It appears that Communism wants to say that you can create new things. You can build a better mousetrap, and you can own that mousetrap, but you don’t own the idea. but once built, the idea isn’t yours anymore. Intellectual property is less yours than air.
So, you have an idea for a magnetic hovercraft, and you thought up a prototype in your garage. This cost you a lot of effort. Now, you’d like to make a lot of these magnetic hovercraft, but you don’t have the labor resources to do so. What do you do? You hire people. Oh, wait. You can’t. That would be exploiting someone else’s labor. I guess you’re just stuck making all these magnetic hovercraft quite inefficiently in your small garage by yourself, with no one to keep you company. (Communists are against the family.)
Wow! I didn’t know that the family I love is simply a tool of capitalism! Thank you, Marx, for opening my mind.
I already figured that, but would they let them leave? A skilled person can lose all his wealth and just make more. Which is why so many from the Eastern bloc fled to the West, leaving everything behind.
Not to mention that liberty is a wonderful thing even if you’re dirt poor. I’d rather be free and live under an overpass than have all the material comforts I could want and be a slave.
To say Lenin was nothing more than a murderer and a thug is a bit simplistic for my tastes. Was he those things? Without question.
He was also a first rate politican, inspiring orator and writer of no little skill. Not a good man, by any reasonable standards but certainly a more complex one than you suggest.
For what it’s worth Kerensky was hardly a saint either.
Perhaps I was unclear, What I meant was that in a historical context I find it hard to accept the view that Lenin was merely a murderer and a thug, that doesn’t give the full picture.
I’m no fan of Lenin’s but surely one can acknowledge his skills and historical importance?
Yes, I was just getting emotional. As I’ve posted earlier, my parents escaped Communist oppression. I understand your point if I just detach myself a little.
What does it matter if I’m working for the State or working for Bob Johnson, CEO of MegaCorp? A person still has to work. The policies of the State or MegaCorp will still serve to protect the greater good of the State or the corporation, not my individual interests and goals.
Marxisms goal of a “classless” society is impossible (unless by classless you mean “everyone is poor”) since there will always be some stratification of people by intellegence, skills, or authority.
That’s one of those statements that sounds good until you think about it for awhile. Would you actually rather live like a homeless person than be a well cared for slave? Isn’t that the choice 99% of the world makes when they get up for work in the morning? You have to go to a place every day, when and where they tell you. Do everything that is asked of you. In exchange, they will provide you with the means to feed, clothe and house yourself. It’s not quite slavery but it is a big infringement on your personal freedom. The alternative, of course, is to live under a piece of cardboard in a subway station (with 100% freedom).
In any event, I would rather make a decent living working as some billionares wage-slave than live under a bridge.
And if my option is to have the same standard of living working in a Marxist colective or some big corporate office, then who cares?
Working voluntarily for a wage isn’t slavery. It’s exchanging one thing of value for another. It is trade. Slavery isn’t trade. A slave is a possession, like a dog or a computer.
That is true. The point I am trying to make is that while we are technically free to work where we please (or not work at all), we are still bound to the system, whether it is capitalist, marxist or evil ant overlord-ist. All things considered, I think we would all choose to work in a system that maximized our personal freedoms. Those freedoms include having the mobility to work where we can in whatever career we choose. I don’t get the feeling a marxist economy allows that.
Bingo. Exactly my point about the blurring of the lines. Back in the day, people didn’t have a lot of choices about what they could and could not do. They didnt’ have oppurtunities to change or go elsewhere. If you are a peasant farmer…you farmed. You were tied to the land. If you worked at a factory, then you most likely worked at that same factory all your life. If you were a miner, same. You were tied to your job by the lack of other oppurtunity.
