Does Socialism hurt more people than it helps?

[MeDeFe]

If they have no concept of property, I'm not taking anything away from them. I am however, giving to them Civilization and the Gospel.

Also eating disorders and diseases.

[Frigidus]

If they have no concept of property, I'm not taking anything away from them. I am however, giving to them Civilization and the Gospel.

Also eating disorders and diseases.

And oppression. And the inevitable destruction of their culture.

[Napoleon Ier]

Well... define "culture"... I mean, do Chimpanzees have "culture"?

I don't know about eating disorders and disease... we have better medical technology, and we enclose our land to grow crops and produce foodstuffs.

[PLAYER57832]

Id also tenatively add that property rights are not so easily and neatly understood in much of the world, thus making the positive claim napoleon makes about compensating negative externalities a bit more theoretical than practical.

In which case, colonize those parts of the world and make them your property.

Sorry, timber companies beat you to it .. and that is partially why certain timber prices have been so low, more US timber companies have gone out of business.

[Napoleon Ier]

Which is why any reasonable proponent of free markets will also advocate compensation for negative externalities, (for Player's benefit, that means when evil nasty capitalist entrepreneurs ravage a forest or dump pollution...)

As opposed to, say, those plain crazy, weaping Liberals?

Names, stupidity, out of the way ... now for the issues:

For the record, I have never used the word "evil" except in very specific and intentional situations (the Lehman brothers executives who took their own bonuses and refused to pay the UK secretaries and janitors their earned wages, for example).

since the external damage represents a violation of the property rights at the heart of the system of free enterprise. Continue using google to research the Soviet Union, as I suggested to you earlier: you'll see how well their system of the State owning and using blunt legislative tools for protection of the environment turned out.

Big jump here! Since when did you decide that my property rights supercede the right of the company next door to operate and make money? (you argued the reverse pretty strongly before). Besides, your claim that "any free market advocate" supports limits of externalities is just plain silly. They may on paper, but only until you tell them that THEY have to cut emissions from THEIR stacks because the scientific evidence shows the chemicals cause harm to neighborhood kids. Then its "what research? ... faulty data .. funded by liberal patsies with agendas"... etc. ("greenhouse gases.. poppycock theory!). The truth is that scientific evidence, particular environmental and health effects is difficult and takes a very long time to assess definitively. A business man says "I won't change until I get ABSOLUTE proof". A mom is more likely to say "if there is a chance it will harm my kid ... get rid of it!". As a scientist, I fall a bit in between. However, when it comes to the irreplaceable, such as much of our environement truly is, I do believe in erring on the side of caution. It is far less COSTLY to everyone to stop damage than it is to correct damage that has already occured ...even if it does mean temporarily putting limits on certain types of business and production as precaution, without fully firm evidence.

(in other words, if I told you that one of the 1000 seats in an auditorium has a tack you cannot see, but will feel when you sit .. you will likely risk it. But, if I told you there was a trigger to a shotgun that would be aimed at your head, would that 1 in 1000 chance seem such a slim chance? In this case, I know enough to see the gun ... many others do not.)


As for the Soviet Union ... Communism is a big leap from basic socialism. I know you are fully aware of the differance. The Soviet union was (and is moving back toward) a fully controlled economy. Why try to pretend they are the same?

Anyway, I specifically said in my earlier post that free market works well for some things. It just happens that my field of expertise is not an area where the free market readily applies.

Well, when it comes to whether the free market or the State damages the environment, I'd rather it were the free market: that way, you can at least get legal representation and fight your battle against offending individuals in the context of the judiciary branch of government. And if a nuclear waste company stacks glowing barrels up near your kids' school or whatever it was you were blabbing about, fair enough, I'm sure any judge would find in your favor.

In a State system, you'd have one executive arm you can't argue against. In Soviet Russia, State sue YOU!

So clearly, ultimately, a system of free enterprise predicated on a philosophy of free individuals being endowed with inalienable rights is better positioned to care for environmental safety than one based on coercive legislation from a faceless government executive. In theory anyway.

As for the empirical evidence... it speaks for itself.

Theory backed up by empirical evidence. There you are... the nuts and bolts of what I call "Science", and when I use that word, I make it mean something.

[Napoleon Ier]

Id also tenatively add that property rights are not so easily and neatly understood in much of the world, thus making the positive claim napoleon makes about compensating negative externalities a bit more theoretical than practical.

