[Rancid]

Communists, especially on this forum remind me of libertarians. There is the blind faith that it will all work itself out if we just do it. What's more damning to the communist case is that they advocate for a planned economy, yet don't have a hard plan. It's mostly "we'll work it out" as an answer to very specific economic and policy questions. Wait lists for resource management, and random unproven ideas on how to deal with structural employment issues (what if no one wants to be a bus driver? or design a mini-van, or build defense weapons? or whatever? Do you apply force to people and make them work?). It's all very wishy washy and thus, to risk a revolution that could fail or be hijacked by other non-communist people, is simply not worth it.

Hence, the best solution we have, is to work with what we have today, and move it towards more socialistic policies (UBI, universal health care, better public education, etc.).

I see communists and libertarians as equally delusional.

[Heisenberg]

There is the blind faith that it will all work itself out if we just do it. What's more damning to the communist case is that they advocate for a planned economy, yet don't have a hard plan.

That's a bit unfair. The hard plan is to organise the economy through central planning.

[Julian658]

I see communists and libertarians as equally delusional.

I agree, but we Libertarians do not impose our views into others.

[Julian658]

That's a bit unfair. The hard plan is to organise the economy through central planning.

Famous last words. All commies say: "This time around it will be different".

[Rancid]

I agree, but we Libertarians do not impose our views into others.

True, but that' because the libertarian position is fundamentally one of intentionally not planning anything, thus, there is nothing to impose as that would imply a plan.

[ckaihatsu]

Communists, especially on this forum remind me of libertarians. There is the blind faith that it will all work itself out if we just do it. What's more damning to the communist case is that they advocate for a planned economy, yet don't have a hard plan.

The 'hard plan' is detaching productivity from exchange values, and even from rewards-for-work, with the full collectivization of all industrial mass production.

Producing for human need doesn't require intermediate exchange values at all -- goods can go directly from manufacturers to the end users / consumers.

It's mostly "we'll work it out" as an answer to very specific economic and policy questions. Wait lists for resource management,

This is *presumptuous*, and uses the strawman of Stalinism instead of referring to workers' collectivized social production.

and random unproven ideas on how to deal with structural employment issues (what if no one wants to be a bus driver? or design a mini-van, or build defense weapons? or whatever? Do you apply force to people and make them work?).

The mechanical and computerized productivity is *already here* -- a healthy, humane society wouldn't even *need* 100% labor participation, as you're implying, because that's what *automated machinery* is for.

It's all very wishy washy and thus, to risk a revolution that could fail or be hijacked by other non-communist people, is simply not worth it.

You'd rather have COVID and global warming.

Hence, the best solution we have, is to work with what we have today, and move it towards more socialistic policies (UBI, universal health care, better public education, etc.).

I see communists and libertarians as equally delusional.

Reforms are fine, but capitalist governance has shown itself to be incapable of addressing and responding to *global*-scale issues. We require a fully worldwide social organization, based on the working class, to appropriately address *global* issues like the pandemic and climate change, etc.


Multi-Tiered System of Productive and Consumptive Zones for a Post-Capitalist Political Economy

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[B0ycey]

I agree, but we Libertarians do not impose our views into others.

Sorry, how many wars in the pursuit of freedom??? Vietnam must have been because you wanted them to have the choice of Communism.

[Rancid]

@ckaihatsu, you really are a stray dog.

[Goranhammer]

Although I am much less libertarian than I once was, I find comparing communists to libertarians offensive. For starters, libertarianism doesn't ultimately end in an authoritarian structure. Quite the opposite, actually.

Libertarianism is based off of the belief that most, if not all, people will act accordingly, which is why I've abandoned it to some extent. But at least with libertarianism, individualism is allowed and even encouraged. Communism operates on the fact that people are just a statistical number, part of a collective, and not to act on their own innate selfish beliefs at any time.

In a nutshell, that's why socialism and communism are all authoritarian, and always fail.

[ckaihatsu]

@ckaihatsu, you really are a stray dog.

Hardly. I don't go sniffing around at various personages, looking to form a political cult, in the manner of Trump. Sounds more like *you*.

[ckaihatsu]

Communism operates on the fact that people are just a statistical number, part of a collective, and not to act on their own innate selfish beliefs at any time.

This is conflating *workplace logistics* with *civil society*.

Communism is *not* Stalinism. There's no advocacy of bureaucratic elitism from communists.

[Rancid]

Hardly. I don't go sniffing around at various personages, looking to form a political cult, in the manner of Trump. Sounds more like *you*.

No, sounds like you

[ckaihatsu]

No, sounds like you

You really think that politics is *interpersonal*, don't you?

The world's working class is not a 'cult', it's the source of all social productivity.

[Rancid]

You really think that politics is *interpersonal*, don't you?

The world's working class is not a 'cult', it's the source of all social productivity.

You don't know what I think.

[ckaihatsu]

You don't know what I think.

