Left vs. Right

But that's where you're wrong, if you have the luck to get out of a communist state, you most certainly will not have the luck to get in to the US as well, because that's virtually impossible (legally anyway.

 

Human beings are:

1. Greedy (What's in it for me?)
2. Corrupt (I'll support the person who gives me what I want.)
3. Competitive (I want to be the best!)
4. Different (I want to go surfing vs I want to go shopping.)
5. Stupid (I don't understand what you mean.)
6. Indifferent (I don't care.)

The only society that will ever work is a society that recognises those traits and plays to them. That's why Democracy (corruption, greed and indifference) and Capitalism (competition, difference and stupidity) work.

Number 6 is the killer though. Get twenty people together and ask them what they want to do for a birthday party. You'll get one or two people who take the lead and have all the ideas. The rest won't care enough to get involved and will simply be happy to do whatever those one or two people think they should do. Balloons and a barbecue? Sure, fine. Whatever. Think about every group situation you've been in and think about who got involved and who didn't. For those that sat back, work out why those people didn't get involved. You'll eventually realise it's because they don't care enough to contribute and they're happy with "whatever everyone else wants to do".

That's why "Communism" partially works on a family or tribal level but it isn't really "Communism". Why? It has classes. Workers, leaders, bums who do nothing. I care about my family. I care about my community. But I couldn't care less about your family or your community. That's your problem. This is why we have leaders (a more respected and therefore "higher class" of people).

It all contributes to why we have other classes. I want to do things that will allow me to buy nice cars and go on holidays to nice islands. You might be happy with what you've got and so have no need to earn more money. I might be better than you at certain things or if you're better than me, I'll want to compete with you and become better.

The most interesting thing though, is that in their bid for a "classless" society, Communists all talk about the "working class". That is, the "working class" needs to have a revolution. The "working class" needs to take control. There's not one moment of thought put towards any of the other classes of society or seemingly, any serious attempt to involve them at all. One wonders how a claseless society can be created if only one class is involved in the transition.

The term "working class" is also a misnomer. It's an attempt to imply that somehow, they are the only ones that do any "work". That everyone else is lazy and doesn't deserve what they have. That the leaders (higher class) shouldn't be doing what they do, irrespective of the fact that leading is itself work and that the working class' failure to care is why the leaders get their in the first place.

The reality is, there has never been a Communist country. What "Communism" is was never even actually defined by Karl Marx. That is, he never said what a Communist society would be. He just sort of said what it wasn't and gave a few broad terms which mainly boil down to "power to the people".

What he focussed mainly on was the "revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat". That is, not Communism itself and not even a dictatorship in the sense of an individual, but a "situation where the proletariat (working class) would hold power and replace the current political system controlled by the bourgeoisie (propertied class)."

Point is, Stalin, Lenin, Mao, and all the others used that as a wedge to gain power for themselves. Communists think they need a dictator and a revolution of the working class, so when someone comes along offering those things, they stupidly think it's Communism.

State ownership of factories is not Communism. It's supposed to be an "intermediate stage" (the dictatorship) between Capitalism (which has been clearly defined thanks to the likes of Adam Smith) and Communism (which even the most well-known founders of the movement never bothered to clearly explain).

I want to quote from Wikipedia on this point. I agree with Xz but take a look at Wikipedia's interpretation of something Karl said:

• In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly -- only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!

The phrase summarizes the idea that, under a communist system, every person shall produce to the best of their ability in accordance with their talent, and each person shall receive the fruits of this production in accordance with their need, irrespective of what they have produced. In the Marxist view, such an arrangement will be made possible by the abundance of goods and services that a developed communist society will produce; the idea is that there will be enough to satisfy everyone's needs.

Marx specifically delineated the conditions under which such a creed would be applicable - a society where technology had substantially eliminated the need for physical labor in the production of things. Marx explained his belief that in such a society, each person would be motivated to work for the good of society despite the absence of a social mechanism compelling work, because work would become a pleasurable and creative activity. Marx intended the initial part of his slogan, "from each according to his ability" to suggest not merely that each person should work as hard as they can, but that each person should best develop their particular talents.

In other words, Communism will never work until we have robots. In short: A society where we don't NEED to work. Forget taxes. Forget rich people paying more. Forget whatever hokey system you think you can implement that will make Communism work. None of it will work until we have technology that mens we don't need to work. It's that simple. Communists should be working on making robots and advancing technology if they want to see that society. Not overthrowing the Government out of some bizarre attempt to make things better for themselves (greed).

http://www.rebell.se/

English Motherfucker?

Smaller dividend = Less money = Not able to buy food = Starvation = Death. I've simplified the concept but the point remains the same. Capitalism allows you to choose between a profit generating company and a loss making company. People generally dislike losses because they reduce your ability to survive.

