“i don’t buy into that tired old argument: without incentive for improvement, people aren’t creative or motivated.”
I didn’t make that argument.
“if everyone is equally involved with and committed to improving production so that more is accomplished in less time and with less resources,”
Production isn’t just a thing that happens. Somebody comes up with the idea, and it takes a lot of sacrifice and ressources to get it happening, ain’t cheap. In US, it’s billionaire entrepreneurs, in China it’s a beaurocrat. But somebody’s gotta do it, or you’re Cuba.
“like, what am i missing here? some bullshit about social darwinism? this is the nonsense the ruling classes have been peddling philosophically to rationalize their ‘right’ to power for the last 2000 years. wait, darwinism is only a few centuries old. you know what i mean; same shit, different name. it’s been part of the philosophical furniture since thrasymachus spit that shit in the republic. yeah no shit, einstein. might is right. but the moment the working classes rise up and take power, it’s suddenly ‘reactionary’ or ‘resentful’, not ‘mighty’. bollocks. and first of fucking all, the only reason the arstocratic classes gained power over the worker/soldier type was because they were able to brainwash them ‘philosophically’; ‘you need us, we represent god’s kingdom and order, socrates and plato and aquinas and the gang said so… so we’ll do the legislating over here in the castle and you guys go work in the field, mmkay?’”
I addressed all this elsewhere. In a nutshell, as a famous Venezuelan dictator once said, not one or the other but the complete opposite.
“hey man, when in rome, etc.”
Ok, so what’s the fucking problem with THAT?
Do you truly think Zappa woulda made any of that shit under a communist regime?
Here
I’m sure you didn’t read any of it considering the lame ass video you posted as a response. Go ahead and give that a try now.
i think that’s rather dismissive. i knew an emo kid once in the mental hospital who’s childhood was so fucked up, the fact that he hadn’t already killed somebody, was a miracle. kid’s dad hammered a 16 penny nail into his left ear, and that was the least of his problems. this was the kind of kid you looked at and said ‘this is no pussy… this kid has the internal strength and resolve of a fucking stoic monk.’
we can’t always judge a person by only what they do, but also what they don’t do. some people are pushed to such limits by things beyond their control that, had they really been ‘pussies’, they’da already snapped. but we don’t see that. one would have to ‘walk in my shoes’, so to speak, to get a feel for the measure of strength one really has.
but yeah i get it. lotta the shit that depresses kids today is trivial and many of those emos are a joke. but there are some who really are on the precipice. i knew several in my youth when i was in the cuckoos nest.
That kid’s emo sounds circumstantial.
I grew up in the age of emo. Don’t try to tell me what the kind of kid that listened to my chemical romance was like.
Btw, notwithstanding their ability to perfect any production process, give me ONE innovation that came out of China?
one common running theme throughout these ill advised critiques of communism i see everywhere, is a misunderstanding of what ‘wealth’ is, and where it comes from. i seem to remember a short exchange between me and your old kung-fu master, fixed cross, at POD about this.
anything that has ‘economic value’ in a system of modern property relations is appropriated in some way. i’m talking about a system in which people harvest, produce, and trade material goods either through equal exchange or through a monetary medium (with credit or not). we’re not talking about a group of scattered, isolated villages in which people lay claim to a patch of land or a river or a bush.
in this modern system, you total gains either equal exactly what you produce yourself, or the profit you’ve made from exchanging something somebody else made. so all these investors and entrepreneurs you’re talking about fit into one or the other of these options; if one such person involves only his own gains in financing his venture, he’s not a capitalist. if he uses money he’s made from some exchange involving the products of someone else’s labor to finance his venture, he’s lost nothing, and is therefore taking no risk, if he fails. why not? because he’s not putting his own gains, the wealth generated from his own labor, into the venture. the money he’s risking isn’t his because he didn’t produce it… he merely appropriated it. that is, he followed and acted out a privilege given to him by the specific laws of property relations he is involved in.
all this bullshit about ‘omg the responsibility and risk the capitalist has to take, blah blah,’ is just that; bullshit. of course, he might lose money… but nothing he did in the first place generated that money, so he cannot be said to ‘lose’ something that wasn’t his to begin with.
you got me. i didn’t read it. i ‘skimmed’ it though. anyway, i thought it was another one of these ‘omg marxism preaches equality and that’s just crazy!’ posts.
man i’m telling you the number of misunderstandings of marxist theory is so extensive in these forums it’s like walking through a mine field. you can’t even be sure it’s safe to click on a post because the fucking thing might blow your computer up, it’s such nonsense. that’s why i only skimmed it. i was afraid to keep it up for longer than a few seconds. didn’t want my computer to crash.
