Biden clenches the nomination.

[tstorm823]

I mean, you say that, but your corporatist ideology is literally burning up the planet. I think supporting education and human culture is important. Whose destroying society?

The stated goal of communism is the creation of a stateless, classless society. Such a thing does not now, nor has it ever existed. Nothing's even come close in all of recorded history, and likely all of pre-history before that. Every culture ever realized has hierarchy. Your goal necessarily requires the elimination of all of it, because by your ideology, cultures are just another means of discrimination between classes of people, and therefore must be erased.

So, you. You want to destroy society.

 

[Worgen]

And destroy society entirely. I understand what communism is. I'm not sure it's accurate to even describe it as political in nature. Most people line up on the political spectrum where we try and figure out how best to govern existing society and how that governance might improve that society. To you, politics and economics are just tools towards the end goal of erasing all human culture that has ever existed. That's not left-wing politics. Left-wing politics is getting maximum participation in governance and in society as a whole. You would destroy everything left-wing people are trying to make better. Communism does not exist in a reasonable political spectrum.

I don't think his policies would destroy society. I just think they would never make it, I doubt we have the political will for some of what he was advocating, like literally getting rid of private insurance. I have a feeling that Bernie would have been a do nothing president, not because he didn't want to do more, but because he just couldn't get the votes needed for what he wanted to pass.

 

[tstorm823]

I don't think his policies would destroy society. I just think they would never make it, I doubt we have the political will for some of what he was advocating, like literally getting rid of private insurance. I have a feeling that Bernie would have been a do nothing president, not because he didn't want to do more, but because he just couldn't get the votes needed for what he wanted to pass.

I don't disagree, and I would personally call that a feature of the system more than a bug, but Bernie Sanders isn't a communist. fOx thinks Bernie is towards the center because Bernie is only talking about lessening inequalities rather than eliminating any structure that could possibly lead to them. Actual communists don't believe in a proper distribution of wealth, they want the concept of wealth to no longer exist.

 

[Worgen]

I don't disagree, and I would personally call that a feature of the system more than a bug, but Bernie Sanders isn't a communist. fOx thinks Bernie is towards the center because Bernie is only talking about lessening inequalities rather than eliminating any structure that could possibly lead to them. Actual communists don't believe in a proper distribution of wealth, they want the concept of wealth to no longer exist.

I hesitate to call it a feature, even though I agree with that since our system is designed for slow change overtime. I think the real problem Fox is having is that he is coming at this from the far left and is implying that his stance is more just left and everyone not as far left as him is right. I thought the communists right now were mostly fighting against classes. Like that it should be a classless society, whatever that means.

 

[tstorm823]

I hesitate to call it a feature, even though I agree with that since our system is designed for slow change overtime. I think the real problem Fox is having is that he is coming at this from the far left and is implying that his stance is more just left and everyone not as far left as him is right. I thought the communists right now were mostly fighting against classes. Like that it should be a classless society, whatever that means.

When you really think about what a classless society means, it's kind of frightening.

Tangentially, I really do wish we would stop trying to plot totally different paradigms on the same spectrum. The vast majority of everyone will share the common sense idea that the structures of society have been important in the advancement of the species, that advancements in culture and government and economics as well as technology have gotten people from nomadic tribes that slaughter one another to modern society.

The fringe groups that are typically seen as extremists aren't just really far right or really far left, their ideologies exist in a parallel universe where the foundations of our society are the root issue; where civilized society and governance aren't solutions to conflict or suffering, but instead the cause of those problems. That's where you get the anarchists who want governments to disappear and let human nature run free, the communists who seek to replace all aspects of human civilization with a single monolithic thing, and the fascists who see the conflict and instead of trying to fix it, they decide they're gonna win.

But normal people don't view the world that way. Normal people know that suffering is natural and society works to mitigate it. Normal people know that conflict is human nature and would exist with or without power hierarchies. Normal people believe that good is done through wealth, and government, and leadership, and that it's not all just some arbitrary system of oppression. If someone isn't on board with the idea that the state, the economy, and the structures of society in total are just systems of oppression, then it doesn't matter how far left they go, they still won't reach communism.

Edit to summarize: I think when discussing left to right politics, it would be better to limit it to the discussion on what form and scope of government is most beneficial, and ignore all the groups who think it just isn't.

