CDZ Ask Me About Marxism

[alang1216]

As for the "wealth concentration" -- that's an artifact of destroying the easy path to entrepreneurism. Excessive Central regulation and control REDUCES the number of start-ups and IPO that can COMPETE with a few giant corporations.

Every business loves the free market when they're starting up but, once they're established, try their best to throttle it. They will use their money to seek government protections and market share to buy out to bankrupt competitors. A free market requires an active government to keep it free.

My analogy is the NFL. They make the rules for every team and have a ref on the field to enforce the rules, they are the gov't. Other than that the teams are free to hire and train players and make plays as they see fit.

 

[Natural Citizen]

A free market requires an active government to keep it free.

Bull Pucky.

You've been reading too much Krugman. lol.

 

[alang1216]

There is no evidence that capitalism exists today.

Free markets are the solution to reintroducing fundamental capitalism.

Was there ever a time or place with 'fundamental capitalism'? If we reintroduce it will it not fail again?

 

[Natural Citizen]

There is no evidence that capitalism exists today.

Free markets are the solution to reintroducing fundamental capitalism.

Was there ever a time or place with 'fundamental capitalism'? If we reintroduce it will it not fail again?

1913 gave us the income tax, The Federal Reserve, the 16th amendment and the IRS. There's the probem.

 

[Natural Citizen]

And we need to reintroduce free markets. Get the government out of it because all they're doing is building a mountain of debt while debasing the dollar.

That system is doomed to fail. Intelligent people realize it. And other countries are now realizing it.

 

[alang1216]

There is no evidence that capitalism exists today.

Free markets are the solution to reintroducing fundamental capitalism.

Was there ever a time or place with 'fundamental capitalism'? If we reintroduce it will it not fail again?

1913 gave us the income tax, The Federal Reserve, the 16th amendment and the IRS. There's the probem.

What do any of these have to do with capitalism?

Every gov't in history has collected taxes, socialist and capitalist alike.

How did the Fed kill capitalism? You'd think capitalism requires a stable money supply or it is back to the barter system.

The Federal Reserve System (also known as the Federal Reserve or simply the Fed) is the central banking system of the United States. It was created on December 23, 1913, with the enactment of the Federal Reserve Act, after a series of financial panics (particularly the panic of 1907) led to the desire for central control of the monetary system in order to alleviate financial crises.[list 1] Over the years, events such as the Great Depression in the 1930s and the Great Recession during the 2000s, have led to the expansion of the roles and responsibilities of the Federal Reserve System.[4][9][10]

 

[Natural Citizen]

What do any of these have to do with capitalism?

Every gov't in history has collected taxes, socialist and capitalist alike.

How did the Fed kill capitalism? You'd think capitalism requires a stable money supply or it is back to the barter system.

The Federal Reserve System (also known as the Federal Reserve or simply the Fed) is the central banking system of the United States. It was created on December 23, 1913, with the enactment of the Federal Reserve Act, after a series of financial panics (particularly the panic of 1907) led to the desire for central control of the monetary system in order to alleviate financial crises.[list 1] Over the years, events such as the Great Depression in the 1930s and the Great Recession during the 2000s, have led to the expansion of the roles and responsibilities of the Federal Reserve System.[4][9][10]

Sigh. Wikipedia. Are you serious? Do you think I don't know what the Federal Reserve is?

You're not qualified for this discussion. Respectfully. I'm sorry. I'm just not going to waste any more time with you at the moment.

I'll leave you a snippet with a homework assignment. Read it, come back to me, then we can see what you've learned and perhaps move forward in the discussion in a relevant way. Okay?

A system of capitalism presumes sound money, not fiat money manipulated by a central bank. Capitalism cherishes voluntary contracts and interest rates that are determined by savings, not credit creation by a central bank. It's not capitalism when the system is plagued with incomprehensible rules regarding mergers, acquisitions, and stock sales, along with wage controls, price controls, protectionism, corporate subsidies, international management of trade, complex and punishing corporate taxes, privileged government contracts to the military-industrial complex, and a foreign policy controlled by corporate interests and overseas investments. Add to this centralized federal mismanagement of farming, education, medicine, insurance, banking and welfare.

This is not capitalism!

Finish your assignment here, please - Has Capitalism Failed?

 

[CrusaderFrank]

A free market requires an active government to keep it free.

Bull Pucky.

You've been reading too much Krugman. lol.

Krugman is the funniest thing in the papers ever since "The Far Side" ended

 

[CrusaderFrank]

'Communism doesn't work because people like to own stuff.' -- Frank Zappa

 

[Toronado3800]

'Communism doesn't work because people like to own stuff.' -- Frank Zappa

Hey Frank, what up man! I feel like we've talked on here for a decade.

