[The Immortal Goon]

From top to bottom the marxist canon is attempting to persuade people of the necessity of going on killing sprees.

Please list where Marx and/or Engels state this.

Citations please.

[MememyselfandIJK]

@SolarCross That's the spin that Americans have put on it. Have you read any Marxist literature? Or were you simply indoctrinated (read: "learned how bad Marxism is") in school? Reading straight from the primary source is valuable because it allows you to make your own interpretations rather than the nationalistic dirt they put into textbooks. That is how I learned to appreciate communism.

But seriously read a primary source or two. They are a great way to learn history and think critically, even if you don't change your mind.


Also if you want to use IQ as an argument why is the US below average, and China nearly half a SD above the average. Economic system and race has little bearing to IQ. I do not subscribed to racial theories unless they are complete objective, proven-beyond-a-doubt-situations (ex. Non-Africans' human DNA is composed of several percent Neanderthal DNA). For now, unless far more evidence piles up, I will state that this is probably most likely statistical fluctuations that will disappear several generations from now. Generalizations are also poor because they often tell us little about individuals.

Furthermore, just because someone is from a below average area doesn't mean they can score higher and vice versa (I am from the US which is below average, but I have attended late/college early graduate physics lectures in early high school, and I invent new methods off the top of my head in order to check problems on my math tests). Instead the major factors are proper education, better conditions, healthcare, and others, all of which communism tries to provide in better quality to the people.

@NightShadows you do realize that Orwell was Socialist, and Hitler war far right (His party dropped most of its socialist elements by the time he got power)?

[SolarCross]

I think it's fair to point out communism isn't an economic system at all. If you wanted to start a bakery or a farm or a bicycle repair business there is not a single piece of advice for you in the entirety of the marxist canon, not even bad advice just nothing at all. From top to bottom the marxist canon is attempting to persuade people of the necessity of going on killing sprees. What happens after all the killing? So you and your mates conquered someone else's bakery, what to do with it now? Ask Marx? Ask Lenin? They don't know and have nothing to say.

So, the criteria for determining if something is an economic system is if it has a how to guide to start your own small business?

So, feudalism was not an economic system according to you?

An economic system should have at least that if it wants to earn that title. If I turn up at your economic system I want to know how it works and how I can forge a life in it. In my experience only an-comms even try to answer that question and then the answers are not encouraging: ration cards for bare necessities and lotteries for luxuries.. that sort of stupid shit.

It is debatable if feudalism is something so grandiose as a economic system but it is pretty simple to understand. Feudalism is when Kings reward military support with land titles instead of coin, usually because they have land but don't have coin. Land by itself doesn't earn the title holder a bean but those that live and work on it can pay fair rents in the form of goods, labour or coin to the owners for the privilege of using his land and in this way a mostly economically idle warrior caste is kept fed and relatively loyal without the king having to go to the trouble of finding coin for them all the time. It's pretty straightforward.

In contrast communism is nothing, just kill everyone in a big shit fight (revolution) then magical communism will appear and everything will be great!

Please list where Marx and/or Engels state this.

Citations please.

Come on Goon you are Pofo's resident marx fanboy I'd bet you've read everything at least a dozen times, can you think of one marxist tract that couldn't be summarised as:

Tl;dr capitalism is broken, stupid, evil, unfair and doomed now go out there and have a revolution!

I was understating it, after all a killing spree is just one loon killing a few people, a revolution is like thousands of killing sprees all at once.

@MememyselfandIJK
Most of my experience of communist literature comes from @The Immortal Goon's copy and paste crusade. I think it is fair to say those are primary sources, a devout such as he would not corrupt the holy texts now would he?

On IQ:
The US is above average actually if you look at the population as a whole, if you single out the "aboriginal" population only then it comes out at like Africa.

Instead the major factors are proper education, better conditions, healthcare, and others, all of which communism tries to provide in better quality to the people.

This is delusional because you fail to understand reflexivity. Intelligence is problem solving essentially those that have the ability to solve problems better will be able to create better education, healthcare and other products. Those goodies are not the cause of intelligence they are the CONSEQUENCE of it.

