[The Immortal Goon]

If I were to respond to all your polemics and emotionalizing, we would just end up in dirt slinging contest.

Thus far you, and every other right-winger, has yet to do anything but respond to polemics and completely ignored anything of consequence.

You seem to think that migration is a problem caused by capitalism(?) Even if we leave aside the fact that capitalism is too vague a term to make any sense, that is hardly something that can be proven.

It's cute that you claim not to be able to define capitalism, and yet are willing to leave behind your stated ignorance on the topic and move on from there.

Capitalism is a mode of production. That is to say, it's how we make and distribute stuff. The way we make things and the way we acquire them are the primary means in which we interact with the world around us. For instance, if you have a landlord, you are in a financial relationship with him based upon him providing stuff and you providing him capital. This is different than a feudal mode of production where you would have knelt to the landlord to humble yourself as (presuming you are like 90% of the population) a feature of the land that does not own but exercises control over. You would never think to kneel to your landlord now because the mode of production—the way you interact with the world—is different than it would have been in feudalism. This is true for even the cup I'm drinking tea out of it. In feudalism, it would be a feature of the land upon which I lived, something passed down to me from the last person in my station and not mine so much as something to be passed on to the next person. In capitalism, it is something I have acquired that I have no second thought about smashing should I feel like it.

While migration has always occurred, even prior to what can reasonably be termed capitalist period, the problem of economic migration is due to international inequality, which is due to imperialism, which in turn is an extreme form of nationalism.

Migration has always occurred, but we live in chronological time, so we cannot experience migration in the way that people in the feudal era or hunter-gatherers or Athenian slavers experienced migration.

So there is little reason to change your mind about it being a, "crises," in order to put it into a thematic view of World History for a moment for no apparent reason at all.

Nationalism, as it is legally constituted, is bourgeoisie, starting in the French (bourgeois) Revolution. It does not have anything to do with feudalism or tribalism in any legitimate academic sense.

Imperialism is a form of capitalism.

Socialism didn't prevent economic migration, other than by brute force. In fact socialism even aggravated economic migration due to retarding the economic development of socialist countries. Or why do you think you have nearly a million economic migrants from the former communist republic of Poland in the UK?

Given that most socialists don't consider socialism possible without rising from capitalism in a global (and thus dialectic matter), I could disregard this entirely. But instead, I'll merely point out that this immigration, "crises," is one that exists within capitalism.

The premise of the OP, carried on by right-wingers since, was that communists are somehow (?) supportive of capitalist solutions to a problem with in capitalist society because: right-wing feelings.

As mentioned before, most socialists don't consider East Germany socialist (though some do); and in either case, we do not then turn to a capitalistic model in order to solve a capitalist problem as has been accused.

I have, six times, gone through the standard capitalistic models for dealing with immigration and shown why they don't work. The response is always, "BUT COMMUNISM HURTS MY FEELINGS. LOOK AT THIS MEME!!111!!!"

Is there no other way to explain that communists don't support capitalist solutions to promote capitalism?

[SolarCross]

Capitalism is a mode of production. That is to say, it's how we make and distribute stuff. The way we make things and the way we acquire them are the primary means in which we interact with the world around us. For instance, if you have a landlord, you are in a financial relationship with him based upon him providing stuff and you providing him capital. This is different than a feudal mode of production where you would have knelt to the landlord to humble yourself as (presuming you are like 90% of the population) a feature of the land that does not own but exercises control over. You would never think to kneel to your landlord now because the mode of production—the way you interact with the world—is different than it would have been in feudalism. This is true for even the cup I'm drinking tea out of it. In feudalism, it would be a feature of the land upon which I lived, something passed down to me from the last person in my station and not mine so much as something to be passed on to the next person. In capitalism, it is something I have acquired that I have no second thought about smashing should I feel like it.

I don't think that is quite right. Feudalism was just a tactical way for kings to pay soldiers when they didn't have money but did have land, it isn't a mode of production. The difference between feudalism and capitalism is just the difference in how soldiers are paid. When soldiers are paid land, your landlords will be soldiers and have the soldierly tendency to pull rank, make their inferiors show respect and demand martial services from their tenants. When soldiers are paid in money, the landlords will be civilians and practice a more civilian way of doing business which tend to involve carefully worded contracts and a total absence of knee bending instead.

