[annatar1914]

Indeed. But he had one or two good ideas, and a very good turn of phrase. Here's another good one: "Rules for happiness: something to do, someone to love, something to hope for."

Yes, he was always good in the Aphorism department

I always liked this one, not least because I think it happens to be true;

Melancholy characterizes those with a superb sense of the sublime.

Oswald Spengler said that with Kant, Philosophy came to an end as far as the Western/''Faustian'' Civilization was concerned, that his was the last word. But Spengler also was fond of Goethe and Nietzsche as well (Spengler's ''Being and Becoming'', which he made transcend Philosophy)...

These Germans, lol...

[annatar1914]

I have said that I am basically a ''National Bolshevik'', that I'm a Socialist. All that is true, but it by no means exhausts my thinking, and so in light of that thinking which has it's roots in Orthodox Christianity I offer this speech (which I fully agree with) by Alexander Solzhenitsyn;

“Men Have Forgotten God” – The Templeton Address
by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

More than half a century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of older people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.

Since then I have spent well-nigh fifty years working on the history of our Revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous Revolution that swallowed up some sixty million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.

What is more, the events of the Russian Revolution can only be understood now, at the end of the century, against the background of what has since occurred in the rest of the world. What emerges here is a process of universal significance. And if I were called upon to identify briefly the principal trait of the entire twentieth century, here too, I would be unable to find anything more precise and pithy than to repeat once again: Men have forgotten God.

The failings of human consciousness, deprived of its divine dimension, have been a determining factor in all the major crimes of this century.

The failings of human consciousness, deprived of its divine dimension, have been a determining factor in all the major crimes of this century. The first of these was World War I, and much of our present predicament can be traced back to it. It was a war (the memory of which seems to be fading) when Europe, bursting with health and abundance, fell into a rage of self-mutilation which could not but sap its strength for a century or more, and perhaps forever. The only possible explanation for this war is a mental eclipse among the leaders of Europe due to their lost awareness of a Supreme Power above them. Only a godless embitterment could have moved ostensibly Christian states to employ poison gas, a weapon so obviously beyond the limits of humanity.

The same kind of defect, the flaw of a consciousness lacking all divine dimension, was manifested after World War II when the West yielded to the satanic temptation of the “nuclear umbrella.” It was equivalent to saying: Let’s cast off worries, let’s free the younger generation from their duties and obligations, let’s make no effort to defend ourselves, to say nothing of defending others-let’s stop our ears to the groans emanating from the East, and let us live instead in the pursuit of happiness. If danger should threaten us, we shall be protected by the nuclear bomb; if not, then let the world burn in Hell for all we care. The pitifully helpless state to which the contemporary West has sunk is in large measure due to this fatal error: the belief that the defense of peace depends not on stout hearts and steadfast men, but solely on the nuclear bomb…

Today’ s world has reached a stage which, if it had been described to preceding centuries, would have called forth the cry: “This is the Apocalypse!”

Yet we have grown used to this kind of world; we even feel at home in it.

Dostoevsky warned that “great events could come upon us and catch us intellectually unprepared.” This is precisely what has happened. And he predicted that “the world will be saved only after it has been possessed by the demon of evil.” Whether it really will be saved we shall have to wait and see: this will depend on our conscience, on our spiritual lucidity, on our individual and combined efforts in the face of catastrophic circumstances. But it has already come to pass that the demon of evil, like a whirlwind, triumphantly circles all five continents of the earth…

By the time of the Revolution, faith had virtually disappeared in Russian educated circles; and amongst the uneducated, its health was threatened.

In its past, Russia did know a time when the social ideal was not fame, or riches, or material success, but a pious way of life. Russia was then steeped in an Orthodox Christianity which remained true to the Church of the first centuries. The Orthodoxy of that time knew how to safeguard its people under the yoke of a foreign occupation that lasted more than two centuries, while at the same time fending off iniquitous blows from the swords of Western crusaders. During those centuries the Orthodox faith in our country became part of the very pattern of thought and the personality of our people, the forms of daily life, the work calendar, the priorities in every undertaking, the organization of the week and of the year. Faith was the shaping and unifying force of the nation.