 

[Worgen]

Edit to summarize: I think when discussing left to right politics, it would be better to limit it to the discussion on what form and scope of government is most beneficial, and ignore all the groups who think it just isn't.

I think that gives it a bit too broad a reach still, because based on ones personal values you can still argue for very hypothetical versions of government. I think when discussing politics is better to consider the feasibility of such a form of government happening. It's fun to say that communism would solve all our problems and hypothetically with an ideal implementation of it, it would, but so would capitalism. And we already have capitalism and we won't be betting communism, so a realistic discussion would be how to make capitalism closer to the ideal to benefit us all, rather then communism will fix everything, but no idea how to get there.

 

[fOx]

The stated goal of communism is the creation of a stateless, classless society. Such a thing does not now, nor has it ever existed. Nothing's even come close in all of recorded history, and likely all of pre-history before that. Every culture ever realized has hierarchy. Your goal necessarily requires the elimination of all of it, because by your ideology, cultures are just another means of discrimination between classes of people, and therefore must be erased.

So, you. You want to destroy society.

This is incorrect. We actually do get a glimpse of what a pristine anarcho communist society would look like, through the gospels. After the death of jesus, his followers came together, and pulled their resources. They sold their lands and possessions, and decided, as a community, how to use it. Thus the hungry and poor and vulnerable were looked after. For all intents and purposes, Christians were the first communists.

I don't like bringing faith into political discussions, because I know not everyone shares my beliefs, but to be frank, I think a communist society isn't only possible, but inevitable.

 

[Worgen]

This is incorrect. We actually do get a glimpse of what a pristine anarcho communist society would look like, through the gospels. After the death of jesus, his followers came together, and pulled their resources. They sold their lands and possessions, and decided, as a community, how to use it. Thus the hungry and poor and vulnerable were looked after. For all intents and purposes, Christians were the first communists.

I don't like bringing faith into political discussions, because I know not everyone shares my beliefs, but to be frank, I think a communist society isn't only possible, but inevitable.

You don't need to bring religion into this, its actually pretty easy to make a small scale society based around communal living like this. The problem comes when you get more and more people. You can easily manage something like that with about 250 people, you can probably even bump it up to a couple thousand but when you start getting bigger and wanting them to be a rather unified group, things start getting more difficult and you need more structures of governance to keep the groups united. Sure you could stick to just a small group and just have a bunch of those, but then a larger more unified group can easily come in and take over.

 

[Hawki]

You don't need to bring religion into this, its actually pretty easy to make a small scale society based around communal living like this. The problem comes when you get more and more people. You can easily manage something like that with about 250 people, you can probably even bump it up to a couple thousand but when you start getting bigger and wanting them to be a rather unified group, things start getting more difficult and you need more structures of governance to keep the groups united. Sure you could stick to just a small group and just have a bunch of those, but then a larger more unified group can easily come in and take over.

Dunbar's number - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I'm very skeptical of communism working in any meaningful sense. Anarchism/hunter gathers/anarcho primitivism can work for small groups, but do you think you can apply that to a society of millions, in a world of billions? I mean, societies have tried ever since 1917, and, well...

 

[Worgen]

Dunbar's number - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I'm very skeptical of communism working in any meaningful sense. Anarchism/hunter gathers/anarcho primitivism can work for small groups, but do you think you can apply that to a society of millions, in a world of billions? I mean, societies have tried ever since 1917, and, well...

That's literally what I'm saying, that it can work small scale but once you get more people then no. Once you get beyond the number of people in a society that you can directly know and I would argue that a friend of a friend could know then it wouldn't work.

 

[Trunkage]

When you really think about what a classless society means, it's kind of frightening.

Tangentially, I really do wish we would stop trying to plot totally different paradigms on the same spectrum. The vast majority of everyone will share the common sense idea that the structures of society have been important in the advancement of the species, that advancements in culture and government and economics as well as technology have gotten people from nomadic tribes that slaughter one another to modern society.

The fringe groups that are typically seen as extremists aren't just really far right or really far left, their ideologies exist in a parallel universe where the foundations of our society are the root issue; where civilized society and governance aren't solutions to conflict or suffering, but instead the cause of those problems. That's where you get the anarchists who want governments to disappear and let human nature run free, the communists who seek to replace all aspects of human civilization with a single monolithic thing, and the fascists who see the conflict and instead of trying to fix it, they decide they're gonna win.

