SSDR wrote:
@ckaihatsu, Your politics are progressive, AND seem somewhat backwards in my perspective. Not all progressives have forward politics. Left communists and the Antifa are both very progressive, but at the same time, they're backwards.
Well, this is quite a sweeping indictment, and so you should be more forthcoming with your underlying *reasoning* for such a (mis-)characterization.
Adding to the mix, and possible confusion, is that there is a political camp called 'progressives', which are only reformist at best. They *don't* draw revolutionary conclusions from the class structure of society as revolutionaries do.
[3] Ideologies & Operations -- Fundamentals [CORRECTED, 170602]
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SSDR wrote:
I am not a Stalinist either. And not all non-Stalinists are backwards. I am not a Stalinist, and I'm not backwards.
Much of what you've been saying, though, *does* sound like a nation-centric focus, even if for purportedly relatively progressive, national-reformist aims:
SSDR wrote:
While the rest of the world's nations can either be capitalist or socialist.
If you're content to let the world be 'mixed' (inevitably objectively impossible), then you're definitely *not* a socialist, because the aims of such are for *transcending* humanity's class division, in favor of workers control of social production, *everywhere*.
By limiting the implementation of socialist-*minded* -- though *not* socialist -- to just one country or another you're effectively being a Stalinist. Here's that diagram again:
Political Spectrum, Simplified
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SSDR wrote:
The reason why the USSR had a peace treaty with Nazi Germany was so that the USSR could gain trust of Nazi Germany, while the USSR was secretly building up its military, industry, and housing.
And with *this* statement you're effectively *defending* the geopolitical diplomatic actions of a Stalinist: Stalin.
SSDR wrote:
Also, the USSR could of potentially gained access to sensitive information about Nazi Germany so that it could know more about them that they could use against them in the future. If a nation is honest with another, it could lose power and international respect. So the USSR had to be confidential with who they disliked so that they could buy as much time as possible. Also, nations need to trade with each other, to gain access to natural resources and technology (German technology was far more advanced than Soviet technology in the 1930's). The USSR could gain access to some German engineering, and that could help their military, but they wouldn't say that because they don't want to look like enemies so they can buy as much time as possible.
You're continuing to dig your hole deeper, SSDR -- you're showing yourself to be more concerned with international *bourgeois* relations, as Stalin did, than with spreading whatever degenerated formulation of the workers' 1917 soviet revolution that may have still continued to exist, despite Stalinistic top-down control afterwards.
SSDR wrote:
But, one nation could be fully controlled by the labour
So could one world, earth, by the same reasoning.
SSDR wrote:
(workers don't exist in socialism,
Workers, and workers control, are the very *basis* of a proletarian revolution into worldwide socialism.
SSDR wrote:
workers labour for capitalists while in socialism,
Socialism would put the collective of all workers, internationally, into control of social production, thus displacing bourgeois-capitalist control of the same. Workers would then be working entirely to benefit *themselves* / ourselves, rather than for the private profits of capitalists.
SSDR wrote:
people labour for themselves and for society. The term "worker" is used in capitalism, just like the term "serfdom" was used in feudalism), while other nations could have controlled workers (USA) or controlled serfdoms (Saudi Arabia, parts of Africa, etc.).
The term 'worker' is more precise than the term 'people', because not all people work for their necessities of life and living. Those who are dependent on a wage are *workers*, and such labor-power is what makes the world go 'round. All workers are 'controlled' -- in the sense of having to work for a wage -- by the ruling class in whatever part of the world. This is the very definition of the 'class divide'.
SSDR wrote:
In the 1800's, there were capitalist and feudalist societies. Capitalism is the successor of feudalism. In some countries, workers had economic power through wages that were controlled by their employers.
Wages don't confer significant economic power to those who work for wages, because wages are *not* wealth, the way capital is -- rather, wages are *spent*, just on the basics of life and living, by / for those who work. The *point*, for laborers, is to create collective labor *organization*, to show society and themselves that they're the motive force behind all social production in society. If workers don't work, nothing gets done, and social production *ceases* -- so it would be better for workers, the ones doing the actual work for social consumption, to be in *control* of their own labor-power, collectively, since society as a whole is *dependent* on their efforts for any given standard-of-living.
SSDR wrote:
Their employers ruled them and fired some people who advocated steps such as feminism, atheism, or socialism.
You're only looking at the *negative* side -- many times there were collective labor *victories*, basically for nationalist reforms of the conditions of labor (8-hour workday, etc.).
