The Precariat – The new dangerous class

[eric]

[exploited]

[lnrw]

Haven't many of those marxist variations engaged in a lot of war? and violence?

I see no proof that a marxist society is immune from any of the things captialism is being accused of. The exception is that they run out of money sooner and require greater submission. It just creates a 'different' class of elite rulers and they spout different slogans.

[Medius]

[Medius]

[lnrw]

[The Comrade]

calling north korea the epitome of modern socialism is about as accurate as me calling somalia the epitome of modern libertarianism.

[The Dharma Bum]

Russia in the 80s doesn't have anything to do with anything I am saying. That was a centrally planned statist economy, which is basically what our economic system is evolving toward.

If anything that only proves we are going in the wrong direction. We need a decentralized economy, controlled by the people who actually drive the production, the workers. I am advocating an alternative to both central planning, and capitalist production and distribution philosophies.

Anyway, true collectivism only existed for a short time in Russia, but for the time it did exist it worked well. However the statists happened to win that round and we got Stalinist USSR which is a mirror image of the US that existed at the time.

Also, a lot of the reason conditions in the Communist bloc were so poor is because of extreme economic pressure from the capitalist world. The truth is we are the so-called "evil empire" and we expended a lot of blood and treasure hounding them during the Cold War. The communists took over a feudal country, when communism is supposed to be a development of capitalism (that's skipping a crucial developmental step) and they had to fight an uphill battle against a capitalist superpower and it's puppets that spent much of it's resources on containing and suppressing an alternate political ideology. So the idea that collective, participatory production is "less efficient" or something has no basis in fact. The truth is it is far more efficient, as a large chunk of production doesn't have to be earmarked to give to the elite class of society in exchange for pretty much doing nothing but "owning private property". Also people keep all that they produce which further reduces waste.

Communism didn't have the "evil" connotation it has now in the US before the 1950s. That attitude is the result of years of propaganda, McCarthyism etc.

The truth is it is a rationally conceived social development modern industrial capitalism, it address the concerns that were previously ignored, and it is being suppressed so the irrational can continue to enjoy a ridiculously opulent life style at the expense of society.

Bear in mind that socialism isn't limited to centrally planned state socialism. It simply means harnessing society's production for the benefit of society in entirety. The alternative is harnessing society's production for the benefit of just a few. It's easy to see which is the more rational course for the greater part of humanity of action when considered in those terms.

This being the case, socialism is inevitable and desirable.

[The Dharma Bum]

Communism is how people lived before some guys figured out a minority could split everyone up and take advantage of them via the clever use of force.

[The Dharma Bum]