Communists.

asdasd

Does it say millionaire playbpy who used women of much lower status than him for sexual pleasure, with dreams of world domination?

Permabear

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brianthebard

For the last time Nazis weren't socialists. If you expect people to actually consider your position you would need to be somewhat historically accurate.

asdasd

How many people were murdered by American armed forces fighting wars backed by a military lobby and a lust for the control of oil?

These were actions taken by a State, not a corporation. Capitalism can be blamed for deaths caused by capitalists - i.e in the case of expoitation of workers. Since I am not a free market fundamentalist it is very easy to argue for government interventions to stop abuses. The argument you are having with me ( someone who is extremenly anti-Marxist) is with someone who prefers Berlin to Boston. DF is different.

It is Marxist fantasy that all corporations are in favour of a war. It is not as if "Oil Companies" are the only companies in the US, or even massively capitalized. And if they make money from a war then others lose out. If oil prices rise then oil companies make money, but computer manufacturers, software sellers and car manufacturers lose money as there is less of it about ( in fact it goes to the middle east).

On the other hand if oil prices fall ( if that is the "reason" for the war) then the Oil companies lose money.

Why is why Marxists rarely march against the war citing GM, Apple, Google or MicroSoft as responsible for it because that would be absurd, even for Marxists.

Who is responsible for war? States are. Not capitalism.

The American State goes to war regardless of what it's capitalist classes - from Oil companies to the millions of people in small companies - think. Or what the population thinks, often enough.

asdasd

For the last time Nazis weren't socialists. If you expect people to actually consider your position you would need to be somewhat historically accurate.

He can blame the German State. Or in that case a mob.

There are strong similarities between communism and Nazzism anyway, and Nazi literature is exactly like socialist literature of the time expect it places the blame for global capitalism racially. Absurd yes. However I dont really see the communist opposition to Kristalnacht except that it targeted Jewish business alone. By communist standards attacking businesses is ok. Even to this day.

by any moral, pro-property, standard both are equally immoral.

Permabear

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brianthebard

We already covered your inaccurate misquoting of Marx in another thread, you're only embarassing yourself by continuing to pretend Marx called for the extermination of the jews.

Permabear

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asdasd

DF, there is so much in Marxist ideology to attack you probably dont need that kind of argument. Marx was Jewish. That piece is about how what were considered supposedly "traits" of the Jews ( and he held 19th century views on that) would wither away with the removal of capitalism, since these were supposedly very capitalistic traits. He pretty much thought that most nationalities would disappear as well. After all you dont get a world communist system with States fading away unless people lose their prvious identities.

thats all wrong, but not specifically anti-semitic.

I think Marx, the person, was alright. Engels was a playboy. Theory all wrong though.

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Red Sleeping Beauty

DadaKopf wrote: »

Discussion on Friedrich Engels on Pat Kenny now. Dunno if it'll be any good.

It was probably as good as this discussion ?

lmtduffy

donegalfella wrote: »

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A man with money to shave and shower has a better job of contributing to the economy than one who doesn't.

The recession would be deeper if all those people in the the dole didn't have money to spend.

A man with income support will have the time to find the most appropriate job hence being as productive as he can be.

(But the amount of welfare, the other interventions that can take place are another issue, Im sticking to the concept of the dole itself here)

It's also quite clear from history that infrastructure, businesses investment, education, and health care can all flourish outside of the government-will-provide model.

Yes but are provided for the most people with the greatest effect by the Nordic model,

And if government institutions protect us from pollution, how do you explain the fact that those countries which were or are most controlled by government—such as the former Soviet Union, China, and former communist countries of Eastern Europe—suffer from the worst pollution on the face of the earth?

I wanna clear up I dont support communism or socialism,

It is not, however, clear that government interventionism and massive public spending produces a "smarter, healthier society."

Well whos going to be more likely to be smarter and healthier a man with a hospital and a school with open doors or a man who has to work whats offered and will have to pay as much as he can afford to get into a hospital or school?