To the first thing, I gotta say it seems like a jargon heavy way to avoid addressing what I done said, which is that somebody COMES UP with the idea for the production or production process. Not risk or responsibility or anything.
Regarding all the rest, you seem to have me all figured out. But if you ever feel like addressing me instead of preexisting positions you already have formed in your mzzind, I always thought you were a pretty smart dude and not a pussy, so I’ll be waiting.
how about i don’t go googling for shit like this and instead just say a few things that’ll wrap this argument up pretty quickly.
first, all hitherto ‘revolutions’ fell victim to two factors that significantly effected their stability and growth. most, if not all, were incredibly premature. successful revolutions must occur within a technologically, moderately advanced society. china’s was a disaster for this reason. a botched peasant revolt that backfired because of mao’s rush to modernize the country without sufficient resources and technology in place. so we don’t count china. russia; an industrial proletariat revolution and therefore better conditioned for a possible success… and we saw that in russia’s rapid growth in the cold year wars to come. the little satellite communist countries seized up for the same reasons; lack of development and industry. i could go on, but the important has been made. communist revolution requires very delicate circumstances to work, and it is nearly impossible for a single country to develop substantially while in isolation. trotsky and lenin knew this… that it must be international or it’ll tank.
one of the biggest reasons why the west got the jump was not because of it’s totally fabulous ideology, but because it’s enemies were relatively underdeveloped by comparison, and they left the gate prematurely.
but look. what drives innovative ideas is not what can be gained from them. if i have an idea - let’s say that little plastic cap on the ends of your shoe laces - it doesn’t enter my brain because i know i could get rich from inventing it. rather, i have the idea independently of what i might gain from it, and then i say ‘hey, i could make mad bank from this idea.’
ah, then it isn’t the social or political circumstances that encourage or prohibit innovative thinking. it can’t be. you’re not going to not picture in your head a cooking utensil that dices onions because you live in a high-rise apartment in moscow in 1982. where you are has nothing to do with the generation of ideas as such. you either have the idea or you don’t, and what you can get from that idea is irrelevant until later.
One of these days when you can smell her pussy just walking by.
Nice text Rengel.
Fuck you for keeping this site interesting enough to drop by now and then.
okayyy okayyy, I deserved that. I started this thing with the kung-fu comment. I accept that. I’m gonna let you live this time.
The only thing I object is this: Capitalists dont argue with theoreticians. They simply outwit them and live the ideal. That is to say, Capitalism needs stronger arguments than argumenting. It needs Tesla, Microsoft, Disney, it needs dreams and billionaires, dreams made by people who could live their dreams as a result. Capitalism is like something that strikes a human being like an affliction, a mental state.
You cant stop someone like that very easily. It is a psychological condition rather than an economic model.
People who are unafflicted by it couldnt see it in any other way than as misplaced, wrongful, even people who are afflicted by it often make efforts to show others another way, a way out, a way of not having to go through the terrible thing called wealth they have to swim through each day trying to find some place not already filled with it.
One problem that is really a setup to a reconciliation of capitalist with capitalism; people who have spent all their imagination on a company that has made them eleven figure fortunes, have no imagination left to decide what to do with all that money. Virtually none of these remarkable geniuses has done anything very cool with a couple of dozen of billions. Whereas that should be very doable.
This is a sign Capitalism is still in an early stage. Were only just coming to the point where innocent wealth can feel itself free to exist, and to expend itself like health.
Wealth has to attain health - Communists have always pressed this point. If it is simply the challenge to capitalists that the Russians caused it to be for a good part of a century then this is enough to justify it ten fold. Took us to space. Showed us that God isnt all that obvious. It enhanced mankinds experience of power in ways Capitalism simply could never afford. It was the moment at which it took hold in Russia; it wasnt a premodern Anschluss of the peasant class to the bourgeoisie, but a deeply informed, radically uncompromising campaign on all fronts just at the moment when the state was ripe for industrialization. It was, in the end, an Enterprise on behalf of consciousness. About power. It showed what Capital could do if it was really challenged. It was, as it were, the shadow which appeared before the Sunlight to cast it. I dont know if thats already a metaphor.
