I would think we could make a priority of automating these kind of tasks so nobody would have to.
Well. That’s a good question. Another question would be who will clean the toilets and pick up the garbage in a capitalist society? There’s already people who do it? Well why do they do it? Because they find it’s worth it for the pay they recieve?
Seriously though there are a number of issues. First we wouldn’t jump right into a socialist society. There would be a period of transition. Maybe we could pay people who clean toilets more than other jobs, so much more that it’s worthwhile for people to do. Then we could work on automating much of the process. Already there are self cleaning toilets. Then we could arrange it so that no one has to do it full time. We could have it so everyone has to clean a toilet at least once in their life or maybe just once a month. With socialism, a main aspect of it is the people deciding for themselves. I can make some grand plan for how we will clean the toilets. But, maybe everyone will come together and come up with something better. I have faith that several thousand or million people can come up with a better plan for getting peopole to take out garbage than I can.
A otkuda ty?
I gotta get some work done instead of hanging around this thread for the rest of the day (which is not to say I’m not enjoying myself!) so I’ll just throw this out one more time:
Russia, Eastern Europe, China, No. Korea, and Cuba are not, nor have they ever been (with the exception of Russia, briefly, after 1917) either Communist or Socialist. You can’t build it in one country or one region. They are all state capitalist, in which the state assumes the role of boss and manager of industry, and there is the same, or greater, level of exploitation and lack of democracy in the workplace and in the streets than capitalism, and the drive for profit over need is still very much in force.
oldscratch - hail and well met. Your contributions are more than welcome on this thread. If I’d have known you were of the same idea, I would have pluralized ‘Bastard’. laughs
My Dearest Commie Bastard,
After reading this
I’m not sure you’re really stating the merits of socialism as opposed to another social structure or just advocating that individuals develop a stronger sense of social responsibility. If there were a “conscious effort of the majority in running society”, capitalism or just about any other socioeconomic structure would work perfectly, wouldn’t it? Are you convinced that, in a perfect world where everyone is working to ensure the success of a society, socialism would produce a greater benefit for society than capitalism?
Dear Commie Bastard:
Do you think such persons as Thomas Edison would have been so prolific/succesful without the possibility they would have profited from their inventions/innovations?
V.
That’s * ot kuda ty? *, and I think that Nikita, Leonid, Joseph and a host of others would disagree with you. I think they thought they were running a very communist state all the while they were building socialism. The trouble was, all the materials required to build socialism kept being re-routed to build communist member’s datchas.
So you think that socialism will only work on a global scale then? Need to drown all those capitalist pigs in the oceans before we can establish a new world order. How very optimistic and misguidedly sad of you.
Of course I ws simpluy using toilets and garbage as examples of undesirable jobs. i think it is interesting that in s socialist society you would advocate paying someone more to do these jobs. How much more would be interesting thing to determine. I suppose a committee would get together and decide. You have to be careful, because you don’t want to pay the garbage colllector’s too much, otherwise you either incent people away from such things as teaching and mediine to become garbage collectors, or you create the very inequalities that socialism professes to despise.
However, the most interesting thing is that you don’t really need a committe to try and figure this stuff out, because there is already a fairly decent self-regulating system that does, Capitalism.
As for automating every undesirtable, dangerous or otherwise unhealthy task. Who is going to do that? While those resources and brilliant minds are trying to figure out how to make trash collection automated, they are not spending time figuring out how to make our cars safer or cure AIDS.
Yes these issues also come up in Capitalism, the difference is that Capitalism uses the efficient method of prices to help determine the proper allocation of scarce resources (including individual talent). Socialism has no such tool.
**
No it would not. The problem with capitalism is that you have everything being driven by profit. As long as profit is the driving motive behind society you will have all of the problems you see now. Why? Because you have a minority who are trying to preserve their profits. This means not giving away food to those who neeed it, sponsoring war in the fight over rescources, using racism to devide those who work for them. The minority will never give up their power willingly. Thus the need for a socialist revolution.
**
yes. Because under socialism you have the majority running everything for the majorities benefit. That is impossible under capitalism.
I can’t wait until this topic series starts getting contributors like those at The Onion: Ask A Bee, Ask A Gut-Shot Policeman, Ask A Faulknerian Idiot Man-Child…
What is the communist view of people who are able to obtain great wealth not through owning any means of production, but by their own talents, such as artists, entertainers, and sports stars? They are workers, that is, they don’t get their wealth by taking part of someone else’s production, like factory owners do. Do communists in general object to their wealth, or do different communists have different views on this?
You sort of answered one of my questions already in GQ (it was asked by Sunspace, although I had wondered the same thing), but I am still unclear. That is, when does a personal belonging become a means of production? When it is used for production, I guess, but how does this change occur? The example in GQ was about a personal computer used for creative purposes, so I understand your answer there, but let me think of another example. If I make shoes with my personal tools, both the shoes and tools are probably still my personal belongings. If I hire someone to help me, are these tools now “means of production” to which my employee has a claim of ownership? Or do all workers in society have a claim?
**
Actually I was only speaking of paying more during the transition. Also, it was only one a several possiblties. You would also pay researchers and scientists more in the begining.
**
That’s true. However, I’m not naive enough to think that all inequalities can be leveled in one fell swoop. Hence the need for slowly lessening them.
**
Is that why there aren’t enough techers in California for all the children? Yeah, capitalism works real great. :rolleyes:
Is that also why under capitalism you have people starving in Indonesia while we have a food surplus in the United states? Or why we spend billions on weapons we don’t need at the cost of medicine and health care. Yeah, capitalism wors real great. :rolleyes:
**
It takes different kinds of minds to automate trash collection and cure AIDS. I’m pretty sure there wouldn’t be a conflict there. 
