For Frell's Sake

[GandALF]

Technically "communism" refers to the post-socialist form of society. What the so-called "communist" countries were practicing was a kind of socialism. It's the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics after all. Socialism us a multifaceted ideology that can be expressed as watered down, ineffectual reformists or authoritarianism or anarchism or many, many other ways.

If they don't count as the proper kind of communist socialists, why does allied intervention in the Russian civil war count as brutal capitalist suppression?

[Wild_Kraken]

Technically "communism" refers to the post-socialist form of society. What the so-called "communist" countries were practicing was a kind of socialism. It's the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics after all. Socialism us a multifaceted ideology that can be expressed as watered down, ineffectual reformists or authoritarianism or anarchism or many, many other ways.

If they don't count as the proper kind of communist socialists, why does allied intervention in the Russian civil war count as brutal capitalist suppression?

Because it was brutal capitalist suppression. The exact nature of the post-revolution society could not have been known at the time of the civil war, as there were many possible ways it could have evolved. All that could have been known at the time was the type of revolution, which was socialist. And like previous failed revolutions, like the Paris Commune, the forces of capital came to destroy it.

[Antiboyscout]

1st
How much taxation and regulation do you have to put on a business before you de facto control it? When a gov can determine Who, how, where, when, and how much a business can do business, how can you say they don't control the means of production.

Are the people who work for the business making all the decisions on how to run the business democratically? Is the surplus value the workers created being redistributed to them or is it being redistributed to the owner(s)/shareholders? The government imposing regulations under capitalism is worlds away from public control of the means of production. Being forced to provide a modicum of safety equipment, or not being able to use dangerous materials in consumer products, or not being able to fire people based on certain criteria has nothing to do with socialism when businesses are still ones of top-down authoritarian control that exploits their workers.

2nd
So you're saying, competition is not natural behavior, at least for humans. You know, I never thought I would see a real live Lysenkovist. You want to pretend that communism is just an economic system and yet here you are competition is an invention of capitalism and some sort of moral evil.

What you're engaging in is a form of the appeal to nature. We can look to nature and find myriad behaviors that we in human society would not tolerate. Murder, for one. Should we allow murder because it is natural behavior? What about rape? Or cannibalism? As human beings with sentience and an innate moral sense, we are more than capable of turning away from natural behaviors that we find to be morally repugnant. Capitalist competition has proven itself time and time again to lead to unacceptably immoral outcomes. We are not obligated to forever engage in it simply because it's "natural behavior".

That all having been said capitalist competition developed along with capitalism. It is a specific form of competition that came from specific historical and material conditions. How exactly can it be natural behavior when for the vast majority of human existence capitalism did not exist and so neither did capitalist competition?

1st
Thorough Taxation the surplus value is redistributed. It may even be redistributed to people worse off than than those working for the company. Also you are conflating socialism and communism again. STATE control of the means of production. Also, got to love those communist tag lines "exploits their workers". Let me guess, you believe in the labor theory of value too.

2nd
Of course I'm making an appeal to nature, HUMAN nature. That is what psychology is based on. Here is another difference between communism and capitalism. Communism is an Ideology that determines what people SHOULD be doing. Capitalism is a Social Science that tries to explain How and Why people ARE doing what they do. And as for "capitalist" competition, most of early human existence was subsistence level lacking extra production available to trade. Complex nearly global international trade systems existed at least as early as the Bronze age.

[GandALF]

Technically "communism" refers to the post-socialist form of society. What the so-called "communist" countries were practicing was a kind of socialism. It's the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics after all. Socialism us a multifaceted ideology that can be expressed as watered down, ineffectual reformists or authoritarianism or anarchism or many, many other ways.

If they don't count as the proper kind of communist socialists, why does allied intervention in the Russian civil war count as brutal capitalist suppression?

Because it was brutal capitalist suppression. The exact nature of the post-revolution society could not have been known at the time of the civil war, as there were many possible ways it could have evolved. All that could have been known at the time was the type of revolution, which was socialist. And like previous failed revolutions, like the Paris Commune, the forces of capital came to destroy it.

Well "the forces of capital" didn't feel a desperate need to stop the February revolutionaries. Maybe the fact that the Bolsheviks were backed by the Germans in order to get Russia out of the war had more to with it than capitalism.

When again, as I've said before, there is nothing in the core of communism, of Marxism, or socialism, that requires the cultural revolution, or the murder of the kulaks, or the great leap forward. At the core of communism is a world without exploitation, without sexism, without racism. That is fundamentally a better world than what we have now.

So liberal democratic capitalism, which actually exists and is practiced by real life human beings, who for the most part try to do the right thing, is morally inferior to a hypothetical, non-existent Mary Suetopia. You might as well be saying "these liberal democratic capitalist states are morally inferior to the realm of Gondor!"

Aside from tankies, no one is a cheerleader for Stalin or Mao.

You seem to be a cheerleader for Lenin though.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

GandALF, the difference is that there is no core ideology that defines Gondor, and nobody has been trying to enact Gondor as a real-life state only to be brutally quashed.

[Wild_Kraken]

1st
Thorough Taxation the surplus value is redistributed. It may even be redistributed to people worse off than than those working for the company. Also you are conflating socialism and communism again. STATE control of the means of production. Also, got to love those communist tag lines "exploits their workers". Let me guess, you believe in the labor theory of value too.

It would require something like 100% taxation, that is the seizing of all profits, to even entertain the idea that surplus value is being redistributed back to the people who created it. And going back to your original point, none of the states that are currently undergoing austerity have such a system in place, and so it is incorrect to say that austerity is a consequence of "late stage socialism". Additionally, even if you wish to use state control of the means of production as your litmus test for socialism, it's still lacking in the example of states undergoing policies of austerity, since owners and bosses still ultimately control their businesses. There's no vote in parliament that clothing firm X must produce styles Y in quantity Z.

