Hi John On Fri, Apr 3, 2015 at 10:10 PM, John Mikes <[email protected]> wrote:
> TELMO: > I did not expect from you to point to the 2 centuries old obsolete and > theoretical exercise of Marx-Engels (irrespective of Lenin's intermitted > LATER speculations) as "blueprint" for a (still?) viable(?) political > system. > I don't think it was ever viable, and I don't think it's relevant to the current times, as it is based on too many assumption from an era that is long gone (early Industrialism). What I mean is, when people use the word "communism", there is a document that describes precisely what this word is supposed to mean. A blueprint for communism. I do think that Marx-Engels correctly identified social problems that remain being problems to this day, namely the self-reinforcing nature of wealth inequality. The issue is that their proposed solution seems to equalize society by throwing the majority of people into extreme poverty and servitude. > It never got further than a tyranny of 'leftish-sounding' slogans by > pretenders. As the original authors dreamed it up, it never (and nowhere) > did get off from the ground. > I know, I lived in a so called "Peoples' Democracy" (Called 'commi' system > - ha ha) which was neither "peoples'" nor democracy. Nor Marxist, nor > Leninist. > It was a Stalinist tyranny. And Maoist, Pol-Pot, plus a KimIrSen-istic one. > I would be very interested in any story you had to share about those times. I agree that these societies never achieved anything resembling what Marx proposed. The remaining communists of today tend to argue that all of past communist movements were not sincere in their motivations. That might very well be true, but even then it is an important piece of information on human nature. If we are trying to get from A -> B and we always stumble on the same horrors along the way, maybe the plan is just not viable for this world. So far we have learned that either communism is a terrible idea or communist revolutions always end up being hijacked by sociopaths. To be honest, I think both are true. > > > Capitalism - in my view an advanced form of slavery, following feudalism - > started to destroy the entire human experiment on this Globe - way before > the "warming" entered the picture. > It never 'faced' a competition of any 'socialistic' challenger. It > succumbbed to the authoritarian religious tyrannies (brutal and violent, or > just retracting and philosophical). > As with communism, there is a big gap between the theory and the implementation. "Advanced form of slavery" might be a way to put it, but an even more cynical view would be that there's always been slavery to some degree. I believe that the big challenge that we face is how to move to a jobless society. Worse, I think this transition already started but there is still no political will to admit it. Robotics and AI are Marx's worse nightmare. In the limit, the number of employees required by a business will tend to zero, while the ability of a business to provide goods for the rest of us keeps being more and more leveraged by technological advance. One of the realities about the current economic crises that few are willing to admit: there simply are no longer jobs for everyone. I think the best idea that we have so far is the universal flat salary. Best, Telmo. > > > > On Fri, Apr 3, 2015 at 4:04 AM, Telmo Menezes <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> >> >> On Fri, Apr 3, 2015 at 4:19 AM, LizR <[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> On 2 April 2015 at 15:18, John Clark <[email protected]> wrote: >>> >>>> On Wed, Apr 1, 2015 LizR <[email protected]> wrote: >>>> >>>> >>>>> >> In practice Communism was evil but in theory it was just stupid >>>>>> >>>>>> > Almost as stupid as capitalism, >>>>> >>>> >>>> The defining characteristic of stupid is that stupid doesn't work, so >>>> regardless of what you may personally think of capitalism's ethics (and >>>> there is no disputing matters of taste) the fact remains that if capitalism >>>> was stupider than communism then it wouldn't have won the 40 year long face >>>> to face confrontation with it. >>>> >>> >>> It didn't. Communism hasn't been tried except at the tribal/village >>> level (you're getting confused because some people called themselves >>> communist). >>> >> >> The same claim can be made about anything. Reality never seems to conform >> to the idealized version of any political theory. >> >> Communism has a blueprint, "The Communist Manifesto" by Marx and Engels. >> Several societies of varying sizes and cultural backgrounds attempted to >> implement these ideas. In all cases so far, the results have been >> horrendous. I have no doubt that this is not the outcome that Marx desired, >> but there is now strong empirical evidence that this is the outcome you get >> when applying the idea to societies of human beings. >> >> >>> My point is that capitalism is in the process of destroying the world, >>> so it hasn't "won" anything and may well lose the entire human experiment >>> thanks to the greed of a few short sighted individuals. >>> >> >> If the world is indeed being destroyed by pollution, then this is being >> done by a complex network of cooperation between communist, capitalist and >> autocratic nations, of which a communist nation is the biggest polluter. >> Yes, maybe Chinese communism is not what Marx had in mind, but western >> capitalism is not what the intellectuals who defend capitalism have in mind >> either. The "no true Scotsman" brigade will not help us here. >> >> >>> >>> >>> -- >>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >>> Groups "Everything List" group. >>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send >>> an email to [email protected]. >>> To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. >>> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. >>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. >>> >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "Everything List" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to [email protected]. >> To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. >> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. >> > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. 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