A lot of people don't get that.

[Potemkin]

A lot of people don't get that.

[The Immortal Goon]

So you choose to focus on your imaginary reality in which feudal kings had a secret fiat financial system and the peasantry was made up of yeoman farmers despite all scholarship ever done.

Even if we were to accept this bogus quackery, it does nothing in any way whatsoever to address any point brought up about the subject at hand.

Again, this thread is the finest advertisement for socialism made in a long time.

[SolarCross]

So you choose to focus on your imaginary reality in which feudal kings had a secret fiat financial system and the peasantry was made up of yeoman farmers despite all scholarship ever done.

Even if we were to accept this bogus quackery, it does nothing in any way whatsoever to address any point brought up about the subject at hand.

Again, this thread is the finest advertisement for socialism made in a long time.

That isn't what I said. Try again.

[The Immortal Goon]

That isn't what I said. Try again.

That's true, I didn't address everything.

I didn't harp on how most people that have been to grade school know that peasants didn't own the land and weren't often soldiers.

But since you are having so much trouble with more pressing concepts, I decided that it would be too complicated to explain what your grammar school failed to teach you.

Again:

Even if we were to accept this bogus quackery, it does nothing in any way whatsoever to address any point brought up about the subject at hand.

Again, this thread is the finest advertisement for socialism made in a long time.

[SolarCross]

That's true, I didn't address everything.

I didn't harp on how most people that have been to grade school know that peasants didn't own the land and weren't often soldiers.

But since you are having so much trouble with more pressing concepts, I decided that it would be too complicated to explain what your grammar school failed to teach you.

Again:

Even if we were to accept this bogus quackery, it does nothing in any way whatsoever to address any point brought up about the subject at hand.

Again, this thread is the finest advertisement for socialism made in a long time.

Again that isn't what I said. Try again.

[The Immortal Goon]

Oh wow, what a fine school of debate the capitalist brings!



If you are having trouble understanding why I'm saying the things I'm saying, you can always ask for clarification. Though I'm supposing that your failure to do so may speak to a broader problem about why you seem to know so little about feudalism and capitalism.

Again:

Even if we were to accept this bogus quackery, it does nothing in any way whatsoever to address any point brought up about the subject at hand.

Again, this thread is the finest advertisement for socialism made in a long time.

[Kaiserschmarrn]

Capitalists are definitely the big boogeyman of the left. As mentioned though, their desire for cheap labour is relatively easily controlled if they do not have an ally in legacy socialists/progressive liberals.

[Potemkin]

Capitalists are definitely the big boogeyman of the left. As mentioned though, their desire for cheap labour is relatively easily controlled if they do not have an ally in legacy socialists/progressive liberals.

That may have been the historical experience of modern Germany, but it has not been the historical experience in Britain. Back in the 19th century, the capitalists would undercut wages by importing Irish labour, who were so impoverished and desperate that they would accept almost any wage, no matter how meagre. Importing Irish labourers was also the preferred method of breaking strikes, when sabre-charges by dragoons didn't do the job. The British capitalists have always been very keen on importing cheap labour, and the British workers have always been very keen on keeping them out. This has not changed.

[Atlantis]

Given that most socialists don't consider socialism possible without rising from capitalism in a global (and thus dialectic matter), I could disregard this entirely.

Like you have always disregarded all real world facts ...

Yes IG, you are right, if your dreams come true, migration will no longer be a problem. But since we all know that your dreams cannot come true in the real world, your self-complacency is simply unbearable.

But instead, I'll merely point out that this immigration, "crises," is one that exists within capitalism.

What nonsense is that? Polish migration to the UK is because socialism retarded economic development in Poland. It will take decades for Poland to overcome the damages done by socialism.

Quite frankly, those hundreds of millions of people who have suffered under the real socialism feel like throwing up when they listen to champagne socialists like you. You have been able to carve out a comfortable life thanks to the neo-liberal policies of your government, while spitting in the face of the victims of socialism.

