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[Jackrabbit]

Non-sequitur hypnosis can strike at almost any time. Make sure you are immunized.

[Criptfeind]

Thank god your post was enough to make a new page.

[Jackrabbit]

I've checked, it's happened something like 20 times now.

[Criptfeind]

What happened?

[Jackrabbit]

Me, starting a new page with a post that somehow manages to totally end one line of discussion.

It's getting kind of silly.

[HideousBeing]

New question: can people be completely equal in a world with limited resources? I feel like competition (and thus castes) would always be present, unless there was essentially infinite resources and possibly infinite labor (supplied by robots ).

[subject name here]

would you give your job to robots so fearless leader can pee in solid gold urinal?

[loveschach]

New question: can people be completely equal in a world with limited resources? I feel like competition (and thus castes) would always be present, unless there was essentially infinite resources and possibly infinite labor (supplied by robots ).

Well, class isn't determined just by how much stuff you have. It's determined by one's relationship with "the means of production", a.k.a. capital a.k.a. factories, farms, workshop, land...etc.

So if this is owned collectively, the first steps towards eliminating class are taken right there.

would you give your job to robots so fearless leader can pee in solid gold urinal?

I can't tell if this is serious or not.

[HideousBeing]

New question: can people be completely equal in a world with limited resources? I feel like competition (and thus castes) would always be present, unless there was essentially infinite resources and possibly infinite labor (supplied by robots ).

Well, class isn't determined just by how much stuff you have. It's determined by one's relationship with "the means of production", a.k.a. capital a.k.a. factories, farms, workshop, land...etc.

So if this is owned collectively, the first steps towards eliminating class are taken right there.

I think very capitalist, so bear with me 
My idea was that infinite resources would give everyone means of production (not natural resources, but w/e resource you could imagine needing).

Back to the real world.
The problem is obviously how you can get that to happen. I can't imagine it would remain that way for more than a few generations or so. I'm not sure a state run socialist nation could even manage to achieve communism because of corruption and large initial class differences between the government and it's people. And how would community ownership work? They could vote on how to manage their resources, but that just leads to mob rule and would allow some influential people to become more powerful.

hmm... someone point me toward a resource of current communist ideas. Mostly curiosity, I'm a die hard capitalist if only because I don't really want to sacrifice freedom for equality (hear that it's considered a trade-off).

[eerr]

And thus Dwarf learned never to answer questions about communism on the internet.

The end.

[Grakelin]

In a world with unlimited resources, we wouldn't need to worry about things like Capitalism or Communism because there would be no need to distribute anything.

You're only a die-hard capitalist if you also hate all government benefits and taxation, by the way. There's a difference between Communism and Socialism, in that Communism is a system of government, and Socialism is an economic system. There are no countries (except for North Korea) which are entirely geared on one side of this scale. Cuba isn't pure Socialist because some people get paid tips by the tourists and therefore the government doesn't have control of their resource flow. The United States gives out social security benefits and the like, and they do this by taxing people, so they're not fully Capitalist. The United States is one of the most Capitalism-leaning countries in the West, though. Most of the Western European nations and Canada lean more towards Socialism and Social Democracy.

You're right that Freedom and Equality are considered a trade-off. You have to understand what you get out of the 'freedom', though. I'd rather lose my freedom to start a business than be subjected to hard labour 12 hours a day, for instance. It might also be preferable to be able to get a job if I have no legs, even if I lose the freedom to reject employees from my white collar employment opportunity on that account. These are the sorts of freedoms you trade. You don't lose your freedom to marry who you like just for being equal, after all.

[loveschach]

You're only a die-hard capitalist if you also hate all government benefits and taxation, by the way. There's a difference between Communism and Socialism, in that Communism is a system of government, and Socialism is an economic system.

No. Socialism/Communism are both economic systems. Using "Communism" to refer to the USSR's system of government is uniquely American and is a misnomer. Communism is defined as a classless and stateless society, and the USSR and China always referred to themselves officially as Socialist.

Socialism is a really broad word which can, at this point, mean pretty much whatever you want it to mean. In the Marxist context, it can pretty much be used interchangeably with Communism but most people use it to describe the transitional stage between capitalism and communism, in which states and vestiges of class still exist to varying degrees.

There are no countries (except for North Korea) which are entirely geared on one side of this scale. Cuba isn't pure Socialist because some people get paid tips by the tourists and therefore the government doesn't have control of their resource flow. The United States gives out social security benefits and the like, and they do this by taxing people, so they're not fully Capitalist. The United States is one of the most Capitalism-leaning countries in the West, though. Most of the Western European nations and Canada lean more towards Socialism and Social Democracy

Personally when I find myself using a sliding scale when discussing political orientations, I immediately assume I'm completely off base. Social security programs and welfare states aren't necessarily socialist at all, and it's not as if you get enough welfare programs and suddenly you have a good, functioning, Marxist-Leninist state.

In the Marxist understanding, what makes a country capitalist doesn't hinge on how free the market is at all. Scandinavia is just as capitalist as Hong Kong, because they are both societies based on private property and the exploitation of labor.

[loveschach]

New question: can people be completely equal in a world with limited resources? I feel like competition (and thus castes) would always be present, unless there was essentially infinite resources and possibly infinite labor (supplied by robots ).

Well, class isn't determined just by how much stuff you have. It's determined by one's relationship with "the means of production", a.k.a. capital a.k.a. factories, farms, workshop, land...etc.

So if this is owned collectively, the first steps towards eliminating class are taken right there.

I think very capitalist, so bear with me 
My idea was that infinite resources would give everyone means of production (not natural resources, but w/e resource you could imagine needing).

Back to the real world.
The problem is obviously how you can get that to happen. I can't imagine it would remain that way for more than a few generations or so. I'm not sure a state run socialist nation could even manage to achieve communism because of corruption and large initial class differences between the government and it's people. And how would community ownership work? They could vote on how to manage their resources, but that just leads to mob rule and would allow some influential people to become more powerful.

hmm... someone point me toward a resource of current communist ideas. Mostly curiosity, I'm a die hard capitalist if only because I don't really want to sacrifice freedom for equality (hear that it's considered a trade-off).

I would say that mob rule is better than dictatorship, and humans are more inclined to co-operate with each other than people want to believe.

As for the corruption and class differences, these are administrative issues that every state, socialist, capitalist, or feudal, would have to contend with.

As for modern Marxist resources, there's libcom.org (Anarcho-Communist and Libertarian Socialist oriented. Library, news, forum), revleft.com (Discussion forum, literally every sort of Leftist posts here. Where I came from actually.), marxists.org (Huge library, run by the SWP, I believe), and maybe Marxist.com (Run by the International Marxist Tendency, a Trotskyist organization like the SWP)

I might think of more later.

[Grakelin]

Hi,

Go read a book or something before you start refuting things. Here, I'll get you started:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism

Grakelin

EDIT: I have a variety of books by political theorists,including Marx (as well as Weber and some others) sitting on my shelf, so don't be trying to do a war of source attrition, either.

[cerapa]

Personally I find that its more of a trade-off between personal freedom and freedom of the whole. We could do lots of good stuff that would require large amounts of resources cause they wouldnt be used up building mansions for rich people.

Almost all freedom comes at the cost of someone elses. Richer people can sit around all day, while some have to work 12 hours a day just to feed their family.