I think you’re taking those demarcations too far.
Communism is literally “communal decision making”, which perfectly describes many (not all) indigenous tribes.
Here is my first point-of-contention.
To me, Socialism is about Society, and how people interact and relate with each-other. Socialists, idealistically, want Society to form better and stronger bonds with one-another. So, to me, this means that Socialism is about Morality, not Economics. Economics is anti-Social. Usually, one person or group, is making money and profit, and the detriment, or to the detriment, of others. When one group profits off-of others; this is Anti-social behavior.
This is also a big reason why World War II happened. German Nationalists were sick and tired of ‘Others’ profiting from the German country’s hard-work.
I wouldn’t say you’re a Socialist then…you’re just Anti-Capitalist or Egalitarian. A Socialist society could have disparities between rich and poor, if that disparity were wrought through merit and accumulation of resources (Inheritance).
Yes, very Libertarian…
I disagree.
Taxation is needed (on the middle-class) to fund the Military. Other than that, I might agree with you.
Again, it looks to me like you are simply Anti-Capitalist and Anti-Corporatist, not necessarily “Socialist”.
I think you might have the wrong idea bout Socialism, for better or worse.
Socialism and “Progressivism” are slightly different ideals.
Progressivism is Socialism “of the 21st Century”. Progressivists believe in Egalitarian moral-values, that, homosexuals should be “married” and races should mix, for a variety of reasons. Progressivism is a huge slice and component of ‘Modernism’, if not the main core of it. Progressivists believe that “evil-whitey” is to blame for everything, and the world can only “move forward” with non-white, non-male leadership. However, Progressivists never explain the disparity of “Leadership”. When challenged, it’s always a backpedal into a bad argument, that “we’ve always been oppressed”, as a means to explain the lack of Leadership from women and minorities. So, this begs-the-question, why are white-males still the De Facto ‘leaders’ of, arguably, all important matters in life???
Socialism is Morality. How should people interact and relate with each-other? Should a Society be Homogeneous (genetically close) or Heterogeneous (genetically distant)? Many “Socialists” are Liberal-hypocrites. They say one thing, but do another. Or they do one thing, but think another. This fallacious thinking appears as, “Do as I say, not as I do”. So Progressivists and Socialists are generally untrustworthy. To proclaim Social-values, and actually follow them, is usually the realm of Religion. Religion preaches that your actions and words must coincide. So Socialists are similar to Judæo-Christians, except, Socialists don’t necessarily follow the ‘Rules’ they wish they could impose onto anybody-else.
Sure you can ignore the context entirely and focus only on the derivation of the name to sum up an entire economic model with extensive literature about it.
I mean Communism has plenty in common with Capitalism too, so should we just say that they’re the same thing too?
This way you can reduce all Communists to desiring a single small subsistence commune and suggest they go join a small-holding and leave everyone else to it - like so many people do.
Capitalism works best post-Feudalism, and is great for getting the poor out of poverty and kick-starting a technological age, but it becomes toxic after this is achieved - the aim isn’t then to regress all the way back to the start, it’s to devolve power yet one more step: having been passed all the way down from the autocracy of tribalism, through feudal lords, through capitalists, to the working class so everyone can actually enjoy the fruits of previous steps in the Historical Materialism chain.
Direct Democracy finally becomes possible… but u wouldn’t call urself a communist even though that’s what you’re after, yes? The same as countless others who simply don’t know…
Every thread on this subject is the same, nobody’s read up on the subject, but they’re all so eager to tie in Communism either with its opposite: State Totalitarianism, Social Democracy (which is what we already have), Progressivism (individual communes could stoop to that if they wanted, but couldn’t force it on others because there’s no centralised power, or prevent anyone from moving to another commune if they didn’t like it), or Socialism (which is simply a transition from Capitalism to Communism according to Lenin).
The insistence to misunderstand and spread misunderstanding of the solution, which pretty much everyone is after anyway, is the definition of stupidity.
Right, increasingly we live in an oligopoly, not a free and/or social market.
In the last several decades the rich have gotten richer and poor poorer, despite largely uninterrupted economic growth and technological advancement.
Sure, we all have flashy phones and tablets now, but in terms of necessities like food and housing, the standard of living has declined for working/middle class people.
Price inflation has outpaced wage inflation.
It’s not enough to merely prevent future theft.
We need to take our wealth and power back from these megacorps.
It’s ludicrous to permit one or a handful of men to fully own and wield a megacorp with a revenue bigger than the revenues of some countries, with millions of people dependent on it for goods, services and a livelihood.
It stifles and undermines democracy and competition.
It’s ludicrous that it takes working/middle class couples both working full time to support a small household.
If corporate and technological sophistication just means less money for necessities but more consumerism and flashy tech, at least for the rich, then what’s the point?
Might as well turn the clock back a century or two.
At least then we won’t need to consume all this crap, much of it bad for the environment as well as our health.
I am too.