In which case, colonize those parts of the world and make them your property.

Sorry, timber companies beat you to it .. and that is partially why certain timber prices have been so low, more US timber companies have gone out of business.

So, let me guess... gigantic protectionist tariffs, import quotas, and government money-printing to decrease real value of their debt is the solution to the problem of the timber companies and all the other starving Americans on the Main Street Dust Bowl?

[PLAYER57832]

Well, when it comes to whether the free market or the State damages the environment, I'd rather it were the free market: that way, you can at least get legal representation and fight your battle against offending individuals in the context of the judiciary branch of government. And if a nuclear waste company stacks glowing barrels up near your kids' school or whatever it was you were blabbing about, fair enough, I'm sure any judge would find in your favor.

In a State system, you'd have one executive arm you can't argue against. In Soviet Russia, State sue YOU!

Last time I checked, this was the United States and not Russia... and if you think the state cannot be sued, you have not studied ANYTHING about natural resource law. Folks sue because the government is doing too little, others sue because the government is not doing enough ... and generally many of each at the same time.

So clearly, ultimately, a system of free enterprise predicated on a philosophy of free individuals being endowed with inalienable rights is better positioned to care for environmental safety than one based on coercive legislation from a faceless government executive. In theory anyway.

Sorry, the data does not support this idea. I don't have to rely on "theory". I have witnessed and lived the reality ... and am still involved in various ways.

As for the empirical evidence... it speaks for itself.

Theory backed up by empirical evidence. There you are... the nuts and bolts of what I call "Science", and when I use that word, I make it mean something.

Present some and we can see. So far, I have only seen opinions. And even those are off base in this case. (WELL below your usual standards! I mean, I generally don't agree with you, but usually you at least present some real information).

To contrast, I can cite multitudes of cases involving everything from Western water rights, to multiple use policies of the Forest Service to the Spotted Owl (actually only a headline for the REAL issue ... salmon), to mining issues, etc.

Oh, and for a prime example of how private property does NOT work, study mining law. Or just look at the past three years in Wyoming.

(and even touching on the citations would fill far more space and take far more time than I have).

[Napoleon Ier]

I'm not denying the State can't be sued, I'm saying thank God it can: because it couldn't under socialism.

As for the rest of your concerns, you've brought up specific cases of largely legislative (in the case of mining law) rulings emanating from a government institution. So, no. Theory, as I outlined and you made bugger all effort to rebutt, and empirical evidence, as China and the ex-Soviet bloc countries all attest, support my view.

The fact that a mining company is digging for uranium under your house or whatever it was is clearly a problem, but not one caused by free-market ideology.

[Snorri1234]

Well... define "culture"... I mean, do Chimpanzees have "culture"?

For someone who claims he isn't racist you sure do sound like one.

[PLAYER57832]

Id also tenatively add that property rights are not so easily and neatly understood in much of the world, thus making the positive claim napoleon makes about compensating negative externalities a bit more theoretical than practical.

In which case, colonize those parts of the world and make them your property.

Sorry, timber companies beat you to it .. and that is partially why certain timber prices have been so low, more US timber companies have gone out of business.

So, let me guess... gigantic protectionist tariffs, import quotas, and government money-printing to decrease real value of their debt is the solution to the problem of the timber companies and all the other starving Americans on the Main Street Dust Bowl?

I have no idea how you derive this nonsense from the facts at hand.

No, the "answer" is, among other things, changing IMF policies so that countries have incentives to protect things of greater value to us protected, rather than encouraging them to bring in companies that will pay short term dividends, but in an extremely unsustainable way.

The ultimate answer is sustainable harvests, but how to acheive that is way more complicated than there is room here.

I'm not denying the State can't be sued, I'm saying thank God it can: because it couldn't under socialism.

Not true at all. You can sue in Scandinavia. The Scandinavian countries are quite socialistic.

So, no. Theory, as I outlined and you made bugger all effort to rebutt, and empirical evidence, as China and the ex-Soviet bloc countries all attest, support my view

yes, I reversed order of your sentences here.

China and the old Soviet Union were COMMUNIST, not socialist. Very differant! And your confusion on this point is very telling!

As for the rest of your concerns, you've brought up specific cases of largely legislative (in the case of mining law) rulings emanating from a government institution. So, no. Theory, as I outlined and you made bugger all effort to rebutt, and empirical evidence, as China and the ex-Soviet bloc countries all attest, support my view.

