PreteenCommunist - ask me anything ^.^

"Social democratic" is the word you're looking for. Don't blame us.

And anyway...what would happen to the availability of public services to the poor in this kind of system? What of environmental protections, minimum wages, dealing with market failure?

How on Earth does consumer demand create this kind of useless crap?

Politicians are but another type of rich people who do useless jobs.

In my country, care workers, cleaners, caterers at state schools...all of them are privately-employed and there have been countless scandals relating to them not being paid enough. Monopolies emerge pretty organically in the private sector too.

Wait, what? You're not suggesting that we live in some sort of fascist society, are you? The last time anyone tried corporatism was in Mussolini's Italy, and to an extent in Nazi Germany. Our current system is nothing at all like that.

Can I call an apple an orange? No, because the apple does not match the definition of an orange. It does, however, perfectly match the definition of an apple.

Literally the same situation. Well, not literally, but you get it.

And Lenin was a poopy-pants too, wasn't he?

As for history, if you would like me to give a list of all of the countries which were considered communist/socialist/proletarian and explain exactly what circumstances caused them not to reach that point or, in the Soviet Union's case, to degenerate, I will oblige. But systems fail when they are in the wrong conditions. I've used this example like 10.000 times, but this is what happened to democracy in ancient Greece. This does not mean that democracy will inevitably fail in whatever circumstance, particularly since we can fully explain the conditions of its failure in this particular instance. The same applies to communism.

Well someone's been reading Pasternak.

Do my blog posts on this site answer your questions? I don't remember if I talked about the process of replacing capitalism, so I'll elaborate on that if you want.

Where is the corporatism? Where is the corporate state and the syndicates? I'm honestly completely perplexed by your assessment. By no standards is this a corporatist society. It's just late capitalism, with all its inefficacy, crises and state meddling.

Anti-monopoly regulation is a thing too, and monopolies existed before the state; the trend of capital accumulation is that businesses expand, outstrip the expansion pace of their sectors and engulf the competition. Perfect competition cannot exist as long as capital accumulation does, and you can't have capitalism without this.

I know the state gets too heavy-handed with its regulation and there is no denying that red tape and overspending are behind many of the crises we've been having (Eurozone, anyone?). But the reason it was introduced in the first place was that businesses in the 1830s when there was no regulation treated workers and the environment like disposables. The governments were under enormous pressure from workers. The result is that we have a safety net and decent public services and governments can stop companies from trashing the planet and workers' lives (when it suits them), but capitalism's efficiency has been hampered. This is part of the contradiction in the system.

 

That's suppression of the bourgeoisie, not the proletariat, who were being suppressed (along with the peasantry) during the period in question. The state had long ceased to be proletarian in class character by then. I have never said that I supported the killings carried out by Stalin, Mao or anyone else, because I don't support them.

 

Where they're not is a place called "Hialeah"
If you want to get beat by 60-yr old Cuban women with HUGE heavy purses,wear one there.
You'll wonder why there's something like a brick in their purse.

Here's my question: Do you make any kind of money for yourself?

 

Yes; state violence during the proletarian dictatorship/transition period.

 

Well I can't be legally employed just yet, but I 100% want to get a job when I turn 16.
[MENTION=22863]RPA1[/MENTION], I read your post but it's really late; I'll reply tomorrow.

 

How do your parents feel about your Communist tendencies? The "preteen" part really just sunk in just now.Sometimes I'm dense.
I've been working since I was 11.Mowing people's yards and things.
I guess nowadays "There's Mexicans fer that" Guess what? They took yer jerbs.
Thank Obama,Clinton, and Bush 1 for that.
Sometimes I'd make $80 a day.When you're 11 that's not bad.

 

Without government how would society run? Would there be police?

 

Who's to say that past revolutions were right? They cost lives and don't necessarily offer a better outcome. I don't view the American revolution as something purely good and an example to emulate...

potential for everyone to access the (overabundant) social product in whatever capacity they want - I'd like to see specifics about this. People are just going to produce stuff and others can have at it? Is there an economy in your utopia? A system of trade? If you leave it up to people to work out for themselves, they'll end up right back here, where they were before your revolution began.

By the way, I forget now - did you say you'd read Animal Farm when you were asked before? It should give you some idea of what happens when people try to declare everyone 'equal' - some invariably end up more equal than others in the social order, and this again is due to inherent differences. I don't know what empirical study would speak against that.

 

Nevertheless, the American revolution set the stage for our modern capitalist society. It created the US, a major capitalist and global superpower. Either way, history is written by the victors, the losers are swept away and forgotten or seen with scorn. The French revolution was quite the same, but it overthrew the monarchs and replaced them with the Bourgeoisie, who in my opinion were much better.

