The New Appeal Of Communism

[whitehall]

The greatest threat to Capitalism in the United States are the Capitalists. Greed is a deadly sin, and the lust for more wealth and more power will eventually lead to civil unrest.

Wealth and power used to be part of the American dream. I rest my case.

Before you rest your case, I suggest you read some history.

Don't the educated elites understand that they would be the first ones in the train headed for the gulag or the firing squad in communist takeover? Look at freaking history. Stupid American socialists fell in love with communism while Stalin was murdering peasants. Simon Motefiore's amazing biography of Stalin relates an era when elite members of the Stalinist regime traveled to their lavish dachas with trains loaded with exotic food while trains loaded with the corpses of starved people traveled in the other direction. Do modern lefties think they could do communism better than Stalin or chairman Mao? Let's hope they never get the chance.

 

[georgephillip]

Wealth and power used to be part of the American dream. I rest my case.

Before you rest your case, I suggest you read some history.

Don't the educated elites understand that they would be the first ones in the train headed for the gulag or the firing squad in communist takeover? Look at freaking history. Stupid American socialists fell in love with communism while Stalin was murdering peasants. Simon Motefiore's amazing biography of Stalin relates an era when elite members of the Stalinist regime traveled to their lavish dachas with trains loaded with exotic food while trains loaded with the corpses of starved people traveled in the other direction. Do modern lefties think they could do communism better than Stalin or chairman Mao? Let's hope they never get the chance.

You're conflating the all powerful state imposed by Lenin and Trotsky and ruthlessly enhanced by Stalin with what socialists fell in love with. Worker Soviets and factory committees were the chosen instruments to create an economy with democratic control by producers over production. Lenin abolished those collectives in 1917 and required the workers submit to the all powerful state. What was practiced in the USSR was about as far from democratic control of the workplace as you can get (outside of Walmart)

The Soviet Union Versus Socialism, by Noam Chomsky

 

[bripat9643]

Humans have rights with respect to things, and humans have rights with respect to themselves. You made the claim property rights are human rights; are you now arguing human rights are property rights?

If humans have rights with respect to things, are those not human rights?

Yes.
Now, what happens when property rights and human rights conflict?

"Yes," they are human rights, or "yes," the are not human rights?

 

[bripat9643]

Before you rest your case, I suggest you read some history.

Don't the educated elites understand that they would be the first ones in the train headed for the gulag or the firing squad in communist takeover? Look at freaking history. Stupid American socialists fell in love with communism while Stalin was murdering peasants. Simon Motefiore's amazing biography of Stalin relates an era when elite members of the Stalinist regime traveled to their lavish dachas with trains loaded with exotic food while trains loaded with the corpses of starved people traveled in the other direction. Do modern lefties think they could do communism better than Stalin or chairman Mao? Let's hope they never get the chance.

You're conflating the all powerful state imposed by Lenin and Trotsky and ruthlessly enhanced by Stalin with what socialists fell in love with. Worker Soviets and factory committees were the chosen instruments to create an economy with democratic control by producers over production. Lenin abolished those collectives in 1917 and required the workers submit to the all powerful state. What was practiced in the USSR was about as far from democratic control of the workplace as you can get (outside of Walmart)

The Soviet Union Versus Socialism, by Noam Chomsky

Worker Soviets and factory committees are exactly the means that gave Lenin absolute power over the populace and allowed him to impose the all powerful state. What the state creates the state can abolish. When you give the state total control over the means of production, you give it control over your life.

Totalitarianism is the fruit of government control of production. The Soviets were little more than arms of the central government as were the factory committees.

Only a true fool would even consider moving in that direction again.