Laws that came about because mining companies want them .. i.e. capitalism and free market.

The fact that a mining company is digging for uranium under your house or whatever it was is clearly a problem, but not one caused by free-market ideology.

Pretty far off base. The fact that my (and many other people's) surface land and the minerals underneath are sold separately absolutely is due to market economics. Some people were smart enough and had enough money to buy up the rights years ago. They would argue and absolutely do argue that any limitations on their "fair and reasonable" acquisition of those resources would be an impingement upon their property rights.

[Napoleon Ier]

China and the old Soviet Union were COMMUNIST, not socialist. Very differant! And your confusion on this point is very telling

USSR stands for Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Read Marx. There has yet to be (and I contend cannot be) a Communist system, since Communism in the historical dialectic is an anarchist utopia following the dictatorship of the Proletariat, which is in other words, "Socialism", the post-Bourgeois state. It is what every crudely called "Communist" nation has implemented. No good Marxist will claim that these nations were Communist.

Now, these days, many parties call themselves "socialist" because of the post-Soviet stigmatization of the word "Communist", leading people like you to think you're clever by drawing a distinction.

So, yes, very "differant", but not in the way you posit.

As for the idea that "socialistic" countries in Scandinavia provide an example... utter bollocks. This is where there's a "diffarance" in ideology. They're social-democratic, not Socialist, (as for that matter was the French PS in the 1980s, or Labour in the 70s). And no, if the State by legislative decree proclaims something you don't like, you can't sue: those countries operate on a body of Code Law, not an Anglo-Saxon Common Law system.


Sadly, you just end up looking very silly to anyone with a clue.

Laws that came about because mining companies want them .. i.e. capitalism and free market

Funny... I looked up Capitalism in various political textbooks, discussions of it in Mill, Friedman, and Smith, but at no point did any of them mention "an economic system in which wealth and the means of production are controlled by the Mining Companies".

Legislation based on coercion, (such as that passed in favor of the mining companies, which you allude to as an example of the free market) is a product of at worst paleo-corporatism.

Think about it. Why would free-enterprise liberalism want to favor a group of individuals when equality of rights and safety on their mutual exercise in society is the most fundamental tenet of that ideology?
ercion

[Napoleon Ier]

Well... define "culture"... I mean, do Chimpanzees have "culture"?

For someone who claims he isn't racist you sure do sound like one.

I would make a demotivationnal poster for you if I were arsed but I'm not, so I'll just write it:

Irony.

Not a steel alloy.

[PLAYER57832]

China and the old Soviet Union were COMMUNIST, not socialist. Very differant! And your confusion on this point is very telling

USSR stands for Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Read Marx. There has yet to be (and I contend cannot be) a Communist system, since Communism in the historical dialectic is an anarchist utopia following the dictatorship of the Proletariat, which is in other words, "Socialism", the post-Bourgeois state. It is what every crudely called "Communist" nation has implemented. No good Marxist will claim that these nations were Communist.

Yes, we all know they refer to themselves as "Socialist", but they WERE Communist, albiet not the "pure" communism you refer to in Marx. In fact, the Scandinavian countries are much more like the economic Marxist ideal than Russia (or China or even Cuba) ever were.

Now, these days, many parties call themselves "socialist" because of the post-Soviet stigmatization of the word "Communist", leading people like you to think you're clever by drawing a distinction.

No, leading people now talk of a "Planned economy" versus a "free market" or "demand" economy, among other terms. "Communism" and "Socialism" are generally used for political systems not economic ones ... and have been for some time.

So, yes, very "differant", but not in the way you posit.

As for the idea that "socialistic" countries in Scandinavia provide an example... utter bollocks. This is where there's a "diffarance" in ideology. They're social-democratic, not Socialist, (as for that matter was the French PS in the 1980s, or Labour in the 70s). And no, if the State by legislative decree proclaims something you don't like, you can't sue: those countries operate on a body of Code Law, not an Anglo-Saxon Common Law system.


Sadly, you just end up looking very silly to anyone with a clue.

[/quote]

Except I happen to be correct.

[Napoleon Ier]

China and the old Soviet Union were COMMUNIST, not socialist. Very differant! And your confusion on this point is very telling

USSR stands for Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Read Marx. There has yet to be (and I contend cannot be) a Communist system, since Communism in the historical dialectic is an anarchist utopia following the dictatorship of the Proletariat, which is in other words, "Socialism", the post-Bourgeois state. It is what every crudely called "Communist" nation has implemented. No good Marxist will claim that these nations were Communist.

