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[Hanslanda]

Because Socialism is the idea a person's life and their work do not belong to them, but belong to society, thus it's antithetical to the idea that a person has the right to exist for their own sake and their own actions belong to them.

Also I imagine because Socialism hasn't worked out very well historically. It's purpose was 'the abolition of poverty, the achievement of general prosperity, progress and peace' and in practice it accomplished quite the opposite.

It'll work better next time, surely, if we all just believe hard enough.

This is nowhere near a correct reading of what socialism is about. The ideal in Marxist socialism is a stateless federation of cooperative councils with voluntary membership and direct democratic decision making at the local level.

That would be amazing.

[misko27]

Oh, hey! Guys, apparently people are running for the borders in Sweden, Germany, France, the U.K., AND CANADA!

Who'da thunk it.

Spoiler: BY THE WAY (click to show/hide)

Socialism =/= Communism. Get it right.

I have no patience for this bullshit, someone else can handle the rest.

CANADA? FUCK CANADA.

LETS NUKE THE SYRUP-CONSUMING MOOSE-MONGERS.

Canada is like France. Surprisingly badass.

No. No its not.

Okay. You're an idiot.

Canada:
-Canadian troops in WW2 were far more feared than Americans or anyone else, by the Germans.
-Canadians also composed one of the smallest groups in the war.
-This means that half as many Canadians made a impression twice as good.

France:
-Fucking. Napoleon.
-Hundred years war.
-WW2, French Resistance.
-They're badass. Very badass. Just they like cheese. And wine.

Napolean was very similar to hitler, in strategy and in methods. Except for the Genocide. Oh wait no, did that too.

Counter-arguement:
Yugoslavia:
Only country to self-liberate during WW2
The Mother Fucking PARTISANS BITCH. DON"T MESS WITH THE PARTISANS. They be out, traveling the mountains at night waiting, getting stronger tambien. and this wasn't a ARAYN nation like France oh no, where hitler used BASIC HUMAN RESTRAINT.
-Code-name for invasion of Yugoslavia: Operation Punishment. Why? Because they deposed the king when he supported Nazism. Did the french do that? I THINK NOT.
-Total Losses, 1 million. FUCK THE CANADIANS AND FRENCH.
-Not only that, but they also had to deal with Loyalist backstabber anti-resistance.

Canadas grand contribution to the war was hiding the Dutch royal family.

And lets not get STARTED on the other slavic countries.

Oh, sigh. You know having more losses than the other team isn't a good thing, right?

No, it shows cowardice. Guess what? If you can hide in a cave and take potshots at the enemy, you will kill more. However, at the end of the day, you are still living in THEIR country hiding in a tree.

Seriously though now, end this here. Over half of my entire extended family died resisting the Fascist Armies. My own Grandfather was deported to a Concentration camp. And lived. He was the only survivor out of 9 children in his family. I'm just a little sensitive about this, and I will punch your face through the Computer screen if I feel offended. I'm serious. I Will punch you so hard your grandchildren will have headaches.

[Montague]

Just because they hate each other doesn't make them dissimilar. Same basic ideas form the basis for their ideologies, same as with Nazis and Commies.

\Watch me sum ths up elegantly. The Extremes Meet.

Except not really. Nazis and commies were both militant, collectivist ideologies. They placed the state above the individual. They also killed alot of said individuals in the name of their ideology. Both had planned economies, massive propaganda, secret police, political killings, banning of political parties, deprivation of individual rights, suppression of free speech.

Nazi Germany and the USSR were even nominally allied for a minute, while they were carving up Poland. It was Hitler being crazy and invading Russia that started the war, not because of any ideological struggle.

It's harder to find things they were distinct from one another then anything else. Different rhetoric and propaganda styles, perhaps?

Different flavors of Kool-aid, really.

Because Socialism is the idea a person's life and their work do not belong to them, but belong to society, thus it's antithetical to the idea that a person has the right to exist for their own sake and their own actions belong to them.

Also I imagine because Socialism hasn't worked out very well historically. It's purpose was 'the abolition of poverty, the achievement of general prosperity, progress and peace' and in practice it accomplished quite the opposite.

It'll work better next time, surely, if we all just believe hard enough.

This is nowhere near a correct reading of what socialism is about. The ideal in Marxist socialism is a stateless federation of cooperative councils with voluntary membership and direct democratic decision making at the local level.

tbh, they do that in legit communes here and there. It still doesn't work well, even on a small scale, voluntary system with few people like in a commune. I think if people really believe in the merits of such a system, they should go live in a commune and experience it first hand. OR make their own commune if they think they have a purer, better vision of how to make such a system work.

