Why do people not understand socialism ? - Page 2 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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As either the transitional stage to communism or legitimate socio-economic ends in its own right.
Forum rules: No one line posts please.
#15228192
BlutoSays wrote:Hey dirty commie, you get compensated for your property in eminent domain. You can also tie them up in court for years.
:lol: Really, you dumb fucking Yank?

The Taking: How the federal government abused its power to seize property for a border fence
A decade ago, many border Texans got a raw deal when the federal government seized land for a barrier — while others pushed up the price. Will the government's rushed, haphazard process be repeated as it pushes for a border wall?

Homeland Security circumvented laws designed to help landowners receive fair compensation. The agency did not conduct formal appraisals of targeted parcels. Instead, it issued low-ball offers based on substandard estimates of property values.

The Justice Department bungled hundreds of condemnation cases. The agency took property without knowing the identity of the actual owners. It condemned land without researching facts as basic as property lines. Landholders spent tens of thousands of dollars to defend themselves from the government’s mistakes.

Nearly a decade later, scores of landowners remain tangled in lawsuits. The government has already taken their land and built the border fence. But it has not resolved claims for its value.

https://www.texastribune.org/2017/12/14 ... erty-fence
#15228195
ckaihatsu wrote:
Think about it *economically* -- how is *valuation* supposed to take place -- ?



Truth To Power wrote:
As value is what something would trade for, it can only occur in a market.



*Or* it could be an inter-factional *politicking* that decides which administration is in power, and gets to set priorities, as happens internationally / worldwide, anyway, as we're seeing with Europe versus Russia right now.


ckaihatsu wrote:
By *commodification*, even into people's own *lives* (capitalism), by bureaucratic-elitist administration (Stalinism), or by the workers themselves, 'co-administratively', over everything in the world (communism).



Truth To Power wrote:
Gibberish, Marxist, Silly.



Look at everyday workplace realities -- it's the *workers* who are physically next-to and all-over the machinery anyway, so next-step, *they* get to decide how to use it, and what to do with it. Seems fair to *me*.
#15228196
Godstud wrote:No. You have a very simplistic version of what Socialism.

I.e., I am clear.
To you it's all or nothing, or black and white, which is simply NOT THE CASE.

Strawman. There are obviously degrees of socialism and capitalism, as of any other economic system.
Regulation of Capitalism is one of the key facets of Socialism, and is why China can be classified as Socialist, not Communist. Chinese economy is Capitalist with Socialism regulating it.

Nope. China is neither capitalist nor socialist because it is geoist: private ownership of privately created value, public ownership of publicly created value, including natural resources. China was never communist and has not been socialist for ~40 years.
Nothing would be Socialism OR Communism if we went by your personal interpretation,

Wrong, and it's not "my" interpretation. Cuba is socialist, as was the USSR and Mao's China, Vietnam, Laos, and a few other places.
@Truth To Power.

Your grasp of the English language is quite poor, evidently.

I have made a very good living as a writer and editor, and scored 170/170 on the GRE verbal, so, no.
I posted a few definitions that you cannot seem to grasp.

Definitions can be invalid, especially technical ones.
Oxford Dictionary

Socialism
a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.

That definition is vacuous and thus invalid because it says every capitalist democracy is socialist.
#15228197
Godstud wrote::lol: Really, you dumb fucking Yank?

The Taking: How the federal government abused its power to seize property for a border fence
A decade ago, many border Texans got a raw deal when the federal government seized land for a barrier — while others pushed up the price. Will the government's rushed, haphazard process be repeated as it pushes for a border wall?

Homeland Security circumvented laws designed to help landowners receive fair compensation. The agency did not conduct formal appraisals of targeted parcels. Instead, it issued low-ball offers based on substandard estimates of property values.

The Justice Department bungled hundreds of condemnation cases. The agency took property without knowing the identity of the actual owners. It condemned land without researching facts as basic as property lines. Landholders spent tens of thousands of dollars to defend themselves from the government’s mistakes.

