Define communism for dum 'ol Lancer

[Agathon]

Really? Ask the third world for a second opinion.

But this is not the thread.

[Velociryx]

Hey...I agree....there's lots of people who still haven't been bouyed by the power of the engine...it takes time, and the concept of a global economy isn't that old...makes sense that the most developed nations would feel the gains first, and that is in fact, what has occurred.

But have a look around India and China (whose recent successes have been coming specefically BECAUSE they began embracing the market), and I think you'll see that the rise in standard of living has been pronounced since embracing capitalist principles, while it had stagnated (in China's case) under the same-old, same-old paradigm.

Standards of living are on the rise, which makes it harder to recruit to your cause....I understand this, but don't really see a good way of combating it, short of bloodletting, of course, which would only prove me right.

-=Vel=-

[Velociryx]

(it's that whole "+1 energy per sqare" thing, really....amazing what that extra energy can do...)

-=Vel=-
(apologies for the silly SMAC reference... )

[Agathon]

Au contraire. The radical left has been going gangbusters in the last four years. All thanks to Morons inc.

[Odin]

Radicalism is stupid, Throw rocks at it. Radicals never get anything done because they piss too many people off.

[MrFun]

Yes -- that means that American abolitionists were retarded for daring to advocate for abolition of slavery in the antebellum years!

It also means that feminists were retarded for pressuring legislatively implemented changes for women towards equality in the nineteenth century!

It means that black activists and their white allies were retarded for pressuing for greater equality after World War II!

[Odin]

Originally posted by MrFun
Yes -- that means that American abolitionists were retarded for daring to advocate for abolition of slavery in the antebellum years!

It only worked because we crushed the resulting rebellion

It also means that feminists were retarded for pressuring legislatively implemented changes for women towards equality in the nineteenth century!

sone of then were starting outright revolts as far as I know.

It means that black activists and their white allies were retarded for pressuing for greater equality after World War II!

The MLK Jr. types won support because they protested peacefully. When the extemist Black Panther types incited the race riots much of the intergration stuff like school bussing stated to loose support.



We are problebly using different definitions of "radical" I am using it as a term for people who wan't to make an abrupt and immediate change, pragmatism and realism be damned; which rarely works because it always causes a backlash, or ends up being a stupid move.

[MrFun]

I see

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Velociryx
Thanks Ag, and btw, the feeling is mutual. I like you, and Spiff, Kid, and Che and actually, all the reds I banter with.

Calling people stupid for having different opinions, and telling stories to make it seem like they support a type of system that they don't isn't bantering. I'm suprised you still find people to put up one side of a debate.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Odin
It only worked because we crushed the resulting rebellion

Which is a bad thing how?

sone of then were starting outright revolts as far as I know.

So your beliefs aren't radical unless you revolt?

The MLK Jr. types won support because they protested peacefully. When the extemist Black Panther types incited the race riots much of the intergration stuff like school bussing stated to loose support.

Integration was not really the goal of the Black Panther party. If you look at the ten point program of the organization it says nothing about integration.

One thing that a lot of people don't know is that most of the foot soldiers of the Civil Rights Movement resented the non-violent ideology of MLK Jr.. They saw a more immediate need to defend themselves.

We are problebly using different definitions of "radical" I am using it as a term for people who wan't to make an abrupt and immediate change, pragmatism and realism be damned; which rarely works because it always causes a backlash, or ends up being a stupid move.

What kind of backlash has there been against all of these radical movements? A few right wing idiots like neo-nazis? Who cares? Radicals have been much more successfull than so called "pragmatists" who never change a damn thing because they really want things to stay the same.

[Velociryx]

Calling people stupid for having different opinions, and telling stories to make it seem like they support a type of system that they don't isn't bantering. I'm suprised you still find people to put up one side of a debate.

Mmmm....well now...unless I'm mistaken, just one page ago, YOU were the one who said that forced work camps were a good idea.....were you not?

Do you refute having said this?

