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"Communism is the greatest evil unleashed on humanity" (6 Viewers)

zeam

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sam04u said:
The future must suck for people like you.

Where will you be when it's revolution time?
revoulution...slaughter of thousands ~~~millions~~~~blood to flow through the streets you want that>>....
obvious troll is obvious
 

Nebuchanezzar

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vs.



The battle is won comrades. Communism clearly offers happiness and prospertity good future for in bucket.
 

sam04u

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zeam said:
revoulution...slaughter of thousands ~~~millions~~~~blood to flow through the streets you want that>>....
obvious troll is obvious
:lol:
Maybe if this was a dictatorship....
All revolution takes is a whole bunch of pretty flyers, a gathering of the worlds leading socialists, televised debates and conventions and a sucessful election. (Then again what we have now aint so bad.)
 

zeam

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sam04u said:
:lol:
Maybe if this was a dictatorship....
All revolution takes is a whole bunch of pretty flyers, a gathering of the worlds leading socialists, televised debates and conventions and a sucessful election. (Then again what we have now aint so bad.)
i fucking hope ur d!ck get chop off irl, shit stains like you make me vomit go
 

sam04u

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zeam said:
i fucking hope ur d!ck get chop off irl, shit stains like you make me vomit go
Your mum loves me. ;)
 

Nebuchanezzar

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i hope your capitalist dictators strip you of your rights and make you work in a factory for pittance while they reap the rewards.

you wake up in heathrow
you wake up in dulles
you wake up in la guardia
 

melanieeeee.

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Nebuchanezzar said:
Comrades! Let us work together and not against one another! We can build a new left and create a new world!
communism ftw.

[Repeat x2]
my ads bring all the commies to the yard,
and they're like,
i wanna take part
damn right they wannna be a part
of communism, it’s a trend
ill tell ya

yes you want it,
the thing that makes me,
e-equal
to my neighbour
i think its time

[Chorus x2]
la la-la la la,
karl marx
lala-lalala,
commies for life now

my ads bring all the commies to the yard,
and they're like,
i wanna take part
damn right they wannna be a part
of communism, it’s a trend
ill tell ya
 

Zeitgeist308

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sam04ufail said:
Zeitgeist, how fortunate we are that you will never be responsible for running anything larger than a household, if by the time you're old enough to open up a family, male is still the dominant figure in the household.
What does this have to do with anything? Please, stay on topic.

sam04u said:
You have an absolute lack of even fundamental knowledge or of how a society which you would like to exist (I can infer so) a communist state, could exist and at the same time provide for the people neccessities of life, let alone the fine arts and pleasures life has to offer.
I'm not exactly understanding what you are saying here (your English makes no sense at all), but I'll try to respond as best I can.

The hypothetical of the farmer in a communist society did not present my "wishes" for how society should be organised, that would be pure utopianism, something I have condemned thoroughout this thread. Rather it presented a sketch as to how communist social relations function.

sam04ufail said:
If the crop is controlled by the farmer
Well actually in my hypothetical the farmer did not "control" the crop qua property. The farmer, rather, was performing labour in the growing and harvesting of the crop in accordance with a hypothetical rational social plan for the production of use-values.

sam04ufail said:
therefore the cost of the crop is controlled by the farmer
Well actually Sam, that would be an impossibility as a result of the fact that:

1. The crop is not the property of the farmer
2. Even if we assume a hypothetical where the farmer was to appropriate the crop as his own property he would be unable to "control the price" due to the fact that in our hypothetical communist society money and the market no longer exist.

sam04ufail said:
What you're implying is Communism = Anarchism.
Unless you are referring to the market anarchism of Proudhon which has been dead for 150 years your interpretation could not possibly have been "Communism = Anarchism" because in case you don't know, an "Anarchist society" is a "communist society".

sam04ufail said:
YOU ARE COMPLETELY WRONG
No Sam, you have interpretted it wrongly.

sam04ufail said:
And how about if the farmer can not labour at all? Should he and the people go without?
Are you suggesting that the farmer must be forced to labour?

