U.S. Labor Party?

[Kelly]

Boy, If I had said something like that you'd be all over me telling me to stop insulting the persons opinion and to give a counter arguement with my opinion.

I guess it's "Do As I Say, Not As I Do" with you, Huh?

*sighs* yeah, yeah yeah Supes, I get it....I'm your new *****ing post since you got tired of *****ing about Matt...ok...***** on.

 

[hippie_hunter]

So it sounds to me like we have a choice here. We can believe that the most important thing is for management to have fat profits by getting the cheapest possible labour, or we can forge international links between workers to battle for universally higher wages. There's a contradiction between the desires of the owners (who want the lowest possible wages so they can have the highest possible profits) and the workers (who want higher wages so they can, you know, feed their families and live comfortable lives).

If we were to take your point of view, the only solution would be cutting the wages of workers in North America and Europe to a level comparable with Asian sweatshop workers. This is what happens when you internalize the view of management and the capitalist class. If you were to take the view of the workers, you might start to wonder why the vast majority of the human race has to put up with worse and worse conditions, lower and lower wages, while a few obscenely wealthy individuals at the top see their incomes go even higher on this basis of lower labour costs. You know, companies like GM might have a lot more money lying around if they hadn't pissed so much of it away on fat bonuses and multi-million dollar golden parachutes for their top executives. So now the workers have to pay for management's mistakes? **** that.

That is never going to happen. Asian and Latin American workers will forever want to keep their competitive edge over American and European workers, you know so that they can have the jobs and feed their families.

Also, GM didn't go under due to bonuses and golden parachutes for their executives. Their CEO's salary before going under was $1. That's right $1. GM's problems lied with the fact that they were spending far too much, and then the economy crashed where no one bought cars anymore which was the straw that broke it's back. The reason why Ford succeeded to live was because they were able to negotiate with their labor along with better predicting trends. The reason why Toyota and the Japanese automakers are healthier is because they don't have the absurdly high labor costs that GM and Chrysler had.

 

[hippie_hunter]

I'm glad somebody said it! I put a lot of work into my posts and that one-line "response" about Kool-Aid, to me, means I effectively won the argument. I do welcome a proper exchange of ideas, if you have any...

It comes more from the fact that a lot of your ideas just flat out go against American culture and ideals. Sorry but Communism just has no place at all in American society which still idolizes capitalism to a certain degree. Communism has also proven to be a failure.

 

[Kelly]

To answer your earlier question Axl....I have not been convinced that Obamacare, though it might be cheaper will give me the choice and care that I have with my insurance policy I have right now. BUT, I do know that if it is cheaper, my district will jump at the choice...I hope they look clearly at what the policy actually gives us, rather than simply the price.

 

[Superman]

*sighs* yeah, yeah yeah Supes, I get it....I'm your new *****ing post since you got tired of *****ing about Matt...ok...***** on.

Deny it, Go ahead, Deny you wouldn't have said that very thing if I had said something like that. Tell me you wouldn't have jumped all over me for doing anything close to that. And when you do I'm going to show you about a half dozen post by you preaching that very thing.

You can dish it out like a preacher on sunday but when it comes to you following your own BS it's, Lets change the subject like it never happend. This has nothing to do with Matt, This is about everytime I do something you don't like I get preached at by you about respecting others opinions and making a counter arguement with my opinion. That "kool aid" line was insulting and has nothing to do with the subject of the thread and you know it.

If you can't follow your own BS don't preach it to others.

 

[Kelly]

I have preached at you? hmmmm...don't remember that. But, then again, ok....whatever ya say...

BTW, your opinion on the subject of the U.S. Labor Party is???

 

[Superman]

Well since you want to play little miss innocent I guess we can move on....

I like the ideal. Labor needs a counter to the Tea Party and the Dems sure as hell ain't going to do it. Like Axl said Democrats and Republicans are both bought and paid for by Big Business now and if something doesn't change soon this country is going to end up being a third world country because both parties are running us into the ground.

Good enough for you Kel?

 

[Kelly]

Eggcellent....

 

[Kelly]

Now, what he has stated, sounds very much like a communist country. As I look at the communist countries around the world, all but China ARE 3rd world countries, and China is almost at a dead run towards Capitalism....

Sooooo, how does that mesh with your 3rd world country scenario?

 

[hippie_hunter]

More like almost every Communist country ended up collapsing (Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, Africa, and Mongolia) and those that still remain embraced capitalism in order to survive (Cuba, China, Vietnam). And lets not forget North Korea.

 

[Handsome Rob]

Thanks for clarifying. I guess I was wrong saying that the extra money goes to an insurance company

No problem. I do this stuff for a living, and it's not entirely clear to me all the time, either.

, but the whole reason that rates are going up during the recession is still a result of the particular logic of capitalism. If workers are getting squeezed right now and having to pay more in insurance, it's because the businesses that employ them want to cut costs - and why? So they can maintain their profit margin in tough economic times by shifting some of that financial burden onto their employees.

Frankly? Yes.

But what would you have them do? Corporations need to be able to make a profit in order to grow. And, they need it to show to potential creditors that they have the ability to pay the interest on and ultimately pay back any debts they incur. And, they need it to attract investors--people willing to put money into the company for a chance to get more back. And guess what happens with dwindling profit margins? Not only are people less willing to invest their money in the company, but creditors are likely to charge higher interest rates (or not let them borrow as much) due to the perceived increased risk of default?

Which is worse? For some employees to lose their jobs or all employees to take a cut in pay/benefits/etc, or for the company to refuse to cave on employee expenses, default on debts, and go out of business? If the company liquidates, everyone loses their jobs, it will cost more to other people to borrow from creditors (so they can recover the money they lost on the liquidation), and a lot of investors (including those whose 401k's have investments in said company) will see almost all of their money disappear.

No one wants to live paycheck to paycheck. People want to be able to have the money they take in exceed the money they pay out. Is it OK for people to make a profit? Because that's what you've done if you manage to save even one penny at the end of the year. If so, then why is it wrong for corporations or other businesses to do the same thing?

 

[Axl Van Sixx]

That is never going to happen. Asian and Latin American workers will forever want to keep their competitive edge over American and European workers, you know so that they can have the jobs and feed their families.

Is it really the workers that want to keep that competitive edge...or is it their employers? The latter, clearly. Labour is the single biggest expense for businesses, so lowering wages and laying off employees is the easiest way to keep a failing company "competitive" in tough times. Asian and Latin American workers want the same thing as American and European workers - first and foremost, to keep their jobs. But they also want decent living wages that will enable them to lead happy, comfortable lives. The reason workers in developing countries put up with such horrendous conditions is because often these are peasants who've been pushed off their land by large-scale agriculture and take any job they can find to escape their dire poverty. Workers in developed nations can't really fathom those kinds of conditions anymore, but that is the way things were back in 1911, and it only changed because workers organized themselves into unions and fought for their rights.