All kinda like religious folks. I think they too should go live in a monastery or commune and leave everybody else alone from their delusional ideas.

[Reelya]

Actually, it works BETTER in a large system with skilled individuals and formalized democratic procedures / profit sharing. A small unskilled bunch of hippies not being able to boost-strap a corporation proves nothing. Different systems succeed on different scales.

Try running the Third Reich with half a dozen people. Then say Nazism would have been an ineffective way to manage a nation.

Want to know what a democratic socialist workplace would look like? look up Ricardo Semler CEO of Semco in Brazil, he radically changed the company he inherited from his father to be run in a democratic fashion, similar to how you could run things under Marxism. The result - they went from $4 million a year to $200 million a year in revenue. Because the workers get half the profits, they work hard.

I find it hard to believe workers will bust a gut for half the profits without needing to be whipped, while the right-wingers would have us believe that if they were working for 100% of the profits, they'd get lazy.

saying adult workers won't work for their own interests, but need a "boss" to hold the whip to them, is the true heights of paternalism, whether government or corporate-style. Because we're constantly told how if the bosses get more money, it'll incentivize them to boost productivity. It seems it's opposite day, every day, when talking about the effect of profits on rich or poor.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Basically Marx's "socialism" stage, talked about workers talking control of the workplace, i.e. employee owned corporations run democratically (by a council called a commune), just like the example of Semco. Marx's fundamental idea, and it took me a while to realize this, is that if the workers ARE the shareholders, then there is no fundamental enmity, no labor/management disputes, no unions. In fact, the unions are weak in Semco, because the conditions are so good and everyone gets a vote on company decisions.

In Marx's model there is no room for bosses, whether they be company bosses, party bosses, union bosses, or government bosses.

In fact, Marx's definition of Communism was the local communes forming federations, making the nation state obsolete. Just like worker ownership of the workplace collapsed the hierarchy of business, the union of many communes was to collapse the heirarchy of government. Note that competition and trade still exist under this basic model, because each commune can only make a range of products, they will have to trade for other essentials, and there are no monopolies or empires (because each factory is owned by the workers there).

[Montague]

Actually, it works BETTER in a large system with skilled individuals and formalized democratic procedures / profit sharing. A small unskilled bunch of hippies not being able to boost-strap a corporation proves nothing. Different systems succeed on different scales.

Try running the Third Reich with half a dozen people. Then say Nazism would have been an ineffective way to manage a nation.

Want to know what a democratic socialist workplace would look like? look up Ricardo Semler CEO of Semco in Brazil, he radically changed the company he inherited from his father to be run in a democratic fashion, similar to how you could run things under Marxism. The result - they went from $4 million a year to $200 million a year in revenue. Because the workers get half the profits, they work hard.

I find it hard to believe workers will bust a gut for half the profits without needing to be whipped, while the right-wingers would have us believe that if they were working for 100% of the profits, they'd get lazy.

Basically Marx's "socialism" stage, talked about workers talking control of the workplace, i.e. employee owned corporations run democratically (by a council called a commune), just like the example of Semco. Marx's fundamental idea, and it took me a while to realize this, is that if the workers ARE the shareholders, then there is no fundamental enmity, no labor/management disputes, no unions. In fact, the unions are weak in Semco, because the conditions are so good and everyone gets a vote on company decisions.

saying adult workers won't work for their own interests, but need a "boss" to hold the whip to them, is the true heights of paternalism, whether government or corporate-style. In Marx's model there is no room for bosses, whether they be company bosses, party bosses, union bosses, or government bosses.

Ok, so you are saying you really need a top-down authority to make a communist model work? Doesn't require voluntary association? Isn't against everything it's supposed to be?

Marx envisioned world-wide revolution, when it became obvious his system worked better then any other system. Didn't quite work out like that, the nations that had such revolutions had living conditions and situations that were not really ideal models to show off the merits his ideas. So doesn't the ' stateless federation of cooperative councils with voluntary membership and direct democratic decision' model work at least at the lowest level? Is there no commune or community where these ideals took hold and attracted other people to join them?

Just saying, at a very basic level this requires voluntary consent, if the system cannot attract or convince anybody to live in it, what does that say about it's credibility as a system? I'm assuming nobody here lives on a hippie commune.

