Telmo: I have only a few remarks to your (appreciable) response:
you wrote:
.
*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.*
That 'document' is obsolete and was "idealized' even when formulated. Lenin
(in his theoretical work) tried to save (some of) it and postulated a BRAND
NEW type of humans ('the communist man') unselfish and active up to his
capabilities in the favor (benefit) of mankind (society). He was not to
hopeful about it's realization.
I don't give more credit to the M-E *Socialis*t Bible than to the other
earlier one.
I believe in (some?) advancement over the past 2 centuries, so I would be
careful to draw conclusions upon the ancient pattern (wording?). Today's
'inequality' means haves and havnots, as developed in the capitalistic
world. Havenots not meaning only absolute paupers, rather employees as well
and I am willing to add the very well paid ones. ((A chairman can fire a
CEO etc.)) I contrast them by the OWNERS (of big wealth) - the successors
of the feudal lords. The slave-owners.
Inequality cannot be fixed by re-distribution, it is a system. As long as
people seek "jobs" to survive with their family as in today's economy, no
re-distribution works.
We have to return to the (original?) M-E ideas of "ownership" excluded for
all territory, or products of Nature (in-ground, or grown out of ground)
except for the part that is a result of the invested (human's) activity
((work)).
A "flat salary" is still a salary - not a MINIMUM distribution of the
avalable goods necessary for survival at the level the world can achieve at
any point in time.
Then comes Lenin's super hero (communist man) and works to the top of his
capacity and talents FOR the society, not for a salary. Appreciation
(expressable also in levels of living) may be a 'reward', not an additional
pay.
Such new system requires a new identification of values and activities,
goals and results. I don't think we are ready for such.
At the end you write about jobs (missing for everyone) which is a view
anchored in captialism. In the re-evaluation I mentioned we don't speak
about (paid?) jobs.The entire view has to be different Of course - in
today's terms - technology will soon eliminate the necessity of "working
employees for pay" and if we cannot change the entire image of societal
survival a mass-famine will strike, only the owners of the technology will
survive, unless the starving crowd finishes them off.
I need someone smarter-than-me to propose the re-evaluation of this world.
And about your "flat salary: WHO ON EARTH will assign and supply it?
Of course the owners (HA-HA)
Thanks for your thoughts
On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 at 9:19 AM, Telmo Menezes <[email protected]>
wrote:
> 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.
>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
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