But in the 17th century Russian Orthodoxy was gravely weakened by an internal schism. In the 18th, the country was shaken by Peter’s forcibly imposed transformations, which favored the economy, the state, and the military at the expense of the religious spirit and national life. And along with this lopsided Petrine enlightenment, Russia felt the first whiff of secularism; its subtle poisons permeated the educated classes in the course of the 19th century and opened the path to Marxism. By the time of the Revolution, faith had virtually disappeared in Russian educated circles; and amongst the uneducated, its health was threatened.

It was Dostoevsky, once again, who drew from the French Revolution and its seeming hatred of the Church the lesson that “revolution must necessarily begin with atheism.” That is absolutely true. But the world had never before known a godlessness as organized, militarized, and tenaciously malevolent as that practiced by Marxism. Within the philosophical system of Marx and Lenin, and at the heart of their psychology, hatred of God is the principal driving force, more fundamental than all their political and economic pretensions. Militant atheism is not merely incidental or marginal to Communist policy; it is not a side effect, but the central pivot.

The 1920’s in the USSR witnessed an uninterrupted procession of victims and martyrs amongst the Orthodox clergy. Two metropolitans were shot, one of whom, Veniamin of Petrograd, had been elected by the popular vote of his diocese. Patriarch Tikhon himself passed through the hands of the Cheka-GPU and then died under suspicious circumstances. Scores of archbishops and bishops perished. Tens of thousands of priests, monks, and nuns, pressured by the Chekists to renounce the Word of God, were tortured, shot in cellars, sent to camps, exiled to the desolate tundra of the far North, or turned out into the streets in their old age without food or shelter. All these Christian martyrs went unswervingly to their deaths for the faith; instances of apostasy were few and far between. For tens of millions of laymen access to the Church was blocked, and they were forbidden to bring up their children in the Faith: religious parents were wrenched from their children and thrown into prison, while the children were turned from the faith by threats and lies…

For a short period of time, when he needed to gather strength for the struggle against Hitler, Stalin cynically adopted a friendly posture toward the Church. This deceptive game, continued in later years by Brezhnev with the help of showcase publications and other window dressing, has unfortunately tended to be taken at its face value in the West. Yet the tenacity with which hatred of religion is rooted in Communism may be judged by the example of their most liberal leader, Krushchev: for though he undertook a number of significant steps to extend freedom, Krushchev simultaneously rekindled the frenzied Leninist obsession with destroying religion.

But there is something they did not expect: that in a land where churches have been leveled, where a triumphant atheism has rampaged uncontrolled for two-thirds of a century, where the clergy is utterly humiliated and deprived of all independence, where what remains of the Church as an institution is tolerated only for the sake of propaganda directed at the West, where even today people are sent to the labor camps for their faith, and where, within the camps themselves, those who gather to pray at Easter are clapped in punishment cells–they could not suppose that beneath this Communist steamroller the Christian tradition would survive in Russia. It is true that millions of our countrymen have been corrupted and spiritually devastated by an officially imposed atheism, yet there remain many millions of believers: it is only external pressures that keep them from speaking out, but, as is always the case in times of persecution and suffering, the awareness of God in my country has attained great acuteness and profundity.

It is here that we see the dawn of hope: for no matter how formidably Communism bristles with tanks and rockets, no matter what successes it attains in seizing the planet, it is doomed never to vanquish Christianity.

The West has yet to experience a Communist invasion; religion here remains free. But the West’s own historical evolution has been such that today it too is experiencing a drying up of religious consciousness. It too has witnessed racking schisms, bloody religious wars, and rancor, to say nothing of the tide of secularism that, from the late Middle Ages onward, has progressively inundated the West. This gradual sapping of strength from within is a threat to faith that is perhaps even more dangerous than any attempt to assault religion violently from without.