I do understand what you are saying though. However under Capitalism, we frequnetly don’t allocate the necessary rescources to figuring out these problems. Why? Because there is npt enough profit to be made. Genentech, a few years back, created a process that could eliminate 90% of mosquitos in tropical areas. Why wasn’t it marketed and released? People in those areas didn’t have enough money to spend. The truth is there will always be a massive ammount of items and cures and inventions to work on. Deciding which ones are important would be an vital task of a socialist government. However, they would have many more rescources to throw at the problem than any capitalist society.
As i stated earlier, the method of prices is anything but efficient. Yuo have competing teams of scientists working towards the same goals instead of cooperating. What sense is that? And socialism does have such a tool. It’s called central planning. Something capitalist governments and corporations practice all the time.
Hmm. How about this:
Under theoretical socialism you have the majority running everything for the majorities benefit. That is impossible under observed capitalism.
Now, under theoretical capitalism, the owners of enterprise, because they are motivated by profit, would work to establish the best possible conditions for their workers so as to ensure continued productivity. Thus, the needs of the majority would dictate the policies of the leaders. Is this end result somehow different in a thoretical socialist society?
**
OK. Let’s see if I can explain this to your liking. There are two major forces in the world. That of the capitalists or bougouise (although not everyone is a capitalist), and that of the workers or proletartiat. The capitalists control the means of production, the proletariats are forced to sell their labor power to the capitalists. When a revolution happens, these two forces will be on opposing sides. Not to mean that some won’t cross over.
Of course not everyone fits so nicely. We also have the lumpen-proletariat ( a rather untrustworthy segment of society made up of the unemployed, criminals, some would say students, etc), while many are quite oppressed, they lack the organization of workers and frequently hold reactionary or backwards ideas. The perfect example would be a pimp, one who is technically “oppressed” but not someone you would want to be fighting alongside.
You also have the petty-bougouise (this includes small business owners, managers, and some would say students). This group of people is caught in between the two forces and is pulled and pushed both ways. The petty-bougouise has always been the class basis for fascism, many have joined communist causes too. They are frequently quite conservative in their outlook. They have a feeling of superiority over workers.
And lets’ not forget the peasents. When the communist manifesto was written and when the revolution in russia took place, this was a large group. Now they are virtually non-existant. Don’t worry to much about them.
There are others who fall outside of this.
Artists are artists. They are small enough to be insignificant. Many, from past experience, have been quite liberal and have fallen in with the communists. There is something daring and exciting and artistic about socialist revolution. 
Actors fall into the category of workers. They have unions go on strike etc. FAMOUS actors simply bacome the rich bargining with the rich. They have no class interest. That doesn’t mean they couldn’t fall in with communists or capitalists. They just have nothing in particular pulling them either way. Sorts stars are also workers. Sure they are paid alot. But, it’s nothing compared to what the owners are paid. They still have to deal with a lot of the same problems as other workers. Bad managers, lousy conditions, work injuries, etc. As communists we should support them in times when they strike.
No they are still personal products. To illistrate the point. During a revolution, we will not go around nationalising small bookstores. Nothing much will probably change in the way they are operated, at least not at first. By hiring someone to help you, you do not become a capitalist. You simply become petty-bougouise.
This is somewhat similar to what happened in CUBA. You, can see what happened there. The problem is that that enterprise would still need to compete with other enterprises around the world. They need to make a profit. I don’t have time to go into it here, but there is a tendency called the “falling rate of profit”. It has to do with productivity and such. Maybe Olentzero can talk of it more. What it means is that a company that established the best conditions for the workers wouldn’t show enough profit, they would start having to take more and more away from the workers in order to grow and compete with other enterprises. Soon, they would be nothing more than a normal business. In CUBA they were forced to compete with the rest of the world. As such they must exploit the workers, keep wages down, etc.
Dear Commie Bastard;
After taking a look at the link to the International Socialist Organization in your OP, my questions are:
- Do you advocate revolution as they apparently do?
- Do you think this would be a bloodless revolution?
- Assuming that it would not be a bloodless revolution, which IMHO would be a pretty safe bet, what percentage of the population would be an acceptable loss?
**
No, otkuda is one word in Russian.
But doesn’t this make socialism/communism impossible at this time? Marx postulated that societies must go through other socio/economic forms (feudalism, then capitalism, etc.) before communism can be successfully attained. Since a large portion, if not the majority, of the world’s population has not even attained capitalism yet, aren’t you and the ISO just wasting your time? After all, the rationale given for apologists during Soviet rule/after its fall was that Russia was a peasant feudal society at the time of the October Revolution, and thus wasn’t ready for Communism. Marx himself had Germany in mind, not Russia, when he wrote Das Kapital and the Manifesto.
In other words, shouldn’t the ISO disband, and have your grandkids restart the process in fifty years, when more/most of the world will have achieved capitalism, and is ready for socialism?
V.
oldscratch
I am not going ot go over point by point because clearly we are not going to agree.
I do wonder why in one part of your post you discuss how the governemnt misallocates resources to military spenind instead of medicine, etc. Yet later you decide to use the governemnet as an example of central planning that socialism would requirte.
Other then that we must agree to disagree.
Although I am right
oldscratch
I am not going ot go over point by point because clearly we are not going to agree.
I do wonder why in one part of your post you discuss how the governemnt misallocates resources to military spenind instead of medicine, etc. Yet later you decide to use the governemnet as an example of central planning that socialism would require.
Other then that we must agree to disagree.
Although I am right