First of all, there is need to distinct utopia and scientific socialism. Engels made great emphasis in attacking utopian socialists, and created the scientific socialist movement.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/
As for your desire to see how a socialist system would be. Look no further than the system used in revolutionary Catalonia. Factories were run by the workers, who in turn were able to function as a unit until the Facists and Stalinists defeated them.

The system I propose uses a mixed system, which would be leaning towards a decentralized planned economy, in which factories and workplaces communicate and resources proportions are calculated and transported according to their use. There would be several larger regional units of calculation, which would oversee the more local units and adress any issue. People would be specialized in each part of the system, and of course they would oversee the technology and have backups if those fail.
People don't just produce stuff and give them away, that is misconception. Each regional unit will have their own centers where commodities are produced, if one region does not have that, then the other region will send some of its stockpile to the other region. In accordance to the amount calculated in the supercomputer and planning centre.
There is no trade however, a market does not need to exist in socialism. People can of course exchange gifts and other personal things like that, but nothing like a bazaar. Money is also a thing of the past, since it does not needed in socialism.

Did you know George Orwell was actually in the Spanish civil war fighting for the CNT? He even wrote a book Homage to Catalonia, where he describes his experiances in Revolutionary Catalonia. I also love Animal Farm, because it is a warning to all revolutions the influence of Bonopartism and how it can destroy the thing they were trying to achieve.
https://www.amazon.com/Homage-Catalonia-George-Orwell/dp/0156421178

But the Russian revolution is an EXTREMELY complicated thing to talk about. Since it was mostly involving a semi-feudal Russia that had not transitioned to capitalism. In fact, the purpose of the Russian revolution wasn't a revolution in one country, it was to incite a global revolution. It failed when the Spartacists in Germany, the Reds in Finland, the socialists in the Netherlands, and the Hungarian Soviet Republic was defeated. Thus leaving Russia isolated in a economic system that couldn't transfer to socialism, it need the other peices to fall in the right place.


Stalin was also an interesting topic, he was a revolutionary, but tried to address the issue of an isolated revolution in Russia. I don't support Stalin, he was a murderer and a madman, but I do kinda(-ish) see the reasoning in some of his choices.

 

Free market competition would keep the prices down. Also note that even during the barbaric Middle Ages there were houses where the poor could go to be taken care of for free. If it could exist back then, it could exist today.

Everyone is interested in protecting the environment because purposefully hurting it will hurt yourself too, not very rational in other words.

Minimum wage is a huge slap in the face of the less fortunate and the poor and should not exist. It makes it harder to start a business, it makes it harder for the sick who can't work full-time to get a job and the jobs that can be done, but that don't meassure up with e legislated minimum wage will be illegal. It is just not good for anyone and it is just not needed.

Under Capitalism, the market will fail automatically when the customer no longer buys its products. It's called bankrupcy.

I don't know about where you live.

Fascist? No. Those are your words, not mine. Never used that term.

Corporatism is, put shortly, when state and corporation are dancing with each other. When company x offers an MP a high position in their company in exchange for legislation/regulation that will benefit their company. Corporatism very much exist all over "West" still today.

This is what Commies do best. They hate Capitalism, but what they call Capitalism is in fact something else.

Soviet for beginners:
Big moustache: Evil
Small moustache: Less evil

Communism will never succeed.

See above.

There is only two ways for a business to gain a monopoly; (i) run to the government and ask for it or (ii) you are so fantastic at what you are doing, that the customers don't want any other product but yours. Needless to say, in free market Capitalism, only the latter would exist.

I don't get it- Do you or do you not support the state?

 

These are the inane answers I have gotten when I have asked this question on two different commie fora:

1. Under full blown communism, we will all share according to our needs, so there will be no motivation to commit "crimes," therefore there will be no need for police. [Yes, I laughed too.]

2. Under full blown communism, there will be no police, because police enforce bourgeois property rights, and there will be no private property, other than your toothbrush and other personal items. There will instead be worker militias to enforce whatever rules the workers themselves establish. [As to this knee slapper, note that the only way we will know who is a genuine member of the militia is if the carry an ID card, also known as a badge; they will also have to have weapons because some counter-revolutionary may not only be making trouble, but also carrying a gun. So it sounds to me like "worker militia" is just a commie word for police force. Also, if you're wondering how you will come to obtain a toothbrush when there is no money in society, the answer is that "you will be provided with one." Don't ask "by whom?" You can get shot for asking questions like that.]

