I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. Not everyone has your subtle parodical gifts.
Just one time, for this old man, repeat your question. I will attend.
What is this, a “no, u!” post? I read the quote. It doesn’t say thing one about mergers. It does say that corporations should be handing over their profits to the populace or, failing that, the state. That’s communism, plain and simple.
Which is unsurprising, since Lenin was a communist, seeking a communistic agenda, as opposed to whatever *you *think he was talking about.
The question in question wasn’t directed to you but lalenin, based on his personal experiences. If you want to speculate on what happens to innovators in Cuba, be my guest.
What is it about
(nor I might add, to be asked** on this thread**) that you don’t get?
Why it’s your call to make. Repeat it a hundred more times, if you like. It won’t make any difference.
He was talking about the fact that Capital, by its nature and its historical record, coalesces (merges if you will) into monopolies which control govts and populaces and that these accretions of wealth are global in reach to the great detriment of humanity as whole.
Not in the text you’re quoting he’s not. Are you trying to convince me that you’re experiencing an altered state of reality? Because your “interpretation” bears no resemblance to the Lenin quote you provided. None. At all.
Yeah, and go ahead and claim I’m the one not reading him correctly again. That’ll fly.
Which, seeing as how this hasn’t happened, doesn’t make him a visionary, simply wrong. Generally, being wrong is ok…except when you kill millions and your nutty philosophies lead to a reign of terror that continues to bump along, killing 10’s of millions more until it finally crashes and burns nearly a century later.
-XT
Nobody cares what he was talking about. They care about the results of his actions. Look, if you want to push your philosophy, why don’t you either argue using your own words, or quote someone who isn’t a mass murderer? It’s not like there are no non-murderous left wing people to choose from. You are in the same position as someone trying to argue for a stronger Presidency by quoting Hitler in support.
Y’know, it’s not like you were talking about monopolies or whatever, and somebody else brought up Lenin, and tried to pull the old “You know who else didn’t like monopolies?” gambit. You’re the one who wanted to talk about how Lenin had it all figured out.
I don’t know what you thought would happen–that we’d all go, “Whoah, Lenin thought that? Huh, must be more to this Lenin guy than we thought. What else can you tell us about him, he sounds like he knew his stuff.”
I guess we’re so stupidly provincial that we can’t get over our disgust of Lenin to realize that we’re just falling for the lies of the corporatist fascists. Except you should have expected we’d be that stupidly provincial–you should have planned on it–and therefore you clearly shouldn’t have brought up Lenin in the first place. Because Lenin, you know, poisons the well. Because he’s a, you know, mass-murdering totalitarian dictator. But you’re the guy who poisoned that well.
So next time, ixnay on the Eninlay.
Let me try one more time. Seriously and respectfully I think I see the source of our disagreement.
At the time (1916) there was no communist state. In the quote in question and in Imperialism in general, Lenin is making a well-cited pitch to socialists in the large capitalist states that their rationalization that, whatever their imperfections, monopolies produce cheaper/better consumer goods while paying a fair share of taxes to the state had not been borne out by history.
There are a good many people in this country who still accept this myth as fact even as they watch the world go to pieces around them. Libertarians and pubs say that the global markets are free because it allows big corporations to compete unimpeded by silly govt regulations to everyone’s benefit.
How’s that been working out for you? $3 gas (for the present), Walmart, a chance to choose between corporate sponsored Presidents every four years and our ongoing involvement in two illegal wars , draining our resources and enriching the arms industry. And don’t get me started on Wall Street or pollution.
Dems mostly agree but express some reservations. To them, there have been serious corporate abuses of power and they say what we need is better oversight and regulation of these behemoths. Of course many of the regulators are fuck-buddies with the boards of directors which they sat before they “left” the private sector to enter “public” service.
How’s that been working out for you?
OK, pretend I wrote it. I might as well have. Let’s pretend that instead of attributing this pamphlet to (dare I say his name?) Lenin, the man whose name makes one go blind, I had claimed authorship myself.
Easier now?
Adjusted for inflation, is that better or worse than during the peak of Lenin’s power?
Of course, what I said was
Ask yourself what your world might look like when, as it must eventually, gas hits $6, $10.
You may find this relevant, I do.
American Apparently with Jon Stewart.
I guess I like his nailing of the governmental political charade which our corporate consolidated media presents to the American people as news and basis for choice.
Hmmmm. 70% of AP want this according to this poll and 70% of the AP don’t want that according to that poll. Should I go with this or that? Democracy, corporate style.
I get “IT”. So how do we fix “IT”…
Are we talking about what the real world might look like, or your fantasy world? If the real world, then I expect that a world of $6/gallon gas won’t look a lot different than a world of $3/gallon gas, except that more alternatives will start to be available because they become economically viable (free market and all that). Other than that, it won’t look much different. We know this because they are already paying that much (well, more) for gas in Europe, and they haven’t yet descended into whatever howling hell you envision. At $10/gallon (which I seriously doubt we’ll EVER see) then you’ll have whatever alternatives win the great alternatives battle for supremacy (that free market thingy again) will start to dominate and wholesale replace the current system…in fact, my guess is that by the time gas gets even near that price it will mostly be obsolete as a personal fuel source (which, with the drop in demand, will stabilize the price much lower in any case).
That’s because the world just doesn’t work the way Lenin et al THOUGHT it did…which sort of gets back to exactly how visionary he/they were. In short…not very.
-XT
Thanks, a breath of fresh air. I’ll get back to you.
Whose fantasy world? There is no immediate alternative for oil in all its guises (energy, plastics, fertilizers, etc) and it will only become economically “feasible” to produce them when it’s too fucking late. The free marketeers are only interested in short term profits at the immediate expense of humanity and the environment. These are the people running our govt and who make and implement our foreign and domestic policies.
Of course, you may disagree.
Well…yeah. Of COURSE I disagree. There are plenty of alternatives out there already. Mostly they are simply not economically viable at $2.70/gallon gas (or even $3-4/gallon gas). However, once the price of oil reaches certain levels (and stays there) then it opens up more alternatives. Other, less accessible and more costly to develop oil deposits for one thing (tar sands and shale oil).
:rolleyes: Seriously, your rhetoric is ridiculous. The free market IS the people. It’s the people making choices about what they want and what they are willing to pay for it.
If you don’t understand this basic concept then you have as little understanding of the system and how it works as Lenin had.
Uhuh. Sure they are. Even if that were the case (which it has some grains of truth but misses the mark), I’m thinking I’d MUCH rather have the people we currently have running the government than a bunch of murdering madmen who not only are bloody handed totalitarians but who ALSO don’t have a clue about how economics or production works, since they managed to both kill millions AND to drive their economy completely tits up. THAT’S the only tits that Lenin et al are…TITS UP.
Well, there are alternatives, but they aren’t feasible because they either cost more than our current hydrocarbon based fuels, or they are marginally cheaper but the capital costs are so high to implement them that it would take a LONG time to get a decent ROI. We are already starting to see the market bringing early adoption type products to the market though, and there are a lot of companies (and governments) that are investing research dollars into various technologies.
They aren’t doing it for the love of humanity or to help the peasants and workers…they are doing it because the company or group that comes up with the next adopted system will make more money than the gods. Which is why they will succeed, while Lenin et al were complete and total failures.
-XT