I'm quitting this discussion because you are obviously not going to come up with anything of relevance to the real world.

[The Immortal Goon]

What nonsense is that? [that the current 'crises exists in capitalism]Polish migration to the UK is because socialism retarded economic development in Poland. It will take decades for Poland to overcome the damages done by socialism.

So currently the UK is in socialism and we should look at socialist solutions?

This is obviously not the case. If your seeming thesis was correct, then Mexico would have been a socialist state recently in the case of the US. This is simply not true.

Quite frankly those hundreds of millions of people who have suffered...

Yes, always back to the appeal of feelings. I'm sure Polish people will smile graciously as you spit on them for coming into the country, or whatever your solution is since you have yet to provide one.

Im quitting this discussion because you are obviously not going to come up with anything of relevance to the real world.

Six times in six ways I've posted the ways to solve this under capitalism, and why they will not work because of capitalism. The only response is, "Thirty years ago, things were different in Poland!"

Fine, what a fine observation!

This has not, and will not, change the fact that immigration into capitalist countries has certain mechanics that affect capitalist countries.

The OP asked why socialists may take whatever stance on immigration that they do. The policy we all agree on can be unraveled by considering that no capitalist has yet to even begin to challenge the issues that are coupled with their own solutions. Instead, they attack the specter haunting Europe.

Very good then, we will grow stronger as it is obvious we know and understand these causes and issues, while the capitalists are forced to put their fingers in their ears, stamp their feet, and ask us to instead consider their feelings.

[SolarCross]

Oh wow, what a fine school of debate the capitalist brings!



If you are having trouble understanding why I'm saying the things I'm saying, you can always ask for clarification. Though I'm supposing that your failure to do so may speak to a broader problem about why you seem to know so little about feudalism and capitalism.

Again:

Even if we were to accept this bogus quackery, it does nothing in any way whatsoever to address any point brought up about the subject at hand.

Again, this thread is the finest advertisement for socialism made in a long time.

You put up two posts that demonstrated only that you didn't understand what I said, there can be no debate until you get that little thing right.

It addressed your claim that feudalism was a mode of production, like using animal power to drive ploughs or steam engines to drive looms, but it isn't that. Feudalism is just a way for rewarding and keeping loyal an armed forces where the employers of soldiers, kings, had land but didn't have easy access to money. When William Duke of Normandy went to England to claim its throne he did not go alone he went with some 10,000 fighting men. Those fighting men did not go to risk being cut down on foreign soil just for the merry japes of it, they went for a pay off. William didn't have money to offer them so he offered them the land he would get when he took the crown of england. He was, and had to be, true to his word so the norman knights that followed him over the channel were all given land titles, some were given large land titles and became barons and others smaller land titles and became knights. One of my ancestors was in William's army, nobody special just a "3rd spear carrier", and was given the village of Snettisham, the name of which he then took for his family name. So when kings pay soldiers with land instead of money, then you will have a society were the landlords are soldiers, with a soldier's culture.

England's future landlords earning their pay.

If you would like to find out more about feudalism, try these links:

Feudalism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feudalism
http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?ParagraphID=enz

Also several times you have crowed that this thread is the best advertisement of socialism ever.. if that is what all your huffing and blowing is then socialism is proper fucked.

[Rich]

So you choose to focus on your imaginary reality in which feudal kings had a secret fiat financial system and the peasantry was made up of yeoman farmers despite all scholarship ever done.

All scholarship ever done? All Scholarship ever done proves the centrality of Marxist class categories for understanding history? Please stop trying to pass of Marxism as some sort of serious analysis. Marxist organisations are cults, if I went along to a Marxist group, I can guarantee that 95% of them couldn't quote a single piece of scholarship on Feudal property relations. Most Marxists don't even seem to know when Capitalism is supposed to have begun. They don't seem to be aware that most of the richest merchants sided with the King in the English Civil war, the supposed defining war between the Aristocratic and Capitalist classes. Most Marxists don't even know which areas of the world had Feudalism.