Also, GM didn't go under due to bonuses and golden parachutes for their executives. Their CEO's salary before going under was $1. That's right $1. GM's problems lied with the fact that they were spending far too much, and then the economy crashed where no one bought cars anymore which was the straw that broke it's back. The reason why Ford succeeded to live was because they were able to negotiate with their labor along with better predicting trends. The reason why Toyota and the Japanese automakers are healthier is because they don't have the absurdly high labor costs that GM and Chrysler had.

Actually, the Big Three have been ailing for a long time. The auto bailout was the culmination of a decades-long process. I've read issues of Mad magazine from the 1970s were they ridicule people who bought American cars, of whom there were already a declining number. Obviously the immediate reason things came to a head was because of the global financial crisis in 2008, but management connived with the politicians and the union leadership to exploit this opportunity and dramatically cut wages and benefits for unionized auto workers, "Shock Doctrine"-style.

It comes more from the fact that a lot of your ideas just flat out go against American culture and ideals. Sorry but Communism just has no place at all in American society which still idolizes capitalism to a certain degree. Communism has also proven to be a failure.

My friend, I'm glad you brought this up, although I'm sure you'll come to regret it because now you've opened the floodgates. t:

Close to a century of anti-communist propaganda has indeed cemented the idea in the heads of most Americans (and Canadians, while we're at it) that Marxism is something sinister, foreign and "anti-American". Your country is indeed the centre of global capitalism. There are many reasons why the U.S. became a superpower, mainly the vast land and resources within its territory. When you talk about how American capitalism developed, a lot of Ayn Rand/Milton Friedman types would have you believe that pure individualistic capitalism built the country and government only got in the way. Nothing could be further from the truth, starting with the way government-subsidized railroads helped settle the West. Big Business has always decried the role of government, even as it uses it to further its own ends (note the Randian heroes leading today's firms who have made their riches off extremely generous corporate welfare yet whine about government "getting in the way").

You need to read a book called Marxism and the U.S.A. by Alan Woods. It's a history and catalogue of radical movements throughout American history, and you'd be surprised at some of the radical egalitarian ideas that have found favour there. The Pilgrims, for example, were left-wing Puritans who escaped religious persecution in England and hoped to found "God's kingdom on earth" in the New World. Although the material basis for communism at this point in history did not exist, the Pilgrims nevertheless founded colonies that were based on relatively radical notions of democracy. Everything produced went into a common fund and everyone was to be fed and clothed out of it. The electoral body consisted of the whole body of citizens, and those over the age of 16 formed militias which appointed their own officers.

The American Revolution was fought primarily by poor colonists, who pushed the Founding Fathers and the property interests they represented to go further than they originally wanted to in articulating the notions of "democracy" and "freedom" that we now find in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. You can see from Shays' Rebellion in 1786-87 that whenever the masses threaten to get too far out of hand - as they did here at the end of the war when the poor farmers who fought the battles were still crushed by debt and launched an insurrection - they are eventually quelled by state forces. "Democracy" in the early days of independence was relatively limited: only white male property owners had the right to vote. Eventually African-Americans and women won that right, but only through organized struggle.

It's bitterly ironic that communism is seen as anti-American when the history of the radical labour movement finds some of its strongest roots in America. If you're familiar with May Day, you'll know that that holiday celebrating workers arose to commemorate the violent crackdown by police of a three-day general strike in Chicago during the 1886 Haymarket affair. 12 people were left dead at the end, and the socialist Second International began remembering the event every year on May Day. In Canada and the US today, we have Labour/Labor Day at the end of the summer, which is an attempt to separate Canadian and American workers from their counterparts around the globe by replacing the historically resonant May Day with a safely non-political celebration.

I haven't even gotten into the 20th century, when the anarcho-syndicalist International Workers of the World became a legitimate phenomenon, and over 1 million people cast their vote for Socialist Party leader Eugene Debs in the 1920 presidential election while he was in prison for speaking out against World War I (that is, he was in jail for free speech. This demonstrates how the ruling class will happily dispense with democratic niceties when it suits their interests). In the 1930s, it was only because of demonstrations and agitations by workers, often organized by the Stalinist CPUSA, and which often ended in violent clashes with the state security apparatus, that Franklin Roosevelt felt the need to save capitalism by instituting reforms through the New Deal.

Even after the unions caved to anti-communism and McCarthyist red-baiting after World War II, and the U.S. economy boomed, we saw massive class struggle at the height of that boom when the 60s baby boomers rebelled against the notion of being sent overseas to die in an imperialist war. Not to mention the civil rights movement, which was seen as "radical" at the time...Martin Luther King, who held socialist views, was targeted by the FBI as a communist, and towards the end of his life had articulated the need for fundamental economic changes and opposition to the war in Vietnam. He was assassinated while in Memphis supporting striking garbage workers. Since 1968 MLK has been gradually Santa Claus-ified, frozen in time in 1963 where his message was less threatening to the establishment.

The Black Panther Party, for its part, was a highly radical movement that organized black communities and urged black self-defense through a people's militia. They were inspired in part by Mao's Little Red Book, and as much as I hate Mao, this still illustrates how communist ideas had a direct influence on historically important American movements. What I'm trying to say with all this is basically just that radical social ideas are more "American" that the reactionaries would have you think.

Now, ever since the end of the Cold War a lot of people have said Communism failed. What failed was not communism - the ideal of a classless society, which has never existed in human history - but Communism, or to put it more bluntly, Stalinism. In order to understand what happened in the USSR, you have to read Leon Trotsky's seminal work The Revolution Betrayed, which explains that the bureaucratic degeneration of the Soviet Union under Stalin was the result of the Revolution's isolation in a poor, backward country after the revolution failed to spread to Germany. Real Marxism (meaning Trotskyism) is internationalist to the core. Just as the capitalist market is global, whatever the boundaries of nation-states, so no country can exist isolated from the world market, socialist or capitalist. The idea of "socialism in one country" that Stalin put forward is absolutely contrary to the true ideas of Marxism, which continually emphasize the international solidarity of the working class.

Marxism - not Stalinism or Maoism, a variant of Stalinism - is intensely democratic. Instead of electing representatives from the capitalist class every few years to rule over us, true socialism would have workers directly elect their own representatives through workers' councils, and send delegates or deputies to larger bodies. Those deputies would have regular worker's wages and be subject to recall at any time (as Lenin said, "if everyone is a bureaucrat, no one is a bureaucrat". I'd love to see what populists who hate "Big Government" would make of that). In this way the workers themselves could democratically plan and organize production for society, once the means of production become subject to public ownership. This is the model we saw in the 1871 Paris Commune, which Marx studied intensely, and the early Bolshevik Revolution (1917 to roughly 1924).