Yes, we all know they refer to themselves as "Socialist", but they WERE Communist, albiet not the "pure" communism you refer to in Marx. In fact, the Scandinavian countries are much more like the economic Marxist ideal than Russia (or China or even Cuba) ever were.

Now, these days, many parties call themselves "socialist" because of the post-Soviet stigmatization of the word "Communist", leading people like you to think you're clever by drawing a distinction.

No, leading people now talk of a "Planned economy" versus a "free market" or "demand" economy, among other terms. "Communism" and "Socialism" are generally used for political systems not economic ones ... and have been for some time.

So, yes, very "differant", but not in the way you posit.

As for the idea that "socialistic" countries in Scandinavia provide an example... utter bollocks. This is where there's a "diffarance" in ideology. They're social-democratic, not Socialist, (as for that matter was the French PS in the 1980s, or Labour in the 70s). And no, if the State by legislative decree proclaims something you don't like, you can't sue: those countries operate on a body of Code Law, not an Anglo-Saxon Common Law system.


Sadly, you just end up looking very silly to anyone with a clue.

Except I happen to be correct.[/quote]

No, you don't happen to be correct, because Communism is still an anarchist utopic stage in a historical dialectic posited by Karl Marx that has yet to be reached by any society, and because mining law favoring certain companies over others is still an element of paleo-corporatist political philosophy, not free (i.e, hic, legislation minimizing) market capitalism.

Oh, and by the way, no. Scandinavian Countries aren't Marxist. There's a "diffarance" between high % GDP public sector spending and Dictatorship of the Proletariat.

[PLAYER57832]

No, you don't happen to be correct, because Communism is still an anarchist utopic stage in a historical dialectic posited by Karl Marx that has yet to be reached by any society,.

Try Lennin on for size

Oh, and by the way, no. Scandinavian Countries aren't Marxist. There's a "diffarance" between high % GDP public sector spending and Dictatorship of the Proletariat.

The differance in the standard of living between the "rich" and the "poor" in Scandinavia is pretty narrow. Economically, they are much closer to the Marxist ideal than the Soviet Union ever was.

You mix politics and economics and try to switch definitions to suit yourself. Stick to one and stick to the RECOGNIZED definitions.

As for this bit:

and because mining law favoring certain companies over others is still an element of paleo-corporatist political philosophy, not free (i.e, hic, legislation minimizing) market capitalism.

You just don't know of what you speak. No company was favored over another. He who had the money and went out to seek the claim got them .. i.e. private ownership. Most of this was decided long before I was born, so I was excluded, but in the same way I am "excluded" from buying prime realistate in Manhattan. That is, if I had the money and the owner wanted to sell, I could buy ... but I don't. The problem is that those "private property rights" never took into account surface issues, because they were not in the radar back then. They REMAIN off the radar screen because we have had 8 years of "deregulate everything to get this economy booming". (unless, of course its against Al Quaeda..)

but this is already far afield from the thread topic, so if you want to debate this further, it will have to be in another thread.

[Napoleon Ier]

Try Lennin on for size

Oh, so I presume you've read him on his Theory of Empiriocriticism and have an elaborate justification for your crackpot theory on how Lenin somehow posited socialism as different from communism in the sense of the latter being the actual dialectic stage to succeed Bourgeois capitalism.

(For snorri's benefit, no I don't presume that's the case, especially given the fact she 's had the gall to misspell his fucking name whilst pretending to lecture me on Marxist historical materialism, I was being ironically rhetorical).

You just don't know of what you speak. No company was favored over another. He who had the money and went out to seek the claim got them .. i.e. private ownership. Most of this was decided long before I was born, so I was excluded, but in the same way I am "excluded" from buying prime realistate in Manhattan. That is, if I had the money and the owner wanted to sell, I could buy ... but I don't. The problem is that those "private property rights" never took into account surface issues, because they were not in the radar back then. They REMAIN off the radar screen because we have had 8 years of "deregulate everything to get this economy booming". (unless, of course its against Al Quaeda..)

but this is already far afield from the thread topic, so if you want to debate this further, it will have to be in another thread.

Which is why an independent judiciary dealing with complex property issues and maximally respecting individual rights on both sides is better equipped to deal with these issues.

