REAL war protest

[Fanger]

Fanger, when you'll get torn lim from lim you'll understand better what US wellfare is all about. The blood and life of others. Since any of you will experience some drama courtesy of US, all that capitalistic theory is gold. Its the hogwash with wich your eyes are washed and told its pure water. It feels the same and even if it smells funny you're not educated enough to tell the truth, and fat enough to not care.

Its all about the will, if you wish to get fat and stupid fine, it will not be you who will die in cancer, die hungry, die stoned, die drunk, die killed etc or is it? Ignorance is the paradise isn't it? Until it hits you, people are not keen at understanding fate at all...

sir, wtf are you on about... are you even in touch with reality...

Torn limb from limb.. why would I be torn limb from limb. What does that have to do with anything, what does your post have to do with anything. Im not even sure what your saying because your terrible grasp of english and your over generalized statements about nothing are in fact confusing, you dont actually say anything but just seem to.. please demonstrate some solid point..

[Zoombie]

I think he meant "torn limb from limb in a metaphorical fashion as greedy loan sharks rip your earnings apart in a frenzy of capatalistic oppression..." and so on and so on.

[Felix the Cat]

Geez, are you folks going to sit back and let Spiked win the debate by framing the question in a way favorable to his side?

Spiked wants us to, in essence, disprove Communism. I'm of the opinion that this can't really be done in an absolute sense. Communism is a system that is, internally, logically self-consistent, and that is derived from a set of axioms about how the world works. Thus, any effort to "disprove Communism" is doomed to fail - it is logically impossible, especially since, by acquiescing to Spiked's framing of the debate, we have essentially agreed to the axioms that Communism is based on.

Note that I am not arguing for Communism here. I think it's a load of horseshit, honestly. People seem compelled to say "it's a good idea on paper"; I believe that it is a terrible idea on paper, not to mention in reality.

Lots of systems are logically consistent and can't really be disproved except by disproving their axioms, and since axioms by definition cannot be disproved, there are lots of systems that cannot be disproved in an absolute sense. Communism is one of these systems. Anarcho-capitalism is one, Christianity and Islam and Buddhism and all of the world's religions are, pure direct democracy is one, and so on.

I'm of the opinion that political-economic systems that are worked out on paper from a set of axioms are all doomed to fail, because the world is not a logically consistent place. I say that I'm a libertarian, but this belief separates me from many other libertarians; they hold libertarian beliefs because they have logically derived them from an underlying set of absolute assumptions (for the more radical of libertarians, this assumption is simply that the initiation of force against another person is always wrong).

I'm not trying to say that civil discourse is impossible and that politics should be banned from discussion. Civil discourse certainly is possible. However, unless those taking part show a modicum of maturity, it will get nowhere. It will get nowhere because the various parties do not share the same fundamental beliefs about how the world works; they do not acknowledge each others' axioms.

As far as the argument goes, Spiked has challenged you to disprove Communism. It should be the other way around. Spiked should have to prove Communism to you, because he is the one who wants to impose his system on you; he is the one providing the alternative to the current system, and as such, he should have to prove why the alternative is better.

[Fanger]

I ah already said that, and all he did was present a set of links to communist written documents and a chide saying im a buffoon.. so asking him to elaborate is just going to get your intelligence insulted..

[SpikedHelmet]

Think of Socialism as an economic system where you own everything you have a part in making. You are not relegated to simply selling your labour power to someone else who owns something, but rather, whether you are a simple artisan or a factory worker you own either in whole or in part whatever commodity you are involved in producing. For someone who decides he wants to go into the computer-building profession, for instance, he buys his parts, constructs his computers, and sells them. But let's say he works for a large computer-making company, in an assembly line that produces computers, in a factory that employs 100 people. He then gets 1% of the profits made, and forms, essentially, part of a 100-man union-esque assembly that makes the decisions collectively. Whereas today, decisions on production and factory administration are controlled by CEOs and directory boards who can pass decrees at their leisure which the workers are forced to comply with (such as paycuts, layoffs, factory transfers, etc) and who are limited by nothing other than their never-ending thirst for self-profit; in a socialist system all decisions that affect the workers are managed by the workers themselves. A factory may have a design team who are elected by the majority, a voted head of production, so on and so forth -- essentially, every factory, every workshop, every business that employs more than 2 people would become its own sovereign democratic entity. There would be no competition, either -- no factory would be able to set the price for its commodities but rather would simply produce commodities based on what is needed and what is requested and each worker would either earn the same set universal wage or a wage largely determined by national standards, so long as he works. This would all be managed by government institutions that operate on the same principles of true democracy in a system devoid of lobbyists and persons seeking out their own fortunes.

