Communist Education?

[JohnT]

Originally posted by Agathon

You'll be sexually violated with a Josef Stalin bobblehead by an ex east german female shot putter for starters.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Ned
Just think. Did the Communist Bloc ever produce any car than anyone in the West in their right minds would buy?

Yes. IIRC, the Mercedes Benz was built in the same factory as the Trabi. As well, the Soviets built a sedan that was among the best in the world, but the name of it escapes me right now. The masses, however, were not allowed to buy such cars because these countries wanted to promote public transportation. The Trabi sucked deliberatelty.

And then there's the Yugo. You can argue fo yourself whether people in the West who bought them were in their right mnids.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Kidicious
No. Marx predicted that the revolution would come after the collapse of capitalism.

That's not really correct.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Ned
Ramo, one of us is wrong. Who is going to blink first and provide a link?

Ned is half correct. Cambodia is led by a communist party. In fact, Hun Sen (sp?) was the leader of Cambodia during the years of Vietnamese occupation. Cambodia, however, has a market economy, so it's not really a socialist/communist cuontry.

Furthermore, female slavery, as deplorable and despicable as it is, is very common throughout SouthEast Asia (and also Eastern Europe). The appetite for these slaves, however, is from the capitalist cuontries. It is men from the imperialist world who fly to these countries to rape these women for money. This doesn't prove how horrible communism is, but that in an unregualted capitalist society, everything is for sale.

[Saras]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
<...> the Soviets built a sedan that was among the best in the world, but the name of it escapes me right now. The masses, however, were not allowed to buy such cars because these countries wanted to promote public transportation.

Che, please excuse me, but I'm amazed at what a treasure trove of Soviet trivia your arse is.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara


That's not really correct.

It really is.

Communist Manifesto:Chapter 1

A similar movement is going on before our own eyes. Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells. For many a decade past, the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeois and of its rule. It is enough to mention the commercial crises that, by their periodical return, put the existence of the entire bourgeois society on its trial, each time more threateningly. In these crises, a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises, there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity - the epidemic of over-production. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation, had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed. And why? Because there is too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand, by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented.

The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself.

But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons - the modern working class - the proletarians.

In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed - a class of labourers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital. These labourers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Woot! Woot!

Commie cat fight.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Saras
Che, please excuse me, but I'm amazed at what a treasure trove of Soviet trivia your arse is.

If you can't say anything usefull . . . The ZIL was an excellent car, but it was only for the bureacracy.

[Saras]

LOL!!!! ZIL, of all things!!! Own goal, Che What a blatant copy of (i'll tell you later on which exactly) american car!

[chequita guevara]

The Manifesto is a political tract, Kid. It was also written early in Marx's career, and shouldn't be tacken as dogma, nor representitivate of Marx's more mature (and still revolutionary) views. Furthermore, the two sections you linked do not say that the revolution will come after a collapse of capitalism. In the first section Marx is saying that collapses are a regular feature of capitalism. In the second, he is saying that the productive forces which capitalism creates, including the very proletariet itself, will be the undoing of capitalism.

Now, historically, revolutions have only followed disasters with which the state has been unable to cope. Not every collapse nor every disaster is followed by a revolution. War, famine, earthquake have all preceeded revolution, but I don't yet know of any revolution following an economic collapse (unless you count the overthrow of Suharto in Indonesia).

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
The Manifesto is a political tract, Kid. It was also written early in Marx's career, and shouldn't be tacken as dogma, nor representitivate of Marx's more mature (and still revolutionary) views.

So show me were Marx corrects this so-called error.

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Furthermore, the two sections you linked do not say that the revolution will come after a collapse of capitalism. In the first section Marx is saying that collapses are a regular feature of capitalism. In the second, he is saying that the productive forces which capitalism creates, including the very proletariet itself, will be the undoing of capitalism.

He also says that the long run trend is for the protetariat to grow and the capitalists to diminish in number, which makes the revolution possible. The ratio of proletariat reach a critical mass during a period of contraction. Or are you saying that the critical mass will be reached during expansion of capital?

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Now, historically, revolutions have only followed disasters with which the state has been unable to cope. Not every collapse nor every disaster is followed by a revolution. War, famine, earthquake have all preceeded revolution, but I don't yet know of any revolution following an economic collapse (unless you count the overthrow of Suharto in Indonesia).

The govts are still able to cope with economic crisis. At one point, as productive forces reach a critical mass, they will no longer be able too. Look at the great depression. The capitalists govts were able to get out of that crisis only through war. A repeat of the same type of war is not possible because of the nature of modern warfare and production.

[Pax]

Would'nt the American Revolution, The rise of Hitler(Change from republic to dictatorship), Revolution of Russia during the WW1, and Cold War, Vietnamese revolt against France all be due to economic crisis or collapse.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Pax Africanus
Would'nt the American Revolution, The rise of Hitler(Change from republic to dictatorship), Revolution of Russia during the WW1, and Cold War, Vietnamese revolt against France all be due to economic crisis or collapse.

A revolution is an essential change, not a change of form. The aim of a revolution is to replace one class with another, thus several of your examples don't fit.

The American Revolution wasn't a true revolution, though it started as one. And you would be correct, the basis of the crisis was economic. Ultimately, however, revolution was co-opted into a war of independence.

Hitler did not stage a revolution. The capitalists were in charge before and after the rise of Hitler.

The Russian Revolution came about as the result of crisis of WWI. As the government was unable to maintain the war effort, it began to be unable to maintain anything.

The Vietnamese revolution was a war of national liberation. Quite simply, they wanted to be free of France.

Did you mean the end of the Cold War? You may be correct there. There was a severe economic crisis in the Eastern block, but in the end, the same people who were in charge before were largely in charge afterwards. Instead of heading government bureaucracies, they now head corporations. Instead of running the Communist Party, they run various ex-communist parties. In the words of the Who, "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Pax Africanus
Would'nt the American Revolution, The rise of Hitler(Change from republic to dictatorship), Revolution of Russia during the WW1, and Cold War, Vietnamese revolt against France all be due to economic crisis or collapse.

The kind of economic crisis that Marx described is one that changes the political landscape, changing the economic and political interests of members in one class by making them members of another class. This has never happened.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara



Did you mean the end of the Cold War? You may be correct there. There was a severe economic crisis in the Eastern block, but in the end, the same people who were in charge before were largely in charge afterwards. Instead of heading government bureaucracies, they now head corporations. Instead of running the Communist Party, they run various ex-communist parties. In the words of the Who, "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."

And so lets hope the Eastern block countries learned their lesson and "Won't be fooled again" by the lure of communist (in)equality.