Doesn't the service industry preclude communist revolt?

[OzzyKP]

Originally posted by GePap
IN Theoretical communism, which si what Speer brough up, there is no state.

As Spiffor said, that is Statist Socialism, which is really what you can say the USSR was-an attempt to build communism through a single party socialist state as oposed to waiting for the final stages of capitalism to bring forth the revolution.

OK, you've gotten yourself into a trap. Communists today, despite frequent denials, must necessarily be Statist Socialists in the mold of USSR and Stalin. This I believe is what we've all been talking about all along. Whenever anyone points out a flaw in Communism (using this model) then they fall back to the theoretical utopian marxism, with no state or property or anything. But if this was the kind of communism you were seriously advocating then you would not call yourself a communism, and you would not work for greater welfare state provisions, you instead would call for more capitalism. As Marx stated the most advanced capitalist state would be the one to naturally spark the revolution to bring about his utopian communist state.

So which is it? You can't go both ways.

And the welfare state is in no way even close to this since the state is not taking control of the means of production, ismply taking a bite out of the profits to fund the programs.

Der, how many times to I freaken have to say it, Welfare State IS NOT Communism. It isn't. They are not the exact same thing. I never said they were. Now be a darling and read what I type here, thanks.

The welfare state is state-owned charity. Now the United States is looking at state-owned health care. Perhaps next they will look at state-owned utilities. State-owned industry. State-owned everything else. In France the state owns many major industries. As I stated above, the US is on its way towards France, and France is on its way towards the USSR. Keep up here.

[Kuciwalker]

Re: Re: Doesn't the service industry preclude communist revolt?

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
proletariat != factory workers.
proletariat= those who have nothing to sell but their ability t do work

That means a lot of service workers are proletarians. The vast majority of people in the U.S. and Europe are proles. Our productivity is just so great that we can live a "middle-class" life-style.

The real middle-classes are people who own their own small means of production, such as farmers and shop keepers, and also those who sell trained services, from land scapers to laywers. The people who work for them, however, are proles.

By your definition, though, a lawyer would be a proletariat - he has nothing to sell but his labor. His labor just happens to be worth a lot.

Btw, virtually all Americans own some small means of production. A computer is a means of production. Most people have some stock. Almost all Americans are "capitalists".

[DanS]

The vast majority of people in the U.S. and Europe are proles.

Vast majority? Wouldn't stock ownership preclude people from being in the proletariat? If yes, then the majority of Americans aren't in the proletariat.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by OzzyKP
As I stated above, the US is on its way towards France, and France is on its way towards the USSR. Keep up here.

UPDATE:
Most nationalizations occured in France in 1945 (as a punishment against capitalist collaborators of nazi Germany, and as a mean to influence the reconstruction efforts drastically), and in 1981 (as the Socialist Party took power, before throwing away all its beliefs).

Since then, France hasn't known any significant nationalization, yet most State-owned companies have been privatized, or are in the process of being so. There is no public bank anymore, there is no public car industry anymore, there is no public air transportation anymore, and electricty and railroads are on the brink of privatization.

We are heading to become a sub-UK or sub-US right now. There are even talks of privatizing healthcare

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by DanS
Vast majority? Wouldn't stock ownership preclude people from being in the proletariat? If yes, then the majority of Americans aren't in the proletariat.

I just made that point

[Az]

I think you should've had state owned utilities a long time ago, even under capitalism. Private regulated utilities are nothing more than private monopolies.

[GePap]

Originally posted by OzzyKP


OK, you've gotten yourself into a trap. Communists today, despite frequent denials, must necessarily be Statist Socialists in the mold of USSR and Stalin. This I believe is what we've all been talking about all along. Whenever anyone points out a flaw in Communism (using this model) then they fall back to the theoretical utopian marxism, with no state or property or anything. But if this was the kind of communism you were seriously advocating then you would not call yourself a communism, and you would not work for greater welfare state provisions, you instead would call for more capitalism. As Marx stated the most advanced capitalist state would be the one to naturally spark the revolution to bring about his utopian communist state.

So which is it? You can't go both ways.

Communists are a wide gorup that includes orthodox Marxists, Leninists, Stalinits, Maoists and so forth/ So "communist" must not believe in Socialist sattism to be communits.

In fact, this was part of the Menshevik, Bolshevik split.

Communist are under no obligation to ask for the fastest route towards what will eventually happen anyway. It becomes a question of the greater good-better a lot of misery and fast revolution, or a slower pace towards revolution but with less misery?

I pick the later.

[Az]

You're a communist, GePap?!

[Kuciwalker]

I thought you like Nietzsche, GePap why worry about the suffering caused by the overthrow of the old system?

[GePap]

Only in so far that, with everything he got wrong, marx was right about capitalism setting up its own fall.

Otherwise I am a social-democrat.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Kucinich
I thought you like Nietzsche, GePap why worry about the suffering caused by the overthrow of the old system?

Becuase while I like his annalisys on so many things, at the end I don't agree with him on more than 50% of the things.

[Az]

Only in so far that, with everything he got wrong, marx was right about capitalism setting up its own fall.

Personally, I begin to doubt that, with all the media power, and other influence that capitalism has. I wonder what will happen in the end. *sigh*

[Spiffor]

This is a problem shared by commies since 1848. There's a reason why a revolution always needed an avant-garde. That's because the bourgeois society spreads its values, making quite a few proles opposed to us. Think of the 19th century's Lumpenproletariat. No literacy, no media influence, but already an efficient mind control organized by the Church and the capitalists.

[Kuciwalker]

The whole thing about communism arising out of infinite productivity is interesting, but it really doesn't seem to say anything about capitalism. If we had infinite productivity, then we would still be capitalist; it's just that we would be communist, if not in the strictest sense of no ownership of the means of production, but in terms of distribution of resources. By the time communism could be implemented without conflict (which occurs whenever you have a redistribution of limited resources), it will already have arrived.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

That nice little infinite productivity tho' will not happen as the natural resources are limited. Hence I always love the arguement that states capitalism is raping the environment, when it is the very same conditions (only much worse) that they argue in order to enable their utopian communistic society.