A political statement.Follow

Damn it, I'll type this again, grr. (Alt+whatever [not F-4] in Firefox kills the window/tab....)

Argh, I knew he was British a few days ago :|, damn short term memory. Thanks for pointing it out, have a habit of assuming anyone that speaks/types english fluently is American (I know, I know....) Nationalistic side to me I guess. Anyway, it's still something I'm curious about Britain or the States isn't too big a difference in the question, changes it from ours to theirs.

Edit: damn typos ><

Edited, Tue Jul 13 21:49:26 2004 by AriesGhost

It's pretty taboo here, not something you see alot of. Gotta go to North Idaho to find the bastions.

Hmmm.... things seem to be working backwards. Communism is collapsing and being replaced by capitalist systems or slowly eding towards more capitalistic systems. Kinda shoots your whole theory all to hell.

I saw it, I was stating more that its taboo to be communist in the states, not that it was there. He did say it was illegal there. They have a few strange "quirks," if you will. I could wholly imagine it is illegal. Hell, I'm surprised it's not completely here after McCarthy whipped out his burning sticks and set America into deep freeze.

Stok, please off your puppet.

Yes, it is, however the problem is giving up personl properties, thats going to be the killer. I'll read up more on Marxs definition/theory tonight.

It's like reading a law book and working through the double speak at times.


Yeah, it's difficult to research a topic before you ******* out oppinions about it, isn't it.

He's referring to a mixed up bag of different concepts and political groups that he thinks is "communist". I'm reasonably sure he parrots the "party line" just cause he thinks it makes him look cool or something.

Read Marx. Communism is *not* a government. You can't get there via an overthrow of a governent (yeah. Kind of a shocker for Lenin and Mao, huh?). You cannot *chose* to change to communism. You can't vote to get there. The very concept of having a communist party in a democracy is absurd if you actually understand what Communism is.

Marx was talking about a global economy. He was looking at the trend in the 19th century where those who conrol the means of production were gradually taking ever larger amounts of "everything". He was looking at "pure" capitalism, and extrapolating what would become of the worls over time. He was envisioning that in the future, we'd have markets that covered the whole world (much as we do now), and that the capitlists would control them all. The role of governents in Marx's vision was restricted (except in those cases where the government *was* the means of production of course). What would matter wasn't the size of one's armies, but the size of one's bank balance. And *all* the wealth and power would be controled by a very small number of people.

In that world, he imagined that the laborers would recieve no benefit from the capitalists. And so, they would uniformly rise up. He realized that their wealth relied upon the workers labor. Stop working, and the capitalists lose. He never specified *how* this would happen. It certainly did not have to be any sort of revolution. It would simply be a change, where the power would switch to the workers, and they would gain the fruits of their labors instead of people who just happened to have their names on the letterhead. This was something that would happen globally. Not in just one nation. It required that all workers in all nations across the globe rise up in this fashion, or it wouldn't work. It was not a government. It was a global thing across all governments.


Um. But that never happened. And it *wont* happen. Either Marx was wrong about capitalism and the path it would take, or the fear that he was right caused it to take a different path. No one can say. However, what we've developed in the last century is a mix of capitalism and "socialism". Our governments have specifically gone out of their way to protect the workers and ensure fair wages and prevent monoplies. And so the negatives that Marx saw simply never occured. We had a bunch of "little revolutions" in the form of labor strikes, which prevented true communism from ever occuring by preventing the conditions (unchecked capitalism) from ever occuring. And meanwhile, our workers live in much greater luxury then Marx envisioned as well. He simply missed the fact that capitalism also vastly increases technological growth, and that results in vastly improved standards of living.


In fact, the nations that tried to force communists states (as bizarre as that thought actually is), only ended up removing the benefits of capitalism from their economies and their work forces, while realising none of the benefits that Marx envisioned. This was largely because the "benefit" of communism was freedom from capitalism. Since capitalsim didn't develop in quite the "evil" direction Marx envisioned, those nations basically just hurt themselves. And since their form of communism wasn't global, it could not possibly work. All it did was reduce the efficiency of their economies.