One of the only positive things from the October Revolution that Stalinism retained was the nationalized planned economy. Given the failure of the Soviet economy near the end of the Cold War, we tend to think of this now as a failed model. But in its early decades, it in fact had tremendous successes. The Soviet Union moved from a backward feudal society to an industrial superpower in the space of a few decades. This is incredible when you consider that Britain, for example, took 150 years to do the same thing, and that this happened during the height of the Great Depression when capitalist economies around the world were in hobbled and weak in comparison.

The biggest testament to the superiority of a nationalized planned economy is the victory of the Soviet Union over Nazi Germany in World War II. How could formerly backward Russia defeat a technologically-advanced military juggernaut that had conquered all of Europe? With a rational economic plan they were able to quickly transfer industries to the east and speed up production on necessary war materials. It's worth noting the World War II example because it provides a constructive parallel regarding the capitalist democracies: when the U.S. and Britain had their backs to the wall, did they rely on "the magic of the market" to win the war? No, they instituted a planned economy of sorts and nationalized certain industries, although they kept them in private hands.

The eventual failure of the Soviet economy was due to the suffocating influence of the bureaucracy, and this is the main difference between Stalinism and Trotskyism, which is for radical workers' democracy rather than elite bureaucracy. As the Soviet economy developed and became more complex, there was no way that a bunch of planners in Moscow could realistically determine what everyone in the country needed at every given time. As Trotsky said, "socialism needs democracy like the human body needs oxygen." He actually predicted in his book - written in 1938 - that the Soviet Union would either have another revolution to re-establish workers' control, or fall back into capitalism. He was proven right in the end - and if you saw the social disaster that unfolded in Russia in the 1990s, you can see that the reintroduction of capitalism did not make Russia a better place at all.

After all that triumphal "end of history" rhetoric from the 1990s, we now see in 2011 that capitalism has failed. While it was once a historically productive force, it has now long outlived its usefulness and contributes nothing but endless war, poverty, hunger and environmental degradation. We need a radical change, and it's not going to come from smooth capitalist politicians/con artists like Barack Obama masquerading as such. American workers (and me - I confess I was briefly a supporter in 2008) had to go through the school of Obama to realize the inability to create real change through the two-party system. Hence the need for a Labor Party to represent the real interests of the people, not corporations.

I like the ideal. Labor needs a counter to the Tea Party and the Dems sure as hell ain't going to do it. Like Axl said Democrats and Republicans are both bought and paid for by Big Business now and if something doesn't change soon this country is going to end up being a third world country because both parties are running us into the ground.

You summed up everything perfectly. Thanks, Superman! I knew I could count on you.

 

[Axl Van Sixx]

One other point: Marxist theory and experience argues that socialism cannot be achieved without expropriating the property of the largest industries, the big banks and landlords, and putting it in the hands of the workers themselves. A lot of people would argue that the expropriation of property is fundamentally un-American.

During the Civil War the U.S. government expropriated the property of the Southern slaveowners in the form of slaves - human beings. Land was also seized without compensation. The Emancipation Proclamation was introduced by a flaming radical by the name of Abraham Lincoln. Clearly, when it is morally right, the government may expropriate property and has in the past. When the means of production are used to generate private profit for the few and, increasingly, misery for the many, would it not be morally right (one might argue) to expropriate that property on behalf of society as a whole? Note that this would be done by the organized workers themselves, NOT by the current U.S. government, which is a terrific example of Lenin's idea that "the state is an organ for the oppression of one class by another."

 

[Paradoxium]

It's not fair why does Matt and Kel getz to get picked on by Superman and not me. Do I need to use a Glenn Beck avatar? Ann Coulter Undewear? Some Limbaugh quote on my sig to get his attention.

 

[hippie_hunter]

Here's a plain and simple fact, in order for communism to work, you essentially need to take away everything that makes people, people. In essence, their humanity. People overall are driven by how to advance themselves and their loved ones first and foremost, and Communism, while good on paper, failed to address this need. It took away individuality, it took away motivation to work above and beyond. It also just doesn't take into account basic economics.

Also, Lincoln didn't do what he did because it was right. He did what he did such as freeing the slaves and taking away property in order to defeat the South. He had no real desire to free the slaves (hence why even after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, slavery was still legal in territories controlled by the Union) and was often said to do anything to preserve the Union first and foremost, even if it meant keeping slavery intact. He was also kinda racist.

 

[Axl Van Sixx]

I think that if you read Lenin's State and Revolution with an open mind, you'd be amazed at some of the - frankly - "libertarian" ideas in there. Lenin argues that the state, which consists of special armed bodies of men, is fundamentally the instrument for the oppression of one class by another.

The U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the world. Note that during the recent debate over the government shutdown, funds for the state security apparatus - military, police, prisons, the CIA, the FBI, "homeland security" - were never in doubt. Only social services that actually benefited the population were put on the chopping board.

From Karl Marx's analysis of the 1871 Paris Commune, The Civil War in France:

The Commune was formed of the municipal councillors, chosen by universal suffrage in the various wards of the town, responsible and revocable at any time. The majority of its members were naturally working men, or acknowledged representatives of the working class.... The police, which until then had been the instrument of the Government, was at once stripped of its political attributes, and turned into the responsible, and at all times revocable, agent of the Commune. So were the officials of all other branches of the administration. From the members of the Commune downwards, the public service had to be done at workmen's wages. The privileges and the representation allowances of the high dignitaries of state disappeared along with the high dignitaries themselves.... Having once got rid of the standing army and the police, the instruments of physical force of the old government, the Commune proceeded at once to break the instrument of spiritual suppression, the power of the priests.... The judicial functionaries lost that sham independence... they were thenceforward to be elective, responsible, and revocable.

Abolition of the standing army and its replacement by the armed people, i.e. a working class militia under the command of organized workers' councils. Surprisingly enough, that basic idea has some overlap with the militias of hardcore right-wingers, except in this case the leadership of the militias would be democratically elected by the workers as a whole.

All the economic problems of the U.S., especially the massive deficit corporate politicians claim to care about, have been exacerbated by the rampant militarism, the bloated Pentagon budget, multiple wars, and a worldwide empire of bases. The cost of maintaining that empire are steadily draining the United States treasury. While the military and the state security apparatus work in the service of a corporate-owned government, the huge amount of money and power accumulated by these organizations means that the military raises itself above economic classes to become an independent actor, in a tail-wagging-the-dog kind of thing.