There is a lot of double-think on IQ and on race and I guess the reason for that is the reality of genetic variation is an ideological problem for those with that basically religious belief that we might generally call egalitarianism. If people are not innately equal then equality however you do it (equal opportunities or outcomes) is both impossible and rationally undesirable. Genetic variation is problematic for egalitarians the same way the orbits of Jupiter's moons as observed by Galileo was problematic for the Catholic Church's geocentric cosmology.

[MememyselfandIJK]

@SolarCross Copy and paste is not the same as reading it for yourself

As for IQ, communism says that all people deserve basic economic rights that have to come before capitalism. It abolishes capitalism because it is clear that capitalism is unreliable in providing for the people. It however, does not say all people are of equal ability (Have you ever hear the phrase "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need"), and communism and meritocracy are highly compatible.

The racist thesis that you presented does not account for genetic variation. If it did it would simply plot a bell curve. What you presented is in total defiance of genetic variation by trying to classify people by race.

And yes the US is below average IQ (the US is 97, the world is 100)

[SolarCross]

The racist thesis that you presented does not account for genetic variation. If it did it would simply plot a bell curve. What you presented is in total defiance of genetic variation by trying to classify people by race.

This is so mixed up I honestly am beginning to think you are brain damaged, or there again this will be the double-think that I mentioned that the egalitarian is forced into to preserve his belief against reality...

Suffice to say the reality in stark contrast to your double-think is that genetic variation is the basis for "trying to classify people by race", no genetic variation and there is no race and no individuality, we'd all be the same like a world of clones.

And yes the US is below average IQ (the US is 97, the world is 100)

97 is only a few point off that average (which I guess would be the mean rather than median or mode). With Africa, South America, Middle east and India being far below that, it is misleading to say 97 is below average even if it technically true.

East Asia and Europe score highest but are only a few points higher than the US. If the world average really is 100 then clearly the high populations of East Asia and Europe are dragging that mean average up. You'll note that 97 is above the median.

[The Immortal Goon]

Come on Goon you are Pofo's resident marx fanboy I'd bet you've read everything at least a dozen times, can you think of one marxist tract that couldn't be summarised as:

Even if we are to wildly move your goal posts from, "top to bottom," to, "Please say that you've read one thing in your life that supports my absurd claim," nothing comes to mind.

Please cite a source from Marx or Engels.

[ingliz]

reality

Research by Angela Lee Duckworth, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, into motivation, reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that monetary incentives effected IQ scores.

The financial rewards ranged from less than $1 to $10 or more. The team calculated a statistical parameter called Hedge's g to indicate how big an effect the incentives had on IQ scores; g values of less than 0.2 are considered small, 0.5 are moderate, and 0.7 or higher are large.

Duckworth's team found that the average effect was 0.64 (which is equivalent to nearly 10 points on the IQ scale of 100), and remained higher than 0.5 even when three studies with unusually high g values were thrown out. Moreover, the effect of financial rewards on IQ scores increased dramatically the higher the reward: Thus rewards higher than $10 produced g values of more than 1.6 (roughly equivalent to more than 20 IQ points), whereas rewards of less than $1 were only one-tenth as effective.

[SolarCross]

Even if we are to wildly move your goal posts from, "top to bottom," to, "Please say that you've read one thing in your life that supports my absurd claim," nothing comes to mind.

Please cite a source from Marx or Engels.

Actually I am asking for you to find just one thing that refutes it not support it, with your encyclopedic knowledge of marxian writing surely that is not a hard thing for you. Is there even just one marxian tract that can't be summarised as "capitalism wrong, do revolution!"?

Or to put it another way, after all the dead bodies are tidied away, how does communism as an "economic system" work, what do the marxists say of that? Anything at all?

Why should I as a lowly worker, kill a bunch of people for you at the risk of getting killed in the process for free (do revolutionaries get paid?), what is in it for me? Once the looting and killing of revolution is over what happens next?

[The Immortal Goon]

So, in other words, you can't find anything to support your claim. You have these feelings and you can't verify them, so you're resorting to the most childish way to justify them possible.

[SolarCross]

So, in other words, you can't find anything to support your claim. You have these feelings and you can't verify them, so you're resorting to the most childish way to justify them possible.

My claim was that the entirety of the Marxist Canon could be summarised as "capitalism wrongthink, do revolution", that communism as a "economic system" had nothing else to offer than revolution. Admittedly I was making a wild bet here since although every marxian tract I had ever seen fit this I had not (fortunately) ever read the entirety of the marxist canon.