Nearly a decade later, scores of landowners remain tangled in lawsuits. The government has already taken their land and built the border fence. But it has not resolved claims for its value.

https://www.texastribune.org/2017/12/14 ... erty-fence


Hearsay.
#15228199
BlutoSays wrote:Yeah, well, that's your opinion.

Heheh. I knew your claim to have earned your property was nothing but self-serving BS. You have simply used privilege to steal from the community with government's help. Your bleating about eminent domain sealed it: "Keep your government hands off my government-issued and -enforced land title!"

:lol: :lol: :lol:
#15228200
Truth To Power wrote:
Any wealth obtained by privilege is indeed earned -- just not by the folks who get it.



BlutoSays wrote:
Yeah, well, that's your opinion. Try taking it away and you'll get a nasty surprise.



Well, *are* you a slumlord or a financier -- ? 'Fess up.
#15228294
ckaihatsu wrote:*Or* it could be an inter-factional *politicking* that decides which administration is in power, and gets to set priorities, as happens internationally / worldwide, anyway, as we're seeing with Europe versus Russia right now.

The difference: governments don't create or provide what they exercise authority over. The factory owner does.
Look at everyday workplace realities -- it's the *workers* who are physically next-to and all-over the machinery anyway, so next-step, *they* get to decide how to use it, and what to do with it. Seems fair to *me*.

What could possibly be fair about taking what someone has created/provided/put in place so someone else gets the power to decide what is to be done with it? That's called, "stealing."
#15228297
BlutoSays wrote:Yeah, well, that's your opinion. Try taking it away and you'll get a nasty surprise.


What you'll post a nasty a meme?

Don't worry he got nothing. He wouldn't be posting crap on boards for living if he had a choice. I mean it's dirty disrespectful way to earn a living but with his skills he had got many choices,
#15228306
This is an old lie.

What the Nordic countries do is called Socialism, but it's just robust social programs that make a country a better place to live.

But the kooks will try to imply social programs are the old meaning of Socialism, which is the government owning pretty much everything.

It's ridiculous, but what else would we expect??
#15228307
Truth To Power wrote:
The difference: governments don't create or provide what they exercise authority over. The factory owner does.

What could possibly be fair about taking what someone has created/provided/put in place so someone else gets the power to decide what is to be done with it? That's called, "stealing."



The factory owner didn't create or provide what they exercise authority over -- the *workers* did.

What could possibly be fair about taking what someone has created / provided / put in place so someone *else* gets the power to decide what is to be done with it? That's called *economic exploitation*.


[11] Labor & Capital, Wages & Dividends

Spoiler: show
Image



material-economic exploitation DRAFT

Spoiler: show
Image
#15228326
ckaihatsu wrote:The factory owner didn't create or provide what they exercise authority over -- the *workers* did.

No they didn't. They were merely paid by the owner to provide one factor, and all claim they had to it was extinguished when they received the wages they consented to accept in return. You are claiming, falsely, absurdly, and disingenuously, that when you buy a cup of coffee at Starbucks, the fact that you paid for it does not extinguish the barista's claim to it, and you should have to give it back because the barista made it -- but not get your money back. It's just evil, insane nonsense. I.e., Marxism.
What could possibly be fair about taking what someone has created / provided / put in place so someone *else* gets the power to decide what is to be done with it?

"Taking"? The entrepreneur takes nothing from the workers. That is just another bald falsehood from you. They agreed to provide their labor in return for wages and to relinquish all claim to the product they worked on when their agreed wages were paid.
That's called *economic exploitation*.

