PreteenCommunist - ask me anything ^.^

Until there is evidence for that, or even a way in which it could possibly scientifically be the case, I have no reason to believe it. And it is impossible to evidence a claim like this, since it is impossible to control all the variables involved, and we would need access to inhabitants of historical societies for testing purposes, which we do not have. But we can establish very clear links between certain societal conditions and their behavioural counterparts, and we know that in primitive societies, economic necessity at the time caused the means of production to be socially owned and the lack of existence of a state, and no aspect of some kind of ill-defined "human nature" obstructed this.

Sure, I wouldn't consider myself an optimist either; but I don't think it's realistic to make unparsimonious assumptions about human nature. It's just begging the question really.

 

I almost wrote this whole reply and then my tab randomly closed and I lost it. Life is hard.

It shouldn't be too difficult to allow for a margin of error and therefore produce small surpla of everything, or to monitor changes in demand constantly through stock levels, store surveying and other such mechanisms or factor in the risks of weather incidents. Current companies have to plan for these things and assess risks anyway. It will just be easier in communism because all processes will be co-ordinated together and integrated.

They didn't have to. The NEP route was only taken because of organisational bureaucracy, a growing lack of true soviet and workers' control and the isolation of the revolution in one backward country, all of which exacerbated the Civil War's duration and severity as well as the economic shortages. In my opinion, the NEP was the final political expression of the revolution's death; along with events like the Kronstadt rebellion and its aftermath.

Evidently businesses still don't manage their resources well enough, since time after time the taxpayer has to bail out their sorry arses and suffer the crises caused by their failure. Any thorough economic plan would, as a comprehensive and consciously-devised computational process, be able to factor in all inputs and outputs and carry out cost-benefit analyses far more efficiently than the market, as it would not attempt to pack all of the information into one metric (price) and would plan directly for human need, thus incorporating factors often ignored by the market as "externalities." We could definitely plan for the future and take future risks into account using this method, and far more effectively than the market does too; I mean, the market certainly ignores future consequences when it is cheaper to dump crap into the ocean, pollute the planet and cause future environmental havoc than to find greener methods of production which ultimately benefit humanity more.

Wait, so you're a communist?

(The DotP does not involve social ownership by the way, since classes still exist in this period. It's a transitional phase.)

It doesn't organically morph. The objective of the revolution (I'm ignoring reformism here since it isn't my personal position) is to forcibly overthrow the bourgeoisie, as the feudal nobility were forcibly overthrown, and to seize control in its place and thereby establish the basis of a transition into socialism. But in order for this transition to take place, the new state must be genuinely proletarian and the revolution cannot be isolated in one country (in my opinion). Otherwise we end up with the USSR: a particularly autocratic and clumsily-managed form of capitalism.

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Because they look badass af.

 

Capitalism is the ONLY way to quantify the value of someone's work.

Wanting to improve one's own status is NOT 'selfish' it is an innate human drive.

MORALITY is where compassion lies. Human beings agreeing how to treat each other, it is not the job of any government or can it be mandated to be provided. Lack of compassion in the world has nothing to do with Capitalism. Talk about ridiculous.

 

How do you feel that just during the 20th Century that communist regimes have murdered over 100 million civilians ?

Not talking about wars where soldiers were killed and civilians were caught in the cross fire but right out murder.

HOW MANY DID COMMUNIST REGIMES MURDER ?* -> https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/COM.ART.HTM

 

He doesn't care, in fact earlier in this thread he told me he supported that type of murder.

 

There is no system you can ever concoct that will eliminate what you call "class struggle." People are fundamentally unequal, and many are dishonest and will seek power and advantage over others, and most have a sense of personal ownership, and so on and so forth. Communism does not take human nature into account. YOU do not take human nature into account. Such a system will always fail.

 

Isn't her answer to such questions always that those Communists were not True Communists? It is from what I've seen. She thinks she's got it all figured out, how to implement Communism in a way that won't lead to an oppressive police state and purges and all that fun stuff.

 

Like I said, you fail to understand human nature. Not everyone is like you and going to agree with your lofty notions. Your idealistic notions are just not practical.

 

Bollox. This is typical Communist rhetorics. As if being CEO is only about pointing fingers and say "do this, do that!" Remember that it is the CEO who helps "the proletarian" to leave poverty. Additionally, the great thing about Capitalism is that you are always free to become a CEO yourself and try it out.

Furthermore, all "obscurity and uselessness" that exists on a Capitalist market is the result of the customers' demand. In Capitalism all power is in the hands of the "under-class". In a Communist state "obscurity and uselessness" will only cease to exist when the state says so. History shows these obscure and useless Socialist/Communist procedures always end in midery, poverty and famine.

Salary is always the result of the relationship between supply and demand. When the latter is greater than the previous, we see high-paid jobs and vice versa. Cleaners do work hard and they do perform useful labour, but usefulness could only be meassured in wealth by a materialistic prick.

The reason cleaner is a low-paid profession is simply because the supply is bigger than the demand. Since this job requires no education, it means "anyone" can apply for it, right? So, the CEO's of the cleaning companies have a vast supply of candidates to choose between. If one candidate, say, demands "too much" money for the labour, it won't be a big loss denying them the position. There will always be someone else out there.