sam04ufail said:
You have no idea what you're talking about. You stupid idiot.
Well I guess neither do Marx or Engels:
It has been objected that upon the abolition of private property, all work will cease, and universal laziness will overtake us.
According to this, bourgeois society ought long ago to have gone to the dogs through sheer idleness; for those those of its members who work, acquire nothing, and those who acquire anything do not work. The whole of this objection is but another expression of the tautology: that there can no longer be any wage-labour when there is no longer any capital. - Marx The Communist Manifesto

In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly—only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs! - Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme

The state inevitably falls with them. The society which organizes production anew on the basis of free and equal association of the producers will put the whole state machinery where it will then belong - into the museum of antiquities, next to the spinning wheel and the bronze ax. - Engels, Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State
 

Zeitgeist308

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fOR3V3RPINKKKK said:
You cannot apply communism if people do not want to follow communist ways. Communism makes the assumption that everyone wants to share possessions with the community.
And if they do?:
In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly—only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs! - Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme

What constitutes the alienation of labour?
Firstly, the fact that labour is external to the worker – i.e., does not belong to his essential being; that he, therefore, does not confirm himself in his work, but denies himself, feels miserable and not happy, does not develop free mental and physical energy, but mortifies his flesh and ruins his mind. Hence, the worker feels himself only when he is not working; when he is working, he does not feel himself. He is at home when he is not working, and not at home when he is working. His labour is, therefore, not voluntary but forced, it is forced labour. It is, therefore, not the satisfaction of a need but a mere means to satisfy needs outside itself. Its alien character is clearly demonstrated by the fact that as soon as no physical or other compulsion exists, it is shunned like the plague. External labour, labour in which man alienates himself, is a labour of self-sacrifice, of mortification. Finally, the external character of labour for the worker is demonstrated by the fact that it belongs not to him but to another, and that in it he belongs not to himself but to another. Just as in religion the spontaneous activity of the human imagination, the human brain, and the human heart, detaches itself from the individual and reappears as the alien activity of a god or of a devil, so the activity of the worker is not his own spontaneous activity. It belongs to another, it is a loss of his self.
The result is that man (the worker) feels that he is acting freely only in his animal functions – eating, drinking, and procreating, or at most in his dwelling and adornment – while in his human functions, he is nothing more than animal.
It is true that eating, drinking, and procreating, etc., are also genuine human functions. However, when abstracted from other aspects of human activity, and turned into final and exclusive ends, they are animal. - Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844

 

Zeitgeist308

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SP said:
1. Your unwillingness to specify what communism will look like makes any argument about how good/bad communism is pointless.
Exactly. A Marxist does not "support" communism on the basis that it is a "better society". They support it on the basis of the class struggle.

SP said:
You cannot sit back and talk about how good it is unless you are willing to put forward a substantive notion of what communism, in fact, is.
I haven't been. I've been combating the notion that the "communist states" where communist and that they can thus not be used to assess the merits of communist society (which in itself I believe is fruitless to do).

SP said:
2. Essentialist ontology of labour = prioritsation of labour as the generator of consciousness.
I am afraid I still miss your point. In what way does Marxism prioritise "labour as the generator of consciousness". How do you define "consciousness" here?

To me, while labour may be important, its ahistorical positioning as always the most important feature of subjective development needs to be tempered with a more balanced, contingent approach. In other words, I would say that the importance of labour versus, say, gender, as the chief "social axis" of consciousness development depends upon particular historical conditions, and is not a law of subjectivity.
I am still a little hazy on exactly what you are saying here. I am assuming that by labour you mean class and what you are trying to say is that Historical Materialism takes a simplistic view of society solely from an economic point of view with either class struggle or the development of the productive forces playing the prime role in historical development. If this is the case this is a very common criticism levelled at Marxism (especially by New-Left Anarchists). I think a good response to this criticism was given by Engels:
According to the materialistic conception of history, the production and reproduction of real life constitutes in the last instance the determining factor of history. Neither Marx nor I ever maintained more. Now when someone comes along and distorts this to mean that the economic factor is the sole determining factor, he is converting the former proposition into a meaningless, abstract and absurd phrase. The economic situation is the basis but the various factors of the superstructure – the political forms of the class struggles and its results – constitutions, etc., established by victorious classes after hard-won battles – legal forms, and even the reflexes of all these real struggles in the brain of the participants, political, jural, philosophical theories, religious conceptions and their further development into systematic dogmas – all these exercize an influence upon the course of historical struggles, and in many cases determine for the most part their form. There is a reciprocity between all these factors in which, finally, through the endless array of contingencies (i.e., of things and events whose inner connection with one another is so remote, or so incapable of proof, that we may neglect it, regarding it as nonexistent) the economic movement asserts itself as necessary. Were this not the case, the application of the history to any given historical period would be easier than the solution of a simple equation of the first degree. We ourselves make our own history, but, first of all, under very definite presuppositions and conditions. Among these are the economic, which are finally decisive. - Engels, Letter to J. Bloch (September 21, 1890)