And a work camp where one is FORCED TO LABOR.....if that's not slavery, what, praytell, would you call it?

PS: Here's the exact quote, lest you try to DanS your way around it....

Vel: And Kid....not delusional...hell, you've said yourself on NUMEROUS occassions that you want to force people to work. You've mentioned forcibly relocating families, telling people WHERE they'll work, and on what project, and a host of other things.

Kid's Reply: This is a lot better, because you don't have such poor allocation of labor. People are trained for the job that will contribute the most to society and they will work where they can contribute the most to society. Everyone benefits. It's much better than the chaos of capitalism where no one really know where the **** to go and what the **** to do half the time.

Ag, I can definitely see how a brush with Morons, Inc. would increase your membership, but that has nothing to do with capitalism itself. Stupid people exist in any ideology.

-=Vel=-

[Dracon II]

The fundamental difference between capitalists and communists is their differing conceptions of equality. Correct me if I'm wrong... I'm just giving a rough sketch here...
Capitalism, or at least the classical liberal justification of capitalism, rests on the belief that all men are equal. This is best summarized in the declaration of independence. However, the equality is moral, not material. Capitalists rest on the idea of inherent equality and use it to promote political and legal equality. Thus arises the assumption that everyone has equality of opportunity and ability, and that there is therefore a justification for economic inequality. The rich simply worked hard. Thus, capitalists rely heavily on the human agency/will and the interaction of human agency/will as the basis of their social system.
Communists however, see equality differently. The abstraction of equality to the moral, political and legal spheres ignores the fact that one of the most basic forms of inequality is material inequality. Material and productive riches constituting the most potent form of power in a capitalist society, communists see the bracketing of equality in the state as a means of justifying and mystifying the gross inequality that exists in civil society. Furthermore, it also mystifies the greater political and legal power that the richer people have as influential and powerful actors in society. The separation of state and civil society is thus a ruse disguising the fact that the two are inseparable and mutually determined.
Thus the difference is that capitalists see equality as an a priori quality inherent in all humans, and use it justify really existing inequality by pointing to the formal equality that all people have within the state, and communists see the really existing inequality and concoct a teleological philosophy in order to justify it's elimination.

My personal view is that humans are endowed with different and unequal capacities, and are distributed across areas with unequal capacities and are born into situations of unequal quality, and that eliminating inequality altogether would take far too much effort and coercion for what it would be worth. Society should concentrate of maximizing equality and utility, but should not commit itself to absolute equality as a goal, merely the amelioration of suffering, want, ignorance and idleness for the lowest of society, and the provision of opportunities for upward mobility. I believe that the assumption of equality anaesthetizes us against the indignity of inequality, but I also believe the ultimate elimination of inequality is a dream.
I simply believe that a commitment to raising the standards of living is necessary in the short term. In the long term, a commitment to making economics sustainable is necessary. If capitalism is allowed to ride roughshod across the world, it is only likely to make the ultimate social consequences and the next mode of production more intolerable for everyone, not least the capitalist. I don't believe that anything should be taken to the extreme. And thus capitalism needs to be regulated by an impartial state that has long term interests and sustainability in mind.
Most societies since at least antiquity have had some form of market operating within their economy. However, the concept of a "market economy" is quite a novelty in historical terms. It's my belief that a market economy is inherently unstable in the long term. The ultimate problem with today's society is that our capacity to stabilize and restrain the market is diminishing, as a global market emerges that has no real political overseer.

I believe that Communism should only be striven for if it becomes a material necessity. In the meantime, I support the socialization of essential goods and services and the universal provision of subsistence. Unfortunately this capacity has been taken away from Governments to a great extent, and thus the only progressive option is global government. This would only happen if a cataclysmic crisis in the global economy occurs. In the meantime, I believe the long term project of the Marxist should be in raising the political consciousness of the masses to a global level, i.e. to the same level at which capital now operates. Marxists can only be effective nowadays if they coordinate across borders and between developing and developed nations. If they restrict their project to the formerly priveliged working classes of industrialized nations... they risk becoming parochial nationalists and anachronistic protectionists... pissing against the wind.

