How Relevant is Marx Today?

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
101

[quote]BonnotGang wrote:
Human nature is a reaction to human condition, I thought people using Human nature was a thing of the past Circa the Mcarthy Era.

[/quote]

McCarthy has been vindicated by history. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Soviet archives confirmed that there were Soviet agents and provocateurs at the highest levels of government, throughout academia and within the leadership of many of the trade unions. Furthermore, CPUSA was always an instrument of Soviet subversion as were the plethora of umbrella groups associated with the new left.

You have already advocated “class war[fare],” “rob[bery]” and you apparently support the murder of people for the purposes of robbing them. You are also advocating totalitarianism. You are clearly a very sick individual.

102

not really, you know I don’t draw conclusions without evidence, therefore all you had to say was, oh heiy guyz, bet he says no scientist will say there is one human nature, but rather behavior is a reaction of condition, aint i mystic meg herp derp.

103

[quote]BonnotGang wrote:
not really, you know I don’t draw conclusions without evidence, therefore all you had to say was, oh heiy guyz, bet he says no scientist will say there is one human nature, but rather behavior is a reaction of condition, aint i mystic meg herp derp.[/quote]

Yes, you are someone who worships rationality beyond reason and scientists are your priests.

That you can hide that from yourself is not really that hard to explain, since hyper rationality is in part a defense mechanism and in part an ersatz religion.

Unfortunately you lack the humility that true religious people have because you neither accept the limits of your understanding nor the existence of forces that are beyond what your God can fix.

Like human nature.

Admittedly, more traditional gods allegedly could fox human nature, at least some of them, but they wont and there is a neat theological trick, eh?

104

LOL bring the bankrupt science is a religion trap, my goodness, are we out of generic unproven ridiculous talking points already pal?

Also quick reply to the idea that socialism fails in action.

Every place unfettered, unchecked capitalism and regulated capitalism alike has been the economic system, there has been crime, poverty, war, inequality.

How has capitalism proven a good system, yes it was great when we lived in a feudalistic society with a guild system, guess what, capitalism is today what feudalism was when the burghers and merchants were rising in the first towns and cities

Just as capitalism smashed the economic and class systems of feudalism, the proletariat, whose existence is necessary for the birth and continuation of the bourgeoisie, are also the seeds of the capitalists destruction, hence the contradiction.

Capitalism has been around for a blink of an eye in terms of human history, it took capitalism thousands and thousands of years to become an idea, to build support, break the old by struggling with the feudalistic idea and system for domination and it won, because the new is always going to out win the old.

Capitalism has faced massive upheavals in its short few hundred year history, to believe anything other than that capitalism will fall is very infantile.

105

[quote]BonnotGang wrote:
LOL bring the bankrupt science is a religion trap, my goodness, are we out of generic unproven ridiculous talking points already pal?[/quote]

Not yet. We haven’t brought up the “anarchist gene”. The one that you were born with and couldn’t help. It’s not your fault; it’s your parents.

106

[quote]BonnotGang wrote:

not really, you know I don’t draw conclusions without evidence…[/quote]

Yes you do. You don’t have a single shred of emprical evidence that human beings would abandon thier nature, habits and customs and voluntarily live in the kind of utopian abstraction you suggest is viable.

They’ve never done it. So, without that evidence, how can you conclude that they will?

107

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:

[quote]BonnotGang wrote:

not really, you know I don’t draw conclusions without evidence…[/quote]

Yes you do. You don’t have a single shred of emprical evidence that human beings would abandon thier nature, habits and customs and voluntarily live in the kind of utopian abstraction you suggest is viable.

They’ve never done it. So, without that evidence, how can you conclude that they will?[/quote]

I disagree. In limited situations this has happened. Usually in situations united by a common religion or philosophy or whatnot. But for a large group of people (more than a few hundred), I know of no situation where it’s happened in a sustainable manner. Where it hasn’t ultimately “degraded” into a power struggle via money, status, etc.

Now, it’s quite possible it has, but they just had poor recordkeeping… or have simply just cut ties with the external world.

As far as the “ownership of the means of production” thing, certainly there are still situations where Marxist thought applies such as factory work, but there’s a lot of gaps when it comes to “knowledge work”. E.g., I write software for a living and I have full control over the means of production. If someone wants me to do something, it doesn’t get done unless I choose to. In most cases, I actually have enough leverage to set things in motion to work the way I want them to. In a very real sense, they’re investing in me, in what I can do, in my ability to deliver. I’m able to set some of my own terms because of that leverage. The nature of my work is very far from that of an employee that just follows instructions.