Those don't exist in Socialist States, where there is no property, and hence no property law, and hence no end of shit when it comes to attempt to protect the environment.

As evidenced by Socialist failures in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and Maoist China.

The differance in the standard of living between the "rich" and the "poor" in Scandinavia is pretty narrow. Economically, they are much closer to the Marxist ideal than the Soviet Union ever was.

Right. Well, lovely thought that may for you, you haven't demonstrated how that has anything to do with you absurd hypothesis that the existence mining rights being an example of why Marxism is a preferable system of allocating resources in a society.

You mix politics and economics and try to switch definitions to suit yourself. Stick to one and stick to the RECOGNIZED definitions.

Economics and politics do tend to overlap. If a simultaneous discussion of both in relation to MArxism-Leninism is too intellectually daunting, I refer you to a number of good introductory guides on the subject, which you will find do contain definitions recognized by pretty much every serious academic rather than you and the population of mediocre Bachelor's degree holding (read: just about literate) Americans.

[Snorri1234]

China and the old Soviet Union were COMMUNIST, not socialist. Very differant! And your confusion on this point is very telling

USSR stands for Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Read Marx.

Ah shit nappy. I thought you were smarter than others who use the "they call themselves socialist so they are"-argument.

[GabonX]

The history of the USSR demonstrates what happens when you let the government take control. Despite the fact that a socialist nation would be next to impossible to run effectively the leaders who attempted such a system have always been corrupt.

[Napoleon Ier]

China and the old Soviet Union were COMMUNIST, not socialist. Very differant! And your confusion on this point is very telling

USSR stands for Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Read Marx.

Ah shit nappy. I thought you were smarter than others who use the "they call themselves socialist so they are"-argument.

Granted it isn't a stand-alone proof, but given how axiomatically the bollocks PLAYER spouts seems to be held to be amongst vast tranches of the less educated public in the US, I thought I'd provide the best counter-example I could provide, just to tenderize spirits before the big guns of analysis of the dialectic were deployed to prove wrong her position more definitively.

[PLAYER57832]

Try Lennin on for size

Oh, so I presume you've read him on his Theory of Empiriocriticism and have an elaborate justification for your crackpot theory on how Lenin somehow posited socialism as different from communism in the sense of the latter being the actual dialectic stage to succeed Bourgeois capitalism.

(For snorri's benefit, no I don't presume that's the case, especially given the fact she 's had the gall to misspell his fucking name whilst pretending to lecture me on Marxist historical materialism, I was being ironically rhetorical).

The reference is because Soviet Union borrows far more from Lenin than Marx ...as you obviously know, being the expert that you are. And is all the more reason your comparisons to Marx are silly. But then, this used to be a pretty common topic of debate amongst University Professors over beer. It is a bit passe now.

You just don't know of what you speak. No company was favored over another. He who had the money and went out to seek the claim got them .. i.e. private ownership. Most of this was decided long before I was born, so I was excluded, but in the same way I am "excluded" from buying prime realistate in Manhattan. That is, if I had the money and the owner wanted to sell, I could buy ... but I don't. The problem is that those "private property rights" never took into account surface issues, because they were not in the radar back then. They REMAIN off the radar screen because we have had 8 years of "deregulate everything to get this economy booming". (unless, of course its against Al Quaeda..)

but this is already far afield from the thread topic, so if you want to debate this further, it will have to be in another thread.

Which is why an independent judiciary dealing with complex property issues and maximally respecting individual rights on both sides is better equipped to deal with these issues.

Those don't exist in Socialist States, where there is no property, and hence no property law, and hence no end of shit when it comes to attempt to protect the environment.

Socialism means some things are run by the government. Communism is where the state owns everything. At least on this side of the pond. And actually an independent judiciary can exist quite well under Socialism. Theoretically, it could under Communism, but of course it has not.

Again, you mix terms.

As evidenced by Socialist failures in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and Maoist China.

We haven't precisely done a great job of protecting the environment ourselves historically ... and there is a great deal of argument that a major reason for erosion of science in our educational system and promotion of non-scientific ideas is to get rid of all those nasy environmentalists. If kids don't learn how the environment really works, how can they object?

The differance in the standard of living between the "rich" and the "poor" in Scandinavia is pretty narrow. Economically, they are much closer to the Marxist ideal than the Soviet Union ever was.