The huge cost of maintaining the American state security apparatus apparatus are blamed on "defense", "security" and the need to "keep safe". But the multiple wars and occupations the U.S. military is engaged in overseas only increase the likelihood of terrorist attacks on Western targets. If the need is defense, the armed and organized people are far more capable of looking after themselves and each other than an army and police force primarily delegated with looking after the interests of big business and the wealthy. Minus the class warfare language, isn't that something that a lot of right-wing gun owners and Second Amendment types basically argue?

 

[hippie_hunter]

Nothing that you mention explains why Communism works.

I do believe that Lenin and Marx had good intentions, and I am not going to villainize them, and I think that they only wanted what they saw was best for the industrialized world and Russia. But humanity will always screw up implementing Communism the way it should run in order to work. Every time it will end up with a brutal dictator in charge, incompetent bureaucrats that will screw it up, and eventually the populace will become complacent due to lack of motivation and anger. Simply because that is the way we are.

Humanity is an individualistic and emotional species, and the only way for Communism to ever work is to take away that individualism and emotion. And without individualism and emotion, we wouldn't be where we are today. It's not perfect, but without humanity's need to improve we wouldn't see the massive changes in technology, culture, and philosophy.

 

[Axl Van Sixx]

Also, Lincoln didn't do what he did because it was right. He did what he did such as freeing the slaves and taking away property in order to defeat the South. He had no real desire to free the slaves (hence why even after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, slavery was still legal in territories controlled by the Union) and was often said to do anything to preserve the Union first and foremost, even if it meant keeping slavery intact. He was also kinda racist.

Actually, I totally agree with you. I guess I was trying to appeal to your conception of a popular figure in American history, but I forget a lot of people still don't like Lincoln. Anyway, you're absolutely right, he wasn't particularly progressive and ended up freeing the slaves due to the irresistible course of history, for the reasons you mentioned.

The Civil War was in many ways the Second American Revolution, which took care of the unfinished business of the first. From a class analysis, it was a war to establish the industrial capitalism of the North, with its free labor force and wage-based system, in the South, whose slave-based agricultural economy was incompatible with the Northern mode of production.

 

[hippie_hunter]

Actually, I totally agree with you. I guess I was trying to appeal to your conception of a popular figure in American history, but I forget a lot of people still don't like Lincoln. Anyway, you're absolutely right, he wasn't particularly progressive and ended up freeing the slaves due to the irresistible course of history, for the reasons you mentioned.

Yeah, Lincoln's kind overrated for me. Mostly due to the fact that he had no desire at all for racial equality that many like to portray him to be and he pretty much completely ****ed over the Constitution with his suspension of basic civil liberties and establishing the total dominance of the federal government as opposed to the original intention of having the federal government and state governments be equal partners in governance.

The Civil War was in many ways the Second American Revolution, which took care of the unfinished business of the first. From a class analysis, it was a war to establish the industrial capitalism of the North, with its free labor force and wage-based system, in the South, whose slave-based agricultural economy was incompatible with the Northern mode of production.

That is a rather interesting perspective. But I tend to see it as more of a culture clash. Due to the activities of abolitionists and having nothing in common (like the North being more urbanized culture and the South being almost a completely rural culture), Southerners just had no trust at all in a Northerner, who personally opposed slavery and was a part of the abolitionist GOP ticket, being in charge along with the fact that the North was gaining more and more power due to having a stronger economic clout and faster growing population, they just completely flipped out.

This culture clash is still rather common nowadays in the United States such as New York where I live where the more culturally conservative and rural Upstate New York is often resentful of the more urbanized and culturally progressive New York City controlling everything. Or Virginia where Northern Virginia is much more like Maryland, Delaware, and Washington D.C. as opposed to the rest of the state that acts more like a typical Southern state.

 

[Axl Van Sixx]

Nothing that you mention explains why Communism works.

I do believe that Lenin and Marx had good intentions, and I am not going to villainize them, and I think that they only wanted what they saw was best for the industrialized world and Russia. But humanity will always screw up implementing Communism the way it should run in order to work. Every time it will end up with a brutal dictator in charge, incompetent bureaucrats that will screw it up, and eventually the populace will become complacent due to lack of motivation and anger. Simply because that is the way we are.

Humanity is an individualistic and emotional species, and the only way for Communism to ever work is to take away that individualism and emotion. And without individualism and emotion, we wouldn't be where we are today. It's not perfect, but without humanity's need to improve we wouldn't see the massive changes in technology, culture, and philosophy.

I think humanity's need to improve should if anything propel us away from capitalism towards a better system. Really, I think true socialism if anything is about workers taking control of their own lives and their own labour. Think about it: most of us work for somebody else. People need a paycheck to survive, and that's why they work. They usually don't care about what their company produces, hence the phrase "a job's a job". Marx described this as the alienation from one's own work. The idea of democratically controlling your own workplace strikes me as better than the autocratic, top-down system we have in the capitalist business structure.

Just to emphasize, the bureaucratic degeneration of the USSR under Stalin was the result of a very particular chain of historical events: Russia's backwardness, the failure of the German Revolution, and the hardships of the Russian Civil War (in which 21 foreign armies invaded the country allied with the anti-Bolshevik White Army). After all those years of war, famine, etc., the population was exhausted, many of the best revolutionaries had died, and the bureaucracy that had formed during the war wanted to retain its own position. Stalin represented their interests, and he secured their privileges by turning the society into a totalitarian nightmare. In order to maintain the position of the Soviet bureaucracy, Stalin had to kill off most of the old Bolsheviks in his Great Purges. Trotsky held that Stalinism was a counter-revolutionary force that was antithetical to the democratic ideas that animated the original working class revolution.

Contrary to Trotsky's expectations, Stalinism emerged enormously strengthened after World War II. The success of the Chinese Revolution, influenced by the Soviet model, meant that Stalinist bureaucracy became the norm, and that's why it's what you think of when most people think of "communism" - sadly enough.

We live in a society that claims people are ruled by greed and self-interest. We're taught that because it suits the economic model of the people in charge. But people are capable of so much more - when we think of the words "humanity" and "humane", we think of people caring about each other, helping out, working towards the greater good. The coolest things about the workers' councils (or soviets) that formed in the Russian and German Revolutions was that they were spontaneous and formed by the workers themselves. Marx or Lenin didn't sit in a library thinking up this concept; it arose from the actual experience of the workers themselves.

I personally think capitalism has led us to a historical dead end and the enormous creative potential of humanity can't be unleashed while the productive forces remain in private hands. Why is more money spent on erectile dysfunction pills than AIDS drugs? One is more profitable; you can't make lots of money giving away drugs to a bunch of starving Africans, who certainly can't afford to buy them. Here in Canada, the government is spending $30 billion on F-16 fighter jets and cutting corporate taxes while raising consumption taxes and cutting social services at every juncture. Things are even more grossly distorted in the U.S., where poor people can't heat their homes, Medicare and Medicaid is under attack, austerity is the word of the day, but an expensive war in Libya is just fine. Our governments' priorities are seriously skewed under capitalism.