Imperceptibly, through decades of gradual erosion, the meaning of life in the West has ceased to be seen as anything more lofty than the “pursuit of happiness, “a goal that has even been solemnly guaranteed by constitutions. The concepts of good and evil have been ridiculed for several centuries; banished from common use, they have been replaced by political or class considerations of short lived value. It has become embarrassing to state that evil makes its home in the individual human heart before it enters a political system. Yet it is not considered shameful to make dally concessions to an integral evil. Judging by the continuing landslide of concessions made before the eyes of our very own generation, the West is ineluctably slipping toward the abyss. Western societies are losing more and more of their religious essence as they thoughtlessly yield up their younger generation to atheism. If a blasphemous film about Jesus is shown throughout the United States, reputedly one of the most religious countries in the world, or a major newspaper publishes a shameless caricature of the Virgin Mary, what further evidence of godlessness does one need? When external rights are completely unrestricted, why should one make an inner effort to restrain oneself from ignoble acts?

Or why should one refrain from burning hatred, whatever its basis–race, class, or ideology? Such hatred is in fact corroding many hearts today. Atheist teachers in the West are bringing up a younger generation in a spirit of hatred of their own society. Amid all the vituperation we forget that the defects of capitalism represent the basic flaws of human nature, allowed unlimited freedom together with the various human rights; we forget that under Communism (and Communism is breathing down the neck of all moderate forms of socialism, which are unstable) the identical flaws run riot in any person with the least degree of authority; while everyone else under that system does indeed attain “equality”–the equality of destitute slaves. This eager fanning of the flames of hatred is becoming the mark of today’s free world. Indeed, the broader the personal freedoms are, the higher the level of prosperity or even of abundance–the more vehement, paradoxically, does this blind hatred become. The contemporary developed West thus demonstrates by its own example that human salvation can be found neither in the profusion of material goods nor in merely making money.

This deliberately nurtured hatred then spreads to all that is alive, to life itself, to the world with its colors, sounds, and shapes, to the human body. The embittered art of the twentieth century is perishing as a result of this ugly hate, for art is fruitless without love. In the East art has collapsed because it has been knocked down and trampled upon, but in the West the fall has been voluntary, a decline into a contrived and pretentious quest where the artist, instead of attempting to reveal the divine plan, tries to put himself in the place of God.

Here again we witness the single outcome of a worldwide process, with East and West yielding the same results, and once again for the same reason: Men have forgotten God.

With such global events looming over us like mountains, nay, like entire mountain ranges, it may seem incongruous and inappropriate to recall that the primary key to our being or non-being resides in each individual human heart, in the heart’s preference for specific good or evil. Yet this remains true even today, and it is, in fact, the most reliable key we have. The social theories that promised so much have demonstrated their bankruptcy, leaving us at a dead end. The free people of the West could reasonably have been expected to realize that they are beset · by numerous freely nurtured falsehoods, and not to allow lies to be foisted upon them so easily. All attempts to find a way out of the plight of today’s world are fruitless unless we redirect our consciousness, in repentance, to the Creator of all: without this, no exit will be illumined, and we shall seek it in vain. The resources we have set aside for ourselves are too impoverished for the task. We must first recognize the horror perpetrated not by some outside force, not by class or national enemies, but within each of us individually, and within every society. This is especially true of a free and highly developed society, for here in particular we have surely brought everything upon ourselves, of our own free will. We ourselves, in our daily unthinking selfishness, are pulling tight that noose…

Our life consists not in the pursuit of material success but in the quest for worthy spiritual growth. Our entire earthly existence is but a transitional stage in the movement toward something higher, and we must not stumble and fall, nor must we linger fruitlessly on one rung of the ladder. Material laws alone do not explain our life or give it direction. The laws of physics and physiology will never reveal the indisputable manner in which the Creator constantly, day in and day out, participates in the life of each of us, unfailingly granting us the energy of existence; when this assistance leaves us, we die. And in the life of our entire planet, the Divine Spirit surely moves with no less force: this we must grasp in our dark and terrible hour.

To the ill-considered hopes of the last two centuries, which have reduced us to insignificance and brought us to the brink of nuclear and non-nuclear death, we can propose only a determined quest for the warm hand of God, which we have so rashly and self-confidently spurned. Only in this way can our eyes be opened to the errors of this unfortunate twentieth century and our bands be directed to setting them right. There is nothing else to cling to in the landslide: the combined vision of all the thinkers of the Enlightenment amounts to nothing.