108

[quote]LoRez wrote:

I disagree. In limited situations this has happened. Usually in situations united by a common religion or philosophy or whatnot. But for a large group of people (more than a few hundred), I know of no situation where it’s happened in a sustainable manner. Where it hasn’t ultimately “degraded” into a power struggle via money, status, etc.[/quote]

So, what you meant was - you agree. As you concede, this attenpted utopia has “degraded” because people simply won’t agree to abide by the rules of the utopia for any period of time.

That was exactly the point. There is no empirical evidence that it has happened for a society.

109

[quote]BonnotGang wrote:
LOL bring the bankrupt science is a religion trap, my goodness, are we out of generic unproven ridiculous talking points already pal?

[/quote]

No, it is not.

You treat it as such, there is a difference.

The problem is not science, its you.

110

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:

[quote]LoRez wrote:

I disagree. In limited situations this has happened. Usually in situations united by a common religion or philosophy or whatnot. But for a large group of people (more than a few hundred), I know of no situation where it’s happened in a sustainable manner. Where it hasn’t ultimately “degraded” into a power struggle via money, status, etc.[/quote]

So, what you meant was - you agree. As you concede, this attenpted utopia has “degraded” because people simply won’t agree to abide by the rules of the utopia for any period of time.

That was exactly the point. There is no empirical evidence that it has happened for a society.[/quote]

It is still interesting to point out that monasteries, cooperatives, kibuzes(?= and whatnot are very socialist in nature.

They usually do not care to have people around who had to have been dragged in kicking and screaming, though in the case of medieval monasteries that was probably not quite true.

111

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:

[quote]LoRez wrote:

I disagree. In limited situations this has happened. Usually in situations united by a common religion or philosophy or whatnot. But for a large group of people (more than a few hundred), I know of no situation where it’s happened in a sustainable manner. Where it hasn’t ultimately “degraded” into a power struggle via money, status, etc.[/quote]

So, what you meant was - you agree. As you concede, this attenpted utopia has “degraded” because people simply won’t agree to abide by the rules of the utopia for any period of time.

That was exactly the point. There is no empirical evidence that it has happened for a society.[/quote]

Well, ok. Let me qualify.

When the number of people is small, a “utopia” is possible. Usually there has to be some conceptual framework that everyone agrees on.

As the number of people increases, it’s less likely everyone everyone will comply with those “rules” (for whatever reasons… social psych, group psych, economics, other fields all have their theories) and then the utopianism degrades.

The biological explanations actually seem to make the most sense. We are mammals, and specifically great apes. What we often call “human nature” is really “mammalian” nature and/or “ape” nature. Possession, jealousy, territorialism, social hierarchies. It’s all there.

Certainly we have higher cognitive ability which lets us subvert some of this nature… which is why utopias can and have existed for short periods of time on a small scale… but we also know that willpower is available in limited quantities, and we revert to our “baser” natures more often than most people realize.

The better the politico-economic systems accept that and work with it, the better.

If you look at three different environments in parallel, say, Sudan, modern “new” Russia, and the US, the politico-economic structures are very different. And the human behavior is fundamentally the same. There’s corruption in all of them. There’s major power struggles. There are fights over means of production. And so on.

But I would say that the US’s structure has provided the most widely distributed positive benefits of all of them. All of them can be horrible to live under; all of them can be great to live under, depending on where you fit in… but the average US citizen is better off than the average Sudanese or Russian citizen.

Of course, that doesn’t change the fact that I think most Russian women are incredible, and that I’d prefer to live in a more utopian society, but I’ve gotten more in tune with reality over the years, versus my earlier theoretical and idealist leanings. It also doesn’t mean I think the US is “ideal” by any means.

112

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:

[quote]BonnotGang wrote:

not really, you know I don’t draw conclusions without evidence…[/quote]

Yes you do. You don’t have a single shred of emprical evidence that human beings would abandon thier nature, habits and customs and voluntarily live in the kind of utopian abstraction you suggest is viable.

They’ve never done it. So, without that evidence, how can you conclude that they will?[/quote]

like when people abandoned nomadic lives for civilization, or like when people dropped their fuedal society for capitalist society, no that never happens, next lol.