And how would you do that? Violent revolution? And isn't appointing someone to that role pushing them into a higher (more respected) class (group) of people? That's not Communism.

As Xz said, that's absurd. Why should the US let you in?

Frigo's right. Communism doesn't even work in theory. For starters, Communism wouldn't "create" anything. Communism "is" something. It's a label for a society which is already classless, stateless and has an abundance of resources (food etc...).

A "class" is simply another word for a group. People naturally form groups. Think about your days in school or University. You were all students and you had teachers. That's two different classes of people right there. But even within those groups, certain people formed sub-groups (sub-classes) like the jocks or the geeks.

Within those groups, decision makers (leaders) will naturally emerge. Teachers will choose from amongst them someone with more authority or someone who is respected more. Someone who then makes the decisions about what to teach, what resources to buy for the school and so on because those decisions need to be made.

Now, a "state" is simply another word for any given area which has a "ruling authority" or in other words, a leader. Someone who makes decisions for the people that live within that area. Take a sub-class like a small group of friends and you will see leaders within that group. A group of friends, one of which is the most respected or who makes the decision about where to eat for lunch or what to do, is effectively nothing more than a two classes of people. That leader becomes a class on his own, and the group of friends becomes a state.

Then, in order for their to be an abundance of products, we'd need new technology that takes away the necessity for human labour. Robots, machines and so on that would do the work for us. Let's think, in theory for a moment, about such a future. A future in which human beings don't need to work because we have robots toiling in the field harvesting our crops. We even have advanced artificially intelligent computers making the decisions on what to grow and when to harvest.

Would we now have a classless and stateless society? No, we wouldn't. All we've done now is simply create three major classes. Labour Robots, Thinking Machines and Human Beings. The Human Beings would put themselves into a superior class because we're Human. In fact, we probably wouldn't even consider the Robots to be a class. The Robots were created by us, to work for us. They are inferior. Thinking Machines were created to make our decisions for us. They are built to perform a task. We are a superior class because we don't need to work and we don't need to think or make decisions.

What would happen? Some humans would form groups of friends, with leaders, and go and do their own thing. Those leaders would make decisions on behalf of the group, with the authority of the group, until such time as the group chose a new leader. But what happens if two groups encounter each other and one group decides to kill the other group because they want to play in the area occupied by the other group? There is no state to stop them (each group is its own state). Would the robots interfere?

Nope. Because there'd still be a State, a ruling class, designed to stop those things. There would still be laws that prevent people from kiling each other because society needs it. This is because "Abundance" is a flawed concept. Think about the term "equal social and economic status". What is equal? If there's a ruling class, then that class is not equal to the class it rules. Isn't that fair though? If the people look up to that ruling class to lead them? It is, after all, a human thing to allow someone else to lead (or want to become a leader yourself).

And what is "equal economic status"? Thanks to the robots, we all have the same amount of food but what if I want to eat more? Doesn't that mean we're not equal anymore? Presumably the Robots would provide me with what I wanted because I'm a Human and that's their job. So what if I want to have a larger house? It doesn't matter right, because you can have a larger house too! But what if everyone wants a house so big that there's no room on the planet for them all?

So what about this "freedom" then? If there are limits placed on us, it means we aren't "free", are we? After all, freedom doesn't include the freedom to kill, does it? What if there is an abundance of people? Isn't this abundance supposed to allow us to do what we want? You probably agree with me that the freedom to kill is absurd but that means we need someone to make that decision and a group - class - of people to enforce that law...

But in order for us to be classless and stateless, we'd have to leave that up to the robots. And what if the robots decided, thanks to their programming, that human beings are in abundance and that killing one or two of them is okay? I mean, they're there to give us what we want and if we want to kill, why not? And if the robots decided that our house could only have one bedroom, a kitchen and a small screen TV, would we really accept that? I'm sure some people would be happy but what about those who want more?

In short, Communism relies on fundamentally flawed principles. That is, anything can become "abundant" (even the crops we grow are limited to farmable land). That "freedom" comes without restriction and that we are all equal. We are not equal. Some of us are smarter than others. Some of us are better at certain things than others. And there are restrictions on our freedoms.

The only place where such restrictions would not apply would be in an artifical, virtual world. Though even in those, you would find groups of people emerging and you would find leaders.

 

What the hell does Communism have to do with the concept of 'self'?

The whole point is that individuality is sacrificed for the sake of the population as a whole, so as a devout communist you shouldn't have a self to believe in.

 

Whilst the same cannot be said about capitalism, I wonder?

 

No offence man, but do even you yourself understand what the fuck you're saying?

 

I take it that this 'food chamber' is some archaic form of the 'food chain'?

 

ALL HAIL THE LOGIC!