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"Communism is the greatest evil unleashed on humanity" (2 Viewers)
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Zeitgeist308
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Thank you, but there's not much to be impressed with quite frankly. This debate is one of the worst I've ever had (in terms of the oppositions arguement). I find the much more productive, challenging and fulfilling discussion comes from within Marxism itself (and also to a lesser extent Anarchism).Enteebee said:
I and most certainly planning to go on to university. At this stage I'm probably looking at doing Engineering, specifically environment or chemical. I would also be quite happy with doing an arts degree in politic science or some such. Interestingly the ANU offers post-graduate political science research in Marxism. However the latter option is practically useless unless of course acedemia is your long term career goal...Enteebee said:
No problem. It's just while the philosophical and scientific discussion on this forum is sometimes pretty decent, the political discussion is usually limited to a narrow range of libertarian opinions. I am mostly impressed by your level of knowledge due to your being in year 11, considering that some people here have taken political economy and such classes at the university level.
Well we only have one life. To fill it with a career and to miss out on learning seems to me to be somewhat wasted, though I wouldn't criticise someone who takes the former option (as I find simpler, more family based lives to be rather noble and beautiful). For someone such as yourself who seems so interested in such topics as to research it so thoroughly outside of their normal studies I would say it's something worth deep consideration.
ASNSWR127
Member
Yes you have hit it on the head when you say I would moderate my political position to suit the contemporary working class. As with anything it needs to move with the times I feel. That is of course a personal opinion and I would certainly love for what you are saying to happen.Zeitgeist308 said:
I just don't think it is going to and perhaps doesn't need to anymore. I think we socialists (and i include myself in that even if I am a little less 'militant' than you) missed our great opportunities long ago for a the utopia which we we know could have been achieved...
I think it would take something truly cataclysmic (maybe a really bad financial blow up would do it) for people to once again be shaken out of their complacency and to once again realise that what Marx says still (the majority) holds true. Life is a class struggle and doesn't need to be.
Just out of interest what spawned these leftist views? was it circumstance (like myself) or a simple consciense?
I also get really annoyed when discussing these matters with anyone that they get confused between communism practically working and a philosophical theory. So I apologise if I sound like one of those people. i totally understand where you are coming from with this one.
I would love to discuss the philosophy and theory behind it anyday but I think that these forums are a poor medium for such a discussion.
An interesting case: Venezuela was on the way to socialism.
But Chavez decided that, fundamentally, socialism needs pieces of democracy to work right (lest it stops representing the will of the people and slips into authoritarianism), so he changed course a bit for democratic socialism. He did this all independently of any involvement from American pressure.
These days, though, I think Venezuela is more a social democracy (welfare state) like Western countries (including Israel and Japan, but excluding America).
Also interesting: Chile, in the 1970's, had the best welfare system in the world. The American government pulled their typical "COMMUNISM IS EVIL!!" shit and sent the CIA in to stage a coup, then promptly dismantled the welfare system. Chile was a social democracy at the time. It's stories like these that make me question just how much these old states 'failed' and how much they were forced to fail; I believe a similar story applies to Afghanistan, though it fared far worse afterwards than Chile.
But Chavez decided that, fundamentally, socialism needs pieces of democracy to work right (lest it stops representing the will of the people and slips into authoritarianism), so he changed course a bit for democratic socialism. He did this all independently of any involvement from American pressure.
These days, though, I think Venezuela is more a social democracy (welfare state) like Western countries (including Israel and Japan, but excluding America).
Also interesting: Chile, in the 1970's, had the best welfare system in the world. The American government pulled their typical "COMMUNISM IS EVIL!!" shit and sent the CIA in to stage a coup, then promptly dismantled the welfare system. Chile was a social democracy at the time. It's stories like these that make me question just how much these old states 'failed' and how much they were forced to fail; I believe a similar story applies to Afghanistan, though it fared far worse afterwards than Chile.
ASNSWR127
Member
yes the americans sure have a knack of gettig rid of democratically elected governments which most certainly do have the support of the people
God bless the CIA.
God bless the CIA.
withoutaface
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If a group of people want to get together in a peaceful and voluntary manner to ensure each gets the best deal from their employer, who am I to stop them? Where exactly does having unions go against laissez faire (apart from their constant rent seeking)?ASNSWR127 said:
Capitalism encourages self determination and individuality. The ideology you've outlined relies upon conformity and the centralised distribution of resources.Zeitgeist said:
On the lack of capital behind workers collectives: Are you saying that there's nobody with significant amounts of capital who believes in marxism strongly enough to sponsor such collectives to get them off the ground (esp. if they're the most efficient method of production)?
