Putin doesn't give a fu.....

[Borg Refinery]

Well Im a Marxist. Although in terms of Russia that would be Trotsky as Stalin was authoritarian and Lenin died too early to make a judgement on whether he would have sided on the issues of the state of the proletariat in terms of the SU movement. But in reality I'm a Social Democrat (hybrid) as you will have to at least have free enterprise in ideas and invention otherwise you have stagnation in invention and even Gorbachev tried (and failed) to bring perestroika into the SU.

Fair enough.



And for clarity -

My political ideology is really just some sort of confederation around the world, where different types of societies are allowed to exist; not just neoliberal capitalist experiments - although if a group of people want to live under neoliberalism then let them; real self-determination and autonomy is permitted and everyone isn't beholden to one standard; America's bullying, markets; the likes of moody's and fitch and so forth.. If the commies want their little enclave, let them have it, if English nationalists want a slice of the country to themselves, let them live as they wish..same for other types of capitalist, agrarians, odd cultists, theocrats ...and so on and so forth. And with some compromises, assurances and some way of arbitrating disputes and disallowing stuff like mass abuse or genocide etc, with several reasonable societies arbitrating; it's the only way I can see real freedom and peace enduring around the world.



The problem is that so many people want the whole world to conform to their one, universal standard. But I don't think that can ever work.

If you wanna live under socialism, you can have your society and I will have mine, and others will have theirs, is my ideal. I guess that's got some things in common with libertarianism, but I'm not really one of them.



As for Putin, he has stolen the ancient wisdom of the Russian Church and repurposed it for his own ends; to 'unify' Russia under his political agenda. Not good. Lots of nice stuff has come out of Russia, with its very blessed history.

[B0ycey]

Ah, a variation on the "it wasn't true socialism" argument.



Are you a Trot then? Or a left-com?

Well Im a Marxist. Although in terms of Russia that would be Trotsky as Stalin was authoritarian and Lenin died too early to make a judgement on whether he would have sided on the issues of the state of the proletariat in terms of the SU movement. But in reality I'm a Social Democrat (hybrid) as you will have to at least have free enterprise in ideas and invention otherwise you have stagnation in invention and even Gorbachev tried (and failed) to bring perestroika into the SU.

[Borg Refinery]

Barbarism is merely a term to say "before the social contract" where people governed themselves. It most definitely did exist and was replaced by a formed government decided by devine faith or entitlement. But that is semantics.

Not really, it's very important. There wasn't 'barbarism', there have been (advanced) forms of governance going back IIRC to the Sumerians. You can argue that going back further, men and women were part of primitive tribal societies, but labelling everything as 'barbarism' is indicative of Marx's sneering elitism. Didn't he also look down on 'Oriental' cultures even inventing an 'Asiatic' mode of production?

As for your point about what comes after Capitalism maybe being dystopian, perhaps it will be. The SU project didn't really work, China had to evole Maoism, and Spain gave up Anrachy and these were all systems that were created to replace Capitalism functions. And also all these movements came from hardship and there has never been utopian alternative to ever materialise since to counter their narrative. But that doesn't stop the economic reality. Money isn't real. It is a concept that only works because people believe it has value. And if the numbers who lose becomes excessive, they will revolt and take down governments and replace this economic model with something else. But where history has had hardship in poverish states that moved power from government into the milita as examples presently, when the hardship is from an highly educated society with liberal values, there is a very good chance that the result will be a fairer society or utopian in nature than dystopian because of the values of the original state. I guess the point is, Europe isn't likely to turn into Mad Max because money loses value. It is most likely going to use its knowledge to benefit society as the whole and something that Marx predicted would occur.

That's complete guesswork, and history invariably points to vacuums being filled with a worse alternative where no useful one is offered, like the example I gave earlier.

Finally, true Socialists don't want to kill their foes. Capitalists such as America and historically the British and Dutch imperial empires have killed and will kill more people than the so called socialist states of Mao, Lenin/Stalin or Castro ever will - although famine haven't helped Mao or Stalin death figures I guess. So the answer to that is no, those who dissent do not have to die, but they will have to adhere to the law. And what you see from history is it isn't the economic model that kills people but the political decisions of the governments in power that do. That is socialism doesn't cause "The Great Leap forward" or built Gulags in Siberia, the tyrant nature or poor leadership of those leaders do.

Ah, a variation on the "it wasn't true socialism" argument.



Are you a Trot then? Or a left-com?



Lenin started out with utopian ideals but quickly abandoned them, and became concerned with keeping power. It really started in 1917...



By 1920 he pub'd his pamphlet "left wing communism an infantile disorder".



Anyway, he all but gave up with the N.E.P and zccepted 'state capitalism' as their system.

