Communism. Good or bad. What do you really know about Communism?

[bowlinggreen]

^ Swiss anarcho-crypto-Communist with autism and personal hygiene problems seeks tolerant 40-ish earth mother who habitually wears birkenstocks and hemp skirts to join him on personal commune at the foot of the Alps. Prospective applicants should enjoy reading the works of Marx and Engels, be prepared to live on radishes and turnips, and not have a problem with their significant other looking at porn.

[Estreeter]

Socialism: You have two cows. The government takes one and gives it to your neighbour

Communism: You have two cows. You give them to the government, and the government then gives you some milk

Fascism: You have two cows. You give them to the government, and the government then sells you some milk

Nazism: You have two cows. The government takes both and shoots you

Capitalism: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull

[deepsepia]

Originally Posted by bowlinggreen

^ All that is quite true. But they did practice an anti-material culture for the average individual.

They didn't have a _consumer_ culture -- but they were intensely materialistic. They fetishized industry and tangible capital -- nothing makes a comrade happier than a factory belching smoke or a railroad. Whether your shoes fit is of much less importance. Communists are far more concerned with industrial capital and metrics of industrial production than "capitalists" -- for whom heavy industry is typically a very low ROE investment (compare a steel mill to a computer game designer).

And.that goes right back to Marx: communist theory has nothing much to say about intangibles as part of.the economy- acciuntants, lawyers, architects, shoe designers, plumbers, electricians, cooks -- none of these mean what steel and coal mean to a Marxist.
That's a big part of why Marxism reliably produces railroads and starvation -- Stalin conscripted tens of thousands to build railroads -- and they did, at huge cost in human life, but it got done.
Marxist states prioritized heavy capital investment - the most polluting and energy intensive industries - over the consumer. So they produced blast furnaces and steel, but you had to line up for poorly made boots, and not a decent bar or restaurant anywhere.
These are intensely materialistic and ""capitalstic" polities-- its a joke, but jts also true. Recall the great Soviet economic propaganda hero was a coal miner called Stakhonov, who was supposed to have exceeded his quota many times over. Communist news reads like a blowout corporate earnings report-- its all about "exceeding the quota" . . .

And environmental quality was no part at all of their production function: no one got a quota “mine 10,000 tons of coal and don’t dump the tailings in the lake”

[Arturo2nd]

Originally Posted by deepsepia

Your complaint is with material culture generally, not capitalism

Communists _worship_ material culture. They measured progress in tons of coal mined, in miles of railroads built and pig iron. Their currencies were adorned with factories belching smoke.

They routinely produced the worst environmental disasters — the State owned the factories and their interest in regulating those factories was small

So material culture does pose challenges, but communism isn’t any kind of solution.

The Communist Party decided that the 1960s environmental movement was capitalist rhetoric designed to curtail their "advanced model" from catching and surpassing the capitalist West. This mistake led to several ecological disasters in the communist nations.

We should thank our lucky stars for wise leaders in the West like Donald Trump, Scott Pruitt, and Ryan Zinke. (Yes, I am a sarcastic bastard.)

[Roubignol]

Originally Posted by deepsepia

Your complaint is with material culture generally, not capitalism

I do not agree with you. Capitalism seems unable to survive without exhausting certain limited natural resources.
I do not pretend that a badly managed Communism or any other Anarcho-Marxist alternative could fail to face this problem.
But nothing is worse than Capitalism.
It must be observed that no liberal economist has ever taken seriously the problem of the environment.
The defense of the environment is a left "fight".
The effects are blatant today.
Since the fall of the great Communist nations, humanity has never consumed so much resources to survive in the free market economy. Never.
All your ways to defend the environmental impact of free market economy are sadly based on lies or highly misleading arguments. Why?

Because rich Capitalist societies have outsourced their productions and pollution in poorer countries.
Several monthes ago, a Professor working at the University of Geneva has clearly detailed on the Swiss radio.
"In a finite world, all the polluting manufacturing processes of Western products manufactured in Asia and sold in the West can be added to the balance sheet of Western pollution."

As you wrote in another answer. Capitalism has won and hopefully China became Capitalist.
I even listened some Marxist economists explaining that USSR and China never were communist, but a state Capitalism.

Originally Posted by Brian249x

The Communist Party decided that the 1960s environmental movement was capitalist rhetoric designed to curtail their "advanced model" from catching and surpassing the capitalist West. This mistake led to several ecological disasters in the communist nations.

We should thank our lucky stars for wise leaders in the West like Donald Trump, Scott Pruitt, and Ryan Zinke. (Yes, I am a sarcastic bastard.)

But today in the Occidental Capitalist countries people defending the environmental causes are not the Neoliberal ones (Republican or Democrats), they mainly are Marxist, Anarchist, left environmentalists who have partially adopted several Marxist concepts.

That's impossible to defend the environment and be a Capitalist.
As I explained, Capitalism follows an exponential function. By definition, this kind of functions in a finite world crashes in front of the wall of reality.