The reason this has never been accomplished for any long period of time is because of the inalienable faults humanity has evolved over the eons. Greed and selfishness are two very strong traits that will not easily be cast away on the first try; but that in no way implies that such an endeavour is worthless and should be abandoned. If anything, this fact should push us to work harder at attaining such an equitable solution, and to work harder at maintaining it and protecting it from those very traits.

Felix here would like to believe that Communism = mass "theft", and equates to nothing more than stealing from those who have (without the realization that at the same time it gives to those who have not). He, like many I've observed, are locked into a certain perspective of it, incapable of seeing it from any other angle. Yes, Communism and socialism takes, even steals from people, if you want to explain it in such simplistic and emotion-jerking terms. It steals from a minority of people who have for generations stolen from the majority; stolen their livelihoods and self-determination from them, and transformed the average worker into nothing more than a shackled tool to be manipulated at the whim of those few with power. He'd also like us all to believe that the capitalist system is a benign entity operating on principles of symbiotic relationship between the lower and upper classes; that it offers the freedom of allowing workers to choose who they'd like to sell their labour-power to, without elaborating on the fact that in essence that is the opposite of freedom, just as elections are the opposite. Sure, the worker may choose whether he wants to sell his labour to Dell or Wal-Mart or McDonalds, but for the vast majority of us, we have no other options. Our lives have been worn down into nothing more than the value of our labour, and to whom we can sell it in order to scratch a pathetic living. The majority of us can only dream of being rich and powerful, of owning businesses and travelling, of becoming politicians, or even of attending the best schools and colleges and universities. For most of us, we can only hope to work hard enough to live a comfortable if boxed-in life and eventually retire with a good enough pension to live comfortably in our old age, and eventually die, hopefully leaving a bit of money for our children and grandchildren so that they won't be burdened by funeral costs. That is the sum of a worker's life.

[MrNubyagi]

discriminatingly banned by decimator

[SpikedHelmet]

I think Fanger was like the ONLY person who didn't understand your point.

[Felix the Cat]

Think of Socialism as an economic system where you own everything you have a part in making.

Everything past here depends on the reader accepting the axiom "you own everything you have a part in making".

I do not accept this as true. I believe that, in the natural state, you own everything you make. That is, if I create a pencil out of a piece of wood that I own and a piece of charcoal that I own, then I own the pencil. Nobody may forcibly take it from me.

However, the real world is not the natural state. The products that our modern economy produces and uses - everything from cars to computers to alarm clocks to London wheels - require more than one person to make. Most of them require input products that requried more than one person to make.

A natural system arises. In order to manufacture a modern product (say, a car), two things are required: capital and labor. Capital is the money, land, and tools needed to manufacture and sell the product. Labor is, well, labor.

Everything is based on a risk-reward duality. Providing the huge amounts of capital necessary to build a car manufacturing plant is a huge risk. What if the cars don't sell? What if the place burns down? What happens now? The one who provided the capital has undertaken the risk of catastrophic failure and loss of almost all of his investment. However, with great risk comes great reward. The person providing the capital now owns everything produced by the car manufacturing plant, and can sell it at a profit. This is vitally important, because profit is the incentive for people to take risks. No profit, no risk-taking, no economy.

Labor, of course, is provided by workers. This provides the budding entrepreneur a problem: he needs workers in order to build the cars. But the workers own whatever they produce! So the budding entrepreneur comes up with a solution: he will pay the workers a set amount of money per hour, and they will give him the cars they produce. There is little risk for the worker, at least in comparison to that undertaken by the entrepreneur. The worker shows up at work for 8 hours, sticks door handles in doors or whatever, collects his paycheck, and goes home. The worker doesn't have to deal with trying to sell the cars he makes. The worker assumes no personal risk, and has to invest none of his capital - only his time, which he is paid for.

Finally, Spiked, I find it highly paradoxical that you accuse me of using "simplistic and emotion-jerking" terms and then turn around and do exactly the same thing. Then again, Communism is built not on reality, but on emotion. It says that it sucks that Joe Schmoe has to work to earn a living, and sometimes doesn't have everything he wants, and proposes the nice-sounding solution: let's take money from the rich, make it so Joe Schmoe doesn't have to work unless he wants to, and give him everything he wants! It uses terms like "steals", "shackeled tool", "manipulated", "pathetic living", and the other turns of phrase from Spiked's final paragraph. Let's have these wonderful happy communes where everyone has a say in everything, and it will be so wonderful and democratic! Ignoring, of course, that you will only be free to do what the government allows you to do; ignoring that you will be forced into labor as surely as a slave is, and will receive only what the bureaucrats choose to give you as payment. Such is the life of the commune denizen.

[SpikedHelmet]

I do not accept this as true.