I just don't think people ought to be paid more because they can do something that someone else can't.

Noble ideal, but hard work should be rewarded. We can't rely on voluntarism, or on political rewards. A just society rewards effort and service with real benefits.

I am saying that the rule of law is not possible when there is no legislature and no court system, but only party bosses that make decisions.

I agree with Ned here. In China, even with a legislature and a court system, the existence of the rule of law there is questionable. It's more rule by law.
I don't agree with Lenin's idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat as the violence of the working classes against the bourgeoisie in the absence of laws. Lawlessness breeds arbitrary rule and an excess reliance of charismatic or coercive power.

Rail and Utilities? These are so-called natural monopolies anyway.

The assumption here is that there are "natural" forms of ownership and a "natural" way of organising production. There are "prudent" forms of ownership and production... but not "natural" ones. Reifying a particular way of doing things as natural only makes it more difficult to change when change becomes prudent. That's why the bourgeoisie had such a hard and bloody time trying to get rid of the whole divine right of kings bull****.

All companies are "responsible" in some fashion to their employees.

Company responsibility has got to be more than just to their employees. The environment should be considered a valuable constituent, as should the community, and the company's customers. Marx's labour-centric theories have got to be adapted to the new **** to which we are now privy... such as the importance of consumer goods to our general standard of living, and to the ecosystem.

If it's okay to own the shirt, then it's okay to own the loom. Same mechanism. Same principle.

To what mechanism and principle are you referring? Are you saying that one's relationship to a produced good is the same as one's relationship to that which produced it? By that logic, my ownership of a pair of Nikes entitles me to own the indonesian girls who assembled it. Clearly wrong.
In the context you were referring to, there is no contradiction between privately owning a product produced by a publicly owned instrument... unless you subscribe to absolutes. It's not necessary to believe that everything should be publicly owned to still believe in public ownership. Once again, its a matter of prudence. If a thing can be privately produced, for a lower price, at better quality, and with higher wage and better conditions for the workers that produced the thing, than if it was publicly produced, then private production in that case is unambiguously the prudent option. If it does not satisfy all those criteria, then one has to make a priority choice between them and compromise.

There's nothing inherently immoral about the loom, just as there's nothing inherently immoral about the shirt

This isn't a discussion about morality, nor should it be. Discussions of politics and economics must be about utility and possibility. Otherwise one strays too far into the realm of idealism. Any good Marxist will tell you that their arguments are not based on morality but on a materialist pragmatism that seeks to obtain the greatest amount of utility from a given set of material conditions. This means that the "right", "ideal" or "moral" way of organising society changes according to context.

As a means of establishing the value of any particular good or service, there's nothing better. You can pretend otherwise till the cows come home, but there's yet to be a demonstrably better price setter. Until someone can show me one, I'll stand by my conviction.

Price in the market is determined by the relationship of supply and demand. For this relationship to be an efficient determinant of price, demand must be rational and the supplier and consumer must be equally knowledgable. Unfortunately it doesn't work that way. Consumers are rarely more knowledgeable than the producers, and more often than not receive their knowledge of the product from the advertising that producers spend billions on each year. Thus producers are able to inflate their price beyond reason by creating a cult or aura around their product and pander to the consumer's desire to distinguish him/herself from other's. Much of the market value of products nowadays is determined by the subjective whims of consumers that are in part influenced by the high tech/saturation manipulation of producers. Hardly a rational way of establishing value.
Apart from that, I understand that the theoretical basis of market price determination is valid. Any planned economy should at least take into account the principle of supply and demand. Otherwise, if they sell a scarce product at a fixed price lower than market value, they're merely going to create a shortage anyway. The things that we cannot produce in abundance will have to be supplied according to market principles, or will have to be targeted to those that need them most.

What I take issue with most of all is the fact that the Communist folks feel this urgent, insatiable NEED to control the lives of others.