The Nordic quality of life today continues to hinge on institutions such as property rights, the rule of law, (relatively) stable currencies, and a strong work ethic that were developed prior to the vast welfare-state expansionism of the 1960s. However, the Nordic welfare state model does reduce economic performance quite dramatically over the longer term. In Sweden, real incomes have been dropping consistently ever since 1975. The country is becoming consistently poorer, relative to other developed countries, despite the illusion of prosperity created in recent years by the now-collapsed property and technology bubbles (à la Ireland). This is not a sustainable state of affairs over the long term.

[/QUOTE]

It reduces economic performance as it values other things as well, such as the comprehensive health of its society.

And a key point you say here is relative to other developed countries its economics performance might not suit you but it excels else where.

So if its not sustainable when will or what will cause the death of the Nordic model and when will your libertarian model be resurrected?

Permabear

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DadaKopf

Alan Rouge wrote: »

It was probably as good as this discussion ?

It was just as bad.

hat piece is about how what were considered supposedly "traits" of the Jews ( and he held 19th century views on that) would wither away with the removal of capitalism, since these were supposedly very capitalistic traits. He pretty much thought that most nationalities would disappear as well. After all you dont get a world communist system with States fading away unless people lose their prvious identities.

I'm not sure what you mean here. But anyway, it reminds me of something important. And that is that Marx spotted the danger of nationalism, but also the role it played in the existing socio-political order of his time. Eric Hobsbawm described this period very well in 'The Invention of Tradition' (see also Peter Ekeh's take on this in the sub-Saharan African context). Nationalism, as Marx saw it, served (even invented by elites) to divide people in a way that obscured the divisions generated by capitalist social relations. Marx also recognised the need for any 'proletarian revolution' to speak to its own context. Historically, this found expression in so many cases through workers' revolutions framed in nationalist terms, Ireland being one example. Marx was right that nationalism was dangerous - in most instances of nationalistic revolution - left, right, whatever - ended in a bloodbath. It didn't matter that these revolutions were capitalist, communist, crypto-capitalist, crypto-communist, or 'other', nationalism (and contemporary ethno-nationalisms) is one of the central ideological features and causes of mass murder the world over.

Why?

Nationalism emerged because of two things: the global ascendance of capitalism, and the extension of the nation-state system of international relations. If you trace the emergence of nationalist movements, you trace the expansion of capitalism and the Westphalian order. Think, for example, the Armenian massacre.

Anyway, I don't care.

You know, I don't really want to get sucked into this reductive strategy by anti-lefties to discredit the marxian tradition. And by 'tradition', I mean something that *evolves*.

If anything, the biggest task and one being taken seriously among the 'post-left' is how to re-establish so-called Marxism the revolution without violence it originally was.

Leonid

donegalfella wrote: »

Actually, Marx was raised as a Christian. His father was a convert.
His father was a lawyer, there were laws against Jews working as lawyers, so to continue working he converted. Though this was not for religious reasons. Marx was not raised a Christian in the usual sense, religion wasn't very important in the Marx household. They lived in the Alsace-Lorraine region which taken over by Germany following the Franco-Prussian war, hence the change in jurisdictions.

lmtduffy

donegalfella wrote: »

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I said I didnt want to get into this, as its not what were discussing,
I agree the dole is too generous but thats not the issue.

We should keep borrowing money from China and keep pumping it into our economy so that we sustain the illusion of prosperity? Isn't that just trying to borrow one's way out of a recession?

Its just a roundabout stimulus package really, Id prefer more direct easing that creates jobs not just keeping people in jobs.

Care to expand on the china reference?

Many on income support don't see any reason to find employment at all since, for a lot of people, the difference between the dole + rent subsidies + medical card + other benefits and the average industrial wage doesn't justify getting out of bed in the morning.

Once again the present dole in Ireland is not what we are discussing,
and your making it sound like you are more scorned by Ireland's inefficiencies rather than the concepts behind them,.

A couple who have combined salaries of €100,000, and two dependent children, would take home €78,000 after taxes in the USA. The same couple would take home €68,000 in Ireland, €66,400 in the UK, and €55,000 in Denmark (the crown jewel of the so-called "Nordic Model"). And once the Danes get their hands on their €55,000—note that one of them has effectively worked to fund the State—they can look forward to paying 25 percent VAT on absolutely everything they buy, even food and children's clothing. What a paradise.

