someone here please have common sense. And free health care among other things; You're Right! But whoever said it was good? Sorry to break it to you, but you'd better off curing yourself then going to the hospital. Communist really don't direct to much money to public interest, you know what I mean? And about all the classes that have a voice in the government... Not really. They had a say in the government; but had no decision.

if you look at communism and you look at capitalism, there are some wonderful parralels to draw.

communism as it has been implemented, and i do grant that it has never been truly tried, with proletariat revolution and all the granduer, has tried to con the masses into thinking they were working for the greater good, when in reality they were working for the benefit of a few, and a sort of equal poverty between those who werent of the administration.

in this, i see corporate america. people working, thinking they benefit themselves, when in reality, the money only goes up.

neither of them work. were communism implemented correctly, it would work a fuckload better. this is because it takes a step towards a classless society...b ut it fails to eliminate one thing. the state. the state is the ever powerful, vertically organized hierarchy that completely eliminates the concept of a classless society. you cannot be free of oppression until you are free of the state.

as an anarchist, i work towards a method of ORGANIZATION in which people will be able to function in a horizontally organized society with full rights, but at the same time with protection from mob rule, from what the common conception of anarchy is...mob rule, ocharchy (which is not anarchy according to anarchist definition, as well as the root of the word, if you bother to find it.)

ps...there was a post a while back about the poor being just as able to succeed as the rich. think so? really think so? then go die. you make me sick. if you feel like listening instead of pulling i love america and the flag and the president and the 4th of july bullshit out of your ass...then ask.

I'll apologize in advance for the long post.

I do agree with this - labour without planning is worthless. A socialist economy would certainly be directed by thought, and might remove a lot of the wastage in capitalism.

Any economic system would have to be directed by thought, and the one which properly values (rewarding and emphasizing its progress and its contributors properly) thought as above labor will acheive the greatest progress by far. Even a socialist system would have to emphasize and invest it's 'labor' in thought to maximize progress, which puts at issue the idea of giving knowledge-generated profit to the laborers.

Would one say Edison is 'exploiting' his light bulb workers by discovering and making possible their jobs and raising everyone's standard of living? Value and wealth are not static, more can be created out of what was less. There can exist mutual profit between the originator of the idea and the laborers who are provided paying wages.

Another idea of mutual profit vs. static profit: If workers employ a new and more efficient way of producing their product, in their same time of work using only the same amount of labor but producing more value, it is possible that both the bosses and the workers could earn more money. The boss gets more profit.. so did 'exploitation' occur? No. Profit can occur without exploitation. I will permit that exploitation can and does result in profit, but it wouldn't generate wealth in the same way as actually applying ingenuity.

Even with all the money Edison made from his work, he hasn't and unlikley would ever be fully compensated for the wealth his ingenuity produced- as even today (with Edison long dead) his contributions remain useful for our well being and he has a share in the responsibility for the net advantage attained by anyone who buys a lightbulb. And what about the workers in the factories making the light bulbs? Their value in society began with the lightbulbs they produced and ended when those lightbulbs flickered and burnt out. And as they have died, they have since been replaced by other common laborers (or machines, depending upon how they do it now) serving the same limted-time purpose. And again, even the value of their labor was made possible only after they were trained and provided the knowledge of how to be useful in creating them. Thus, I think those laborers seem to be paid for their knowledge they inherit which they then employ in the process of producing products, which makes their labor valuable (important!!), so even in the value of the labor, knowledge is sourced.

As for wastage, in either situation, I would think it would be dependent upon the specifics of the system and wouldn't necissarily be because of the system (haven't thought about it much.) Though I have to doubt that socialism in general would encourage it more, because as an economic system it (in my view, improperly) emphasizes the 'value' of labor over that of the mind.

Well, while you anticipated it, I certainly would make the point that market manipulation is unproductive yet reaps great benefits for individuals.
Fair enough. I just wanted to seperate this issue from that of the value of knowledge, for sake of clarity.


A genius born in the Third World might never get the chance to express that because that country only offered manual labour jobs and offered no education. Even in the UK, a clever student who goes to a run-down comprehensive school will do less well than one who goes to a private one, and even if he displays ingenuity and skill, may find it hard to succeed in life.

I agree that opportunity is not always equal for everyone and that people can be born into more or less fortunate situations. (In Vonnegut's 'Hocus Pocus', he imagines the poor and uneducated people who seem to have no place in society but prison as saying: "Sorry for being born".)