To rigorously prove this claim I would have to copy and paste with commentary every single marxist tract available which is a heavy burden indeed, tiresome and time consuming and none of you would read it.

In contrast for you to disprove this claim all you would have to do would be to post just one marxist tract that didn't just boil down to an incitement to violence as the solution to the alleged deficiencies in capitalism which if it was possible at all should be an easy thing especially for you. On this subject, if no other, you are the master.

I understand your complaint that I am shifting the burden of proof onto you when it was my assertion in the first place but see if you are a communist and you want communism you need me and people like me to do the revolution that will put you in power and that is no small favour to ask of us. I can drop my assertion as not worth proving and forget communism was ever a thing leaving you not an inch closer to a commissariat posting, in the end if you want communism you need to disprove my assertion more than I need to prove it.

[ingliz]

if you want communism you need to disprove my assertion more than I need to prove it.

Why?

We are not "propaganda of the deed" anarchists. If enough people turn up, we will have a revolution; if not, we will not.

[Pants-of-dog]

An economic system should have at least that if it wants to earn that title. If I turn up at your economic system I want to know how it works and how I can forge a life in it. In my experience only an-comms even try to answer that question and then the answers are not encouraging: ration cards for bare necessities and lotteries for luxuries.. that sort of stupid shit.

While I understand why you feel this way, your feelings are not a logical critieria for determing what is an economic system.

It is debatable if feudalism is something so grandiose as a economic system but it is pretty simple to understand. Feudalism is when Kings reward military support with land titles instead of coin, usually because they have land but don't have coin. Land by itself doesn't earn the title holder a bean but those that live and work on it can pay fair rents in the form of goods, labour or coin to the owners for the privilege of using his land and in this way a mostly economically idle warrior caste is kept fed and relatively loyal without the king having to go to the trouble of finding coin for them all the time. It's pretty straightforward.

Yes, it is an economic system, and a straightforward one at that.

In contrast communism is nothing, just kill everyone in a big shit fight (revolution) then magical communism will appear and everything will be great!

I am going to have echo TIG and ask for a citiation. Thanks.

[SolarCross]

Why?

We are not "propaganda of the deed" anarchists. If enough people turn up, we will have a revolution; if not, we will not.

Why would they turn up if you can't persuade them?

[ingliz]

you need me and people like me

We don't need you or people like you. People, not like you, have risen up before and will do so again.

[The Immortal Goon]

From top to bottom the marxist canon is attempting to persuade people of the necessity of going on killing sprees.

So you've moved the goal posts, committed a logical fallacy, and now seem to be at pains to pretend you never said this in the first place.

I'm presuming we can agree that this was at best a woeful fallacy based upon ignorance, and at worst a lie.

[If you don't use Propaganda of the Deed,] Why would they turn up if you can't persuade them?

Since it's pretty apparent that you have not read any of the things that you're whining about, I am not surprised that you do not know what Propaganda of the Deed is.

This is action that Marxists do not endorse.

Because I pity your lack of literacy, here:

This latest Fenian exploit [an act of individual terrorism] in Clerkenwell is a great folly. The London masses, who have shown much sympathy for Ireland, will be enraged by it and driven into the arms of the government party. One cannot expect the London proletarians to let themselves be blown up for the benefit of Fenian emissaries. Secret, melodramatic conspiracies of this kind are, in general, more or less doomed to failure.

First, that party, which rejected Marxism, stubbornly refused (or, it might be more correct to say: was unable) to understand the need for a strictly objective appraisal of the class forces and their alignment, before taking any political action. Second, this party considered itself particularly "revolutionary", or "Left", because of its recognition of individual terrorism, assassination—something that we Marxists emphatically rejected.

The Congress decisively rejects terrorism, i.e., the system of individual political assassinations, as being a method of political struggle which is most inexpedient at the present time, diverting the best forces from the urgent and imperatively necessary work of organisation and agitation, destroying contact between the revolutionaries and the masses of the revolutionary classes of the population, and spreading both among the revolutionaries themselves and the population in general utterly distorted ideas of the aims and methods of struggle against the autocracy.

