sniper

5y

The lust for power will always oppress the people

The relationship between the ruler and the ruled. Good people or bad people at the helm will not save it from its sins.

ARCADE GOON

5y

Deep stuff, bro. I'm sure no one thought of this.

Nort

5y

that’s why I don’t see how an authoritarian regime would willing relinquish it’s power over the economy to it’s people.

Nort

5y

that’s why I don’t see how an authoritarian regime would willing relinquish it’s power over the economy to it’s people.

sniper

5y

That’s the thing, as history has shown, it wouldn’t and the proletariat would still be in its chains being controlled by the hands of a few

Nort

5y

Right. So if we want to refer back to history so often you’d think we’d want to go a different route. Perhaps a socialist revolution, turn authoritarian regime isn’t the way.

ARCADE GOON

5y

"Unfortunately, this ‘pure socialism’ view is ahistorical and nonfalsifiable; it cannot be tested against the actualities of history. It compares an ideal against an imperfect reality, and the reality comes off a poor second. It imagines what socialism would be like in a world far better than this one, where no strong state structure or security force is required, where none of the value produced by workers needs to be expropriated to rebuild society and defend it from invasion and internal sabotage.

No surprise then that the pure socialists support every revolution except for the ones that succeed.'

ARCADE GOON

5y

We have a Che Guevara and a Kim Jong Un on this forum and both aren't communists

ARCADE GOON

5y

Engels spoke about you in 1872:

Why do the anti-authoritarians not confine themselves to crying out against political authority, the state? All Socialists are agreed that the political state, and with it political authority, will disappear as a result of the coming social revolution, that is, that public functions will lose their political character and will be transformed into the simple administrative functions of watching over the true interests of society. But the anti-authoritarians demand that the political state be abolished at one stroke, even before the social conditions that gave birth to it have been destroyed. They demand that the first act of the social revolution shall be the abolition of authority. Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists. Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if it had not made use of this authority of the armed people against the bourgeois? Should we not, on the contrary, reproach it for not having used it freely enough?

sniper

5y

Strawman moment

ARCADE GOON

5y

Engels spoke about you in 1872:

Why do the anti-authoritarians not confine themselves to crying out against political authority, the state? All Socialists are agreed that the political state, and with it political authority, will disappear as a result of the coming social revolution, that is, that public functions will lose their political character and will be transformed into the simple administrative functions of watching over the true interests of society. But the anti-authoritarians demand that the political state be abolished at one stroke, even before the social conditions that gave birth to it have been destroyed. They demand that the first act of the social revolution shall be the abolition of authority. Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists. Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if it had not made use of this authority of the armed people against the bourgeois? Should we not, on the contrary, reproach it for not having used it freely enough?

Nort

5y

Yes, I know. Theory is an important and I know that, But at the end of the day they were human and will not be completely correct on everything. I think history has proven Engels wrong and we would be smart to refer back to failed “socialist” societies and not repeat their mistakes.

Nort

5y

Wouldn’t it be easier then to say that either A. USSR is a failed socialist experiment that never actually achieved what it was intended to be or B. Socialism can’t work because the world we live in today won’t allow it.

ARCADE GOON

5y

Dawg. You think automation isnt a part of Marxism? Even Marx himself wrote about automation while he was alive.

Capitalism still functions mostly the same. The biggest difference is that the gold standard exists. Everything else is practically the same way as 150 years ago. Do the education dawg.

New challenges are still happening but the system is the same

And people update Marxism all the time.

ARCADE GOON

5y

Ok, cool. You're not a communist. You can believe what you want but this is basic stuff. Why do you have Kim Jong Un as your avatar even.

Nort

5y

I believe in a stateless, classless, and moneyless society. The leaders and “communist” states you’re glorifying failed to get us there. Why would we repeat the same mistakes?

ARCADE GOON

5y

Obviously the USSR dissolved and we have to ask ourselves why. But to claim it was never socialist at all is a totally useless assertion. It had a socialist economy, albeit a primitive one, and was an earnest attempt at building the groundwork for a communist society.

ARCADE GOON

5y

Ok, you are an anarchist as you believe that the transition will happen so smoothly that a state apparatus isn't even needed. Anarcho-communist maybe. You are better at home in the anarchism thread then instead of s***ting this one up.

Nort

5y

I believe in a stateless, classless, and moneyless society. The leaders and “communist” states you’re glorifying failed to get us there. Why would we repeat the same mistakes?

spongebob

5y

no one is saying we’d copy any of the history entirely. you’re framing this so incorrectly

ARCADE GOON

5y

Dawg. You think automation isnt a part of Marxism? Even Marx himself wrote about automation while he was alive.

Capitalism still functions mostly the same. The biggest difference is that the gold standard exists. Everything else is practically the same way as 150 years ago. Do the education dawg.

New challenges are still happening but the system is the same

And people update Marxism all the time.

Nort

5y

Ok so how would you attempt to bring about socialism in the US?