[B0ycey]

I mean, you are welcome to your views, but "the end of capitalism" with no workable remedy sounds like the beginning of a dystopian novel.



Just saying something is going to end, doesn't mean it'll be replaced by something better by default. Look at what happened across the Islamic world and what they descended into, after centuries of progress.



There is no such thing as 'barbarism'. There were concrete systems before feudalism, arguably feudalism was worse (to many) than what came before..



I don't subscribe to the marxist modes of production theory. And that theory has big holes when you look at the entire uneven development stuff.



IMHO, while he was no doubt a clever bloke, he suffered from the ignorance of the age; this is reflected in his many small-minded views that would be today thought of as quite prejudiced.



Plus, it's all very tyrannical. Socialism or barbarism as the pamphlet was titled..Rosa Luxemburg I think.



So what about folks who don't want to live under this system that you're not even sure will look like, but know that it must come? What will happen to them?

Barbarism is merely a term to say "before the social contract" where people governed themselves. It most definitely did exist and was replaced by a formed government decided by devine faith or entitlement. But that is semantics.



As for your point about what comes after Capitalism maybe being dystopian, perhaps it will be. The SU project didn't really work, China had to evole Maoism, and Spain gave up Anrachy and these were all systems that were created to replace Capitalism functions. And also all these movements came from hardship and there has never been utopian alternative to ever materialise since to counter their narrative. But that doesn't stop the economic reality. Money isn't real. It is a concept that only works because people believe it has value. And if the numbers who lose becomes excessive, they will revolt and take down governments and replace this economic model with something else. But where history has had hardship in poverish states that moved power from government into the milita as examples presently, when the hardship is from an highly educated society with liberal values, there is a very good chance that the result will be a fairer society or utopian in nature than dystopian because of the values of the original state. I guess the point is, Europe isn't likely to turn into Mad Max because money loses value. It is most likely going to use its knowledge to benefit society as the whole and something that Marx predicted would occur.



Finally, true Socialists don't want to kill their foes. Capitalists such as America and historically the British and Dutch imperial empires have killed and will kill more people than the so called socialist states of Mao, Lenin/Stalin or Castro ever will - although famine haven't helped Mao or Stalin death figures I guess. So the answer to that is no, those who dissent do not have to die, but they will have to adhere to the law. And what you see from history is it isn't the economic model that kills people but the political decisions of the governments in power that do. That is socialism doesn't cause "The Great Leap forward" or built Gulags in Siberia, the tyrant nature or poor leadership of those leaders do.

[Borg Refinery]

I mean, you are welcome to your views, but "the end of capitalism" with no workable remedy sounds like the beginning of a dystopian novel.



Just saying something is going to end, doesn't mean it'll be replaced by something better by default. Look at what happened across the Islamic world and what they descended into, after centuries of progress.



There is no such thing as 'barbarism'. There were concrete systems before feudalism, arguably feudalism was worse (to many) than what came before..



I don't subscribe to the marxist modes of production theory. And that theory has big holes when you look at the entire uneven development stuff.



IMHO, while he was no doubt a clever bloke, he suffered from the ignorance of the age; this is reflected in his many small-minded views that would be today thought of as quite prejudiced.



Plus, it's all very tyrannical. Socialism or barbarism as the pamphlet was titled..Rosa Luxemburg I think.



So what about folks who don't want to live under this system that you're not even sure will look like, but know that it must come? What will happen to them?

[B0ycey]

Looks like we have some people who like to discuss Marx on here. Good. The guy is an unsung hero.



Marx never went into detail on what will come after Capitalism. TCM mentioned that people (proletariat) would realise their class distinction and revolt and obviously as the pamphlet was for the Communist Party there is an indication that Communism would be achieved somehow after Socialism, but there is little analysis how to get there nor did he focus his effort on it either. But there is no doubt that Capitalism will end and the Covid19 crisis is perhaps the first step. Indefinite debt isn't sustainable and this has an impact on our ideology and behavour which then affects how we behave and what we produce (Dialectical Materialism). At some point inflation will divide the class system further and as both the French and Russian revolutions show, if they do, the elite is whom they go for. And as Barbarism turned to feudalism which then turn into capitalism, reading the works of Engels and in particular "The Origins of the Family", the next step is likely to be of interest of the proletariat as they are the numbers - which is likely going to be the end of private property. Also we are already seeing social reforms. The talk is of nationalisation, taxing the rich, shutting down tax havens today. These are not Libertarianism ideas. They are Socialist ideas. The next stage of Capitalism will be Socialism. Perhaps not the SU type but of a radical Scandinavian model. Thus Marx will be proven right. It is just a question of when.



And yes, I am that guy from PoFo.

