Collectivism vs Communism

[Dan~]

Do we blame the rich for all our problems?

Really?

And the rich would fight to stay rich,
so a communist revolution would require a war with the rich.

When the commies get the rich's money and assets,
who gets them, after that? The government?
Or do they split it up equally between peasants?

How to stop people from becoming rich again:
Suppression.

If everyone had equal money, they would all be equally happy?
Money buys happiness, appearantly.

More later.

[Peter Kropotkin]

I look forward to the continuation....

Kropotkin

[Dan~]

Imagine a family owned business.
Everyone pitches in, and they spend the surplus as they see fit.

Collectivistic ownership of property is similar to that.
Public property.

Socialism means the government owns the property,
but the government is supposed to represent the will of the public.
Democratic representative socialism.
That seems to be as far as any commies got.

If humans were more unified by being more loving and concerned,
communism wouldn't be so **** difficult.

On the other hand, if everyone was nice, the rich would be kind and fair.

More later.

[Meno_]

"humans were more unified by being more loving and concerned,
communism wouldn't be so **** difficult.

"On the other hand, if everyone was nice, the rich would be kind and fair.

More later."



Yeah and under united in kindness and empathy, they nationalized all that , to fight off borderline tugs, out of their element, then the union would form a national versus international cabal, to protect and promote their model of who was to be included.

But, oh, that has been tried at the expense of others.



Of course the thing that develops
conjunctive with their riches, is a blindness of what that represents in terms of severe changes in value. Then slowly, or suddenly , they become increasingly uncertain of their relation to what makes things tick, and how the models have diminished in stature., and how to increasingly apply control what has been accumulated.

The best way to pro-op this is to create metaphors , smoke and mirrors , which may signify some party unity, or it's lack.

Why does anyone think that being the reason Biden could laugh off Trump's frequent incursions into his supposed private debating space was some on the spot affect of being caught off guard?


Nah!




Or, I may be wrong.


In fact 'collectivism' is a kind of neutral term that may hinge on who does the collecting.

As has been severely pointed out, there is within several contextual referenced the seriously misused concept of welfare for corporate america, vs burdening taxation of the Dem's basic unfettered grievence: -no taxation without representation.

As if corporate America was badly underrepresented since a lot of them are moving or have moved abroad.


I m with PeterK looking forward to.continuation.

[Dan~]

So, class struggle may be shoe-horning the issue.
Is all strife existent because of class struggle?
Some atheists say most of the world's problems are because of religion.
Is that also true? Or not?

It's a mistake to blame one thing for everything,
yet people do this all the time : God, to blame for reality itself.

I think democracy favors the poor, if there is a lot of poor people all together.
Democracy is on more of the issue than Marxism.
Democracy represents the will of the workers,
instead of favoring a minority of rich business owners.

This seems true to me.
If it is true, how did so many people miss the point?

[Dan~]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism

Marxist concepts
Class conflict and historical materialism
Main articles: Class conflict and Historical materialism

At the root of Marxism is historical materialism, the materialist conception of history which holds that the key characteristic of economic systems through history has been the mode of production and that the change between modes of production has been triggered by class struggle. According to this analysis, the Industrial Revolution ushered the world into capitalism as a new mode of production. Before capitalism, certain working classes had ownership of instruments utilized in production. However, because machinery was much more efficient, this property became worthless and the mass majority of workers could only survive by selling their labor to make use of someone else's machinery, thus making someone else profit. Accordingly, capitalism divided the world between two major classes, namely that of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.[57] These classes are directly antagonistic as the latter possesses private ownership of the means of production, earning profit via the surplus value generated by the proletariat, who have no ownership of the means of production and therefore no option but to sell its labor to the bourgeoisie.

According to the materialist conception of history, it is through the furtherance of its own material interests that the rising bourgeoisie within feudalism captured power and abolished, of all relations of private property, only the feudal privilege, thereby taking the feudal ruling class out of existence. This was another key element behind the consolidation of capitalism as the new mode of production, the final expression of class and property relations that has led to a massive expansion of production. It is only in capitalism that private property in itself can be abolished.[58] Similarly, the proletariat would capture political power, abolish bourgeois property through the common ownership of the means of production, therefore abolishing the bourgeoisie, ultimately abolishing the proletariat itself and ushering the world into communism as a new mode of production. In between capitalism and communism, there is the dictatorship of the proletariat, a democratic state where the whole of the public authority is elected and recallable under the basis of universal suffrage.[59] It is the defeat of the bourgeois state, but not yet of the capitalist mode of production and at the same time the only element which places into the realm of possibility moving on from this mode of production.