Hi preteen, hope you're well.

 

Ritter, I agree with the sentiments in general, but I left the (USA) Libertarian Party because I believe its environmental policies are as much pie-in-the-sky as the communists' belief in people taking "only according to their needs," among other silly slogans. For example, the American bison/buffalo was hunted to near extinction before evil government said "no.". Other harmless and species were hunted to extinction, including the lovely Carolina Parakeet. For no reason whatsoever, people just enjoyed killing them by the hundreds. Okay, maybe a few made a buck off the pretty feathers. But I personally know people from my home state who would pay money to kill the last elephant, redhead duck, ivory-billed woodpecker, or rhinoceros on Earth, just to brag about it. To me this is wrong, and there is no stopping it without government of some sort or at least an authorized environmental protection militia.

Which is not to say you are a libertarian, but that's what it sounds like. Doesn't work any more than communism works.

 

I don't know, private prooerty rights and contracts could serve to protect animals and enivornment pretty well, I believe.

Busted. I am Libertarian.

 

tomb defined:

''a large vault, typically an underground one, for burying the dead.
synonyms: burial chamber, sepulcher, mausoleum, vault, crypt, catacomb; More
an enclosure for a corpse cut in the earth or in rock.''






''Behind Lenin's mausoleum, 12 top Soviet leaders, including Joseph Stalin, are buried in graves. Cremated ashes of dozens more, including the first cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, are buried in the walls of the Kremlin, which also holds a mass grave of Bolsheviks who were killed during the 1917 revolution''


https://www.questia.com/magazine/1G1-55670889/a-christian-burial-for-lenin

 

I'm coming up with conflicting definitions.

bur·y (bĕr′&#275
tr.v. bur·ied, bur·y·ing, bur·ies
1.
a. To place (a corpse) in a grave, a tomb, or the sea; inter.
b. To dispose of (a corpse) ritualistically by means other than interment or cremation.
2.
a. To place in the ground; cover with earth: The dog buried the bone. The oil was buried deep under the tundra.
b. To place so as to conceal; hide or obscure: buried her face in the pillow; buried the secret deep within himself.


Wouldn't you say that Stalin is in a state of interment ? Lenin definitely is. So is the soldier inside the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington. Even though we know who he is today.

But the first definition refers to a tomb being buried.

I would have to dig out an old dictionary published before Webster adopted revisionism.

 

http://api.theweek.com/sites/defaul...rticle_full.jpg?itok=_CsKlZeO&resize=1260x560



I got news for you: Stalin is still loved by many in Russia.

 

These are antiquated ideas, if indeed they were ever truly accurate, the "bourgeoisie" and the "proletariat." I think of these concepts as an evolution of older class-based thinking from times when society, especially in Europe (as opposed to, say, the USA) was more rigidly structured, with notions of the landed aristocracy (the haves) and the have-nots - peasant farmers and proletarian factory workers, etc. Birth controlled people's fate and opportunities; there was very limited social mobility. That is NOT the case in modern western societies, where anyone can earn a fortune and succeed according to their own merits. Modern western societies also do a great deal to ensure that everyone gets every opportunity they need to succeed, one big thing being public education. Everyone is entitled to education, and even compelled to attend.

When you whine about this imagined "bourgeoisie" today, it just sounds like sour grapes by those who are not so successful wanting to take what others have earned through their hard work and talent. Capitalism is not a flawed system for revealing that not all people are equal in every fundamental way. Capitalism simply allows those who are capable to achieve; the socialist policies that have grown up within Capitalism help those who are not so successful, so that they're not left starving on the streets and still have an opportunity to advance economically and socially no matter their circumstances. It's a fine arrangement, and clearly it's what works economically. It's why China is building and thriving today - they've escaped the shackles of Communism to allow their people to build their nation. Capitalism as a system is very much bottom-up, and that is what's needed for something as complex as a national society and economy to be built and maintained successfully, because it's too large and complex for central management (the top-down approach) to work. And you need that centralised, top-down approach for Communism to exist and function, because as I and others have said previously, humans will not accept and participate (universally, anyway) in Communism without being forced into it; it's simply not compatible with human thinking on the whole. It's the product of a certain segment of humanity thinking they can plan the perfect society for everyone; Capitalism, on the other hand, allows people to negotiate their individual interests freely as they see fit and reach compromises, and again it doesn't classify people in that old fashioned sense, but allows the individual to succeed (or not) as they individually merit. These days, even the unsuccessful live pretty comfortably in the West. They have their basic needs met, or at least easily can. Some are so messed up mentally and emotionally that they still fail hard, but there's really no helping some people... Many homeless people live that way by choice, for instance, and many are poor because they have awful spending habits, a terrible work ethic, are personally irresponsible, and so on - in short, again, they're mentally and emotionally messed up. Help is available to them. No egalitarian pipe dream that ignores basic facts of reality (Communism) is required or called for.