[The Immortal Goon]

You put up two posts that demonstrated only that you didn't understand what I said, there can be no debate until you get that little thing right.

It's true, I may have been giving you the benefit of the doubt when what you're saying was shockingly more stupid than I had assumed. My mistake.

It addressed your claim that feudalism was a mode of production, like using animal power to drive ploughs or steam engines to drive looms, but it isn't that.

This is

a: Not a mode of production.

Mode of production refers to the varied ways that human beings collectively produce the means of subsistence in order to survive and enhance social being.

b: Not what I said.

Capitalism is a mode of production. That is to say, it's how we make and distribute stuff. The way we make things and the way we acquire them are the primary means in which we interact with the world around us. For instance, if you have a landlord, you are in a financial relationship with him based upon him providing stuff and you providing him capital. This is different than a feudal mode of production where you would have knelt to the landlord to humble yourself as (presuming you are like 90% of the population) a feature of the land that does not own but exercises control over.

I see now that my error was assuming that you could understand this. I did not, even once, bring up a, "drive plough or steam engines." In fact, I made a point of making this a broader point about how it is how, "we interact with the world around us."

Feudalism is just a way for rewarding and keeping loyal an armed forces where the employers of soldiers, kings, had land but didn't have easy access to money.

"Rewarding" is not a synonym for "capitalism." Nor is it a synonym for "feudalism."

Let us examine your own sources.

First, your claim was that:

The difference between feudalism and capitalism is just the difference in how soldiers are paid.

So the first of your citations.

1. It flat out denies, in the first sentence, that it is the same as capitalism:

Feudalism was the medieval model of government predating the birth of the modern nation-state.

Unless, of course, you live in a fantasy land where you don't live in a, "modern nation-state." Perhaps as a pretty-pretty princess that needs to be coddled.

Regardless, let's continue:

2.

Feudal society is a military hierarchy in which a ruler or lord offers mounted fighters a fief (medieval beneficium), a unit of land to control in exchange for a military service. The individual who accepted this land became a vassal, and the man who granted the land become known as his liege or his lord. The deal was often sealed by swearing oaths on the Bible or on the relics of saints. Often this military service amounted to forty days' service each year in times of peace or indefinite service in times of war, but the actual terms of service and duties varied considerably on a case-by-case basis. Factors such as the quality of land, the skill of the fighter, local custom, and the financial status of the liege lord always played a part. For instance, in the late medieval period, this military service was often abandoned in preference for cash payment, or agreement to provide a certain number of men-at-arms or mounted knights for the lord's use.

Does this really read like a description of capitalism except with a different payment for soldiers to you? If so, I'll be happy to take your oath of fealty and be your boss. I swear I will let you live in a hovel in my backyard so long as you can eek out a living for yourself and will fight whomever I tell you to fight. It'll be just like whatever job you're working now except with job security! Certainly if the entire society were based around our new relationship, it would be exactly like current capitalism, right?

Though, of course, your own source here says that it is an economic system that collapsed so that merchants and craftsmen could take over.

In actuality, this simple tripartite division known as the Three Estates of Feudalism proved unworkable, and the necessity of skilled craftsmen, merchants, and other occupations was quite visible in spite of the theoretical model espoused in sermons and political treatises. We can see remnants of the "Three Estates" ideology in poets like Langland and Chaucer. Langland, for instance, writes diatribes against the breakdown of the old theoretical order in the Vox Clamantis and the Confessio Amantis; likewise, the ordering of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales suggests in some ways that Chaucer organizes the pilgrims according to social rank, but this order is disrupted by the bawdy Miller.

Let us assume that your own source is correct and feudalism collapsed in such a way that merchants dependent upon providing and accepting capital took over. Do you think they might come up with a different system that revolved around capital? What do you suppose you'd call a completely different system that was dependent upon relations around capital?

Next example you give:

At the heart of feudalism is a basic idea common to any society with a warrior caste. Such men need to be provided for. In a simple economy this means that the produce of an appropriate number of peasants or serfs must underwrite the expenses of the fighting man. In ancient Sparta, where all free men are warriors, the support comes from the defeated and enslaved peasants of Messenia, known as the helots.

