/u/specterofsandersism because some people worked hard for their homes by contributing to society while others are defective wastes of space who would turn any home you give them into a dilapidated crack den
Labor contributes; capital doesn't. Capital is dead labor. However, because poor people generally have no choice but to sell their labor, they are poor and the rich are rich, even though the former contributes far, far more to society.
Every time people try and establish communism they end up killing large numbers of people. Refusing to address and accept that is exactly why communism will never work. You refuse to face or accept the failings of it so you're always doomed to repeat it.
Every death in a socialist state is directly attributable to communism, whereas in capitalist state, any deaths are completely incidental to capitalism. This is the logic you McCarthyists operate by.
The establishment of modern industrial capitalism was completely contingent on the enslavement of millions of Africans, the genocide of the Americas and Australia, and the imperialist conquest of almost every continent. It literally COULD NOT have developed without these events happening. The removal of slavery and the colonization of the Americas alone would've ensured capitalism never really got a start in Europe.
Further, having developed, capitalism has produced countless deaths across the world, from the Holocaust to the Iraq War.
Note that I'm talking about straight up murder. I'm not even counting famine, which capitalist countries still suffer from (whereas every socialist country that lasted for more than a few decades managed to eradicate them).
Wow you really are looking to be the top submission on /r/badhistory aren't you?
The establishment of modern industrial capitalism was completely contingent on the enslavement of millions of Africans, the genocide of the Americas and Australia, and the imperialist conquest of almost every continent. It literally COULD NOT have developed without these events happening
The industrial revolution kicked off because they figured out that coal worked a fuck ton better than wood does and they developed steam engines. Why do you think it focused in The United Kingdom, France, Germany, and generally Western Europe? They found a way to exploit their own resources far more effectively and ran with it.
The removal of slavery and the colonization of the Americas alone would've ensured capitalism never really got a start in Europe.
You understand that capitalism relied on, you know, capital. The thing that the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Kingdom of Kush (real thing), Romans, Prussians, Babylonians, Aztecs, Holy Roman Empire, Carthaginians, Chinese, Persians, Japanese, and Mali empire all had in common was currency. You know currency, that wondrous thing that allows your labour to be transformed into a universal good so that you never have to deal with different desires when bartering. Without currency the Greek Shepard would be stuck having to try and trade wool for wood, pottery, and all other daily essentials. With currency the Shepard can simply purchase those things after he sells his sheep and wool on the market to people who are looking for sheep and wool rather than try and convince the potter that he needs sheep and wool when he really likes fish and wine. Currency has been used by literally every society that could build something more than a mud or wood hut. As soon as the Europeans started mucking around with metals and stone it was inevitable currency would be used. We've seen this repeated in every sophisticated society yet only communists and socialists don't understand it.
Further, having developed, capitalism has produced countless deaths across the world, from the Holocaust to the Iraq War.
The holocaust came from an insane desire to destroy the impure, not for money. It literally was a massive race war and Hitler repeatedly mentioned that. The Iraq war was a "why the fuck not?" The Iraq was especially cost far, far, far more than what could have been earned through pillaging Iraq. Oddly the US troop concentrations are in cities and not in oil fields. Weird for a war just for money huh?
Now if you are right that the holocaust and Iraq war are results of capitalism, then every Red terror, mass starvation, and the infamous killing fields of Cambodia have to be the result of communism and its predecessor, socialism.
Note that I'm talking about straight up murder. I'm not even counting famine, which capitalist countries still suffer from (whereas every socialist country that lasted for more than a few decades managed to eradicate them)
North Korea lives on international aid and the Chinese starved millions of their own intentionally. Let's not forget the Holodomor where the red army literally kicked in doors to see if the Ukrainians were hoarding food, shot anyone who tried to leave, and turned down international offers of aid. Cuba still suffers from food shortages and China did too until it embraced capitalism. Literally until capitalism started to be embraced there were shortages of everything. Check out the Venezuelan diet if you don't believe me.
In comparison socialism is practically Gandhian.
The reason that socialism and communism will never work is because the free rider problem. The issue is that when there is no minimum requirement to access publicly available good then people will do the least amount of work possible. A great example of this can be seen in the American militia during the War of 1812 and the Mexican-American war. See, during those wars the Americans really embraced democracy, to the point the Militia would elect their own officers.
Unsurprisingly they would elect the men who promised the least amount of work. After all, when one is saying you'll have to do days of backbreaking work to create embankments and sanitation channels, then drill for hours after and the other says you just have to not get that drunk, people choose the one who asked less of them. Now what this meant was that the militia tended to be completely ill-disciplined, lazy, and a drag on supply lines as they had voracious appetites. So the regulars would suffer from lack of supplies because militia men, who usually did very little work to aid them and fled Battle easily (when they even joined) consumed them all.
Communism saw the same thing happening, which is exactly why they had to do things like execute factory managers and shoot anyone on collective farms who wasn't working hard enough while claiming they were 'counter-revolutionary'. Funny how communism, and socialism, all assume that people will naturally do things altruistically, especially when all of human history has shown that in order to be self-motivated people need a reason why. And as it turns out, currency is a great reason why, and the vague promise of maybe getting equal access to food stores isn't. Furthermore you'll also run into the problem of natural jealousy where people like brain surgeons will get pissed they're working long hours while I just get to write poetry and have equal access to resources.
Now as for you, I know for a fact that in any socialist paradise you imagine you're thinking that you'll be some party elite. You aren't fantasizing about getting eaten alive by black flies and mosquitos cutting lumber so people can have wood. You're also not fantasizing about cleaning the sewer systems that are vital for every city. Nor are you thinking about getting on an ice breaker to cut paths in the Arctic ice for months or thinking about handling nuclear waste. No, you fantasize about some cushy job and as much access to as much resources as someone who makes $100,000/yr does.
All socialists and communists believe that some strange other will do all that nasty work. It won't have to be you doing it because some other person will just do it. This is exactly why communist countries always ended up having to use military or para-military force against their own citizens. They believed people who do that work for free, and when that didn't happen they forced them to do it. Why else do you think that the Soviets forced people to stay on collective farms and used slave labour from gulags to mine uranium?
This is why I said that the reason that communism and socialism is doomed to always be a failure is because you refuse to accept these basic problems as legitimate. So you keep having to end up using force and keep up killing all who resist. Even now you'll refuse to accept the free rider problem as legitimate and will just say "Well in real communism people will just help each other!" because you can't face the fact that Marx was bourgeoise, not proletariat, and really had no idea what the motivations of humans really are. When every advanced human society since the dawn of time has used currency, it's safe to say it's not artificial or forced upon us. What is artificial and forced upon us has always been communism.
Wow you really are looking to be the top submission on /r/badhistory aren't you?
It's hilariously apparent from the rest of your post that your historical knowledge is limited to high school textbooks (I especially enjoyed the part where you assumed I would be surprised there was a country called Kush, as if that isn't common knowledge to anyone with a decent understanding of African history) so I'm gonna enjoy tearing this post apart.
The industrial revolution kicked off because they figured out that coal worked a fuck ton better than wood does and they developed steam engines. Why do you think it focused in The United Kingdom, France, Germany, and generally Western Europe? They found a way to exploit their own resources far more effectively and ran with it.
The knowledge that coal produces a lot of heat is quite ancient, actually, and England isn't the only place with an advanced civilization that had large coal reserves in the world (off the top of my head, China and Bengal did/do too).
Nor is the availability of coal the only factor behind the Industrial Revolution. Not even a middle school history textbook would make such an infantile assumption. At least, as I recall, mine discussed other factors too. Let's talk about that.
You understand that capitalism relied on, you know, capital. The thing that the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Kingdom of Kush (real thing), Romans, Prussians, Babylonians, Aztecs, Holy Roman Empire, Carthaginians, Chinese, Persians, Japanese, and Mali empire all had in common was currency. You know currency, that wondrous thing that allows your labour to be transformed into a universal good so that you never have to deal with different desires when bartering. Without currency the Greek Shepard would be stuck having to try and trade wool for wood, pottery, and all other daily essentials. With currency the Shepard can simply purchase those things after he sells his sheep and wool on the market to people who are looking for sheep and wool rather than try and convince the potter that he needs sheep and wool when he really likes fish and wine. Currency has been used by literally every society that could build something more than a mud or wood hut. As soon as the Europeans started mucking around with metals and stone it was inevitable currency would be used. We've seen this repeated in every sophisticated society yet only communists and socialists don't understand it.
Sigh. First of all, that isn't what capital is. Can you do us both a favor and at least google basic terms before talking? Capital refers to the means of production which are (really, really simplistically) the things that allow you to make more things which can be sold, i.e. TV factories, but not TVs.
Second, the mere presence of capital doesn't entail the existence of capitalism. Again, not even mainstream (capitalist) economists believe this so all I'm getting here is your own ignorance. Capitalism refers to a very specific set of social and economic circumstances primarily characterized by strong private property rights, and, consequently, vast capital accumulation. This means, for the first time in history individuals or very small groups of people could control vast swathes of capital. Not only that, most capital in a given society is controlled by very few people. Sure, previously, there were rich people (kings, sometimes merchants and bankers too), but it's not like a handful of corporations produced and owned all the yokes, sickles, and ploughs in feudal Europe. This gives capitalists an outsized power; you literally have to go through them to obtain your livelihood. I could talk a lot more about this, or perhaps you could watch this instead. Even if you don't end up agreeing it's quite fascinating and he's very engaging, so please watch.
Also, Europeans didn't invent currency. Again it seems like you should be on /r/badhistory, not me.
The holocaust came from an insane desire to destroy the impure, not for money. It literally was a massive race war and Hitler repeatedly mentioned that. The Iraq war was a "why the fuck not?" The Iraq was especially cost far, far, far more than what could have been earned through pillaging Iraq. Oddly the US troop concentrations are in cities and not in oil fields. Weird for a war just for money huh?
Again, sigh. I no longer feel enmity for you because it's very clear you just don't know a lot of things, not that you just hate poor people (like some people here and in the other thread).
In particular, it seems like you've managed to learn a couple of facts about history but are inept at analyzing history in any meaningful way. When you say:
The holocaust came from an insane desire to destroy the impure
All you're doing is stating what the Holocaust literally was, not what caused it. Why did that desire arise? What possessed millions of Germans (and other Europeans and Americans) to agree with it? Even if the idea just spawned out of the ether, something gave it the ability to come to power (i.e. for Nazis to seize the state). What was that exactly?
An economic understanding of Fascism (broadly) and Nazism (more specifically) as well as European imperialism shows that it was very much borne from the capitalist system. As Lenin said, "Fascism is capitalism in decay."
It seems you're really averse to considering economic factors in historical analysis which is exactly what makes you so blind to how capitalism really functions. For example:
The holocaust came from an insane desire to destroy the impure, not for money.
So why enslave Jews before murdering them? Remember, the genocide camps doubled as work camps; you worked until you died or were chosen to be murdered. Many corporations profited quite handsomely from slave labor- included BMW and Mercedes; here's a list of some of them.
"Free labor" isn't even the biggest connection between the Holocaust and capitalism, but it is a start, and a really obvious one to anyone who knows even a little bit about the Holocaust, so why did it not occur to you? I could go on and on about how capitalism precipitated the Holocaust and how neither Fascism nor the Holocaust could not have occurred outside a capitalist system, but it seems you've failed to taken into account even elementary historical considerations, so I'd rather not waste my time. Instead I urge you to please research things before talking about them with such authoritativeness.
As for your belief that:
The Iraq war was a "why the fuck not?
Whenever your answer to a historical question is "why the fuck not?" you should probably pause and consider that you might be wrong. Bush did not trip and accidentally start a decade long war. This is especially true because:
The Iraq was especially cost far, far, far more than what could have been earned through pillaging Iraq.
America didn't want to pillage Iraq in the sense of just picking up things (including oil) and flying them home. That doesn't mean the war didn't have economic motives, because as you rightly pointed out, the war was really expensive, and capitalists hate spending money unless there's profit in it for them. The sources of profit were two-fold:
First, yes, the war was about oil- not in the sense that America captured the oil fields, but rather that the nature of the oil market is that minor disruptions in the oil supply anywhere threaten oil prices everywhere. Consequently, it is imperative that America ensure a steady and stable flow of oil everywhere. It doesn't need to literally steal the oil; the oil makes it to American markets by itself, as long as it isn't hindered by anti-American rulers. One of the primary purposes of our army and intelligence agencies is basically making sure this process goes smoothly.
Second, the military-industrial complex stands to gain from any war, whether American or otherwise, which explains such contradictions as America selling weapons to both sides of a war (as in the brutal Iran-Iraq War from 80 to 88). The US military budget is so ridiculously outsized at this point, as even a cursory examination of the budget will show, and the MIC profits from that. Justifying that budget requires constant war.
So, yes, the Iraq war was costly for most Americans and pretty much all Iraqis, but for a small group of people it was tremendously profitable.
Now if you are right that the holocaust and Iraq war are results of capitalism, then every Red terror, mass starvation, and the infamous killing fields of Cambodia have to be the result of communism and its predecessor, socialism.
Cambodia wasn't socialist for the umpteenth time. Pol Pot was literally funded by Reagan with the hope that Cambodia would destroy Vietnam, an actually socialist state. Please see Michael Haas' great book on the subject, "Cambodia, Pol Pot, and the United States: The Faustian Pact."
Red Terrors were usually excessive, but revolutions tend to be; but they were not altogether unjustified. Brutal feudal landlords and their church lackeys deserve to die. No, that doesn't mean I think everyone who was murdered/tortured in red terrors deserved it. But this kind of terror goes with most revolutions, including the one that really gave liberal democracy its place in the world theater: the French Revolution. It could also wholesale be avoided if capitalists just agreed to dismantle their system; they don't, because it behooves them not to.
You also freely ignore all the cases of (usually American or Western backed) forces attempting to brutally overthrow or bomb into oblivion any country that attempted socialism. Literally every major socialist country had to face this, and plenty of left-wing governments that weren't even socialist, but just too far left for capitalists to be happy.
North Korea was actually richer than its southern neighbor, which was headed by a brutal US-backed dictator) until the 1980s. This is despite the fact that the US all but destroyed the country in the Korean War, something no one seems to tlak about. I'm not talking about just WWII level destruction. Imagine Dresden, but over the entirety of North Korea. More bombs were dropped on Korea than on Japanese territory during the entirety of WWII. Every single building over two stories tall was flattened. The partition made things worse because while the North was where industry and resources like coal was, the South was agricultural. After the war and for several decades after, as a result, the North was richer; but with the collapse of the USSR and multiple international embargoes it simply couldn't produce enough food- a problem that could easily be solved by uniting with the South (something most South Koreans actually want, btw- it's America and a handful of its Korean lackeys that don't want this). I don't think North Korea is socialist anymore, but you seem to fail to realize how it got there.
During the course of the three-year war, which both sides accuse one another of provoking, the U.S. dropped 635,000 tons of explosives on North Korea, including 32,557 tons of napalm, an incendiary liquid that can clear forested areas and cause devastating burns to human skin. (In constrast, the U.S. used 503,000 tons of bombs during the entire Pacific Theater of World War Two, according to a 2009 study by the Asia-Pacific Journal.) In a 1984 interview, Air Force Gen. Curtis LeMay, head of the Strategic Air Command during the Korean War, claimed U.S. bombs "killed off 20 percent of the population" and "targeted everything that moved in North Korea." These acts, largely ignored by the U.S.' collective memory, have deeply contributed to Pyongyang's contempt for the U.S. and especially its ongoing military presence on the Korean Peninsula.
"Most Americans are completely unaware that we destroyed more cities in the North then we did in Japan or Germany during World War II... Every North Korean knows about this, it's drilled into their minds. We never hear about it," historian and author Bruce Cumings told Newsweek by email Monday.
and the Chinese starved millions of their own intentionally.
No, no they didn't.
Let's not forget the Holodomor where the red army literally kicked in doors to see if the Ukrainians were hoarding food, shot anyone who tried to leave, and turned down international offers of aid.
First of all, the "Holodomor" is incorrect terminology intended to make the Ukrainian famine seem like a genocide. This was a fabrication of Goebbels and the Nazi propaganda machine.
There was a famine; it was not limited to the USSR; and it was partly caused by natural events (bad weather), a foreign embargo on the USSR, and kulaks hoarding grain.
Cuba still suffers from food shortages
No, it doesn't.
Literally until capitalism started to be embraced there were shortages of everything.
That's very true, young Padawan! Marx himself noted this. The problems of capitalism are not of paucity, but rather surplus. This was such a curious problem and Marx was not the only economist to point it out. He just explained it best and proposed an actual solution to it that wasn't "more welfare."
Check out the Venezuelan diet if you don't believe me.
Venezuela isn't any more socialist than Sweden (that is, not at all). It's problems are because of the oil market. Other oil countries are also facing similar issues.
The reason that socialism and communism will never work is because the free rider problem. The issue is that when there is no minimum requirement to access publicly available good then people will do the least amount of work possible. A great example of this can be seen in the American militia during the War of 1812 and the Mexican-American war. See, during those wars the Americans really embraced democracy, to the point the Militia would elect their own officers.
Americans embraced democracy so much they kept millions of black people in bondage and invaded the sovereign territory of another nation while murdering indigenous Indians. These are the true markers of democracy. It is known.
As for the free rider problem, this really blows my mind, because one of the chief Marxist critiques of capitalism is it allows for the proliferation of free riders. In two ways:
First, capitalists profit off the labor of others simply because they claim ownership over the means of production. Even if they themselves built the MoP with their own two hands (rarely if ever), once it is built, they are no longer contributing. They believe they can sit back for the rest of their lives and have others work for them. Which is what they do.
Second, capitalism decreases the amount of work people can do and increases the work done by machines. This is great right? Well it should be, and to some extent it has been; but the contradiction here is that in capitalism laborers die if they don't work, so somehow less work for society is actually a bad thing. In fact, whenever production outstrips demand, people get laid off, which means demand decreases even further, and you get an economic crisis like the Great Depression or the most recent recession. To solve this, capitalist countries have instituted various degrees of social welfare programs to ensure the unemployed/underemployed don't die in the streets. This produces more free loaders. I don't mean to call the unemployed "freeloaders" in the "I hate the poor and I'm a Republican" sense; what I mean is these people could be contributing but can't simply because in capitalism people only work if a capitalist can make a profit off of them, or if they themselves can find a way to make a profit off of someone else. It doesn't matter if our bridges are crumbling and we need renewable energy fast; all the engineers and construction workers and scientists in the world can't do shit about that unless someone believes they will make a profit in doing so.
