Since this is interesting…

"I will now try to deal with a few objections people generally bring against communism. Some people have a terror of being loafed upon. I don’t see why this should be considered a great obstacle; if sufficient care be exercised in formation, loafers could be excluded.

Nordhoff Hind’s Histories of American Communities states, ‘How do you manage with lazy people? But there are no idlers in a commune; I conclude that men are not naturally idle. Even the winter shakers, - the shiftless fellows who, as cold weather approaches, take refuge in shaker and other communities, professing a desire to become members, who come at the beginning of winter, as a shaker elder said to me, with empty stomachs and empty trunks, and go off with both full as soon as the roses begin to bloom, - even these poor succumb to the systematic and orderly rules of the place, and do their share of work without shrinking, until the mild spring sun tempts them to a freer life.’

I am inclined to suspect that it is the fear of not being able to loaf on others that deters many from even contemplating the communistic question. From what I myself have been able to observe of life amongst the North American Indian, the Maories, and even the Australian aborigines, I find loafing is seldom a source of trouble. Of course, these people have only adopted a very crude form of communism; yet I do not hesitate to say, that these people enjoy more of the privileges of life than do one fourth of the civilised world: they never had to (before the advent of the whites) depend on charity." - Voluntary Communism,
Robert Beattie

still, you are side-stepping your way around the point that the existance of laziness itself kills any “ideal” system. everything is acquired, besides desire. desire keeps you alive, desire to eat…to sleep. how about desire to eat more? greed is born, and even selfishness (since you were a baby crying for everything you want.)

Communism will not kill that. instead, communism will be affected by this acquired greed and selfishness, and will serve no one but the ones in power.

that you cannot debate…or can you?

your missing the point Horton.
there is no one in complete control the system is called the soviet were you have one rep. from each work place in a community to make a council, this council acts as the managment for the entire community.
the reps are elected by the workers of there workplace and subject to recal at ANY TIME.
the council is run by a rep that is elected by the council and subject to recal at any time. this exsecutive rep is in contact with the other ex reps from all the other communitys this makes up the goverment.

this idea is to have every one have a say in the way the nation is run.
in words of Vladamir Lennin “if everyones a buerocrat then nobody is a buerocrat”

all the problems of our world could be soved so vary simply.
you could eliminate unimployment and poverty in one move
you rase the wages by 4 and cut the workweek in half this creats a labour shortage providing imployment for the unimployed. and with more people working and spending. it stimulats the economy.
we can eliminate homelessness simple by building houses just like weve allways done only now it’s a priorty not an after thought
and with people working only half the amount they have the time to learn on there own.
you will begin to see an influx of culture.

this would probably take time but it is very posible to do.

now i just want you to open your mind to the consept that there might is a beter system out there then what we got

Want to eat more? Well this is true. However it’s more of a double edged sword against Capitalism. Did you know if America really wanted to feed the world, it could? The American breadbasket by far has enough fertile soil and the means to produce foodstuffs and more for the whole world. So why don’t we? Easy, capitalism. You see by over producing, American gain prices would drop due to low prices and overproduction.

This was widely apparent during the Great Depression. Did you know that several million squealing pigs were purchased and slaughtered by the Agricultural Adjustment Administration to set up artificial scarcity and establish parity prices? Farmers were forced to plow under young plants, reduce crop acreage, and destroy their own crops. All of this during the depression when people were straving? As you can see, this is capitalism at its worse.

Besides, you always heard of the expression that we’re spoiling kids, right? That kids nowadays have it much better off than their parents did blah blah blah… This is also a byproduct of capitalism. By expecting children to achieve more and to have this “perfect lifestyle,” it inevitably makes children desire more.

Remember in communism we have, “Do more with less.” If everyone followed the old Marxist slogan “from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs,” meaning that people will have reached discipline enough to work for the good of society, we will take only what we need.

Now it’s not to say communism is perfect. There are still some kinks to be worked out. The Communist Manifesto was written over 100 years ago! However, communism offers a better solution than capitalism. Case in point?

Supposing you don’t buy the argument that a person’s environment determines his nature. Well whats to say greed in communism is bad? In some Native American cultures an extremely greedy and self-centered act would be to give all of his belongings away. In a different case among the tribes of the South Pacific Islands like Oceania (sp) there is not word for “I” in their language; there is only “We.”

Never before have we had so little time in which to do so much

[ This Message was edited by: TG Moses VI on 2002-04-11 00:14 ]

Now that me and Mini Phreek have defended our principles regarding Communism (though not everybody will buy these explanations…), I feel it is time to instead go on the offensive. Yes, in a great counteroffensive not unseen since Stalingrad, the true Communists will rise again.