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ASNSWR127
Member
yes but it is only recently that unions have taken the soft cock "peaceful" approach to work place solutions. This is where I get militant.withoutaface said:
It is only through instances such as waterfront strikes, picket lines etc that many of the conditions have been fought for and won.
withoutaface
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Yeah, because Dollar Sweets really helped the Confectioners' Union win rights.ASNSWR127 said:
I feel I should second Zeitgeist's call of "a priori moralism" here. I think it is perfectly acceptable to tax people for the greater good of the community. I firmly believe that inequalities in our initial conditions (genes and environment) determine our success - or simply our outcomes in general. Even a classically industrious personality type may find partial explanation in terms of neurotransmitter polymorphisms (there is interesting current research being down on basic personality dimensions, e.g. Cloninger's Harm Avoidance, Novelty Seeking and Reward Dependence, and their relationship to genes coding for certain cell membrane receptors/transporters, enzymes and so forth).zstar said:
It's fair enough if you want to try to make an empirical argument showing that a pure free market is to the general betterment of all involved. It is another to place ideology first and equate taxation with highway robbery. Of course, I should conceed that I am a moral relativist, so black & white moralising often gets up my nose.
I have read what Marxism is you fag, I don't want any of it do youunderstand. My family lived through the hell known as Communism andneither they nor I want anything to do with it. Get it? I don't want topractice Marxism and I don't want Marxism imposed on me and if you evertried to force me to live your "Utopian" World I would do whatever ittook to defend myself. You little shits think just because you've justfinished your HSC that you can lecture me? You've never even held adamn job in your lives so what can you possibly know?
Who's them? If I run a store I run it because of my work, Do you thinkmanagers just sit there and do nothing you freaking bum? They work 24/7to keep the business running and they work hard so once again youlittle rat who never held a job wouldn't know squat.
Ah yes you're freaking wise aren't you? That's why every Marxist inhistory has failed miserably. The only failure is Communism and nobodyis crazy enough to run to Communism except for you little moonbats whowouldn't understand anything.
What do you think sonny jim? You sell your product then you make profitget it? As you make more profit your business grows and your moneyincreases therefore you can use that money to spend on yourself orothers if you desire. When you make profit you have incentive to createa better product and your products become cheaper.
What the BS that property could be owned by everyone? ahahahaha sorrybut it can't work at all. If we all owned it then who would run it? Whowould maintain it? It's like saying we should all own your computertherefore nobody owns it well let me tell you this if all of us ownedyour computer that would be the most chaotic thing ever. If you everwanted to type something for an assignment you technically would neverever be able to accomplish that because everyone else is fighting overwho should do what, when, and how. So again you give a moonbatargument that belongs in the realm of fantasy.
I don't think you understand what I'm saying, I'm saying that if youwanted to go to a doctor, plumber, dentist then you should save yourmoney up and help yourself and if you can't afford it then rely on yourfriends and family. Get it?
That's 2 completely different things. An employee has the right to hisproperty and business, You as an employee agree by his set up rulesvoluntarily and if you're not happy then you have the right to changeto another job. A company cannot force you to things the way he/shewants, A company boss cannot make you buy his/her product, A companyboss will not put you in prison for disagreeing with him/her, It is 2completely different things. In fact you as a worker have anoppurtunity to take his/her place and make your own sets of rules. Youthink people who run businesses are lazy but I tell they are not. Manyof them spend sleepless nights to ensure that things are running, Agovernment however couldn't give a crap if something ran properlybecause government could use force to quash any opposition throughpara-military and military means. You are confusing 2 different things.
No but you advocate that society owes you something, You think you havea right to everything and that everything should be handed to you on asilver platter because somehow it fits in with your Utopian view.
I don't need to read 25 pages to get what you're on about, Let me tellyou something about Marx. When he was writing his theories Germany wasstill in the middle of the Industrial revolution he saw to classes theso called Bourgeoisie and the Workers, What he never anticipated however was the rise of the middle class and improvements in labour laws as well as human nature. He essentially written it in a time where Industry was only just advancing.
You don't believe me do you? You really don't believe me when I say that Marxism ALWAYS leads to dictatorship by the government. You think I'm just
pulling it out of my ass and so you keep trying to convince me that we haven't had a chance to make it work but I'm telling you that no one can because the nature of Marxism means that those who want Marxism must appropriate personal property through force and therefore those who refuse and persecuted for not submitting to those orders.
What you haven't had enough evidence?
USSR
Peoples Republic Of China
Democratic Peoples Republic of North Korea
Venezuela
Cuba
Eastern Europe
Zimbabwe
Vietnam
Cambodia
Laos
East Germany
etc
etc
What more evidence do you want until you admit that Marxism has been tried and failed? How many more lives must be destroyed before your experiment ends up the inevitable disaster that it is? The Hundreds of Millions of people that starved and butchered to death would disagree with you.
The elite ruling class always wants and has more and they won't care if the rest of us starve just as long as they can enjoy lobster. Of course they think you're too good for lobster.
This will cause severe imbalances and shortages. In fact by your logic most people will never have to work they can just sit back and expect everything right in front of them with nothing but the invisible man to run everything.
Yes but what reward is he getting? A truck driver needs fuel and maintenance to run the truck and so he needs people to dig up the oil and go to all the trouble of doing that and believe me nobody would bother if their was no incentive to do so and even if he could find a mechanic to fix his truck he would have to wait for years to get it fixed because under your system the only people who work are those who somehow enjoy it yet you don't realise that most people will not work because they just enjoy it, Life does not work that way.
Look maybe your idea of morals is different from mine so lets just keep it that way for now.