Marx's whole point was that this freeloader problem caused by capitalism will cause its decline and fall. The rich freeloaders keep getting richer, while the amount of poor freeloaders keeps increasing; this isn't sustainable.
Unsurprisingly they would elect the men who promised the least amount of work. After all, when one is saying you'll have to do days of backbreaking work to create embankments and sanitation channels, then drill for hours after and the other says you just have to not get that drunk, people choose the one who asked less of them. Now what this meant was that the militia tended to be completely ill-disciplined, lazy, and a drag on supply lines as they had voracious appetites. So the regulars would suffer from lack of supplies because militia men, who usually did very little work to aid them and fled Battle easily (when they even joined) consumed them all.
This is generally true of militia everywhere and comparing this to either political or economic democracy on a national scale doesn't make much sense. Most workers are much more comparable to regulars than militia.
Now as for you, I know for a fact that in any socialist paradise you imagine you're thinking that you'll be some party elite. You aren't fantasizing about getting eaten alive by black flies and mosquitos cutting lumber so people can have wood. You're also not fantasizing about cleaning the sewer systems that are vital for every city. Nor are you thinking about getting on an ice breaker to cut paths in the Arctic ice for months or thinking about handling nuclear waste. No, you fantasize about some cushy job and as much access to as much resources as someone who makes $100,000/yr does.
That isn't true though. Socialist states the world over have had to all those things, and they've managed to do so. In the USSR, people with particularly dangerous jobs (miners, for example) or who had to work unusual/long hours (doctors on call) were paid more as compensation. This type of situation simply can't happen in capitalism.
I could flip the scenario back on you:
"I know for a fact that in any Randian paradise you imagine you're thinking that you'll be some CEO. You aren't fantasizing about getting eaten alive by black flies and mosquitos cutting lumber so people can have wood. You're also not fantasizing about cleaning the sewer systems that are vital for every city. Nor are you thinking about getting on an ice breaker to cut paths in the Arctic ice for months or thinking about handling nuclear waste. No, you fantasize about some cushy job and as much access to as much resources as someone who makes $100,000/yr does."
All socialists and communists believe that some strange other will do all that nasty work.
All capitalists believe that some strange other will do all that nasty work. No, they literally believe this as evidence by the history of capitalists forcing non-white peoples the world over to do the dirty work (African slavery, worldwide imperialism) and buy their products (mercantilist policy oh and of course the Opium War).
Communism saw the same thing happening, which is exactly why they had to do things like execute factory managers and shoot anyone on collective farms who wasn't working hard enough while claiming they were 'counter-revolutionary'. Funny how communism, and socialism, all assume that people will naturally do things altruistically, especially when all of human history has shown that in order to be self-motivated people need a reason why.
No! Wrong! Communism is nothing but pure self-interest on the part of the proletariat. It absolutely behooves us to seize the means of production. What, did you think Indian workers working for slave wages is somehow more beneficial to them? Do you think they elected to do that out of nothing but self-interest, no coercion needed?
Marx was bourgeoise
This is just plain false my guy. Marx was a professor and journalist for most of his career. At no point was he anything close to "rich." In any case, plenty of Marxist thinkers after him have been proles, so the point is moot. It also wouldn't be relevant because you are already implying only capitalists know what "the motivations of humans really are" and yet you accuse Marx of not knowing what those were... because he was bourgeoise.
It's hilariously apparent from the rest of your post that your historical knowledge is limited to high school textbooks (I especially enjoyed the part where you assumed I would be surprised there was a country called Kush, as if that isn't common knowledge to anyone with a decent understanding of African history)
I promise you didn't know shit about African Kingdoms before this, or else you would have known that literally every advanced society no matter how separated in time or distance used currency, and not be claiming that it's natural to not use currency.
Nor is the availability of coal the only factor behind the Industrial Revolution.
I never said it was, it's just that the British has very local coal deposits and were able to exploit them easily and early on. The industrial revolution started as a way to better exploit your own resources, not simply conquer. That came later.
First of all, that isn't what capital is. Can you do us both a favor and at least google basic terms before talking? Capital refers to the means of production which are (really, really simplistically) the things that allow you to make more things which can be sold, i.e. TV factories, but not TVs.
HOLY FUCKING SHIT!!! It's actually defined as "wealth in the form of *money** or other assets owned by a person or organization or available or contributed for a particular purpose such as starting a company or investing." Seriously, this is gold! You actually claim to know what capital was but then claimed that it didn't include currency! Hahahahaha fuck this is hilarious. Yeah you're doing a real great job of "tearing apart my post" you absolute mongoloid. Capital doesn't refer to the means of production, it refers to wealth that can be used to *start** a business or to buy the means of production. Fucking hell man, that's economics 101 and you fucking failed HARD.
This means, for the first time in history individuals or very small groups of people could control vast swathes of capital.
You mean like what the ancient Greek, Roman, and Babylonian landowners all did? Seriously, you didn't think that it's been well established in human history that people will own large amounts of capital?!?! Man you have less than zero idea what you're talking about so it's real obvious why you're a communist!
What was that exactly?
The desire to make Germany Great Again and kill Jews, Slavs, Blacks, and anyone 'inpure'.
watch this instead
Citing a YouTube video instead of published peer reviewed paper eh? That's certainly something that crazy people don't do.
So why enslave Jews before murdering them? Remember, the genocide camps doubled as work camps; you worked until you died or were chosen to be murdered.
Yeah because they were planning on killing them, so why not make them work a bit first since all the young German men were off fighting a war? Man-o-man you really are reaching far.
Also, Europeans didn't invent currency
I never said they did, in fact I pointed out many cultures that used currency far before the Europeans did. What I said was that it was inevitable that the Europeans would use currency when they first started smelting metals and cutting stone. Apparently reading comprehension isn't quite your forte.
Again, sigh. I no longer feel enmity for you because it's very clear you just don't know a lot of things, not that you just hate poor people (like some people here and in the other thread).
I don't hate poor people at all. I grew up poor until I was midway through high school. I used to only wear donated clothing because we couldn't afford anything else. What I hate are people with genocidal Utopian ideals that refuse to accept that an ideology that was created in a library by a man who never did an honest days work in his life might be false. Usually when someone (Marx) doesn't do anything with his hands aside from jerking off and writing bullshit, you can trust he doesn't know anything about the plight of the worker.
Cambodia wasn't socialist for the umpteenth time. Pol Pot was literally funded by Reagan with the hope that Cambodia would destroy Vietnam, an actually socialist state. Please see Michael Haas' great book on the subject, "Cambodia, Pol Pot, and the United States: The Faustian Pact."
It's never real socialism or communism if it's bad huh? King Leopold II was capitalist, few would deny that. Why is it that capitalist countries can accept they've done really shitty things but communists always have to deny they ever have? You can't learn from your mistakes if you keep denying there ever were any.
Red Terrors were usually excessive, but revolutions tend to be; but they were not altogether unjustified. Brutal feudal landlords and their church lackeys deserve to die.
"Hey guys! The path to Utopia is right through this river of blood! Trust us, THIS time it'll work!"
Any ideology that tells you that you need to kill groups of people for there to be peace is a garbage ideology. Especially when the people who 'deserve' to die end up always being the proletariat peasants. What did the Ukranians or Chinese farmers do to the Communist party that they deserved to suffer so much? And why does every 'worker revolution' always end up punishing the workers the most?
It could also wholesale be avoided if capitalists just agreed to dismantle their system; they don't, because it behooves them not to.
Or you know, Capitalism is a natural occurrence and Communism isn't. Show me some examples of advanced societies through human history that decided to stop using capital, and went full communist voluntarily. If it's so natural then surely we should see some examples of that happening bloodlessly. After all Switzerland became Capitalist without shedding anyones blood. Seems to me that the ideology that occurs naturally and bloodlessly is the natural one.
You also freely ignore all the cases of (usually American or Western backed) forces attempting to brutally overthrow or bomb into oblivion any country that attempted socialism.
Yes like how Eastern Europe needed some tanks to keep Communism or how the Tibetans totally were threatening Communist China. Communist countries and Capitalist countries have been fucking with each other since 1917, yet one ideology has lasted without the people rising up to shoot their leader and overthrow Communism. The Romanian Revolution was very much a people's revolution, and it didn't happen against their King, it was against Communists.
North Korea was actually richer than its southern neighbor
Two things; 1) You can't feed people with memories, 2) When the USSR gives you billions in aid to piss off the Americans you tend to do well. Now how you explain South Korea's runaway economic success due to Capitalism while North Korea flooded most of it's fertile land because they wanted to build a cool dam. I'm eager to hear how that was America's fault.
No, no they didn't.
When you radically change government policy, punish people who refuse to adhere to the policy, and don't revert the policy when lots of people start dying then yes, it's fucking intentional. If I decide that my dogs needs to be vegan, I see them get sick, one dies from malnourishment, yet I continue feeding them vegan, am I not responsible for that dogs death? Spoiler Alert: I'm directly responsible because I ignored all the warning signs and continued down a path I knew was causing harm.
First of all, the "Holodomor" is incorrect terminology intended to make the Ukrainian famine seem like a genocide.
I had a classmate in high-school whose father was born in the Ukraine. The Red Army searched his house for hidden food, took their pigs, took their neighbours livestock, shot anyone who tried to leave, and Stalin turned down foreign offers for food aid. That's fucking intentional and it's meant to kill people. Please explain how turning down offers of international food aid was in the interests of the starving farmers.
That's very true, young Padawan! Marx himself noted this. The problems of capitalism are not of paucity, but rather surplus. This was such a curious problem and Marx was not the only economist to point it out. He just explained it best and proposed an actual solution to it that wasn't "more welfare."
Capitalism has a surplus because the people are self-motivated by a desire for money. That motivator is very strong and while it can cause some people to act very immorally, it has overwhelmingly been a benefit by allowing all sorts of innovations that wouldn't normally be considered strictly necessary for survival.
Venezuela isn't any more socialist than Sweden
Another "Not real socialism/communism because it isn't working" I have no doubt that when Venezuela was doing very well you were out championing it as an example of how well socialism works.
Americans embraced democracy so much they kept millions of black people in bondage and invaded the sovereign territory of another nation while murdering indigenous Indians. These are the true markers of democracy. It is known.
Are you actually stupid? Democracy is literally just the rule of the people. Sure people can be shitty and prejudiced and try and pervert that, but just look at how democracies have overcome all that. Democracy stopped slavery, the rich would have kept it up but the people overwhelmingly rejected that. Without democracy there won't be a Plato-style Philosopher king, there'll be Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot killing to keep control.
They believe they can sit back for the rest of their lives and have others work for them. Which is what they do.
Which is fair when you did something yourself. If you ever built something with your own hands you sure as shit wouldn't freely give it away. That's natural to all humans.
Marx's whole point was that this freeloader problem caused by capitalism will cause its decline and fall.
That's not the freeloader problem at all you absolute retard. Here, I'll link it to you since you don't seem to know anything about what you're talking about;
"The free rider problem is a *market failure that occurs when people take advantage of being able to use a common resource, or collective good, without paying for it*, as is the case when citizens of a country utilize public goods without paying their fair share in taxes. The free rider problem only arises in a market in which supply is not diminished by the number of people consuming it and consumption cannot be restricted. Goods and services such as national defense, metropolitan police presence, flood control systems, access to clean water, sanitation infrastructure, libraries and public broadcasting services are able to be obtained through free riding."
Jesus Christ you literally know nothing about what you're talking about. When people can use something for free without contributing, they will abuse it as much as possible. Don't believe me? Host a party and buy a couple 24's of beer. Let people know that you have been and they're free to drink it if they want and they don't have to bring anything if they don't want to. See how many people show up with beer to contribute now that they know there is plenty and they don't have to do anything to access it.
This is generally true of militia everywhere and comparing this to either political or economic democracy on a national scale doesn't make much sense. Most workers are much more comparable to regulars than militia.
What the fuck is wrong with you?!? Workers are more like regulars that milita?!?! If there was any doubt you were a champagne socialist isn't gone now. No one who has worked with factory workers would ever doubt that they'd work less if it was an option. Why the fuck do you think that plant managers in Communist countries are so overbearing? Otherwise shit all would get done.
That isn't true though. Socialist states the world over have had to all those things, and they've managed to do so. In the USSR, people with particularly dangerous jobs (miners, for example) or who had to work unusual/long hours (doctors on call) were paid more as compensation. This type of situation simply can't happen in capitalism.
What the fuck is wrong with you? Socialist states the world over never have abolished capital and have compensated people differently because they realize nothing would get done if everyone just had equal access to goods. In Capitalist countries it happens all the time that people who do dangerous or stressful jobs get paid more. If you work on wind turbines you make at least $80,000/yr. Seriously?!?! Capitalist countries don't compensate people more based on how difficult, skilled, or undesirable the job is? They do all the time which is why plumbers, linemen, surgeons, and millwrights get paid so much. As long as the job requires skill/training and is undesirable you get paid a ton.
I know for a fact that in any Randian paradise
Ayn Rand is dumber than shit. I'm not some Libertarian who thinks unrestricted Capitalism is best. Capitalism needs to be monitored and needs state competition in certain industries for it to be healthy. Pure capitalism would be just as much of a cancer as communism or pure socialism is.
All capitalists believe that some strange other will do all that nasty work. No, they literally believe this as evidence by the history of capitalists forcing non-white peoples the world over to do the dirty work (African slavery, worldwide imperialism) and buy their products (mercantilist policy oh and of course the Opium War).
You know we pay people now right? McDonald's workers aren't enslaved. They are just unskilled and with a surplus of people willing to do those jobs aren't paid much. You however literally believe that people will magically do shit jobs in communism because communism has told you that it would and since your brain is too small for doubt, you've filled it with blind faith.
It's very telling that you won't say what you'd do in your version of socialism. I'm betting because I was right on the money with my guess that you believe you'd be some important person instead of a random lumberjack or miner.
This is just plain false my guy. Marx was a professor and journalist for most of his career.
Marx suckled off Engels who made his money off owning factories. He never had to build or create anything useful with his hands because he had the money not to. That's pretty bourgie man.
In any case, plenty of Marxist thinkers after him have been proles, so the point is moot.
Except during any revolution it's always the intelligentsia who had the money to not work that seizes power and kills proletariat's for 'their own good'.
It also wouldn't be relevant because you are already implying only capitalists know what "the motivations of humans really are" and yet you accuse Marx of not knowing what those were... because he was bourgeoise.
I said Capitalists know what human motivations are because they know that people want currency in exchange for labour. Marx said that deep down people really don't want that. One of the two has been seen all through history and the other was only thought up in a library. Marx was a fool that got lucky with his ideas of alienation, communism on the other hand has only ever been a failure and everyone except communists can see that.
Like I said earlier though, the mind that's too small for doubt is always filled with blind faith. Capitalism sure as shit isn't perfect but it has always gotten better. The sins of the early 20th century capitalists are not illegal and all due to the worker. Alternatively in Communism the worker will be gulaged for questioning the will of the party until they finally all rise up and shoot the Communist leader in the head so they can finally be free.
Funny how for supposedly being a workers revolution communism has always been destroyed by workers revolutions and replaced with the supposedly evil capitalism by the very workers who supposedly would just suffer under it.
A Politburo document dated 4 May 1953 said that executions were "fixed in principle at the ratio of one per one thousand people of the total population." The number of persons actually executed by communist cadre carrying out the land reform program has been variously estimated. Some estimates of those killed range up to 200,000.
Other scholarship has concluded that the higher estimates were based on political propaganda emanating from South Vietnam and that the actual total of those executed was probably much lower. Scholar Edwin E. Moise estimated the total number of executions at between 3,000 and 15,000 and later came up with a more precise figure of 13,500.
You intentionally left out this latter bit which directly follows it, which is the height of disingenuity.
A Politburo document dated 4 May 1953 said that executions were "fixed in principle at the ratio of one per one thousand people of the total population."
not innocent
You are right. They were guilty of the heinous crime of being number one of 1000. And thus deserved death
You are right. They were guilty of the heinous crime of being number one of 1000. And thus deserved death
First of all, the whole point of me citing the latter part of the paragraph is to show that the earlier part is questionable in its veracity.
Anyways, I didn't say they were guilty either. I'm merely questioning why you are so quick to make negative assumptions about socialist states and then use those self-same assumptions to conclude socialism is bad. Seems very circular to me.
Personally? I have no clue how many were guilty of a crime and how many weren't; I do know revolutions don't happen bloodlessly and that liberal democracy is extremely violent despite the pretensions of its supporters that it isn't.
You can't be serious.
I've been to Cambodia. I've listened to the Cambodians explain what the Khmer Rouge wanted. I've gone through the museums in the Killing Fields.
Denying that they were communist is like denying the Holocaust. It's repulsive ideological revisionism. You owe it yourself to go to the Killing Fields and then try to say this again with a straight face.
What do you think socialism (or more specifically Marxism) means? What did the Khmer Rouge want? Can you tell me exactly what in your experiences supports the idea that Pol Pot was a Marxist? Could you further explain why, then, the CIA funded Pol Pot, or socialist Vietnam had such enmity with the Khmer Rouge? While some inter socialist enmity during the Cold War was not unheard of (Hoxha/Tito, USSR/China, etc.), it never resulted in open invasion and the deposition of one country's government.
Simply being offended doesn't make you right. Unless you're actually able to define socialism and show that the Khmer Rouge fit the definition (spoiler alert: it doesn't), your taking offense isn't worth a jot.
Pol Pot was a Marxist in that he followed the writings of Karl Marx, and believed in a society free of private ownership of the means of production, and the rulership of the proletariat.
He differed in that he declared the peasantry to be the true proletariat and hated cities, and started executing capitalists and anyone who could be a supporter of capitalism (school teachers, engineers, plumbers) until there was nothing left but farmers.
The Khmer Rouge was absolutely motivated by Marxist beliefs, with their own spin ("peasants are the true proletariat"). Denying that they were communists is a bunch of nonsense that ignores what they themselves said.
or socialist Vietnam had such enmity with the Khmer Rouge?
They didn't, initially. Communist Vietnam and the Khmer Rouge were allies in the Vietnam war, but after the war, the Khmer Rouge thought that the Vietnamese were going to usurp them as the dominant force in the region and attacked them, and performed an early strike.