Things can only improve when the productive resources at humanity's disposal are used for the benefit of society as a whole, rather than subordinated to the needs of private profit.

 

[hippie_hunter]

I think humanity's need to improve should if anything propel us away from capitalism towards a better system. Really, I think true socialism if anything is about workers taking control of their own lives and their own labour. Think about it: most of us work for somebody else. People need a paycheck to survive, and that's why they work. They usually don't care about what their company produces, hence the phrase "a job's a job". Marx described this as the alienation from one's own work. The idea of democratically controlling your own workplace strikes me as better than the autocratic, top-down system we have in the capitalist business structure.

The problem is that Communism is just going to provide just the basics to the masses, no matter what. It's not going to motivate people because they will eventually see that no matter how hard they work, those that work less than them, will be taken care of just as much as they are. There is no extra incentive because the system doesn't allow it, everyone has to be treated "equally". It's why the economic system in the Soviet Union eventually just completely collapsed.

People want extra incentives. They want the ability to buy frivolous items such as iPads, and cable TV, and their Xbox 360s, and their extremely nice cars, and their big houses, etc. And deep down, people kinda enjoy bragging about it to their friends that don't have them.

Just to emphasize, the bureaucratic degeneration of the USSR under Stalin was the result of a very particular chain of historical events: Russia's backwardness, the failure of the German Revolution, and the hardships of the Russian Civil War (in which 21 foreign armies invaded the country allied with the anti-Bolshevik White Army). After all those years of war, famine, etc., the population was exhausted, many of the best revolutionaries had died, and the bureaucracy that had formed during the war wanted to retain its own position. Stalin represented their interests, and he secured their privileges by turning the society into a totalitarian nightmare. In order to maintain the position of the Soviet bureaucracy, Stalin had to kill off most of the old Bolsheviks in his Great Purges. Trotsky held that Stalinism was a counter-revolutionary force that was antithetical to the democratic ideas that animated the original working class revolution.

Contrary to Trotsky's expectations, Stalinism emerged enormously strengthened after World War II. The success of the Chinese Revolution, influenced by the Soviet model, meant that Stalinist bureaucracy became the norm, and that's why it's what you think of when most people think of "communism" - sadly enough.

Like I said, I think that Lenin and Marx had pure intentions, but their ideologies just didn't factor in how the human race really is. Communism needs to have some degree of totalitarianism in order to work to ensure that the masses are treated equally. The problem is that the vast majority of totalitarians are horribly genocidal maniacs (Pol Pot, Joseph Stalin, Kim Jong-Il, Josip Tito), totalitarianism ends up leading to that. In order to effectively manage the economy to provide equality to the masses, Communism needs bureaucrats to run things, and a lot of the time you end up with incompetent bureaucrats, hence why Mao's Five Year Plan and Kim Jong-Il's Juche are complete disasters.

The problem is what was on the minds of Lenin and Marx, the problem lies that most people just shouldn't be in charge. At all.

We live in a society that claims people are ruled by greed and self-interest. We're taught that because it suits the economic model of the people in charge. But people are capable of so much more - when we think of the words "humanity" and "humane", we think of people caring about each other, helping out, working towards the greater good. The coolest things about the workers' councils (or soviets) that formed in the Russian and German Revolutions was that they were spontaneous and formed by the workers themselves. Marx or Lenin didn't sit in a library thinking up this concept; it arose from the actual experience of the workers themselves.

And yet, self-interest is pretty much the reason why the Soviet Union collapsed and why the remaining "Communist" countries went to capitalism in order to survive.

Self-interest and greed can go hand in hand with helping people out and working towards the greater good. The problem with greed in the United States is that often people like the Wall Street fatcats just don't see when enough is enough. But we can still try to better and benefit ourselves while helping others out at the same time. And dare I say that Western culture is becoming more and more self-absorbed.

I personally think capitalism has led us to a historical dead end and the enormous creative potential of humanity can't be unleashed while the productive forces remain in private hands. Why is more money spent on erectile dysfunction pills than AIDS drugs? One is more profitable; you can't make lots of money giving away drugs to a bunch of starving Africans, who certainly can't afford to buy them. Here in Canada, the government is spending $30 billion on F-16 fighter jets and cutting corporate taxes while raising consumption taxes and cutting social services at every juncture. Things are even more grossly distorted in the U.S., where poor people can't heat their homes, Medicare and Medicaid is under attack, austerity is the word of the day, but an expensive war in Libya is just fine. Our governments' priorities are seriously skewed under capitalism.

Now that is the major difference between where you and I think, while you think that capitalism has led us to a historical dead end due to the spending of frivolous things and morally bankrupt corporations not providing.

While I think that Communism would lead to a dead end because in order for everyone to be equal in a Communist society, you pretty much have to completely kill off innovation, individuality, and motivation.

Also much of the stuff you mention has nothing to do with the flaws of capitalism. It isn't because of the skewed ideals of capitalism that has caused Medicare and Medicaid to be under attack, they're under attack because the money just doesn't exist to properly fund those programs as they currently are. The war in Libya has nothing to do with capitalism if you look at it from a humanitarian perspective (though I personally think that if Libya had no oil, we wouldn't be there).

Things can only improve when the productive resources at humanity's disposal are used for the benefit of society as a whole, rather than subordinated to the needs of private profit.

Things improve when people are motivated by the reward of private profit. It's why technology has advanced and it's why we have culture and see wonderful works of art in film, music, video games, and on stage and beautiful works of architecture, painting, sculpture, etc.

Yeah, Communism takes part in technological research and funding the arts, but the Soviet space program is a joke compared to NASA. The Battleship Potemkin is no Citizen Kane or to bring out the uber-nerd in me, The Dark Knight or Empire Strikes Back. Or Nikolai Baskakov's Lenin in the Kremlin is nothing compared to the works of Norman Rockwell.

 

[Kelly]

It's interesting how a communist country like China, is now reforming their education to match their turn towards Capitalism as in "How can I create the next Bill Gates?" and Axl, you are advocating the opposite, what you are advocating stifles that kind of free thinking to the point that we create robots... I think China learned their lesson....why would we want to move toward something that throughout history has shown itself to not work?

Even countries of Europe are moving more toward a Market Economy and away from their psuedo-Socialist economies...they have learned as well. Again, why would we want to move in the opposite direction of the rest of the world into something that has proven itself time and time again to not work.

What you are advocating, other countries have realized has led them to a dead end...

 

[Axl Van Sixx]

The problem is that Communism is just going to provide just the basics to the masses, no matter what. It's not going to motivate people because they will eventually see that no matter how hard they work, those that work less than them, will be taken care of just as much as they are. There is no extra incentive because the system doesn't allow it, everyone has to be treated "equally". It's why the economic system in the Soviet Union eventually just completely collapsed.