Terrorists bow to the spontaneity of the passionate indignation of intellectuals, who lack the ability or opportunity to connect the revolutionary struggle and the working-class movement into an integral whole. It is difficult indeed for those who have lost their belief, or who have never believed, that this is possible, to find some outlet for their indignation and revolutionary energy other than terror.

At a time when the revolutionaries are short of the forces and means to lead the masses, who are already rising, an appeal to resort to such terrorist acts as the organisation of attempts on the lives of ministers by individuals and groups that are not known to one another means, not only thereby breaking off work among the masses, but also introducing downright disorganisation into that work.

We, revolutionaries, “are accustomed to huddling together in timid knots,” we read in the April 3 leaflet, “and even [N. B.] the new, bold spirit that has appeared during the last two or three years has so far done more to raise the sentiments of the crowd than of individuals.” These words unintentionally express much that is true. And it is this very truth that deals a smashing rebuff to the propagandists of terrorism. From this truth every thinking socialist draws the conclusion that it is necessary to use group action more energetically, boldly, and harmoniously. The Socialist-Revolutionaries, however, conclude: “Shoot, elusive individual, for the knot of people, alas, is still a long way off, and besides there are soldiers against the knot.” This really defies all reason, gentlemen!

But the disarray introduced into the ranks of the working masses themselves by a terrorist attempt is much deeper. If it is enough to arm oneself with a pistol in order to achieve one’s goal, why the efforts of the class struggle? If a thimbleful of gunpowder and a little chunk of lead is enough to shoot the enemy through the neck, what need is there for a class organisation? If it makes sense to terrify highly placed personages with the roar of explosions, where is the need for the party? Why meetings, mass agitation and elections if one can so easily take aim at the ministerial bench from the gallery of parliament?

In our eyes, individual terror is inadmissible precisely because it belittles the role of the masses in their own consciousness, reconciles them to their powerlessness, and turns their eyes and hopes towards a great avenger and liberator who some day will come and accomplish his mission. The anarchist prophets of the ‘propaganda of the deed’ can argue all they want about the elevating and stimulating influence of terrorist acts on the masses. Theoretical considerations and political experience prove otherwise. The more ‘effective’ the terrorist acts, the greater their impact, the more they reduce the interest of the masses in self-organisation and self-education. But the smoke from the confusion clears away, the panic disappears, the successor of the murdered minister makes his appearance, life again settles into the old rut, the wheel of capitalist exploitation turns as before; only the police repression grows more savage and brazen. And as a result, in place of the kindled hopes and artificially aroused excitement comes disillusionment and apathy.

It is necessary to distinguish clearly between sabotage, a revolutionary and highly effective method of warfare, and terrorism, a measure that is generally ineffective and indiscriminate in its results, since it often makes victims of innocent people and destroys a large number of lives that would be valuable to the revolution. Terrorism should be considered a valuable tactic when it is used to put to death some noted leader of the oppressing forces well known for his cruelty, his efficiency in repression, or other quality that makes his elimination useful. But the killing of persons of small importance is never advisable, since it brings on an increase of reprisals, including deaths.

Terror has always been an instrument of the worst enemies of Mankind bent on suppressing and crushing the peoples’ struggle for freedom. It can never be the instrument of a truly noble and just cause.

Here, then, is the immense difference between the Socialist Republicans and our friends the physical force men. The latter, by stifling all discussions of principles, earn the passive and fleeting commendation of the unthinking multitude; the former, by insisting upon a thorough understanding of their basic principles, do not so readily attract the multitude, but do attract and hold the more thoughtful amongst them. It is the difference betwixt a mob in revolt and an army in preparation. The mob who cheer a speaker referring to the hopes of a physical force movement would, in the very hour of apparent success, be utterly disorganised and divided by the passage through the British Legislature of any trumpery Home Rule Bill. The army of class-conscious workers organising under the banner of the Socialist Republican Party, strong in their knowledge of economic truth and firmly grounded in their revolutionary principles, would remain entirely unaffected by any such manoeuvre and, knowing it would not change their position as a subject class, would still press forward, resolute and undivided, with their faces set towards their only hope of emancipation – the complete control by the working-class democracy of all the powers of National Government.

Don't say I never did anything for you.

[SolarCross]

Don't say I never did anything for you.

Well I appreaciate the effort but it isn't quite for what I asked.

The quotes you supplied condemn "individual terror" but not "collective terror".