Both were communist. Pol Pot was paranoid and killed off everyone with an education that could have helped him.
Pol Pot was a Marxist in that he followed the writings of Karl Marx, and believed in a society free of private ownership of the means of production, and the rulership of the proletariat.
Again what are you basing this off of? In what way did he promote the rule of the proletariat?
He differed in that he declared the peasantry to be the true proletariat and hated cities,
This is literally as un-Marxist as you could get lmao. This isn't a minor substitution; there are massive reasons as explained by Marx why peasants (at least by themselves) basically can't build socialism, only liberal democracy.
The Khmer Rouge was absolutely motivated by Marxist beliefs, with their own spin ("peasants are the true proletariat").
That's like saying capitalists are absolutely motivate by Marxist beliefs, with their own spin ("capitalists should rule society, not the proletariat."). See? We only changed a few words, so we must not have changed the meaning much.
China was the backer for the Khmer Rouge.
The US absolutely did back the Khmer Rouge, please read Michael Haas' "Cambodia, Pol Pot, and the United States: The Faustian Pact."
Sure, Pol Pot pretended to pay lip service to Marxism to gain Chinese backing; but any real analysis of the Khmer Rouge shows it wasn't Marxist, and you've stated one of the biggest reasons why. Another is its insistence on Juche,
They didn't, initially. Communist Vietnam and the Khmer Rouge were allies in the Vietnam war, but after the war, the Khmer Rouge thought that the Vietnamese were going to usurp them as the dominant force in the region and attacked them, and performed an early strike.
Correct, because the US literally paid them to do this.
Both were communist.
Yea, if communist means whatever the fuck you want it to mean. Marxism has promoted an alliance between left-intellectuals and workers (and in some countries, peasants, but never peasants alone) since basically its inception, but sure Pol Pot is still Marxist because it hurts your feelings to say otherwise.
How did it work? I’d consider state sponsored murder/incompetence driven starvation to be a pretty significant indicator of failure. Can you be more specific on what worked and how on balance the system was for the better?
Nah, it was a giant failure on every level. The hollowed out military, the debacle that was Lysenkoism, the need to murder lots of people - failure everywhere.
Homeless bums contribute no labor, they are literally worthless people who deserve their disgusting lot in the world.
The labor of bankers and engineers is worth thousands of times more than the easily interchangeable rejects they get to do their homework, which is why so many of those rejects are being rendered irrelevant by automation or having their jobs exported to third world shitholes where you get a dollars worth of work out of a dollars worth of pay.
Living in a random fantasy world is awesome, what with all of this money and opportunity.
Why not? There is plenty of work to be done in society, clearly; infrastructure to be built, etc. Yet, in capitalism, you can't be hired unless a capitalist can make a profit off of you, no matter how much work needs to be done and no matter how much you want to work.
The labor of bankers and engineers is worth thousands of times more than the easily interchangeable rejects they get to do their homework,
First of all, most engineers are workers. Bankers, however, don't do any real, socially useful labor, they just help rich people get richer.
which is why so many of those rejects are being rendered irrelevant by automation or having their jobs exported to third world shitholes where you get a dollars worth of work out of a dollars worth of pay.
I'm just curious how your capitalism economy plans on functioning when it has disemployed and rendered poor and useless the very same people who it expects to profit from. Who are you going to sell your products to if you automate so much of the economy that millions of people can no longer afford them?
Also, it doesn't really seem you have any ethical grounding, that is, I bet you think child labor in third world countries is desirable.
Goods will be cheaper and more plentiful for the people who can meaningfully contribute to the economy. Those who can't contribute can and should die to make room for people who are useful and productive.
Dude, walk into an econ classroom and get some sense slapped into you.
Hell, a fucking MARKETING classroom on value chain analysis would be good enough.
Why do hate homeless people so much? Most homeless people aren't that guy at all. You don't even notice most homeless people, probably, nor do you want to because it's easier for you to assume every homeless person is a lazy no-good piece of shit.
Why not? You don't ask this question. There is plenty of work to be done in society, clearly; infrastructure to be built, etc. Yet, in capitalism, you can't be hired unless a capitalist can make a profit off of you, no matter how much work needs to be done and no matter how much you want to work. It doesn't matter that you have the skills to build bridges and many people would benefit from said bridges, unless a rich guy is willing to pay you to build the bridge.
Christ...If people want a bridge than there is demand. Do you really think the people of my town will line up along the waters looking at the people of your town, scratching our heads, wondering what to do?
Sorry, but we know what we need better than the state does, and people arent idiots would would refuse to create infrastructure because its expensive (hint: the bridge is itself capital for the community).
Christ...If people want a bridge then there is demand.
The mere existence of demand doesn't ensure the building of a bridge. Not even capitalists argue this; even an elementary high school econ textbook would find your proposition laughable.
In a pure free market economy, bridges only get built if it is profitable to do so. If there is very high demand for a bridge, but everyone who wants the bridge is a poor peasant, the bridge isn't gonna get built. If a single really rich guy wants a bridge, it will get built. If a bunch of rich guys want a bridge really bad, but the bridge costs far more than they could expect to make in profit, the bridge still won't get built.
Seriously the easiest way to debunk your argument is to take a drive in America. You will find many crumbling roads and bridges. You will also encounter unemployed people. Why aren't they being offered jobs to build said roads and bridges?
Sorry, but we know what we need better than the state does, and people arent idiots that would would refuse to create infrastructure because it's expensive (hint: the bridge is itself capital for the community).
So, again, why isn't America's infrastructure better than it is? Why has it been in decline for decades?
Bitch ass motherfucker, you can't do shit without proper financial planning. I want to get a fucking loan and pilot classes just to buy a helicopter to throw you out of.
All shitposting aside you should probably stop short of actual threats of violence fam, even if they're over the top / not credible, I'd hate to see you get suspended.
You are right of course. It would also be god damn retarded to think I'm serious about having the conviction to take pilot lessons other than to help me get laid.
Who needs financial planning? You just have Comrade Bernie write a bill that says "Socialism bridge medicine = yes" and then it just happens!! Its literally that simple.
Bitch ass motherfucker, you can't do shit without proper financial planning.
I-bankers don't do "financial planning" lmao. They help rich people get richer.
Financial planning in capitalism is only necessary because of the way capitalism functions. A very different kind of financial planning would happen under a socialist government.
I want to get a fucking loan and pilot classes just to buy a helicopter to throw you out of.
Bankers are laborers just as much as engineers, you just take their labor for granted because you don't understand or appreciate it. However the market has determined that their labor has value.
You talk about how there's plenty of work to be done. Well sure, if you want to have people dig ditches and fill them in you could have everyone fully employed today, but that labor wouldn't be doing anything useful.
Determining which labor is and isn't necessary is the labor of bankers and managers, and profit is how we measure their success and failure.
If many people are willing to pay to build a bridge, then a bridge gets built. If you just build bridges anywhere and everywhere because someone, somewhere says they want one, without regard for whether the bridge is really needed by enough people to justify the expense of building it, then you're just back to digging ditches and filling them in.
Bankers are laborers just as much as engineers, you just take their labor for granted because you don't understand or appreciate it. However the market has determined that their labor has value.
Who is it valuable to? Other rich people.
Determining which labor is and isn't necessary is the labor of bankers and managers, and profit is how we measure their success and failure.
Why do you hate homeless people so much? Why are you so convinced you, personally, know everything about homeless people based on purely anecdotal evidence? Have you actually tried researching this subject? You might be surprised what you'll find.
If I hated homeless people I would just be a socialist. Famines are the fastest way to holocaust the homeless and no one is better at holocausting the homeless than the far left.
Lol wut. In terms of trade economics, labor is capital. You buy cash with labor, you can buy a house with paintings. It's all the same, it all has trade value. Its unavoidable no matter how many socialist laws we pass to cripple the economy.
Communism was built on the assumption that the industrial revolution would replace all human labor creating a void. Socialism without those machines is simply slavery (the poor are the means of production).
Laborers contribute; Jews don't. Jews are parasites. However, because laborers generally have no choice but to follow TPTB unless they want to be branded "anti-semites", they are poor and the Jews are rich, even though the former contributes far, far more to society.
This is the twisted shit liberalism will actually make you believe, that there is no meaningful difference between machines and people.
If labor is capital, why would a respected capitalist publication like the WSJ publish an article headlined In Labor vs. Capital, Labor Is Now Winning? This implies labor isn't capital.
Seriously, even an introductory capitalist economics text would dispel you of you delusions. Not an econ textbook per se but see here. Or see Adam Smith's definition of capital (Google that shit). As Mao said, "No investigation, no right to speak."
Now, it is true that in recent years economists speak of such things as "human capital," but this is only by way of analogy. When economists speak of human capital, they aren't even referring to labor, they're referring to talent and skill, and even then the term "capital" is only used by way of analogy because it's fairly obvious human talent and skill isn't literally equivalent to machines and factories.
You buy cash with labor, you can buy a house with paintings. It's all the same, it all has trade value.
This is not the definition of capital, i.e. "anything you buy." Since you can basically buy anything, it would mean the Statue of David, prostitutes, and medicine are all "capital" now, which is a uselessly broad definition of capital and certainly not the one used by socialists, or even most capitalists for that matter.
Communism was built on the assumption that the industrial revolution would replace all human labor creating a world of unemployment.
No, it wasn't. Please cite a single line from a classical socialist author (i.e. Marx, Engels, Lenin, or even non-Marxists like Proudhon or Kropotkin) indicating this is true.
This is such an infantile understanding of LTV. LTV never states that any labor at all creates value. Do you really think it never occurred to Marx that digging holes and filling them back up isn't valuable labor?
Damn I didn't think anyone would find my economic PhD dissertation if I hid it among all the other academic works in /r/drama. If I might offer a rebuttle:
Fuck off cummie, people dive for perls because they are valuable, perks are not valuable because people dive for them.
"Fuck off cummie, people dive for perls because they are valuable, perks are not valuable because people dive for them."
Good talk bro.
For anyone still taking this exchange seriously, no, the LTV doesn't say "pearls are valuable because people dive for them" so much as it says "pearls are useless sitting on the bottom of the ocean floor and only acquire any socially useful value because some guy dives for them and brings them up and brings them to market." A pearl at the bottom of the Mariana Trench has, in fact, no value.
The problem with a lot of amateur economists like yourself (and plenty of professionals too) who think they can single-handedly overturn the LTV with such a fastidious argument is that you think of every object as being completely isolated, as if "oil" has some value "out there" (presumably as dictated by the Holy Market) independent of whether it is in a gas tank or locked so far deep into the earth we cannot even drill for it. Marxist economics actually does differentiate these two types of oil, while recognizing that there is also the market price of oil, which is the only thing you seem to see.
Labor is not the source of all wealth. Nature is just as much the source of use values (and it is surely of such that material wealth consists!) as labor, which itself is only the manifestation of a force of nature, human labor power.
Comentary of an 18th century concept from Karl, I hate "jew niggers" because of the shape I'd their skulls, Marx that every modern day economist laughs at for being simplistic and terrible are not inconvient facts. The fact that you're seriousposting on a bussy appreciation sub and are thus embarrassing to be around in pretty inconvenient.
Labor contributes; capital doesn't. Capital is dead labor.
No, it's supposed to be labor that went into increased productivity.
Like, suppose some nerd spend a bunch of labor constructing a pottery wheel, and offers the local potter that makes 20 pots per day manually to rent the wheel and make 200 pots per day, split 100:100 between her and the wheel-owner. The potter gets +80 pots per day, so she agrees.
Labor theory of value can't explain that, at all. And then it doubles down on the contradiction and claims that the potter must violently seize the pottery wheel for herself instead of just keeping making her shitty wheels by hand, as if means of production grow on trees and capitalists unfairly monopolize those trees.
There are things to be said about unregulated capitalism as well of course, as a radical south park centrist liberal I maintain that libertarians get the bullet disability cheque too. But reversed stupidity is not intelligence. For example:
I'm just curious how your capitalism economy plans on functioning when it has disemployed and rendered poor and useless the very same people who it expects to profit from. Who are you going to sell your products to if you automate so much of the economy that millions of people can no longer afford them?
Being concerned about the societal effects of automation is not stupidity, but putting those concerns that particular way is dumb as fuck because there's an obvious answer: of course capitalists would just enjoy consuming those products themselves, duh. Like in Isaak Asimov's "The Naked Sun" where a bunch of super rich people enjoy living on their planet in their immense estates (with 20,000 of them in total), with their every whim served by robots.
They didn't need profits in that book, they didn't need to oppress the nonexistent underclass, that's the thing about automation taken to its logical conclusion: while usual technological progress still requires an excavator operator to make more usefulness than a thousand guys with shovels, automation eliminates even that. And then the labor theory of value divides by zero and disappears in a puff of contradiction.
Recognizing that this part of commie shit is retarded and useless and moving to different arguments that say that it's still kinda unfair that those fat cats live there in luxury without oppressing anyone, while other not so lucky people struggle.
The Naked Sun is a science fiction novel by American writer Isaac Asimov, the second in his Robot series. Like its predecessor, The Caves of Steel, this is a whodunit story. The book was first published in 1957 after being serialized in Astounding Science Fiction between October and December 1956.
Being concerned about the societal effects of automation is not stupidity, but putting those concerns that particular way is dumb as fuck because there's an obvious answer: of course capitalists would just enjoy consuming those products themselves, duh.
This is hysterical because I actually thought you might say something like this but then I realized "no, no way he's actually that dumb."
Asimov's story is nice but you seem to fail to realize it literally does describe a communist society. The problem is how we get from here to there without a bunch of dead people or the destruction of society altogether. Automation doesn't happen overnight; it's not like today there is full employment and then tomorrow everyone is laid off and the rich are totally self-sufficient and have the guns to keep the hungry hordes off their property. In between, unemployment will steadily increase while automation increases as well, but not the point where the rich could ensure self-sufficiency. Further, remember that automation isn't the only process at work; so is outsourcing. Previously, outsourcing worked because you could outsource shitty jobs to Ghana and India, give many first world workers high paying professional jobs, and then profit by selling what the former makes to the latter. But as automation replaces intellectual labor in the first world, it won't replace manual labor in the third world nearly as quickly because of just how dirt cheap manual labor in the third world is. You end up with a gulf between production and consumption, which is exactly how financial crises (depressions and recessions) happen, even by a capitalist understanding of economics. Of course, we're not talking about a minor recession here, we're talking potentially about multiple crippling depressions.
So, again, what is your plan? Marx predicted more or less this exact process would plague capitalist economies, and it has from their inception; periodically production outstrips consumption because every capitalist wants to make a lot of shit while paying as few people as possible. The better they get at this, the more they make and the more people are laid off, which means there are fewer people to buy their shit. And so you end up with even more people laid off, despite enormous surpluses, which is ironic because you'd think a society that produces more would be better off, not worse off. Ah, the contradictions of capitalism.
They didn't need profits in that book, they didn't need to oppress the nonexistent underclass, that's the thing about automation taken to its logical conclusion: while usual technological progress still requires an excavator operator to make more usefulness than a thousand guys with shovels, automation eliminates even that. And then the labor theory of value divides by zero and disappears in a puff of contradiction.
Asimov's story is literally an affirmation of LTV, not a contradiction. It literally describes a communist society. It isn't the only possible communist society but it is one possible communist society.
LTV says nothing about market exchange value, and Marx understood that was a thing. Nothing about this scenario contradicts LTV in the least.
I said nothing about market exchange value. The core trait of LTV as a political statement is the assertion that all profit the capitalist makes is the part of the surplus value created by the laborer that is unfairly appropriated from her.
So in our example, since the capitalist gains 100 pots per day, he must have fooled the potter to go from gaining 20 pots per day to losing 80 pots per day. In reality she went from gaining 20 to gaining 100 pots/day. How comes?
Oftentimes the MOP does literally grow on trees
And oftentimes it doesn't. Robots don't.
Oh, and yes, the potter should seize the wheel. Why not? The potter doesn't need the nerd anymore.
Because, firstly, you lose the moral high ground: when you abandon fairness and start talking in terms of might makes right, you lose the right to complain that the nerd uses the police and army and the rest of the government to maintain the system of oppression indefinitely. Secondly, you'll never get out of the stone age.
Asimov's story is nice but you seem to fail to realize it literally does describe a communist society.
Asimov's story also has crowded megacities populated by people who literally have never seen open sky in their lives. The whole picture doesn't sound very communist to me.
Automation doesn't happen overnight; it's not like today there is full employment and then tomorrow everyone is laid off and the rich are totally self-sufficient and have the guns to keep the hungry hordes off their property. [..] If they don't oppress, how is it unfair?
If your only objection to that future is that you don't think that capitalists will manage to get there without hurting themselves too much in the process, but if they pull it off then you're OK with that, then you're one hell of a confused communist, lol.
Asimov's story is literally an affirmation of LTV, not a contradiction.
No it literally isn't, because there's value but no labor. The only connection between communism as an economic system that allocates labor (or we can call that socialism if you insist) and communism as the end state that no longer has labor or economy is that you jerk off to both. By that criterion Rosa Luxembourg's tits affirm LTV as well.
If they don't oppress, how is it unfair? This is what capitalists believe. You're doing nothing to disabuse them of that notion.
The ideological message of communism embodied in the LTV is that the rich are rich and the poor are poor because the rich exploit the poor, that is, steal a large part of value produced by the poor. This arrangement is unfair and that's why we should change it to something more fair.
Increasing automation makes obvious the absurdity of that theory. Imagine a situation 20 years from now, when half of the country live in squalor on welfare, while the other half work high-tech or service jobs and live in nice gated communities. Obviously, people on welfare don't produce anything, but do consume stuff. They are not being exploited by the rich, they are exploiting the rich, if you insist on looking at the situation in terms of flows of material wealth. They are not proles, they are unproductive lumpenproletariat.
And unless you really don't see anything wrong with that situation, or maybe even willing to apply your principles consistently and suggest that we should eat our unemployed exploiters, then you'll need a non-bullshit reason to call that situation unfair in the future, and then it makes sense to cut the increasingly irrelevant bullshit and start using that reason already as well.
I said nothing about market exchange value. The core trait of LTV as a political statement is the assertion that all profit the capitalist makes is the part of the surplus value created by the laborer that is unfairly appropriated from her.