People want extra incentives. They want the ability to buy frivolous items such as iPads, and cable TV, and their Xbox 360s, and their extremely nice cars, and their big houses, etc. And deep down, people kinda enjoy bragging about it to their friends that don't have them.

The best reply to this comes from a Marxist FAQ I often find useful:

"Where is the incentive under Socialism?" is a commonly asked question."If everyone is paid the same wage than where is the incentive for the worker to produce more than he has to or even the quota amount?"

As Lenin explains in The State and Revolution, and Marx explains in Critique of the Gotha Program, it is impossible to jump straight from capitalism to the most advanced stage of human society - a classless society based on the democratic administration of things in the interests of all. Communism is based on being able to provide more than needed for everyone - and though in the US we could reach that level fairly quickly, it is still not there right now. This is why a transitional period, which we often refer to as socialism is necessary.

During this time there will still be elements of the old society (some market economy, some armed forces until the whole world is in the democratic hands of the workers, etc.) But already things will be moving rapidly towards the complete dissolution of the state, of the market economy and so on. Once the workers begin to democratically plan the BIG industries - the ones which dominate our lives - energy, banking, agriculture, pharmaceuticals, etc., then we will be putting the surplus produced by the workers towards improving our lives.

New technology and greater productivity of labor will lead to a decrease in the working day, to more time for study, travel, exploration, research,music, art, culture, etc. Nowadays the incentive to work harder is "work so you can pay your rent, your mortgage, your interest on credit card and school loans, your over-priced food, health care, transportation, and entertainment, and so on or STARVE". THAT is the only incentive capitalism offers us! Why work more efficiently at work if you know you have to be there for 8 hours no matter what?


Under socialism, the incentive to come up with more efficient ways to do things is that we'd have to work less time to do the same amount of work! The amount of necessary labor needed to produce the things we need like food, housing, etc. would gradually decrease so that eventually we may only need to "work" for 2 hours a week or less! Of course as humans we would not be lazy and sit around - humans are curious, exploratory, and want to learn, invent, etc. Our "free" time would be spent creating ever better works of art, scientific research, cures for diseases, etc. After a period of time, the new generations will not even know what it was like under capitalism, and the productivity of labor will be tremendously high. The barrier between "work" and raw human exploration and mastery over its environment (in harmony with the environment!) will disappear also - no more coercive state, police, etc. No more chaos in the markets - the workers will plan what we need and then reinvest a portion to continually make even better things. Everyone will be "rich" so to speak - able to travel, to live comfortably, to eat what they wish, to continue their education throughout life.

Like I said, I think that Lenin and Marx had pure intentions, but their ideologies just didn't factor in how the human race really is. Communism needs to have some degree of totalitarianism in order to work to ensure that the masses are treated equally. The problem is that the vast majority of totalitarians are horribly genocidal maniacs (Pol Pot, Joseph Stalin, Kim Jong-Il, Josip Tito), totalitarianism ends up leading to that. In order to effectively manage the economy to provide equality to the masses, Communism needs bureaucrats to run things, and a lot of the time you end up with incompetent bureaucrats, hence why Mao's Five Year Plan and Kim Jong-Il's Juche are complete disasters.

The problem is what was on the minds of Lenin and Marx, the problem lies that most people just shouldn't be in charge. At all.

Obviously, Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, etc. were some of the most horrific tyrants of the 20th century. That's why I'm a Trotskyist - because we denounce all those so-called "communist" regimes, one-party dictatorships in which a parasitical bureaucracy held the population in its control through brutal secret police and a bloated military (personality cult optional). Stalinism and social democracy (capitalism with the rough edges filed down) are both antithetical to proper, Marxian socialism. You offer examples of regimes that I hate as just as much as you do, because you believe they are essentially Marxist. This begs the question, does Marxism-Leninism inevitably lead to Stalinism?

I honestly don't think so. The shape of world "Communism" for 70 years, and thereby our perceptions of it today, are largely due to what happened in the Soviet Union - the bureaucratic degeneration that resulted from its isolation after the First World War. People don't think much about the German Revolution anymore, but its failure was one of the biggest tragedies of the 20th Century. Because the USSR was left alone in a hostile world, the bureaucrats could consolidate their power and the world communist movement became a mere appendage of Stalin's foreign policy. This had its worst consequences in the 1930s, when the insane "social fascism" policy saw the Social Democrats as the German Communists' biggest threat and allowed the Nazis to come to power, leading to World War II and the Holocaust. The subsequent boost to Stalinism and Maoism at the end of the war prevented Trotskyist views from gaining much currency among the working class.

Stalinism failed because of the bureaucracy. The solution is not a return to capitalism, but a move to true workers' control. That's something that hasn't been tried since the early days of the Russian Revolution, although we've been seeing some interesting things in Venezuela in recent years.

By the way, nobody ever tries to catalogue the number of deaths in the 20th century that were due to capitalism. Let's see, World War I, World War II, and a staggering number of colonial and neo-colonial occupations and dirty wars in some countries people have heard of and many they haven't. And even if "most people", as a concept, shouldn't be in charge, that still doesn't explain why the current American system, which has put such lousy people in charge, is so good.

The kneejerk conservative response to this would be "less government!" But some form of social organization is necessary and the "no to big government" slogan has been used by Big Business and a wealthy oligarchy as a mask for their own selfish interests, which really mean fewer of the regulations that protect the working class (environmental and labour standards, etc.) and interfere with unfettered profiteering. The real solution, in the end, can only be for the working masses to take power away from the oligarchs and govern themselves.

And yet, self-interest is pretty much the reason why the Soviet Union collapsed and why the remaining "Communist" countries went to capitalism in order to survive.

Self-interest for the bureaucracy. They were the ones who took state-owned enterprises into their own private hands and became the grotesque new Russian oligarchs of the 1990s. Stalinist politicians were just as full of **** as capitalist ones; they didn't really believe any of the stuff they said about socialism, the working class, Marx and so on.

Self-interest and greed can go hand in hand with helping people out and working towards the greater good. The problem with greed in the United States is that often people like the Wall Street fatcats just don't see when enough is enough.

They'll never see that enough is enough because under capitalism, enough is NEVER enough. If a company can't make a profit, it goes out of business. I agree that corporate greed has reached a new low. But that attitude is built into the system.

But we can still try to better and benefit ourselves while helping others out at the same time. And dare I say that Western culture is becoming more and more self-absorbed.

Now that is the major difference between where you and I think, while you think that capitalism has led us to a historical dead end due to the spending of frivolous things and morally bankrupt corporations not providing.