But normal people don't view the world that way. Normal people know that suffering is natural and society works to mitigate it. Normal people know that conflict is human nature and would exist with or without power hierarchies. Normal people believe that good is done through wealth, and government, and leadership, and that it's not all just some arbitrary system of oppression. If someone isn't on board with the idea that the state, the economy, and the structures of society in total are just systems of oppression, then it doesn't matter how far left they go, they still won't reach communism.

Edit to summarize: I think when discussing left to right politics, it would be better to limit it to the discussion on what form and scope of government is most beneficial, and ignore all the groups who think it just isn't.

Well, a classed society definitely doesn’t help society either.How many wars have been started by ‘the common man’? How many were started by kings or other world leaders? You talk about slaughter, but people like Attila, Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, Alfred the Great, Charlemagne, Coa Coa, Isabella and Ferdinand of Spain, Theodore Roosevelt and a George Bush, who are all very keen to enforce their society onto others, killed millions each do so. Lenin fits here too, as he was very into the ‘elites are needed to control society properly.’ (You know, the opposite of Communism.) And it is also a key theme of the Founding Fathers, they banned non-elites from being in the electoral process.

We’re so scared of anarchy, we ignore the wasteland and misery structured society provides. See also Iran and the US, or China and the US. Both are about forcing a type of societal structure onto others. Iran is all about classes. And you can’t tell me that China is rife with classes, despite pretending to be classless.

And I’m not pro-Anarchy at all. I don’t think it’s a great idea. It IS being used as a bogeyman to scare people into giving up their freedom and worth.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Out of curiosity, what do you think the solution is to the right wing problem in americsn politics?

Truthfully, I don't think there is a solution, at least not at the present time. The options seem to be disaster, not-disaster and hoping for something to magically fix everything. I'm leaning towards the second, with the hope that if things are held together long enough progress can slowly get made. The last hundred or so years in the US didn't see their society being replaced by a better one all of a sudden, but women got the vote, the civil rights movement happened, there's been great improvements in LGBT rights etc. Still a long way short of the goal (whatever an individual personally sees the goal as) and many, many people aren't going to live to see much in the way of improvements for them.

crimson5pheonix accused Saelune of being comfy with the treatment of poor people in the US. While I can't say I'm comfy, it's fair to say I'm fairly resigned. Come back in 4, 8, 12, 16 years later and there might have been some improvements (and that's worth fighting for), but the underlying issues won't have gone away because people don't want them to.

 

[Hawki]

We’re so scared of anarchy, we ignore the wasteland and misery structured society provides. See also Iran and the US, or China and the US. Both are about forcing a type of societal structure onto others. Iran is all about classes. And you can’t tell me that China is rife with classes, despite pretending to be classless.

And I’m not pro-Anarchy at all. I don’t think it’s a great idea. It IS being used as a bogeyman to scare people into giving up their freedom and worth.

Every society in the world technically 'forces' itself onto you. It's basically Social Contract Theory.

I suppose how appealing anarchy is depends on your current circumstances.

 

[Agema]

That's where you get the anarchists who want governments to disappear and let human nature run free, the communists who seek to replace all aspects of human civilization with a single monolithic thing, and the fascists who see the conflict and instead of trying to fix it, they decide they're gonna win.

But normal people don't view the world that way. Normal people know that suffering is natural and society works to mitigate it. Normal people know that conflict is human nature and would exist with or without power hierarchies. Normal people believe that good is done through wealth, and government, and leadership, and that it's not all just some arbitrary system of oppression. If someone isn't on board with the idea that the state, the economy, and the structures of society in total are just systems of oppression, then it doesn't matter how far left they go, they still won't reach communism.

Anarchists, communists and fascists are mostly "normal" people who want those things too. They just have radically different ways of thinking how society can and should make life for people better.

When you really think about what a classless society means, it's kind of frightening.

Is it?

In some forms, I think it's a very recognisable idea and many like the idea of it. Not necessarily a society where there is no difference between a janitor and a CEO in wealth and status, but a society where the offspring of a janitor has the same opportunities as the offspring of a CEO. Where the attainment of the individual is not dependent on their parents' resources and status. This concept theoretically exists and is often touted in Western societies ("the American dream" being the most famous), but in practice often turns out to be a load of junk when we look at social mobility statistics.

 

[Agema]

I'm very skeptical of communism working in any meaningful sense. Anarchism/hunter gathers/anarcho primitivism can work for small groups, but do you think you can apply that to a society of millions, in a world of billions? I mean, societies have tried ever since 1917, and, well...