We regard the economic conditions as conditioning, in the last instance, historical development. But race is itself an economic factor. But there are two points here which must not be overlooked. (a) The political, legal, philosophical, religious, literary, artistic, etc., development rest upon the economic. But they all react upon one another and upon the economic base. It is not the case that the economic situation is the cause, alone active, and everything else only a passive effect. Rather there is a reciprocal interaction with a fundamental economic necessity which in the last instance always asserts itself. The state, e.g., exerts its influence through tariffs, free trade, good or bad taxation. Even that deadly supineness and impotence of the German philistine which arose out of the miserable economic situation of Germany from 1648 to 1830 and which expressed itself first in pietism, then in sentimentalism and crawling servility before prince and noble, were not without their economic effects. They constituted one of the greatest hindrances to an upward movement and were only cleared out of the way by the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars which made the chronic misery acute. Hence, it is not true, as some people here and there conveniently imagine, that economic conditions have an automatic effect. Men make their own history, but in a given, conditioning milieu, upon the basis of actual relations already extant, among which, the economic relations, no matter how much they are influenced by relations of a political and ideological order, are ultimately decisive, constituting a red thread which runs through all the other relations and enabling us to understand them.
(b) Men make their own history but until now not with collective will according to a collective plan. Not even in a definitely limited given society. Their strivings are at cross purposes with each other, and in all such societies there therefore reigns a necessity, which is supplemented by and manifests itself in the form of contingency. The necessity which here asserts itself through all those contingencies is ultimately, again, economic. Here we must treat of the so-called great man. That a certain particular man and no other emerges at a definite time in a given country is naturally pure chance. But even if we eliminate him, there is always a need for a substitute, and the substitute is found tant bien que mal; in the long run he is sure to be found. That Napoleon – this particular Corsican – should have been the military dictator made necessary by the exhausting wars of the French Republics that was a matter of chance. But that in default of a Napoleon, another would have filled his place, that is established by the fact that whenever a man was necessary he has always been found: Caesar, Augustus, Cromwell, etc. Marx, to be sure, discovered the materialistic conception of history – but the examples of Thierry, Mignet, Guizot, the whole school of English historians up to 1850 show they were working towards it; and the discovery of the same conception by Morgan serves as proof that the time was ripe for it, and that it had to be discovered.
So with all other accidents and apparent accidents in history. The further removed the field we happen to be investigating is from the economic, and the closer it comes to the domain of pure, abstract ideology, the more we will find that it reveals accidents in its development, the more does the course of its curve run in zig-zag fashion. But fit a trend to the curve and you will find that the longer the period taken, the more inclusive the field treated, the more closely will this trend run parallel to the trend of economic development. - Engels, Letter to H. Starkenburg

Also, specifically on the question of gender and it's role in history, a good work to read despite its lenght (and in some respects it's out-datedness is The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.

SP said:
If theory and practice do not unite, Marxist theory (while it could possibly be descriptively true) has failed in its revolutionary ambition.
Thank you for the clarification on point 3. However this does not amount to a critique of Marxism so much as a critique of Marxists hitherto.

SP said:
I think The German Ideology tends to take a more "realist" approach to communism - seeing it as not the fulfilment of an inevitable historical teleology, but as the contingent outcome of real social action. I haven't got the entire book in front of me so I can't find you any quotes - but this is what my philosophy lecturer tells me.
This is correct. But I would add, this is not unique to the German Ideology.
 