Communism is predicted as the next step here.

Meanwhile, what i see, i call, high tax capitalism.
Taxes are so high that the government can redistribute resources to the needy.
Free health care, free education, etc. Are signs of high tax capitalism.
Marx's capitalism was kinda lawless at the time.
Now we have high tax capitalism in Canada.
I think it works well, and is the next step. After that, i dont know.

[Dan~]

Internationalism and capitalism:

So, if they taxes are too high, or the labor is too expensive,
big business can uproot and move to a different country.
They can effectively dodge taxes and costs.
This is due to internationalism.
International capitalism is a step towards anarcho-capitalism.
Dodging tax and wages.

How can we deal with the rich?
It seems difficult.

[obsrvr524]

how did so many people miss the point?

Marxist propaganda. When you own the media people belief what you arrange for them to believe.

[Meno_]

how did so many people miss the point?

Marxist propaganda. When you own the media people belief what you arrange for them to believe.

[Meno_]

how did so many people miss the point?

Marxist propaganda. When you own the media people belief what you arrange for them to believe.

[/quote


Again, I hope for not another sleepless night !

[Silhouette]

Democracy is on more of the issue than Marxism.
Democracy represents the will of the workers,
instead of favoring a minority of rich business owners.

This seems true to me.
If it is true, how did so many people miss the point?

You quoted the following yourself in your next post:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism

In between capitalism and communism, there is the dictatorship of the proletariat, a democratic state where the whole of the public authority is elected and recallable under the basis of universal suffrage.[59]

Marxism, as in your own quote, clearly states the transition of Capitalism to Communism (the dictatorship of the proletariat) as a democratic state.

You say "Democracy is on more of the issue than Marxism" - yet your quote explains they are one and the same.
The transition from "one vote per dollar" to "one vote per person" gets us from Capitalism to Democracy.

"How did so many people miss the point?"
They are on all sides confronted with the constant propaganda of mis-information merchants out to scare people away from reading about what Marxism really is (e.g. in your quote) with stories that literally invert the literature e.g. now that Marxists "own the media people belief what you arrange for them to believe."
We even see these types of response in recent posts on this very thread.

How do these people miss the point? They got duped by the mis-information merchants before them and blindly carried on the tradition of not actually reading about what Marxism really is.
Ironically you'll probably see these same bad faith actors bemoaning the state of education in their own country (no shit) as the reason for people not knowing about their own indoctrination that would safely keep everyone away from the facts of what's actually in the literature. They tend to imitate the same style as those who have actually read about the subject to lend an air of credibility to their fearmongering, which is enough to deter the less intelligent away from books (not a hard task to accomplish), yet if you aren't already better educated or sufficiently intelligent to have figured out this sophistry because of the actual literature that you've read first hand, one of the signs that give these people away might be their disdain for how radical leftism has overcome higher education - which translates to resentment against people finding things out for themselves, first hand, and being able to see through the propaganda in which they've placed their faith, fears and even a sense of identity. The Cognitive Dissonance is apparently too great for them to cope with, and instead of incentivising them to honestly and neutrally critique their adopted purpose, they dig their heels in deeper: the "Backfire Effect", and they repeat and reinforce to themselves and others the arguments that fooled them, looking only to any seeming evidence to support their cause: "Confirmation Bias".

So basically the answer to how so many people miss the point is Bibliophobia and some basic Human Psychology. So it's not surprising that it happens really, but fortunately all you need to do to escape the same fate is keep on reading and take care not to miss things like what I just pointed out in the words you quoted.

[obsrvr524]

Wikipedia's article is easily verified to be political punditry.

Capitalism does not divide society between two classes. That what socialism does. Capitalism allows for workers to also be owners - a mix of proletariat and bourgeoisie - the middle class. If capitalism creates such a divide, then where did the middle class ever come from? And also why is it that during this time of a push toward socialism, the middle class is disappearing?

And democracy in communism?? Are you kidding? We have China as a stark example even if we don't want to look into the recent past. You really think that the extreme control of information to the Chinese people allows for free and fair elections of someone like Xi Jinping? If you can't wake up at least loop up.