Well, since you've already decided you do not accept reality as reality, there really isn't any point in arguing with you. Your analyses of capitalism is inherently flawed and one-sided, filled mainly with grandiose claims like "No profit, no risk-taking, no economy" and "Everything is based on a risk-reward duality". These are archaic and out-dated modes of thought that I would have hoped died with the 20th century, and are generally re-hashed statements that have been repeated time and time again and have somehow become fact.

Your last paragraph shows exactly the kind of bias you have against the very mentioning of Communism. You sound exactly like the anti-red reactionaries in the 1950s who lived and breathed and slept anti-communism. You know what else they used to say? That the "evil commies" wanted to legalize gay marriage, and liberalize sexuality, and force American schools to *gasp* focus more on teaching world history rather than American history!

All in all, we're both guilty of using trumped-up emotional baggage, but atleast mine were true. Yours, on the other hand, completely disreguard everything I've said about the former and current so-called "Communist" states, and yet you can't help yourself but continue to equate Communism with the fuckjobs that created oppressive state capitalist machinations such as the USSR and China and North Korea. If you're simply going to absorb and reject reality, and use twisted and untruthful terminology, then I really don't have the time or willpower to waste on you. I'd much rather have a discussion with someone who is more open-minded and receptive of something in constrast to what they've been taught. You, on the other hand, are a typical reactionary, who will go to any length, even untruth, to make yourself right and more importantly, to destroy something that would mean the end of your way of life.

[Candleman]

Wait, so all the countries that call themselves and are thought of as communist actually aren't?

PS I am not trying to be sarcastic, I was actually unaware of this.

[Decimator]

Spikedhelmet, power corrupts, and government wastes. Communism is the largest government that can exist, and its leaders wield absolute power over the lives of the citizens.

[Fanger]

greed and selfishness are recent developments.. thats news to me.. I would have figured wed have lots of examples of these vices going back to the time when we started recording stuff in writing of some form. I think these 2 specific "vices" are at least as old as greek civilization maybe even older. So mayhaps youll explain how we will exercise some sort of vice from our collective nature that has been around since the dawn of time..

[Zoombie]

Anyone else notice that this has kind of devolved into "Uh-huh" followed by "Nu-uh" ad infindium.

So, to lighten the mood (and cause I thought it was a hoot). Here's how things could have turned out: Boom

Just be glad we survived the eighties so we can get nuked by some terroists, cause you can't have a "cold war" with a relligion that thinks suicide bombing the enemy is a straight ticket to hevean...

[Felix the Cat]

Also, Spiked, you know as well as I do that Adolf Hitler did not espouse free-market capitalism. (In reference, of course, to your avatar.)

[tombom]

Hey guys look up the etymology of "utopia".

This is a stupid argument because one side is saying "COMMUNISM IS UTOPIA THEREFORE IT IS BEST GOVERNMENT" while other side is saying "COMMUMNISM IS DYSTOPIA THEREFORE IT IS WORST GOVERNMENT".

I mean what is the point seriously.

[Felix the Cat]

It's not quite that. "Utopia" is generally used to refer to systems that are, like Communism and anarcho-capitalism, deducted logically from axioms that are held to be self-evident. "Dystopia", as its opposite, would argue about the same sort of system.

My core belief about politics and political/economic systems is that the real world is not rational; it does not follow tidy logical laws; it cannot be deducted from simple axioms; it does not wrap up in a neat little bundle with a little red bow tie holding it together. Therefore, systems - like Communism, and like anarcho-capitalism - that rely on pure logical reasoning for their entire existence are doomed to fail, and fail miserably. I have an acquaintance within the UF College Libertarians who is a diehard anarcho-capitalist. He is always ranting about how "Austrian economics" (don't ask) is the only logically consistent school of economics, and how it cannot be disproven. I want to smack him across the face, and then show him some pictures of the genocide in Darfur and ask him if he still thinks the world is a logical place.

To quote something I heard someone say once: "Man is not a rational animal. Man is a conservative animal. What is, works. What may be may fail. This is not a failing; it is a feature." The system we have now works, and it works surprisingly well for something that we blundered into sometime in the mid-18th century and have been refining ever since. Yes, it has failings; yes, some people are screwed over. However, that's not because of capitalism or any other particular political-economic system; it's because that's the way life is. The strong accept what has happened, persevere, and doggedly work their way up in the world. The weak howl and scream about how they have been victimized, seeking to blame someone - anyone - for what is really nobody's fault. In the end, the strong always win.

[tombom]

My core belief about politics and political/economic systems is that the real world is not rational; it does not follow tidy logical laws; it cannot be deducted from simple axioms; it does not wrap up in a neat little bundle with a little red bow tie holding it together.

I believe that it does as long the laws have enough exceptions.

Also are you trying to say that political systems that are designed fail?

[Felix the Cat]

No.

Take a look at the US political system. The current one - the real one - not the one written down on paper.

