I don’t think capitalism has anything to do with voting. Capitalism is about the economic system of exchange and private ownership, not the method of choosing leaders. Private ownership of anything doesn’t exist in a socialist world but that doesn’t have anything to do with voting either.
And Silhouette, Everyone was accepting your version of what Marx was calling communism whether accurate or not. And we were telling you that because of that description of Marxist communism, what Marxism IS, is a violent effort to chase a fantasy (YOUR version of stateless communism whether the same as Marx’s or not).
Stateless communism is a fantasy. No one needs to read Marx or anyone else in order to determine that if you merely look at how often any kind of communism has been attempted. It is NEVER stateless. And it has always immediately become dictatorial as it must.
It is the stateless aspect that prevents it from ever becoming a real thing.
On one hand it’s an incentive to produce, but on the other hand it violates equality of opportunity.
Why wouldn’t a commie want a bank to exist?
It’s not the holding and protection of wealth that’s anti-Communist, it’s the use of that wealth to generate more wealth as a result of that wealth that is i.e. the anti-Meritocratic practice of being able to get richer because you’re already richer.
It’s the same thing that keeps house rent high - rich people being paid because they’re already richer. An extreme version of anti-Meritocracy.
The practice of ringing up someone every once in a while to fix something for you is not a full-time job. Fuck landlordship.
A commie operating a bank, like all workers employed by a bank currently do anyway, is completely normal. People like the facility of keeping their private property safe - it’s the act of owning the means of production that must be abolished if we’re going to pretend there’s any meritocracy left in the world. Regular things for normal consumption is fine. They’re yours and so they should be.
I agree that communists utilize banks and money as a means to control the population. The CCP even manipulates its currency in order to shift relative wealth (the Hong Kong banks, the World Banks).
Which is actually a war of thoughts and ideas.
People control themselves, but their selves control them.
The whole system of a life itself,
can oppress itself.
Class struggle is not the only form of trouble that can come about.
Sometimes people make their own trouble.
Like street drugs, for example.
All kinds of fools get addicted.
Do we blame the drugs themselves?
Playing the poor victim card only works sometimes.
I agree that it happens. I don’t know if religion is any worse. At least religion has a few unchangeable rules, stated “morals”. A communist government has no moral obligations to be concerned about…
I agree but I can see how keeping people crazy is a fundamental part of trying to maintain power over them. Telling people to not be crazy doesn’t stop those who are ensuring that they remain crazy.
The human body is made of many parts.
If one should succeed, the rest will do well.
If one part fails, the whole system falls down.
Organs are not equal though.
Organs are each unique and has its own job.
An ideal society realizes that many things are necessary.
All this talk of equality is crap to me.
We can be friends without being equal.
We blame a killing based on intent because it is the intent we hope to change by punishment.
Do you blame the people for having COVID or do you blame the CCP for giving it to them?
Do you blame a weed for growing in the wrong place?
Can you change a crazy person by blaming him for it?
If you don’t like something the way it is, isn’t it up to you to change it?
Isn’t a frustrated blamer just a crazy person?
You reminded me of James’ “planet of the apes” comments. Although I never saw him blaming them for it - probably because he didn’t expect to change it by blaming or wanting to punish them. “If you can’t fix it, deal with it.”
I was kinda hoping my earlier post would apply to something beyond the punishment system.
True cause, never mind the crazy contraptions of crime and innocence.
I think sometimes a dream is preferable compared to being awake.
Some part of me wants to torture and destroy all life.
It’s on the edge of destruction.
It’s connected with tubes going into my brain and heart.
I’m hoping i can out-live this.
I’m pleased with my light side.
I love life without hate, anger, frustration, thirst, etc.
But some part of me is really holding me back.
That’s my bubble.
Let’s say i got up one morning, and said : I own 2000 square feet of land,
and nobody gets to use it unless they either buy it from me or get my permission to use it…
That only works if the people were foolish enough to believe me.
However, if i had 100 armed men on the land,
they would enforce my idea. They would help to own the land.
Land ownership is a form of militarism.
The military is the strong arm of the bourgeois elite.
The military is a giant mind controlled mercinary gang.
Sure, they can do good things,
but all they are is trained to obey, equipped with the best weapons,
then deployed due to a national interest.
On the other hand, a collectivist plot of land,
is shared between people that want to cultivate it.
The workers can arm themselves, but not in the same fashion as a military.
Private ownership of anything is fine for Socialism - just not the use of it as capital. Personal use/consumption is still fine - you still have your own stuff. You just don’t use it to make more money. The stuff being used to make more money (means of production) is not privately owned.
Capitalism is voting with your money - more money, more power, more leadership. The more unequal wealth gets, the more the rich pull away with their ability to control things, the more they can rig the system in their favour - and the icing on the cake is that because it’s “private” the less conspicuous it is. The only difference between that and a government is that government is out in the open and visible. Any corruption is obvious, but apparently simply hiding the corruption is the capitalist solution.
You need to read Marx to realise that all these “attempts” lacked crucial ingredients - like occurring in late Capitalist societies.