Why would you think that Wikipedia is beyond political corruption?

[Meno_]

The only way to define class in a supposedly classless society in the US, is by the difference in legal terms: de-jure & de--facto.

Now if that' s not a nominal description, I don't know what is.
Oh forgot a third one: fiction

[Silhouette]

I thought I'd test if you'd just as easily forsake Wikipedia as you waltzed into the other thread about "what Marxism really is" with Wikipedia quotes that you thought furthered your cause.

Turns out the literature supports Wikipedia when it comes to Democracy and Marxism, which you'd know if you'd read Marx.
That's how you use Wikipedia when you have a healthy skepticism of it: you don't only listen when it supports you and dismiss when it doesn't, you read the actual books and check yourself.


On any other issue, if some instructions said one thing, and a bunch of people told you they followed the instructions and come up with something that in many ways achieves the exact opposite of what the instructions said - you'd doubt the bunch of people and you'd side with the proposition that they failed to follow the instructions and just "claimed" they were successful.
But when China says they're Communist, and the US government agrees you're just like "okay, that's good enough for me!"

If you want to operate beyond misinformation merchant on threads like these, you need to read.
I know it's easier to just go along with the general feel of what all these people are telling you, and fight for that, but the intellectual way that qualifies you to talk about subjects like these is to read up on the literature first hand, and suspend judgment while you honestly assess literally what you're reading with politically charged reports and claims that fly in the face of the original sources. I'm trying to help you here, and all the many like you - why can't you listen?

[obsrvr524]

The only way to define class in a supposedly classless society in the US, is by the difference in legal terms: de-jure & de--facto.

Now if that' s not a nominal description, I don't know what is.
Oh forgot a third one: fiction

Perhaps you are not aware that the USA hasn't been an actual capitalist society for 50-100 years. Mr Trump's policies are strictly capitalist and look at the extreme degree of push back from the establishment ("deep state" - left - socialist) he has been getting. The USA has been a largely socialist nation for decades. It's obvious to those bothering to watch it from afar - not so obvious for those who are living in the midst of the clouding and blather.

The USA is currently NOT classless at all. Just watch how their congress operates with the untouchable owner class (Ms Pelosi, Ms Clinton, Mr Bloomberg, Ms Waters, Mr Biden, for examples) and the lower "deplorable" working class. In a real (and former) capitalist society, none of those people would even have jobs much less be filthy rich (most would be in prison).

Learn the difference and reexamine your media instilled presumptions. You are fighting against yourself.

[obsrvr524]

I thought I'd test if you'd just as easily forsake Wikipedia as you waltzed into the other thread about "what Marxism really is" with Wikipedia quotes that you thought furthered your cause.

Turns out the literature supports Wikipedia when it comes to Democracy and Marxism, which you'd know if you'd read Marx.
That's how you use Wikipedia when you have a healthy skepticism of it: you don't only listen when it supports you and dismiss when it doesn't, you read the actual books and check yourself.

I didn't say anything when you falsely assumed that I had not read that thread nor when you falsely assumed that I had not read Karl Marx. None of that was the matter at hand.

The issue is and was that it is like someone arguing that Heaven isn't real. We might then tell him to READ THE BOOK! Then perhaps to read it more carefully and with an open mind. He would probably tell us that it doesn't matter what the book says because Heaven is a fantasy.

Alternatively you are like someone arguing about the REAL nature of Ironman. You complain that we haven't read the comic books or watched the movies so we have no right to talk. We should shutup and let you keep espousing nonsense. What we are trying to tell you is that the character (communism) is fantasy so it doesn't matter how the author detailed it.

You have no evidence as to whether Heaven really exists. But we DO have evidence that communism is NOT real. It simply doesn't work and we have had many trials, some still going on, that prove that it is just a fantasy about a utopia, a heaven, that just isn't possible in the real world. And we can even see WHY it isn't possible. You are ignoring the science and the logic.

China is a perfect real world example of what you get when you subscribe to communism - an oppressive, murderous dictatorship hell bent on crushing any thought of opposition to "The Party" - millions of political prisoners awaiting to get their organs harvested and billions of intimidated and coerced citizens. The human rights violations in China are outrageous. Yet you keep arguing that it is only because they aren't following the comic book correctly. The real world IS NOT a comic book regardless of who wrote it or how well they painted the picture of paradise.