No, what you advocate is correctly called "stealing," and it is what Marxists/socialists advocate be done with the products of entrepreneurs' and investors' decisions, initiative and labor.
[11] Labor & Capital, Wages & Dividends

Spoiler: show
Image

material-economic exploitation DRAFT

Spoiler: show
Image

Repeating false, absurd, disingenuous and evil Marxist garbage doesn't make it any less false, sorry.
#15228340
ckaihatsu wrote:
The factory owner didn't create or provide what they exercise authority over -- the *workers* did.



Truth To Power wrote:
No they didn't. They were merely paid by the owner to provide one factor, and all claim they had to it was extinguished when they received the wages they consented to accept in return. You are claiming, falsely, absurdly, and disingenuously, that when you buy a cup of coffee at Starbucks, the fact that you paid for it does not extinguish the barista's claim to it, and you should have to give it back because the barista made it -- but not get your money back. It's just evil, insane nonsense. I.e., Marxism.



You're missing the point, as usual, by conflating the *labor* commodity with any given *non-living* good or service (*also* commodities) -- by valuating only the *market value* / exchange-value aspect of labor-power. That exchange-value yardstick you've chosen doesn't reflect expropriated *surplus labor value*, the appropriation of which happens in the regular course of employing labor for a wage.

(Recall that 'surplus labor value' is a percentage *above* 'socially necessary labor value', or the constant-vector of total active labor value -- work -- taking place at any given moment, self-sustainably, indefinitely.)

Also, on the *capitalism* / management side of things, the figure of 'price' (of any given commodity) is forced to do *double duty* -- it initially reflects the *production cost* of the commodity (from capital + labor), but then it takes on the additional task of finding the median between economic *demand*, and material-economic *supply* -- this *secondary-market* speculative pricing activity / fluctuations, has no bearing whatsoever on the initial, preceding economic *inputs* / costs, yet this potentially inflationary or deflationary 'price' number-value is socially accepted under capitalism to be *appropriate*, somehow, just by-default.


ckaihatsu wrote:
What could possibly be fair about taking what someone has created / provided / put in place so someone *else* gets the power to decide what is to be done with it?



Truth To Power wrote:
"Taking"? The entrepreneur takes nothing from the workers. That is just another bald falsehood from you. They agreed to provide their labor in return for wages and to relinquish all claim to the product they worked on when their agreed wages were paid.



Again, the biggest overall travesty is this *commodification* of living people's own lives -- 'labor' -- that's simply part-of-the-system.

It wreaks havoc in people's lives being under such physical / existential *duress* just for the basic necessities of life -- Squid Game comes to mind here.

You're only describing how it looks *on paper* -- which, has been, admittedly, *unavoidable*, for past historical reasons of historical *necessity* (for bourgeois administration, etc.), but society has been capable of 'modern' 'socialism', for lack of a better term, since the Industrial Revolution.

Wilde actually has a pretty-good treatment of it:



Up to the present, man has been, to a certain extent, the slave of machinery, and there is something tragic in the fact that as soon as man had invented a machine to do his work he began to starve. This, however, is, of course, the result of our property system and our system of competition. One man owns a machine which does the work of five hundred men. Five hundred men are, in consequence, thrown out of employment, and, having no work to do, become hungry and take to thieving. The one man secures the produce of the machine and keeps it, and has five hundred times as much as he should have, and probably, which is of much more importance, a great deal more than he really wants. Were that machine the property of all, every one would benefit by it. It would be an immense advantage to the community. All unintellectual labour, all monotonous, dull labour, all labour that deals with dreadful things, and involves unpleasant conditions, must be done by machinery. Machinery must work for us in coal mines, and do all sanitary services, and be the stoker of steamers, and clean the streets, and run messages on wet days, and do anything that is tedious or distressing. At present machinery competes against man. Under proper conditions machinery will serve man.



https://www.marxists.org/reference/arch ... /soul-man/



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
That's called *economic exploitation*.



Truth To Power wrote:
No, what you advocate is correctly called "stealing," and it is what Marxists/socialists advocate be done with the products of entrepreneurs' and investors' decisions, initiative and labor.



