[ckaihatsu]

I am just cutting through the bullshit to what is the real essence of communism.

No, you're not.

What you're *actually* doing is mixing-up socio-political contexts. Under the status quo you obviously want to *criminalize* any actions that threaten the prevailing power structure, for example the world's working class *seizing* the implements of automated / labor-leveraging mass industrial production, while you blithely *ignore* that it's *workers'* labor-power that makes anything run, or produces anything, including infrastructure and capital goods.

So all you're doing is referencing present-day *hegemonic* norms, and inappropriately imputing that onto the potential future implementation of *communist* relations, meaning full collectivization of social production by workers themselves / ourselves, and the ending of *private property* based social relations.

Also, for some historical context here:

Weather Underground (2002) [Documentary]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJjSz9oNqmA


And:


[2] G.U.T.S.U.C., Simplified

Spoiler: show

[Hong Wu]

I’m wondering if there are novel views on what property relations might overcome that of private property as it exists under communism.
I am dissatisfied with the common distinction between private and personal.
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/works/property.htm


The only different view I’ve seen from the same article as above.

Does this sound promising? What is your take on the subject?

In China, one typically "leases" land for 70 years from the government, which is presented as an extension of the people, although actual leadership positions are elected by a Republic of top university graduates with jobs in the communist Party and they can appoint someone as President for life etc.

This sort of blurs the distinction between personal and private. 70 years is a long time (few if any of those "leases" have run out yet). Re-leasing for another 70 years is plausible. In the United States we have eminent domain and so your ownership of land is somewhat theoretical/a legal fiction anyway.

This goes back to what the definition of use is, especially in a time of over-production (by which I mean, all basic necessities for people which are reasonably capable of being provided have already been provided for, usually in excess, in developed countries). What is an appropriate use for producing things that people don't actually need, or when the use is to live there or for recreational purposes? Our typical, scarcity-based values cannot answer this question. This is to say that we are already "post-scarcity" in a sense but people are unable to admit this due to their machinations against each other. The delusions have to be protected.

An ultimate answer to this goes back to the roots of humans as material biological organisms in a space that is at once both mutually cooperative and competitive, or to put it another way, "to be a reactionary is to recognize that man is a problem without a human solution."

[SolarCross]

No, you're not.

What you're *actually* doing is mixing-up socio-political contexts. Under the status quo you obviously want to *criminalize* any actions that threaten the prevailing power structure, for example the world's working class *seizing* the implements of automated / labor-leveraging mass industrial production, while you blithely *ignore* that it's *workers'* labor-power that makes anything run, or produces anything, including infrastructure and capital goods.

So all you're doing is referencing present-day *hegemonic* norms, and inappropriately imputing that onto the potential future implementation of *communist* relations, meaning full collectivization of social production by workers themselves / ourselves, and the ending of *private property* based social relations.

Also, for some historical context here:

Weather Underground (2002) [Documentary]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJjSz9oNqmA


And:


[2] G.U.T.S.U.C., Simplified

Spoiler: show

If it was just a bunch of random people stealing shit and getting away with it then that would just be a temporary breakdown of civilisation. Afterwards when the new owners had settled in with their loot and people had forgotten what had been stolen from whom or were just too dead to remember or say anything then "capitalism" will be restored as the new owners will not want their stuff stolen either. See if the working class did "seize the means of production" they would be the new capitalists. You don't want that and commies don't want that they want the communist party to be the ones to own all the property and the working class to stay where they are except in a worse situation because you want to make it illegal for non-communists to own anything which is not something they suffer under a normal regime. So yeah in practice you want an ideological cult which is functionally a private corporation having an exclusive monopoly over everything. You presumably imagine that you will have a share of this corporation and perhaps you even imagine you will be the CEO "dear leader". The greed is bottomless.

[SolarCross]

How is capitalism not also a protection racket on a large scale?

Capitalism is private enterprise and most private enterprises are not engaged in security work. I have a little taxi business, that's capitalism, but I don't charge taxes for protection from enemy militants.