And leave it to Wikipedia to not realize that democracy, the distribution of authority, and socialism/communism, the centralization of authority, are extreme opposites. There can never be both at the same time in the same place.

If China can control Hollywood, the W.H.O. and the US NBA, they certainly wouldn't have an issue controlling Wikipedia. Propaganda is paramount to their game.

[Silhouette]

"What something is" is not the same as "is something real".

I don't believe heaven or Ironman are real beyond the realm of imagination, but the way to test if "they specifically" are real is to compare "what the book says they are" to reality.
Otherwise, WHAT is it that you are comparing to reality?

To test if "something is real", it is a prerequisite that we know "what something is", because otherwise what theory are we comparing the reality to? Two options:
1) We question if some reality is similar to theory already formulated
2) We construct new theory to describe reality

If we want to compare China to the already formulated theory about Collectivism vs Communism, or "what Marxism really is", then we use "1".
If we want to decide what Collectivism vs Communism are, or "what Marxism really is" based on China then we have to at least initally suppress 1 in favour of 2 - and decide what the theory "really was all along" instead of what it said it was in any theory that was already formulated. We would be constructing "our new theory to describe reality" retrospectively, after having first seen some results - accepting them as the foundation - and THEN defining Collectivism, Communism, Marxism etc. And replacing any theory already formulated with that?!

You're doing 2. I'm doing 1.
I'm doing 1 because I know some of the literature already formulated and note the STARK difference between that and what China etc. claim they are.
You're doing 2 despite claims that you've read Marx and thread content reminding us what Marx wrote. You're defining these terms after historical events happened, and evaluating the theory based on that, which implicates the actual theory already written despite the gaping void that separates the theory already written from the history espousing fidelity to said theory.

The fantasy is to imagine that the literature is sufficiently represented by China et al.
I bet there's some common ground that can be drawn from each, but even that requires knowledge of what both are. You need to know what China is AND what Marxist literature is.
But then you need to also evaluate what they do not have in common, and the degrees to which that is the case.
You can't establish the odd common element and use that to derive complete identity. That would commit the fallacy of composition - don't try to make out I'm ignoring the logic.

It cannot be ignored that the Marxist literature supports democracy and opposes the state - yet China is anti-democratic and has a strong state.
To continue to argue that China sufficiently represents Marxism is false to the most basic degree.
Stop doing that.

And you think the conditions of China et al. remotely resembled scientific experiment? How ignorant of science do you have to be to think these "experiments" remotely qualify as sufficiently rigorous according to scientific standards?
Stop doing that.

If you want to evaluate "what China really is" with reference to Marxism, you need to READ THE BOOK(s) that explain what Marxism really is in order to be able to perform that comparison.

Until you do that, you are completely disqualified from contributing valuably to threads about Marxism to any degree of intellectual honesty.
But if you think that knowing what I'm talking about is "espousing nonsense" then you can't be helped. I try, but you need to read a book (and show one iota of understanding of it) if you want to show any desire whatsoever to be intellectually honest. The same would go even if the topic were Ironman or Heaven - you have to know what they are in order to determine whether reality is compatible with the respective concepts, regardless of how unreal they might be.

[Dan~]

Marxism, as in your own quote, clearly states the transition of Capitalism to Communism (the dictatorship of the proletariat) as a democratic state.

Capitalism and Marxism both can have a sort of voting system, but was Marx really all about democracy?

Also thanks for your big post / reply.

[Silhouette]

Marxism, as in your own quote, clearly states the transition of Capitalism to Communism (the dictatorship of the proletariat) as a democratic state.

Capitalism and Marxism both can have a sort of voting system, but was Marx really all about democracy?

Also thanks for your big post / reply.

S'ok.

Capitalism has 1 vote per dollar, which is a sort of voting system.

The fact that there's usually a 5-or-so yearly election cycle on top of it is a bolt-on idea, separate to Capitalism but often used in conjunction, to counter 1 vote per dollar with 1 vote per person. And it's only to vote in a delegation of particular people (career politicians), who usually have a lot of capital already and who can be influenced by capital, which is "indirect democracy".

If it were solely up to Capitalism, there'd be no explicit mediation on who can watch the watchers - only the implicit "mechanism" intended to moderate Capitalism from within according to Classical Liberal theory. And yet an extreme amount of capital goes into the industry of manipulating people to choose irrationally (i.e. advertising). Capitalism allows and even encourages the very opposite of what Classical Liberal theory relies on to actually work in the real world.