SSDR wrote:
Examples of countries like this in the 1800's were the USA, the British Empire, France, or the German Confederate Empire. Then, there were countries that were family oriented, and that labourers were controlled by their owners and landlords.
Laborers are *still* 'controlled' by business owners (the bourgeoisie), and by landlords, because they / we have to get wages just to buy the basics of life and living, and part of that is having housing, which also costs money, from wages. (Hence the term 'wage-slave', or 'wage-slavery', is quite accurate and correct.)
SSDR wrote:
This is feudalism, or is similar to feudalism. Countries that were feudal like in the 1800's were the Ottoman Empire, parts of Imperial Russia, parts of Africa, or the Kingdom of Serbia. In the 1800's, BOTH capitalist countries and feudalist countries existed, and had different economies. So why can't socialist and capitalist countries co exist?
The reason is that the difference between feudalism / slavery, and capitalism is that both those modes of production were still *class*-based societies, so the historic change in the mode of production was basically just a shift in how labor-power was to be expropriated by the ownership class -- directly, from treating workers as *chattel*, or indirectly, from the expropriation of *surplus labor value*, as in wage-slavery / 'free' labor.
[23] A Business Perspective on the Declining Rate of Profit
Plans for socialism mean that class-based relations (owners vs. laborers) would be *overthrown*, and such would have to be done on a mass-conscious basis by the world's workers themselves / ourselves -- it would be a *first* in world history, because it would be about eliminating the market mechanism altogether. Revolutionary politics, for the collective planning of social production, would be the guiding force, instead of leaving economic organization to the market mechanism. The historic transitions from one type of class society to the next have all basically been changes in worldwide *class ownership*, or 'the global class management' -- just one economic *faction*, or another.
The transition to a *classless* global society requires a *mass conscious* effort, and it would overthrow the class divide once-and-for-all -- see the top 'level' ('class struggle') of this graphic, again:
History, Macro-Micro -- politics-logistics-lifestyle
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SSDR wrote:
Feudalist and capitalist countries traded, I mean you had Persian rugs in London. The USA traded with the Ottoman Empire. Enver Hoxha's father was a traveling merchant who was from Ottoman controlled feudal Albania, and he traveled to the USA, Britain, and France, which were capitalist countries in the 1900's. He sent money to him and his mother to pay the landlords in the multi family house. If this can co exist, then why couldn't the DDR trade with Federal Germany, or Brazil? Brazil was kind of fascist up until the 1970's. And there was coffee from Brazil in the DDR. And there were Mercedes Benz cars in the DDR, and in other socialist countries such as Yugoslavia, Cuba, or the USSR. They did trade, so they can co exist, just like with capitalism and feudalism of the 1800's.
See -- you're *continuing* to conflate Stalinism / state-capitalism, with socialism, and then using the state-capitalist nation-state formulation to argue for international 'free trade' policies.
You're showing yourself to be a Stalinist over and over again by arguing for the state-capitalism formulation, which is *not* workers being in collective control of social production.
SSDR wrote:
But in a pure, global socialist world, different societies would still exist because different people want different things. And besides, wouldn't it be boring if everyone was the same?
You're making the cultural-determination argument again, but culture is *not* the most deterministic social force -- *labor* is.
SSDR wrote:
What does the "matters of wealth" have NOT to do with socialism?
Socialism doesn't *depend* on accumulated wealth, because it doesn't *have* to -- wealth is a measurement of commodity-type *exchange value* (money, basically), while socialism uses *workers collective self-organization* as the basis for material economic production, *without* requiring any exchange values / money whatsoever, due to the social implementation of free-access to collective mass industrial production, and direct-distribution.
My 'labor credits' model framework, referenced in previous posts of mine here, shows a possible *structure* for this kind of implementation of workers power over social production.
SSDR wrote:
Many people are socialists because they want more wealth!!!
You're misusing the term 'wealth' here -- sure, people want more of this-or-that, but the real question is how that stuff is to be produced, and how it's to be *distributed*.
As things are now, under capitalism, those who can benefit capitalist organization of *private* production are the ones rewarded with wealth, through profits, but for socialism the watchword would be *egalitarianism* over social production. Social organization over production and distribution could be done *collectively*, by the workers themselves, without having to rely on *capitalist* modes of organization / production / distribution. Instead of *commodifying* labor-power the workers could be collectively socially conscious, and could *intentionally* self-organize to produce for the sake of unmet human / humane *need* (and wants).