[Pants-of-dog]

Well, if someone does not pay you for your services, you can get the cops and the courts after him.

You pay taxes for this, so it seems like a protection racket to me.

And if anyone tries to change the system, they got arrested or shot.

[Rancid]

Well, if someone does not pay you for your services, you can get the cops and the courts after him.

In a communist system, wouldn't disputes between people also be handled by the cops and courts?

[Pants-of-dog]

In a communist system, wouldn't disputes between people also be handled by the cops and courts?

Yes, but the cops and courts would not also act as the coercive force for capitalism.

Nor would we have the military invading other countries for resources, nor would we use the cops and courts to stop indigenous people from exercising sovereignty.

[SolarCross]

Well, if someone does not pay you for your services, you can get the cops and the courts after him.

You pay taxes for this, so it seems like a protection racket to me.

Exactly I am, as a capitalist, a potential consumer of security services not a provider of security services, just as I said.

If the po-po couldn't be bothered to actually make their monopoly useful to me then I'd have to do it myself but as it is I think they have it covered.

And if anyone tries to change the system, they got arrested or shot.

Most people who get elected manage not to get shot. If you try to "change the system" (really hijack the system) through terrorism then you deserve to be shot.

[Pants-of-dog]

Exactly I am, as a capitalist, a potential consumer of security services not a provider of security services, just as I said.

If the po-po couldn't be bothered to actually make their monopoly useful to me then I'd have to do it myself but as it is I think they have it covered.

So you agree that capitalism is a protection racket.

Most people who get elected manage not to get shot. If you try to "change the system" (really hijack the system) through terrorism then you deserve to be shot.

Since most of the critics of capitalism were not terrorists, they did not deserve to be shot simply for agitating for a different economic paradigm, and the capitalists were oppressive.

Okay.

[SolarCross]

So you agree that capitalism is a protection racket.

No I said government, or specifically the police and military, are a protection racket. Not greengrocers, freelance writers or pop stars just police and military.

Since most of the critics of capitalism were not terrorists, they did not deserve to be shot simply for agitating for a different economic paradigm, and the capitalists were oppressive.

Okay.

Most of those "critics" are just idiots repeating some nonsense they heard from another idiot. It would clean up the gene pool to shoot them but otherwise they are harmless enough though annoying. So yeah just shoot the dangerous ones.

[Pants-of-dog]

No I said government, or specifically the police and military, are a protection racket. Not greengrocers, freelance writers or pop stars just police and military.

So, a necessary part of capitalism is a protection racket, which makes sense, since all societies will have a way of protecting their economic paradigms.

...some stuff about how innocent people deserve to be killed...

[SolarCross]

So, a necessary part of capitalism is a protection racket, which makes sense, since all societies will have a way of protecting their economic paradigms.

Is that what you do when you are caught in the act of bag snatching? Just say "but I don't agree with your economic paradigm!" and everything will be okay? lol.

I said shoot the dangerous ones. Stop lying.

[Pants-of-dog]

....some ad hominems....

Since you have nothing further to add to the debate, have a good one.

[SolarCross]

Since you have nothing further to add to the debate, have a good one.

It seems you are the one with nothing to add to the debate, as usual.

[ckaihatsu]

If it was just a bunch of random people stealing shit and getting away with it then that would just be a temporary breakdown of civilisation. Afterwards when the new owners had settled in with their loot and people had forgotten what had been stolen from whom or were just too dead to remember or say anything then "capitalism" will be restored as the new owners will not want their stuff stolen either. See if the working class did "seize the means of production" they would be the new capitalists. You don't want that and commies don't want that they want the communist party to be the ones to own all the property and the working class to stay where they are except in a worse situation because you want to make it illegal for non-communists to own anything which is not something they suffer under a normal regime. So yeah in practice you want an ideological cult which is functionally a private corporation having an exclusive monopoly over everything. You presumably imagine that you will have a share of this corporation and perhaps you even imagine you will be the CEO "dear leader". The greed is bottomless.