Our five continents are caught in a whirlwind. But it is during trials such as these that the highest gifts of the human spirit are manifested. If we perish and lose this world, the fault will be ours alone.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, “Godlessness: the First Step to the Gulag”. Templeton Prize Lecture, 10 May 1983 (London).

Particularly emphatic points I ponder in bold.

[Presvias]

You are not a Naz-Bol, your ideology is very different to Naz-Bols.

I've talked to NazBols before, I know what I'm talking about.....

Where did you get that from?

[annatar1914]

You are not a Naz-Bol, your ideology is very different to Naz-Bols.

I've talked to NazBols before, I know what I'm talking about.....

Where did you get that from?

''NazBol'' to me seems like a loathsome hybrid of Communism and Naziism. What I see is something which Anatoly Karlin (unwillingly and condescendingly) recognizes as where most people who are ''Reds'' in the former Soviet Bloc nowadays are politically and spiritually;

The justification of the October Revolution, of Bolshevism, and of Soviet power – in short, the entirety of Red apologetics – now occurs from within patriotic, nationalist, conspirological, populist, and even Christian Orthodox frameworks, all of which were mostly or entirely antithetical to the Communist value system itself. In practice, this consists of sophistic manipulations of Hegel’s “Cunning of Reason.” That is, the Bolsheviks wanted one thing, but something entirely different happened in reality, and it is actually this unconscious benefit which constitutes the real blessing of the revolution.

My own emphasis in bold.

From this article;

https://www.unz.com/akarlin/myths-of-bo ... evolution/

So therefore, while not by any means limiting my own Socialism, this commentary accurately describes the root of what I regard as ''National Bolshevism'' in the Russias today.

[Presvias]

Thanks for clarifying, that term has very negative connotations & ideological attachments as you know, was worried for a second when you posted that..

That's an interesting article, I read most of it. Not sure there's any commentary to add, you've probably covered it a thousand different ways in this and that older 2015 thread alone.

[annatar1914]

Thanks for clarifying, that term has very negative connotations & ideological attachments as you know, was worried for a second when you posted that..

That's an interesting article, I read most of it. Not sure there's any commentary to add, you've probably covered it a thousand different ways in this and that older 2015 thread alone.

No worries brother:-). I have a subtle and nuanced but very clear political philosophy that is an extension of my very traditional beliefs. In practical matters, a person like me is limited in what I can ''do'' in regards to political action anyways, but I suspect that the nature of Civilization's decline in the coming years will render any political action on my part superfluous. In other words, I figure people of good will come over to where I'm at when the time and circumstances are right.

[annatar1914]

Here and elsewhere perhaps, I have written of the slogan; ''Tsar and the Soviets!'' of small groupings of Russian emigres in the 1920's and 1930's, the Mladorossi. It expresses the insight that the Tsar or Caesar, from earliest times down to ancient Rome, represented, embodied, and defended the Popular will and Common Good against Aristocratic internal enemies and the external enemies abroad. In 1917, having abdicated, Tsar Nicholas II failed in that duty and so it passed to the Soviet Dictatorship of the Proletariat which likewise ultimately and necessarily failed of it's identical archetypal mission.

I have not written much of this, because it can so easily be misinterpreted one way or another and because the concept has not been nearly as fleshed out in my mind as others. In the past, I have written extensively of Monarchy, without a doubt, which IS similar but not totally identical to this Autocratic concept. But the reality of it, were I to compare it to something historically, is like the relation between say, St. Prince Alexandr Nevsky and the Novgorod Republic in Russia in the 1200's.

All this being said, I'm certain that this can be organically reconciled with the principles of Soviet Democracy, Democratic Centralism, and Socialism

[Presvias]

I met some Ukrainians today. They've been through some rough things... it's very sad that Ukraine, which to us is very important - of course, has been so afflicted by evil.

I was told of an interesting prophecy; apparently during end times it feels like time is going much faster. And that's the impression I've had for a while.