In medieval Europe the system is more complex. The central economic feature is the manorial system. Transcending that, and dependent upon it, is the interconnecting network of loyalties and obligations which make up feudalism.

a. This again goes beyond the simplistic narrative of, "the difference in how soldiers are paid." It, in fact, depends entirely on the manorial system to explain the economics.

b. Your own source defines the manorial system as:

Life on a manor is the medieval version of a relationship which occurs, between landlord and peasant, in any society where a leisured class depends directly on agriculture carried out by others.

Your claim is that this is essentially capitalism. Presumably living in a capitalist economy, I will ask everyone reading this how many of you paid rent or mortgage the way that SolarCross seems to think that they are paid—by agricultural production for your lord—or the way that I presumed a capitalist economy worked:

you have a landlord, you are in a financial relationship with him based upon him providing stuff and you providing him capital.

I'll let the reader dictate which seems closer to a capitalist mode of production between the alternatives.

The final of your citations was Wikipedia, which writes:

[quote-"Wikipedia"]Broadly defined, it was a way of structuring society around relationships derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labour.[/quote]

This definition

a. Certainly goes beyond glossing over how soldiers are paid
b. Necessitates a mode of production instead of, "plow."
c. In one sentence explains exactly what I used as an example, to wit:

For instance, if you have a landlord, you are in a financial relationship with him based upon him providing stuff and you providing him capital. This is different than a feudal mode of production where you would have knelt to the landlord to humble yourself as (presuming you are like 90% of the population) a feature of the land that does not own but exercises control over. You would never think to kneel to your landlord now because the mode of production—the way you interact with the world—is different than it would have been in feudalism.

When William Duke of Normandy went to England to claim its throne he did not go alone he went with some 10,000 fighting men. Those fighting men did not go to risk being cut down on foreign soil just for the merry japes of it, they went for a pay off. William didn't have money to offer them so he offered them the land he would get when he took the crown of england. He was, and had to be, true to his word so the norman knights that followed him over the channel were all given land titles, some were given large land titles and became barons and others smaller land titles and became knights. One of my ancestors was in William's army, nobody special just a "3rd spear carrier", and was given the village of Snettisham, the name of which he then took for his family name. So when kings pay soldiers with land instead of money, then you will have a society were the landlords are soldiers, with a soldier's culture.

What a capitalist exchange! As long as you completely ignore Pope Alexander II, Edward the Confessor, and hereditary privilege, feudal allegiance, and the legacy of the Vikings!

If we completely ignore what seems inconvenient, like your own sources, we can make up whatever crazy history you feel like!

Also several times you have crowed that this thread is the best advertisement of socialism ever.. if that is what all your huffing and blowing is then socialism is proper fucked.

I have every confidence when people read this, they won't be impressed by you having not read your own sources.

[Kaiserschmarrn]

That may have been the historical experience of modern Germany, but it has not been the historical experience in Britain. Back in the 19th century, the capitalists would undercut wages by importing Irish labour, who were so impoverished and desperate that they would accept almost any wage, no matter how meagre. Importing Irish labourers was also the preferred method of breaking strikes, when sabre-charges by dragoons didn't do the job. The British capitalists have always been very keen on importing cheap labour, and the British workers have always been very keen on keeping them out. This has not changed.

I'm not denying that capitalists have always pushed for immigration to have a constant labour pool, but that's all they are interested in. Further, in today's industrial economies they are not particularly keen on unskilled or low skilled workers since they have only limited use for them, although obviously they won't object as long as immigration policy also provides them with the desired skilled migrants. So they have no problem with completely open borders, but they can quite easily be satisfied with much more restrictive policies as long as they can fill their open positions without much difficulty. Specifically, they are not interested whether the workers' families are in the country or not, whether the worker has the right to stay in the country once he leaves the job, whether the workforce is ethnically and religiously diverse, etc. To explain today's immigration numbers you need an additional force, one that feels strongly about humanitarianism, rejects ethnic and religious homogeneity, detests the nation state and borders on ideological grounds, etc.