On the other hand, when it comes to a profession like heart-surgeon, it is highly-paid because the demand is bigger than the supply- Not anyone can become a heart-surgeon, it requires years and years of reading so the amount -or supply- of them is very small.

Simple.

 

Commie,


How do you feel about Christian tyrants killing over 100 million in the name of Christianity such as right wing fascist Hitler killing Jews, Queen Victoria killing Indians, and King Leopold killing Africans?

Also, some people refer to Stalin as a murderer - how do you feel about the fact that he was a practicing Christian and was given a Christian burial?

 

Revisionism. Another example of ciltural-marxism to further a leftist political agenda.

Stalin was never buried.

1961
Stalin’s body removed from Lenin’s tomb -> http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/stalins-body-removed-from-lenins-tomb

 

If "Capitalism is the ONLY way to quantify the value of one's work" how do you explain subsistence farming, barter and hunter/gatherers?

"Wanting to improve one's status is NOT 'selfish' it's an innate human drive." Humans are social animals. There's a wealth of evidence we are innately driven to cooperate with each other for our own, individual benefit. If I can't reach the box on the high shelf and you can, I'm not going to get the step ladder I'm going to ask you.

"MORALITY is where compassion lies" Such an individual thing, morality. So subjective. One man might believe homosexuality is immoral, for instance, and I'd call that man an immoral bigot.

 

How does capitalism do a decent job of this? The people who are paid the most in capitalism are not necessarily those who contribute the most to society (and thus are valuable) or who physically work the hardest. Market quantification does not equal the actual value, the actual utility, of a given contribution of labour by any means. And in fact the latter is impossible to determine, because not all labour is of the same sign. Many of capitalism's fundamental problems derive from the fact that it treats labour like any other commodity; and labour is not just any old commodity.

I never denied that?

People have argued that selfishness is innate; I'm saying that this is a baseless claim. That's it. And in any case, communism doesn't stop people from improving their lot.

(Selfishness doesn't have to be a bad thing anyway. Sometimes it's more beneficial to put oneself first.)

Oh boy, the M-word. Let's...deal with that later.

First off, I was not saying that governments shape human behaviour, but that economic modes of production (and wider socioeconomic conditions, more broadly). At base, a mode of production is intimately connected to how people make a living and go about their daily lives and the social relations in their place of work. Thus capitalism, a mode of production based on competition and individual success (and I'm not saying that this in itself is a bad thing) and rewarding those who make it to the top of the pile, causes people generally to care less about the common good and more about individuals. That is why people postulate that we are innately selfish and that compassion is not human nature. Because that is how society looks today, and capitalism has become so ingrained that we associate the human behaviour it spawns with inherent human characteristics. Once again, I am not saying that a negative aspect of capitalism is that it makes people appear, on the whole, more greedy and competitive and less compassionate and co-operative. I am just making an observation about how human behaviour is altered by social conditions.

Now for the morality part. Linguistically (I did warn you in my signature of my being an armchair semanticist) I have issues with arguing in moral terms, since a moral statement (P is just) does not seem to me to be the sort of statement which can be true or untrue, and thus we are dealing here in abstractions. Just a heads-up. But anyway; what is the root of this morality, this agreement? Agreements do not spring up spontaneously on the whims of individuals.

 

Ok, so picture a country with a huge, bureaucratic state which owns and regulates most business and slaughters dissenters. This country has some private business, and there is a clear divide between the state and its employees; the latter toil in horrible conditions and the state extracts surplus value from them. There is money, and commodities are traded. In short, private property relations, wage labour and a market where an M-C-M' cycle occurs, but the state gets in the way of and mismanages everything. Consequently, there are food shortages, and the workers - who do not have preferential access to the food - are not free at all and have no control of their employment or lives.

If you think this is communism, you do not know what a communist economic system and the relations within it entail.

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Er, no I didn't?

Also, female pronouns por favor.

 

from your own site:



removed and "shunted off to a nearby tomb"



lol - please read your own info before posting

 

Even if we discount the fact that this "human nature" is a baseless assertion both empirically and theoretically-speaking, some people being power-hungry =/= a society invariably emerging wherein different strata of people have different relationships to the means of democracies.

You could have said this exact same thing to an American or French revolutionary in the 18th century, and look what happened.

 

By paying them less than the value of what they produce (not because capitalists are meanies, but because this is absolutely necessary in order to make a profit).

You're having a laugh. It really isn't that easy, especially with current bureaucracy and costs. Although having rich parents and a crap-tonne of inheritance helps.

So all the financiers, marketing and management consultants, lobbyists and corporate lawyers, stock traders, property investors etc. etc. who are paid exorbitant sums to do work which does not provide anything worth anything meaningful to actual human beings exist due to customers' demand? These people literally produce nothing. They clean up after and prettify capitalism. And they get paid ridiculous amounts for it, while manual workers in poorer countries starve because their labour isn't "worth enough" and people like care workers who perform incredibly valuable jobs, in the sense of meeting human need, are barely paid the minimum wage.