While I think that Communism would lead to a dead end because in order for everyone to be equal in a Communist society, you pretty much have to completely kill off innovation, individuality, and motivation.

Marxists acknowledge that everyone is different. It's an obvious fact that people come in all shapes, sizes and types, we have different mental and physical abilities, etc. But the idea is giving everyone equal opportunity - the same thing reactionary ideologues pretend exists in America today, but really doesn't. The idea is for everyone to do what they can and get what they need ("from each according to his ability, to each according to his need").

From the FAQ:

Q. What about individuality under socialism?

A. Often, people's idea of individualism under socialism is based on the idea that socialism is represented by either Stalin's Russia or Mao's China. This brings to mind everyone running around in uniform, in terms of both their clothing and their behavior, and an all-powerful state to which the rights and wishes of the individual are subservient, in the "interests of the whole of society". In reality it was not the whole of society whose interests were being served in those cases but the interests of the small bureaucratic clique who led a parasitic existence on the backs of the working class, and on the back of the nationalized, planned economy.

This bureaucratization had a fatal impact on all the gains made by the revolution in Russia, not just economically but in every sphere of life. Bureaucratism has a stifling, suffocating effect not just on production but also on art, science and culture. The Stalinists were terrified of any potential opposition, and especially the intellectuals that they could not control. They were snuffed out, in many cases quite literally. Individual expression was portrayed as counter-revolutionary, even culture was subjugated to the "collective will" - not of society but of a handful of bureaucrats desperate to cling on to their power and privilege. Not just economy but all aspects of life require the oxygen of democracy if they are to flourish.

The capitalist society we live in today is supposedly individualistic, and this is made to sound positive. In reality the profit based society is one that engenders greed, selfishness, and egotism. It is a society based on the idea of "kill or be killed", and under capitalism people will do anything to "get ahead". In the name of profit, the talents and abilities of the vast majority of people are squandered on the production line, or the unemployment line. We don't have the right to a job, the right to an education, the right to healthcare, the rights that could ensure the bare bones of a civilized existence, let alone the right to express ourselves and contribute, to fulfil our potential

The collective society of genuine socialism is one where the rights of the individual can truly flourish for the first time, without any force or coercion. It will be a society without borders and frontiers, based on the democratic running of all aspects of life by the whole of society on the basis of an economy of super-abundance, where all our needs and more can be catered for. With modern technology we can produce more than enough for all the needs and desires of humanity with relatively minimal effort. For example, it used to take many workers to build a television set. But now, with automation, robotics and other improvements in efficiency, it takes many less workers. But under capitalism, the machines replace the workers, who must then find other, usually lower-paying jobs or be unemployed - wasting their potential away. Under socialism, improvements in technology will be put to the use of humanity. Machines will be made to work for us - the time we save due to their efficiency can then be spent pursuing other goals in life. We will be freed from the drudgery of human labor that is our existence under capitalism, and we will have the time to breathe in life, to study, to travel, to mingle with other cultures, to realize our talents

The development of our economy, will enable us to spend less time in work, and free us to participate in those fields blocked off from us today either by money or by overwork. Art, science, music, etc. will all will be able to blossom once they are unshackled from the constraints of capitalist society. How many Shakespeares or Beethovens have existed to date? Barely a handful. Or rather barely a handful whose talent we've been able to enjoy. How many more have been confined to the factory, the field or the office? Having done away with the outmoded private profit system and the anarchy it introduces into our economy, not only the rights of the individual, of all individuals, but their aspirations and their dreams will be set loose as well. New heights of human culture will be attained, and from those summits on the horizon ever newer peaks will emerge. Standing on the shoulders of all previous experience, men and women will stand head and shoulders above history. With our primitive past behind us, and with a democratic plan on how to use our resources and technology, humanity will be free to develop and realize its true potential as a whole and as individuals.

Also much of the stuff you mention has nothing to do with the flaws of capitalism. It isn't because of the skewed ideals of capitalism that has caused Medicare and Medicaid to be under attack, they're under attack because the money just doesn't exist to properly fund those programs as they currently are. The war in Libya has nothing to do with capitalism if you look at it from a humanitarian perspective (though I personally think that if Libya had no oil, we wouldn't be there).

So the money exists for destroying lives and not for saving them? That's what happens when you launch another war in the Middle East and cut funds for poor and elderly Americans' health care. One of these benefits rich people, the other does not. Hmm....

Things improve when people are motivated by the reward of private profit. It's why technology has advanced and it's why we have culture and see wonderful works of art in film, music, video games, and on stage and beautiful works of architecture, painting, sculpture, etc.

Yeah, Communism takes part in technological research and funding the arts, but the Soviet space program is a joke compared to NASA. The Battleship Potemkin is no Citizen Kane or to bring out the uber-nerd in me, The Dark Knight or Empire Strikes Back. Or Nikolai Baskakov's Lenin in the Kremlin is nothing compared to the works of Norman Rockwell.

Are you telling me that all those great works of art you just mentioned were created, in the end, because the artist wanted to make MONEY? Orson Welles made Citizen Kane purely for money? Come on, dude, I know you have more faith in artists and the creative mind than that. Sure they make money, but that's a side benefit from the creative process - ask any struggling musician, because 99% of them never become rock stars. Dark Knight you might actually have a stronger argument - is Christopher Nolan the type to take a big budget superhero movie because it'll make him some big bucks? Maybe, but that's not the whole story. Ultimately, he wanted to make it because he liked Batman. Lots of people like Batman because they've grown up with the character, he's a cultural icon, and therefore lots of people will want to see movies about him.

Even I forget this sometimes because we're all so used to the commercial film industry as it exists today, with mass marketed summer event blockbusters that provide the lion's share of profits for the five or six corporations that control the major film studios. But the fact is, people will always want to be entertained, and even if we were living under socialism, movies about Batman would get made because the people want to see them. What's more, they wouldn't be tied merely to crass considerations of box office grosses. Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, all the great superheroes are now cultural icons and as subject to respectful film treatment at this point as any literary masterpiece. I think that would be the case regardless of whether we lived in a socialist or capitalist society (there's a lot of great Soviet movies out there). A proper socialist society wouldn't be totally alien from what we have now; it would develop on from that.

It's interesting how a communist country like China, is now reforming their education to match their turn towards Capitalism as in "How can I create the next Bill Gates?" and Axl, you are advocating the opposite, what you are advocating stifles that kind of free thinking to the point that we create robots... I think China learned their lesson....why would we want to move toward something that throughout history has shown itself to not work?

Even countries of Europe are moving more toward a Market Economy and away from their psuedo-Socialist economies...they have learned as well. Again, why would we want to move in the opposite direction of the rest of the world into something that has proven itself time and time again to not work.

What you are advocating, other countries have realized has led them to a dead end...