No disagreement with the Zappa quote there. I suspect we can meet and agree that pure socialism just is not going to work in the foreseeable future. To set up a future series of debates on tax structures and regulations I don't feel pure capitalism will work either. We'll see where humanity is in 1,000 years and debate if the needle has moved at all!

 

[alang1216]

What do any of these have to do with capitalism?

Every gov't in history has collected taxes, socialist and capitalist alike.

How did the Fed kill capitalism? You'd think capitalism requires a stable money supply or it is back to the barter system.

The Federal Reserve System (also known as the Federal Reserve or simply the Fed) is the central banking system of the United States. It was created on December 23, 1913, with the enactment of the Federal Reserve Act, after a series of financial panics (particularly the panic of 1907) led to the desire for central control of the monetary system in order to alleviate financial crises.[list 1] Over the years, events such as the Great Depression in the 1930s and the Great Recession during the 2000s, have led to the expansion of the roles and responsibilities of the Federal Reserve System.[4][9][10]

Sigh. Wikipedia. Are you serious? Do you think I don't know what the Federal Reserve is?

You're not qualified for this discussion. Respectfully. I'm sorry. I'm just not going to waste any more time with you at the moment.

I'll leave you a snippet with a homework assignment. Read it, come back to me, then we can see what you've learned and perhaps move forward in the discussion in a relevant way. Okay?

A system of capitalism presumes sound money, not fiat money manipulated by a central bank. Capitalism cherishes voluntary contracts and interest rates that are determined by savings, not credit creation by a central bank. It's not capitalism when the system is plagued with incomprehensible rules regarding mergers, acquisitions, and stock sales, along with wage controls, price controls, protectionism, corporate subsidies, international management of trade, complex and punishing corporate taxes, privileged government contracts to the military-industrial complex, and a foreign policy controlled by corporate interests and overseas investments. Add to this centralized federal mismanagement of farming, education, medicine, insurance, banking and welfare. This is not capitalism!

Finish your assignment here, please - Has Capitalism Failed?

The Austrian School is not considered mainstream and was generally discredited in the '30s. I prefer practical systems and not theoretical ones:

Milton Friedman objected to the policy implications of the theory, stating the following in a 1998 interview:

I think the Austrian business-cycle theory has done the world a great deal of harm. If you go back to the 1930s, which is a key point, here you had the Austrians sitting in London, Hayek and Lionel Robbins, and saying you just have to let the bottom drop out of the world. You've just got to let it cure itself. You can't do anything about it. You will only make it worse. You have Rothbard saying it was a great mistake not to let the whole banking system collapse. I think by encouraging that kind of do-nothing policy both in Britain and in the United States, they did harm.[95]​

In 1969, Milton Friedman, after examining the history of business cycles in the U.S., concluded that

"The Hayek-Mises explanation of the business cycle is contradicted by the evidence. It is, I believe, false."[90] He analyzed the issue using newer data in 1993, and again reached the same conclusion.[91] Referring to Friedman's discussion of the business cycle, Austrian economist Roger Garrison argued that Friedman's empirical findings are "broadly consistent with both Monetarist and Austrian views", and goes on to argue that although Friedman's model "describes the economy's performance at the highest level of aggregation, Austrian theory offers an insightful account of the market process that might underlie those aggregates".[96]​

 

[Wry Catcher]

I can't give you all the answers, but I'd like to discuss people's objections to it, as well as why I still believe it's a worthwhile philosophy. Not looking to change minds so much as to have an exchange of an ideas. Or at least provide an understanding of how I and most Marxists I know think about politics, the damage done to the idea of Communism by the USSR and governments like it, economics, etc.

Why did Lenin write State and Revolution?

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

Communism is the antithesis of individual liberty.

Not if it is viciously protected. Which given the state of today's oligarchy is something entirely possible.

Ideally? The sacrifice of a few privileged people's opulent lifestyles that get toned down to happily comfortable.

In reality? Likely some form of conflict between proletariat and bourgeoisie that shakes the foundations of society to its core. It would be intellectually dishonest for me to say otherwise...Marxism is inherently based in the concept of struggle.

How do you reconcile human nature, specifically, if a person works, and has his product taken away from him and given to a person who chooses not to work, eventually the worker stops working. How do you plan on dealing with that very real problem?

I hear many workers complaining about people on welfare yet they still work to survive. I grew up in a Republican household so = P.

At any rate, same situation in Marxism. Except people work to thrive.

This sounds like an oxymoron. You either have democracy or you don't. You can't lock in an economic system that can't be changed by popular consensus and still consider yourself a democracy.