So the only solution is forcing people to live under the system if voluntary associations are not plausible? I think they tried that model before too and it didn't quite work out how they hoped it would.

[Reelya]

It's not a top down model. What i said was you need - skilled individuals and a level of formal organization, agreed methods for profit-sharing.

Read up on Semco. Each work group votes to elect a coordinator, on an ad-hoc basis. The only governing body in the company is the forum of all coordinators.

Agreed rules that the company works by, ensures that everyone gets a fair share of the profits, and knows that if they work hard, it adds to the bottom line, and everyone profits. At Semco there is also virtually zero theft, because you're stealing from yourself and your friends. There are also no unions, because if the workers elect the management themselves, just who are the union going to argue with?

and it's bosses who get sacked by the workers at Semco, not the other way around. At Semco they need 2/3rds majority vote to sack people. So you're not screwed because you didn't suck up to the right person.

[Descan]

Well, there was the Paris commune. Which got stamped out by the army.

And a few other communes, I can't think of their names and I don't really care about you enough to check on them, but again, stamped on by the army.

Kind of a recurring theme, the whole... army, thing.

[Montague]

Well, there was the Paris commune. Which got stamped out by the army.

And a few other communes, I can't think of their names and I don't really care about you enough to check on them, but again, stamped on by the army.

Kind of a recurring theme, the whole... army, thing.

I was implying the 'hippie' communes in the USA and elsewhere. http://eastwind.org/ and such places. They are perfectly legal in the USA due to it's laws about voluntary association and clubs and everything. Nobody is forced to live in such a commune for similar ideas on individual freedoms. The army thing defends their rights to voluntary association, rather then crushing it, in these cases.

[Reelya]

Marx envisioned world-wide revolution, when it became obvious his system worked better then any other system. Didn't quite work out like that, the nations that had such revolutions had living conditions and situations that were not really ideal models to show off the merits his ideas. So doesn't the ' stateless federation of cooperative councils with voluntary membership and direct democratic decision' model work at least at the lowest level? Is there no commune or community where these ideals took hold and attracted other people to join them?

Russia and China didn't implement worker's ownership of the corporations, and Marx actually advocated against government dictatorship as just the same old system with a new face.

If it doesn't involve democratic workplaces owned by the workers, it isn't Marxism by definition, it's some other form that he NEVER advocated, so it's not a relevant critique of Marx.

It's like blaming Jesus for the actions of the crusades.

[Descan]

Those have a whole lot more baggage attached to them that makes them undesirable for people to join. From the practical, such as the shunning of technology and doing everything by hand. To the more emotional, since Hippy is kind of a dirty word and people don't want to be associated with it.

[Reelya]

The hippie idea of a commune and all the anti-tech is little to do with Marx's ideas at all.

Marx was really just about removing share-holders of existing corporations and funneling the profits back into the workers pockets, and replacing the board of directors with an elected congress. Such a corporation would still be free to operate as a for-profit company.

such arrangements are common and expected in white-collar environments - medical practices, legal practices, IT partnerships, etc.

[Montague]

Those have a whole lot more baggage attached to them that makes them undesirable for people to join. From the practical, such as the shunning of technology and doing everything by hand. To the more emotional, since Hippy is kind of a dirty word and people don't want to be associated with it.

Well, that's why I put 'hippie' in scare quotes and just said it to clarify what I meant. I don't think all communes need have anything to do with that. There are other such communities/communes and projects that are not as agrarian hippie styled, but east wind is one of the most prominent leftist ones. A lot of leftists say early tribal humans practiced an egalitarian, property-less model of society and want to return to that, hence communes like East Wind.

On the other hand I'm a bit dubious of something like a co-op or whatever egalitarian corporation, that just hires employees and competes in a capitalist system. They are are not communist, it's just a business model.

So you say communism/ socialism, whatever is impossible without educated and skilled people and an established industrial base and everything else... then my question point is, if communism cannot be achieved through voluntary association, then it seems it cannot exist on it's own merit, even when it's let alone by the powers-that-be. So the only alternative is that it must come about through violence and subjugation, dictatorship, killing, deprivation of individual freedom and human rights, as it has come about historically.

Marx was pretty sure it could happen on it's own merit. Not just happen slowly or democratically, but it would be too obviously awesome for anybody to accept anything less then absolute communist as soon as they heard about it. It was just a problem of dealing with the powers-that-be to implement it and even then, victory was assured and the worker's and proletarian would bring the system about.

