[ckaihatsu]

I've heard this 'German funding' allegation before, but no one's been able to provide any references for it -- it's probably some misinformation that you've absorbed and are perpetuating.

https://www.dw.com/en/how-germany-got-t ... a-41195312

The German chartered train was provided by Kaiser Wilhelm II with the aim of furthering the Russian Revolution. In one of the wagons sat none other than Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as Lenin. With German help, Lenin left his exile in Switzerland and, a week later, reached his destination: Petrograd, which would later be renamed to Leningrad then changed back to today's Saint Petersburg.

https://www.dw.com/en/how-germany-got-t ... a-41195312

Okay, thanks for this, SC -- I do recall hearing about this decades ago, when I was initially politicized, around school.

So we can see that historically-revolutionary events can't take place in a geopolitical vacuum -- Germany benefitted from (Bolshevik) Russia's withdrawal from World War I, but at least the nascent Bolshevik Revolution didn't have to participate in a global-bourgeois world war.

Aside from this settling of material balances I don't see any extended 'indebtedness', on the part of the Bolsheviks, to Germany, going-forward. The revolution remained the workers' and Bolsheviks' own, except for the waves of internal and foreign counterrevolutionary interventions and destruction to the economy.


---

The revolution had occurred several months earlier. What Lenin paid foreign gold for was a putsch.

You're being *contradictory* again -- if 'the revolution had occurred several months earlier' (which it had), then the Bolshevik Russia was a *revolutionary* one, and *not* a tsarist one, so there could not *be* a putsch / coup-d'etat, because there was no monarch to displace at that point.

[SolarCross]

Okay, thanks for this, SC -- I do recall hearing about this decades ago, when I was initially politicized, around school.

So we can see that historically-revolutionary events can't take place in a geopolitical vacuum -- Germany benefitted from (Bolshevik) Russia's withdrawal from World War I, but at least the nascent Bolshevik Revolution didn't have to participate in a global-bourgeois world war.

Aside from this settling of material balances I don't see any extended 'indebtedness', on the part of the Bolsheviks, to Germany, going-forward. The revolution remained the workers' and Bolsheviks' own, except for the waves of internal and foreign counterrevolutionary interventions and destruction to the economy.

In the long run it was a bum deal for Germany actually. Sure they got Russia off their eastern front in the short term but they lost WW1 anyway and then ended up with USSR on their eastern front instead. The USSR was a lot less rational and more aggressive power than Tzarist Russia (TR was only dragged into WW because of treaties with GB and France and an obligation to defend their client state Serbia from Austrian expansion). In subsequent decades the USSR flooded Germany with subversives just as Lenin promised which sparked the rise of Hitler and then another crushing world war for Germany to lose, which left Germany split in two with its eastern half subject to a brutal terror state for decades... I wonder if the Kaiser could have looked into a crystal ball to see all the consequences of his plans whether he would still have taken that gamble, probably not.

As Gandalf said: "For even the very wise cannot see all ends"

[Truth To Power]

The philosophical basis of Georgism is theft.

Right: the theft of land by landowners from all who would otherwise be at liberty to use it, and the need, in the interest of liberty, justice and economic efficiency, to redress that theft.

Land is wealth and wealth is land.

See? You have to resort to self-evident, disingenuous absurdity. Land has never been and is not wealth: it is only the legal privilege of depriving others of it, the title to land, that is wealth. And wealth is not land but all manner of assets, land titles being only one. You know this. Of course you do. You just have to find some way of not knowing it because you have already realized that it proves your beliefs are false and evil.

The private ownership of wealth is implicit in a free economy.

Like slaves? Or are you saying that because it has no private ownership of land, Hong Kong -- which routinely tops lists of the world's freest economies -- is somehow not a free economy?

If the government decided to issue a private ownership title to the earth's atmosphere, as it does to land, and the owner of the title was thus legally entitled to charge the rest of rent for air to breathe, would the private ownership of that wealth also be implicit in a free economy? Are you really claiming that enslaving people by owning their rights to liberty is implicit in a free economy?

Do you understand why your claims are false and absurd?

[Truth To Power]

You're being *contradictory* again -- if 'the revolution had occurred several months earlier' (which it had), then the Bolshevik Russia was a *revolutionary* one,

No, it was an evil socialist dictatorship with little popular support, installed by a violent coup and maintained thereafter by constant, brutal, sadistic violence.

and *not* a tsarist one, so there could not *be* a putsch / coup-d'etat, because there was no monarch to displace at that point.