Zeitgeist308

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sthcross.dude said:
I favour nationalisation of factors of production, but think we should maintain a functioning democracy.
1. State capitalism is not a solution to the class struggle.
But, the transformation — either into joint-stock companies and trusts, or into State-ownership — does not do away with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces. In the joint-stock companies and trusts, this is obvious. And the modern State, again, is only the organization that bourgeois society takes on in order to support the external conditions of the capitalist mode of production against the encroachments as well of the workers as of individual capitalists. The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine — the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage-workers — proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with. It is, rather, brought to a head. But, brought to a head, it topples over. State-ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but concealed within it are the technical conditions that form the elements of that solution - Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
2. Democracy? O dear, suffering from illusions of bourgeois dictatorship as "pure democracy" now are we. How very Kautskyite of you.

sam04ursogullible said:
You can't stop the revolution troll.

I'm with you Comrade Nebuchanezzar!
You do realise Nebuchanezzar is just playing right? :uhoh:

sam04ursuchajoke said:
All revolution takes is a whole bunch of pretty flyers, a gathering of the worlds leading socialists, televised debates and conventions and a sucessful election. (Then again what we have now aint so bad.)
I hope you are joking.

*I will edit this to include a quote shortly*
 

Nebuchanezzar

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If you seriously believe there's a substantial amount of people who do that at Centrelink then you're deluded.

It's a Thatcheresque fantasy dreamed up to murder communism and babies.
 

Zeitgeist308

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fOR3V3RPINKKKK said:
Once upon a time a met this guy who told me that he didn't work and scabbed of centrelink because every time he did work he would get shitty. How does that explain all the lazy buggers scabbing off the centrelink atm?
Wage-labour is alienating.
What constitutes the alienation of labour?

Firstly, the fact that labour is external to the worker – i.e., does not belong to his essential being; that he, therefore, does not confirm himself in his work, but denies himself, feels miserable and not happy, does not develop free mental and physical energy, but mortifies his flesh and ruins his mind. Hence, the worker feels himself only when he is not working; when he is working, he does not feel himself. He is at home when he is not working, and not at home when he is working. His labour is, therefore, not voluntary but forced, it is forced labour. It is, therefore, not the satisfaction of a need but a mere means to satisfy needs outside itself. Its alien character is clearly demonstrated by the fact that as soon as no physical or other compulsion exists, it is shunned like the plague. External labour, labour in which man alienates himself, is a labour of self-sacrifice, of mortification. Finally, the external character of labour for the worker is demonstrated by the fact that it belongs not to him but to another, and that in it he belongs not to himself but to another. Just as in religion the spontaneous activity of the human imagination, the human brain, and the human heart, detaches itself from the individual and reappears as the alien activity of a god or of a devil, so the activity of the worker is not his own spontaneous activity. It belongs to another, it is a loss of his self.

The result is that man (the worker) feels that he is acting freely only in his animal functions – eating, drinking, and procreating, or at most in his dwelling and adornment – while in his human functions, he is nothing more than animal.

It is true that eating, drinking, and procreating, etc., are also genuine human functions. However, when abstracted from other aspects of human activity, and turned into final and exclusive ends, they are animal.

We have considered the act of estrangement of practical human activity, of labour, from two aspects:

(1) the relationship of the worker to the product of labour as an alien object that has power over him. The relationship is, at the same time, the relationship to the sensuous external world, to natural objects, as an alien world confronting him, in hostile opposition.

(2) The relationship of labour to the act of production within labour. This relationship is the relationship of the worker to his own activity as something which is alien and does not belong to him, activity as passivity, power as impotence, procreation as emasculation, the worker’s own physical and mental energy, his personal life – for what is life but activity? – as an activity directed against himself, which is independent of him and does not belong to him. Self-estrangement, as compared with the estrangement of the object mentioned above.

[...]

In the same way as estranged labour reduces spontaneous and free activity to a means, it makes man’s species-life a means of his physical existence.

Consciousness, which man has from his species, is transformed through estrangement so that species-life becomes a means for him.

(3) Estranged labour, therefore, turns man’s species-being – both nature and his intellectual species-power – into a being alien to him and a means of his individual existence. It estranges man from his own body, from nature as it exists outside him, from his spiritual essence, his human existence.