Seems kinda like the reverse of that happened.

The hippie idea of a commune and all the anti-tech is little to do with Marx's ideas at all.

Marx was really just about removing share-holders of existing corporations and funneling the profits back into the workers pockets, and replacing the board of directors with an elected congress. Such a corporation would still be free to operate as a for-profit company.

such arrangements are common and expected in white-collar environments - medical practices, legal practices, IT partnerships, etc.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but that sounds more like Syndicalism then anything Marx said. Marx was about putting the means of production into the worker's hands, that profits were parasitism and believed in a society without property, not about co-ops or credit union type business models or firms that function in a capitalist system.

[Reelya]

A lot of leftists say early tribal humans practiced an egalitarian, property-less model of society and want to return to that, hence communes like East Wind.

And specifically nothing to do with any of the ideas i proposed.

On the other hand I'm a bit dubious of something like a co-op or whatever egalitarian corporation, that just hires employees and competes in a capitalist system. They are are not communist, it's just a business model.

I never once said "communist", that's a straw-man. Since i never made anything like that claim, you disproving it proves nothing. I said it was an example of how a socialist workplace might be organized. There are many branches of socialist ideas, this falls under one of them.

So you say communism/ socialism, whatever is impossible without educated and skilled people and an established industrial base and everything else... then my question point is, if communism cannot be achieved through voluntary association, then it seems it cannot exist on it's own merit, even when it's let alone by the powers-that-be. So the only alternative is that it must come about through violence and subjugation, dictatorship, killing, deprivation of individual freedom and human rights, as it has come about historically.

No, i didn't EVEN say communism, nor socialism in relation to this point. Actually, i've never said communism at all during this conversation, it's a word you keep shoving in my mouth.

You said co-operatives corporations don't work. I replied out that co-operatives are more successful when they consist of people with the relevant work skills and decent organization, as opposed to the hippie communes you were using as an counter example. That point had nothing at all to do with advocating any political system.

how you keep going from me advocating democratic workplaces (which definitely come under a branch of socialist thinking) to some neo-nazi / fascist / communist dystopia is beyond me.

To reiterate the whole conversation: I'm advocating a model of market socialism, based on voluntary-association democratic corporations. If you want to throw stuff about gulags and hippies and communists back against that feel free, but it's nothing to do with what I've been advocating.

[Yoink]

France:
-Fucking. Napoleon.
-Hundred years war.
-WW2, French Resistance.
-They're badass. Very badass. Just they like cheese. And wine.

 

...You are dead to me. Or, rather, French to me, which is arguably far worse.

[Montague]

I never once said "communist", that's a straw-man. Since i never made anything like that claim, you disproving it proves nothing. I said it was an example of how a socialist workplace might be organized. There are many branches of socialist ideas, this falls under one of them.

No, i didn't EVEN say communism, nor socialism in relation to this point. Actually, i've never said communism at all during this conversation, it's a word you keep shoving in my mouth.

You said co-operatives corporations don't work. I replied out that co-operatives are more successful when they consist of people with the relevant work skills and decent organization, as opposed to the hippie communes you were using as an counter example.

how you keep going from me advocating democratic workplaces (which definitely come under a branch of socialist thinking) to some neo-nazi / fascist / communist dystopia is beyond me.

To reiterate the whole conversation: I'm advocating a model of market socialism, based on voluntary-association democratic corporations. If you want to throw stuff about gulags and hippies and communists back against that feel free, but it's nothing to do with what I've been advocating.

Well, I just went sort of off track there and most of the stuff about gulags and hippies wasn't really addressed to anybody in particular. I did respond to what you said though, that egalitarian businesses are not communist. So there you go.

I really have no compunctions with democratic workplaces, or profit sharing or labor unions or anything like that. It's just a business model, like I said. I believe the reason they are not more widespread or is that they have trouble expanding and staying competitive and paying pensions/obligations and such things down the road without capitalists/ investors and stockholders and the such. Otherwise there obviously isn't any problem with it.

Socialism would be making such workplace democracy mandatory for every firm or something, or an enterprise based around such an enterprise. A software firm without a board of directors or shareholders and egalitarian decision making isn't really Socialism, (because they can get off at 5 and go home without worrying about secret police abducting them from their beds, of course.)

Though it might be kind screwed up if a bunch of newly hired janitors and security guards or whoever got a majority and voted to fire all the  workers that hired them and then proceeded to liquidate all the firm's assets and close the business or something.