Anarchism has never survived more than a few years (e.g. civil war Spain, post-WWI Ukraine), but only because it has been violently crushed by larger, oppressive forces. It's never really had a chance. Communism - at least in the form of the USSR/China model that permanently stalled en route to the theoretical end phase - ultimately provided for its people and increased living standards. For instance, the USSR actually caught up with the USA in economic performance until around 1970. It's not that it didn't work, so much that when it became clear it wasn't working as well as other systems around, it was discarded.

There is a sort of irony that capitalism is potentially producing the means to support a planned economy. What do you think a huge company like Wal-Mart is if not a planned economy? Over 2 million employees and half a trillion dollars in revenue, it's larger than some countries. If a corporation can be run on this scale, it's hard to argue that a country cannot be, even if we accept a country involves more complexity than a corporation.

 

[gorfias]

I'm told that for the USA right to accuse the left of doing exactly the things the that the left accuses them of (sexism, racism) is NOT going to help. Will, for instance, the Tara Reid thing move the needle a nano centimeter ? I honestly don't think so. I've always thought the Democratic party establishment would see to it that Biden doesn't actually run in the general. Now I'm not so sure. The legacy media will circle the wagons around sleepy joe and as long as he doesn't wet himself during the debates with Trump, they will gush over his "masterful" performance.

 

[Hawki]

Anarchism has never survived more than a few years (e.g. civil war Spain, post-WWI Ukraine), but only because it has been violently crushed by larger, oppressive forces. It's never really had a chance.

Has anarchism ever really had a chance?

This isn't a 1:1 comparison, but I'm reminded of a quote pertaining to the Agricultural Revolution and how agriculture suplanted hunter-gatherers - "ten malnourished farmers can overcome one healthy hunter gatherer." Up until the present, anarchism can only exist at the mercy of non-anarchic society. I'm very skeptical of the notion that all of humanity could become anarchist and not result in a drop-off in population.

Communism - at least in the form of the USSR/China model that permanently stalled en route to the theoretical end phase - ultimately provided for its people and increased living standards. For instance, the USSR actually caught up with the USA in economic performance until around 1970. It's not that it didn't work, so much that when it became clear it wasn't working as well as other systems around, it was discarded.

So, I'm kind of curious, what changed in 1970, and if that was the case, what led the Cold War to go on until 1989?

Anyway, I don't know if communism has been discarded. USSR, sure, but China's definitely held onto elements of communism (one party state) and combined it with market capitalism. Which in principle is good, as I don't think anyone would want to live in a pure capitalist society either.

There is a sort of irony that capitalism is potentially producing the means to support a planned economy. What do you think a huge company like Wal-Mart is if not a planned economy? Over 2 million employees and half a trillion dollars in revenue, it's larger than some countries. If a corporation can be run on this scale, it's hard to argue that a country cannot be, even if we accept a country involves more complexity than a corporation.

Don't know if that's the best comparison.

Wal-Mart has the obligation to increase profits, and those profits primarily go to its shareholders/CEOs/whoever. I mean, Christ, there's people at Wal-Mart who basically live paycheck to paycheck, and it's been shown that their lives could be improved just by slightly increasing the prices of some items, and channeling the increase in earnings to their wages. A planned economy by government would, ideally, redistribute wealth more equally. Or in other words, don't run a country like a corporation, unless that corporation is using a worker cooperative template or something (in case you're wondering, I've never taken an economics course, so I'm potentially talking out of my arse).

 

[Thaluikhain]

I'm told that for the USA right to accuse the left of doing exactly the things the that the left accuses them of (sexism, racism) is NOT going to help. Will, for instance, the Tara Reid thing move the needle a nano centimeter ? I honestly don't think so. .

You've got people in this thread saying they won't vote for Biden because of things like that.

OTOH, the Republican party is full of obviously worse people, so saying "Don't vote for that rapist, vote for this rapist who is much worse and has lots of rapist friends and colleagues" might not be that convincing.

 

[tstorm823]

This is incorrect. We actually do get a glimpse of what a pristine anarcho communist society would look like, through the gospels. After the death of jesus, his followers came together, and pulled their resources. They sold their lands and possessions, and decided, as a community, how to use it. Thus the hungry and poor and vulnerable were looked after. For all intents and purposes, Christians were the first communists.