So in our example, since the capitalist gains 100 pots per day, he must have fooled the potter to go from gaining 20 pots per day to losing 80 pots per day. In reality she went from gaining 20 to gaining 100 pots/day. How comes?
LTV and Marxism don't state the potter went from gaining 20 to 80. It states that the potter could be making 200 pots a day by herself. She doesn't need the capitalist anymore. All the capitalist has is a "claim" of ownership, which is only valid because the state reinforces it with guns.
And oftentimes they don't. Robots don't.
But their raw materials do, and capitalists monopolize these. You didn't address the rest of the point in the least.
Because, first, you lose the moral high ground: when you abandon fairness and start talking about might makes right, you lose the right to complain that the nerd uses the police and army and the rest of the government to maintain the system of oppression indefinitely.
What do you mean we lose the moral high ground? The whole point of capitalism is might makes right. Capitalism only works because the police, courts and army protect private property rights at all costs.
Second, your argument is predicated on the assumption of private property rights. The set of property rights that permit modern capitalism to work are really, really historically rare. In most historical societies, you couldn't own things you weren't using; that was what was perceived as fair. We agree.
Secondly, you'll never get out of the stone age.
We are already out of the stone age.
Asimov's story also has crowded megacities populated by people who literally have never seen open sky in their lives. The whole picture doesn't sound very communist to me.
Those societies aren't communist; but since the rich are supposedly self-sufficient, they do live in their own private communist world. Of course, this is sci-fi; such a scenario couldn't develop in real life. Also it raises the question of how the poor people are running megacities without a functioning economy, or if they do have a functioning economy, how it works and how it got there.
If your only objection to that future is that you don't think that capitalists will manage to get there without hurting themselves too much in the process, but if they pull it off then you're OK with that, then you're one hell of a confused communist, lol.
It's not about whether I'm OK with it or not. I would prefer capitalists not to get away with it, and I'm quite certain they won't; or at the very least, they'll destroy humanity in the process, which is also undesirable.
No it literally isn't, because there's value but no labor.
Sigh. Yes there was labor. The robots were built by human manual and mental labor. Thus they have value.
The only connection between communism as an economic system that allocates labor (or we can call that socialism if you insist) and communism as the end state that no longer has labor or economy is that you jerk off to both. By that criterion Rosa Luxemburg's tits affirm LTV as well.
This isn't an argument and you're really only betraying the fact that you are becoming aware of your own ignorance by substituting solid economic arguments for titty jokes. It's a tactic of desperation.
The ideological message of communism embodied in the LTV is that the rich are rich and the poor are poor because the rich exploit the poor, that is, steal a large part of value produced by the poor. This arrangement is unfair and that's why we should change it to something more fair.
Correct, more or less.
Increasing automation makes obvious the absurdity of that theory.
Oh my god. Read Marx. Hell, even read a decent capitalist economist's take on Marx. Pretty much everyone worth their salt in economics/social science knows that the whole point of Marxism is that increased automation is a fundamental flaw with capitalism. Increased automation affirms Marxism, and if you read any major publications even capitalist rags are beginning to question whether the assumption of the Cold War, that Marx's beliefs about automation were wrong because we could always create new jobs, is, in fact, wrong.
magine a situation 20 years from now, when half of the country live in squalor on welfare, while the other half work high-tech or service jobs and live in nice gated communities.
You mean exactly what Marx predicted?
Obviously, people on welfare don't produce anything, but do consume stuff.
Correct. Marx pointed this out; capitalism produces both rich and poor "free-loaders."
They are not being exploited by the rich, they are exploiting the rich, if you insist on looking at the situation in terms of flows of material wealth. They are not proles, they are unproductive lumpenproletariat.
Since they are cut off from the means of production, no, they are not being exploited, but their situation is a direct product of capitalism. The only way to resolve it in a satisfactory manner is the end of capitalism.
And unless you really don't see anything wrong with that situation, or maybe even are willing to apply your principles consistently and suggest that we should eat our unemployed exploiters,
Why not?
then you'll need a non-bullshit reason to call that situation unfair in the future, and then it makes sense to cut the increasingly irrelevant bullshit and start using that reason already as well.
The situation didn't materialize out of thin air. America is not (for the most part, i.e. Dakota Pipeline and the like excepted) stealing native land and murdering natives. That doesn't mean the situation of Native Americans right now is in any way (historically) equitable or just. Justice and fairness are not relative to a single moment in time.
It states that the potter could be making 200 pots a day by herself.
Yeah, but if the capitalist doesn't offer her that choice, then she's stuck with 20 pots per day. How does that mean that the capitalist doesn't bring anything of value to the table?
And then you're like, but the capitalist had already made that offer, how about we fuck him over now?
And I'm like, but for the very least that means that nobody will offer you any offers like that in the future.
And you're like, but we already have pottery wheels, that's basically one step away from FULLY AUTOMATED LUXURY GAY SPACE COMMUNISM, we can get there on our own.
And I'm like, nope, lol, we are pretty far away from any of that, and the only people working on that are actually ultralibertarians like Peter Thiel or Elon Musk, because you've successfully alienated everyone with any sort of natural-philosophic disposition.
Here's a dyed in the wool communist's take on that last point btw. I disagree with a lot of what's written there including the entire premise that care must opposed to the pursuit of truth, but he's totally right that that's what the left believe, and the inevitable consequences.
And oftentimes they don't. Robots don't.
But their raw materials do, and capitalists monopolize these. You didn't address the rest of the point in the least.
It's not that capitalists don't allow you to make robots by making raw materials unaffordable (they don't), it's that you can't expect to get robots just by removing capitalists. There's no robot-yielding trees, saying that there are apple-yielding trees is not an argument.
What do you mean we lose the moral high ground? The whole point of capitalism is might makes right. Capitalism only works because the police, courts and army protect private property rights at all costs.
No, the point of capitalism is that the owner of the pottery wheel deserves a share in the extra pots made by combining her wheel with potter's labor. And also that if the wheel-owner and the potter voluntarily and without coercion agree on some particular share, then it's fair, while robbing the potter of his wheel is unfair and immoral.
Most people actually agree with that, and that's what gives the capitalist state the mandate to defend this social order using men with guns. Any social order must be defended by men with guns in the end, that's not an argument for or against that order.
But in that particular argument you made a mistake by skipping that moral justification entirely and going like, well, when we have men with guns we will take the wheel from the owner just because we can!
That's how you lose all support except from assholes, and that's how your revolution led by assholes inevitably results in megadeaths, if you manage to attract a critical mass of assholes to succeed even.
Sigh. Yes there was labor. The robots were built by human manual and mental labor. Thus they have value.
The question is not what value the robots have, but what value they produce, including untold generations of further robots, without any human labor involved. Or are you saying that all that value actually rightfully belongs to the initial constructors of the first robots, lmao?
Like, when a dude operates an excavator with a 1000x bonus productivity, all of that belongs to the dude and nothing to the girl who made the excavator, but as soon as that girl makes the excavator properly autonomous and tells the dude to fuck off and get on welfare, all that value belongs to her and her descendants?
Since they are cut off from the means of production, no, they are not being exploited, but their situation is a direct product of capitalism. The only way to resolve it in a satisfactory manner is the end of capitalism.
They are not cut off from the means of production, they are made obsolete by automation. It turns out that the more automation there is, the less capitalism needs to exploit low-qualified labor, and the larger is the proportion of people who can't meaningfully contribute to production, because they can't write software for robots that make and maintain other robots. Then modern capitalism puts those useless people on welfare and they live in squalor.
I think you misunderstand what this discussion is about. It's not about whether capitalism is superior to socialism or whatever. It's about the fact that the labor theory of value says that capitalists exploit proles to get profits and that's the unfair thing about capitalism, and that is becoming increasingly wrong as automation increases. It might have been a good approximation in Marx's times, but it's a very bad approximation already and will only become worse.
When the 1% consisting of capitalist programmers live in their securely walled off paradise and the 99% feed on their handouts in squalor everywhere else, the LTV argument will lose all power, because it will be obvious to everyone that the 1% are not "exploiting" the 99%, the opposite if anything.
And then your argument against that state of things should become that it's unfair that some people live in luxury and some people live in squalor just because the latter are not very good programmers or aren't descendants of good programmers. That the moral worth of a human should not be determined by their contributions to the society, "from each according to their ability (even if it's pretty much zero), to each according to their need".
So if you can see that in the future, look around and realize that we are far enough down that road that the LTV retardation is already obvious to anyone whose eyes are not ideologically shuttered, and drop that retarded argument right now, without waiting 20 years until it becomes really really obvious to everyone and you'd have to backtrack hard and explain why you were peddling that bullshit all along and why anyone should still trust your judgment on social issues.
And unless you really don't see anything wrong with that situation, or maybe even are willing to apply your principles consistently and suggest that we should eat our unemployed exploiters,
Why not?
I really hope that you misunderstood the question. I asked if in that situation it would be moral for the 1% to literally cannibalize the rest of the humanity turned into lumpenproletariat by automation.
The situation didn't materialize out of thin air.
If you reject the pottery wheel maker's claim to the indirect fruits of her labor, you shouldn't invoke structurally equivalent arguments like that.
Yeah, but if the capitalist doesn't offer her that choice, then she's stuck with 20 pots per day. How does that mean that the capitalist doesn't bring anything of value to the table?
No one said the capitalist didn't bring anything to the table, but they brought something to the table because of labor. They brought value because they were a laborer not because they later became a capitalist. Once that labor is over though, it makes no sense the capitalist gets to profit from it in perpetuity no matter how much labor the potter does on "his" wheel.
And then you're like, but the capitalist had already made that offer, how about we fuck him over now?
We're not fucking him over. We simply operate by a different understanding of property. You only assume yours is the most correct because you were born into the <.0001% slice of mankind's history where this specific set of property rights tends to be very common.
In socialism it is meaningless and laughable to say that something you produce, and anything that "something" may produce, is yours forever in perpetuity no matter how many trillions of hours others sink into making those other things using "your" something.
Whereas in the lunacy of capitalism, especially with IP laws, if you make a potter's wheel the profits of trillions of hours of labor-power are literally yours, even though you did a negligible portion of said labor. This is what we mean when we say capital is "dead labor."
And I'm like, but for the very least that means that nobody will offer you any offers like that in the future.
What offers? Did you think communism was going to be an "offer" to the ruling class? what world do you live in? Do you think the French revolutionaries "offered" liberal democracy to the French king? did you think "Let them eat cake" was a serious contractual proposal by Marie Antoinette, and the subsequent revolution merely an agreement?
Never in the history of mankind has an oppressive group of people voluntarily relinquished their power to oppressed. They were forced to do so, either by economic pressure or outright violence.
And you're like, but we already have pottery wheels, that's basically one step away from FULLY AUTOMATED LUXURY GAY SPACE COMMUNISM, we can get there on our own.
This isn't even an argument. I think we both know you lost this one, so you're injecting irrelevant memes in a last-ditch attempt to hand wave away what's painfully obvious to both of us.
And I'm like, nope, lol, we are pretty far away from any of that, and the only people working on that are actually ultralibertarians like Peter Thiel or Elon Musk, because you've successfully alienated everyone with any sort of natural-philosophic disposition.
Musk is notorious in the industry for being extremely abusive even to his highly skilled workers, who are not nearly as replaceable as janitors and construction workers. The dude has no interest in helping workers.
When will you get that your techbro heroes are almost invariably racist, misogynistic pieces of trash who just blatantly hate the poor?
It's not that capitalists don't allow you to make robots by making raw materials unaffordable (they don't), it's that you can't expect to get robots just by removing capitalists. There's no robot-yielding trees, saying that there are apple-yielding trees is not an argument.
Amazing, an argument to a point I never even made, all while continuing to ignore my question of why capitalists get to lay claim to vast swathes of the earth's virgin resources.
No, the point of capitalism is that the owner of the pottery wheel deserves a share in the extra pots made by combining her wheel with potter's labor.
She didn't do this though. The potter did.
And also that if the wheel-owner and the potter voluntarily and without coercion
Let me stop you at coercion. Capitalism is synonymous with coercion. Capitalism only works on a national or international scale (i.e. the real world not your fantastical premise) because it monopolizes the very ability to live into the hands of a few people, and you have to go through them to live. Don't work for a capitalist and you starve; actually go so far as to piss off enough capitalists, or even a single capitalist enough, and you could get murdered, shit, your entire country could get obliterated. This is actually existing capitalism, not your pottery fantasy.
agree on some particular share, then it's fair, while robbing the potter of his wheel is unfair and immoral.
You're using circular logic as I have repeatedly pointed out; it's only "his" because you say so, assuming a very specific set of property rights, which are historically rare and contingent.
Most people actually agree with that,
Sure. In late medieval Europe most believe literally believed God gave monarchs the right to rule them, and it was natural for some people to be serfs and others nobles. As Marx said, "The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas [of society]."
and that's what gives the capitalist state the mandate to defend this social order using men with guns. Any social order must be defended by men with guns in the end, that's not an argument for or against that order.
You got this ass backwards. Capitalists first monopolized the state and the MOP, and then used their power to brainwash people into believing their nonsense. Not just brainwashing either; dissenters were generally wiped off the face of the earth.
But in that particular argument you made a mistake by skipping that moral justification entirely and going like, well, when we have men with guns we will take the wheel from the owner just because we can!
Only because capitalists inevitably boil their argument down to "because we can." You were the one who claimed socialism doesn't take self-interest into account; my point is socialism is nothing but pure self-interest on the part of the proletariat.
In other words, I didn't skip anything; you just failed to see that capitalism is held afloat by guns and nothing else, and so you thought I was skipping ahead when in fact you weren't following along.
That's how you lose all support except from assholes,
If the assholes supported us, the rich would be communists and the poor anti-communist.
and that's how your revolution led by assholes inevitably results in megadeaths, if you manage to attract a critical mass of assholes to succeed even.
Sizzling historical analysis.
"Lots of people died in the USSR because they were all assholes."
The question is not what value the robots have, but what value they produce, including untold generations of further robots, without any human labor involved. Or are you saying that all that value actually rightfully belongs to the initial constructors of the first robots, lmao?
Dude, the idea that all (or most) the value belongs to the initial constructors is your idea. You're the one who in your pottery fantasy claimed the maker of the wheel deserves pots in perpetuity from the potter.
Communist ssimple state that resources produced by society should be shared by society. It's not that the robots are any individual worker's personal robot- you are still thinking within the capitalist mindset. The robots belong to us collectively, or they should in socialism.
Like, when a dude operates an excavator with a 1000x bonus productivity, all of that belongs to the dude and nothing to the girl who made the excavator, but as soon as that girl makes the excavator properly autonomous and tells the dude to fuck off and get on welfare, all that value belongs to her and her descendants?
This seems to be an apt description of capitalism. I'm amazed this isn't satire. The rich automate everything primarily using the labor (mental and manual) of the workers, and then having rendered the workers obsolete tell them to fuck off and get on welfare (which is literally Musk and Thiel's brilliant proposal on how to avoid the guillotine).
They are not cut off from the means of production, they are made obsolete by automation.
The same thing, what did you think it meant to be cut off from the MoP?
It turns out that the more automation there is, the less capitalism needs to exploit low-qualified labor,
Sort of. It entirely depends on how expensive automation is and how cheap labor is. As it is now, mental (first world) labor is getting automated because it is expensive, whereas manual labor is dirt cheap in the third world, so it just gets outsourced. We simply don't know enough to say whether capitalism alone can take us to complete automation, but I would hazard that, no, it can't. Automating certain tasks would simply not be worth the investment for capitalists.
and the larger is the proportion of people who can't meaningfully contribute to production, because they can't write software for robots that make and maintain other robots. Then modern capitalism puts those useless people on welfare and they live in squalor.
Correct. This seems like a commie argument.
I think you misunderstand what this discussion is about. It's not about whether capitalism is superior to socialism or whatever.
Sanford Ballard Dole (April 23, 1844 – June 9, 1926) was a lawyer and jurist in the Hawaiian Islands as a kingdom, protectorate, republic and territory. A descendant of the American missionary community to Hawaii, Dole advocated the westernization and destruction of Hawaiian government and culture. After the overthrow of the monarchy, he served as the President of the Republic of Hawaii until his government secured Hawaii's annexation by the United States.
It's about the fact that the labor theory of value says that capitalists exploit proles to get profits and that's the unfair thing about capitalism, and that is becoming increasingly wrong as automation increases.
Did you literally not read my comment at all? Automation confirms the entirety of Marxism.
When the 1% consisting of capitalist programmers live in their securely walled off paradise and the 99% feed on their handouts in squalor everywhere else, the LTV argument will lose all power, because it will be obvious to everyone that the 1% are not "exploiting" the 99%, the opposite if anything.
Once again, only if you think the robots just self-generated themselves into existence. They didn't. You didn't address my Native American analogy earlier, and have instead chosen to repeat yourself.
The rest of your comment is basically not worth addressing as you are saying the same thing in new and creative ways when I have already addressed it. I'll go ahead anyways, because of just how much I love you.
And then your argument against that state of things should become that it's unfair that some people live in luxury and some people live in squalor just because the latter are not very good programmers or aren't descendants of good programmers. That the moral worth of a human should not be determined by their contributions to the society, "from each according to their ability (even if it's pretty much zero), to each according to their need".
That's true.
So if you can see that in the future, look around and realize that we are far enough down that road that the LTV retardation is already obvious to anyone whose eyes are not ideologically shuttered, and drop that retarded argument right now, without waiting 20 years until it becomes really really obvious to everyone and you'd have to backtrack hard and explain why you were peddling that bullshit all along and why anyone should still trust your judgment on social issues.
Except, no, again automation confirms LTV. LTV doesn't refer to value in the sense you believe it does as I have repeatedly explained. All the "value" in robot society was initially created by humans, even if those robots can then create new robots. The argument here isn't, "hey robots you and all your robot spawn are now belong to us because our ancestors mined the metal inside you and wrote your code," it's "the means of production should be owned collectively with the aim of reducing human labor."
Dude, I think you're literally retarded. You do this extremely annoying thing where you quote and reply to each individual sentence without understanding what the whole argument is, and occasionally even the shit you reply to.
For example, I point out that somehow people actually working on automation, like Thiel and Musk, are hypercapitalists, so something is wrong with your hopes for the future. You respond by "correcting" me that Thiel and Musk indeed aren't working on fully automated gay space communism, then go on a rant about how they are assholes.