(4) An immediate consequence of man’s estrangement from the product of his labour, his life activity, his species-being, is the estrangement of man from man. When man confront himself, he also confronts other men. What is true of man’s relationship to his labour, to the product of his labour, and to himself, is also true of his relationship to other men, and to the labour and the object of the labour of other men. - Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844

When the alienating nature of labour is cast off, labour will no longer be a coerced activity of degradation and slavery. Then and only then does labour then become "life's prime want", that is, a positive expression of man's "species being" (or human nature if you will).
 
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melanieeeee.

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Zeitgeist308 said:
Wage-labour is alienating.
What constitutes the alienation of labour?

Firstly, the fact that labour is external to the worker – i.e., does not belong to his essential being; that he, therefore, does not confirm himself in his work, but denies himself, feels miserable and not happy, does not develop free mental and physical energy, but mortifies his flesh and ruins his mind. Hence, the worker feels himself only when he is not working; when he is working, he does not feel himself. He is at home when he is not working, and not at home when he is working. His labour is, therefore, not voluntary but forced, it is forced labour. It is, therefore, not the satisfaction of a need but a mere means to satisfy needs outside itself. Its alien character is clearly demonstrated by the fact that as soon as no physical or other compulsion exists, it is shunned like the plague. External labour, labour in which man alienates himself, is a labour of self-sacrifice, of mortification. Finally, the external character of labour for the worker is demonstrated by the fact that it belongs not to him but to another, and that in it he belongs not to himself but to another. Just as in religion the spontaneous activity of the human imagination, the human brain, and the human heart, detaches itself from the individual and reappears as the alien activity of a god or of a devil, so the activity of the worker is not his own spontaneous activity. It belongs to another, it is a loss of his self.

The result is that man (the worker) feels that he is acting freely only in his animal functions – eating, drinking, and procreating, or at most in his dwelling and adornment – while in his human functions, he is nothing more than animal.

It is true that eating, drinking, and procreating, etc., are also genuine human functions. However, when abstracted from other aspects of human activity, and turned into final and exclusive ends, they are animal.

We have considered the act of estrangement of practical human activity, of labour, from two aspects:

(1) the relationship of the worker to the product of labour as an alien object that has power over him. The relationship is, at the same time, the relationship to the sensuous external world, to natural objects, as an alien world confronting him, in hostile opposition.

(2) The relationship of labour to the act of production within labour. This relationship is the relationship of the worker to his own activity as something which is alien and does not belong to him, activity as passivity, power as impotence, procreation as emasculation, the worker’s own physical and mental energy, his personal life – for what is life but activity? – as an activity directed against himself, which is independent of him and does not belong to him. Self-estrangement, as compared with the estrangement of the object mentioned above.

[...]

In the same way as estranged labour reduces spontaneous and free activity to a means, it makes man’s species-life a means of his physical existence.

Consciousness, which man has from his species, is transformed through estrangement so that species-life becomes a means for him.

(3) Estranged labour, therefore, turns man’s species-being – both nature and his intellectual species-power – into a being alien to him and a means of his individual existence. It estranges man from his own body, from nature as it exists outside him, from his spiritual essence, his human existence.

(4) An immediate consequence of man’s estrangement from the product of his labour, his life activity, his species-being, is the estrangement of man from man. When man confront himself, he also confronts other men. What is true of man’s relationship to his labour, to the product of his labour, and to himself, is also true of his relationship to other men, and to the labour and the object of the labour of other men. - Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844

When the alienating nature of labour is cast off, labour will no longer be a coerced activity of degradation and slavery. Then and only then does labour then become "life's prime want", that is, a positive expression of man's "species being" (or human nature if you will).
so what you are saying is if we remove wage labour everyone is more likely to want to work?
you seem to know a lot about communism. good on ya.
 
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Zeitgeist308

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Nebuchanezzar said:
step 1: copy+paste from Marx websites
step 2: ???
step 3: respect
I'm letting the text speak for itself. I could of course choose to type out a rather lengthy post on the alienation of labour for example but it is much easier to cite the text. Also, my heavy use of quoting has been to dispel any illusions that I am (as a poster claimed earlier) "repackaging communism".

melanieeeee said:
so what you are saying is if we remove wage labour everyone is more likely to want to work?
What I am saying is that it is the alienating nature of work which causes the worker to act as he does in relation to work. When the cause for the disdain of labour is done away with, labour can then become a fulfilling activity in which people may take part voluntarily for their own collective benefit.
 
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