GARBAGE. The Bolshevik putsch/coup d'etat overthrew the popularly supported revolutionary Kerensky government, not the monarch. You are blatantly trying to rewrite history in predictable Orwellian Marxist fashion.

[Truth To Power]

The short-term-mindedness of capitalist firms is pronounced in the theory of shareholder primacy.

Whom do you incorrectly imagine is being served by the capitalist long game, the firms or their rich, greedy, privileged, parasitic human shareholders?

If you actually follow the business world you can very plainly observe how reckless the pursuit of profit has become through the creation of new financial instruments, not only putting stakeholders at risk but the long-term viability of those companies as well.

The companies are just tools: created, used, and destroyed to extract wealth from the economy for their human owners. Hello?

[Truth To Power]

TTP's counter-historical-progress, anti-socialist sentiment aside, what I'm seeing is that TTP has a solid *anti-aristocratic* line, as from the days of the American Revolution.

I'm against privilege and injustice, not aristocracy (if understood as meritocracy).

because society's production no longer comes from *land*, as it did during the times of feudalism,

I guess that explains why land is now more expensive, in terms of labor, than it was during feudalism...

but in the present era it comes from *industrial production*, a fact of the modern-day that TTP doesn't want to acknowledge.

The fact that aggregate land value is now a large multiple of the aggregate value of all industrial production goods proves me right and you wrong with no further argumentation needed, or possible.

I *appreciate* this parody of TTP, because while TTP may want to 'modernize' the treatment of non-productive assets like land,

All production requires land, and land is now more valuable than ever. HELLO???

this same approach is *not* applied to what matters *today*, which is the means of mass industrial production, or 'production goods'.

The value of land relative to production goods conclusively proves you wrong. CONCLUSIVELY. No dispute of that fact is possible.

[Truth To Power]

If you knew about the history of the US in Latin America and how it has supported intervention to support right wing governments, and if you knew that this did not happen in East Asia, you would not make this faulty comparison.

Try not to display your ignorance of history so cruelly. US intervention in East Asia has routinely supported right wing governments, including in South Korea.

I am now ignoring your ad hominem about Allende since you have no actual evidence.

And I suppose your personal acquaintance with Allende cronies makes you a neutral observer....

[Donna]

No, it was an evil socialist dictatorship with little popular support, installed by a violent coup and maintained thereafter by constant, brutal, sadistic violence.

GARBAGE. The Bolshevik putsch/coup d'etat overthrew the popularly supported revolutionary Kerensky government, not the monarch. You are blatantly trying to rewrite history in predictable Orwellian Marxist fashion.

The Kerensky government was not popular, by the summer of 1917 industrial workers were again striking, soldiers and sailors were mutinying, and peasants were revolting. The driving material factors of the revolution was not an abstract desire for Western democracy and liberty, but the fact that Russia's backwardness, aggravated by a disastrous war policy (which Kerensky continued), was effectively starving the country to the bone.

The companies are just tools: created, used, and destroyed to extract wealth from the economy for their human owners. Hello?

This is a good reason why the capitalist mode of development is unstable and prone to cyclical failure. The necessities of life being provided by such avaricious, mercenary entities cannot be sustained indefinitely.

[Truth To Power]

If the net tax burden went down for the majority of people it might be saleable at the ballot box.

The majority's net tax burden would definitely go down, as land value owned is far more unequally distributed than the current tax burden.

Farmers would be pissing themselves in terror at the prospect,

They have no reason to. Lots of farmers are already farming rented land, and the only difference would be who they paid the rent to. Plus, they would not have to pay taxes on TOP of land rent. Even most landowners would be net winners, and the landless would be MASSIVE net winners.

though I am not sure how much political clout they have these days.

Landowners have far more, obviously.

I expect they would get some kind of loop hope to use anyway to keep them quiet.

Not a loophole, just restoration of their rights to liberty and property in the fruits of their labor.

[Truth To Power]

Companies do raise cash through IPOs and secondary offerings, but trading/investing on the secondary market is basically speculation.

No, it's positive-sum. Stock investors merely have different opinions about which firms will do better than the market expects.

Capitalism is on borrowed time.

Whereas socialism is already dead.

[Truth To Power]

The Kerensky government was not popular, by the summer of 1917 industrial workers were again striking, soldiers and sailors were mutinying, and peasants were revolting.