Yes because you have to force someone and confiscate it from him to give it to the public domain. You can say whatever the hell you want but until you've worked in company or ran a company you will never understand this.
Workers don't need handouts, As soon as they get a job they are now responsible for their own savings. It's not fair for someone who does save and does take care of his money to be responsible for somebody who doesn't. Again you can call it whatever you want but I call it simple logic.
There's no free ride in this life, Rich people start doing jobs they don't like then they move on and do other things. Bill gates was a door to door salesman before he became the wealthy software giant mogul. Sometimes you must work jobs you dislike to get what you want or desire. That's called facing reality. I don't want to get old, sick and die out but I must face that truth.
Mugabe did that in Zimbabwe and guess what? Now Zimbabweans are hungry and they have one million percent inflation. He gave away white owned property to blacks who didn't know what to do with those farms and now the breadbasket of Southern Africa is a turd hole that cannot feed itself let alone Africa.
Kid listen many in history have been idealistic like you but as they grow older they realise the mistakes that they made in their thinking, Socialism sounds nice and looks nice but when you actually put it into practice you realise that Socialism tries to create heaven on earth that is not achievable by the human condition. What Capitalism tries to do is acknowledge those imperfections and imbalances and inequality will always exist but no other system in history has gotten people out of poverty more then Free Market capitalism. What some of you perceive to be poverty in this country is not really that bad compared to what most people in this world experience daily. You don't know how good you have it until you
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bigboyjames
Banned
bring forward the Third Way of economic philosophy.
Thank God for Pinochet.Trefoil said:
He saved Chile from death and now it's one of the most prosperous and stable economies in Latin America where people are not persecuted for their beliefs.
Venezuela is a disaster waiting to happen. Chavez can only fund his social programs by selling his oil to "evil capitalists". Let me tell you without a middle class or foreign investment those people are doomed to forever repeating the cycle of poverty and now he is trying to create a dictatorship and overwriting the Venezuelan constitution with his enabling acts.
Without oil money he'd be running his bankrupt banana republic by now as true failed state.
For the 100 millionth time it's not possible, It's quackery. You can either have complete market drive economy or a complete Socialist economy.
Any intermixing of those economic philosophies has a long term adverse effect.
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not.addie
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The true model of communism has never existed, so it has not been unleashed on humanity yet.
While socialism has brought on some benefits to countries, better social welfare than capitalist countries, it does reach an end after a certain period of time. As seen in For. Yugoslavia, under the rule of Tito; where after his death in 1980 the whole country slowly reached its demise; hence bringing the question of dictatorship and totalitarianism in the whole equation.
But then again even that form of socialism had capitalist tendencies.
While socialism has brought on some benefits to countries, better social welfare than capitalist countries, it does reach an end after a certain period of time. As seen in For. Yugoslavia, under the rule of Tito; where after his death in 1980 the whole country slowly reached its demise; hence bringing the question of dictatorship and totalitarianism in the whole equation.
But then again even that form of socialism had capitalist tendencies.
But this is a key part of the debate. On one hand you have the empirical data which can be used to argue factual claims, and on the other you have moral debate regarding what we ought to do given the established facts. It's a mistake to simply ignore the associated problems. Embrace the spectre of moral relativism. Embrace it.zstar said:
ASNSWR127
Member
KFunk said:
For those of us who aren't doing a Bachelorintoomanydegrees at the university of ultra academic people who get to put way too many letters in front of and behind their names when they are finished uni, could you please explain what moral relativism is?
The name is sort of suggestive of what it is (i.e that what someones morals are is relative to ?occupation, circumstance, intelligence?)
Silver Persian
Banned
I don't know if I'd want a moral relativist to be doing surgery on meKFunk said:
Aye, you've more or less got it in one. The wiki article on moral relativism is fairly comprehensive. The term is sometimes used in a descriptive sense to identify the supposed fact that morality varies across sociocultural contexts. I'm am using in the stronger, metaethical sense (where metaethics is the study of the meaning and nature of ethics, e.g. what does 'good' mean? is there a logic of ethical reasoning?) in which moral relativism is a theory claiming that moral claims must be evaluated relative to some context (e.g. occupation, circumstance as you pointed out). In short: that there is no objective moral truth.ASNSWR127 said:
And what is objective truth? Think of claims like 'Friedrich Nietzsche died in 1900'. Generally we assume that they are either true or false (and not both!), and that the respective truth value does not depend on the opinions or perspectives of individuals. In short, we assume that there is an objective truth about the way the world is which is independent of observers such as ourselves (i.e. a tree falls in the forest irrespective of whether we see/hear it).
In any case, I take the moral nihilism direction within moral relativism because I claim that there are no objective moral truths, only subjective individual/group moral beliefs. I view them as similar to aesthetic claims - e.g. caramel is delectable, or Klimt is a better artist than Monet - which we generally have little trouble accepting as subjective (and not objective). N.B. I'm not trying to label moral beliefs as worthless, as I still view my moral life as extremely important (indeed, moral beliefs are important for the proper functioning of society). However, I don't see them as having an objective source of validation.
Such is the barrow that I push.
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