First on the list is capitalism and it’s economic system.

"Capitalism is presently in crisis. Western economies have been in slump since March 2001. Everywhere we see layoffs, closures, cutbacks and shortage, and yet only 1 year ago all the pundits were praising the virtues of the economy. A thinking member of the working class can be left with only one conclusion - the capitalists do not understand their own system.

Since its very birth capitalism has gone through booms and catastrophic slumps, and yet in not one university economics textbook will you find an explanation for this phenomenon. Every slump is seen to be the result of certain “special” conditions, a failure of the stock exchange, not enough credit, too much debt, inflation, deflation, lack of oil, lack of “confidence”, etc., etc., etc., and the current slump will undoubtedly be blamed on terrorism. None of these excuses get to the root of the problem - the capitalist mode of production.

The basic contradiction within capitalism is that it produces more goods than can be sold at a profit. This is the famous crisis of overproduction. To use capitalist language, supply outstrips demand. Of course this is a very narrow definition of the word “demand”. There still exists a huge demand for houses for the homeless, or food for the hungry, or medicine for the sick - but for a capitalist, demand only means anything if it is backed up with hard cash. Capitalism gets itself in this mess because it produces for profit and not for need." - YIS

How do you defend these claims?

I understand I am hammering away at Communism that glorifying capitalism…It is just that capitalism is the current working system. now let’s get to that quote of yours.

""Capitalism is presently in crisis. Western economies have been in slump since March 2001. Everywhere we see layoffs, closures, cutbacks and shortage, and yet only 1 year ago all the pundits were praising the virtues of the economy. A thinking member of the working class can be left with only one conclusion - the capitalists do not understand their own system.

Since its very birth capitalism has gone through booms and catastrophic slumps, and yet in not one university economics textbook will you find an explanation for this phenomenon. Every slump is seen to be the result of certain “special” conditions, a failure of the stock exchange, not enough credit, too much debt, inflation, deflation, lack of oil, lack of “confidence”, etc., etc., etc., and the current slump will undoubtedly be blamed on terrorism. None of these excuses get to the root of the problem - the capitalist mode of production.

The basic contradiction within capitalism is that it produces more goods than can be sold at a profit. This is the famous crisis of overproduction. To use capitalist language, supply outstrips demand. Of course this is a very narrow definition of the word “demand”. There still exists a huge demand for houses for the homeless, or food for the hungry, or medicine for the sick - but for a capitalist, demand only means anything if it is backed up with hard cash. Capitalism gets itself in this mess because it produces for profit and not for need." - YIS "

"Capitalism is presently in crisis. Western economies have been in slump since March 2001. Everywhere we see layoffs, closures, cutbacks and shortage, and yet only 1 year ago all the pundits were praising the virtues of the economy. A thinking member of the working class can be left with only one conclusion - the capitalists do not understand their own system. "

ahhh, human imperfection…that’s the problem. IMO, you can make a capitalist system that isn’t corrupt as easily as a communist one. the problem is NO (“N”+“O”) system will even be free from corruption. Do you understand that? Doesn’t matter how your organize it, corruption and special interests always run the show. the best you can do is TRY to govern the part of your life you have control over. I oppose a communistic system, because after one slashes social mobility, and gives the selfish people no incentive to work, it will screw everyone. We can agree that if the world was governed for the greater good, communism would work. I like communism’s theory…i’m sure i would pull my own weight. But you have to be realistic. What are we going to do? Kill all the powerful people on earth? Then won’t the killers gain that sort of power? People will eventually advance themselves through abilities they acquire, people with leadership qualities. Communes are a great idea…the co-exist with a system that won’t go away.

“Since its very birth capitalism has gone through booms and catastrophic slumps, and yet in not one university economics textbook will you find an explanation for this phenomenon. Every slump is seen to be the result of certain “special” conditions, a failure of the stock exchange, not enough credit, too much debt, inflation, deflation, lack of oil, lack of “confidence”, etc., etc., etc., and the current slump will undoubtedly be blamed on terrorism. None of these excuses get to the root of the problem - the capitalist mode of production.”

And communism would be any diufferent? Eventually (unless the proper steps are taking) the world will run out of fuel, pollute their world, overpopulate, harvest failures…whatever. The economic system is not the problem, the conditions are.