The former socialists have for the most part made their peace with capitalism/free market economics and poured their revolutionary and ideological fervor into social justice, i.e. that which you believe will follow once the economics change from capitalism to communism.

[Potemkin]

To explain today's immigration numbers you need an additional force, one that feels strongly about humanitarianism, rejects ethnic and religious homogeneity, detests the nation state and borders on ideological grounds, etc.

There is some truth to this, but this is still specific to Germany's historical experiences as a result of the Nazi era and, more especially, its catastrophic downfall in 1945 and everything which flowed from that. This, of course, is why Germany is experiencing the current European immigration crisis in a particularly acute form.

The former socialists have for the most part made their peace with capitalism/free market economics and poured their revolutionary and ideological fervor into social justice, i.e. that which you believe will follow once the economics change from capitalism to communism.

In other words, they have stopped being socialists and become social democratic SJWs. And they will not even achieve their more limited ambition of achieving social justice; the capitalist system will see to that. The capitalists are making use of these people; they are in fact precisely the kind of people meant by the phrase "useful idiots". My point still stands - the former socialists are only facilitating uncontrolled immigration insofar as they have ceased being socialist. They are no longer acting in the interests of the working class, and have forfeited all right to claim to represent the working class. They have, in effect, become nothing more than the left wing of the bourgeoisie. Such people existed even in Lenin's time. They were called 'Mensheviks', and Lenin waged merciless war against them.

[Kaiserschmarrn]

There is some truth to this, but this is still specific to Germany's historical experiences as a result of the Nazi era and, more especially, its catastrophic downfall in 1945 and everything which flowed from that. This, of course, is why Germany is experiencing the current European immigration crisis in a particularly acute form.

I agree but Germany is just an extreme example. The phenomenon exists across all Western countries with European heritage.

In other words, they have stopped being socialists and become social democratic SJWs. And they will not even achieve their more limited ambition of achieving social justice; the capitalist system will see to that. The capitalists are making use of these people; they are in fact precisely the kind of people meant by the phrase "useful idiots". My point still stands - the former socialists are only facilitating uncontrolled immigration insofar as they have ceased being socialist. They are no longer acting in the interests of the working class, and have forfeited all right to claim to represent the working class. They have, in effect, become nothing more than the left wing of the bourgeoisie. Such people existed even in Lenin's time. They were called 'Mensheviks', and Lenin waged merciless war against them.

Yes, they are no longer socialists, and that's why I have called them socialism's legacy in Western Europe. Many of them would probably argue that they have developed and moderated socialism into something more mature and pragmatic.

There is some irony in the fact that one of the preferred targets of these people today is Russia.

[Potemkin]

I agree but Germany is just an extreme example. The phenomenon exists across all Western countries with European heritage.

Granted.

Yes, they are no longer socialists, and that's why I have called them socialism's legacy in Western Europe.

Which is precisely why true socialists must reclaim that legacy, as Corbyn is trying to do in the Labour Party. The long betrayal must end.

Many of them would probably argue that they have developed and moderated socialism into something more mature and pragmatic.

Lol. So selling out to the enemies of the working class is being "mature and pragmatic" now, eh? That's probably what Petain thought he was being when he decided to collaborate with the Nazis, or what Benedict Arnold thought he was being when he betrayed the revolutionary cause in America. Defeatism, cowardice and treason are not mature and they are not even pragmatic, in the long run.

There is some irony in the fact that one of the preferred targets of these people today is Russia.

Indeed. Back in the 1930s and 40s, most of these types were praising Stalin to the skies, but once the tide of public opinion turned against them during the Cold War, they suddenly decided to switch sides. This clearly wasn't for moral reasons - after all, they had supported the Soviet Union at the height of the bloodletting of Stalin's purges, but denounced it when it was merely a rather dreary bureaucratic dictatorship under Brezhnev. No, it was just defeatism, cowardice and opportunism on their part, which they have represented (even to themselves) as 'maturity' and 'pragmatism'. Ha!

[Donna]

Everybody has their price.