Yes, I do:

Fuck democracy.

What we need is a police state.

viewtopic.php?p=15141684#p15141684

[Rancid]

Yes, I do:

No, you don't.

That quote was sarcasm, so clearly, you do not understand you stray dog.

[ckaihatsu]

No, you don't.

That quote was sarcasm, so clearly, you do not understand you stray dog.

Shittiest sarcasm ever.

I don't share your fortress mentality, or advocacy for proprietary balkanization over the production of what people *need* for their modern lives and living.

[Wellsy]

Communists, especially on this forum remind me of libertarians. There is the blind faith that it will all work itself out if we just do it. What's more damning to the communist case is that they advocate for a planned economy, yet don't have a hard plan. It's mostly "we'll work it out" as an answer to very specific economic and policy questions. Wait lists for resource management, and random unproven ideas on how to deal with structural employment issues (what if no one wants to be a bus driver? or design a mini-van, or build defense weapons? or whatever? Do you apply force to people and make them work?). It's all very wishy washy and thus, to risk a revolution that could fail or be hijacked by other non-communist people, is simply not worth it.

Hence, the best solution we have, is to work with what we have today, and move it towards more socialistic policies (UBI, universal health care, better public education, etc.).

I see communists and libertarians as equally delusional.

Maybe communists of a crude Marxist or utopian bent.
[url] https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/e/s.htm[url]

Eschatology refers to the ideas found in a wide variety of religions and other ideologies about “doomsday,” a “Last Judgment,” the end of the world, or whatever. Eschatology provides an interpretation of the present reality from the standpoint that it is a just preparation for the coming “doomsday.” Thus for Christians, our sufferings and actions today will determine our fate at the Day of Judgment.
Some anti-communists describe Marxism as an “eschatology” in that the present time is interpreted in relation to the ultimate destiny of the working class to take power, socialise ownership of the means of production and institute a socialist society. Thus, present-day politics would be interpreted solely in relation to the future achievement of socialism and could be used to justify otherwise unjustifiable violence or even indifference towards the suffering of the working class.
While such a criticism can legitimately be made against vulgar interpretations of Marx’s ideas, Marxism is fundamentally a critique of existing conditions, not an attempt to force the world to conform to some predetermined ideal, far less a fatalistic theory of the inevitability of socialism.

https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/Hegel-and-Marx.pdf

(f). Hegel overestimated speculative reason relative to social process itself

Hegel first published his Encyclopædia of the Philosophical Sciences in 1817. In this monumental work he aimed to prefigure (among other things), in outline, the entire development of natural science. But natural science did not progress by the writing of ever more perfect and comprehensive encyclopaedias. Rather, individuals and groups beavered away separately on narrowly defined problems, all the while lacking any sophisticated view of the whole, and gradually, over the decades, the separate strands more and more came into contact with one another, and over time, through a seemingly objective social process, viable overall, interdisciplinary scientific visions began to emerge.

Each strand of research has been influenced by the discoveries and theories and techniques and tools produced by the others. The scope and complexity and interconnectedness of human activity developed further and further, throwing up new insights, new techniques, new theories, new forms of experiment, new possibilities endlessly, way beyond the capacity of a single mind to plan or predict. Every insight, every discovery is the product of a human mind, but the process as a whole is a gigantic worldwide social process.
At each moment, the latest discovery to come out of the endless unfolding of human practice is intelligible in the light of what has gone before, what has already been discovered. But who can tell what the next discovery will be?

When Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto he left many questions unresolved. One of these was the question of whether the workers’ movement could could seize state power and how they would use that power. Marx did not attempt to work this out in advance. He had to wait until the Paris Commune demonstrated what the workers movement would do. He then amended the Manifesto accordingly – adding to the 1872 Preface to the Manifesto the words: “One thing especially was proved by the Commune, viz., that “the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it for its own purposes.”

Likewise, in the writing of Capital, Marx took as his starting point the simplest social form in which value was manifested, the exchange of commodities. Living in England, at that time the most advanced capitalist country, it was possible to observe the entire unfolding of the value relation from practice of exchanging commodities. He could make the development of capital intelligible by means of his analysis of exchange, but he made only the most general and qualified predictions of where it was headed based on his clear view of where it was at the moment. But he could not predict the shape of the successive transformations of capital which would flow through the economy after his death, and Marx knew this.*
But compare Marx’s analysis with Hegel’s naïve analysis of value mentioned above.
As an Idealist, Hegel falsely believed that Logic would allow him to foresee what was as yet outside social experience. He was writing in 1817, before the microscope, Darwin’s discoveries, the Michelson-Morley experiment and the burgeoning of natural scientific investigation during the 19th century. It is obvious to us that the project of the Encyclopaedia was untenable, even granting that the Encyclopaedia in large measure is merely a systematisation of scientific knowledge as it was at his time, and not wholesale speculation. Only the social process itself as a whole can work out and reveal the real content of a concept. The real content of a concept is available to the theorist to the extent that they can observe and make intelligible what exists or is already at least in the process of development.
This is the difference between Idealism and Materialism in terms of method.