You're still not listening, and you're obviously not acknowledging that the ruling class steals from all workers, every hour of every day. Again it's the workers who do the actual production of whatever, yet the wage they're / we're paid is much less than what the products of labor are sold for on the market. This is the expropriation of (Marx's) *surplus labor value*, and is a real thing.

If the workers "steal back" the stuff that they've created, en masse, then it's just a settling of accounts from this past legacy of private expropriation. You could probably just write-off the losses on your taxes. (joke)

This isn't 'greed', it's a *rectifying* of past exploitative practices which are still in operation today, the overcoming of class relations so that workers can fully control their / our own labor without having to go through capitalism's realm of exchange values, and its elitist governments.

I *don't* think that this is an *easy* thing to do, and, again, any 'party' would have to reflect actual on-the-ground sentiment if it's to have any value as proletarian 'leadership' -- a revolutionary vanguard and/or party is just a political *convenience*, for the administration of the revolution itself that overthrows bourgeois rule. Once the bourgeoisie is overthrown the vanguard party (as an organization) would have then outlived its usefulness and would automatically implode as all of humanity would then be liberated and fully able to control production for itself.

[ckaihatsu]

In a communist system, wouldn't disputes between people also be handled by the cops and courts?

Yes, but the cops and courts would not also act as the coercive force for capitalism.

Nor would we have the military invading other countries for resources, nor would we use the cops and courts to stop indigenous people from exercising sovereignty.

The type of society you're indicating would more-accurately be for the *transitional* period ('socialism'), from capitalism, on the way to communism itself, which would then be humanity's collective self-determination for itself.

In other words full, global, mature communism would not *require* a state-type apparatus like cops and courts because literally *everyone* would be unencumbered in full personal participation in the running and developing of society, including its material productivity.

Capitalism's cops and courts are only necessary -- from the ruling-class point of view -- because the working class is *dispossessed* from any real, meaningful participation in society's functioning, and so the capitalist state is currently a *tool of repression*, to *contain* the collective power and aspirations of the proletariat, as over the productive process. Hence the class social norm of bureaucratic top-down hyper-individuation, etc.

A *workers* state, being 'socialism', to overthrow bourgeois rule, *could* have its own 'cops and courts' but the difference is that such a workers state would be used to repress the *bourgeoisie*, as part of the overall worldwide proletarian revolution.

This kind of 'vanguard', or 'vanguard party', *would* be a state-type of *institution*, but it could only exist as long as its existence was *beneficial* to working-class interests. Upon the full displacement of class rule it would cease to have any reason to exist, and would be superseded by humanity's full direct involvement and implementation in its collective best interests.


---

If you try to "change the system" (really hijack the system) through terrorism then you deserve to be shot.

I have to take-issue with this political conception -- while a proletarian revolution would doubtlessly be opposed, and violent, you have to realize that this is a *mass* activity that requires a *mass* worker involvement. The 'terrorism' card is played all-too-often in attempts to *personalize* what is actually a *societal* dynamic, that of class rule.

No *one* person even *could* pull-off a 'revolution' all on their own, because that's not the point -- the world's working class needs to take power *collectively*, in its own best class interests, through proletarian revolution.

Also, with this line you're implicitly regarding the current capitalist status-quo as being 'correct', or a correct *social norm* (economic exploitation of workers), for how society *should* function, which is objectively *problematic* for the working class.

It's terrorism whenever the capitalist state uses violence and killings to invade other countries and to repress (anti-imperialist) uprisings in oppressed Third-World-type countries.

POD is correct to point-out that you're *mixing scales* here -- politics is about *mass* dynamics that thoroughly *transcend* the involvement and activity of any this-or-that individual. You keep attempting to *personalize* and *criminalize* the activities of those who are simply acting in their own best *class* interests.

A reminder, in graphical form:


‭History, Macro-Micro -- politics-logistics-lifestyle

Spoiler: show