SolarCross wrote:You didn't link anything countering my claim on diamat.
Your claim was:
SolarCross wrote:Dialectics is as much metaphysical pseudo-science as the Dianetics of the Scientologists is, and sticking the word "materialism" after it changes that not a jot.
Which was essentially a crass insult that doesn't mean anything—There is nothing of substance to refute.
What do you suppose someone on an engineering forum would say if I challenged them to respond to:
"Engineering is as much metaphysical pseudo-science as the Dianetics of the Scientologists is, and sticking the word 'engine' in it changes that not a jot."
It's too stupid to even engage with. So I refrained from doing so.
SolarCross wrote:That withering of the state thing you linked to was supposedly to expand on communism as an economic system. I did read that, but found it full of just so unfounded suppositions it wasn't worth reading, it explained nothing and wasn't worth comment.
That was placed in order to help explain the theoretical transition from socialism to communism.
Lenin wrote:The state will be able to wither away completely when society adopts the rule: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs", i.e., when people have become so accustomed to observing the fundamental rules of social intercourse and when their labor has become so productive that they will voluntarily work according to their ability.
Do you find it difficult to conceptualize a post-scarcity economy?
What Lenin does here is essentially simply Marx for an audience less familiar with philosophical walls of text:
Marx wrote:Real wealth manifests itself, rather – and large industry reveals this – in the monstrous disproportion between the labour time applied, and its product, as well as in the qualitative imbalance between labour, reduced to a pure abstraction, and the power of the production process it superintends. Labour no longer appears so much to be included within the production process; rather, the human being comes to relate more as watchman and regulator to the production process itself. (What holds for machinery holds likewise for the combination of human activities and the development of human intercourse.) No longer does the worker insert a modified natural thing [Naturgegenstand] as middle link between the object [Objekt] and himself; rather, he inserts the process of nature, transformed into an industrial process, as a means between himself and inorganic nature, mastering it. He steps to the side of the production process instead of being its chief actor. In this transformation, it is neither the direct human labour he himself performs, nor the time during which he works, but rather the appropriation of his own general productive power, his understanding of nature and his mastery over it by virtue of his presence as a social body – it is, in a word, the development of the social individual which appears as the great foundation-stone of production and of wealth. The theft of alien labour time, on which the present wealth is based, appears a miserable foundation in face of this new one, created by large-scale industry itself. As soon as labour in the direct form has ceased to be the great well-spring of wealth, labour time ceases and must cease to be its measure, and hence exchange value [must cease to be the measure] of use value. The surplus labour of the mass has ceased to be the condition for the development of general wealth, just as the non-labour of the few, for the development of the general powers of the human head. With that, production based on exchange value breaks down, and the direct, material production process is stripped of the form of penury and antithesis. The free development of individualities, and hence not the reduction of necessary labour time so as to posit surplus labour, but rather the general reduction of the necessary labour of society to a minimum, which then corresponds to the artistic, scientific etc. development of the individuals in the time set free, and with the means created, for all of them. Capital itself is the moving contradiction, [in] that it presses to reduce labour time to a minimum, while it posits labour time, on the other side, as sole measure and source of wealth. Hence it diminishes labour time in the necessary form so as to increase it in the superfluous form; hence posits the superfluous in growing measure as a condition – question of life or death – for the necessary. On the one side, then, it calls to life all the powers of science and of nature, as of social combination and of social intercourse, in order to make the creation of wealth independent (relatively) of the labour time employed on it. On the other side, it wants to use labour time as the measuring rod for the giant social forces thereby created, and to confine them within the limits required to maintain the already created value as value. Forces of production and social relations – two different sides of the development of the social individual – appear to capital as mere means, and are merely means for it to produce on its limited foundation. In fact, however, they are the material conditions to blow this foundation sky-high. ‘Truly wealthy a nation, when the working day is 6 rather than 12 hours. Wealth is not command over surplus labour time’ (real wealth), ‘but rather, disposable time outside that needed in direct production, for every individual and the whole society.’ (The Source and Remedy etc. 1821, p. 6.)
Since you seem to have had difficulty with Lenin, I'm presuming the Marx isn't going to help—but there's the context. To boil it down more simply I'll ask this:
Why did the advent and proliferation of computers mean people spent more time at work despite the fact that we are individually thousands of times more efficient?
Why do we throw away good food before market, trash bottles with labels upside-down, and scrap shoes that didn't sell instead of giving them to people that need it?
The answer, obviously, is the profit motive. If we were to further innovate and scrap the profit motive than we wouldn't have to work that much and the society around it would be different than it is now. Would this be easy? No, the rest of what Lenin wrote was about how difficult that transition would be. He always claimed that the USSR wasn't even socialist, let alone communist.
SolarCross wrote:Moreover it is a little sad you can't explain anything yourself in your own words instead of just linking to something written more than a hundred years ago.
Since you seem to refuse to learn anything about the topics you bring up, it seemed that the most simple way to express the idea was to make a short statement and then use a citation so that you could learn more if you wanted to do so.
Obviously this was giving you far too much credit.
SolarCross wrote:I said the insults you use as a substitute for argument is unpersuasive not offensive.
I did not claim that you said it was offensive.
SolarCross wrote:I have a thick skin to go with my thick head, consequently I have never been injured by words. But way to go to prove my point by doubling down on the insults through implying I am some sissyfied college SJW brainwashed by creepy marxist professors who gets triggered over nothing.
I am not
implying anything. All liberals relying on their emotions instead of fact are the same to me. Whether you cry about the Democrats or the Republicans makes no difference.
SolarCross wrote:I am happy for you to call me an illiterate, a crybaby or whatever else and honestly fair is fair i am not always very polite myself, so there is that, but it amounts to a distraction that persuades me of nothing. I wonder how many converts you can really win that way?
Your feelings about this are irrelevant to me. However, since you seem to be very emotional, the thought was that if I could shame you into learning about what you are whining about we might be able to have a discussion about it.
You seem to be more interested in talking about your feelings and proudly remaining ignorant than engaging in discussion, however.
SolarCross wrote:Potemkin has a much better technique in that respect, he is always so polite even utilising a judicious amount of flattery. He has obviously taken to heart the expression "you kill more flies with honey than with vinegar". He is a lot cleverer than you isn't he?
While Potemkin is quite clever, I feel justified in asserting that he'd agree that his genius isn't limited to a measurement about how you think he makes you feel about yourself.
If you want to be coddled and for your feelings to be acknowledged, I'm afraid that I can only do what I always do— link you to something
that may be of interest to you.
If you want to talk about Marxism, this forum is still here.
Alis Volat Propriis; Tiocfaidh ár lá; Proletarier Aller Länder, Vereinigt Euch!