Things can’t be guaranteed nor perfect, the ideal end is typically different from the realized end but perfectionism is impotence. Not that one shouldn’t aim to realize something better, but to strong an emphasis on imperfection is a dead end in thought and action.
The fear of error can’t lead to anything except following established paths and is a symptom of fear rather than courage. Of course such drives are often characterized cynically as inherently naive, utopian. But Less spoken about is the naivety of trying to maintain a status quo with minor changes. At some point, things have to give way also. Many without any aspiration for communism of some variation similarly raise alarm bells about global problems and how amicably it can be addressed within a world of capitalist economies. Again, the emphasis is on the criticism of the present state rather than the dreams of a not existent future. And whether such reforms as you listed can be meankngfully implemented when the political power of workers in the west is increasingly diminishes may be as utopian despite its practical possibility. Its not utopian to think that we could materially meet the many needs of every human being, its simply an artificial scarcity. In the same way the US bankrupts people with medical bills rather than accommodates medicinal needs as a social good. People get fucked not out of necessity but political weakness and fragmentation. My cynical side thinks for the time being we are in a worse state than to imagine communism in the newer horizon as the goal of even those modest reforms is off the table without any real political subject to push it. The issue of the very conditions of organizing any meaningful opposition.

So some sort of balance must be struck in not going down adventurist paths of aimless destruction but not impotent to perfection.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1935/02/ws-therm-bon.htm

There are some who say that since the actual state that has emerged from the proletarian revolution does not correspond to ideal a priori norms, therefore they turn their backs on it. This is political snobbery, common to pacifist-democratic, libertarian, anarcho-syndicalist and, generally, ultraleft circles of petty-bourgeois intelligentsia. There are others who say that since this state has emerged from the proletarian revolution, therefore every criticism of it is sacrilege and counterrevolution. That is the voice of hypocrisy behind which lurk most often the immediate material interests of certain groups among this very same petty-bourgeois intelligentsia or among the workers’ bureaucracy. These two types – the political snob and the political hypocrite – are readily interchangeable, depending upon personal circumstances. Let us pass them both by.

A Marxist would say that the present-day USSR obviously does not approximate the a priori norms of a Soviet state; let us discover, however, what we failed to foresee when working out the programmatic norms; let us, furthermore, analyze what social factors have distorted the workers’ state; let us check once again if these distortions have extended to the economic foundations of the state, that is to say, if the basic social conquests of the proletarian revolution have been preserved; if these have been preserved, then let us find in what direction they are changing; and let us discover if there obtain in the USSR and on the world arena such factors as may facilitate and hasten the preponderance of progressive trends of development over those of reaction. Such an approach is complex. It brings with it no ready-made key for lazy minds, which the latter love so much. In return, however, it not only preserves one from the two plagues, snobbery and hypocrisy, but also presents the possibility of exerting an active influence

Historically specific point but with good a generalizable point in it.

Regardless, its early days yet.
[url]rickroderick.org/105-hegel-and-modern-life-1990/[/url]

Marx’s name of course is not used much anymore. You know, this is supposed to be what happened in the last fifteen years, is that definitively his view of the world has been refuted and so on. And I would like to warn against these relatively premature judgements, especially in the long scope of history. After all, Communism as an ideology… In the Soviet Union, the first communist state, began in 1917 and it is hardly a long historical run to go from 1917 to 1989, and to win hearts and minds in two thirds of the world and then be over like that.

That is the kind of historical view a culture might have if that culture’s view of history was based on a miniseries. Because then you could go “Well, that was kind of like a miniseries in this longer story”.

Communism emerged from capitalist conditions and private property and can’t be erased as long as capitalism exists in the same way the existence of the working class is connected to the existence of a capitalist class.

[Rancid]

Shittiest sarcasm ever.

I don't share your fortress mentality, or advocacy for proprietary balkanization over the production of what people *need* for their modern lives and living.

Look, just be happy that when the revolution comes, I will be lined up and shot.

[ckaihatsu]

Things can’t be guaranteed nor perfect, the ideal end is typically different from the realized end but perfectionism is impotence. Not that one shouldn’t aim to realize something better, but to strong an emphasis on imperfection is a dead end in thought and action.
The fear of error can’t lead to anything except following established paths and is a symptom of fear rather than courage. Of course such drives are often characterized cynically as inherently naive, utopian. But Less spoken about is the naivety of trying to maintain a status quo with minor changes. At some point, things have to give way also.

I have a *framework* for this, btw....


universal paradigm SLIDES TEMPLATE

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universal paradigm DATABASE

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Look, just be happy that when the revolution comes, I will be lined up and shot.

It's not about *bloodlust*, it's about which-side-are-you-on. Just don't be a counterrevolutionary.