SSDR wrote:
In capitalism, workers stay poor while the rich stay rich. In capitalism, what determines how much wealth you can get is determined by currency,
No, currency is just the *formal medium* of exchange values -- what determines relative levels of compensation is *private property ownership*. The rich *have* wealth / private-property, while the workers do *not*, and so must produce labor-power themselves, for a wage, instead of letting *wealth* / capital do the "work" for them as the rich do.
SSDR wrote:
the concept of debt, and what employment is available. If you are only allowed to work 20 hours a week, then you would stay more poor, then if you wanted to work 50 hours a week. If you want to have your own home, but you're not allowed to build a home even though there are resources, you can't build one because "there's not enough money." But if currency didn't exist, then wages and debt wouldn't limit how much you can work, and how much access of wealth you have because you're allowed to work as much as possible in pure socialism.
This is a misnomer / mischaracterization, too, because you're continuing to assume -- in a Stalinistic way -- that labor-power would still be *commodified*.
What's required under socialism is a *detachment* of work-efforts, from the need for consumption. In other words, those who *need* the most would be benefitted by worker-control, liberated-labor social production, regardless of their own work-effort *inputs*. To us today this may sound strange and counterintuitive, but that's only because we've been thoroughly conditioned to regard everything as being *commodified* and valued according to abstract exchange-values, even if it means that people have to die every day from a lack of humane economic distribution of social production.
SSDR wrote:
Socialist countries were more wealthy than their pre capitalist phases. The USSR was wealthier than the Russian Empire. China today is far more wealthier than it was 200 years ago. In pure socialism, you have as much opportunity to work and to extract resources,
You're misrepresenting socialism -- it does *not* mean 'socialism-in-one-country'-type *Stalinism*, with the continuation of commodity-production and state-capitalism-by-country.
SSDR wrote:
as the amount of resources there are. There is no debt or wages to limit you. This is one reason why the Russian Empire couldn't industrialize fast enough, "BECAUSE THEY DIDN'T HAVE ENOUGH MONEY TO." But with Stalin, he abolished the medium of exchange at the state level, and was like "we have resources, land, and labour, so why can't we industrialize?" So he industrialized Russia from a quasi peasant wasteland full of tree huggers, to one of the most powerful nations to ever exist!
Industrialization confers huge advantages of machine- and fuel-leveraged industrial processes, so that's why overall relative wealth increased in those countries (Western First-World, then others) that *did* industrialize.
SSDR wrote:
What kind of mode of production do I advocate? I advocate that if there is labour and resources, and if society or people want something, they *or automated technology* should extract it. There should be no currency, nor debt. And that the concept of value should be abolished. Everything should be free from value. In capitalist terms, people work for free, people live for free.
Well, this is certainly a better expression of politics from you, but I find the sum of your statements to be *inconsistent* -- for example, how do you reconcile this most-recent statement with your previous position of:
SSDR wrote:
While the rest of the world's nations can either be capitalist or socialist.
This is obviously far less enthusiastic, to where you'd be indifferent to some parts of the world that *didn't* transcend capitalist social relations.
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SSDR wrote:
Exactly, many wives have to listen to their husbands because it's the husbands' property. The wives are limited to what the husbands want because he owns their homes, and that limits them from living their destinies and being free.
Agreed.
SSDR wrote:
Money is evil. Anyone who thinks that money is king is my enemy.
So then what are you *recommending* to replace money-type / commodity-type economic relations?
SSDR wrote:
CAPITALISM DOES NOT SUPPORT THE FAMILY INSTITUTION? No, Capitalism ENFORCES the family institution. Capitalists want people to be about their families so that the majority of the people are too stressed with their families, and that their families decoy them from realizing that they are being ruled by greedy capitalists.
Okay, to clarify, I'd rephrase it to say that bourgeois *class society* -- the 'superstructure' -- recognizes, encourages, and even at times *enforces* the institution of the nuclear family. But the 'base' -- capitalism's material economics -- does not *fund* / support the family, so it's like an overall social norm of an 'unfunded [social] mandate'.
SSDR wrote:
Plus, for some people, if there was a socialist revolution, "they can't run away from their fathers to fight in the revolution because it would be *shameful.* Capitalists inflict shame on rebels to prevent a revolt."
It doesn't stop at Western 'shaming', or cultural values. There's *this* history, again:
Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_in ... _Civil_War---
SSDR wrote:
Socialism goes against the family institution because family is slavery, and socialism frees people from being ruled by others. In pure socialism, society is extremely individualistic, while economically, by capitalist terms, it is collective.
Okay, I can agree with this particular formulation.