It’s like using salt instead of sugar and then complaining that cakes necessarily taste like crap and they’re a fantasy.
You just write it off as “Statelessness = impossible” and attempts calling themselves Communist and failing is enough for you with zero regard for precision and detail - it’s just lazy, the same as being too lazy to actually read Marx, and claiming nobody needs to read Marx to know what it is and that it’s impossible.
That’s your “bubble”, and because you suffer from living in your bubble you assume that everyone else does too.
All I’m doing is trying to explore outside of bubbles.
If statelessness is impossible in all possible circumstances, let sufficient studies confirm as much with scientific rigor. Until then, the jury is NOT out, stop pretending it is. Your “can’t win don’t try” attitude is self-fulfilling, allowing you to remain safely in your bubble.
Not so. Capitalism is used in democratic environments
Democracies forbid purchasing of votes although people are always breaking laws regardless of the type of government. In socialist systems (centrally controlled - anti-democratic) only the elite, ownership class have any rights or actual authority (whether they are allowed to vote or not). It is in socialism that more money can purchase more political influence through voting or not. You seem to have it all backwards.
And YOU complain that others do not read the material first?
I think you have corporate “crony capitalism” (hidden socialism using corporations as disguise) confused with actual capitalism (free trade protected by anti-trust laws). The US is infected with a great deal of that because open socialism is unpopular and actually unconstitutional. So they have been sneaking in their Marxism through corporate hegemony.
You can’t use the current US as an example of capitalism simply because the US is currently in a Sun Tzu internal takeover war that has been going on for a long time (decades). Mr Trump opposes the corrupt take over so he has tremendous internal push back from the hidden, corporate crony capitalist/Marxist elites and their establishment pundits. Mr Trump is trying to get rid of the very kind of corrupt abuse of power that you are talking about. I suspect that you, as many people here, have been fooled into standing up for the antithesis of your own ethics.
No I explained why it is impossible and gave real world examples, as did urwrong.
In Seattle Washington just a couple of months ago, the city mayor allowed for a Marxist group to take possession of a part of the downtown city (7 blocks worth). Their city council is run by a devout Marxist. Police were not allowed to interfere at all. She declared, “Maybe it will be a summer of love. We will see”.
Did you see what happened? Did you read the experimental data? Very probably not so let me tell you what happened.
Within only two weeks that collection of anti-capitalist millennial communists were impoverish, living on handouts from outside of the blocked off “CHAP Zone”, had shot and killed one white teenager for speaking up by the only person allowed to have a gun (black of course), and beat another nearly to death. The self appointed leader (the “Party of the People” leader also black) stood above the crowd telling every white person to give their money to the black person next to them, saying, “I want every one of you white people to give $10 to the black person next to you. And I can see every one of your faces. I will remember your faces.” - intimidation, coercion, violence, and murder. Exactly as China does except these were a bunch of black and white US born millennials.
That was their communist “summer of love”. The city Mayor is culpable for murder with her experiment in communist love.
New York state governor Mr Cuomo and New York city mayor Mr de Blasio, both communists are even more guilty of condoning and promoting impoverishment, criminality, and murder (more than 3000 people killed directly from governor and mayor edicts). Look at New York city now after communist rule. Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago are similar under socialist (not quite communist yet) rule. And now they demand more money (after enriching themselves) from the federal government. And in Congress any stimulus help for COVID relief is being held up in hostage until they get more free money from the nation’s other states (extortion).
The Marxist ploy is to stand for the opposite of what they really do (hypocrisy). It seems that they have you, just as those millennials, standing on the opposite side of your own ethics.
Lmao, so Wikipedia is suddenly okay again now you (mistakenly) think it’s supporting your misinformation?
Actually READ the quotes you provide next time:
See that bit where it clarifies “social ownership” as being “of the means of production and workers’ self-managements of enterprises” earlier in the quote?
Yeah - that’s the bit you’re conveniently ignoring in order to interpret “social ownership [as] the one common element” as not specifically referring to what it literally just clarified that it specificially referred to, but instead as necessarily applying to ALL things. Y’know what, I bet there are obscure types of Socialism where people share toothbrushes, but if you want to talk about Marxism, you are just highlighting yet more ignorance on your part.
Yes, this is what I was saying:
I clarify that Democracy and Capitalism are separate, and the latter needs the former though in practice it’s not much of a consolation.
Why are you trying to “correct me” with my own point?
I say Capitalism is a sort of voting system, not that it “is” Democracy.
So YESSS, I DOOO complain that others are not reading the material first
And YOU have it backwards (AGAIN) trying to make out like Socialism has an elite ownership class where money buys votes. LITERALLY the opposite of Marxism. And YESSS, even though China told you that they were perfect examples of Marxism, all the government corruption they impose is indisputable proof that government isn’t simply regular working class elected people - it was set up as a dictatorship just like China always has been, merely “calling itself” Communist. The opposite of being working-class-run.
It’s infuriating how you insist on constantly coming out with completely inverted nonsense!!!