I don't feel a communist should control the lives of others unless the activities of these "others" are a threat to the sustainability of both society and the environment. Thus, those industries that are directly contributing to global warming, to desertification, to the irreversible degradation of the environment are in effect threatening future productivity, and the sustainability of human civilization. I think the case for control is compelling in this regard. This is just one example. If arms manufacturers are, by their greed, directly contributing to the escalation of conflict and to the increasing effectiveness of the killing potential of the parties to a conflict, then I think the case for control is compelling. If, by their actions, a firm is making life miserable for its employees and is not sufficiently contributing to their welfare, then the case for control is compelling and the need to collectively determine a minimum standard of living for people is a necessity. These cases do not even call for communism, they simply call for a wholistic review of the social and natural impact of economic/productive activity and the active pursuit of solutions, which will inevitably result in the necessity of controls.

Somehow, the poor, downtrodden average man is incapable of negotiating a good deal for himself

If he has no security in his employment, if he lives in desparation for a wage and if he is forced to act alone, then I would say that he is incapable of negotiating a good deal. Somehow, you don't see how the characteristics of being "poor" and "downtrodden" are both the cause and effect of being incapable of negotiating a good deal. Again, this is blindness is symptomatic of the assumption of equality.

* Further, people do not exist in a vaccuum. That is to say, we are dynamic. When I was sixteen, I was only qualified to work in low skilled jobs. I did not come from a family of wealth or affluence, and yet...despite my relative lack of opportunity, I was able, all by my powerless self, bootstrap my way AWAY FROM the unskilled type job, and into a highly technical field. I did not need a state babysitter to assist me in this (no student loans taken, no nanny state paying for my education). I did not need a rich uncle's trust fund. I did it by virtue of focus and hard work. In this, I am hardly unique.

The idea that simple hard work and perseverance are the sole pre-requisites for a good and prosperous life is symptomatic of a flawed world-view that can only seriously exist in times of plenty, and when the opportunities for growth and expansion are in abundance. In times of economic penury and scarcity of opportunity (more the norm than the rule), one's hard work and perseverence in no way guarantees success. It is inequality that structures life chances and success, not simply the human will. Thus the ontological assumptions of laissez faire capiralists with regard to the fundamentals of human nature and its interaction with the actual world are scarcely less ideological than communism. Human will/agency is not sufficient to explain human success/inequality. It is in man's interaction with pre-existing and objective social and material conditions that largely determine his chances of success. That in western society there is sufficient room for growth and dynamism in the economy that a larger number of people than ever before are able to lift themselves into prosperity is no confirmation of the validity of this particular state of affairs across time and space. If (When) the economy hits bottom, it will not matter one iota whether or not you work hard to write and produce games and works of art. Your life chances as a producer of such idle luxuries will see you sink regardless of your efforts.

But it goes back to individual choice (and hand-in-hand with it, individual responsibility)

See above. The assumption that everything comes down to individual choice and responsibility is just as ideological, if not more so, than communism.

It's the economic fairytale I have problems with.

Me too... the idea that everything falls back on individual choice and responsibility is a fairytale. The invisible hand anmd the assumption that markets are infallible and will always do the right thing is a fairy tale. The assumption that all men are born equal is a fairy tale.
Markets fail, individual choice and responsibility is more often than not individual necessity and dependency, the invisible hand can slap you in the face, and inequality between men is one of the great constants of history. If communism is a fairy tale, this does not detract from the fact that much the rhetoric of capitalism is just as airy-fairy.

Kid...one question regarding your last post. Do you understand that human constructs/inventions (such as electricity and economic systems) exist to serve the needs of human beings, and not...I repeat NOT the other way around?

Marx couldn't have put it better himself. I suppose he simply differed on how best to turn these things to the service of human beings. Personally, I think a normative and conscious commitment to developing an economic system from which all human beings derive benefit is far less fetishistic as putting one's trust in some "invisible hand".

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Velociryx
Mmmm....well now...unless I'm mistaken, just one page ago, YOU were the one who said that forced work camps were a good idea.....were you not?