 

[georgephillip]

Don't the educated elites understand that they would be the first ones in the train headed for the gulag or the firing squad in communist takeover? Look at freaking history. Stupid American socialists fell in love with communism while Stalin was murdering peasants. Simon Motefiore's amazing biography of Stalin relates an era when elite members of the Stalinist regime traveled to their lavish dachas with trains loaded with exotic food while trains loaded with the corpses of starved people traveled in the other direction. Do modern lefties think they could do communism better than Stalin or chairman Mao? Let's hope they never get the chance.

You're conflating the all powerful state imposed by Lenin and Trotsky and ruthlessly enhanced by Stalin with what socialists fell in love with. Worker Soviets and factory committees were the chosen instruments to create an economy with democratic control by producers over production. Lenin abolished those collectives in 1917 and required the workers submit to the all powerful state. What was practiced in the USSR was about as far from democratic control of the workplace as you can get (outside of Walmart)

The Soviet Union Versus Socialism, by Noam Chomsky

Worker Soviets and factory committees are exactly the means that gave Lenin absolute power over the populace and allowed him to impose the all powerful state. What the state creates the state can abolish. When you give the state total control over the means of production, you give it control over your life.

Totalitarianism is the fruit of government control of production. The Soviets were little more than arms of the central government as were the factory committees.

Only a true fool would even consider moving in that direction again.

The state did not create worker Soviets and factory committees.
The workers did.
The state destroyed them, possibly because of the debt Lenin owed Wall Street.

 

[bripat9643]

You're conflating the all powerful state imposed by Lenin and Trotsky and ruthlessly enhanced by Stalin with what socialists fell in love with. Worker Soviets and factory committees were the chosen instruments to create an economy with democratic control by producers over production. Lenin abolished those collectives in 1917 and required the workers submit to the all powerful state. What was practiced in the USSR was about as far from democratic control of the workplace as you can get (outside of Walmart)

The Soviet Union Versus Socialism, by Noam Chomsky

Worker Soviets and factory committees are exactly the means that gave Lenin absolute power over the populace and allowed him to impose the all powerful state. What the state creates the state can abolish. When you give the state total control over the means of production, you give it control over your life.

Totalitarianism is the fruit of government control of production. The Soviets were little more than arms of the central government as were the factory committees.

Only a true fool would even consider moving in that direction again.

The state did not create worker Soviets and factory committees.
The workers did.
The state destroyed them, possibly because of the debt Lenin owed Wall Street.

horse shit. Government officials went to a factory and told the workers to form a committee. The idea that they formed spontaneously in thousands of factories is too absurd for words. The same goes for Soviets. These were all creatures of the central government.

 

[bripat9643]

If humans have rights with respect to things, are those not human rights?

Yes.
Now, what happens when property rights and human rights conflict?

"Yes," they are human rights, or "yes," the are not human rights?

Georgie obviously doesn't want to be clear about what he means with regard to the above.

 

[georgephillip]

Worker Soviets and factory committees are exactly the means that gave Lenin absolute power over the populace and allowed him to impose the all powerful state. What the state creates the state can abolish. When you give the state total control over the means of production, you give it control over your life.

Totalitarianism is the fruit of government control of production. The Soviets were little more than arms of the central government as were the factory committees.

Only a true fool would even consider moving in that direction again.

The state did not create worker Soviets and factory committees.
The workers did.
The state destroyed them, possibly because of the debt Lenin owed Wall Street.

horse shit. Government officials went to a factory and told the workers to form a committee. The idea that they formed spontaneously in thousands of factories is too absurd for words. The same goes for Soviets. These were all creatures of the central government.

Who told you that?

 

[georgephillip]

Yes.
Now, what happens when property rights and human rights conflict?

"Yes," they are human rights, or "yes," the are not human rights?

Georgie obviously doesn't want to be clear about what he means with regard to the above.

Property rights are a sub-group of human rights.
How humans treat things is not the same thing as how humans treat each other.
Whenever a conflict between property and humanity exists, humanity is superior.

 

[bripat9643]

"Yes," they are human rights, or "yes," the are not human rights?

Georgie obviously doesn't want to be clear about what he means with regard to the above.