SSDR wrote:
In socialism, society is not one big, egalitarian family. In pure socialist terms, a socialist would realize that people use each other, and that family nurturings are not needed to motivate people to contribute to the survival of humanity, because when one needs nurturing, they could potentially enforce fakeness, stress, and annoying ceremonies and arranged marriages. In a capitalist society, marriages motivate workers to work. While in a socialist context, it is oppression because you have to act a certain way to people who could of potentially abused you (such as strict fathers) but wouldn't view it as abuse, but rather would view those who view it as abuse as "shameless, rebels who promote satanism." Hence, satanism is a symbol of reality. And family somewhat destroys that because they say family is the number one love, yet people get more stress from them, and usually they're the first ones to let you down, child abuse and drama are some unspoken examples and that socialism would liberate people from this.
Okay, I'll agree here and just note that people can truly be themselves once they're liberated from material concerns.
Here's from my favorite essay on the subject:
Yes; there are suggestive things in Individualism. Socialism annihilates family life, for instance. With the abolition of private property, marriage in its present form must disappear. This is part of the programme. Individualism accepts this and makes it fine. It converts the abolition of legal restraint into a form of freedom that will help the full development of personality, and make the love of man and woman more wonderful, more beautiful, and more ennobling. Jesus knew this. He rejected the claims of family life, although they existed in his day and community in a very marked form. ‘Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?’ he said, when he was told that they wished to speak to him. When one of his followers asked leave to go and bury his father, ‘Let the dead bury the dead,’ was his terrible answer. He would allow no claim whatsoever to be made on personality.
https://www.marxists.org/reference/arch ... /soul-man/
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SSDR wrote:
You sound like a Trotskyist. I bet you think that capitalism destroys family, and that socialism will allow people to love their families again. Stalin only re introduced family only for reproductive matters, to increase the military size of the Soviet Union.
Hmmmmm, I think you're mischaracterizing again -- I'm not familiar with *any* pro-family aspect to Trotskyism. You may want to seek-out supporting evidence for this misconstrued claim of yours.
SSDR wrote:
No, in capitalism, one is forced to rely on their families because fathers own their homes, parents own their domestic companies (I bet you're against big corporations and support small family owned companies, because they're "not greedy and more poor"
Bad guess. Capitalists are capitalists and all exploit labor-value, no matter their size, large or small. I'm not interested in any (fictional) 'better-capitalism', as much as I'm interested in overthrowing the social institution of private property altogether, at all scales.
SSDR wrote:
I know how some Trotskyists are against big corporations, even though in capitalism, big corporations are way closer to socialism than small, family owned companies),
Again this is another mischaracterization on your part -- socialism calls for the working-class *total expropriation* of the business / corporate form of social organization, to produce for human / humane need.
Of course corporations, like any capitalist business, don't require any kind of *political* support within the current socio-political context of capitalism, because they're not on the side of the workers anyway.
SSDR wrote:
and people stay with their families for economic security, like if one loses their jobs or company, they have family to help them pay for bills. Capitalism enforces the family, it doesn't promote it in a "charitable" way. Submissive wives are not doing charity to their ruling husbands.
Yeah, I'll reiterate that the social / material / economic role of the nuclear family is that of *charity* (at-best), because capitalism doesn't inherently *supply* families with any kind of economic support as an integral aspect of its functioning.
SSDR wrote:
How should my ideas be achieved? If that's what you're asking, then nationalize all property, destroy currency, and make sure everything is industrialized, or post industrialized. If people cannot rule themselves because they're not ready, then have a socialist state run them so they can help them get closer to freedom and liberation.
Why stop at *nationalization*, though -- ? This is still-more *Stalinism* on your part, because any nationally-constrained radical reformism, as you're suggesting, would *not* put control into workers' hands, and would continue to require an inherently substitutionist, specialized bureaucratic state-like administration over the workers themselves, which is essentially back to state-capitalism.
SSDR wrote:
The USSR did have socialism.
No, it didn't, because socialism is equivalent to *workers control* over social production, which the USSR didn't have, particularly at the higher levels of state administration -- the elitist Stalinist bureaucracy.
SSDR wrote:
It was state socialism. Not all socialists are anarchists. I am strongly against anarchy.
Currency existed in the Soviet Union to control the traitors who needed it to motivate them to work. Black markets were hosted by criminals in the USSR.
Stalin was always a working class person. He only got wealthier due to having lots of leadership in the Soviet state. And the "elites" that he had existed to control the traitors who needed currency and religion to motivate them to contribute to the survival of humanity and work.