It isn't based upon a set of coherent assumptions about how the world works. It once was, but it has grown since then, morphed to fit the needs of the time. Even at its founding, the US government wasn't completely based on logic and reasoning; see the issue of slavery.

You wouldn't be able to give some ignorant person a set of postulates and have him derive the US political system from it. (The closest thing I can think of is, "money talks".) The US system of government fits what is, not what should be; it governs the real world of hurricanes and terrorism and recessions and human illogic, not the imaginary world of happy commune dwellers or an-cap sovereign individuals, secure and safe in their cocoons of reason.

We like to think that we live in a fundamentally rational world, one that is explained by some set of immutable natural laws, and if we know these natural laws we can establish a perfect society. I believe that this way of thinking is flawed. The world - both natural and social - simply doesn't work that way. I could go back in time and kill a man, and come back and the world would be largely the same; I could go back and kill a butterfly, and come back to find myself in the middle of a new mega-hurricane. The interactions between people that ultimately make our society are not deterministic like the interactions between subatomic particles; they are fundamentally irrational, subject to such things as mood swings and luck and distractions and millions of other factors. To pretend like the world is rational is a quaint pursuit, but one that is ultimately doomed to failure.

[SpikedHelmet]

The problem with your analysis is that you rely upon the untrue notion that the quest for profit is the single most important driving force in the economic world, that without it. You've essentially (and you've done this ever since we've talked about it) tried to place the Communist ideology over the template of the current capital system without taking into account that Communism is a completely different system. You also exhibit the irrational "chaos theory" of ultra-capitalists and anarchists, that nothing is certain and everything is based on some unknowable set of non-rules that simply can't be controlled or even tamed. To you, the drive for wealth is an omnipotent being that only serves humanity.

Also, can we please stop referring to Communism as utopian. Communist is not utopian. Communism is based on the scientific and measurable aspects of economics and society. If you have any doubts I again encourage you to read "Socialism: Utopian and Scientific", which details the difference between this "utopian wet-dream" socialism and a system based on real principles far better than I can.

My core belief about politics and political/economic systems is that the real world is not rational; it does not follow tidy logical laws; it cannot be deducted from simple axioms; it does not wrap up in a neat little bundle with a little red bow tie holding it together.

You're right. Today's world is not rational, it does not follow tidy logic and it can not be "wrapped up" with a little red bow tie. However that does not in any way mean that it can never be tidy. Quite the opposite. For all the "failures" of socialism, it is capitalism, not communism, which has led to the terrible state the world is in today. It is capitalism which has determined that 4/5ths of the world's population will starve while 1/5th live in relative luxery (and an even smaller percentage of that 1/5th lives in complete and utter embellishment). This is not "loaded" emotional rhetoric, this is plain truth. Every time we sit down to eat a meal there are 10 people who starve, one or two of whom may die while we eat, as an indirect but culpable result of the capitalist system. Of course, to you, this is perfectly acceptable. "That's the way life is". Fortunately, it doesn't have to be, although I don't expect you to realize that.

Wait, so all the countries that call themselves and are thought of as communist actually aren't?

HELL no. China, Cuba, North Korea, are NOWHERE NEAR COMMUNISM. Please understand that, people. I would appreciate it if you heed these words and stop claiming that Communism = North Korea = Fascism. North Korea inparticular goes against everything Communism stands for.

Communism is the largest government that can exist, and its leaders wield absolute power over the lives of the citizens.

Again, please, try to open your mind up to the possibility that China and North Korea are not, and have possibly never been, Communist!

greed and selfishness are recent developments..

No, they obviously aren't, and I never claimed that they are. Capitalism is a recent development, and the conditions of the relationship between commodity production, workers, and the ruling class as we know it today are recent developments. And because they are recent, they can be undone with relative ease, as opposed to if they had been in place for 500 years.

Also, Spiked, you know as well as I do that Adolf Hitler did not espouse free-market capitalism. (In reference, of course, to your avatar.)

My hatred for all things fascist and Nazi has nothing to do with my economic beliefs.

This is a stupid argument because one side is saying "COMMUNISM IS UTOPIA THEREFORE IT IS BEST GOVERNMENT"

FOR THE LAST TIME, COMMUNISM IS NOT SOME WET-DREAM "UTOPIAN" VISION THAT HAS NO BASIS CONCERNING THE REAL CONDITIONS OF HUMANITY.

Anyway, Felix, if you truely want to learn more about the dialectics of Communism, specifically as it concerns human "nature", I can point you to some good books on the subject. I would, of course, reciprocate. Unless, you know, you don't want to have your viewpoint shattered. I'll understand if you don't.

[SpikedHelmet]

Btw, "Scandinavian socialism" isn't socialism at all, please stop calling it that.