“The basic contradiction within capitalism is that it produces more goods than can be sold at a profit. This is the famous crisis of overproduction. To use capitalist language, supply outstrips demand. Of course this is a very narrow definition of the word “demand”. There still exists a huge demand for houses for the homeless, or food for the hungry, or medicine for the sick - but for a capitalist, demand only means anything if it is backed up with hard cash. Capitalism gets itself in this mess because it produces for profit and not for need.” - YIS "

This i agree with very much, but not totally. I think it’s theory is a little off. In a perfect world, the population won’t change, everyone can have equal everything, and their is no excess to profit off of. Demand is always growing, with population. Technology is always changing.

“Capitalism is presently in crisis. Western economies have been in slump since March 2001.”

not true…stop trying to blame bush for the economic failure. it started during the april of 2000, 11 months before!

sorry about my previous posts mispellings and tone. i was in a major rush.

yes, especially DELL.

BTW Yanny, did you see IMC? lately you have posted a lot of pro-palestinian things, and i’m wondeirng if you saw the IMC.

good post…

Awww… another shot in the dark against communism. Well, I’ll be eager to give a reponse. Just give me a moment to gather my resources.

On 2002-04-05 19:12, Yanny wrote:

There is no such thing as Evil or Good, its all perspective.

Dangerous thinking. So is killing a baby not evil? Or saving a life not good?

@ (1): It’s funny how most of the americans here say “america is the best” and most of the non-americans say “americans are big mouthed whatevers”. I agree with the second (being non-american). Can the US of A please think over this, and maybe sey “we like us, but all others have the same rights as we do?” Then most of the problems would solve itself, like the US would stick to treaties it once signed, accept and support the UN, not claim all resources (which includes everything environmental) for themselves, but share it, and have a view that there are global porblems, which need a global solution, even if that endangers some precious jobs (and would create others, but those others don’t have such a big lobby).

@(2) If we can get down from our racist point of view against muslims, then most of the problems there would not exist. They were advanced in the Middle Ages, now we are. Does that give us any right to force them into our way of thinking? I think not. For the Israelis… they are pretty much the same, you can’t accuse say Iran not being democratic, but call Israel that.

@(3) Dangerous, but i hope that their leaders are as smart as Chrushev (sp?), and not drop the big one…

@(4) 14 … i wouldn’t have thought you were such young :smile:… man, you are doing a good job here, respect!

@(5) read @(1) :smile:

To Yanny

Who’s fault was it for the internet bubble bursting? Simply put, overproduction. By creating artificially high stock market prices with Internet websites, we have a classic case of over production (supply and demand). As I said before, none of these excuses get to the root of the problem - the capitalist mode of production.

To Horten

Over consumption? Where have we heard that before? Yes, over consumption is a constant plague of the capitalistic society. For example, did you know that America waste more and disposes more garbage than any other country in the world? That’s right, 1.3 billion Chinese can’t even match less than 300 million US citizens. With capitalism we have depletion at an accelerated pace.

SUD,

You brought up a very interesting aspect on the free market. However, would-be monopolists are always emerging as natural products of capitalism (Microsoft, US Standard Oil), threatening to do away with competition from capitalist, not socialist motives. If people have been able to raise their standards of living it has been partly because of the work of labor unions and those who have agitated for minimum wage and maximum work day laws, all denounced as harmful to free competition. Now what happens during economic slumps in a free market, capitalistic system? We have bigger capitalists, with economies of scale, are better able to survive. Capitalism has an inherent tendency to concentrate into monopoly. They also try to get out of these crises by selling goods on foreign markets. However, all the other capitalists are trying to do the same and the world is only so big. Also in the very act of exporting to foreign markets, the capitalists develop the productive forces in these countries (eg. Indonesia, China) which then start producing a surplus for export - exacerbating the problem. The only solution at this point is to take these foreign markets by force – largely a reason for World War I.

Sometimes it is the capitalists who fear the free operation of the market and call for regulation. When employment is high and people are achieving higher wages, the stock market frets about inflation and creates pressures on government regulatory agencies to “cool off” the economy, creating more widespread unemployment and lower wages.

Free marketers are currently triumphant; but the record of the unregulated market in post-Communist Russia is not inspiring. Unregulated capitalism could produce misery, demonstrated during the industrial revolution, and the demonstration has been often repeated since. No society can long tolerate the entire, free-market lack of restraints on business, and never does.

America’s not so great after all, huh?

Without America, Germany would have conquered Europe, and Japan would have conquered Asia. During WW1.

Without the U.S. to (1) Economically prop-up Britian and France (2) reduce effectiveness of and discourage Germany’s submarine blockade (3) send troops to help the allies (4) and provide a moral boost the Allies would have lost. And without the U.S. and Britian to oppose it, Japan would have moved faster/been successful in it’s drive to create a co-prosperity sphere.