Yes and they will also have OT pay for health care, university etc,
and very well they might be lucky enough to afford it.
But whit social democracy even if they are unfortunate enough to be poor they still have a chance to better themselves and be of benefit to society.

Also they are less likely to end up in prison and with that less likely to be a victim of crime in Denmark you know with America having 5% of the world's population and 23.6% of the world's prison population?

As Margaret Thatcher put it, "The problem with Socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money."

and she was rejected in favour of?
is now held in what sort of esteem by most people?
is portrayed as what by the media?
and here policies are being emulated to success by who?

And Im not supporting socialism.

DadaKopf

For the laugh, here's an enjoyable article by Slavoz Žižek where he describes 'Liberal Communists', a term not of his own invention. He extends his discussion of this in his recent book, 'Violence' (or 'Vye-o-lensch' as he would say), which is only ten euros!

Nobody has to be vile
Slavoj Žižek

Since 2001, Davos and Porto Alegre have been the twin cities of globalisation: Davos, the exclusive Swiss resort where the global elite of managers, statesmen and media personalities meets for the World Economic Forum under heavy police protection, trying to convince us (and themselves) that globalisation is its own best remedy; Porto Alegre, the subtropical Brazilian city where the counter-elite of the anti-globalisation movement meets, trying to convince us (and themselves) that capitalist globalisation is not our inevitable fate – that, as the official slogan puts it, ‘another world is possible.’ It seems, however, that the Porto Alegre reunions have somehow lost their impetus – we have heard less and less about them over the past couple of years. Where did the bright stars of Porto Alegre go?

Some of them, at least, moved to Davos. The tone of the Davos meetings is now predominantly set by the group of entrepreneurs who ironically refer to themselves as ‘liberal communists’ and who no longer accept the opposition between Davos and Porto Alegre: their claim is that we can have the global capitalist cake (thrive as entrepreneurs) and eat it (endorse the anti-capitalist causes of social responsibility, ecological concern etc). There is no need for Porto Alegre: instead, Davos can become Porto Davos.

So who are these liberal communists? The usual suspects: Bill Gates and George Soros, the CEOs of Google, IBM, Intel, eBay, as well as court-philosophers like Thomas Friedman. The true conservatives today, they argue, are not only the old right, with its ridiculous belief in authority, order and parochial patriotism, but also the old left, with its war against capitalism: both fight their shadow-theatre battles in disregard of the new realities. The signifier of this new reality in the liberal communist Newspeak is ‘smart’. Being smart means being dynamic and nomadic, and against centralised bureaucracy; believing in dialogue and co-operation as against central authority; in flexibility as against routine; culture and knowledge as against industrial production; in spontaneous interaction and autopoiesis as against fixed hierarchy.

Bill Gates is the icon of what he has called ‘frictionless capitalism’, the post-industrial society and the ‘end of labour’. Software is winning over hardware and the young nerd over the old manager in his black suit. In the new company headquarters, there is little external discipline; former hackers dominate the scene, working long hours, enjoying free drinks in green surroundings. The underlying notion here is that Gates is a subversive marginal hooligan, an ex-hacker, who has taken over and dressed himself up as a respectable chairman.

Liberal communists are top executives reviving the spirit of contest or, to put it the other way round, countercultural geeks who have taken over big corporations. Their dogma is a new, postmodernised version of Adam Smith’s invisible hand: the market and social responsibility are not opposites, but can be reunited for mutual benefit. As Friedman puts it, nobody has to be vile in order to do business these days; collaboration with employees, dialogue with customers, respect for the environment, transparency of deals – these are the keys to success. Olivier Malnuit recently drew up the liberal communist’s ten commandments in the French magazine Technikart:

1. You shall give everything away free (free access, no copyright); just charge for the additional services, which will make you rich.