Disagree-to-disagree, I think.

Again, consider the *premium* made from the employment of wage labor -- that's the sound of the worker getting *cut-out* of their own provisioning of work-product, however you'd like to slice that.

All that accumulated 'dead labor' adds-up immensely over time, while the worker themselves is saddled with the everyday expenses of *employment*, and living, etc., that are necessarily paid-for out of wages *only*, and not from the gains of ownership of capital / dead-labor.

Capital / surplus ownership means having no material-economic necessity to perform labor for the sake of one's own life and living.
#15228378
ckaihatsu wrote:You're missing the point, as usual, by conflating the *labor* commodity with any given *non-living* good or service (*also* commodities) -- by valuating only the *market value* / exchange-value aspect of labor-power.

No, YOU are missing the point -- quite deliberately and disingenuously -- by refusing to know the fact that consensual exchange does not violate anyone's rights or deprive anyone of anything they would otherwise have, whether the exchange is for physical goods or services.
That exchange-value yardstick you've chosen doesn't reflect expropriated *surplus labor value*, the appropriation of which happens in the regular course of employing labor for a wage.

No, the metric of exchange value doesn't reflect expropriated surplus labor value because that is not only silly Marxist gibberish (SMG) but non-existent. Employing labor for a wage does not appropriate or expropriate anything. It is a consensual exchange.
(Recall that 'surplus labor value' is a percentage *above* 'socially necessary labor value', or the constant-vector of total active labor value -- work -- taking place at any given moment, self-sustainably, indefinitely.)

SMG. If that sentence meant anything (it doesn't), it would be wrong. It's just a bunch of made-up concepts with invalid definitions designed to prevent people from understanding the relevant economic relationships. But I am here to expose such deceitful tripe.
Also, on the *capitalism* / management side of things, the figure of 'price' (of any given commodity) is forced to do *double duty* -- it initially reflects the *production cost* of the commodity (from capital + labor),

No it doesn't. Your claims are just bald falsehoods with no basis in economics, fact, or logic.
but then it takes on the additional task of finding the median between economic *demand*, and material-economic *supply* -- this *secondary-market* speculative pricing activity / fluctuations, has no bearing whatsoever on the initial, preceding economic *inputs* / costs, yet this potentially inflationary or deflationary 'price' number-value is socially accepted under capitalism to be *appropriate*, somehow, just by-default.

No, it is accepted because it balances supply and demand: if the price is high, production is profitable and increases; if it is low, production is unprofitable and decreases.
Again, the biggest overall travesty is this *commodification* of living people's own lives -- 'labor' -- that's simply part-of-the-system.

Again, labor is not a living person's own life -- though their liberty rights to use land are close.
It wreaks havoc in people's lives being under such physical / existential *duress* just for the basic necessities of life -- Squid Game comes to mind here.

GARBAGE. Scarcity is the natural condition of all living organisms. It is the natural condition of a human being to labor to sustain himself. The Marxist just seeks to evade the responsibility of sustaining himself -- the responsibility of living -- by stealing from those who have not evaded that responsibility.
You're only describing how it looks *on paper* -- which, has been, admittedly, *unavoidable*, for past historical reasons of historical *necessity* (for bourgeois administration, etc.),

No, I am identifying the relevant indisputable facts of objective physical reality.
but society has been capable of 'modern' 'socialism', for lack of a better term, since the Industrial Revolution.

Right. And modern socialism has been tried, and the result has always been tyranny, poverty, stagnation, and mass murder because the alternative to consensual exchange is force.
Wilde actually has a pretty-good treatment of it:

No, Wilde was an economic ignoramus who understood economics as little as you do:
Up to the present, man has been, to a certain extent, the slave of machinery,

Idiocy. It is landowners and other privilege holders who own people's rights to liberty, not machines.
and there is something tragic in the fact that as soon as man had invented a machine to do his work he began to starve.