Like, what the fuck dude. What's the point of having a discussion when you don't understand my arguments and use random quotes to rant about unrelated stuff?
But it isn't, capital and labor and compliments, in addition, capital is created by a combination of capital & labor, even the machines built by craftsman in 1800 had tools(capital) to increase their productivity.
Here's a thought, maybe you should try reading an economics book that was written with ideas AFTER the Marginal Revolution in the 1870's.
I'm sorry you live in a Randian fantasy world
Oh, so disregarding the LTV like the REST of the discipline, makes me an ancap, brilliant!
If I owned 10 homes I would gladly give the government any of them that I didn't need... as long as they compensated me 3x their value in accordance with eminent domain law.
To be nitpicky and pedantic, idk where you got that 3x figure. It just has to be 'just compensation' which is determined as the value of the land as you own it, not valued at the benefit to the government.
So the gov't could be turning your property into a massive complex that will be worth 10x what your lot is worth now, but that has no bearing om the valuation of jus compensation.
The worst part is, this person is probably North American, student, who hasn't started in the workforce yet, or maybe even a couple years in.
He is seeing older people(who have spent 40-50 years working) with more than him, so why not be pro-communism? Once he works for 20 years and has something that he worked for, I guarantee he isn't going to say the same thing. He'll be one of the people he is complaining about now.
They've done it in Colorado, and are trying to do it in Utah and other places. Their policies priced them out of California, then they move somewhere else and vote for the same policies.
Depends on where he's working. If he works 40-50 years in a dead-end place he'll probably end up with a lot less than his parents or older generations now. Just look at how much labor and money had to be divided between a population in the 60's vs today, it's fucking math. More people = less money for MOST of them. Some make out like bandits tho.
Given something for free without any obligations, the owner has no responsibility to perform upkeep. Those apartments would be trashed with needles and shit in a matter of days.
You literally have to build social housing without copper wire because they will rip it out of the walls the second the front closes after the social worker leaves.
Those signs are Fake News. I bet they even used the good wire and just don't want to share.
Once the wall is open, maybe the pipes can go to the scrapper too unless it's PEX or something, then I'll just bash and batter it until there's water flooding any units below me.
I occasionally do work with USDA housing. People who live there are professional unemployables. They treat the units like shit. Treat the people trying to fix their unit like shit. Argue with the property managers about everything. Argue with their neighbors about everything. Also, they all have two cars that each cost at least three times of what mine cost. 0/10 not a fan.
That's not a guarantee. Republican extremism is creating new communists every day. The only way to stop communism is to decimate the republican party/ideology.
I keep finding them in random places around reddit, disguising their language until you're a few responses in... then they let the buzzwords and ideological axioms creep in.
159 comments
1 SnapshillBot 2017-09-11
I can take a 9-inch dildo up my butt, because I'm an adult and I solve my own problems
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1 nmx179 2017-09-11
/u/specterofsandersism because some people worked hard for their homes by contributing to society while others are defective wastes of space who would turn any home you give them into a dilapidated crack den
Sorry you can't handle living in a just world.
1 specterofsandersism 2017-09-11
Labor contributes; capital doesn't. Capital is dead labor. However, because poor people generally have no choice but to sell their labor, they are poor and the rich are rich, even though the former contributes far, far more to society.
I'm sorry you live in a Randian fantasy world
1 boyoyoyoyong 2017-09-11
True, we should try communism again it's certain to work this time
1 specterofsandersism 2017-09-11
It's worked before. Not perfectly, but it has.
1 MegaSeedsInYourBum 2017-09-11
If your definition of worked involved lots of dead Cambodian babies then yes, it's worked very well.
1 specterofsandersism 2017-09-11
Cambodia wasn't socialist and its regime was ended by an actually socialist state, namely, Vietnam.
1 MegaSeedsInYourBum 2017-09-11
Every time people try and establish communism they end up killing large numbers of people. Refusing to address and accept that is exactly why communism will never work. You refuse to face or accept the failings of it so you're always doomed to repeat it.
1 specterofsandersism 2017-09-11
Every death in a socialist state is directly attributable to communism, whereas in capitalist state, any deaths are completely incidental to capitalism. This is the logic you McCarthyists operate by.
The establishment of modern industrial capitalism was completely contingent on the enslavement of millions of Africans, the genocide of the Americas and Australia, and the imperialist conquest of almost every continent. It literally COULD NOT have developed without these events happening. The removal of slavery and the colonization of the Americas alone would've ensured capitalism never really got a start in Europe.
Further, having developed, capitalism has produced countless deaths across the world, from the Holocaust to the Iraq War.
Note that I'm talking about straight up murder. I'm not even counting famine, which capitalist countries still suffer from (whereas every socialist country that lasted for more than a few decades managed to eradicate them).
In comparison socialism is practically Gandhian.
1 MegaSeedsInYourBum 2017-09-11
Wow you really are looking to be the top submission on /r/badhistory aren't you?
The industrial revolution kicked off because they figured out that coal worked a fuck ton better than wood does and they developed steam engines. Why do you think it focused in The United Kingdom, France, Germany, and generally Western Europe? They found a way to exploit their own resources far more effectively and ran with it.
You understand that capitalism relied on, you know, capital. The thing that the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Kingdom of Kush (real thing), Romans, Prussians, Babylonians, Aztecs, Holy Roman Empire, Carthaginians, Chinese, Persians, Japanese, and Mali empire all had in common was currency. You know currency, that wondrous thing that allows your labour to be transformed into a universal good so that you never have to deal with different desires when bartering. Without currency the Greek Shepard would be stuck having to try and trade wool for wood, pottery, and all other daily essentials. With currency the Shepard can simply purchase those things after he sells his sheep and wool on the market to people who are looking for sheep and wool rather than try and convince the potter that he needs sheep and wool when he really likes fish and wine. Currency has been used by literally every society that could build something more than a mud or wood hut. As soon as the Europeans started mucking around with metals and stone it was inevitable currency would be used. We've seen this repeated in every sophisticated society yet only communists and socialists don't understand it.
The holocaust came from an insane desire to destroy the impure, not for money. It literally was a massive race war and Hitler repeatedly mentioned that. The Iraq war was a "why the fuck not?" The Iraq was especially cost far, far, far more than what could have been earned through pillaging Iraq. Oddly the US troop concentrations are in cities and not in oil fields. Weird for a war just for money huh?
Now if you are right that the holocaust and Iraq war are results of capitalism, then every Red terror, mass starvation, and the infamous killing fields of Cambodia have to be the result of communism and its predecessor, socialism.
North Korea lives on international aid and the Chinese starved millions of their own intentionally. Let's not forget the Holodomor where the red army literally kicked in doors to see if the Ukrainians were hoarding food, shot anyone who tried to leave, and turned down international offers of aid. Cuba still suffers from food shortages and China did too until it embraced capitalism. Literally until capitalism started to be embraced there were shortages of everything. Check out the Venezuelan diet if you don't believe me.
The reason that socialism and communism will never work is because the free rider problem. The issue is that when there is no minimum requirement to access publicly available good then people will do the least amount of work possible. A great example of this can be seen in the American militia during the War of 1812 and the Mexican-American war. See, during those wars the Americans really embraced democracy, to the point the Militia would elect their own officers.
Unsurprisingly they would elect the men who promised the least amount of work. After all, when one is saying you'll have to do days of backbreaking work to create embankments and sanitation channels, then drill for hours after and the other says you just have to not get that drunk, people choose the one who asked less of them. Now what this meant was that the militia tended to be completely ill-disciplined, lazy, and a drag on supply lines as they had voracious appetites. So the regulars would suffer from lack of supplies because militia men, who usually did very little work to aid them and fled Battle easily (when they even joined) consumed them all.
Communism saw the same thing happening, which is exactly why they had to do things like execute factory managers and shoot anyone on collective farms who wasn't working hard enough while claiming they were 'counter-revolutionary'. Funny how communism, and socialism, all assume that people will naturally do things altruistically, especially when all of human history has shown that in order to be self-motivated people need a reason why. And as it turns out, currency is a great reason why, and the vague promise of maybe getting equal access to food stores isn't. Furthermore you'll also run into the problem of natural jealousy where people like brain surgeons will get pissed they're working long hours while I just get to write poetry and have equal access to resources.
Now as for you, I know for a fact that in any socialist paradise you imagine you're thinking that you'll be some party elite. You aren't fantasizing about getting eaten alive by black flies and mosquitos cutting lumber so people can have wood. You're also not fantasizing about cleaning the sewer systems that are vital for every city. Nor are you thinking about getting on an ice breaker to cut paths in the Arctic ice for months or thinking about handling nuclear waste. No, you fantasize about some cushy job and as much access to as much resources as someone who makes $100,000/yr does.
All socialists and communists believe that some strange other will do all that nasty work. It won't have to be you doing it because some other person will just do it. This is exactly why communist countries always ended up having to use military or para-military force against their own citizens. They believed people who do that work for free, and when that didn't happen they forced them to do it. Why else do you think that the Soviets forced people to stay on collective farms and used slave labour from gulags to mine uranium?
This is why I said that the reason that communism and socialism is doomed to always be a failure is because you refuse to accept these basic problems as legitimate. So you keep having to end up using force and keep up killing all who resist. Even now you'll refuse to accept the free rider problem as legitimate and will just say "Well in real communism people will just help each other!" because you can't face the fact that Marx was bourgeoise, not proletariat, and really had no idea what the motivations of humans really are. When every advanced human society since the dawn of time has used currency, it's safe to say it's not artificial or forced upon us. What is artificial and forced upon us has always been communism.
1 specterofsandersism 2017-09-11
It's hilariously apparent from the rest of your post that your historical knowledge is limited to high school textbooks (I especially enjoyed the part where you assumed I would be surprised there was a country called Kush, as if that isn't common knowledge to anyone with a decent understanding of African history) so I'm gonna enjoy tearing this post apart.
The knowledge that coal produces a lot of heat is quite ancient, actually, and England isn't the only place with an advanced civilization that had large coal reserves in the world (off the top of my head, China and Bengal did/do too).
Nor is the availability of coal the only factor behind the Industrial Revolution. Not even a middle school history textbook would make such an infantile assumption. At least, as I recall, mine discussed other factors too. Let's talk about that.
Sigh. First of all, that isn't what capital is. Can you do us both a favor and at least google basic terms before talking? Capital refers to the means of production which are (really, really simplistically) the things that allow you to make more things which can be sold, i.e. TV factories, but not TVs.
Second, the mere presence of capital doesn't entail the existence of capitalism. Again, not even mainstream (capitalist) economists believe this so all I'm getting here is your own ignorance. Capitalism refers to a very specific set of social and economic circumstances primarily characterized by strong private property rights, and, consequently, vast capital accumulation. This means, for the first time in history individuals or very small groups of people could control vast swathes of capital. Not only that, most capital in a given society is controlled by very few people. Sure, previously, there were rich people (kings, sometimes merchants and bankers too), but it's not like a handful of corporations produced and owned all the yokes, sickles, and ploughs in feudal Europe. This gives capitalists an outsized power; you literally have to go through them to obtain your livelihood. I could talk a lot more about this, or perhaps you could watch this instead. Even if you don't end up agreeing it's quite fascinating and he's very engaging, so please watch.
Also, Europeans didn't invent currency. Again it seems like you should be on /r/badhistory, not me.
Again, sigh. I no longer feel enmity for you because it's very clear you just don't know a lot of things, not that you just hate poor people (like some people here and in the other thread).
In particular, it seems like you've managed to learn a couple of facts about history but are inept at analyzing history in any meaningful way. When you say:
All you're doing is stating what the Holocaust literally was, not what caused it. Why did that desire arise? What possessed millions of Germans (and other Europeans and Americans) to agree with it? Even if the idea just spawned out of the ether, something gave it the ability to come to power (i.e. for Nazis to seize the state). What was that exactly?
An economic understanding of Fascism (broadly) and Nazism (more specifically) as well as European imperialism shows that it was very much borne from the capitalist system. As Lenin said, "Fascism is capitalism in decay."
It seems you're really averse to considering economic factors in historical analysis which is exactly what makes you so blind to how capitalism really functions. For example:
So why enslave Jews before murdering them? Remember, the genocide camps doubled as work camps; you worked until you died or were chosen to be murdered. Many corporations profited quite handsomely from slave labor- included BMW and Mercedes; here's a list of some of them.
"Free labor" isn't even the biggest connection between the Holocaust and capitalism, but it is a start, and a really obvious one to anyone who knows even a little bit about the Holocaust, so why did it not occur to you? I could go on and on about how capitalism precipitated the Holocaust and how neither Fascism nor the Holocaust could not have occurred outside a capitalist system, but it seems you've failed to taken into account even elementary historical considerations, so I'd rather not waste my time. Instead I urge you to please research things before talking about them with such authoritativeness.
As for your belief that:
Whenever your answer to a historical question is "why the fuck not?" you should probably pause and consider that you might be wrong. Bush did not trip and accidentally start a decade long war. This is especially true because:
America didn't want to pillage Iraq in the sense of just picking up things (including oil) and flying them home. That doesn't mean the war didn't have economic motives, because as you rightly pointed out, the war was really expensive, and capitalists hate spending money unless there's profit in it for them. The sources of profit were two-fold:
First, yes, the war was about oil- not in the sense that America captured the oil fields, but rather that the nature of the oil market is that minor disruptions in the oil supply anywhere threaten oil prices everywhere. Consequently, it is imperative that America ensure a steady and stable flow of oil everywhere. It doesn't need to literally steal the oil; the oil makes it to American markets by itself, as long as it isn't hindered by anti-American rulers. One of the primary purposes of our army and intelligence agencies is basically making sure this process goes smoothly.
Second, the military-industrial complex stands to gain from any war, whether American or otherwise, which explains such contradictions as America selling weapons to both sides of a war (as in the brutal Iran-Iraq War from 80 to 88). The US military budget is so ridiculously outsized at this point, as even a cursory examination of the budget will show, and the MIC profits from that. Justifying that budget requires constant war.
So, yes, the Iraq war was costly for most Americans and pretty much all Iraqis, but for a small group of people it was tremendously profitable.
Cambodia wasn't socialist for the umpteenth time. Pol Pot was literally funded by Reagan with the hope that Cambodia would destroy Vietnam, an actually socialist state. Please see Michael Haas' great book on the subject, "Cambodia, Pol Pot, and the United States: The Faustian Pact."
Red Terrors were usually excessive, but revolutions tend to be; but they were not altogether unjustified. Brutal feudal landlords and their church lackeys deserve to die. No, that doesn't mean I think everyone who was murdered/tortured in red terrors deserved it. But this kind of terror goes with most revolutions, including the one that really gave liberal democracy its place in the world theater: the French Revolution. It could also wholesale be avoided if capitalists just agreed to dismantle their system; they don't, because it behooves them not to.
You also freely ignore all the cases of (usually American or Western backed) forces attempting to brutally overthrow or bomb into oblivion any country that attempted socialism. Literally every major socialist country had to face this, and plenty of left-wing governments that weren't even socialist, but just too far left for capitalists to be happy.
1 specterofsandersism 2017-09-11
North Korea was actually richer than its southern neighbor, which was headed by a brutal US-backed dictator) until the 1980s. This is despite the fact that the US all but destroyed the country in the Korean War, something no one seems to tlak about. I'm not talking about just WWII level destruction. Imagine Dresden, but over the entirety of North Korea. More bombs were dropped on Korea than on Japanese territory during the entirety of WWII. Every single building over two stories tall was flattened. The partition made things worse because while the North was where industry and resources like coal was, the South was agricultural. After the war and for several decades after, as a result, the North was richer; but with the collapse of the USSR and multiple international embargoes it simply couldn't produce enough food- a problem that could easily be solved by uniting with the South (something most South Koreans actually want, btw- it's America and a handful of its Korean lackeys that don't want this). I don't think North Korea is socialist anymore, but you seem to fail to realize how it got there.
from here
No, no they didn't.
First of all, the "Holodomor" is incorrect terminology intended to make the Ukrainian famine seem like a genocide. This was a fabrication of Goebbels and the Nazi propaganda machine.
There was a famine; it was not limited to the USSR; and it was partly caused by natural events (bad weather), a foreign embargo on the USSR, and kulaks hoarding grain.
No, it doesn't.
That's very true, young Padawan! Marx himself noted this. The problems of capitalism are not of paucity, but rather surplus. This was such a curious problem and Marx was not the only economist to point it out. He just explained it best and proposed an actual solution to it that wasn't "more welfare."
Venezuela isn't any more socialist than Sweden (that is, not at all). It's problems are because of the oil market. Other oil countries are also facing similar issues.
Americans embraced democracy so much they kept millions of black people in bondage and invaded the sovereign territory of another nation while murdering indigenous Indians. These are the true markers of democracy. It is known.
As for the free rider problem, this really blows my mind, because one of the chief Marxist critiques of capitalism is it allows for the proliferation of free riders. In two ways:
First, capitalists profit off the labor of others simply because they claim ownership over the means of production. Even if they themselves built the MoP with their own two hands (rarely if ever), once it is built, they are no longer contributing. They believe they can sit back for the rest of their lives and have others work for them. Which is what they do.
Second, capitalism decreases the amount of work people can do and increases the work done by machines. This is great right? Well it should be, and to some extent it has been; but the contradiction here is that in capitalism laborers die if they don't work, so somehow less work for society is actually a bad thing. In fact, whenever production outstrips demand, people get laid off, which means demand decreases even further, and you get an economic crisis like the Great Depression or the most recent recession. To solve this, capitalist countries have instituted various degrees of social welfare programs to ensure the unemployed/underemployed don't die in the streets. This produces more free loaders. I don't mean to call the unemployed "freeloaders" in the "I hate the poor and I'm a Republican" sense; what I mean is these people could be contributing but can't simply because in capitalism people only work if a capitalist can make a profit off of them, or if they themselves can find a way to make a profit off of someone else. It doesn't matter if our bridges are crumbling and we need renewable energy fast; all the engineers and construction workers and scientists in the world can't do shit about that unless someone believes they will make a profit in doing so.
Marx's whole point was that this freeloader problem caused by capitalism will cause its decline and fall. The rich freeloaders keep getting richer, while the amount of poor freeloaders keeps increasing; this isn't sustainable.
This is generally true of militia everywhere and comparing this to either political or economic democracy on a national scale doesn't make much sense. Most workers are much more comparable to regulars than militia.