SUD (again),

So how are prices established, except by central planning? Again, in a Communist society, it is without money, therefore your point about capitalist prices is pointless.

“Classical political economy, before Marx, evolved in England, the most developed of the capitalist countries. Adam Smith and David Ricardo, by their investigations of the economic system, laid the foundations of the Labor Theory of Value. Marx continued their work. He rigidly proved and consistently developed this theory. He showed that the value of every commodity is determined by the resources and quantity of socially necessary labor time spent on its production.

Where the bourgeois economists saw a relation of things (the exchange of one commodity for another), Marx revealed a Relation of Men. The exchange of commodities expresses the tie by which individual producers are bound through the market. Money signifies that this tie is becoming closer and closer, inseparably binding the entire economic life of the individual producers into one whole. Capital signifies a further development of this tie: man’s labor power becomes a commodity. The wage-worker sells labor power to the owner of the land, factories and instruments of labor. The worker uses one part of the labor day to cover the expense of maintaining himself and his family (wages), while the other part of the day the worker toils without remuneration, creating surplus value for the capitalist, the source of profit, the source of the wealth of the capitalist class.

The doctrine of surplus value is the cornerstone of Marx’s economic theory. Capital, created by the labor of the worker, presses on the worker by ruining the small masters and creating an army of unemployed. In industry, the victory of large-scale production is at once apparent, but we observe the same phenomenon in agriculture as well: the superiority of large-scale capitalist agriculture increases, the application of machinery grows, peasant economy falls into the noose of money-capital, it declines and sinks into ruin, burdened by its backward technique. In agriculture, the decline of small-scale production assumes different forms, but the decline itself is an indisputable fact.

By destroying small-scale production, capital leads an increase in productivity of labor and to the creation of a monopoly position for the associations of big capitalists. Production itself becomes more and more social-hundreds of thousands and millions of workers become bound together in a systematic economic organism-but the product of the collective labor is appropriated by a handful of capitalists. The anarchy of production grows, as do crises, the furious chase after markets and the insecurity of existence of the mass of the population.

While increasing the dependence of the workers on capital, the capitalist system creates the great power of united labor. Marx traced the development of capitalism from the first germs of commodity economy, from simple exchange, to its highest forms, to large-scale production. And the experience of all capitalist countries, old and new, is clearly demonstrating the truth of this Marxian doctrine to increasing numbers of workers every year. Capitalism has triumphed all over the world, but this triumph is only the prelude to the triumph of labor over capital.” - Lenin

You ruled out central planning, but it plays a vital role in the communist system. Marxists propose reorganizing the economy so production is for the fulfillment of human needs and not private greed. The commanding heights of the economy, the top 150 banks and corporations that control 85% of Canadian commerce, must be nationalized and democratically controlled by the workers. The bosses can’t take their factories down to Mexico if the workers are occupying them. When the majority comes together to collectively decide how to plan the economy, in the interests of all, we will be able to eradicate poverty. Even under present day chaotic unplanned capitalism there is enough wealth for each family to be worth over one third of a million dollars if only it was distributed equally. Production for need enables us to destroy the boom slump cycle and lower the working week to create full employment.

that anonymous post before was by me grmpf… how comes that every thread “degenerates” into a communism/capitalism thread?

yourbuttocks,

You seem to be implying that America wouldn’t be so great if it had been brought up in a communist system. Rest assured, America would still be great if it were communist, if not even better. :smile:

Without America, Germany would have conquered Europe, and Japan would have conquered Asia. Are you supposing that if America were communist, it wouldn’t have entered the war even if Pearl Harbor was attacked? Also, would capitalism have been the only way America and her Allies could’ve achieved victory in WWII? Certainly not. Look at the Soviet Union. The USSR deserves much of the credit for the Allies defeat of Nazi Germany, probably more so than Britain and USA combined. Now I find this interesting since USSR was “communist.” Now imagine how much more powerful USSR would be if it was truly Communist and under an able body leader(s) that didn’t kill off all his best generals in bloody purges (Stalin).

Now off to WW1,

1. Economically prop up Britain and France? Now the way you say this, we intend to save these countries by flooding it with capita instead of sending manufactured goods, raw materials, and produce which are the cornerstone of the communist economic system?
2. So how does capitalism directly cause us to reduce the effectiveness of Germany’s submarine blockade? What, are we to use capita to make them not shoot our ships?
3. Again, how would USA being communist prevent US troops from being sent to help the Allies. In Russia we saw literally 10’s of millions of soldiers willing to die for the Motherland.
4. Provide a moral boast? Yes, lets fight for the glory of capitalism and not democracy.