Idiocy. Landowners have never needed machines to starve the landless to death.
This, however, is, of course, the result of our property system and our system of competition.

No, it's the result of our system of property in land, which forcibly strips the landless of their rights to liberty, thus their options, and thus their bargaining power.
One man owns a machine which does the work of five hundred men. Five hundred men are, in consequence, thrown out of employment,

No they aren't. They are freed to do easier, more human jobs that machines can't do.
and, having no work to do, become hungry and take to thieving.

Idiocy. What stops them from working on their own account? The only way they can have no work to do is if they can't afford to pay a landowner full market value just for permission to work. But that is not the fault of the machine's owner. It is the fault of the landowner.
The one man secures the produce of the machine and keeps it,

No he doesn't. He has to give most of it to the landowner just for permission to use the location the machine occupies.
and has five hundred times as much as he should have,

No he doesn't. By the machine he provided, he has fantastically increased production, of which he gets to keep only a small portion (if any), while the landowner gets most of it for doing and contributing exactly nothing.
and probably, which is of much more importance, a great deal more than he really wants.

Wilde was an economic ignoramus (like some other people I could name). The Law of Rent shows why the landowner gets the additional production, not the machine owner.
Were that machine the property of all, every one would benefit by it.

No they wouldn't. Only the landowner would benefit. Wilde was an economic ignoramus, like every Marxist.
It would be an immense advantage to the community.

Nope. Only to the landowner.
All unintellectual labour, all monotonous, dull labour, all labour that deals with dreadful things, and involves unpleasant conditions, must be done by machinery.

But the people who invent, create, produce, invest in and contribute that machinery to the production process must be robbed of it, and their contributions relentlessly lied about and made to vanish from people's minds? That's how you are going to get that machinery???
Machinery must work for us in coal mines, and do all sanitary services, and be the stoker of steamers, and clean the streets, and run messages on wet days, and do anything that is tedious or distressing.

WHO IS GOING TO PROVIDE THAT MACHINERY, HMMMMMMMMMMM?
At present machinery competes against man.

Only to an economic ignoramus who thinks the first stone hand axe and sharpened stick were competing against man.
Under proper conditions machinery will serve man.

The proper conditions being when Marxist know-nothings find a willingness to know self-evident and indisputable facts of objective physical reality.
Disagree-to-disagree, I think.

Because I am objectively correct and you are objectively wrong.
Again, consider the *premium* made from the employment of wage labor -- that's the sound of the worker getting *cut-out* of their own provisioning of work-product, however you'd like to slice that.

They aren't "cut out" of the provisioning of their own work product. They are paid wages for it.

The only sound I hear is the landowner laughing at you because you refuse to know the fact that he charges the laborer full market value for permission to live close enough to the factory to work there, and then turns around and also charges the factory owner full market value for permission to hire the laborers that live near his factory! By refusing to know facts, you contrive to blame the factory owner for what the landowner does to the worker, and thus enable the landowner to keep robbing the worker. The worker's straitened circumstances are therefore YOUR FAULT. YOU ARE THEREFORE TO BLAME for every worker who can't afford a decent place to live, every worker who can't afford medical care for his family, every worker who can't afford education for his kids, and every worker who drowns his shame in drink or commits suicide in despair.

YOU. Not the factory owner. YOU.
All that accumulated 'dead labor' adds-up immensely over time, while the worker themselves is saddled with the everyday expenses of *employment*, and living, etc., that are necessarily paid-for out of wages *only*, and not from the gains of ownership of capital / dead-labor.

There is no such accumulation. Wealth accumulates around privilege, not machinery, as I have already proved.
Capital / surplus ownership means having no material-economic necessity to perform labor for the sake of one's own life and living.

GARBAGE. Machinery loses you money if you can't use it productively. But land yields income even if you are comatose. You just refuse to know such facts, and that makes you as guilty of the robbery and murder of workers as any landowner.
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