They may be deprived of a chance at contributing knowledge to their society, but that chance could only have been made possible to them in the first place by previous contibutions-- demonstrating the wealth and oppurtunity they afford us, and that the difference in situations that this creates for future generations.


While Harvard or MIT will produce grads who earn more, and have cleverer students, class certainly has an effect, and it's much easier for a wealthy student to get in to any university than a poor one of equivalent merit.

They have a right to demand such wages for superior education. And lesser universities looking for intelligent students will be willing to take the poorer one of equivalent merit, as a means of gaining what quality students they are capable of gaining. The universities that best take advantage of these 'bargains' will best rise in the quality of their student environment, and improve the standing of the school. Class does have an effect- but the inequalities between class and ability create opportunities for businesses, universities and the like, it's in their own interests to constantly look at lowers classes for opportunities to find quality minds, laborers, etc. at a lower cost, or more easily available to improve their own standing. This creates a oppurtunity and movement between classes.

That said, I have a special concern for how there seems to be a pattern of wealth being able to reinvest and regenerate itself (albeit cheifly for those with the ambition to use it for an education or a business, and still bound by a need to provide a contribution as opposed to just throwing wealth around.) I don't think that everyone and anyone with money can keep it forever but still, for the ambitious people, inherited wealth does seem to provide them an advantage, so that even an average wealthy person will in the end be better off than a poor genius, who even after moving up in the world and through the classes and taking advantages of all his oppurtunities, could possibly still be less well off than an average-minded wealthy man- and this subject I do think deserves concern and fleshing out, as I have no complete explanation for it.

(another note I typed but didn't seem to have a place in the rest of my post)
Labor is a VALUE when it is a SOURCE of a human's well being. When the two are disconnected, (your values guaranteed for you by the state and your labor done not by your desire, but by compulsion of the state) Labor no longer is a VALUE to a person who's needs are met anyway, which brings us to the classic (and still unanswered) argument of working motivation and proper reward.

I haven't answered the rest of your post because this is a ton of info right here as it is. Perhaps we could continue in a different thread or by email?

You talk about the light bulb. What about the satelitte?

Bump

(directed towards author)
Did you ever grow up in a communist country? I did. The big honcho to be exact; USSR. Tell me, do people escaping from USSR and fleeing to America sounds like a good systems? And YOU only said the pros. Not the cons! Rember when Stalin killed millions of innocent people? Someone here please have common sense. And free health care among other things; You're Right! But whoever said it was good? Sorry to break it to you, but you'd better off curing yourself then going to the hospital. Communist really don't direct to much money to public interest, you know what I mean? And about all the classes that have a voice in the government... Not really. They had a say in the government; but had no decision.

Exactly. even if those corrupt bastards did pour money into the public services though, a bit of basic contemplation will reveal that a competitive market produces better quality of service than a government monopoly anyway.

So is equal opportunity.....


Equal opportunity is not reached by the government helping some people more than others because they are more needy. Equal opportunity is not the same as equal reception of wealth.

Opportunity implies potential. If the government hands everyone the same sum of cash and stops them trading freely, that's not equal opportunity, it's equal wealth. Equal opportunity is reached when people's wages are bound only by how valuable their services are. Equal opportunity to earn an unlimited amount. That is Laissez-faire capitalism.

My family left Russia when communism fell in 1991. We would have left before but the government wouldn't let us. As a matter of fact, you got no political freedoms there, and the civil rights weren't that much better. On top of that, my dad was an engineer doing R&D work in defense and he made the same wage as any idiot shoveling coal.

Does that sound right to you? You have no choice but to do more work and live the same way as anyone else.

If you love communism so much, go live in Cuba, you idealistic dipshit. See how you like it.

If you love communism so much, go live in Cuba, you idealistic dipshit. See how you like it.

"Piss off to Cuba" is my standard advice to any communists who complain about life in the states or europe.

To control a man's property is to control the man even to end his life by denying the necessities of life. Unless a man has free and private control over his own property he is a total and utter slave with no rights and no independent existance. He is no more than cattle. Hence communism is not a legitimate form of government, it is simply slavery by another name.

Communism stinks like my shoes because when a communist nation became strong, they messed up horribly. :sniper:

Because 100+ million murdered people in the USSR and the PRC alone can't be wrong.

http://www.freedomsnest.com/rumrud.html
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/