That being said, we still need to elect admins to administer it.
While I think in time we’ll be able to supplant the legislative branch with direct democracy, we may still need an executive branch to make quick decisions and give executive orders, and a judicial branch to determine what’s constitutional.
Not sure, haven’t looked into it enough yet.
But if so, of course the people should be able to directly challenge executive orders after the executive branch has made them, and make direct amendments to the constitution.
Anyway it’s an interesting topic, direct democracy would probably lead to a freer and fairer market and society.
A couple other things I disagree with many other social democrats and democratic socialists about besides globalism, progressivism and what I see as the overregulation of small businesses, is I believe in arming citizens and militias.
I want to reduce the wealth gap between the people, small businesses and big business, but also the power gap between the people, local governments and big government.
I’m for giving provinces/states more rights.
In my view, you can’t really have a functional democracy when (nearly) most of the wealth and power are in the hands of big business and government.
I’m skeptical of big business and government, but in favor of using either big or local governments to go after big business.
The people should hold the overwhelming majority of both the wealth, and power.
Lastly, I’m in favor of a more stable technological economy.
If we’re to have any growth at all, it should be slow and sustainable.
I’m against the transnaturalists who want to overturn nature overnight, which could result in a mass extinction event.
I’m against the transhumanists who want to commit self-extinction by transforming ourselves beyond recognition.
To me if anything technology should aid us in preserving what we are, and we can’t do that by doing away with nature altogether.
Really many or most scientists aren’t naturalists, they’re transnaturalists, they have no respect for nature.
Nationalism to me means just putting citizens first ahead of foreigners, it doesn’t mean discriminating against minorities.
It’s not our job to fix the world’s problems, we got enough of our own.
I believe in protecting ourselves and closest allies from an overt attack, but that’s it, no pre-emptive strikes, no war on or for drugs and terror.
if some states are really, truly sponsoring terror out there, and it’s not just false intelligence, we’ll deal with it just by sanctioning and isolating them.
A lot of foreign aid is just used to manipulate the 3rd world and unnecessarily expand the size of government.
Much of our foreign aid goes to Israel, and I don’t consider it a (close) ally.
Geographically it’s far away.
Ask not what we can do for Israel, but what Israel can do for us.
Israel, and its expansionist, racist government, does nothing but encourage our countries to commit suicide and stoke tensions between us and Muslims.
I’m anti-immigration, but if people come here, they should speak our language, know and respect our customs and have something to contribute.
They should be capable of creating jobs, not just competing for them.
I’m not a vegan or vegetarian, but I’m against animal cruelty and hunting endangered species.
I’m in favor of doing more to protect oceans and national parks, but skeptical of manmade climate change or it being a problem and against austerity measures.
Communism has been defined somewhat differently by different schools of thought, which’s not to say the word is meaningless, because all these definitions have something in common, like shared ownership, but which’s is to say no single school has a monopoly on it.
We needn’t be bound by Marxist definitions.
For me, communism, like socialism and corporatism is strictly about ownership or distribution of property, not life and liberty.
Communism is about the people (they could be any people, a small tribe of dozens of animists, a large tribe of millions of atheists) sharing ownership of (virtually) all property, by contrast socialism is shared ownership of (virtually) all commerce and corporatism is say a small % of people owning (virtually) all property or commerce.
Capitalism is private property, then there’s state property.
Some anarchoindividualists promote private possession (not to be conflated with private property) and Stirnerite egoists no property (might makes right).
Theoretically you can have private or state communism, socialism and corporatism.
There are all kinds of ways of trying to achieve these economic forms, and ideas about what kind of societies they could or should accompany.
There are also gradations between them.
Communism can work well for families and small tribes, altho small tribes tend to be polygamous, infight and outfight over women rather than stuff.
Can democratic or anarcho-communism work for a big tribe like ours?
I wouldn’t bet on it.
Yup and stirner’s egoism - which was a direct response to the dominant hegelian thought at the time - was viewed as a dangerous prototype philosophy that would usher in capitalism. Marx recognized that hegel’s idealism could not contend with stirner’s scathing criticism, and it’s said somewhere (can’t remember where), that this contributed to marx’s drive to split from hegel and develop a purely materialistic philosophy. You might say that stirner got the ball rolling back then. The young hegelians came to see him as the great dragon that had to he slayed…
Austerity measures will only enhance animal cruelty in big crowded meat factories.
Very interesting!
Supremely interesting in fact.
Where can this be read?
Thats then basically the unresolved tension in our world, the West. The invisible yet explicit Ego of the Left.