I don't like bringing faith into political discussions, because I know not everyone shares my beliefs, but to be frank, I think a communist society isn't only possible, but inevitable.

a) You're talking about a people who were convinced Christ was coming back imminently and weren't planning for anything long term, and Paul had to write an epistle telling people to get back to work.
b) If your communist utopia depends on selling your land and possessions to someone else to pay for it, I have some rather bad news for you.

Well, a classed society definitely doesn’t help society either. How many wars have been started by ‘the common man’?

No wars have been started by the common man, but only because that's not what war means. If the common man starts an armed conflict, it might be a revolution, it might be terrorism, it might just be murder. To say the common man doesn't start wars is basically just wordplay because war, by definition, it between opposing political entities. The common person is damaged or killed more by the common person than by war even with lawful authorities about, who knows how bad that would be without authorities, and that doesn't even include the inevitable Genghis Kahn situation where one group has ultra violence and the people without an army to fight back get obliterated.

Anarchists, communists and fascists are mostly "normal" people who want those things too. They just have radically different ways of thinking how society can and should make life for people better.

So, they're mostly normal except in their perspective of politics which is what we're talking about. I'm not suggesting communists don't eat or poop, I'm saying they have no contribution to make to a discussion on how best to govern society, because they think governing is oppression.

Is it?

In some forms, I think it's a very recognisable idea and many like the idea of it. Not necessarily a society where there is no difference between a janitor and a CEO in wealth and status, but a society where the offspring of a janitor has the same opportunities as the offspring of a CEO. Where the attainment of the individual is not dependent on their parents' resources and status. This concept theoretically exists and is often touted in Western societies ("the American dream" being the most famous), but in practice often turns out to be a load of junk when we look at social mobility statistics.

What you're saying applies to some people who like socialism, but not to communists. To put it quite frankly, the classless society communists want has no social mobility, because you need classes to move between them. There are no personal opportunities to make a better life, because nobody can have a better life than anyone else. If you squint, you might think the American Dream and the communist utopia are similar in that they're both sort of visions of equality, but they are truly as utterly opposite as they could be. Like, the American Dream is in fact based on the idea that in a nation that protects the rights of individual, anyone can work for a better life. And there's definitely arguments to make that other places have succeeded more in that sense. But the debate on what level of government involvement creates the best personal opportunities for people can't exist in a paradigm where government is oppression and personal success is violence against others.

 

[PsychedelicDiamond]

The stated goal of communism is the creation of a stateless, classless society. Such a thing does not now, nor has it ever existed. Nothing's even come close in all of recorded history, and likely all of pre-history before that. Every culture ever realized has hierarchy. Your goal necessarily requires the elimination of all of it, because by your ideology, cultures are just another means of discrimination between classes of people, and therefore must be erased.

So, you. You want to destroy society.

The platonic long term goal of stateless communism and the concrete short term goal of a workers state with no capitalist class are only slightly more related than expecting the biblical apocalypse in your lifetime and going to church on sunday.. You can argue the former will never come to pass and it's your right to do so but don't pretend that that alone takes any merit away from the latter. There have been workers states where capitalism wasn't practiced. As a matter of fact one of them had been the only global power that could compete with the United States for most of the last century.

And I'm not trying to lionize the Soviet Union here, sure, I can acknowledge the human rights abuses that happened in it and other leninist states like a good little moderate, but they prove a state doesn't need a capitalist class to exist. The eventual restoration of capitalism in these countries alone doesn't serve as an argument against the redundancy of the capitalist class in a fully industrialized society. In the first world, I'd argue, the capitalist class is not only unnecessary for the quality of life and forward development of society as a whole, but actively harmful.

There is no destruction of society but simply its evolution. I'm a Marxist. As a Marxist I acknowledge and honor the many benefits capitalism brought, especially as compared to feudalism. At the same time I believe that society can't be stuck with capitalism forever. And I believe at this point it's deliberately held back from moving on from it. The skill and knowledge to sustain an develop a society is not some divine gift bestowed upon those who own the means of production. I know that, you know that, those who do own the means of production know it just as well. Which is why they are been grasping for more and more political control and don't shy away from relentless cruelty in applying that control. You think Trump isn't laughing his ass of about getting people to inject themselves with disinfectant with his friends at the country club or the dinner party or the child brothel or wherever people like him go to unwind?