Still can't reconcile the prospects of real violence with our beliefs; St Paisios apparently shot away from enemies when conscripted in WWI, deliberately missing other soldiers

How do we reconcile violence and wrath? Already I'm a most sinful, wrathful creature..how do you reconcile it?

[annatar1914]

I met some Ukrainians today. They've been through some rough things... it's very sad that Ukraine, which to us is very important - of course, has been so afflicted by evil.

I was told of an interesting prophecy; apparently during end times it feels like time is going much faster. And that's the impression I've had for a while.

Still can't reconcile the prospects of real violence with our beliefs; St Paisios apparently shot away from enemies when conscripted in WWI, deliberately missing other soldiers

How do we reconcile violence and wrath? Already I'm a most sinful, wrathful creature..how do you reconcile it?

It's not easy. One thing that seems to help focus my thinking on these issues is the great stock Christianity holds in obedience to legitimate earthly authority. There is Force which is wrong and sinful that comes from wrath and other disordered passions, usually expressed on one's own volition, and then there is the Force that comes from protecting and serving, from motives of justice and the common good of one's people and nation, which usually comes from the commands of others over us in leadership positions. Not all force and violence is wrong, and not all pacifism is right, of course.

I have always been something of an Authoritarian, I admit freely, an Statist. I would prefer that violence be something that is deliberated on rationally and hierarchically than something engaged in Anarchically and personally motivated.

I'm not sure if this helps, or raises more issues than it addresses properly, but it's the best I can muster at this time, with a measure of prayer and reflection maybe I can answer in a more God-Illumined manner.

[annatar1914]

The last post was something that made me reflect on force and violence so this post will be a continuation of this reflection.

The first weapon seen in this world, a tool designed to render compliance via threat of it's use of force and pain, was the flaming sword mentioned in the Book of Genesis in the Scripture. It was and is wielded by an Angel to bar the way to Eden from fallen Mankind. It also marks the boundary between where one can go and where one cannot go as human beings. This later became perverted by Cain and his line, and so therefore they invented weapons and private property (Cain building the first City in the World). ''And the Earth was filled with violence''...

Just like the Sacred Spaces of Heaven and of Eden could only only be defended by division, expulsion, violence and force, so too do the Secular spaces rely on these same tools albeit for very material and earthly goods and goals.

[annatar1914]

So in talking of secular and sacred spaces and the use of violence in the protection of the same, it might be useful to talk about what I've reflected upon recently and in the past about the State. Does the State have the monopoly on the use of social force within a society? Am I talking about what might be called the Westphalian Nation-State?

A qualified 'yes' to the first question and a definite 'no' to the second.

Remember my theme of ''Tsar and the Soviets?'' Well it's a common space designated as the object of sovereignty, but it's not a Secular space, such a space can only exist under abnormal and anti-natural conditions, the conditions of the modern era in fact which are breaking down today.

Some time back when I was wrestling with the consequences of @Victoribus Spolia and his thought (thanks VS!) I imagined a pre-modern State at least as somehow being the ''private property'' of one great patriarchal man, who could do as to the economical arrangements of his holdings of his renters and residents as he wished. But that's not quite right or exact either-a pre-modern despotism is what that is.

''Tsar and Soviets!'' means ultimately rather in my conception, a Republic, a true and illiberal Republic; ''Res Publica'', the ''Common Good'' of all the people who have lived or will live within a Polity as citizens. An Autocracy and a Democracy all in One, exercising power for the public benefit within it's domain, and balancing the necessary power of the representative dictatorship that exercises power for the people, with the freedom of the many who are the intended beneficiary of such an exercise of power. Such is necessarily also a Socialist Republic, at least in the process of embryonic formation. I place this conception at the very middle of my revised political spectrum.

So what are the extra-state powers, since the state is in a very real sense; the 'State of the Whole People'? One is the ''Party'', which is the carrier of the ideological aims of the People in a Material and Earthly sense, and either always exists or is in the process of formation or destruction within any society. The Other is the Church, which is beyond and above the State, rendering her true children the best of citizens possible and educating them as such, but otherwise ''just'' another belief system among belief systems. Outside of her, though, all other belief systems are merely human and not divine. The State might declare it's incompetence in spiritual matters, but by design and function conforms entirely to the social principles of the Church in an unconscious sense, else the Church becomes the State on one hand, or has no freedom at all on the other.