That isn't true though. Socialist states the world over have had to all those things, and they've managed to do so. In the USSR, people with particularly dangerous jobs (miners, for example) or who had to work unusual/long hours (doctors on call) were paid more as compensation. This type of situation simply can't happen in capitalism.
I could flip the scenario back on you:
"I know for a fact that in any Randian paradise you imagine you're thinking that you'll be some CEO. You aren't fantasizing about getting eaten alive by black flies and mosquitos cutting lumber so people can have wood. You're also not fantasizing about cleaning the sewer systems that are vital for every city. Nor are you thinking about getting on an ice breaker to cut paths in the Arctic ice for months or thinking about handling nuclear waste. No, you fantasize about some cushy job and as much access to as much resources as someone who makes $100,000/yr does."
1 specterofsandersism 2017-09-11
All capitalists believe that some strange other will do all that nasty work. No, they literally believe this as evidence by the history of capitalists forcing non-white peoples the world over to do the dirty work (African slavery, worldwide imperialism) and buy their products (mercantilist policy oh and of course the Opium War).
No! Wrong! Communism is nothing but pure self-interest on the part of the proletariat. It absolutely behooves us to seize the means of production. What, did you think Indian workers working for slave wages is somehow more beneficial to them? Do you think they elected to do that out of nothing but self-interest, no coercion needed?
This is just plain false my guy. Marx was a professor and journalist for most of his career. At no point was he anything close to "rich." In any case, plenty of Marxist thinkers after him have been proles, so the point is moot. It also wouldn't be relevant because you are already implying only capitalists know what "the motivations of humans really are" and yet you accuse Marx of not knowing what those were... because he was bourgeoise.
1 MegaSeedsInYourBum 2017-09-11
I promise you didn't know shit about African Kingdoms before this, or else you would have known that literally every advanced society no matter how separated in time or distance used currency, and not be claiming that it's natural to not use currency.
I never said it was, it's just that the British has very local coal deposits and were able to exploit them easily and early on. The industrial revolution started as a way to better exploit your own resources, not simply conquer. That came later.
HOLY FUCKING SHIT!!! It's actually defined as "wealth in the form of *money** or other assets owned by a person or organization or available or contributed for a particular purpose such as starting a company or investing." Seriously, this is gold! You actually claim to know what capital was but then claimed that it didn't include currency! Hahahahaha fuck this is hilarious. Yeah you're doing a real great job of "tearing apart my post" you absolute mongoloid. Capital doesn't refer to the means of production, it refers to wealth that can be used to *start** a business or to buy the means of production. Fucking hell man, that's economics 101 and you fucking failed HARD.
You mean like what the ancient Greek, Roman, and Babylonian landowners all did? Seriously, you didn't think that it's been well established in human history that people will own large amounts of capital?!?! Man you have less than zero idea what you're talking about so it's real obvious why you're a communist!
The desire to make Germany Great Again and kill Jews, Slavs, Blacks, and anyone 'inpure'.
Citing a YouTube video instead of published peer reviewed paper eh? That's certainly something that crazy people don't do.
Yeah because they were planning on killing them, so why not make them work a bit first since all the young German men were off fighting a war? Man-o-man you really are reaching far.
I never said they did, in fact I pointed out many cultures that used currency far before the Europeans did. What I said was that it was inevitable that the Europeans would use currency when they first started smelting metals and cutting stone. Apparently reading comprehension isn't quite your forte.
I don't hate poor people at all. I grew up poor until I was midway through high school. I used to only wear donated clothing because we couldn't afford anything else. What I hate are people with genocidal Utopian ideals that refuse to accept that an ideology that was created in a library by a man who never did an honest days work in his life might be false. Usually when someone (Marx) doesn't do anything with his hands aside from jerking off and writing bullshit, you can trust he doesn't know anything about the plight of the worker.
It's never real socialism or communism if it's bad huh? King Leopold II was capitalist, few would deny that. Why is it that capitalist countries can accept they've done really shitty things but communists always have to deny they ever have? You can't learn from your mistakes if you keep denying there ever were any.
"Hey guys! The path to Utopia is right through this river of blood! Trust us, THIS time it'll work!"
Any ideology that tells you that you need to kill groups of people for there to be peace is a garbage ideology. Especially when the people who 'deserve' to die end up always being the proletariat peasants. What did the Ukranians or Chinese farmers do to the Communist party that they deserved to suffer so much? And why does every 'worker revolution' always end up punishing the workers the most?
Or you know, Capitalism is a natural occurrence and Communism isn't. Show me some examples of advanced societies through human history that decided to stop using capital, and went full communist voluntarily. If it's so natural then surely we should see some examples of that happening bloodlessly. After all Switzerland became Capitalist without shedding anyones blood. Seems to me that the ideology that occurs naturally and bloodlessly is the natural one.
Yes like how Eastern Europe needed some tanks to keep Communism or how the Tibetans totally were threatening Communist China. Communist countries and Capitalist countries have been fucking with each other since 1917, yet one ideology has lasted without the people rising up to shoot their leader and overthrow Communism. The Romanian Revolution was very much a people's revolution, and it didn't happen against their King, it was against Communists.
Two things; 1) You can't feed people with memories, 2) When the USSR gives you billions in aid to piss off the Americans you tend to do well. Now how you explain South Korea's runaway economic success due to Capitalism while North Korea flooded most of it's fertile land because they wanted to build a cool dam. I'm eager to hear how that was America's fault.
When you radically change government policy, punish people who refuse to adhere to the policy, and don't revert the policy when lots of people start dying then yes, it's fucking intentional. If I decide that my dogs needs to be vegan, I see them get sick, one dies from malnourishment, yet I continue feeding them vegan, am I not responsible for that dogs death? Spoiler Alert: I'm directly responsible because I ignored all the warning signs and continued down a path I knew was causing harm.
I had a classmate in high-school whose father was born in the Ukraine. The Red Army searched his house for hidden food, took their pigs, took their neighbours livestock, shot anyone who tried to leave, and Stalin turned down foreign offers for food aid. That's fucking intentional and it's meant to kill people. Please explain how turning down offers of international food aid was in the interests of the starving farmers.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/08/world/americas/cuba-fidel-castro-food-tourism.html?_r=0
Capitalism has a surplus because the people are self-motivated by a desire for money. That motivator is very strong and while it can cause some people to act very immorally, it has overwhelmingly been a benefit by allowing all sorts of innovations that wouldn't normally be considered strictly necessary for survival.
Another "Not real socialism/communism because it isn't working" I have no doubt that when Venezuela was doing very well you were out championing it as an example of how well socialism works.
Are you actually stupid? Democracy is literally just the rule of the people. Sure people can be shitty and prejudiced and try and pervert that, but just look at how democracies have overcome all that. Democracy stopped slavery, the rich would have kept it up but the people overwhelmingly rejected that. Without democracy there won't be a Plato-style Philosopher king, there'll be Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot killing to keep control.
Which is fair when you did something yourself. If you ever built something with your own hands you sure as shit wouldn't freely give it away. That's natural to all humans.
1 MegaSeedsInYourBum 2017-09-11
That's not at all how the Great Depression started. Seriously, you really are bad at history champ http://www.history.com/topics/great-depression.
That's not the freeloader problem at all you absolute retard. Here, I'll link it to you since you don't seem to know anything about what you're talking about;
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/free_rider_problem.asp
"The free rider problem is a *market failure that occurs when people take advantage of being able to use a common resource, or collective good, without paying for it*, as is the case when citizens of a country utilize public goods without paying their fair share in taxes. The free rider problem only arises in a market in which supply is not diminished by the number of people consuming it and consumption cannot be restricted. Goods and services such as national defense, metropolitan police presence, flood control systems, access to clean water, sanitation infrastructure, libraries and public broadcasting services are able to be obtained through free riding."
Jesus Christ you literally know nothing about what you're talking about. When people can use something for free without contributing, they will abuse it as much as possible. Don't believe me? Host a party and buy a couple 24's of beer. Let people know that you have been and they're free to drink it if they want and they don't have to bring anything if they don't want to. See how many people show up with beer to contribute now that they know there is plenty and they don't have to do anything to access it.
What the fuck is wrong with you?!? Workers are more like regulars that milita?!?! If there was any doubt you were a champagne socialist isn't gone now. No one who has worked with factory workers would ever doubt that they'd work less if it was an option. Why the fuck do you think that plant managers in Communist countries are so overbearing? Otherwise shit all would get done.
What the fuck is wrong with you? Socialist states the world over never have abolished capital and have compensated people differently because they realize nothing would get done if everyone just had equal access to goods. In Capitalist countries it happens all the time that people who do dangerous or stressful jobs get paid more. If you work on wind turbines you make at least $80,000/yr. Seriously?!?! Capitalist countries don't compensate people more based on how difficult, skilled, or undesirable the job is? They do all the time which is why plumbers, linemen, surgeons, and millwrights get paid so much. As long as the job requires skill/training and is undesirable you get paid a ton.
Ayn Rand is dumber than shit. I'm not some Libertarian who thinks unrestricted Capitalism is best. Capitalism needs to be monitored and needs state competition in certain industries for it to be healthy. Pure capitalism would be just as much of a cancer as communism or pure socialism is.
You know we pay people now right? McDonald's workers aren't enslaved. They are just unskilled and with a surplus of people willing to do those jobs aren't paid much. You however literally believe that people will magically do shit jobs in communism because communism has told you that it would and since your brain is too small for doubt, you've filled it with blind faith.
It's very telling that you won't say what you'd do in your version of socialism. I'm betting because I was right on the money with my guess that you believe you'd be some important person instead of a random lumberjack or miner.
Marx suckled off Engels who made his money off owning factories. He never had to build or create anything useful with his hands because he had the money not to. That's pretty bourgie man.
Except during any revolution it's always the intelligentsia who had the money to not work that seizes power and kills proletariat's for 'their own good'.
I said Capitalists know what human motivations are because they know that people want currency in exchange for labour. Marx said that deep down people really don't want that. One of the two has been seen all through history and the other was only thought up in a library. Marx was a fool that got lucky with his ideas of alienation, communism on the other hand has only ever been a failure and everyone except communists can see that.
Like I said earlier though, the mind that's too small for doubt is always filled with blind faith. Capitalism sure as shit isn't perfect but it has always gotten better. The sins of the early 20th century capitalists are not illegal and all due to the worker. Alternatively in Communism the worker will be gulaged for questioning the will of the party until they finally all rise up and shoot the Communist leader in the head so they can finally be free.
Funny how for supposedly being a workers revolution communism has always been destroyed by workers revolutions and replaced with the supposedly evil capitalism by the very workers who supposedly would just suffer under it.
1 DavidAdamsAuthor 2017-09-11
I randomly stumbled upon this post and it was an amazing read, thank you. I added it to my saved list.
1 kuuttis 2017-09-11
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Vietnam#Executions
Gee, you really can't escape from the murderous ideology that is socialism.
1 scatmunchies 2017-09-11
You can’t make an omelette without executing a few hundred thousand peasants.
1 Clark_Savage_Jr 2017-09-11
To keep them is no benefit. To destroy them is no loss.
1 specterofsandersism 2017-09-11
You intentionally left out this latter bit which directly follows it, which is the height of disingenuity.
1 kuuttis 2017-09-11
I purposefully left it out to bait you into admitting that they killed at least "13,500" innocent people.
1 specterofsandersism 2017-09-11
Where does it say they were innocent? You just added that in.
1 kuuttis 2017-09-11
You are right. They were guilty of the heinous crime of being number one of 1000. And thus deserved death
1 specterofsandersism 2017-09-11
First of all, the whole point of me citing the latter part of the paragraph is to show that the earlier part is questionable in its veracity.
Anyways, I didn't say they were guilty either. I'm merely questioning why you are so quick to make negative assumptions about socialist states and then use those self-same assumptions to conclude socialism is bad. Seems very circular to me.
Personally? I have no clue how many were guilty of a crime and how many weren't; I do know revolutions don't happen bloodlessly and that liberal democracy is extremely violent despite the pretensions of its supporters that it isn't.
1 aj_thenoob 2017-09-11
Damn socialists, they're ruining socialism!
1 specterofsandersism 2017-09-11
Not an argument. The CIA literally funded Pol Pot.
1 WhyYouAreVeryWrong 2017-09-11
You can't be serious. I've been to Cambodia. I've listened to the Cambodians explain what the Khmer Rouge wanted. I've gone through the museums in the Killing Fields.
Denying that they were communist is like denying the Holocaust. It's repulsive ideological revisionism. You owe it yourself to go to the Killing Fields and then try to say this again with a straight face.
I'm disgusted.
1 specterofsandersism 2017-09-11
What do you think socialism (or more specifically Marxism) means? What did the Khmer Rouge want? Can you tell me exactly what in your experiences supports the idea that Pol Pot was a Marxist? Could you further explain why, then, the CIA funded Pol Pot, or socialist Vietnam had such enmity with the Khmer Rouge? While some inter socialist enmity during the Cold War was not unheard of (Hoxha/Tito, USSR/China, etc.), it never resulted in open invasion and the deposition of one country's government.
Simply being offended doesn't make you right. Unless you're actually able to define socialism and show that the Khmer Rouge fit the definition (spoiler alert: it doesn't), your taking offense isn't worth a jot.
1 WhyYouAreVeryWrong 2017-09-11
Pol Pot was a Marxist in that he followed the writings of Karl Marx, and believed in a society free of private ownership of the means of production, and the rulership of the proletariat.
He differed in that he declared the peasantry to be the true proletariat and hated cities, and started executing capitalists and anyone who could be a supporter of capitalism (school teachers, engineers, plumbers) until there was nothing left but farmers.
The Khmer Rouge was absolutely motivated by Marxist beliefs, with their own spin ("peasants are the true proletariat"). Denying that they were communists is a bunch of nonsense that ignores what they themselves said.
China was the backer for the Khmer Rouge.
They didn't, initially. Communist Vietnam and the Khmer Rouge were allies in the Vietnam war, but after the war, the Khmer Rouge thought that the Vietnamese were going to usurp them as the dominant force in the region and attacked them, and performed an early strike.
Both were communist. Pol Pot was paranoid and killed off everyone with an education that could have helped him.
1 specterofsandersism 2017-09-11
Again what are you basing this off of? In what way did he promote the rule of the proletariat?
This is literally as un-Marxist as you could get lmao. This isn't a minor substitution; there are massive reasons as explained by Marx why peasants (at least by themselves) basically can't build socialism, only liberal democracy.
That's like saying capitalists are absolutely motivate by Marxist beliefs, with their own spin ("capitalists should rule society, not the proletariat."). See? We only changed a few words, so we must not have changed the meaning much.
The US absolutely did back the Khmer Rouge, please read Michael Haas' "Cambodia, Pol Pot, and the United States: The Faustian Pact."
Sure, Pol Pot pretended to pay lip service to Marxism to gain Chinese backing; but any real analysis of the Khmer Rouge shows it wasn't Marxist, and you've stated one of the biggest reasons why. Another is its insistence on Juche,
Correct, because the US literally paid them to do this.
Yea, if communist means whatever the fuck you want it to mean. Marxism has promoted an alliance between left-intellectuals and workers (and in some countries, peasants, but never peasants alone) since basically its inception, but sure Pol Pot is still Marxist because it hurts your feelings to say otherwise.
1 CucksLoveTrump 2017-09-11
please provide an example where it didn't devolve into genocide or authoritarian dictatorship
1 RecallRethuglicans 2017-09-11
Again, not perfectly but it worked.
1 CucksLoveTrump 2017-09-11
1 SperglockHolmes 2017-09-11
"So what if we've killed hundreds of millions of people in the name of communism. No one's perfect."
1 ragazzo_soup 2017-09-11
*30,000 homeless people because of capitalism*
"This is a disgrace! We must help these poor, defenseless people against the evils of capitalism!"
*Millions dead because of communism*
"Meh, shit happens."
1 scatmunchies 2017-09-11
How did it work? I’d consider state sponsored murder/incompetence driven starvation to be a pretty significant indicator of failure. Can you be more specific on what worked and how on balance the system was for the better?
1 RecallRethuglicans 2017-09-11
Well Stalinism was a great success. Not perfect but a huge success otherwise.
1 CucksLoveTrump 2017-09-11
You realize that man killed more people than Hitler right? Or are you memeing?
1 Ranilen 2017-09-11
But Hitler killed out of hate. Ol' Uncle Joe only killed out of love!
Or something.
1 scatmunchies 2017-09-11
Nah, it was a giant failure on every level. The hollowed out military, the debacle that was Lysenkoism, the need to murder lots of people - failure everywhere.
C’mon, at least give it a try.
1 Gothmog26 2017-09-11
I agree. Dead Russians are a wonderful thing.
1 Eternal_Mr_Bones 2017-09-11
So your bar for "worked" is just really really low.
Like lying on the floor low.
1 Clark_Savage_Jr 2017-09-11
If they can get up off the floor the food rations are too high.
1 OnlyRacistOnReddit 2017-09-11
What's with the trick questions?
1 lunaticLipid 2017-09-11
1 ragazzo_soup 2017-09-11
You know what they say, 50th time's the charm!
1 grungebot5000 2017-09-11
well yeah, if you start with a country that isn't a piece of shit
1 nmx179 2017-09-11
Homeless bums contribute no labor, they are literally worthless people who deserve their disgusting lot in the world.
The labor of bankers and engineers is worth thousands of times more than the easily interchangeable rejects they get to do their homework, which is why so many of those rejects are being rendered irrelevant by automation or having their jobs exported to third world shitholes where you get a dollars worth of work out of a dollars worth of pay.
Living in a random fantasy world is awesome, what with all of this money and opportunity.
1 specterofsandersism 2017-09-11
Why not? There is plenty of work to be done in society, clearly; infrastructure to be built, etc. Yet, in capitalism, you can't be hired unless a capitalist can make a profit off of you, no matter how much work needs to be done and no matter how much you want to work.
First of all, most engineers are workers. Bankers, however, don't do any real, socially useful labor, they just help rich people get richer.
I'm just curious how your capitalism economy plans on functioning when it has disemployed and rendered poor and useless the very same people who it expects to profit from. Who are you going to sell your products to if you automate so much of the economy that millions of people can no longer afford them?
Also, it doesn't really seem you have any ethical grounding, that is, I bet you think child labor in third world countries is desirable.