Right. Well, lovely thought that may for you, you haven't demonstrated how that has anything to do with you absurd hypothesis that the existence mining rights being an example of why Marxism is a preferable system of allocating resources in a society.[/quote]

Probably because I never said it was, nor would I EVER. I simply said that the free market does not fix such problems, which was your ridiculous assertion.

I said it take government oversight, which it does.

You mix politics and economics and try to switch definitions to suit yourself. Stick to one and stick to the RECOGNIZED definitions.

Economics and politics do tend to overlap. If a simultaneous discussion of both in relation to MArxism-Leninism is too intellectually daunting, I refer you to a number of good introductory guides on the subject, which you will find do contain definitions recognized by pretty much every serious academic rather than you and the population of mediocre Bachelor's degree holding (read: just about literate) Americans.[/quote]

Try reading a good dictionary first. Right now, you switch definitions and draw in irrelevant facts and ideas to suit.

I have no trouble debating honestly. What you are trotting out is idiocy in some misguided and arrogant attempt to seem superior. And, you don't even realize you do just the opposit.

[captainwalrus]

This makes no scence, There are more poor people than rich people so how does this hurt more people than it helps?

[Napoleon Ier]

Try Lennin on for size

Oh, so I presume you've read him on his Theory of Empiriocriticism and have an elaborate justification for your crackpot theory on how Lenin somehow posited socialism as different from communism in the sense of the latter being the actual dialectic stage to succeed Bourgeois capitalism.

(For snorri's benefit, no I don't presume that's the case, especially given the fact she 's had the gall to misspell his fucking name whilst pretending to lecture me on Marxist historical materialism, I was being ironically rhetorical).

The reference is because Soviet Union borrows far more from Lenin than Marx ...as you obviously know, being the expert that you are. And is all the more reason your comparisons to Marx are silly. But then, this used to be a pretty common topic of debate amongst University Professors over beer. It is a bit passe now.

I see, and I suppose Lenin came up with his own version of Marxism in a vacuum without at all being influenced by him or his followers.

The only major change Lenin made to Marxist philosophy was to slightly adjust the pre-Bourgeois dialectic to suit Russian historical development. The entirety of his philosophy is directly derived from Marx and Engels.

"Democracy for the vast majority of the people, and suppression by force, i.e., exclusion from democracy, of the exploiters and oppressors of the people--this is the change democracy undergoes during the transition from capitalism to communism."

In other words, Lenin here talks about the "socialist", or "proletarian dictatorship", stage of historical development. Textbook Marx, slightly re-hashed to suit post-feudal Russia.

Do some fucking research on this and get a bloody clue, please, or I'll just end up feeling like I'm beating up the crippled kid. There is literally not a single serious person who's studied Marx at anything more than High School who agrees with you here. Unless you suddenly reveal you're a star scholar on development of Marxist thought, you're going to have to stop making vast, sweeping claims and providing f*ck all evidence for them, at the risk of looking incredibly ignorant.

An independent judiciary dealing with complex property issues and maximally respecting individual rights on both sides is better equipped to deal with these issues.

Those don't exist in Socialist States, where there is no property, and hence no property law, and hence no end of shit when it comes to attempt to protect the environment.

Socialism means some things are run by the government. Communism is where the state owns everything. At least on this side of the pond. And actually an independent judiciary can exist quite well under Socialism. Theoretically, it could under Communism, but of course it has not.

Again, you mix terms.

Yawn.

More Communism/Socialism are distinct ideologies bollocks. Only for the sake of modern convenience, where democratic socialist has been substituted as a term for Marxists who deny the possibility of a Communist stage.

I refer you to the source: read the Communist Manifesto. Everywhere, Socialism is referred to as theories for a system of social organization to complete a transitional stage toward Communist utopia.

But I've already explained to you that Socialism and Communism aren't ideologies, they're historical stages in the Marxist (and Marxist-Leninist) dialectic, and you answer with the usual no! no! no they're not because I always hear CNN and my inept and barely literate friends product of the crumbling American undergraduate educational system refer to them as different, so I must be right!. Then everyone who's read their Kolakowski laughs.

The differance in the standard of living between the "rich" and the "poor" in Scandinavia is pretty narrow. Economically, they are much closer to the Marxist ideal than the Soviet Union ever was.

Right. Well, lovely thought that may for you, you haven't demonstrated how that has anything to do with you absurd hypothesis that the existence mining rights being an example of why Marxism is a preferable system of allocating resources in a society.