This might touch upon what I have thought about as being the ''providential constitution'' of a Nation, the political reality, the ''written constitution'' of which may then veer too much towards absolute Statism and Dictatorship, or too far towards absolute freedom of the individual person, as reflected in my revised political spectrum.

In my worldview then, no State or Polity like this exists in the modern world, which reflects this balance and justice as I see it, but it is nonetheless there as a potentiality throughout every Nation in the World.

So how does this relate to social force, personal exercise of force, and the monopoly of force by the State? In my conception as I see things now, the People and the State are ideally as close to being one political unit as possible, so that there is no personal right to the exercise of force save in self defense, but every right to it's social exercise. Which means a military monopoly by the Army of the People is the ideal.

[annatar1914]

@Potemkin , @Presvias , and others;

Another thing i've been reflecting on recently is the oft-repeated canard that Socialists necessarily are against hierarchy, are ''levellers'' who demand absolute sameness and total egalitarianism. Not so, with me anyway. I'm for earned hierarchy based on merit, on talent and vocation, not a hierarchy based on some circumstance of heredity or private wealth.

And so let a Physician make more money than a Dog-Catcher, for example! But let both not lack in basic needs, or have superfluity of material goods beyond their station in life, some vast disparity of income. And let all contribute to the good of all.

[Potemkin]

@Potemkin , @Presvias , and others;

Another thing i've been reflecting on recently is the oft-repeated canard that Socialists necessarily are against hierarchy, are ''levellers'' who demand absolute sameness and total egalitarianism. Not so, with me anyway. I'm for earned hierarchy based on merit, on talent and vocation, not a hierarchy based on some circumstance of heredity or private wealth.

And so let a Physician make more money than a Dog-Catcher, for example! But let both not lack in basic needs, or have superfluity of material goods beyond their station in life, some vast disparity of income. And let all contribute to the good of all.

Indeed. And Friedrich Engels, for one, was a socialist who was not against hierarchy: Engels On Authority

[Sivad]

And let all contribute to the good of all.

Fuck that. Forcing people to contribute to the good of all is anti-social. Socialism is just paying what you owe and getting what you're due. If people want to contribute beyond that then it's up to them but nobody's got any business forcing others to sacrifice to the collective.

[Potemkin]

Fuck that. Forcing people to contribute to the good of all is anti-social. Socialism is just paying what you owe and getting what you're due.

No, that's accounting. You know, the sort of thing Misty Tiger does at work (among other things, of course). No, socialism can be summed up in the slogan: "He who does not work, does not eat." In other words, an end to economic parasitism. Communism, of course, is the next stage of development of a socialist society, which can be summed up in the slogan: "From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs."

If people want to contribute beyond that then it's up to them but nobody's got any business forcing others to sacrifice to the collective.

So you're against any form of taxation then?

[Presvias]

All I know is that I'd like you to have your ideal marxist-leninist society, I'd like Sivad to have his... whatever his ideology is-opia, and annatar to have his versiin of a good society; and I'd like my own with fellow Orthodox who want to live monastically, doing hard work to support each other; with no requirement of forcible hierarchies because everything happens naturally when you're surrounded by people you care about and you contribute over 100%, because you want to, not because you have to.Same for everyine else'

Just my opinion.

[Potemkin]

All I know is that I'd like you to have your ideal marxist-leninist society, I'd like Sivad to have his... whatever his ideology is-opia, and annatar to have his versiin of a good society; and I'd like my own with fellow Orthodox who want to live monastically, doing hard work to support each other; with no requirement of forcible hierarchies because everything happens naturally when you're surrounded by people you care about and you contribute over 100%, because you want to, not because you have to.Same for everyine else'

Just my opinion.