[Estreeter]

Originally Posted by xyzde69

That's impossible to defend the environment and be a Capitalist.

Bullshit
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk

Yep, typical of being selective like I've found a lot of people who believe stuff they only want to believe.

I wish I could find a link to this,
A few weeks back the ABC, Australia's government funded broadcaster and apparently politically neutral ran a show about Islands in the Pacific losing land mass, I heard about this on the radio, they named 12 I think Islands that have lost land mass due to global warming and was very damning, that said the same show failed to mention the majority of Islands in the Pacific actually increased their land mass ..... typical of selective info giving to make things seem more shocking than they are ..... A bit of a Capitalist tactic the Greenies used there, Good news never sold a newspaper Bad news will

Like I said I only heard that from a radio talk show and also another commentator on a political talk show on Sky News TV here.

[chuckschick]

Originally Posted by deepsepia

These are intensely materialistic and ""capitalstic" polities-- its a joke, but jts also true.

I have never met a progressive who wasn't deeply greedy and deeply envious of others, and who also fetishize the bling and finer things. It's a paradox, but not really.

[deepsepia]

Originally Posted by xyzde69

I do not agree with you. Capitalism seems unable to survive without exhausting certain limited natural resources.
I do not pretend that a badly managed Communism or any other Anarcho-Marxist alternative could fail to face this problem.
But nothing is worse than Capitalism.

Take a look at Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Germany -- any measure of environment is vastly improved over half a century ago. These are all market economies, where folks are very rich, getting tremendous amounts of their energy from renewables.

I'm really not sure what's on your mind; you have some fantasy that you call "capitalism" another fantasy you call "communism". In my experience, it works a lot better to look at real people and places than to spin fantasies.

That "badly managed Communism" you speak of was nothing more than the fantasies of folks who read a century old book and imagined how vague sentiments might direct modern industry.

As one example of environmental, metallurgical and economic disaster, Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward featured a typically disastrous plan: "let's increase steel production by having peasants do it in small furnaces on collective farms". Now that made all kinds of ideological sense, but in its stupidity it represents everything that's wrong with the environmental strategy of Marxists.

In fact, you can't produce useful volumes of quality steel in a backyard furnace-- but you can produce a lot of smoke and waste. Here's Marxism in action:

Huge efforts on the part of peasants and other workers were made to produce steel out of scrap metal. To fuel the furnaces, the local environment was denuded of trees and wood taken from the doors and furniture of peasants' houses. Pots, pans, and other metal artifacts were requisitioned to supply the "scrap" for the furnaces so that the wildly optimistic production targets could be met. Many of the male agricultural workers were diverted from the harvest to help the iron production as were the workers at many factories, schools, and even hospitals. Although the output consisted of low quality lumps of pig iron which was of negligible economic worth, Mao had a deep distrust of intellectuals who could have pointed this out and instead placed his faith in the power of the mass mobilization of the peasants.

Moreover, the experience of the intellectual classes following the Hundred Flowers Campaign silenced those aware of the folly of such a plan. According to his private doctor, Li Zhisui, Mao and his entourage visited traditional steel works in Manchuria in January 1959 where he found out that high quality steel could only be produced in large-scale factories using reliable fuel such as coal. However, he decided not to order a halt to the backyard steel furnaces so as not to dampen the revolutionary enthusiasm of the masses. The program was only quietly abandoned much later in that year.

[bowlinggreen]

Originally Posted by xyzde69

Since the fall of the great Communist nations, humanity has never consumed so much resources to survive in the free market economy. Never.

That's because there are more people on the planet then ever.

Originally Posted by xyzde69

Several monthes ago, a Professor working at the University of Geneva has clearly detailed on the Swiss radio.
"In a finite world, all the polluting manufacturing processes of Western products manufactured in Asia and sold in the West can be added to the balance sheet of Western pollution."

This is quite obvious. But again, you put yourself in the position of dictating by force of arms how much people may possess, if you want to curb this phenomenon.

At least with the Chinese manufacturing all of your materialistic crap, you reduce your chances of dying early from lung cancer.

This is probably one of the reasons why the big western capitalists shifted production there. They don't want to die from poison either, or have the people voting in bankrupting tax levels to pay for the massive health care for diseased and no longer productive workers.

Plus, China has too many people. Putting the pollution over there helps with the overpopulation problem. Hey, you and the capitalists actually agree on something!

Next up on xyzde69's ideological platform, studies in methods of efficient genocide to reduce the population of Africa by 80% in order to save all the endangered animal species there. And a review of the environmental policies of the Third Reich, with an eye towards removing those troublesome minorities who are polluting the air with their overcapitalistic tendencies.

[Estreeter]

Originally Posted by bowlinggreen

That's because there are more people on the planet then ever.

You might recall he also blamed the worlds population being the 7 billion mark on Capitalism also, can't remember if it was this thread or the philosophy thread or the Horrors of late Capitalism thread ....... I still can't work out that logic

People fuck, especially in Hippie Communes






How many Marxists does it take to screw in a light bulb?

None, The light bulb contains the seeds of its own revolution.