The situation today is like nothing Marx or Engels could have imagined. The OP is basically living in a fantasy world of the past. The revolution ALREADY happened…and is spreading. The revolution was social democracy, or socialist/capitalism, and its spread throughout Europe (and to the ex-communist states in Eastern Europe and Russia), through America, to Asia. Its making inroads into China, who will probably eventually fold their communist hand when the old men of the party finally die off. The key question is…WHY is socialist/Capitalism spreading throughout the world…and NOT Maxist/Lennist communism? Want to take a shot at THAT, Sandino?
Also, please TRY and back up some of your more incredible claims with something more than retoric, hm? If you put forth something as fact (say, like the ‘fact’ that “Actually, it is quite correct. It was only the “fear of god” instilled in the hearts of the capitalists that finally prompted them to give women the right to vote. The USSR was the first major state to grant full political equality to women. The U.S. jumped on the bandwagon so as not to lose too many propaganda points.”) I’m not talking about quoting from either Marx, Lennin or Engels either…I’m talking about some FACTS here. Per the example, cite some sources showing the in fact America WAS influenced to grant sufferage to women because of the influence of Russia granting sufferage to their women. Cite that in fact the sufferage movement for women was not happening PRIOR to the Russian revolution. I’d also love a cite showing that communist style industries are more efficient than capitalist style industries on a production basis…hell, on ANY basis. It seems to fly in the face of reality, but why don’t you give us some solid cites that prove its so?
No need to; Sandino is saying what I would have said, for the most part anyway. Sure, I have some disagreements with him/her on a couple of points, but that doesn’t mean I feel the need to set myself up as the voice of “the one true Marxism” against Sandino’s arguments in this debate. It’s high time there was another voice from the radical left around here!
Surely The legacy of Lenin is Stalin? And It doesn’t get much more damning than that.
Given Stalin it is impossible to argue that Lenin was good for Russia. That said with the benefit of hindsight It’s hard to see anyone who was espicially good for Russia at the time.
Nicholas brought the revolution on himself, Kerensky wasn’t up to the job, neither was Chernovs mob and The proto-fascism of Kolchack and Denikin is hardly attractive.
Of course if they’d got out of the war right after the feburary Revolution things might of been different but saving that it’s hard to see how disaster could have been avoided.
Olentzero, could you take a shot at rationally explaining your views on why, empirically, it appears that social-democracy seems to be thriving (and spreading) under a modified capitalist system, while communism seems to be dieing out, a failed experiment?
Actually, it probably has more to do with Marxism’s abysmal human rights and economic record.
Are you alleging that Stalin or Khrushchev were subject to recall at any time?
I’ll give you credit - at least you are up front with your commitment to mass murder.
The problem with your plans, of course, is that in the US and most of Western Europe, the bourgeousie constitutes an absolute majority, and we don’t take kindly to attempts by to rob and murder us.
Really? The invasion of Poland by Stalin was part of the counter-revolution? The purges of the Army? The engineered famines in the Ukraine?
Sorry, not true.
It was the “vote” in the Soviet Union that was largely cosmetic and meaningless. Using the term “the right to vote” in the USSR is a misnomer, since the vote of the average Soviet citizen meant nothing to who was ruling that dark and bloody nation.
Although you are correct that Soviet women had full equality with Soviet men. All slaves are roughly equal.
Really?
Shall I dig up the cites contrasting North and South Korea, or East and West Germany?
Here you have simply taken leave of reality.
Well, that was a devastating rebuttal. If by “devastating” you mean “mendacious” or “idiotically wrong”.
Free and open discussion? In the Soviet Union?
Please tell me you’re kidding. Or do a little research on the term samizdat.
Anyone else get the feeling that someone is channeling Chumpsky?
I think this is a strong indication that any egalitarian scheme will necessarily be totaltarian in practice, and force the creation of a power class in order to combat those that occur naturally.
IMO the only practical ideal is having a welfare “floor” so no one falls through the cracks of society, and enforcing equality of opportunity (within reason). This should enable relative mobility, making class distinctions more abstract than real.
With you, I think we are in or at least approaching a time when class distinctions are no longer primarily externally imposed as they may have been when communists were originally writing.