2nd
Of course I'm making an appeal to nature, HUMAN nature. That is what psychology is based on. Here is another difference between communism and capitalism. Communism is an Ideology that determines what people SHOULD be doing. Capitalism is a Social Science that tries to explain How and Why people ARE doing what they do. And as for "capitalist" competition, most of early human existence was subsistence level lacking extra production available to trade. Complex nearly global international trade systems existed at least as early as the Bronze age.

You haven't actually made any point refuting the main thesis of my critique of your appeal to nature. I can literally just copy/paste the paragraph and replace "natural behavior" with "human nature". Like so:

What you're engaging in is a form of the appeal to nature. We can look to human nature and find myriad behaviors that we in human society would not tolerate. Murder, for one. Should we allow murder because it is human nature? What about rape? Or cannibalism? As human beings with sentience and an innate moral sense, we are more than capable of turning away from human nature that we find to be morally repugnant. Capitalist competition has proven itself time and time again to lead to unacceptably immoral outcomes. We are not obligated to forever engage in it simply because it's "human nature".

Murder, rape, cannibalism, et al. are a part of human nature since human beings have been engaging in them for tens of thousands of years. And yet, we in modern societies do our best to prevent these things. If they are natural, why? Surely, since it's apparently wrong to determine what people SHOULD be doing, then why shouldn't everyone be allowed to do literally anything, even if those things are at the expense of other people's lives?

Empathy is also an aspect of human nature. It allows us to understand that certain other aspects of human nature are damaging and bad, and they should not be cultivated or even tolerated. It is this aspect of human nature from which morality springs. And ultimately, for the same reason that things like murder are not tolerated despite being human, so too it is inescapable that capitalist competition not be tolerated.

[Wild_Kraken]

So liberal democratic capitalism, which actually exists and is practiced by real life human beings, who for the most part try to do the right thing, is morally inferior to a hypothetical, non-existent Mary Suetopia. You might as well be saying "these liberal democratic capitalist states are morally inferior to the realm of Gondor!"

At some point there was no liberal democracy. It had to be implemented, it had to come into existence. And back then, when all the liberal democrats had was theory and philosophy and ideas, there almost certainly were reactionary monarchists making the same argument you are making here:

So absolute monarchy, which actually exists and is practiced by real life human beings, who for the most part try to do the right thing, is morally inferior to a hypothetical, non-existent Mary Suetopia. You might as well be saying "these absolute monarchical states are morally inferior to the realm of Atlantis!"

I don't understand what your argument here is intended to achieve. Are you saying that people shouldn't contemplate and work towards a better future? Or that we already live in the best of all possible worlds?

[Antiboyscout]

Murder, rape, cannibalism, et al. are a part of human nature since human beings have been engaging in them for tens of thousands of years. And yet, we in modern societies do our best to prevent these things. If they are natural, why? Surely, since it's apparently wrong to determine what people SHOULD be doing, then why shouldn't everyone be allowed to do literally anything, even if those things are at the expense of other people's lives?

Empathy is also an aspect of human nature. It allows us to understand that certain other aspects of human nature are damaging and bad, and they should not be cultivated or even tolerated. It is this aspect of human nature from which morality springs. And ultimately, for the same reason that things like murder are not tolerated despite being human, so too it is inescapable that capitalist competition not be tolerated.

Thank you for refuting yourself. Murder, rape, and cannibalism is not an intrinsic part of human nature, but is instead a fringe that is looked down upon and only accepted in desperation. Competition has never had the stigma murder does all though history until the Communist show up.

[Wild_Kraken]

Thank you for refuting yourself. Murder, rape, and cannibalism is not an intrinsic part of human nature, but is instead a fringe that is looked down upon and only accepted in desperation. Competition has never had the stigma murder does all though history until the Communist show up.

I'm going to need you to explain how you determine what to be "human nature" or not, because all three of those things listed, murder, rape, and cannibalism, were to various degrees acceptable actions in certain societies and times. What constituted murder in the ancient world was largely determined by who did the killing and what was killed. The killing of deformed infants was not considered murder, the killing of a slave was not considered murder, the killing of someone in a lower class not showing respect for someone in a higher class was not considered murder. Even today, the murder of children via a drone strike isn't considered murder.

Likewise, there are many things that we now understand to be rape that in the past were not viewed as such. The idea of statutory rape, for one, is largely a modern idea, with marriages between adults and children being prevalent throughout history and cultures. Marital rape is another form of rape that ancient people didn't really understand, to say nothing of the rape of slaves.

And the same goes for cannibalism. In modern times the popular imagination is that it's something that only serial killers do, but throughout history cannibalism has had a place, usually symbolic or ritualistic, within various societies.

So again, I'm gonna need you to explain the criteria you're using to determine what is and is not human nature, because for most of human history, these things were not considered "a fringe that is looked down upon and only accepted in desperation".

[GandALF]

GandALF, the difference is that there is no core ideology that defines Gondor, and nobody has been trying to enact Gondor as a real-life state only to be brutally quashed.

So when they win its not real communism, when they lose it's capitalist suppression. Absolutely no chance Marx might have been wrong of course .

I don't understand what your argument here is intended to achieve. Are you saying that people shouldn't contemplate and work towards a better future? Or that we already live in the best of all possible worlds?

Liberal democracy is not about utopia. Its about preventing tyranny. Its about understanding that people are individuals who are never going fully agree on the best of all possible worlds would actually entail. For example where do the religious people belong in communism? They can't. The people who believe materialism won't solve all your problems won't believe it to be utopia. So either you'd have admit that it isn't the best of all possible worlds for everyone or suppress them which would be tyranny.