[Borg Refinery]

Marx is praised by capitalists for his incisive analysis, but is rebuked for his idea of what to replace it with.



I think a lot of people, mainly capitalist people, accept his analysis had some merit, but his remedy was a non starter.



The commie revolutions just turned into another type of plutocracy very quickly, and in the case of the more 'democratic' ones they were quickly slaughtered and put down.



The only 'modern' rebellions of any interest were ironically the anti-soviet ones in Hungary and Czech. The west abandoned them to their fate of course.



Edit: You're that guy from PoFo aren't you...

[Borchester]

You know little about Marx. Engels was a co-author although perhaps it was he who sponged off Marx - especially as he finished Das Kapital from Marxs notes. Marx was comissioned to write as he knew what the f**k he was talking about better than anyone else. He for example was paid to write the Communist Manifesto for the political Communist party and Das Kapital wasn't revolutionary like TCM because he was a philosopher and an economist rather than a political radical like people like to believe he was.

Ah, that was why Marx was so poor. There he was, living on the ribs of his arse in Dean Street because he was all the while funding Engel's fox hunting and champagne parties. There he was, sending Engels the money to set up Mary Burns in her Manchester love nest and poor old Karl was lucky if he could afford a quickie in the broom cupboard with Lenchen.



Thank you for clearing that up boysie.

[B0ycey]

Not really.



He spent most of his life sponging off Engels and waiting for relatives to die and leave him a few bob. Bear in mind that it is not so much that Karl shagged his wife's maid, but that he could afford a maid in the first place.

You know little about Marx. Engels was a co-author although perhaps it was he who sponged off Marx - especially as he finished Das Kapital from Marxs notes. Marx was comissioned to write as he knew what the F@@@ he was talking about better than anyone else. He for example was paid to write the Communist Manifesto for the political Communist party and Das Kapital wasn't revolutionary like TCM because he was a philosopher and an economist rather than a political radical like people like to believe he was.

[Borchester]

I could write many posts on the greatness of Marx although the first volumn of Das Kapital was mainly based on surplus labor value rather than money so it was based on the impact private property and production has on those who work (proletariat) for the land ownership (bourgeois). Although Marx was educated, he was exciled from Prussia and died realitively poor and didn't have a sliver spoon up his ass and basically went through life due with his writings.

Not really.



He spent most of his life sponging off Engels and waiting for relatives to die and leave him a few bob. Bear in mind that it is not so much that Karl shagged his wife's maid, but that he could afford a maid in the first place.

[B0ycey]

Each to his own Boysie.



As I recall our Karl spent the first thirty pages explaining that money was anything you wanted it to be and the next forty that its value was rarely constant, which any patron of the local pub could have managed in a couple of sentences. Still, as you know, Marx was the sort of middle class socialist who expected to live off family and friends, so he never really understood finance.



Still, as I have said, whatever turns you on.

I could write many posts on the greatness of Marx although the first volumn of Das Kapital was mainly based on surplus labor value rather than money so it was based on the impact private property and production has on those who work (proletariat) for the land ownership (bourgeois). Although Marx was educated, he was exciled from Prussia and died realitively poor and didn't have a sliver spoon up his ass and basically went through life due with his writings.

[Borchester]

Yes I am sure. And Das Kapital is the greatest critique of Capitalism you can find and anyone who has spent time reading the volumes would never be bored due to enlightenment.

Each to his own Boysie.



As I recall our Karl spent the first thirty pages explaining that money was anything you wanted it to be and the next forty that its value was rarely constant, which any patron of the local pub could have managed in a couple of sentences. Still, as you know, Marx was the sort of middle class socialist who expected to live off family and friends, so he never really understood finance.



Still, as I have said, whatever turns you on.

[B0ycey]

Are you sure on this Boysie? If the original estimates of hundreds of billions of deaths have been under estimated by a factor of ten then we can expect the actual death toll to be in the order of two billions which is more than a quarter of the world population although considerably less than the number who have tried to read Das Kapital but who were forced to give up when their buttocks fell off from sheer bloody boredom.

Yes I am sure. And Das Kapital is the greatest critique of Capitalism you can find and anyone who has spent time reading the volumes would never be bored due to enlightenment.



Nonetheless the original model was based on figures from the Princess Diamond, a cruise ship populated by the elderly. The figures now are pushing a third of a million and despite a campaign to build the army of ventilators we were going to need, the reality is from analyse from initial antibody studies suggest that those infected is ten times underreported meaning using that (debunked) model is 30 million deaths anyways. And the Imperial model was talking about 300 million. But I have no idea how you consider a quarter of the global population was ever realistic.

[Borchester]

It's one way of getting herd immunity.

 

[Borg Refinery]

It's one way of getting herd immunity.