113

[quote]BonnotGang wrote:
Every place unfettered, unchecked capitalism and regulated capitalism alike has been the economic system, there has been crime, poverty, war, inequality.

[…]

Capitalism has faced massive upheavals in its short few hundred year history, to believe anything other than that capitalism will fall is very infantile.
[/quote]

I completely agree. But can you point out a single economic system with a real world track record which has not had “crime, poverty, war, inequality” or that has not faced “massive upheavals”?

I also agree that capitalism, in its pure form (has it ever existed purely?) will fail, and what we will end up with is an amalgamation of ideas that work better than the ideas prevalent today. I fully expect any successful system we have will be “bastardized”… or “highly customized”, depending on how you want to look at it.

I also think it’s very infantile for someone to propose an economic system and claim superiority when it has no real world track record. I’m not accusing you of that though. I’m just saying.

114

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[quote]BonnotGang wrote:
Human nature is a reaction to human condition, I thought people using Human nature was a thing of the past Circa the Mcarthy Era.

[/quote]

McCarthy has been vindicated by history. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Soviet archives confirmed that there were Soviet agents and provocateurs at the highest levels of government, throughout academia and within the leadership of many of the trade unions. Furthermore, CPUSA was always an instrument of Soviet subversion as were the plethora of umbrella groups associated with the new left.

You have already advocated “class war[fare],” “rob[bery]” and you apparently support the murder of people for the purposes of robbing them. You are also advocating totalitarianism. You are clearly a very sick individual.[/quote]

Anarchism:

Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the STATE to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful,[1][2] or alternatively as opposing authority and hierarchical organization in the conduct of human relations.[3][4][5][6][7][8] Proponents of anarchism, known as “anarchists”, advocate stateless societies based on non-hierarchical[3][9][10] voluntary associations.[11][12]

Totalitarianism:

otalitarianism (or totalitarian rule) is a political system where the STATE recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible.[1] Totalitarian regimes stay in political power through an all-encompassing propaganda campaign, which is disseminated through the state-controlled mass media, a single party that is often marked by political repression, personality cultism, control over the economy, regulation and restriction of speech, mass surveillance, and widespread use of terror.

HAHAHAHAHA, my word, this is kinda shitty of you, because anyone on here genuinely debating has had their argument lessened by you pitching in on their side with the best piece of unintentional comedy iv’e seen for ages!

115

[quote]LoRez wrote:

[quote]BonnotGang wrote:
Every place unfettered, unchecked capitalism and regulated capitalism alike has been the economic system, there has been crime, poverty, war, inequality.

[…]

Capitalism has faced massive upheavals in its short few hundred year history, to believe anything other than that capitalism will fall is very infantile.
[/quote]

I completely agree. But can you point out a single economic system with a real world track record which has not had “crime, poverty, war, inequality” or that has not faced “massive upheavals”?

I also agree that capitalism, in its pure form (has it ever existed purely?) will fail, and what we will end up with is an amalgamation of ideas that work better than the ideas prevalent today. I fully expect any successful system we have will be “bastardized”… or “highly customized”, depending on how you want to look at it.

I also think it’s very infantile for someone to propose an economic system and claim superiority when it has no real world track record. I’m not accusing you of that though. I’m just saying.[/quote]

No system in history has ever been good, because every system has relied on man exploiting man. The one society that was genuinely free was Catalonia during the Spanish civil war, but of course due to the republicans, Stalinist s and fascists, the Anarchism experiment that lead to workers freedom in Catalonia was crushed.

The Paris commune was another great heroic attempt, but again was ruthlessly crushed, every flourishing Anarchist movement is always crushed, it never fails.

Russian revolution is a great example, until the murderous Bolsheviks hijacked it and declared a one party state, workers had taken over factories, people were electing representatives and running their own workplace, the problem is Anarchism is not about ruling but about freedom so it needs more than millions to work it needs all the workers globally to unite.

Greece right now is another example, Anarchist workers have taken over certain factories, one hospital, numerous places and run a free network, its gained huge support and that is why you see thousands and thousands of normal working class people, grandmothers, firemen, bakers, cooks, all marching as Anarchists fighting the current system and what it does to the masses as the few get rich off the inevitable crisis, that always occurs in the capitalist system.