Only those conned by Bolshevik activists or paid for with Lenin's foreign gold.

The driving material factors of the revolution was not an abstract desire for Western democracy and liberty, but the fact that Russia's backwardness, aggravated by a disastrous war policy (which Kerensky continued), was effectively starving the country to the bone.

If they could only have known what REAL starvation to the bone under socialism would be like....

[Truth To Power]

Except in a violent revolutionary setting, Georgism is politically infeasible.

What's interesting about this claim is that we know the oppression, injustice and lies of capitalism are politically feasible, because we live with them. ingliz evidently thinks the oppression, injustice and lies of socialism are also politically feasible. So somehow it's only the liberty, justice and truth of geoism that are politically infeasible....

[SolarCross]

The majority's net tax burden would definitely go down, as land value owned is far more unequally distributed than the current tax burden.

Maybe, the thing which people often get wrong about economics is forgetting that everything is reflexive. Twiddling one parameter, be it income tax, sales tax or property taxes for some particular outcome will potentially create unforeseen consequences as people adapt to it. I guess we will not really know until the experiment is run somewhere.

They have no reason to. Lots of farmers are already farming rented land, and the only difference would be who they paid the rent to. Plus, they would not have to pay taxes on TOP of land rent. Even most landowners would be net winners, and the landless would be MASSIVE net winners.

Some rent but probably most own. It hardly matters though because whatever taxes are raised on freeholders they will just pass on the cost to tenants in higher rents, so the renting farmers will have to pay more too.

Raw land is pretty cheap honestly, restrictive planning permission regimes is what drives the value up. It is an artificial scarcity.

[Pants-of-dog]

Try not to display your ignorance of history so cruelly. US intervention in East Asia has routinely supported right wing governments, including in South Korea.

Provide evidence for this claim.

And I suppose your personal acquaintance with Allende cronies makes you a neutral observer....

You have no argument.

All you did was throw out some insults.

I am not going to pretend that you said something worthwhile.

[Potemkin]

Provide evidence for this claim.

For God's sake, it's common knowledge, PoD.

[Pants-of-dog]

For God's sake, it's common knowledge, PoD.

The history of the partition of Korea is significantly different enough from the history of US involvement in Cuba that the comparison fails when it comes to determining if Cubans are actually wanting a revolution and cannot have one.

But if you want to show they are similar, go ahead.

[foxdemon]

For God's sake, it's common knowledge, PoD.

PoD wants a proof from first principles for every statement. You know, I think he has missed his true vocation. He should have been a mathematician.

[Pants-of-dog]

@Potemkin
@Truth To Power

There was a popular revolution in Cuba.

Was there one in N. Korea?

[Donna]

No, it's positive-sum. Stock investors merely have different opinions about which firms will do better than the market expects.

In other words, speculation.

Only those conned by Bolshevik activists or paid for with Lenin's foreign gold.

But not. The Provisional government was unpopular because they kept Russia in the war and regularly clashed with the soviets. The Bolsheviks were anti-war and supported soviet power. They had widespread support of the nation's industrial and naval bases in Petrograd as well as the landless peasantry. In the August 20 municipal elections, the Bolsheviks won a third of the vote and in September secured majorities in the Petrograd soviet and the Workers' Section of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, effectively becoming the will of the revolutionary masses of Russia.

If they could only have known what REAL starvation to the bone under socialism would be like....

It would have probably occurred regardless what direction Russia had taken. Famine was a perpetual problem in Russia from the 1860s until the end of Stalin's premiership. As David Harvey or Jared Diamond would describe it, human geological development had become uneven, placing unnatural pressure on different ways of life and modes of production outside of the epicenter of capitalist development in Western Europe.

[QatzelOk]

PoD wants a proof from first principles for every statement. You know, I think he has missed his true vocation. He should have been a mathematician.

This whole thread has been de-railed by mathematicians.

It was supposed to be about how the Almighty, text-based defenders of "the working class" - the ones that we've all heard about - are actually not knowledgable about or interested in the working class at all.

The working class are the slaves of technological production, and the OP wonders if the socially-rejected and self-esteem-imploding "ball-less leftist" has any capacity to make life better for this HUGE MAJORITY of our fellow humans.

And it's a great question for two reasons:

1. The working class, by its very existence, lowers the quality of life and value of billions of human beings

2. Mass media has been dictating social norms for so long that most working class people themselves are completely obsessed with other classes or other injustices than this one, the most basic and injustice-generating injustice of them all.