Property rights are a sub-group of human rights.
How humans treat things is not the same thing as how humans treat each other.
Whenever a conflict between property and humanity exists, humanity is superior.

There is no conflict between property rights and any other human right. In fact, without property rights, you have no other rights. If the government owns all the land, it can make you starve simply by not giving you any food. If government owns all the printing presses and all the paper mills, then it controls what can be said.

Attacking a man's property is the same as attacking him.

 

[regent]

Georgie obviously doesn't want to be clear about what he means with regard to the above.

Property rights are a sub-group of human rights.
How humans treat things is not the same thing as how humans treat each other.
Whenever a conflict between property and humanity exists, humanity is superior.

There is no conflict between property rights and any other human right. In fact, without property rights, you have no other rights. If the government owns all the land, it can make you starve simply by not giving you and food. IF government owns all the printing presses and all the paper mills, then it controls what can be said.

Attacking a man's property is the same as attacking him.

Wonder why Jefferson dropped Locke's property thing in the Declaration of Independence and changed it to pursuit of happiness?

 

[bripat9643]

Property rights are a sub-group of human rights.
How humans treat things is not the same thing as how humans treat each other.
Whenever a conflict between property and humanity exists, humanity is superior.

There is no conflict between property rights and any other human right. In fact, without property rights, you have no other rights. If the government owns all the land, it can make you starve simply by not giving you and food. IF government owns all the printing presses and all the paper mills, then it controls what can be said.

Attacking a man's property is the same as attacking him.

Wonder why Jefferson dropped Locke's property thing in the Declaration of Independence and changed it to pursuit of happiness?

Because it sounded better. It was purely for marketing purposes. Besides, when did Jefferson become the doctor or property rights philosophy?

 

[georgephillip]

Worker Soviets and factory committees are exactly the means that gave Lenin absolute power over the populace and allowed him to impose the all powerful state. What the state creates the state can abolish. When you give the state total control over the means of production, you give it control over your life.

Totalitarianism is the fruit of government control of production. The Soviets were little more than arms of the central government as were the factory committees.

Only a true fool would even consider moving in that direction again.

The state did not create worker Soviets and factory committees.
The workers did.
The state destroyed them, possibly because of the debt Lenin owed Wall Street.

horse shit. Government officials went to a factory and told the workers to form a committee. The idea that they formed spontaneously in thousands of factories is too absurd for words. The same goes for Soviets. These were all creatures of the central government.

Really?
Prove it.

"The Leninist antagonism to the most essential features of socialism was evident from the very start. In revolutionary Russia, Soviets and factory committees developed as instruments of struggle and liberation, with many flaws, but with a rich potential. Lenin and Trotsky, upon assuming power, immediately devoted themselves to destroying the liberatory potential of these instruments, establishing the rule of the Party, in practice its Central Committee and its Maximal Leaders -- exactly as Trotsky had predicted years earlier, as Rosa Luxembourg and other left Marxists warned at the time, and as the anarchists had always understood.

"Not only the masses, but even the Party must be subject to 'vigilant control from above,' so Trotsky held as he made the transition from revolutionary intellectual to State priest.

"Before seizing State power, the Bolshevik leadership adopted much of the rhetoric of people who were engaged in the revolutionary struggle from below, but their true commitments were quite different.

"This was evident before and became crystal clear as they assumed State power in October 1917."

Get it? Lenin and Trotsky broke the original Soviets, demanding total authority for their state, and then, later, created new "soviets" and "factory committees" to rubber stamp decisions made by the "vigilant control from above".

Blame Wall Street

The Soviet Union Versus Socialism, by Noam Chomsky

 

[georgephillip]

There is no conflict between property rights and any other human right. In fact, without property rights, you have no other rights. If the government owns all the land, it can make you starve simply by not giving you and food. IF government owns all the printing presses and all the paper mills, then it controls what can be said.