Communism was, in short, also such an affliction. It was perhaps even more impressive what people pulled off on it. But Im not sure sure about the anger, it is also natural for a Communist to be working from a position of privilege in the more human, circumstantial, familiar sense. Happy people tend to make good leaders. And if one thing Communism conducts well it is leadership. Capitalism and leadership… mweh. This is its beauty. Enterpreneurship into the wild, so as to be free of leadership and live on ones own terms.
A captain isnt “leader” of the boat. That would be funny. He would have to be leader of the sea, to control what the boat does.
Not even in terms of nations; the US isnt “leader” of capitalism. Its the champion by most metrics. And the biggest loser by some others.
I think the Netherlands are sort of leading in the EU. The lack of ideology here has been conductive. Spinoza built a great system, where all things are infinite because there isnt anything in the exact same qualia that limits its existence. This works well for a small country. Also it gives understanding of why water, in qigong, follows metal in the proper order. And leads to Green, is the color of anga.
And the color of money.
I contend that Capitalists are more driven by rage than Communists. Rage. Communism is more a “No sorry. We’re standing here now.” and then a show of teeth.
Marx had one thing right and that is that people might be sheep at first but when they are together they turn to sharks.
Dictatorship of the proletariat, thats whats happening now. Thats Lil Wayne with Justin Beeber. Thats what poor people have desired into being.
Shark shark sharks
Marx Marx Marx
charm me this riddle
who plays the fiddle
So the best system hasnt been invented yet. People who are principled dont have much of a place in Capitalism yet. Or anymore. But really Id say yet. Because, globalism. Inevitably the world is becoming a whole, a “land” of sorts. Its not an ideology, it is a destiny. Weve got to prepare Capitalism for this destiny. It can not be at odds with the fundamental power of a man to stand in the way and run his mouth. Because that power will beat all other powers in the end. The last man standing will be a Communist. Capitalism cant thrive off of one man by his lonesome.
One thing Capital tends to do throughout time is to isolate the owner as his wealth increases. As perfectly explicable in terms of envy as this is, it shows that the true relaxation is only affordable in a state of shared wealth. Or shared poverty for that matter. But relaxation in luxury, thats tricky. Excitement in luxury is easy. To relax in it requires generations of training, and is what aristocracy has its codes and absurd games for.
Relax in that it doesnt make any sense, but is just, deep down, so nice that it is quite wicked.
There is no aristocratic tradition that hasnt distinguished itself in some especially pointless cruelty.
The aristocracy of the chosen Communists forms no exception. For if he was a simple man at birth, by his burial Lenin had become a pharaoh.
So this all in mind; what is the most relaxing way to own wealth? Like, if most people were wealthy, what … would… what kind of world would we have?
What would be going on?
How would it be if you stepped outside?
Would that be a thing people do?
Most people can’t be wealthy cuz. The sooner y’all commies accept this, the sooner we can avoid y’alls devolution into fascism. Which is inevitable in a communist that doesn’t have the hard fucking stone of a Russian or a Chinaman. The lack of ego that is not due to spiritual evolution, but having weathered enough bad weather.
Only few can be wealthy because relativity theory.
“you’re not going to not picture in your head a cooking utensil that dices onions because you live in a high-rise apartment in moscow in 1982.”
And yet nobody did.
Think about this, because this is the greatest fallacy standing between you and political enlightenment. If you are coming up with ideas just for the whatever drives a good idea and not cashmoney, congratulations, you are a philosopher. Only philosophy exists in that arena. And maybe science. Sure, science too. Psychology I guess… Anyway, nothing conducive to mass production.
And yes, communism is far more resilient than capitalism. It is made of older stuff.
This is not the argument against it.
I can’t post right now because my country is in a state of emergency. Miguel and Felipe are coming with plans to murder, rape, steal, sell drugs, and do landscaping under the table. Our security level has been upgraded to the highest level, defcon Juan, and all Americans have been instructed by executive order to travel to Texas and help hold the boarder. It might be a while before I can respond. My country needs my full attention right now.
Drama queen…