2. You shall change the world, not just sell things.

3. You shall be sharing, aware of social responsibility.

4. You shall be creative: focus on design, new technologies and science.

5. You shall tell all: have no secrets, endorse and practise the cult of transparency and the free flow of information; all humanity should collaborate and interact.

6. You shall not work: have no fixed 9 to 5 job, but engage in smart, dynamic, flexible communication.

7. You shall return to school: engage in permanent education.

8. You shall act as an enzyme: work not only for the market, but trigger new forms of social collaboration.

9. You shall die poor: return your wealth to those who need it, since you have more than you can ever spend.

10. You shall be the state: companies should be in partnership with the state.

Liberal communists are pragmatic; they hate a doctrinaire approach. There is no exploited working class today, only concrete problems to be solved: starvation in Africa, the plight of Muslim women, religious fundamentalist violence. When there is a humanitarian crisis in Africa (liberal communists love a humanitarian crisis; it brings out the best in them), instead of engaging in anti-imperialist rhetoric, we should get together and work out the best way of solving the problem, engage people, governments and business in a common enterprise, start moving things instead of relying on centralised state help, approach the crisis in a creative and unconventional way.

Liberal communists like to point out that the decision of some large international corporations to ignore apartheid rules within their companies was as important as the direct political struggle against apartheid in South Africa. Abolishing segregation within the company, paying blacks and whites the same salary for the same job etc: this was a perfect instance of the overlap between the struggle for political freedom and business interests, since the same companies can now thrive in post-apartheid South Africa.

Liberal communists love May 1968. What an explosion of youthful energy and creativity! How it shattered the bureaucratic order! What an impetus it gave to economic and social life after the political illusions dropped away! Those who were old enough were themselves protesting and fighting on the streets: now they have changed in order to change the world, to revolutionise our lives for real. Didn’t Marx say that all political upheavals were unimportant compared to the invention of the steam engine? And would Marx not have said today: what are all the protests against global capitalism in comparison with the internet?

Above all, liberal communists are true citizens of the world – good people who worry. They worry about populist fundamentalism and irresponsible greedy capitalist corporations. They see the ‘deeper causes’ of today’s problems: mass poverty and hopelessness breed fundamentalist terror. Their goal is not to earn money, but to change the world (and, as a by-product, make even more money). Bill Gates is already the single greatest benefactor in the history of humanity, displaying his love for his neighbours by giving hundreds of millions of dollars for education, the fight against hunger and malaria etc. The catch is that before you can give all this away you have to take it (or, as the liberal communists would put it, create it). In order to help people, the justification goes, you must have the means to do so, and experience – that is, recognition of the dismal failure of all centralised statist and collectivist approaches – teaches us that private enterprise is by far the most effective way. By regulating their business, taxing them excessively, the state is undermining the official goal of its own activity (to make life better for the majority, to help those in need).

Liberal communists do not want to be mere profit-machines: they want their lives to have deeper meaning. They are against old-fashioned religion and for spirituality, for non-confessional meditation (everybody knows that Buddhism foreshadows brain science, that the power of meditation can be measured scientifically). Their motto is social responsibility and gratitude: they are the first to admit that society has been incredibly good to them, allowing them to deploy their talents and amass wealth, so they feel that it is their duty to give something back to society and help people. This beneficence is what makes business success worthwhile.

This isn’t an entirely new phenomenon. Remember Andrew Carnegie, who employed a private army to suppress organised labour in his steelworks and then distributed large parts of his wealth for educational, cultural and humanitarian causes, proving that, although a man of steel, he had a heart of gold? In the same way, today’s liberal communists give away with one hand what they grabbed with the other.

There is a chocolate-flavoured laxative available on the shelves of US stores which is publicised with the paradoxical injunction: Do you have constipation? Eat more of this chocolate! – i.e. eat more of something that itself causes constipation. The structure of the chocolate laxative can be discerned throughout today’s ideological landscape; it is what makes a figure like Soros so objectionable. He stands for ruthless financial exploitation combined with its counter-agent, humanitarian worry about the catastrophic social consequences of the unbridled market economy. Soros’s daily routine is a lie embodied: half of his working time is devoted to financial speculation, the other half to ‘humanitarian’ activities (financing cultural and democratic activities in post-Communist countries, writing essays and books) which work against the effects of his own speculations. The two faces of Bill Gates are exactly like the two faces of Soros: on the one hand, a cruel businessman, destroying or buying out competitors, aiming at a virtual monopoly; on the other, the great philanthropist who makes a point of saying: ‘What does it serve to have computers if people do not have enough to eat?’