1 Charles_Thunderpenis 2017-09-11
Know how I know you've never had a job?
1 Embers-Ghost-Squad 2017-09-11
Business owners do no work and take no risks, management and investment provides nothing of value to the company, they just sit back in armchairs all day counting their moneybags
People's usefulness to society is determined by declarations of a teenage communist NEET on reddit, even if people find Banks so useful billions use their services every day
There's a fixed limit on the amount of labour the world can do. Production becoming easier and less-reliant on humans means everyone will be unemployed, instead of goods just being cheaper and more plentiful. Even though we've already been witnessing this exact trend ever since humans invented agriculture, with no trend towards mass-unemployment ever happening
Not having an extreme irrational hatred for all buisness owners means you have no ethics
Sad, kind of scary, look into the Communist mind.
1 nmx179 2017-09-11
Goods will be cheaper and more plentiful for the people who can meaningfully contribute to the economy. Those who can't contribute can and should die to make room for people who are useful and productive.
1 GAS_THE_KlKES 2017-09-11
Dude, walk into an econ classroom and get some sense slapped into you. Hell, a fucking MARKETING classroom on value chain analysis would be good enough.
1 LoveThisWebSite 2017-09-11
Yeah that guy who shits himself and shakes a can of coins in the subway is really contributing to the gdp
1 specterofsandersism 2017-09-11
Why do hate homeless people so much? Most homeless people aren't that guy at all. You don't even notice most homeless people, probably, nor do you want to because it's easier for you to assume every homeless person is a lazy no-good piece of shit.
1 FaygoMakesMeGo 2017-09-11
Christ...If people want a bridge than there is demand. Do you really think the people of my town will line up along the waters looking at the people of your town, scratching our heads, wondering what to do?
Sorry, but we know what we need better than the state does, and people arent idiots would would refuse to create infrastructure because its expensive (hint: the bridge is itself capital for the community).
1 CirqueDuFuder 2017-09-11
"Socialism" somehow built the most extensive highway system in the world in a capitalist super power.
1 specterofsandersism 2017-09-11
Private enterprise certainly didn't.
Why has America's infrastructure been in decline for decades?
1 CirqueDuFuder 2017-09-11
Capitalism doesn't mean 100% private you mongoloid.
1 specterofsandersism 2017-09-11
The mere existence of demand doesn't ensure the building of a bridge. Not even capitalists argue this; even an elementary high school econ textbook would find your proposition laughable.
In a pure free market economy, bridges only get built if it is profitable to do so. If there is very high demand for a bridge, but everyone who wants the bridge is a poor peasant, the bridge isn't gonna get built. If a single really rich guy wants a bridge, it will get built. If a bunch of rich guys want a bridge really bad, but the bridge costs far more than they could expect to make in profit, the bridge still won't get built.
Seriously the easiest way to debunk your argument is to take a drive in America. You will find many crumbling roads and bridges. You will also encounter unemployed people. Why aren't they being offered jobs to build said roads and bridges?
So, again, why isn't America's infrastructure better than it is? Why has it been in decline for decades?
1 CirqueDuFuder 2017-09-11
Bitch ass motherfucker, you can't do shit without proper financial planning. I want to get a fucking loan and pilot classes just to buy a helicopter to throw you out of.
1 nmx179 2017-09-11
All shitposting aside you should probably stop short of actual threats of violence fam, even if they're over the top / not credible, I'd hate to see you get suspended.
1 CirqueDuFuder 2017-09-11
You are right of course. It would also be god damn retarded to think I'm serious about having the conviction to take pilot lessons other than to help me get laid.
1 YHofSuburbia 2017-09-11
Nothing will help get you laid, friend.
1 CirqueDuFuder 2017-09-11
Reddit helps me get laid.
1 PussMonster_ 2017-09-11
You're saying that to the biggest straight whore on this sub. He'll still be getting his dick wet after the rest of us are gone.
1 Karmaisforsuckers 2017-09-11
Who needs financial planning? You just have Comrade Bernie write a bill that says "Socialism bridge medicine = yes" and then it just happens!! Its literally that simple.
Have ever even listened to chapo trap house?
1 specterofsandersism 2017-09-11
I-bankers don't do "financial planning" lmao. They help rich people get richer.
Financial planning in capitalism is only necessary because of the way capitalism functions. A very different kind of financial planning would happen under a socialist government.
Ok, Fascist.
1 nmx179 2017-09-11
Bankers are laborers just as much as engineers, you just take their labor for granted because you don't understand or appreciate it. However the market has determined that their labor has value.
You talk about how there's plenty of work to be done. Well sure, if you want to have people dig ditches and fill them in you could have everyone fully employed today, but that labor wouldn't be doing anything useful.
Determining which labor is and isn't necessary is the labor of bankers and managers, and profit is how we measure their success and failure.
If many people are willing to pay to build a bridge, then a bridge gets built. If you just build bridges anywhere and everywhere because someone, somewhere says they want one, without regard for whether the bridge is really needed by enough people to justify the expense of building it, then you're just back to digging ditches and filling them in.
1 specterofsandersism 2017-09-11
Who is it valuable to? Other rich people.
Lmao, this sounds like something out of a satire.
1 old_grumpy_grandpa 2017-09-11
What is this? Thinly veiled antisemitism?
1 specterofsandersism 2017-09-11
No.
1 Karmaisforsuckers 2017-09-11
Of all the stupid shit you've said, this is the stupidest shit
1 specterofsandersism 2017-09-11
Why do you hate homeless people so much? Why are you so convinced you, personally, know everything about homeless people based on purely anecdotal evidence? Have you actually tried researching this subject? You might be surprised what you'll find.
1 Karmaisforsuckers 2017-09-11
If I hated homeless people I would just be a socialist. Famines are the fastest way to holocaust the homeless and no one is better at holocausting the homeless than the far left.
1 specterofsandersism 2017-09-11
Bizarre because p much every socialist country eradicated homelessness... by (wait for it) guaranteeing affordable housing.
1 FaygoMakesMeGo 2017-09-11
Lol wut. In terms of trade economics, labor is capital. You buy cash with labor, you can buy a house with paintings. It's all the same, it all has trade value. Its unavoidable no matter how many socialist laws we pass to cripple the economy.
Communism was built on the assumption that the industrial revolution would replace all human labor creating a void. Socialism without those machines is simply slavery (the poor are the means of production).
1 MakeAmericaSageAgain 2017-09-11
Laborers contribute; Jews don't. Jews are parasites. However, because laborers generally have no choice but to follow TPTB unless they want to be branded "anti-semites", they are poor and the Jews are rich, even though the former contributes far, far more to society.
I'm sorry you live in a Lutherian fantasy world.
1 subpoutine 2017-09-11
This but Talmudically.
1 BussySundae 2017-09-11
This but The Protocols Of The Elders of Zionically
1 specterofsandersism 2017-09-11
This is the twisted shit liberalism will actually make you believe, that there is no meaningful difference between machines and people.
If labor is capital, why would a respected capitalist publication like the WSJ publish an article headlined In Labor vs. Capital, Labor Is Now Winning? This implies labor isn't capital.
Seriously, even an introductory capitalist economics text would dispel you of you delusions. Not an econ textbook per se but see here. Or see Adam Smith's definition of capital (Google that shit). As Mao said, "No investigation, no right to speak."
Now, it is true that in recent years economists speak of such things as "human capital," but this is only by way of analogy. When economists speak of human capital, they aren't even referring to labor, they're referring to talent and skill, and even then the term "capital" is only used by way of analogy because it's fairly obvious human talent and skill isn't literally equivalent to machines and factories.
This is not the definition of capital, i.e. "anything you buy." Since you can basically buy anything, it would mean the Statue of David, prostitutes, and medicine are all "capital" now, which is a uselessly broad definition of capital and certainly not the one used by socialists, or even most capitalists for that matter.
No, it wasn't. Please cite a single line from a classical socialist author (i.e. Marx, Engels, Lenin, or even non-Marxists like Proudhon or Kropotkin) indicating this is true.
1 skeetsurfing1984 2017-09-11
Hey, the 18th century called and it wants its Labour Theory of Value back.
1 aqouta 2017-09-11
This clump of dirt is super valuable because I dug a hole there and filled it back up 100 times. LTV is so great.
1 specterofsandersism 2017-09-11
This is such an infantile understanding of LTV. LTV never states that any labor at all creates value. Do you really think it never occurred to Marx that digging holes and filling them back up isn't valuable labor?
1 aqouta 2017-09-11
Damn I didn't think anyone would find my economic PhD dissertation if I hid it among all the other academic works in /r/drama. If I might offer a rebuttle:
Fuck off cummie, people dive for perls because they are valuable, perks are not valuable because people dive for them.
1 specterofsandersism 2017-09-11
"What makes something valuable?"
"Fuck off cummie, people dive for perls because they are valuable, perks are not valuable because people dive for them."
Good talk bro.
For anyone still taking this exchange seriously, no, the LTV doesn't say "pearls are valuable because people dive for them" so much as it says "pearls are useless sitting on the bottom of the ocean floor and only acquire any socially useful value because some guy dives for them and brings them up and brings them to market." A pearl at the bottom of the Mariana Trench has, in fact, no value.
The problem with a lot of amateur economists like yourself (and plenty of professionals too) who think they can single-handedly overturn the LTV with such a fastidious argument is that you think of every object as being completely isolated, as if "oil" has some value "out there" (presumably as dictated by the Holy Market) independent of whether it is in a gas tank or locked so far deep into the earth we cannot even drill for it. Marxist economics actually does differentiate these two types of oil, while recognizing that there is also the market price of oil, which is the only thing you seem to see.
1 aqouta 2017-09-11
Where the fuck do you think you are?
1 specterofsandersism 2017-09-11
A cesspool, clearly.
1 aqouta 2017-09-11
But weethe things in it more valuable because you have to dive into a cesspool to get them?
1 rstoddard 2017-09-11
1 barakokula31 2017-09-11
You clearly have no idea what the LTV even is.
--Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme
1 aqouta 2017-09-11
Fuck off cummie, this is a south park neutral sub.
1 barakokula31 2017-09-11
Facts are inconvenient.
1 aqouta 2017-09-11
Comentary of an 18th century concept from Karl, I hate "jew niggers" because of the shape I'd their skulls, Marx that every modern day economist laughs at for being simplistic and terrible are not inconvient facts. The fact that you're seriousposting on a bussy appreciation sub and are thus embarrassing to be around in pretty inconvenient.
1 Works_of_memercy 2017-09-11
No, it's supposed to be labor that went into increased productivity.
Like, suppose some nerd spend a bunch of labor constructing a pottery wheel, and offers the local potter that makes 20 pots per day manually to rent the wheel and make 200 pots per day, split 100:100 between her and the wheel-owner. The potter gets +80 pots per day, so she agrees.
Labor theory of value can't explain that, at all. And then it doubles down on the contradiction and claims that the potter must violently seize the pottery wheel for herself instead of just keeping making her shitty wheels by hand, as if means of production grow on trees and capitalists unfairly monopolize those trees.
There are things to be said about unregulated capitalism as well of course, as a radical south park centrist liberal I maintain that libertarians get the
bulletdisability cheque too. But reversed stupidity is not intelligence. For example:Being concerned about the societal effects of automation is not stupidity, but putting those concerns that particular way is dumb as fuck because there's an obvious answer: of course capitalists would just enjoy consuming those products themselves, duh. Like in Isaak Asimov's "The Naked Sun" where a bunch of super rich people enjoy living on their planet in their immense estates (with 20,000 of them in total), with their every whim served by robots.
They didn't need profits in that book, they didn't need to oppress the nonexistent underclass, that's the thing about automation taken to its logical conclusion: while usual technological progress still requires an excavator operator to make more usefulness than a thousand guys with shovels, automation eliminates even that. And then the labor theory of value divides by zero and disappears in a puff of contradiction.
Recognizing that this part of commie shit is retarded and useless and moving to different arguments that say that it's still kinda unfair that those fat cats live there in luxury without oppressing anyone, while other not so lucky people struggle.
1 WikiTextBot 2017-09-11
The Naked Sun
The Naked Sun is a science fiction novel by American writer Isaac Asimov, the second in his Robot series. Like its predecessor, The Caves of Steel, this is a whodunit story. The book was first published in 1957 after being serialized in Astounding Science Fiction between October and December 1956.
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1 specterofsandersism 2017-09-11
This is hysterical because I actually thought you might say something like this but then I realized "no, no way he's actually that dumb."
Asimov's story is nice but you seem to fail to realize it literally does describe a communist society. The problem is how we get from here to there without a bunch of dead people or the destruction of society altogether. Automation doesn't happen overnight; it's not like today there is full employment and then tomorrow everyone is laid off and the rich are totally self-sufficient and have the guns to keep the hungry hordes off their property. In between, unemployment will steadily increase while automation increases as well, but not the point where the rich could ensure self-sufficiency. Further, remember that automation isn't the only process at work; so is outsourcing. Previously, outsourcing worked because you could outsource shitty jobs to Ghana and India, give many first world workers high paying professional jobs, and then profit by selling what the former makes to the latter. But as automation replaces intellectual labor in the first world, it won't replace manual labor in the third world nearly as quickly because of just how dirt cheap manual labor in the third world is. You end up with a gulf between production and consumption, which is exactly how financial crises (depressions and recessions) happen, even by a capitalist understanding of economics. Of course, we're not talking about a minor recession here, we're talking potentially about multiple crippling depressions.
So, again, what is your plan? Marx predicted more or less this exact process would plague capitalist economies, and it has from their inception; periodically production outstrips consumption because every capitalist wants to make a lot of shit while paying as few people as possible. The better they get at this, the more they make and the more people are laid off, which means there are fewer people to buy their shit. And so you end up with even more people laid off, despite enormous surpluses, which is ironic because you'd think a society that produces more would be better off, not worse off. Ah, the contradictions of capitalism.
Asimov's story is literally an affirmation of LTV, not a contradiction. It literally describes a communist society. It isn't the only possible communist society but it is one possible communist society.
1 Works_of_memercy 2017-09-11
I said nothing about market exchange value. The core trait of LTV as a political statement is the assertion that all profit the capitalist makes is the part of the surplus value created by the laborer that is unfairly appropriated from her.
So in our example, since the capitalist gains 100 pots per day, he must have fooled the potter to go from gaining 20 pots per day to losing 80 pots per day. In reality she went from gaining 20 to gaining 100 pots/day. How comes?
And oftentimes it doesn't. Robots don't.
Because, firstly, you lose the moral high ground: when you abandon fairness and start talking in terms of might makes right, you lose the right to complain that the nerd uses the police and army and the rest of the government to maintain the system of oppression indefinitely. Secondly, you'll never get out of the stone age.
Asimov's story also has crowded megacities populated by people who literally have never seen open sky in their lives. The whole picture doesn't sound very communist to me.
If your only objection to that future is that you don't think that capitalists will manage to get there without hurting themselves too much in the process, but if they pull it off then you're OK with that, then you're one hell of a confused communist, lol.
No it literally isn't, because there's value but no labor. The only connection between communism as an economic system that allocates labor (or we can call that socialism if you insist) and communism as the end state that no longer has labor or economy is that you jerk off to both. By that criterion Rosa Luxembourg's tits affirm LTV as well.
The ideological message of communism embodied in the LTV is that the rich are rich and the poor are poor because the rich exploit the poor, that is, steal a large part of value produced by the poor. This arrangement is unfair and that's why we should change it to something more fair.
Increasing automation makes obvious the absurdity of that theory. Imagine a situation 20 years from now, when half of the country live in squalor on welfare, while the other half work high-tech or service jobs and live in nice gated communities. Obviously, people on welfare don't produce anything, but do consume stuff. They are not being exploited by the rich, they are exploiting the rich, if you insist on looking at the situation in terms of flows of material wealth. They are not proles, they are unproductive lumpenproletariat.
And unless you really don't see anything wrong with that situation, or maybe even willing to apply your principles consistently and suggest that we should eat our unemployed exploiters, then you'll need a non-bullshit reason to call that situation unfair in the future, and then it makes sense to cut the increasingly irrelevant bullshit and start using that reason already as well.
1 specterofsandersism 2017-09-11
LTV and Marxism don't state the potter went from gaining 20 to 80. It states that the potter could be making 200 pots a day by herself. She doesn't need the capitalist anymore. All the capitalist has is a "claim" of ownership, which is only valid because the state reinforces it with guns.
But their raw materials do, and capitalists monopolize these. You didn't address the rest of the point in the least.
What do you mean we lose the moral high ground? The whole point of capitalism is might makes right. Capitalism only works because the police, courts and army protect private property rights at all costs.
Second, your argument is predicated on the assumption of private property rights. The set of property rights that permit modern capitalism to work are really, really historically rare. In most historical societies, you couldn't own things you weren't using; that was what was perceived as fair. We agree.
We are already out of the stone age.
Those societies aren't communist; but since the rich are supposedly self-sufficient, they do live in their own private communist world. Of course, this is sci-fi; such a scenario couldn't develop in real life. Also it raises the question of how the poor people are running megacities without a functioning economy, or if they do have a functioning economy, how it works and how it got there.
It's not about whether I'm OK with it or not. I would prefer capitalists not to get away with it, and I'm quite certain they won't; or at the very least, they'll destroy humanity in the process, which is also undesirable.
Sigh. Yes there was labor. The robots were built by human manual and mental labor. Thus they have value.
This isn't an argument and you're really only betraying the fact that you are becoming aware of your own ignorance by substituting solid economic arguments for titty jokes. It's a tactic of desperation.
Correct, more or less.
Oh my god. Read Marx. Hell, even read a decent capitalist economist's take on Marx. Pretty much everyone worth their salt in economics/social science knows that the whole point of Marxism is that increased automation is a fundamental flaw with capitalism. Increased automation affirms Marxism, and if you read any major publications even capitalist rags are beginning to question whether the assumption of the Cold War, that Marx's beliefs about automation were wrong because we could always create new jobs, is, in fact, wrong.
You mean exactly what Marx predicted?
Correct. Marx pointed this out; capitalism produces both rich and poor "free-loaders."
Since they are cut off from the means of production, no, they are not being exploited, but their situation is a direct product of capitalism. The only way to resolve it in a satisfactory manner is the end of capitalism.
Why not?