As I have previously stated, capitalism has been here but a fraction in the space of human history, and its already had tonnes of massive crisis, it has had huge revolts, it is already in its highest stage, aka imperialism (monopoly capitalism)

To think this system will be here much longer is to be a french nobleman gazing upon a rioting mob and declare, to this our royal Monarchy, from this day to the last in time.

116

[quote]BonnotGang wrote:

[quote]LoRez wrote:

[quote]BonnotGang wrote:
Every place unfettered, unchecked capitalism and regulated capitalism alike has been the economic system, there has been crime, poverty, war, inequality.

[…]

Capitalism has faced massive upheavals in its short few hundred year history, to believe anything other than that capitalism will fall is very infantile.
[/quote]

I completely agree. But can you point out a single economic system with a real world track record which has not had “crime, poverty, war, inequality” or that has not faced “massive upheavals”?

I also agree that capitalism, in its pure form (has it ever existed purely?) will fail, and what we will end up with is an amalgamation of ideas that work better than the ideas prevalent today. I fully expect any successful system we have will be “bastardized”… or “highly customized”, depending on how you want to look at it.

I also think it’s very infantile for someone to propose an economic system and claim superiority when it has no real world track record. I’m not accusing you of that though. I’m just saying.[/quote]

No system in history has ever been good, because every system has relied on man exploiting man. [/quote]

I think you may have cause and effect backwards here.

Assume that man will always exploit man from the beginning. (Replace man with “mammal” or “ape” if you want). Now, which system works best to reduce the negative outcomes to the majority of the population?

[quote]The one society that was genuinely free was Catalonia during the Spanish civil war, but of course due to the republicans, Stalinist s and fascists, the Anarchism experiment that lead to workers freedom in Catalonia was crushed.

The Paris commune was another great heroic attempt, but again was ruthlessly crushed, every flourishing Anarchist movement is always crushed, it never fails.

Russian revolution is a great example, until the murderous Bolsheviks hijacked it and declared a one party state, workers had taken over factories, people were electing representatives and running their own workplace, the problem is Anarchism is not about ruling but about freedom so it needs more than millions to work it needs all the workers globally to unite.[/quote]

Those are great attempts, but the reality of it is that they weren’t sustainable. Sure, you can say “some outside factor caused it to fail”… but a sustainable system is capable of dealing with externalities. So far, no anarchist implementation has succeeded.

Now, I love the ideals of the anarchist philosophy/ies, but I just don’t see them really “working”.

What I have seen work is employee-owned companies, and companies that focus on employee satisfaction even at the risk of decreased profitability. In both cases, the companies that focus on keeping their employees happy and empowered actually end up producing more, the work is higher quality, and the morale is maintained. There’s a fair amount of natural camaraderie and minimal backstabbing. But these were all software-industry businesses. I don’t think that translates to manufacturing, for instance.

117

Mate I am not gonna try and ram my beliefs down your throat, I merely say as a worker,we will hugely benefit from Anarchism.

I thought it was silly before I understood it and got past the bullshit idea man is inherently greedy, without taking into account mans hardwired altruism as well as greed and the fact man is made in the image of his conditions, I suggest to people read wealth of nations, read das kapital, read Bakunin, read mein kampf, read every political manifesto, every religious document, the only thing that makes sense and is a society that is fair and can produce in abundance for all without exploitation is revolutionary Anarchism.

Also the highest production recorded in a capitalist environment directly divided by people working to productivity mustered is… you guessed it, a workers cooperative and a auto plant that became workers controlled :slight_smile:

A software computer programmer provides a service that makes an industry’s elite wealthy, all workers must make more than they are paid, simple mathematics, if a worker earned more than the value of his labor capitalism could not work.

And as for the factory workers should control the means of production I can see that, but what about non productive labor question:

All labor, whether cleaning, cooing, IT etc is needed for society to function, for business to carry on, if the capitalist had no one to stack shelves, He could not sell his commodities on a huge scale rendering his business non viable, so the non productive worker in one sense, is even more productive in another, hence, all labor is productive.

118

Sorry will give better responses later, girlfriend won’t stop fucking wining for attention.

119

[quote]BonnotGang wrote:
Sorry will give better responses later, girlfriend won’t stop fucking wining for attention.[/quote]

I’ll wait. You might want to proofread your last post… some of it wasn’t very readable.

120

“…McCarthy has been vindicated by history…”

I’m curious, SM; how are you defining “vindicated”?

Mufasa