The point of a planned economy is to have it under control of the social good, the popular consensus, rather than random market directions and the consensus of a few billionaires. Also if there are socialist parties that exist under a capitalist government, I see no reason why capitalist parties can't exist under a socialist government.

I don't think you can blame Stalin. Authorization rule was a basic Bolshevik doctrine:

Stalin destroyed whatever chance it had of actually working. However I didn't realize what you're talking about to be the case. But I believe Trotsky's numerous treatises after the fact address the fall of the USSR, including Lenin's mistakes, which is why numerous Trotskyists are for individual rights and democracy.

It's easy to be a Marxist when you are still living off good, old mom and dad and so want to turn the entire state into your parents -- especially if you are unmotivated and aimless in life.

What happens when people grow up and decide to make something of themselves, instead?

Marx believed that work and contributing towards society, benefiting directly from the fruits of their labor, make people happy. He simply doesn't want people to be exploited for their work. I don't believe he had the concept of a "welfare queen" in his mind when he wrote his works.

What about the American Dream of having a wife, couple kids, house, RV or boat? Those things were a common sight when I was a kid.

If the American Dream was feasible for most now, I wouldn't be a Marxist. I feel as though the capitalist engine eventually consumes genuinely important things like family structure and an affluent middle class in the drive for profit.

Marxism seems to work so well, it begs the question why it needs and apologist like yourself.

Because I'm a worthless human being with nothing better to do in my life than to defend a century and a half old ideology. If at the very least to say that considering it as a possibility is still worth it.

However part of my goal is also to find a way to make it feasible in the 21st Century, which requires a lot of research and understanding people who don't think the way I do, since many Marxists seem to be sort of cut off from what the working class wants. Hence why I'm here. I may be an apologist, but I hope to actually do more than apologize someday lol.

Karl Marx Was the Sex Slave of a Patty Hearst Type Duchess

Eliminating hereditary rights is the answer, not any of the others the Left/Right ruling class offers us as fake alternatives. When the son of a millionaire has the same chance of becoming a blue-collar worker that the son of a blue-collar worker has, then the rulers won't be so selfish and cruel towards the working class. They won't start wars when their sons will get drafted for the front lines at age 18

The university, which is the cradle of the Socialist fraud, is designed specifically for richkids living off an allowance. All others are slavish nobodies and traitors to their class.

Hereditary rights beyond passing down things like houses and heirlooms should be abolished, I agree. But do you think the upper class will allow that to happen without some sort of long, drawn out fight?

Also I could say a great many slanderous things about whatever person/s you follow. Won't stop you from subscribing to their ideology.

Trotsky massacred the Kronstadt sailors for objecting to the absolutist dictatorship of the Communist Party members and their inhuman idol Lenin. So he wouldn't have been any better than Stalin when his pseudo-intellectual utopia became threatened by reality.

Possibly. This incident is not something I heard of before...but considering Trotksy wasn't a paranoid asshat like Stalin, I believe he would have done a better job.

Castro's Daddy Was a Rich Landowner

"Bourgeois" is another snob word that indicates the aristocratic origin of the Socialist fraud. It originally was a term of contempt from those who had inherited wealth for those who had earned it, honestly or dishonestly. But all inherited wealth is dishonestly earned. Until you get rid of that rotten privilege, you can't criticize Capitalism, which has been distorted by it.

Castro isn't even a communist, I believe i mentioned that earlier.

Marx wasn't an aristocrat, he was the son of a factory owner. Thus he received an education...but I must ask, do you honestly think a person dedicated to his own survival and ensuring that his own kids and wife don't die by working in a factory for 12 or more hours straight would be concerned with creating some ideology? How could it possibly originate anywhere else but a class that actually received at least somewhat of a political education? The important thing is that it's carried on by the proletariat.

Also, Marx was involved with struggles for the working class to gain rights ever since he began his political work. I can understand calling Marx deluded, but I know for a fact that he wasn't a fraud.

People have theorized that Marx and Engels wrote mostly while imbibing in wormwood or inspired by wormwood driven experiences.

An incorrect theory most likely...if you're talking about absinthe, it never was a hallucinogenic. It was touted as such by a French doctor named Valentine Magnan, who induced muscle spasms in a guinea pig by subjecting it to wormwood vapors as part of an experiment involving the deleterious effects of absinthe and wormwood. The control that was breathing alcohol vapors did not experience the same effect, and thus, Magnan concluded that absinthe was a dangerous drink.