I hope some of the excerpts from the Marxist FAQ, and my own responses to hippie_hunter's questions, explained some of this. But basically, the rulers of China wanted to retain their own privileges, they saw what was happening to their Soviet counterparts at the end of the Cold War, and calculated that a gradual return to capitalism - while retaining the authoritarian CCP state - would best serve their own interests. Although there's a growing layer of new wealthy Chinese, social inequality has grown into a chasm. For much of its working population, China is now the world's biggest sweatshop.

If you want to know more about China's transition to capitalism, you can find the best in-depth explanation here.

 

[Axl Van Sixx]

One last quote from the FAQ:

------------------------------------

Q. What About "Human Nature"?

A. The question of so-called "human nature" is one of the most commonly raised arguments against socialism - but it is also one of the easiest to debunk. Many people believe that the way people think has always been the same, and that we will always think the way we do now. But a few examples will show that nothing could be further from the truth. The fact of the matter is, like all things in nature, human consciousness and society are always in a state of change. Marx explained that "conditions determine consciousness". In other words, our environment determines to a large degree how we think. We know what rap music, Hollywood movies, and a Boeing 747 are because they exist in our world. For example, if we were born 5,000 years ago as peasants in China, our world-view would be very different! If we were born as royalty in China 5,000 years ago, we would also have a very different view of things than if we were peasants.
Human beings rose to the top of the food chain not by competing against each other and crushing one another in the struggle to "get ahead", but through cooperation. Only by cooperating were humans able to combine their resources to hunt, build shelters, and eventually domesticate plants, animals, develop pottery, build the pyramids, etc., etc. Just look at a human baby! Compared to a deer, which can stand up and run within minutes of birth, human young are totally helpless for years. Baby humans could not survive even a few days without the help of others! So you see, primitive humans needed to cooperate if they were to survive the elements, wild animals, find enough to eat, etc. For the vast majority of human existence, there were no classes, and we lived communally in small bands, dividing up the work and dividing up the wealth in the interests of everyone.



And although on the surface is appears that nowadays we are all "individuals", the truth is we are even more dependant on literally thousands and even millions of other humans around the world. Can any one person design a car, mine and process the metals and other materials needed, build the factory, and the put together a car themselves? To even pose the question shows how absurd the idea is. And what about the gasoline to fuel it? Or the roads to drive it on?What about the food we eat? The list goes on and on - and we have only scratched the surface.Think about it carefully, and you will see that under capitalism, almost everyone is indirectly linked to everyone else through the world market and the exchange of commodities.



We work together, live together, hang out together, go to the movies together, go to the park together, etc. Do we have police around 24 / 7 to make sure we don't all kill each other? Do we run around murdering each other "to get ahead"? If that were the case, then nothing would ever get done and we would all starve to death in a matter of days! So why do people have this strange idea that we are all "individuals"? Well, getting back to the first point we made, which is that conditions determine consciousness - the ruling class (the capitalists) do everything in their power to affect the way we think. Through our education, through the media, religion, etc., we are raised to have the values of the capitalist system.And what values are these? Precisely the "dog eat dog" attitude which states that the only way to get ahead is to stomp on your opponents. We are raised to look away and think nothing of the homeless, the starving, those killed in war, etc. - or at most to say a prayer for them and give a little "charity" to ease our conscience.



But if we look a little harder, we will see that these "values" benefit only a tiny handful of people - the ultra-rich capitalists! The rest of us, in our daily lives, gain nothing from this. What we want above all is peace, stability, a decent job, no worries about healthcare or education, time off for family and loved ones, etc. It is only the capitalist class which thrives off the individual competition between one company and another. One of the main contradictions of capitalist society is that we have social production (meaning we produce the things we use socially - like the example of the car), but private appropriation of the surplus wealth produced. In other words, we produce the wealth socially, but the profit goes into private hands!The thousands of workers who actually know how to produce the cars in a factory do not get to decide what to produce or how, or what to do with the extra wealth - the capitalist class does. Socialists want to end this contradiction by having social control over the socially produced wealth. The surplus wealth produced by working people would be used to provide better wages, benefits, healthcare, education, safety conditions, new technology that could reduce the working day, etc. - instead of for the private gain of a handful of people while millions starve, are homeless, and unemployed.This is not a utopian idea - the material pre-requisites for this exist now!The only barrier to this is the grip the capitalist class has on political and economic power. Only unity of the world working class can put an end to this situation, and end the horror, degradation, poverty, and instability of the capitalist system once and for all. Then a whole new world will open up!



So just imagine a baby born into a world with no hunger, no want, no poverty, no lack of jobs, etc.Since conditions determine consciousness, they would see the world in an entirely different way than we do today. Even babies born today do not notice differences in race, language, etc. until these are pointed out to them as they get older. Under socialism, people will relate to each other as people, and not as mere commodities to be bought and sold.



The reason for the vast bulk of the problems we suffer under capitalism is scarcity – there is simply not enough to go around. To take an example form nature, if you take 100 rats and put them in a cage with enough food for 100 rats and then a little bit more, you will have docile, friendly, and gregarious animals before you. But if you put those same 100 rats in a cage with only enough food for only 50 of them, you will quickly see the situation deteriorate into a murderous, greedy, self-interested orgy of violence and bloodshed. Of course, humans and their society are much more complex and on a different level than 100 rats in a laboratory cage, but the example illustrates an important point.



As we all know, much of the scarcity we find is artificially produced. We have all heard the stories of farmers being paid not to plant or to destroy crops, even though there are millions of hungry and malnourished children right here in the United States, let alone around the world; of shoe or clothing stores which punch or tear holes in their old stock, to make them unusable, even though millions of people could use those products; of restaurants firing employees for taking food home, insisting instead that this perfectly good food be thrown in the dumpster; or of perfectly healthy, capable, and willing people being paid not to work, or forced into unemployment when they are willing to work, instead of creating meaningful jobs for them.



"Human nature", like all things, in a constant state of change. To accept that it is set in stone for all time does not stand up to even the most simple analysis. Humans have created wonderful tragedies, comedies, songs, poems, paintings, sculptures and countless other expressions of artistic creativity which are a reflection of our changing world view at any given time. Just take a walk through an art, science, or historical museum and you will see the changing consciousness of humanity graphically portrayed. As Marx explained, "the philosophers have interpreted the world in various ways - the point however, is to change it!" Our way of thinking will change with it!

 

[Kelly]

Well, it has served China's interest...to move towards capitalism, and still hold on to communism within their governmental structure, but that doesn't mean it is right, or what is best for the people of China. It is simply a means of growing their industries quickly, since the government doesn't have to "ask" the people so to speak what they can and cannot do...again, doesn't make it right.


And honestly, cut and paste posts, give me a headache...