As Engels pointed out in his article (which you clearly haven't read), this dream is impossible in a modern industrial society. Humanity has eaten of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, and we cannot return to the Garden of Eden. The way is barred by an angel bearing a sword of fire, whose name is 'The Division of Labour'. Your wish is simply to abandon modern human society to its fate and retreat into your own private utopia with a few like-minded friends. Which is fine, but it offers no solutions to the problems currently facing human civilisation. And monasticism wasn't about retreating from society in defeat, or giving up on the rest of humanity. The monasteries were an integral part of Christian society in the Middle Ages, until they were destroyed in the early modern era by the rising bourgeois class, to whom those ideals were utterly alien.

[Presvias]

Sigh... you're still misconstruing my beliefs, which is okay but frustrating for my part.

And I didn't even realize your link was intended for me, I'm tired and dozey, give me a break. By the way your link is like Marxism 101 if it's about the division of labour, I may not be au fait with dialectical materialism but I'm a bit clued up with historical materialism, although no doubt I've forgotten mostly, because my brains a sieve.

Anyway, I've quite clearly (and you've posted subsequently after me so I'm sure you saw it) said I understand very, very clearly how the capitalist hegemony crushes any dissent, and that it needs to be broken. Heck, you've even seen me discussing how they'd stop Corbyn like they did Allende, and they're just moderate social-democrats.

Let me illustrate where I think you, me and annatar differ and perhaps we can come to a proper understanding.

Correct anything I've gotten wrong:

- We all agree that the capitalist hegemony must be broken IE 'world revolution'.

- Me: skeptical of violence; despite my bravado etc, I really genuinely hate violence and would struggle to support violent revolution, but I appreciate it is pretty much necessary because the capitalists won't have it any other way. I'd struggle with it.

You: Assuming you do not have this issue.

AT1914: Conflicted, but closer to your position.

- You, being an ML, after the revolution, would most likely support a state capitalist stage, and would like marxist-leninism to be instituted in every country in like manner (correct me if I'm wrong). You then support a more socialist stage (labour vouchers etc), and eventually the complete abolition of money and full communism.

Me: After a revolution, I'd like you to setup your own societies, same for AT etc, with mutual agreement, and we can come to a consensus to support and not fight. There will be power brokers to ensure no one tries to invade anyone else's societies.

AT1914: Similar to you, but with more religious freedom.

I'll just keep it simple for now, because my brains fried, but just see what you think..

[Sivad]

No, that's accounting. You know, the sort of thing Misty Tiger does at work (among other things, of course). No, socialism can be summed up in the slogan: "He who does not work, does not eat." In other words, an end to economic parasitism.

You're not disagreeing with me, you just restated what I said. Socialism is just an honest and fair accounting. It's not free shit to deadbeats or forced collectivism.

Communism, of course, is the next stage of development of a socialist society, which can be summed up in the slogan: "From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs."

Communism is not the next stage, it's a totally different system with a totally different ethos.

So you're against any form of taxation then?

Where in the retarded fuck are you getting that from? No, I'm not against taxation. I'm for steep progressive taxation because everyone's gotta pay what they owe and get what they're due.

[Potemkin]

You're not disagreeing with me, you just restated what I said. Socialism is just an honest and fair accounting. It's not free shit to deadbeats or forced collectivism.

No, I am not merely restating what you said. After all, a bourgeois would claim that the dividends he or she gets from the capital they have invested in their portfolio are merely their just reward for risking their capital. The existence of private property and the investment of capital for profit leads inevitably to a system in which there is a class of people who must work to live and also a parasitic class of property-owners who do not have to work but can live off the labour-power of others. The parasitic class of people cannot be condemned by accountancy arguments alone, as you are trying to do. After all, they own their capital and are therefore 'entitled' to their dividends. Socialism is not merely a demand for a fair form of accountancy; it is the insistence that all (with the ability) must produce the social wealth in which all (with the need) must share.

Communism is not the next stage, it's a totally different system with a totally different ethos.

It is both, just as capitalism is both the next stage after feudalism and also a totally different system with a totally different ethos.

Where in the retarded fuck are you getting that from? No, I'm not against taxation. I'm for steep progressive taxation because everyone's gotta pay what they owe and get what they're due.

The wealthy would say that they don't owe a damn thing to anyone. What answer would you give them?