How? Through their purchasing power? This would make sense if there was perfect competition and everyone had the same weight on the market, but thanks to the market, the super-rich have a far greater ability to get their demands heard than the millions of people whose basic needs are not being met. The result is that yachts and swanky houses are churned out while people die in the streets of poor countries due to famine, dehydration and easily curable diseases. Reeeally efficient, right?

In a "communist state" [sic] there is no state.

Refer to my response to APACHERAT.

Exactly, exactly. And as you say or at least insinuate, supply and demand cannot sufficiently measure the utility or intensity of labour. The notion that capitalism adequately quantifies labour or that people are paid more under capitalism because they work hard or make more useful contributions is tosh (people like surgeons are the exception, but by and large utility/intensity of labour does not correlate to the extent of renumeration).

 

I don't think Christianity was any more than an excuse in these instances. Religion is just a way for the ruling classes to justify their actions; ideas do not cause events. But needless to say I don't support all this.

I couldn't care less.

 

You don't propose freedom; you propose Communism, a state-centered, highly controlling system of government that stifles the individual by sacrificing liberty for the imagined good of the collective. That is where you differ from French or American revolutionaries. Also, regarding the problems of human nature, remember that your dreamed-of utopian system would have to be implemented and maintained by human beings, who all have their faults and their own ideas.

It may all sound wonderful to you in your white room away from real life, but believe me, it's not practical. We have a far less oppressive system in the US today, and look how people regard it.

 

Under real, free market Capitalism it would be that easy, but thanks to Socialist crap like bureaucracy, regilation, taxes and other costs, it is not.

Pretty much, yes.

Sounds like a great description of politicians to me.

Care takers work in the public sector and many times their jobs are monopolised by state. A monopoly means there is no competition, hence no incentives to raise the salarises. If these jobs were to be privatised, they would be paid what they deserve.

Note: Corporatism and Capitalism are not the same.

Oh, right. I forgot. "Real Communism never existed!"

Communism is stupid. It is an emotionally infantile and logically lacking Utopia that could only satisfy the dreamer or, as history has proven, the elite. Both psychologically and economically speaking, Communism is highly retarded.

What is your plan anyways? How should Capitalism be replaced and with what? You just want to tear down and destroy. You don't want to build.

And your dream would be exactly what? No one has to work and no one needs money. Everything just exists to a perfect supply, guaranteed to always satisfy customer's demand?

The state is the real problem. Not Capitalism. Big companies are big fans of regulation because this helps them create monopolies, here Capitalism turns into Corporatism and the root is, as always, state/government.

The solution is individual freedom and laissez faire.

 

Being placed into a tomb isn't being buried.

 

Yes you did.

 

So, she supports "state violence" but not the state? Hmmmmmm.

 

You made what I consider to be an open-ended non statement:

"The people who are paid the most in capitalism are not necessarily those who contribute the most to society"

It is also true that those paid the LEAST do not NECESSARILY contribute the most to society.

Working for the collective is not conducive to improving one's lot.

Putting one's self first is not necessarily selfishness.

Actually I would argue just the opposite. Those who make it to the top of the pile generally have MORE empathy for those with whom they shared that lower position BEFORE they 'made it.' You seem to have a very dim view of humanity.

I could not disagree more. Just because a human has the innate drive to improve their station in life does not mean they are 'selfish' or 'less compassionate.' Capitalism has nothing to do with that mindset.

Yes, morality is a belief. A belief in how to treat others basically. In the past, religion carried the mantle of morality. This is because doing what's 'right' can never be defined by any form of government. It HAS to be a belief shared by a society, population, etc. You can never legislate morality.

Once a society gives up its to the vagaries of human emotion it will inevitably crumble.

 

Communism is nothing of the sort. For one thing, there is no state at all, and it is not a system of government because there is no government in the normal sense (society obviously will still need to be administrated, but this is not a coercive role and as such is not "governmental"). And for another...what do you mean by the good of the collective? Communism may be describable as "collectivist" but it depends on what you mean by collective. The stifling of individual autonomy and failure to note differences between individuals in the education system, and in much of the corporate world, would not take place in communism since no structures of subjugation would need to be perpetuated. And communism is freer than capitalism in almost every sense: no state, no oppressive, permanent hierarchical structures maintained by coercion, potential for everyone to access the (overabundant) social product in whatever capacity they want, systems of global relations and education and workplace structure which allow and encourage everyone to pursue their passions...the only freedom decreased is the freedom to oppress others.

You still have not given me any reason to believe that there is any sort of innate human behaviour, because theoretical interpretation (linking social conditions with behavioural outcomes) and the mishmash of different results from empirical studies seem to say otherwise.

How exactly is all of this more far-fetched than liberal democratic capitalism would have been to people living in feudal society, particularly given that a transition period with a state and class system preceeds it? Any claims about communism being utopian could have been applied to the visions of French and American revolutionaries before the revolutions succeeded. Crying "it's utopian!" or "it violates human nature!" can always be used to preserve the status quo. And actually, if you think the difference between the bourgeois revolutions and a communist revolution is that the former proposes more freedom, would it not so follow that the former is more utopian and wishful and is trusting us horrible greedy humans with too much?