According to liberal communist ethics, the ruthless pursuit of profit is counteracted by charity: charity is part of the game, a humanitarian mask hiding the underlying economic exploitation. Developed countries are constantly ‘helping’ undeveloped ones (with aid, credits etc), and so avoiding the key issue: their complicity in and responsibility for the miserable situation of the Third World. As for the opposition between ‘smart’ and ‘non-smart’, outsourcing is the key notion. You export the (necessary) dark side of production – disciplined, hierarchical labour, ecological pollution – to ‘non-smart’ Third World locations (or invisible ones in the First World). The ultimate liberal communist dream is to export the entire working class to invisible Third World sweat shops.

We should have no illusions: liberal communists are the enemy of every true progressive struggle today. All other enemies – religious fundamentalists, terrorists, corrupt and inefficient state bureaucracies – depend on contingent local circumstances. Precisely because they want to resolve all these secondary malfunctions of the global system, liberal communists are the direct embodiment of what is wrong with the system. It may be necessary to enter into tactical alliances with liberal communists in order to fight racism, sexism and religious obscurantism, but it’s important to remember exactly what they are up to.

Etienne Balibar, in La Crainte des masses (1997), distinguishes the two opposite but complementary modes of excessive violence in today’s capitalism: the objective (structural) violence that is inherent in the social conditions of global capitalism (the automatic creation of excluded and dispensable individuals, from the homeless to the unemployed), and the subjective violence of newly emerging ethnic and/or religious (in short: racist) fundamentalisms. They may fight subjective violence, but liberal communists are the agents of the structural violence that creates the conditions for explosions of subjective violence. The same Soros who gives millions to fund education has ruined the lives of thousands thanks to his financial speculations and in doing so created the conditions for the rise of the intolerance he denounces.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n07/zize01_.html

I wish this would ground this discussion, but it won't.

Permabear

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af_thefragile

turgon

lmtduffy wrote: »

your making it sound like you are more scorned by Ireland's inefficiencies rather than the concepts behind them,.

So we should give social welfare to every half-deserving tom dick and harry just because the concept is good?

Hamiltonion

Seriously, has nobody else realised the fundemental flaw of communisim?
Man wants to be above his neighbour, status quo in EVERY society.Capitalist system = Money, earn more than your neighbour
Communist system = Power. Become more powerful/higher status than neighbour. Struggle for all encompassing power between individuals will tear any country apart. Hence only system that is ont based upon a self destructive idealology is one with a free market but with true democracy, abolition of political parties and individual representation in government

DadaKopf

donegalfella wrote: »

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I'm sure you can figure that out yourself if you're bothered.

Lockstep

donegalfella wrote: »

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Yes. I deny that.
Hitler's support base came from the Protestant/liberals base. He got little support from Catholic or Socialist areas.
Socialists were initially surprised to see Hitler appear sympathetic to them given his declaration of Mayday as a holiday but were quickly disabused by the notion when Hitler destroyed the union movement, removed right to strike etc; integral parts of socialism. I'd say many of his policies were right wing, given the employer's power over his workers.

Capitalism was fine within Nazi Germany. Private companies like IG Farben were able to avail of slave labour from the concentration camps though. It's true there was a degree of state control but this was more due to Hitler's obsession with a war economy. I don't believe that the state controlled the means of production.

The fact it called itself the National Socialist party does not mean it was socialist. East Germany was far from a GermW Democratic Republic.


Socialism is an extremely broad ideology but at it's heart, hold the belief that humans should cooperate. Nazisms stressing of competition over cooperation and it's racial stratification completely goes against this.