So then the Ego became the Lacanian Real vis a vis the leftist economy of pleasure.
quote was taken from here: unionofegoists.com/authors/ … -and-marx/
essentially marx was so moved by stirner’s devastating attack on ‘philosophy’ that he was simultaneously intrigued and terrified. so he did what any innovative thinker would do; dismantle it before it turned the whole world into a shit-storm, and then put it back together for use against the bourgeois concepts of history that rested so firmly on the philosophical nonsense that supplanted it. so stirner was good and bad; good in demolishing the philosophical idealism/rationalism that elevated the ruling classes over the productive classes, bad in doing such a fantastic job at it, that the almost impossible task of re-centering egoism in favor of history and the proletariat - rather than descending into nihilism - would require a sustained attack on philosophy through the marxist materialists. a culmination of this movement arrives in positivism, wittgenstein, and the ‘ordinary language’ philosophers.
regarding the lacan question, yeah, sorta. what we have today are not spontaneous philosophical questions that arise from nowhere in the heads of philosophers. language is literally like a logocentric superstructure that designs and contains the anatomy of all possible questions… so that today, when doing philosophy, one is absentmindedly participating in an ideology that involves all kinds of presuppositions that are taken for granted. a great example would be nationalistic philosophies that are grounded in social darwinism. this is neither a science or a philosophy, but rather a series of hackneyed attitudes held by conservatives. i think it was lacan who said ‘ideology; they don’t know it, but they are doing it.’ what this might mean here is that such pseudo-philosophy has become so entrenched in modern thinking that in order to dispel its mythology, you’d have to demolish centuries of thought.
all this only has currency in marxist terms; that the ideas of each epoche are established by the ruling classes. ergo, capitalism mobilizes a vast series of pseudo-philosophical truisms in its attempt to rationalize and defend itself. the presuppositions of philosophies upholding this ideology were both destroyed and preserved by stirner. by reducing all institutions down to ‘spooks’, he set the ego free… but in doing so he opened the door for radical, amoral individualism… precisely the kind we see at the foundation of western capitalist theory.
It’s Good that people are ruled-over though, because most people cannot Rule themselves.
Less than 1% of the human population has any potential for individuality or independence.
The rest must Serve the ruling-class.
Im afraid this is true.
I so wished it wasn’t true and spent my whole life really not accepting it because it is impossible to truly except, on the fenced in side of good and evil.
Rulership is per definition both good and evil, as being ruled always involves abnegation of the will which is the definition of evil people hear in their hearts when the term falls.
Rule is only possible because there are conflicting interests.
Rule consists of leveraging a portion of being against another to prevent the other from fulfilling its drives.
Which drives must be suppressed? All rulership is an answer to that question presupposed in its being will to power.
On a grand scale, the drive that must be suppressed is for Truth to be regarded as a democratic privilege. It is tyrannical. Truth doesn’t ask for your votes, it just gives out shares. Not to the highest bidder, but to the one who casts the right glance.
Such is life.
“Im afraid this is true.”
Nah ya not. Only someone from the working class would be ‘afraid’ this is true, while the bourgeois/petty bourgeois are delighted that it’s true. Without it being true, they’d not have their station in life. Nice try, though. I give you a six for the feigned sympathy.
No, there’s something to it.
Like Jakob, I also wanted it to be true that people could “self-rule” themselves to a significant degree and amount. But humanity simply does not work this way, nor animals in general. Mammals, as a specie, exist socially within Hierarchies. People, and mammals, naturally look out for Alpha status in the form of leadership, expertise, nobility, and obviously the most important, Authority. People readily and willingly give away their own choice in life, when asked or demanded by an Authority. I don’t mean police officers. I don’t mean scientists. I don’t even mean family. But there is a type of Authority that exists that people wait for and internally desire. You can call it Totalitarianism …Totalit-Aryianism.
It is observed most readily in Politics (election of Trump), Religion (election of Pope), History (the "Founding Fathers), and the Military (Rank and Order, Alexander, Napolean, Hitler, Etc.). When a real Authority arrives, entire countries, societies, nations, and histories are moved by Authorities. This also coincides with the “Define God” thread. This type of Authority, is Godly. It is momentous. It is forceful. It is compelling.
It’s not merely the relationship between proletariat and bourgeois, but more symbolized between Master and Slave, Superior to Inferior, Man to Woman, Parent to Child, Teacher to Student, etc. It is a form of relationship that is intimate. Like love, people are willing to fight to defend these internal-values and relationships.
People want to be Led, far more than they want to Lead. Almost nobody wants to Lead, because of the stress, anxiety, and implications involved. If you are a Leader in life, then you are rare, and you become Self-Responsible. You become an ‘Agent’, with Agency. You forfeit your victimhood and victim-status. You are no longer a child, or a boy, but forced into the position of a Man.
Only Individuals have the potential to become Leaders. But most ‘Choose’ not to (Lead). It is more comfortable, easy, and peaceful to live a life of fellowship.
But often in life, circumstances force an Individual to choose to Lead, and fight, for whatever (Just) cause they feel necessary. This is where Justice comes into the picture.
Individuals have unique relationships with Justice, representing a noble-heart. Whether they choose good or evil, as a means to obtain their goals, is of secondary importance.
The primary importance is that the rare few (individuals) have the Choice (Free-Will), while the masses, do not.