 

Whew, lots of replies...not sure whether to feel popular or overwhelmed :/

Bear with me, peeps.

I was not arguing anywhere that those paid the least necessarily contribute the most. I was arguing that capitalism is ineffective at quantifying the actual value (i.e. not the market value, but the degree of social contribution and intensity) of labour, and thus capitalism does not remunerate people for hard work. It remunerates them almost randomly.

The only way this could be true would be if person X gaining something directly or indirectly caused person Y to miss out on or lose something - in what circumstances is this invariably the case?

I never said "necessarily" but whatever. This is a bit of a tangent.

Whatever the attitudes of random individual capitalists, one does not empathise with one's competitors.

Capitalism is not merely striving to improve one's station in life; it's striving to do so by beating others, by being better than the competition. Success in capitalism relies on a certain degree of detachment from others, since it requires viewing oneself as an abstract, atomised "individual" in perpetual competition against others. There was this British study a while ago which found that senior executives tended to have traits in common with psychopaths, which include being dispassionate: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10683160310001634304

I feel like you're assuming that I hold certain positions and then arguing from these assumptions. I never said anything about leaving society to the vagaries of human emotion or legislating morality - in fact I'm a non-cognitivist and I do not want to legislate anything at all (in a non-administrative sense).

So you're using this horrible "morality" word to mean a social consensus on acceptable behaviour, correct? You haven't answered my question though. How does such an agreement or consensus come about?

 

They disagree, but they're not thaaat political (they vote and stuff and sometimes have Facebook arguments but that's basically it) so they don't mind that much. I've also been a communist (well, an anarchist at first) for over two years and everyone's used to it by now.

Yeah, kids don't really do odd jobs like that now; at least I don't know anyone who does. I do stuff which could qualify as labour - mostly writing and translation - but no one pays me, I just do it for the lurve. And the language practice.

 

There wouldn't be a state at all, as in a centralised institution with a monopoly on the legitimate use of coercive force (I'm partial to Weber's definition, for once) and law enforcement is an arm of the state, so nope, no police.

Here is a thing I wrote on this topic:

Edit: I'll reply to the others later.

 

Assuming the wild critters don't jump over the fence. Even horses do that much. It's a dilemma.

 

You're popular.

But don't get the big head; half of us think you're hustling us with that avatar of the little innocent girl in the pink dress and bow; seems a bit of an oversell. Get you an image of an anarchist with face mask and jeans, wearing a Che t-shirt and throwing an incendiary device through the plate glass wind of a posh department store. "Revolution NOW!!!"

Still waiting on those dental records ....

 

Capitalism is actually the MOST EFFECTIVE way of quantifying the value of one's labor because it depends on the free market which is the ONLY way to assign value to work. Do you want some government bureaucrat to decide YOUR value?

When government mandates the sharing of the value of one's work, there is no reason for anyone to do more work than anyone else. We see this in American Unions where those who work harder than others are told to slow down. This also happens in government jobs. This is reality and, until one experiences it for themselves one has no idea how much pressure there is on NOT excelling in a collective environment and/or a strictly controlled wage amount NOT calculated by actual business revenue but by government. (i.e. minimum wage)

So you agree that putting oneself first is a good thing?

Competition is not non-empathy. In the real world, your competition are probably the ONLY ones who understand your position. Successful competition is actually dependent upon completely understanding of the opposition.

Big corporations typically give lots of money to charity. Also, corporations provide stock-holders with revenue that can be bought by the public (in the case of a public corporation) and put into retirement accounts that yield approx. 10 times more than government payments on social security (in the U.S.).

Show me your study about senior executives having psychopathic traits. I am the senior executive of my own company...You calling me a psychopath?

Can you stop with the '10 dollar words' that are meaningless like "non-cognitivist?'

In the recent past is was based on religious belief and (in the case of America) The Ten Commandments. Today, however, morality is mostly relative to what secular humanists want to indulge in.

 

I think when we get older we realize this isn't really true, it's just something we say. At best to encourage children and at worst to try and be popular. The truth is that almost every job you can do is based upon your performance, even things like being a waiter or a waitress, and some people are better at certain things than other people are for countless little reasons that have nothing to do with education.

 

Would you rather be Lady Gaga's tour manager or Taylor Swift's friend that she goes to, to complain about boys?