Again, you're basically a Stalinist, advocating his ill-conceived 'socialism-in-one-country'. Here's a rundown of the historical developments that contributed to Stalin's consolidation of power:
The Allied intervention was a multi-national military expedition launched during the Russian Civil War in 1918. The stated goals were to help the Czechoslovak Legion, to secure supplies of munitions and armaments in Russian ports, and to re-establish the Eastern Front. After the Bolshevik government withdrew from World War I, the Allied Powers militarily backed the anti-communist White forces in Russia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_in ... _Civil_War
Results
Military
War communism was largely successful at its primary purpose of aiding the Red Army in halting the advance of the White Army and in reclaiming most of the territory of the former Russian Empire thereafter.
Social
In the cities and surrounding countryside, the population experienced hardships as a result of the war. Peasants refused to co-operate in producing food. Workers began migrating from the cities to the countryside, where the chances to feed themselves were higher, thus further decreasing the possibility of barter of industrial goods for food and worsening the plight of the remaining urban population. Between 1918 and 1920, Petrograd lost 72% of its population, while Moscow lost 53%.[citation needed]
A series of workers' strikes and peasants' rebellions broke out all over the country, such as the Tambov rebellion (1920-1921). A turning point came with the Kronstadt rebellion at the Kronstadt naval base in early March 1921. The rebellion startled Lenin, because Bolsheviks considered Kronstadt sailors the "reddest of the reds". According to David Christian, the Cheka (the state Communist Party secret police) reported 118 peasant uprisings in February 1921.[citation needed]
Christian, in his book "Imperial and Soviet Russia", summarises the state of Russia in 1921 after years of War communism:
A government claiming to represent the people now found itself on the verge of being overthrown by that same working class. The crisis had undermined the loyalty of the villages, the towns and finally sections of the army. It was fully as serious as the crises faced by the tsarist government in 1905 and February 1917.[8]
Economic
A black market emerged in Russia, despite the threat of martial law against profiteering. The rouble collapsed and barter increasingly replaced money as a medium of exchange[9] and, by 1921, heavy industry output had fallen to 20% of 1913 levels. 90% of wages were paid with goods rather than money. 70% of locomotives were in need of repair, and food requisitioning, combined with the effects of seven years of war and a severe drought, contributed to a famine that caused between 3 and 10 million deaths.[10] Coal production decreased from 27.5 million tons (1913) to 7 million tons (1920), while overall factory production also declined from 10,000 million roubles to 1,000 million roubles. According to the noted historian David Christian, the grain harvest was also slashed from 80.1 million tons (1913) to 46.5 million tons (1920).[11]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_communism
The Left Opposition was a faction within the Bolshevik Party from 1923 to 1927, headed de facto by Leon Trotsky. The Left Opposition formed as part of the power struggle within the party leadership that began with the Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin's illness and intensified with his death in January 1924. Originally, the battle lines were drawn between Trotsky and his supporters who signed The Declaration of 46 in October 1923, on the one hand, and a triumvirate (also known by its Russian name troika) of Comintern chairman Grigory Zinoviev, Communist Party General Secretary Joseph Stalin and Politburo chairman Lev Kamenev on the other hand.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left_Opposition
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SSDR wrote:
I never said that Cultural homogenization was needed for a socialist revolution. It is required for a global, permanent revolution society, since different people are not protected from another. Again, Poles don't want to live in the same apartments as Somalians.
No, cultural homogenization is *not* required for a global permanent revolution society. Liberated-production would drive such a society, and you're too caught-up with *cultural* (demographic) racist concerns here.
SSDR wrote:
Stalin was not a pacifist to Hitler before Operation Barbarossa. He pretended to be friends with him so he could buy some time and build up the Soviet military as much as he can.
It's arguable. I'm not an expert in Stalinist diplomacy, but you seem to be.
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ckaihatsu wrote:
I guess, towards the end of his life, Malcolm X would be better described as a pan-Africanist.
But I included his person as an illustration of how Islam as a religion runs the full political spectrum from left to right.
SSDR wrote:
- Islam cannot go with the left, UNLESS if they're using left wing politics to go against non Islamic rulers, like the Orthodox Christian Russian Empire, or the conservative parts of the USA today. If Islam rules, politics would be pure right wing. Islam is conservative. Islam is ANTI socialist. Islam is ANTI feminist. (No offense to Muslims on here who are reading this)
I do agree with these generalizations of Islam -- as with any entrenched religion -- though individual participants may vary in their own individual politics, as I've already mentioned.
I don't support any kind of Islamism in the arena of politics.