Stop wasting everyone’s time with it.
Socialism has nothing to do with “Crony Capitalism”. Crony Capitalism is just what eventually happens when you try to moderate Capitalism with a State. The State gets bought unofficially and tacitly by capitalists such that they advertise themselves overtly as appealing to the working class to try and fool them into voting them in, but covertly they allow in law after law to protect and provide for capitalists. The opposite of a Socialist State.
No conspiracy theory scapegoats are necessary here - it’s all a natural product of Capitalism’s effects playing out in the real world. Trump was elected to facilitate these effects in line with the Republican agenda. Ridding this corruption can’t even be achieved by the Democrats, they’re both too right-leaning. The left dominate education and celebrity, and seem to only be able to influence superficial attitudes, but the core economic structures and politics remain as rightist as ever.
You gave and continue to provide anecdotes.
This is not science.
And this Seattle fiasco is all the most disaffected and angry youths lashing out at all the shit they’ve been subjected to as a result of Capitalism - of course it’s going to be a catastrophe. That’s why I keep saying I’m against revolution - rage isn’t what we need to transform society into something better.
So are you now saying that Wikipedia is wrong after to objecting to me saying that it isn’t always right?
I’ll give you that mere socialism doesn’t directly specify the lack of private property, but communism, the result of socialism, does expressly demand the total lack of private property. I see socialism as merely a short interim in-between. In effect, socialism is communism at birth.
Okay let’s talk about communist Marxism (again). That is what I was talking about anyway. Let’s see how “ignorant” I have been.
… bracketed are my inserts.
Your argument is “Oh but he didn’t REALLY mean all private property so you don’t need to worry. He only meant the property of those OTHER bad oppressive people.” Always depending on the nuance of wording to be adjusted as time goes on -
.
That is not true in democratic environments. Quote a source for that assertion.
Every democratic nation allows for one person - one vote.
I thought you were going to say that. Nothing is going to be “science” until it agrees with you. Real life observations don’t count. So how many people do you want to murder in your “scientific experiment”?
Wikipedia concords with Marxism and not your misinformation - and I simply pointed out why your misinformation is misinformation.
Your History.com article at least agrees with what I was saying about Socialism allowing individuals to own property, and that it’s just the means of production that are publically owned.
But for some reason you still can’t resist inserting your own misinformation into your quotations can you?!
From simply getting at least what you need (from each according to their abilities) you gotta go add in this contradictory bullshit: “[by government decree and taken back at any time - so not actually privately owned]”.
No, the Socialist government is just other working class people according to Marx if you’d just fucking read a book by him - not some oppressive dictatorial regime that acts against the working class and threatens to take back what is given at any time
And this: “[to the degree dictated by the State - if you are breathing, you don’t “need” any more. If you stopped breathing you don’t need any more either - you get the least we care to give you and you better claim to like it or we won’t have a need for you]” - turns an already dubious “Pocket Sense” article that tries to make out that anything beyond daily survival is actively denied from anyone… into some weird extremist threat about merely breathing… I mean, what the actual fuck dude? You are messed up. Where in the hell does Marx support that and why the hell would any Marxist support that? Marxists support things that Marx wrote (and not necessarily every single detail!) They don’t want people to be stripped down to barely breathing - how you could even begin to think that’s what anyone wants is fucked up.
Leave out your paranoid “bracketed inserts” in future, please. They’re completely unnecessary, and just more misinformation. Just leave the texts alone for what they actually say.
The means of production.
Not “the property of those OTHER bad oppressive people” or any other unnecessary nonsense you keep trying to inject into a perfectly clear instruction. No the instruction isn’t subject to change as time goes on, it means what it says - nothing more or less. Why can’t you accept that without imagining some evil malevolent forces out to come get us all as soon as we turn our backs - that’s in YOUR head. If you could just look at the words for what they literally are, you might be able to understand this topic - but until then you’d be doing everyone a favour if you just stopped insisting on all the conspiracy shit.
It’s really not a complex assertation - it’s just a common way of thinking of the market pricing system known as Dollar voting.
Just no, idiot.
I have nothing to do with what counts as scientific rigor. The scientific method stands alone and has everything to do with real life observations: of experimental data extracted from tightly and specifically calculated scenarios.
This is the most basic of requirements for what constitutes science - if you haven’t carefully controlled for what you’re measuring, if you aren’t isolating specific variables to test, it’s not going to be sufficiently clear what the results exactly mean. You don’t just “let some shit happen” and then at some point down the line decide what you think it all means and count that as sufficient evidence for what always happens when you let that kind of shit happen. That’s barely scientific at all - you have to be precise and thorough, trying all different kinds of situations to test against controlled conditions and be exhaustive.
You really have no scientific education, do you.
Yeah coz you can’t disagree with the odd aspect of Marxism without being completely against all Marxism.
That “dollar voting” wasn’t talking about policies or political leaders, you idiot. It is about “voting” for preferred products through paying more.
I’d like to see what your arrangement for a scientific double-blind study on communism would look like. How many people would you be willing to sacrifice for the cause?