It has been proven systematically throughout the years that thujone, the active compound in wormwood that causes these spasms, does not cause hallucinations, merely loss of muscle control when taken in excessively high doses. Of course, it would be seen as a hallucinogenic in these times without modern medical practices to confirm otherwise.

I do however, believe that Marx and Engels were influenced by a legacy of Enlightenment Era philosophers that came before them: Marxism stands on the shoulders of intellectual giants. Though I don't doubt they indulged in absinthe at some point or another, it probably wasn't the reason for the Communist Manifesto's existence.

Mirror Image

Ayn Rand was on drugs when she wrote Atlas Shrugged, which is basically Stalinism for the plutariat. Reversed from Left to Right, but the same simple-minded tyranny.

Ayn Rand is just an example of why idealist capitalism doesn't work. But people think it still can...which is what I'm trying to understand by being here, tbh.

Patrician Contempt for Their Useful-Idiot Followers

As usual, you ideologues take a superficial characteristic such as having a title as the necessary criterion to judge if someone is an aristocrat. The anti-democratic US Constitution does the same thing, abolishing titles but not abolishing birth privileges, which are the real signs of aristocracy. Marx was an elitist snob and would have been a nobody without Daddy's Money.

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

I never understood people who are against free trade.

If there is no free trade, then what are we left to freely do? Take illicit drugs once they legalize them? Go stick our head in a fan? Wut?

To be a Marxist, is to hate freedom.

This Little Piggy Went to Market

The free market means that whoever inevitably controls a market is free to do whatever he wants. It is a fleece market. Don't be a sheep; the Enronists don't care about their apologists either. Only a brain-slave would object that any criticism of this plutocratic parasites' paradise is "Socialist." Besides, a Communist is a Capitalist, Jr.

 

[Natural Citizen]

What do any of these have to do with capitalism?

Every gov't in history has collected taxes, socialist and capitalist alike.

How did the Fed kill capitalism? You'd think capitalism requires a stable money supply or it is back to the barter system.

The Federal Reserve System (also known as the Federal Reserve or simply the Fed) is the central banking system of the United States. It was created on December 23, 1913, with the enactment of the Federal Reserve Act, after a series of financial panics (particularly the panic of 1907) led to the desire for central control of the monetary system in order to alleviate financial crises.[list 1] Over the years, events such as the Great Depression in the 1930s and the Great Recession during the 2000s, have led to the expansion of the roles and responsibilities of the Federal Reserve System.[4][9][10]

Sigh. Wikipedia. Are you serious? Do you think I don't know what the Federal Reserve is?

You're not qualified for this discussion. Respectfully. I'm sorry. I'm just not going to waste any more time with you at the moment.

I'll leave you a snippet with a homework assignment. Read it, come back to me, then we can see what you've learned and perhaps move forward in the discussion in a relevant way. Okay?

A system of capitalism presumes sound money, not fiat money manipulated by a central bank. Capitalism cherishes voluntary contracts and interest rates that are determined by savings, not credit creation by a central bank. It's not capitalism when the system is plagued with incomprehensible rules regarding mergers, acquisitions, and stock sales, along with wage controls, price controls, protectionism, corporate subsidies, international management of trade, complex and punishing corporate taxes, privileged government contracts to the military-industrial complex, and a foreign policy controlled by corporate interests and overseas investments. Add to this centralized federal mismanagement of farming, education, medicine, insurance, banking and welfare. This is not capitalism!

Finish your assignment here, please - Has Capitalism Failed?

The Austrian School is not considered mainstream and was generally discredited in the '30s. I prefer practical systems and not theoretical ones:

Milton Friedman objected to the policy implications of the theory, stating the following in a 1998 interview:

I think the Austrian business-cycle theory has done the world a great deal of harm. If you go back to the 1930s, which is a key point, here you had the Austrians sitting in London, Hayek and Lionel Robbins, and saying you just have to let the bottom drop out of the world. You've just got to let it cure itself. You can't do anything about it. You will only make it worse. You have Rothbard saying it was a great mistake not to let the whole banking system collapse. I think by encouraging that kind of do-nothing policy both in Britain and in the United States, they did harm.[95]​

In 1969, Milton Friedman, after examining the history of business cycles in the U.S., concluded that

"The Hayek-Mises explanation of the business cycle is contradicted by the evidence. It is, I believe, false."[90] He analyzed the issue using newer data in 1993, and again reached the same conclusion.[91] Referring to Friedman's discussion of the business cycle, Austrian economist Roger Garrison argued that Friedman's empirical findings are "broadly consistent with both Monetarist and Austrian views", and goes on to argue that although Friedman's model "describes the economy's performance at the highest level of aggregation, Austrian theory offers an insightful account of the market process that might underlie those aggregates".[96]​

Nuuh nuh nuh nuh nuh. Let's pick up where we were. You're neglecting where we left off. That's not functional debate. One step at a time here. You don't get to skip around. I won't let you.