What if, instead of capital dictating how many votes people have, we have democracy?
That is exactly what Marx was all about if you read his writings.

Why is he made out to support Autocratic Totalitarian dictatorships that do the exact opposite to what he wrote about and supported? You tell me.

[Dan~]

https://www.shortform.com/C/summary-v2/the-communist-manifesto-summary-karl-marx?utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Book%20-%20The%20Communist%20Manifesto%20-%20Broad%20-%20Intl&utm_term=the%20communist%20manifesto&utm_content=84319009731175&msclkid=02392ccc9c0c1126a6e5734dcdb31da8

Abolish the ownership of land and put all land to public use. This will eliminate oppression and class conflict.

Oppression comes from the military being commanded by the dictator.
The military enforces obedience and taxes.

Create a progressive or graduated income tax. This will spread wealth more equally among all members of the population and eliminate classes.

Tax doesn't eliminate classes or spread money out more evenly.
Tax makes the government / taxer more powerful.

Abolish inheritance. This will eliminate wealth being held by a few instead of distributed among everyone.

Everyone gets inheritance, and that is already distributed among everyone.
Some people want their hard work to carry over into the lives of their children.
Inheritance is an essential thing.

Create a national bank using state capital. Private banks simply hold money. A national bank could use money to improve social conditions.

Banks are crazy ****. Why on earth would a commie want a bank to exist?
Anyone can use money to improve social conditions.
You don't need to be a bank in order to do that.
Private banks don't simply hold money, they control and utilize all kinds of ownership and debt.

[obsrvr524]

I don't think capitalism has anything to do with voting. Capitalism is about the economic system of exchange and private ownership, not the method of choosing leaders. Private ownership of anything doesn't exist in a socialist world but that doesn't have anything to do with voting either.

And Silhouette, Everyone was accepting your version of what Marx was calling communism whether accurate or not. And we were telling you that because of that description of Marxist communism, what Marxism IS, is a violent effort to chase a fantasy (YOUR version of stateless communism whether the same as Marx's or not).

Stateless communism is a fantasy. No one needs to read Marx or anyone else in order to determine that if you merely look at how often any kind of communism has been attempted. It is NEVER stateless. And it has always immediately become dictatorial as it must.

It is the stateless aspect that prevents it from ever becoming a real thing.

[Silhouette]

Some people want their hard work to carry over into the lives of their children.
Inheritance is an essential thing.

Inheritance is a sticky issue.

On one hand it's an incentive to produce, but on the other hand it violates equality of opportunity.

Banks are crazy ****. Why on earth would a commie want a bank to exist?

Why wouldn't a commie want a bank to exist?

It's not the holding and protection of wealth that's anti-Communist, it's the use of that wealth to generate more wealth as a result of that wealth that is i.e. the anti-Meritocratic practice of being able to get richer because you're already richer.

It's the same thing that keeps house rent high - rich people being paid because they're already richer. An extreme version of anti-Meritocracy.
The practice of ringing up someone every once in a while to fix something for you is not a full-time job. Fuck landlordship.

A commie operating a bank, like all workers employed by a bank currently do anyway, is completely normal. People like the facility of keeping their private property safe - it's the act of owning the means of production that must be abolished if we're going to pretend there's any meritocracy left in the world. Regular things for normal consumption is fine. They're yours and so they should be.

[obsrvr524]

I agree that communists utilize banks and money as a means to control the population. The CCP even manipulates its currency in order to shift relative wealth (the Hong Kong banks, the World Banks).

[Dan~]

I agree that communists utilize banks and money as a means to control the population. The CCP even manipulates its currency in order to shift relative wealth (the Hong Kong banks, the World Banks).

Which is actually a war of thoughts and ideas.
People control themselves, but their selves control them.
The whole system of a life itself,
can oppress itself.

Class struggle is not the only form of trouble that can come about.

Sometimes people make their own trouble.
Like street drugs, for example.
All kinds of fools get addicted.
Do we blame the drugs themselves?

Playing the poor victim card only works sometimes.

[obsrvr524]

Do we blame the drugs themselves?

No but they readily blame the guns.

Drugs can't be used against your oppressors. Guns can be.
So pass the drugs and ban the guns.