I've seen you post the following before, hence why i know of it, from On Authority by Marx

Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists. Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if it had not made use of this authority of the armed people against the bourgeois? Should we not, on the contrary, reproach it for not having used it freely enough?

My original point was that communism isn't an economic system because nothing that is written on subject elaborates on how it will work instead we just get "capitalism bad, do revolution". Initially I characterised "revolution" as a "killing spree" and presumably you take this to mean something like "individual terror" or "propaganda of the deed" for which you have quotes of marxists decrying, however I had already made clear by that point that by killing spree i was referring to revolution as when i said:

I was understating it, after all a killing spree is just one loon killing a few people, a revolution is like thousands of killing sprees all at once.

Granted you may of missed that line, but there it is I am not talking about individual terror or propaganda of the deed, I am talking about revolution*.

*the potential for semantic confusion exists here too. Revolution could mean a Reign of Terror like bloodbath or it could mean a significant shift in the way things are done but is otherwise bloodless and peaceful as in the "industrial revolution", "digital revolution". When marxists talk of revolution I assume they are referring to the former but I may be mistaken and they are talking of the later...

Putting aside the call for revolution for a moment, if communism is really an economic system then how does it work? A system should have a schematic, I gave one for feudalism, I have even found a cute little graphic which illustrates it:



Is there not something equivalent for communism?

[The Immortal Goon]

I've seen you post the following before, hence why i know of it, from On Authority by Marx

Try reading. Marx didn't write that.

But the point is accurate. As you admit, Marxists are as violent as any other political tendencies. Your point is taken: we're not filthy hippies. After you denied, rephrased, moved goalposts, covered up, and restated, you came on something accurate.

Good job

[ingliz]

from On Authority by Marx

Engels.

[It] isn't an economic system because nothing that is written on subject elaborates on how it will work.

There is plenty, Google is your friend.

Five different economic models within socialist economics:

☻ Public Enterprise Centrally Planned Economy - USSR

☻ Public Enterprise State-Managed Market Economy - China

☻ Mixed Economy - Sweden

☻ Public Enterprise Employee Managed Market Economies - Yugoslavia

☻ Public Enterprise Participatory Planning - Catalonia during the Spanish Revolution


Five distinct types of socialism:

☻ Classical / Marxist

☻ Walrasian / Market Socialist

☻ Leninist

☻ Social Democratic

☻ East Asian

Socialism can be divided into market socialism and planned socialism based on their dominant mechanism of resource allocation. Another distinction can be made between the type of property structures of different socialist systems (public, cooperative or common) and on the dominant form of economic management within the economy (hierarchical or self-managed).

☻ Economic democracy

☻ Lange–Lerner model

☻ Self-managed economy

☻ Worker self-directed enterprise

☻ Democratic planned socialism

☻ Feasible socialism

☻ Pragmatic market socialism

☻ Participatory economy

☻ Computer-managed allocation

☻ Peer-to-peer economy and open source

☻ Negotiated coordination


This should keep you going for now.

[SolarCross]

@ingliz

Okay that is a bit more like it but I have some questions.

You have listed 5 economic models under the title "socialist economics", however I asked for an elaboration of "communism" as an economic system. Is socialism synonymous with communism? Or is it one kind of socialism? If so which one? If it is something other than socialism then how does it work?

Some of the socialist economic models listed might otherwise be called, without being misleading, a variant of capitalism or are socialism which works hand in hand with and depends on capitalism.. For example Sweden's mixed economy or China's state managed market economy. Is revolution needed as a prerequisite for these economies?

How is a market socialism different from regular capitalism? Haven't market socialists just reinvented capitalism then given it a superficial red rebranding?

How is "planned socialism" not just a very undiluted form of Keynesian capitalism?

[The Immortal Goon]

History, like everything, moves through a dialectic process. Understanding how change occurs is important.

Feudalism led to capitalism; capitalism will lead to socialism; socialism will lead to communism.

Try this.

When we look at history, it's easy to see how and why things changed. We use that as a tool to anticipate how things to develop in the future.

In this very thread, someone once wanted us to predict how a pencil factory would work in a socialist economy. Eventually, he had to acknowledge that he couldn't answer how pencils would be produced in a capitalist economy in a century either.

But if you want a Leninist outline, the link I have is there.