Now. You asked ''How did the Fed kill capitalism?''

Did you not?

Was the specific explanation I offered on how the fed killed capitalism not correct, in your view? If not, then, why not?

To repeat: A system of capitalism presumes sound money, not fiat money manipulated by a central bank. Capitalism cherishes voluntary contracts and interest rates that are determined by savings, not credit creation by a central bank. It's not capitalism when the system is plagued with incomprehensible rules regarding mergers, acquisitions, and stock sales, along with wage controls, price controls, protectionism, corporate subsidies, international management of trade, complex and punishing corporate taxes, privileged government contracts to the military-industrial complex, and a foreign policy controlled by corporate interests and overseas investments. Add to this centralized federal mismanagement of farming, education, medicine, insurance, banking and welfare.

This is not capitalism!


Tell me where I'm wrong in offering the accurate assessment which I did, please. Does the government not do these things which have been offered? Thanks.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

'Communism doesn't work because people like to own stuff.' -- Frank Zappa

Hey Frank, what up man! I feel like we've talked on here for a decade.

No disagreement with the Zappa quote there. I suspect we can meet and agree that pure socialism just is not going to work in the foreseeable future. To set up a future series of debates on tax structures and regulations I don't feel pure capitalism will work either. We'll see where humanity is in 1,000 years and debate if the needle has moved at all!

Pure capitalism...what is that? Augustus Caesar ran the entire Roman Empire without a police force, all disputes were settled in courts. That's pure capitalism.

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

A stalking horse is a figure that tests a concept with someone or mounts a challenge against someone on behalf of an anonymous third party. If the idea proves viable or popular, the anonymous figure can then declare its interest and advance the concept with little risk of failure. If the concept fails, the anonymous party will not be tainted by association with the failed concept and can either drop the idea completely or bide its time and wait until a better moment for launching an attack.

Stalking horse - Wikipedia

I've corralled bunches of em. It's a hoot.

A Horse of a Different Color

Similar to that would be a professional opinionator using the embees to test some ideas to see if it would pay off for him to come out with them publicly. Rather than a stalking horse, he would do that himself under a username that doesn't give away who he is.

 

[Sundance508]

Two problems. 1. The rich and the poor tend to be very conservative. 2. Most people are too uneducated to know they are going against their own best interests. Electing Trump is a perfect example. There was a fighter for the poor and what's left of the middle class. It wasn't Trump.

Now this sort of poster deserves to be on a board invisible to the public...such stupidity needs to be hidden away.

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

There is no such thing as true equality. Some people are naturally more skilled than others.

There is only institutionalized equality.

Worth Over Birth

Then the naturally skilled should get the advantages richkids get instead. Confiscate inheritance and redirect it to the talented from childhood on. The investment will pay off many times over, whereas the unearned birth privileges are the hidden tumor that destroys all civilizations. Imagine if athletes had the privilege of passing on their positions to their sons, how long would pro sports last? Letting the HeirHead moochers get Daddy's Money is institutionalized inferiority.

 

[danielpalos]

Two problems. 1. The rich and the poor tend to be very conservative. 2. Most people are too uneducated to know they are going against their own best interests. Electing Trump is a perfect example. There was a fighter for the poor and what's left of the middle class. It wasn't Trump.

Trump spoke to the immediate concerns of the working class, which were charged with rhetoric about immigration, terrorism, and the like. They had been disenfranchised for a long time, and Trump was what they perceived to be their only option...it was either him, a...successful(?) businessman that oozed bravado and promises to take America back for the sections of the working class that had been forgotten by every administration that came before it, or the demonic entity known as Hillary Clinton. In short, the only reason he was voted for was because he claimed to have their interests at heart...populism is a novel concept in a government dominated by neoliberals with capitalist interests at the forefront of their policy decisions.

However, upon seeing what he actually does for the working class (which I predict to be very little), I believe that people will begin to understand that candidates like Trump are not the answer to their problems; the people themselves are.

Also worth mentioning, Bernie Sanders (though not a hardcore Marxist), a self-labeled socialist, almost won the DNC nomination. I genuinely believe a strong labor movement can be formed out of the left and the disenfranchised right.

We already have an American communist here.
Right JakeStarkey

Another American Communist?

*insert get off my lawn pic*

The more social left has health care reform and a fifteen dollar an hour minimum wage on the table.

the more capital right wing is about lowering their taxes, and cutting social benefits for the poor, and have nothing but repeal of health care reform.