Attacking a man's property is the same as attacking him.

Wonder why Jefferson dropped Locke's property thing in the Declaration of Independence and changed it to pursuit of happiness?

Because it sounded better. It was purely for marketing purposes. Besides, when did Jefferson become the doctor or property rights philosophy?

Long before you, Moron.

 

[usmcstinger]

So pointing out the wealth and income inequality in the US and Europe since the 18th century makes one a Communist?

Piketty's book probably won't change the minds of ideologues and members of reactionary groups, but it gave the public an ability to start a dialogue about a topic that was taboo. His work (and his colleagues) already validated what many of us already knew to be pretty concrete data. It's now OK to talk about it.

Not a Communist. Just a delusional person. Then again Communism is a delusional way of life that has failed.

 

[georgephillip]

Georgie obviously doesn't want to be clear about what he means with regard to the above.

Property rights are a sub-group of human rights.
How humans treat things is not the same thing as how humans treat each other.
Whenever a conflict between property and humanity exists, humanity is superior.

There is no conflict between property rights and any other human right. In fact, without property rights, you have no other rights. If the government owns all the land, it can make you starve simply by not giving you any food. If government owns all the printing presses and all the paper mills, then it controls what can be said.

Attacking a man's property is the same as attacking him.

When white Europeans murdered First People were they guilty of violating human or property rights?

 

[bripat9643]

Property rights are a sub-group of human rights.
How humans treat things is not the same thing as how humans treat each other.
Whenever a conflict between property and humanity exists, humanity is superior.

There is no conflict between property rights and any other human right. In fact, without property rights, you have no other rights. If the government owns all the land, it can make you starve simply by not giving you any food. If government owns all the printing presses and all the paper mills, then it controls what can be said.

Attacking a man's property is the same as attacking him.

When white Europeans murdered First People were they guilty of violating human or property rights?

I doubt you will find anyone who claims murdering you isn't a violation of your rights.

The question is whether taking the corn you gew is a violation of your rights.

 

[georgephillip]

There is no conflict between property rights and any other human right. In fact, without property rights, you have no other rights. If the government owns all the land, it can make you starve simply by not giving you any food. If government owns all the printing presses and all the paper mills, then it controls what can be said.

Attacking a man's property is the same as attacking him.

When white Europeans murdered First People were they guilty of violating human or property rights?

I doubt you will find anyone who claims murdering you isn't a violation of your rights.

The question is whether taking the corn you gew is a violation of your rights.

Obviously, the white Europeans didn't.
That's where capitalism comes from.

 

[bripat9643]

When white Europeans murdered First People were they guilty of violating human or property rights?

I doubt you will find anyone who claims murdering you isn't a violation of your rights.

The question is whether taking the corn you gew is a violation of your rights.

Obviously, the white Europeans didn't.
That's where capitalism comes from.

White Europeans didn't view fighting the Indians as murder, just as we don't consider killing members of the Taliban in Afghanistan to be murder.

Capitalism doesn't come from murder, asshole. On the other hand, it's virtually a truism that socialism is where genocide comes from.

 

[Kimura]

Where do any of the definitions from the dictionary mention the initiation of force?

You’re right, I messed that up. It’s through the threat of force.

There's nothing about groups being more effective that means only government can provide protection.

You can lay claim to property until your blue in the fact, but that alone doesn't make it yours. Your claim to possession is only as valid as the force that backs it up. If someone steals your land, it changes hands. As the former owner, you can make the moral claim that it’s yours, and I’d sympathize in such a situation, but claims simply will not change possession. This is done through force or the threat of force by the sovereign government.

You lost your way when you started to explain the reason specialization of labor means government would be more effective. It's not because groups are more efficient. It's because specialization of labor means that some people can train full time at being soldiers and are thus far more effective than untrained civilians. That still doesn't mean government government is required, but it would imply the existence of private armies which pose their own problems. I won't go into the discussion of how such problems can be resolved. I'll leave it by saying these issues have been examined and various solutions proposed.