But then, anyone who actually read Marx and undersood what he was talking about would know this. And that's why the whole concept of a "communist party" is laughable. It's just not a gaol you can work towards. But some people get caught up on lables I guess...

This is why I wish i'd never let my age slip on these forums, normally this would have said: He's referring to a mixed up bag of different concepts and political groups that he thinks is "communist". I'm reasonably sure he parrots the "party line" just cause he's an idiot. Don't try ****** patronising me son, lets keep the discusion political and not resosrt to personal digs at each other, i think the fact that you can't hold up an argument without resorting to this tells us who really is the child on this thread.



No, i don't think mao or lenin or che, or any other communist revoloutionary would give a **** what a middle class capitalist would say about it, its people like you they revolted against, i don't think your warped opinion would shock them at all.



thats what i have been saying



they are total opostise, communism is the proletariat owning the country, and capitalism means that could never happen, i don't see how anything could be much more different from communism



I didn't say it was democratic, what we see now in the usa and in the uk is not democracy, if it were true democracy then i would have just as much say in what goes on as any lord, and all americans would have as much to say as any senator, working class people never get into parliment, and i think its pretty rare they get into the senate. When i say communism, i mean the proletariat owning the state, and the proletariat are a majority, the only way you could prove me wrong with your line of thinking is if the majority of the working class WANTED to be in the hands of lords, members of parliment and senators, the only feasable way the proletariat can take over britain is by "putting a gun to the opponents head", they will decide wether to do that democratically, should we, A keep on being ruled by the middle class or should we B "put a gun to the head" of the middle class?

Edited, Wed Jul 14 07:44:35 2004 by Dracoid

Hehe. And none of your arguments at all change the fact that no government or "party" that today calls itself communist, or marxist has anything remotedly to do with Marx's concept of communism. Other then the name, and a vague idea of "helping the people by fighting those darn capitalists".


Look. You brought up a great example. Marx did assume that if you had two acres of land and two people, that they'd both make the same use out of it, and therefore should get the same result. The problem is that capitalism *allows* for one guy to build a computer manufacturing company with his hypothetical 1 acre and make a lot more money. Um... But capitalism only allows that if the result of his company has greater value (demand) then the sheep that he'd otherwise raise on that land. He gets rich because he comes up with a way to use the resources that is more valueable to others.


And that's the fundamental flaw to communism and all spinoffs of communism. Capitalism relies on entrepenuerism, which not everyone has. Everyone can't come up with "the next big idea". Only one person can. But everyone does benefit from it in the long run. That's the basis of modern capitalsim (which, I'll add for completeness' sake, is also not the same capitalism that Marx was talking about). Since no amount of communism can make everyone come up with equally great ideas about how to utlize their resources, the only way to make sure that the output and gains from both men with their acre's of land is to force them to both raise sheep. See. That way neither of them can get more then the other. It makes a whole lot of sense if you have no ambition to have a nation that does anything other then raise sheep for a living. Um... But then you end up with a nation that does nothing but raise sheep. Meanwhile everyone else is building cars and computers and cell phones. Think about it...

Couple more points:



I have no idea how old you are Dracoid. Honestly. That was also a pretty tame "jab". I didn't make the comment out of any personal observation about you, but just that most people I've run into who spout stuff about how "great" communism is (or any other kinda whacko idea), usually are underinformed about the topic, and really does just think it's "cool" to be "different". It's the psuedo-intellectual thing I guess. It allows you to be in a "special" crowd that can act like they know something secret that others don't. But that's just my observation. I've seen and met a dozen people just like that. You could be different, but based on the way you've posted about this topic, I'm betting you fit the profile.

Take that however you want.




Yet, oddly, here in the states, we did exactly that. We "put the gun to the head" of the ruling class and the "proletariate" then chose a system with elected representatives, instead of some sort of chaotic system where everyone tried to lead directly.

If everyone had as much say as a senator, then who'd do everything else? Everyone would spend all their time making decisions about the country, and not enough time doing things like growing enough food for everyone to eat.

That's kind of a flaw, don't you think?

FoS? It was all Taco's fault.