Probably because I never said it was, nor would I EVER. I simply said that the free market does not fix such problems, which was your ridiculous assertion.

I said it take government oversight, which it does.

No more government oversight than necessary for a normal free-market economy where those incurring externality costs are made to compensate... but I'm just talking to a brick wall here.

You mix politics and economics and try to switch definitions to suit yourself. Stick to one and stick to the RECOGNIZED definitions.

Economics and politics do tend to overlap. If a simultaneous discussion of both in relation to MArxism-Leninism is too intellectually daunting, I refer you to a number of good introductory guides on the subject, which you will find do contain definitions recognized by pretty much every serious academic rather than you and the population of mediocre Bachelor's degree holding (read: just about literate) Americans.

Try reading a good dictionary first. Right now, you switch definitions and draw in irrelevant facts and ideas to suit.

I have no trouble debating honestly. What you are trotting out is idiocy in some misguided and arrogant attempt to seem superior. And, you don't even realize you do just the opposit.

If you want to refer to the work of every single scholar who's ever written on Marx, inside and outside countries officially subscribing to his doctrine as "trotters out of idiocy", then be my guest.

Just don't be astounded when we then turn around and refuse to take you seriously until you post actual arguments rather than endlessly repeat the same tired old garbage we've demonstrated is wrong time and time again.

Right, now I'll leave you to do the latter and have your hollow last word. Just please... for f*ck's sake, read something on this topic after you've done that. I just can't stand that someone can pontificate such vacuous and blatantly, demonstrably incorrect bollocks in such assertive positive formulations whilst clearly having not read into the topic in any more depth than a thirteen year old starting a GCSE history course.

[GabonX]

The reference is because Soviet Union borrows far more from Lenin than Marx ...as you obviously know, being the expert that you are. And is all the more reason your comparisons to Marx are silly. But then, this used to be a pretty common topic of debate amongst University Professors over beer. It is a bit passe now.

"The sparking genius of Marx and Engels
Envisioned the future rise of the commune.
Lenin has outlined us the road to the freedom
And great Stalin is leading us through it."

-Anthem of the Bolshevik Party

We have seen the progression of communism and socialism and know that it has failed. It's easy to say that Karl Marx wasn't responsible for the failure of the USSR but Marx will not be around to guide any such government in the future. Every forray into communism has failed, Lenin being a moderate example of failure and Stalin being an extreme one.

It's also notable that Karl Marx was essentially a bum who did no work aside from writing about how other people should submit to labor to support each other(him), and quite frankly he was an embarrasment to my family.

[Snorri1234]

More Communism/Socialism are distinct ideologies bollocks. Only for the sake of modern convenience, where democratic socialist has been substituted as a term for Marxists who deny the possibility of a Communist stage.

I refer you to the source: read the Communist Manifesto. Everywhere, Socialism is referred to as theories for a system of social organization to complete a transitional stage toward Communist utopia.

While that is true, you are ignoring a simple fact. Socialists don't want communism. Modern socialism basically says that communism is bad and that there needs to be a mix where socialism is present in some things and not in others.


And while you may claim that originally Marx said socialism was a transitional stage, I think you're smart enough to realize that terms change their meaning over time. There was a time when left was associated with conservatism and right with progression, but things change.


This is why the often-heard claims of right-wingers that somethings "reeks of socialism, therefore communism" are absurd. They are basically using an out-of-date definition to condemn an argument.

But I've already explained to you that Socialism and Communism aren't ideologies, they're historical stages in the Marxist (and Marxist-Leninist) dialectic, and you answer with the usual no! no! no they're not because I always hear CNN and my inept and barely literate friends product of the crumbling American undergraduate educational system refer to them as different, so I must be right!. Then everyone who's read their Kolakowski laughs.

Yet those who haven't read Kolakowski but still proscribe to either socialism or communism are the ones who actually determine whether it's an ideology or not.



To deny an argument based on your old definition of a term is flat-out ridiculous. It is retarded and shows that you are a person who'd rather beat someone to death than listen to what they have to say. You dismiss the argument without considering it because it contradicts your world-view. You do not care whether something works or not, you just want everything to fit into your view of how things should be. (And not how they are, which a reasonable person would do.)

[Snorri1234]

We have seen the progression of communism and socialism and know that it has failed.

Sup bitch, how you enjoying that recession?