"Marxism itself systematically plans to hand the world over to the Jews."
http://books.google.ie/books?id=Q8L42KtTrw0C&pg=PA305&lpg=PA305&dq=%22Marxism+itself+systematically+plans+to+hand+the+world+over+to+the+Jews.%22&source=bl&ots=dcz-_BpKJ3&sig=xlDx9bB3H9BfPTxblayNue_zHWE&hl=en&ei=T0kLSqeOCpe5jAfIwomRCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1#PPA311,M1

donegalfella wrote: »

Are you denying that German socialists (including Karl Marx) saw the Jews, typically associated with capitalism, as enemies of socialism, as a blight that had to be removed in order for mankind to fulfill its communistic destiny?

"In Jewry, we recognise a contemporary universal anti-social phenomenon, which has reached its present pitch through a process of historical development in which the Jews have zealously co-operated. And this evil anti-social aspect of Jewry has grown to a stage at which it must necessarily collapse"—Karl Marx

Hitler was not averse to giving Marx's historical inevitability a helping hand.

But Marx was a jew. IIRC, his father only converted in order to be able to practice as a lawyer, given the treatment of jews at the time. By Hitler's standards, Marx would be a jew anyway.
Many communists were also jews (Trotsky)
And socialists/social democrats were such a targeted part of the Nazis that they had their own identification in the concentration camps (the red triangle)

lmtduffy

turgon wrote: »

So we should give social welfare to every half-deserving tom dick and harry just because the concept is good?

not only is the concept good but when practised correctly its very good for everyone.

And no obviously not every half deserving tom dick and harry as thats just stupid honestly this cant be that foreign to you.

Soldie

kickoutthejams wrote: »

Capitalism was fine within Nazi Germany. Private companies like IG Farben were able to avail of slave labour from the concentration camps though. It's true there was a degree of state control but this was more due to Hitler's obsession with a war economy. I don't believe that the state controlled the means of production.

In a communist country (USSR), the state will own the factories. In a fascist country (Germany and Italy), the state will tell the factories what to produce. Beyond the superficial, there's little difference.

Red Sleeping Beauty

DadaKopf wrote: »

It was just as bad.

.

It's interesting how it's the same arguements that are repeated "it doesn't work" , "communism just kills people" , "we have a nature to want the most money and the biggest house ergo capitalism is totally natural" on and on ad nauseam.

Does no one factor in that the type of society a person lives in affects their behaviour and attitude , opinions, beliefs etc.

Lockstep

Soldie wrote: »

In a communist country (USSR), the state will own the factories. In a fascist country (Germany and Italy), the state will tell the factories what to produce. Beyond the superficial, there's little difference.

Not really; focussing the economy towards war is not socialism. This would require it being done in the name of the people.

It's militarism/authoritarianism more than anything.


Private enterprise wasn't discouraged as long as it didn't interfere with the State. Big difference when you compare to practiced communism where the state controlled everything.

Soldie

kickoutthejams wrote: »

Not really; focussing the economy towards war is not socialism. This would require it being done in the name of the people.

Focusing indeed - was this done by the free market, or coercively by the government? State intervention in the economy (i.e. telling it what to produce) has little to do with capitalism, and a lot to do with communism.

Permabear

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brianthebard

Soldie wrote: »

Focusing indeed - was this done by the free market, or coercively by the government? State intervention in the economy (i.e. telling it what to produce) has little to do with capitalism, and a lot to do with communism.

Capitalism is a mode of production, specifically a means of production driven by the need to accumulate surplus, which it does through the exploitation of wage labour. Whether it is state decided or not, if this is how production happens then it is a capitalist enterprise.
Government sponsored capitalism has existed for far longer than your free market, and has continued to exist after the free market idea failed in the nineteenth century. Was Britain in the 19th century not capitalist? Although it claimed to follow an ideology of free market liberalism, the government was run by businessmen, such as Joseph Chamberlain in the latter part of the century. Thus Government and Capitalism have always been intrinsically tied together. To claim that state interference in business is a solely communist trait, or worse that a country which carried out "mixed practise" is socialist, is absurd, when the mode of production continues to be the same capitalist entity.