There’s two reasons that group are more effective and efficient at property: specialization of labor and strength in numbers. The logic being families defending their property are also defending their country, the same way a soldier defending his/her country is also defending their property and way of life.

Historically, the function of any territorial groups is to defend against external threats and and to implement a functioning property system for its members.

Territory is not property. The too things are entirely separate. Military force decides which court system is in force, but it doesn't decide who owns the property unless the invader decides to abolish or confiscate private property, which few ever do.

A state’s jurisdiction over its own territory comes from the rights ceded to it by individual property-holders so to speak. Territory can be considered a form of property in the broad sense.

Owning slaves is about the only kind of property that has been abolished. That was never a legitimate form of property in the first place.

I agree

As for the airwaves, they came into existence because of the invention of the radio. Government didn't create radio, Guglielmo Marconi invented it. Once invented boundaries had to be established to make it useful, just as upon discovering the new world the various governments involved had to establish the boundaries of privately owned land. However, history shows that communities found means other than government to establish property boundaries. There's no reason to imagine that some means other than government couldn't have been used to establish boundaries on the radio spectrum.

The airwaves examples was to demonstrate the government functioning for the commons. Markets don’t always deliver superior outcomes.

Wrong. It's a myth. A genuine contract must be agreed to by both parties. I never agreed to any of the rules that government imposes on me. Getting born doesn't constitute agreement to anything. That's basic contract law.

That's just wrong because the social contract is a myth. Government has no rights over me simply because I was born. That's the central myth of government and the reason it's not legitimate.

It's no such thing. In the first place, getting born isn't agreement to anything. In the second, government doesn't own the property I live on. You explicitly agree to pay a taxi fair because you voluntarily entered the taxi knowing you would have to pay a fair. Getting born within the boundaries of a specific government doesn't constitute knowledge or agreement to anything. This is the weakest of all the arguments statists use to justify government.

Your decision to reside in the United States is the agreement to abide by its social contract. It’s similar to owning a condo: it’s yours but you have a contract between you and your condo association. You agree to pay fees in exchange for certain services and abiding by its rules. You have an equal vote with other condo owners regarding rules, regs, budgets, etc. If you don’t intend to abide by the rules, you’re free to leave and have no right to reside there. There’s other places to live in the real estate market.

This is the inherent problem with the libertarian position. You claim you never signed a contract, but our society has long accepted the concept and validity of implied contracts. If you go to a concert, you’re required to pay, even though you never signed a contract.

Another example of the implicit nature of contracts are children. Many libertarians will argue that since children are basically victims of being born, it’s somehow not fair that you should be a party to a contract you never agreed to enter into. At least for the first 18 years of your life, your parents chose where you reside and your citizenship.

Only if you believe our country is a monarchy. In this country government exists at the sufferance of the citizens, including the property owners. It has authority only so lone as it does what the citizenry wants it to do. It does not have authority to arbitrarily impose its will as it would if it was the true owner. Your view of property ownership died with the revolution and monarchy in general.

No, it’s due to the fact the government is the penultimate owner of all property within its territory and jurisdiction. As citizens, we get to own property for personal and private use in exchange for accepting certain responsibilities, such as taxation and limitations on its use. The ultimate property holder creates the system of private property in its jurisdiction.

Duh, . . . wrong. The fact that private property existed prior to this point in time proves that you are wrong. You haven't even contested that fact.

First of all, the term "property" didn't even have a legal definition until like 17th century England. Before that, what we had was landed property, which was a crucial component of feudalism. If we go into antiquity, the Greeks and Romans had property, inheritance laws, etc, mostly based around social status. Without a government, you can't have a functioning property system. Please don't talk to me about ancient Iceland or Ireland, it doesn't cut the mustard, because those systems were a blip on the radar screen of recorded history.