The situation didn't materialize out of thin air. America is not (for the most part, i.e. Dakota Pipeline and the like excepted) stealing native land and murdering natives. That doesn't mean the situation of Native Americans right now is in any way (historically) equitable or just. Justice and fairness are not relative to a single moment in time.
But even a children's TV show can understand that.
1 Works_of_memercy 2017-09-11
Yeah, but if the capitalist doesn't offer her that choice, then she's stuck with 20 pots per day. How does that mean that the capitalist doesn't bring anything of value to the table?
And then you're like, but the capitalist had already made that offer, how about we fuck him over now?
And I'm like, but for the very least that means that nobody will offer you any offers like that in the future.
And you're like, but we already have pottery wheels, that's basically one step away from FULLY AUTOMATED LUXURY GAY SPACE COMMUNISM, we can get there on our own.
And I'm like, nope, lol, we are pretty far away from any of that, and the only people working on that are actually ultralibertarians like Peter Thiel or Elon Musk, because you've successfully alienated everyone with any sort of natural-philosophic disposition.
Here's a dyed in the wool communist's take on that last point btw. I disagree with a lot of what's written there including the entire premise that care must opposed to the pursuit of truth, but he's totally right that that's what the left believe, and the inevitable consequences.
It's not that capitalists don't allow you to make robots by making raw materials unaffordable (they don't), it's that you can't expect to get robots just by removing capitalists. There's no robot-yielding trees, saying that there are apple-yielding trees is not an argument.
No, the point of capitalism is that the owner of the pottery wheel deserves a share in the extra pots made by combining her wheel with potter's labor. And also that if the wheel-owner and the potter voluntarily and without coercion agree on some particular share, then it's fair, while robbing the potter of his wheel is unfair and immoral.
Most people actually agree with that, and that's what gives the capitalist state the mandate to defend this social order using men with guns. Any social order must be defended by men with guns in the end, that's not an argument for or against that order.
But in that particular argument you made a mistake by skipping that moral justification entirely and going like, well, when we have men with guns we will take the wheel from the owner just because we can!
That's how you lose all support except from assholes, and that's how your revolution led by assholes inevitably results in megadeaths, if you manage to attract a critical mass of assholes to succeed even.
The question is not what value the robots have, but what value they produce, including untold generations of further robots, without any human labor involved. Or are you saying that all that value actually rightfully belongs to the initial constructors of the first robots, lmao?
Like, when a dude operates an excavator with a 1000x bonus productivity, all of that belongs to the dude and nothing to the girl who made the excavator, but as soon as that girl makes the excavator properly autonomous and tells the dude to fuck off and get on welfare, all that value belongs to her and her descendants?
They are not cut off from the means of production, they are made obsolete by automation. It turns out that the more automation there is, the less capitalism needs to exploit low-qualified labor, and the larger is the proportion of people who can't meaningfully contribute to production, because they can't write software for robots that make and maintain other robots. Then modern capitalism puts those useless people on welfare and they live in squalor.
I think you misunderstand what this discussion is about. It's not about whether capitalism is superior to socialism or whatever. It's about the fact that the labor theory of value says that capitalists exploit proles to get profits and that's the unfair thing about capitalism, and that is becoming increasingly wrong as automation increases. It might have been a good approximation in Marx's times, but it's a very bad approximation already and will only become worse.
When the 1% consisting of capitalist programmers live in their securely walled off paradise and the 99% feed on their handouts in squalor everywhere else, the LTV argument will lose all power, because it will be obvious to everyone that the 1% are not "exploiting" the 99%, the opposite if anything.
And then your argument against that state of things should become that it's unfair that some people live in luxury and some people live in squalor just because the latter are not very good programmers or aren't descendants of good programmers. That the moral worth of a human should not be determined by their contributions to the society, "from each according to their ability (even if it's pretty much zero), to each according to their need".
So if you can see that in the future, look around and realize that we are far enough down that road that the LTV retardation is already obvious to anyone whose eyes are not ideologically shuttered, and drop that retarded argument right now, without waiting 20 years until it becomes really really obvious to everyone and you'd have to backtrack hard and explain why you were peddling that bullshit all along and why anyone should still trust your judgment on social issues.
I really hope that you misunderstood the question. I asked if in that situation it would be moral for the 1% to literally cannibalize the rest of the humanity turned into lumpenproletariat by automation.
If you reject the pottery wheel maker's claim to the indirect fruits of her labor, you shouldn't invoke structurally equivalent arguments like that.
1 specterofsandersism 2017-09-11
No one said the capitalist didn't bring anything to the table, but they brought something to the table because of labor. They brought value because they were a laborer not because they later became a capitalist. Once that labor is over though, it makes no sense the capitalist gets to profit from it in perpetuity no matter how much labor the potter does on "his" wheel.
We're not fucking him over. We simply operate by a different understanding of property. You only assume yours is the most correct because you were born into the <.0001% slice of mankind's history where this specific set of property rights tends to be very common.
In socialism it is meaningless and laughable to say that something you produce, and anything that "something" may produce, is yours forever in perpetuity no matter how many trillions of hours others sink into making those other things using "your" something.
Whereas in the lunacy of capitalism, especially with IP laws, if you make a potter's wheel the profits of trillions of hours of labor-power are literally yours, even though you did a negligible portion of said labor. This is what we mean when we say capital is "dead labor."
What offers? Did you think communism was going to be an "offer" to the ruling class? what world do you live in? Do you think the French revolutionaries "offered" liberal democracy to the French king? did you think "Let them eat cake" was a serious contractual proposal by Marie Antoinette, and the subsequent revolution merely an agreement?
Never in the history of mankind has an oppressive group of people voluntarily relinquished their power to oppressed. They were forced to do so, either by economic pressure or outright violence.
This isn't even an argument. I think we both know you lost this one, so you're injecting irrelevant memes in a last-ditch attempt to hand wave away what's painfully obvious to both of us.
Thiel and Musk aren't working on full communism, they're working on guillotine insurance, aka UBI. Amazing you idolize Thiel who isn't even a libertarian: he believes women shouldn't vote, has outright contempt for democracy, and supported apartheid.
Musk is notorious in the industry for being extremely abusive even to his highly skilled workers, who are not nearly as replaceable as janitors and construction workers. The dude has no interest in helping workers.
When will you get that your techbro heroes are almost invariably racist, misogynistic pieces of trash who just blatantly hate the poor?
Amazing, an argument to a point I never even made, all while continuing to ignore my question of why capitalists get to lay claim to vast swathes of the earth's virgin resources.
She didn't do this though. The potter did.
Let me stop you at coercion. Capitalism is synonymous with coercion. Capitalism only works on a national or international scale (i.e. the real world not your fantastical premise) because it monopolizes the very ability to live into the hands of a few people, and you have to go through them to live. Don't work for a capitalist and you starve; actually go so far as to piss off enough capitalists, or even a single capitalist enough, and you could get murdered, shit, your entire country could get obliterated. This is actually existing capitalism, not your pottery fantasy.
You're using circular logic as I have repeatedly pointed out; it's only "his" because you say so, assuming a very specific set of property rights, which are historically rare and contingent.
Sure. In late medieval Europe most believe literally believed God gave monarchs the right to rule them, and it was natural for some people to be serfs and others nobles. As Marx said, "The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas [of society]."
You got this ass backwards. Capitalists first monopolized the state and the MOP, and then used their power to brainwash people into believing their nonsense. Not just brainwashing either; dissenters were generally wiped off the face of the earth.
Only because capitalists inevitably boil their argument down to "because we can." You were the one who claimed socialism doesn't take self-interest into account; my point is socialism is nothing but pure self-interest on the part of the proletariat.
In other words, I didn't skip anything; you just failed to see that capitalism is held afloat by guns and nothing else, and so you thought I was skipping ahead when in fact you weren't following along.
If the assholes supported us, the rich would be communists and the poor anti-communist.
Sizzling historical analysis.
"Lots of people died in the USSR because they were all assholes."
Dude, the idea that all (or most) the value belongs to the initial constructors is your idea. You're the one who in your pottery fantasy claimed the maker of the wheel deserves pots in perpetuity from the potter.
Communist ssimple state that resources produced by society should be shared by society. It's not that the robots are any individual worker's personal robot- you are still thinking within the capitalist mindset. The robots belong to us collectively, or they should in socialism.
This seems to be an apt description of capitalism. I'm amazed this isn't satire. The rich automate everything primarily using the labor (mental and manual) of the workers, and then having rendered the workers obsolete tell them to fuck off and get on welfare (which is literally Musk and Thiel's brilliant proposal on how to avoid the guillotine).
The same thing, what did you think it meant to be cut off from the MoP?
Sort of. It entirely depends on how expensive automation is and how cheap labor is. As it is now, mental (first world) labor is getting automated because it is expensive, whereas manual labor is dirt cheap in the third world, so it just gets outsourced. We simply don't know enough to say whether capitalism alone can take us to complete automation, but I would hazard that, no, it can't. Automating certain tasks would simply not be worth the investment for capitalists.
Correct. This seems like a commie argument.
I mean, it was about that, many moons ago.
(continued below)
1 WikiTextBot 2017-09-11
Sanford B. Dole
Sanford Ballard Dole (April 23, 1844 – June 9, 1926) was a lawyer and jurist in the Hawaiian Islands as a kingdom, protectorate, republic and territory. A descendant of the American missionary community to Hawaii, Dole advocated the westernization and destruction of Hawaiian government and culture. After the overthrow of the monarchy, he served as the President of the Republic of Hawaii until his government secured Hawaii's annexation by the United States.
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1 specterofsandersism 2017-09-11
Did you literally not read my comment at all? Automation confirms the entirety of Marxism.
Once again, only if you think the robots just self-generated themselves into existence. They didn't. You didn't address my Native American analogy earlier, and have instead chosen to repeat yourself.
The rest of your comment is basically not worth addressing as you are saying the same thing in new and creative ways when I have already addressed it. I'll go ahead anyways, because of just how much I love you.
That's true.
Except, no, again automation confirms LTV. LTV doesn't refer to value in the sense you believe it does as I have repeatedly explained. All the "value" in robot society was initially created by humans, even if those robots can then create new robots. The argument here isn't, "hey robots you and all your robot spawn are now belong to us because our ancestors mined the metal inside you and wrote your code," it's "the means of production should be owned collectively with the aim of reducing human labor."
1 Works_of_memercy 2017-09-11
Dude, I think you're literally retarded. You do this extremely annoying thing where you quote and reply to each individual sentence without understanding what the whole argument is, and occasionally even the shit you reply to.
For example, I point out that somehow people actually working on automation, like Thiel and Musk, are hypercapitalists, so something is wrong with your hopes for the future. You respond by "correcting" me that Thiel and Musk indeed aren't working on fully automated gay space communism, then go on a rant about how they are assholes.
Like, what the fuck dude. What's the point of having a discussion when you don't understand my arguments and use random quotes to rant about unrelated stuff?
1 Thestateyest 2017-09-11
Yeah, we don't need any more pottery spinners, fuck that, man!
1 Gothmog26 2017-09-11
Your trolling needs work. There is no way in hell you're actually this stupid.
1 newprofile15 2017-09-11
Being skeptical of how stupid communists can get, cmon manz
1 EarnestNoMeta 2017-09-11
im sorry youre too stupid to realize that poor people are poor because they suck at life
1 DaYooper 2017-09-11
We all sell our labor idiot. You're a communist because your labor is worth jack shit compared to the rest of us.
1 jvwoody 2017-09-11
But it isn't, capital and labor and compliments, in addition, capital is created by a combination of capital & labor, even the machines built by craftsman in 1800 had tools(capital) to increase their productivity.
Here's a thought, maybe you should try reading an economics book that was written with ideas AFTER the Marginal Revolution in the 1870's.
Oh, so disregarding the LTV like the REST of the discipline, makes me an ancap, brilliant!
1 TotesMessenger 2017-09-11
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1 ftylerr 2017-09-11
'worked hard'
1 grungebot5000 2017-09-11
"""contributing"""
1 SethRichOrDieTryin 2017-09-11
(((society)))
1 grungebot5000 2017-09-11
you read my mind
1 KT-47 2017-09-11
t. crackhead mad engineers and doctors get nicer things than him
1 SperglockHolmes 2017-09-11
cough Bernie Sanders cough
1 HodorTheDoorHolder 2017-09-11
If I owned 10 homes I would gladly give the government any of them that I didn't need... as long as they compensated me 3x their value in accordance with eminent domain law.
1 WorldStarCroCop 2017-09-11
this but libertarionically
1 AlreadyPorchNaked 2017-09-11
To be nitpicky and pedantic, idk where you got that 3x figure. It just has to be 'just compensation' which is determined as the value of the land as you own it, not valued at the benefit to the government.
So the gov't could be turning your property into a massive complex that will be worth 10x what your lot is worth now, but that has no bearing om the valuation of jus compensation.
1 newprofile15 2017-09-11
Lol at 3x, try 1x or less depending on your lawyers.
1 HodorTheDoorHolder 2017-09-11
I literally am basing my knowledge on this from something I heard when I was a kid.
1 BarrikadeJ 2017-09-11
The worst part is, this person is probably North American, student, who hasn't started in the workforce yet, or maybe even a couple years in.
He is seeing older people(who have spent 40-50 years working) with more than him, so why not be pro-communism? Once he works for 20 years and has something that he worked for, I guarantee he isn't going to say the same thing. He'll be one of the people he is complaining about now.
1 FaygoMakesMeGo 2017-09-11
IDK, people these days are so focused on their tribe they'll probably vote themselves into the poorhouse and wonder what happened.
1 CucksLoveTrump 2017-09-11
like the blacks!
1 newprofile15 2017-09-11
Yea the blacks were pretty wealthy before your analogy definitely makes sense.
1 ThatMormonMike 2017-09-11
They've done it in Colorado, and are trying to do it in Utah and other places. Their policies priced them out of California, then they move somewhere else and vote for the same policies.
1 wow___justwow 2017-09-11
It's the timeless adage all over again.
If you're young and not a democrat you don't have a heart.
If you're old and not a republican you don't have a brain.
1 GAS_THE_KlKES 2017-09-11
TIL "heart" means giving away other people's money to your friends and yourself
1 GaymasterNacelle 2017-09-11
Sounds pretty cool, yeah.
1 hey_its_shai 2017-09-11
feel the (((bern)))
1 GaymasterNacelle 2017-09-11
Bernie Steiners.
1 sooth_ 2017-09-11
implying he won't live on NEETbux until universal income becomes a thing
1 die_rattin 2017-09-11
1 ftylerr 2017-09-11
Depends on where he's working. If he works 40-50 years in a dead-end place he'll probably end up with a lot less than his parents or older generations now. Just look at how much labor and money had to be divided between a population in the 60's vs today, it's fucking math. More people = less money for MOST of them. Some make out like bandits tho.
1 BlackTed 2017-09-11
Lol, look at his post history
1 RSStilwell 2017-09-11
Easy to see when someone has 0 life experience with the homeless or never had a job.
1 aj_thenoob 2017-09-11
Given something for free without any obligations, the owner has no responsibility to perform upkeep. Those apartments would be trashed with needles and shit in a matter of days.
1 Karmaisforsuckers 2017-09-11
You literally have to build social housing without copper wire because they will rip it out of the walls the second the front closes after the social worker leaves.
1 Clark_Savage_Jr 2017-09-11
How do you know for sure your wiring isn't worth ripping out for scrap until you actually give it a try?
1 Karmaisforsuckers 2017-09-11
They put placards on the electrical panels indicitating "NO COPPER WIRE" and shitloads of warnings with extra pictures.
1 Clark_Savage_Jr 2017-09-11
Those signs are Fake News. I bet they even used the good wire and just don't want to share.
Once the wall is open, maybe the pipes can go to the scrapper too unless it's PEX or something, then I'll just bash and batter it until there's water flooding any units below me.
1 cochnbahls 2017-09-11
I occasionally do work with USDA housing. People who live there are professional unemployables. They treat the units like shit. Treat the people trying to fix their unit like shit. Argue with the property managers about everything. Argue with their neighbors about everything. Also, they all have two cars that each cost at least three times of what mine cost. 0/10 not a fan.
1 Thot_Crusher 2017-09-11
It's funny how every person that works with the homeless said the sign was really stupid, and all the teen commies told them they're actually wrong
1 wabbit_1444 2017-09-11
Personal experience doesn't matter to them.
1 DonaldBlythe 2017-09-11
That's not a guarantee. Republican extremism is creating new communists every day. The only way to stop communism is to decimate the republican party/ideology.
1 KT-47 2017-09-11
hahahahaha- /u/DonaldBlythe -AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
1 ManhattanTransFur 2017-09-11
He's right. The best way to eradicate communists is communism.
1 LoveThisWebSite 2017-09-11
Haha imagine no possessions maaaaan
1 snappleteadrink 2017-09-11
There is a greater force at work when most of those 40-50 year olds are listless and miserable despite their wealth
1 wabbit_1444 2017-09-11
/u/specterofsandersism gimme all your tots
1 OnlyRacistOnReddit 2017-09-11
Oh /u/squeakyonion, I see you're new to communists. They don't have legitimate arguments, just a bunch of buzzwords.
1 squeakyonion 2017-09-11
I keep finding them in random places around reddit, disguising their language until you're a few responses in... then they let the buzzwords and ideological axioms creep in.
1 OnlyRacistOnReddit 2017-09-11
Yep, they pretend to not be completely insane at first and then lose it.
1 Landeyda 2017-09-11
14 - 21 year-old tries talking about the real world. Ends predictably.
1 SpectroSpecter 2017-09-11
It's a real knee-slapper when they bring up how homeless people are a burden on the system, so making them non-homeless would fix it.
Problem: Homeless people are costing the taxpayers money by receiving free shit without contributing.
Solution: Give them more free shit.
-le confused black gent macro-
1 DownvotesAgendas 2017-09-11
I hate commies, so I won't downvote you, but I will comment to say this is an agenda post
1 Thot_Crusher 2017-09-11
Communism is the absolute best ideology if your goal is dead commies
1 almagest 2017-09-11
TIL I'm a communist?
1 grungebot5000 2017-09-11
What if I told you that everyone arguing for or against that is a piece of shit
1 Chin_Up_Chick 2017-09-11
This sounds like something 14 year old me would say.
1 RainyRedux 2017-09-11
Imagine actually ironically being a socialist
Like, the absolute state of your life
1 ____________13 2017-09-11
1 PussMonster_ 2017-09-11
K