Work is a necessity of life, slavery is not. Exploitation is inherent to slavery. I advocate a system where the working class work for themselves. If you keep stating that I don't I won't keep responding to you.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Dracon II
The fundamental difference between capitalists and communists is their differing conceptions of equality. Correct me if I'm wrong... I'm just giving a rough sketch here...
Capitalism, or at least the classical liberal justification of capitalism, rests on the belief that all men are equal. This is best summarized in the declaration of independence. However, the equality is moral, not material. Capitalists rest on the idea of inherent equality and use it to promote political and legal equality. Thus arises the assumption that everyone has equality of opportunity and ability, and that there is therefore a justification for economic inequality. The rich simply worked hard. Thus, capitalists rely heavily on the human agency/will and the interaction of human agency/will as the basis of their social system.
Communists however, see equality differently. The abstraction of equality to the moral, political and legal spheres ignores the fact that one of the most basic forms of inequality is material inequality. Material and productive riches constituting the most potent form of power in a capitalist society, communists see the bracketing of equality in the state as a means of justifying and mystifying the gross inequality that exists in civil society. Furthermore, it also mystifies the greater political and legal power that the richer people have as influential and powerful actors in society. The separation of state and civil society is thus a ruse disguising the fact that the two are inseparable and mutually determined.
Thus the difference is that capitalists see equality as an a priori quality inherent in all humans, and use it justify really existing inequality by pointing to the formal equality that all people have within the state, and communists see the really existing inequality and concoct a teleological philosophy in order to justify it's elimination.

Capitalists were historically concerned with equal opportunity, because it allows them the opportunity to exploit the workers. True equality of all people is just talk for them. They really only mean themselves. Communists know that people without the means to exploit people can not be equal in a capitalist system. Capitalist idea of equality is not equality for workers.

My personal view is that humans are endowed with different and unequal capacities, and are distributed across areas with unequal capacities and are born into situations of unequal quality, and that eliminating inequality altogether would take far too much effort and coercion for what it would be worth. Society should concentrate of maximizing equality and utility, but should not commit itself to absolute equality as a goal, merely the amelioration of suffering, want, ignorance and idleness for the lowest of society, and the provision of opportunities for upward mobility. I believe that the assumption of equality anaesthetizes us against the indignity of inequality, but I also believe the ultimate elimination of inequality is a dream.
I simply believe that a commitment to raising the standards of living is necessary in the short term. In the long term, a commitment to making economics sustainable is necessary. If capitalism is allowed to ride roughshod across the world, it is only likely to make the ultimate social consequences and the next mode of production more intolerable for everyone, not least the capitalist. I don't believe that anything should be taken to the extreme. And thus capitalism needs to be regulated by an impartial state that has long term interests and sustainability in mind.
Most societies since at least antiquity have had some form of market operating within their economy. However, the concept of a "market economy" is quite a novelty in historical terms. It's my belief that a market economy is inherently unstable in the long term. The ultimate problem with today's society is that our capacity to stabilize and restrain the market is diminishing, as a global market emerges that has no real political overseer.

The only way a capitalist economy to survive is increasing exploitation of the workers. When exploitation stops increasing the financial markets will fail and profits will drop. A financial crisis will insue that the managers of the economy will not be able to manage. In short, there is no way that a regulated market can meet the objectives of communists.

I just don't think people ought to be paid more because they can do something that someone else can't.

Noble ideal, but hard work should be rewarded. We can't rely on voluntarism, or on political rewards. A just society rewards effort and service with real benefits.

We weren't talking about effort. We were talking about having a talent for something where there is more demand for your skill than there are people with the talent.

Good post.

[Dis]

What's the real difference between communism and socialism?

socialism isn't that bad. I'd like to get paid by rich people. I've given up hope of ever making a lot of money. I just don't have the aptitude for it.

I just wish we'd go all the way or nothing. As it stands, only people who have kids get goverment handouts.

I want goverment handouts too.