Karl Marx's "Communist Manifesto"

[TCO]

DP

[faded glory]

Slighty ot but I have to ask

Has anybody ever seen the cartoon animal farm by George Orwell (arg think thats his name). Where the pigs rally the animals to fight off the mean the old farmer and set up a communist System. In the end the Pigs just turn out to be as bad as the farmer and they are all overthrown.



It is a 50's cartoon but I saw it when I was in kindergarten. I didnt understand it until recently when I saw it again on PBS.

[chequita guevara]

Ever read the book?

Snowball (the hero) = Trotsky.

chegitz=Trotskyist=Snowballist=good guy

The cartoon is great, because it ends with another animal revolution. It was what we organized for years, a workers revolution in the East, but between the CIA and Russian tanks, any effective worker opposition to the Stalinist was always crushed. Neither system had any desire to see a real worker's state appear.

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by faded glory
Slighty ot but I have to ask

Has anybody ever seen the cartoon animal farm by George Orwell (arg think thats his name). Where the pigs rally the animals to fight off the mean the old farmer and set up a communist System. In the end the Pigs just turn out to be as bad as the farmer and they are all overthrown.



It is a 50's cartoon but I saw it when I was in kindergarten. I didnt understand it until recently when I saw it again on PBS.

Are you admitting that your current goverment is horrible?

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Originally posted by Mark L


Democracy made it possible for Hitler to rise to power, without democracy Hitler would never been allowed to leave his cell.

Does that mean democracy leads to dictorship? of course not.

Does Stalin's rise to power means that communism leads to dictorship? of course not.

Yes of course, but you miss the main point, Stalin was merely the worst one. Communism has a leader of the state who is basically a dictator (or actulally it is a dictatorship of the proleteriat (workforce)) If he is not powerful enough like stalin or Tito, Mao Zedong, etc... he is serving the party as I outlined in the other post; party always serves to itself (or the most powerful members and afilliates, it very close to feudal monarchy like in Civ ) It does not server to the people like it was meant to by Marx.

Democracy can produce a Hitler, but if he did not become a dictator he would have been voted off. So there is a risk, but in communism a dicator is a part of the system, this is an inherent problem of the system. And all the other evil that comes with it.

I can only be amazed and amused how can someone still think that such a system can function on Earth. In heaven MAYBE. But since only angels live there they should behave in a proper communist way anyway (they do not need a state to force them to behave that way, and kill those who do not conform (or at least disable them to think in the long run)).

[chequita guevara]

Dictatorship of the proletariat was an unfortunate choice of words on Marx's part. You need to understand, that by dictatorship he didnt mean what we commonly associate the term with. Rather he mean the absolutely rule of a class of people, in this case, the vast majority of the population.

This is opposed to the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie under which we currently live. By dictatorship he doesn't mean a rutheless arbitrary tyrrany, but the class in for whose rule the government exists. Almost every government today exist to protect the rights of the bourgesoisie over and above all other rights. That doesn't mean that the government does whatever the ruling class wants. Sometimes it must force the ruling class to accept some medicine for its own good (they really are like petulant children), such as the welfare reforms which helped to stave off Communist revolution in the US.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

It is true that the system in which we live in far from perfect, and that the rich are protected by the (tax reliefs, safe havens, shareholder system), but still communism is not an answer to the problems. It is still impossible for people to rule themselves. Socialism goes quite far to address these problems. it is much easier to live as working class in France or Germany compared to US. But still there are trade offs than as higher cost of labour, more bureaucatic society etc.

Even though people are free (technically) to educate themselves and progress in society, still a poor gheto person it migh be much harder than a richmans son. But this society still gives everyone a chance to a persion if he acts reasonably that he may succeed.

I'd say it is better to invest the time and discussions to which are the alternatives to todays society, as just an idea. What if you had by law that 40 % (or a percentage) of net corporate (company) profit over 1 million has to go to the workforce for example). It wouldn't hurt the rich in the long term seriously, and it would give the workforce a fair share of their profit back which would be reinvested to the society insted being held in share value or on some richmans account. That is just an alternative idea within the free society that we have today, and it woudl definitley make life of ordinary people much better.

However communism (as it was, revolution and onwards) is a proven failure.

[chequita guevara]

When you start doing things like that, OFitG, the corporations start looking for alternatives to you. Whether they get it by pooling their resources on a white knight to win electorally by snowing the population with moeny ads, or by getting behind a dark knight like Hitler or Pinochet, they will do it. In the mean time, they will destablize the economy be deinvesting and sending capital abroad to "safer" places. This has happened over and over again. Western Europe was the only exception for a few decades because the threat of communist revolution was very real and the ruling class knew it.

It took massive vote manipulation in Italy, a viscious war in Greece, and the Corsican Mob in south France to stop the advance of Communism in Europe. As well, the US military and CIA set up Operation Gladio with it's European counterparts to plan a military coup if it ever looked like the Communists would actually win an election.

Outside Europe, setting up a welfare system wasn't an option. If you tried to enact even mild land reform or divert government resources to helping the poor, your government was overthrown.

In other words, comunists are revolutionaries because there are no legitimate avenues for peaceful change. Do you honestly think that I'd bang my head against the wall for decades of my life because I want a revolution and civil war? Are you that dumb? If socialism was allowed to happen peacefully, it would already have happened.

[rguilliman]

Does the Communist Party of Apolyton have a web site? If not what real world groups do you support (and their web sites bitte)? I just wanna read some of your stuff.

Thanks

[TCO]

c'mon! My weather remark was funny. Give me some credit. You dry boring bunch of Brazil-like commies.

[faded glory]

Originally posted by Osweld


Are you admitting that your current goverment is horrible?

No at the begining the farm was ruled by an evil farmer who killed his own animals if they made him angry. The Pigs were always spoiled and never had to go through the same as the other animals...but they led a revolution and chased the mean farmer out of the farm.Orignally things got better, the Pigs took control of the farm and the animal produced what they needed to survive. But in the end the Pigs took advantage of there leadership status and turned the farm in a concentration camp in a bid to spread there philosphy to other farms nearby they made outlandish claims about how happy the other animals were. But in fact the only ones who had bettered themselves were the communist Pigs and the rest of the animals, horses, goats..all were toiling for the pigs instead of the farmer.


Hard to explain...see the movie. It was pure Anti-Communist propaganda for its time. Directed at a more or less children's audience

[Lonestar]

Originally posted by faded glory


The Pigs were always spoiled and never had to go through the same as the other animals...but they led a revolution and chased the mean farmer out of the farm.

Actually, Almost all the pigs were going to die. They were Porkers. Only Napoleon had , ah, "gonads".

[faded glory]

ya thats right

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by faded glory


No at the begining the farm was ruled by an evil farmer who killed his own animals if they made him angry. The Pigs were always spoiled and never had to go through the same as the other animals...but they led a revolution and chased the mean farmer out of the farm.Orignally things got better, the Pigs took control of the farm and the animal produced what they needed to survive. But in the end the Pigs took advantage of there leadership status and turned the farm in a concentration camp in a bid to spread there philosphy to other farms nearby they made outlandish claims about how happy the other animals were. But in fact the only ones who had bettered themselves were the communist Pigs and the rest of the animals, horses, goats..all were toiling for the pigs instead of the farmer.


Hard to explain...see the movie. It was pure Anti-Communist propaganda for its time. Directed at a more or less children's audience

Yes yes yes, but what about the farmer representing your current goverment?


That's what I was geting at.

[Lonestar]

Yeah, but our currently president isn't British, Osweld.