Author Topic: 'Who Gets Rewarded by our Economy?' - Salon.com  (Read 26665 times)

Albert

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Re: 'Who Gets Rewarded by our Economy?' - Salon.com
« Reply #50 on: August 29, 2014, 04:57:34 PM »
They deserve a nice middle class life just as much as we do. We don't have a monopoly on that! As for medium term human extinction that is 99% nonsense. A bit more of us or a bit less, but we as species are very, very adaptable. Nothing short of a totally cosmic scale could extinguish us completely.

GuitarStv

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Re: 'Who Gets Rewarded by our Economy?' - Salon.com
« Reply #51 on: September 11, 2014, 01:18:37 PM »
Nobody deserves a 'nice middle class life' if it comes at the cost of the world we live in.

Less

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Re: 'Who Gets Rewarded by our Economy?' - Salon.com
« Reply #52 on: September 23, 2014, 09:39:31 PM »
They deserve a nice middle class life just as much as we do. We don't have a monopoly on that! As for medium term human extinction that is 99% nonsense. A bit more of us or a bit less, but we as species are very, very adaptable. Nothing short of a totally cosmic scale could extinguish us completely.
You're right Albert, but I think what this means is that we in the first world don't deserve the unbelievable level of comfort we live in. 

At least not if we acknowledge the damage that was/is done to get us here. 

Lyssa

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Re: 'Who Gets Rewarded by our Economy?' - Salon.com
« Reply #53 on: September 27, 2014, 08:38:06 AM »
They deserve a nice middle class life just as much as we do. We don't have a monopoly on that! As for medium term human extinction that is 99% nonsense. A bit more of us or a bit less, but we as species are very, very adaptable. Nothing short of a totally cosmic scale could extinguish us completely.
You're right Albert, but I think what this means is that we in the first world don't deserve the unbelievable level of comfort we live in. 

At least not if we acknowledge the damage that was/is done to get us here.

Apart from the world not owing us a living and certainly not a "nice middle class life" simply because of the fact that moral and ethical categories are not applicable to nature: I think this is a common fallacy.

Not that our way of life does a lot of damage. That is obviously true.

But our ancestors were pretty good in exterminating animals, cutting or burning down huge forrests and polluting streams of waters as well. And traditional african goat herders do a nice job accelerating desertification.

We tend to overestimate the impact of dramatic industrial events (like Fukushima) and hugely underestimate the impact of slow-pace terraforming through agriculture and breeding of livestock. Likewise we love smart new technological solutions and underfund longterm traditional solutions like strategically planted new forests.

franklin w. dixon

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Re: 'Who Gets Rewarded by our Economy?' - Salon.com
« Reply #54 on: October 05, 2014, 07:05:06 PM »
Gimp is on the money..just look at the male life expectancy for gods sake. I've read very similar accounts by émigrés ...people were drinking anything...if you had access to a lab for pure alcohol you were particularly lucky.  No risk, no reward, no choice...what's the damn point.
Yes, let's look at male life expectancy:



Gosh, I wonder if anything catastrophic happened around 1991...

It's not false that alcoholism was a social problem in the Soviet Union. But things were far, far worse in the 1990s (not just in terms of substance abuse, but in all ways), and have only returned to a semblance of what once existed in the Putin era. It's easy to find a bunch of anti-communist expatriate crusaders, but ask people in Russia what their view is of the communist years (and of the jackals and turncoats who sabotaged and dismantled Soviet communism) and they are clear: http://rt.com/politics/brezhnev-stalin-gorbachev-soviet-638/

And in eastern Europe? Well... A remarkable 72% of Hungarians say that most people in their country are actually worse off today economically than they were under communism. Only 8% say most people in Hungary are better off, and 16% say things are about the same.

For every expat posting about how the Soviet Union was "dirty" or whatever there are many thousands of Russians and other former Soviet citizens who wish they could live under a system which provided for human needs and aspirations as well as the one their parents enjoyed (and their grandparents built).

Lyssa

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Re: 'Who Gets Rewarded by our Economy?' - Salon.com
« Reply #55 on: October 06, 2014, 01:05:11 AM »
Gimp is on the money..just look at the male life expectancy for gods sake. I've read very similar accounts by émigrés ...people were drinking anything...if you had access to a lab for pure alcohol you were particularly lucky.  No risk, no reward, no choice...what's the damn point.
Yes, let's look at male life expectancy:



Gosh, I wonder if anything catastrophic happened around 1991...

It's not false that alcoholism was a social problem in the Soviet Union. But things were far, far worse in the 1990s (not just in terms of substance abuse, but in all ways), and have only returned to a semblance of what once existed in the Putin era. It's easy to find a bunch of anti-communist expatriate crusaders, but ask people in Russia what their view is of the communist years (and of the jackals and turncoats who sabotaged and dismantled Soviet communism) and they are clear: http://rt.com/politics/brezhnev-stalin-gorbachev-soviet-638/

And in eastern Europe? Well... A remarkable 72% of Hungarians say that most people in their country are actually worse off today economically than they were under communism. Only 8% say most people in Hungary are better off, and 16% say things are about the same.

For every expat posting about how the Soviet Union was "dirty" or whatever there are many thousands of Russians and other former Soviet citizens who wish they could live under a system which provided for human needs and aspirations as well as the one their parents enjoyed (and their grandparents built).

And what do you think happened in 1991 in Russia?

The communist party thinking "Well, communism surely worked out nicely up to now but let's try a completely chaotic version of capitalism for a change now!"? What happened to Russia in 1991 is comparable to anybody swamped in debt who has been ignoring "bad letters" for some months now. Perhaps after having their cards shredded and being evicted people think of the good old times when credit cards were still working and everything was perfectly fine...

Communism has completely ruined Russia and many Eastern European Countries. Its breakdown was inevitable and not pretty. Some countries have adjusted better (Poland, Czech Republic, Estonia, etc), some have done far worse (Belarus, Ukraine, Russia itself).

As for Russia itself I have no idea at all how it can possibly develop into a real democracy with a semblance of respect for human rights. Russian history is an endless chain of different systems bringing misery and tyranny upon the Russian people. And its neighbors. Just look up how long serfdom survived in Russia. Or how communism was established and imposed in the early Soviet Union. When a population count in 1937 came up a few million short because of the toll the Russian version of the "Great Leap Forward" had taken, Stalin had a classic Soviet solution: he had the organizer of the counting shot and the statistics buried. Compared to those standards, Putin surely looks very reasonable. Most Chinese people today are honestly satisfied with their current living standard and personal liberties as well. For similar reasons.

franklin w. dixon

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Re: 'Who Gets Rewarded by our Economy?' - Salon.com
« Reply #56 on: October 06, 2014, 06:59:22 AM »
And what do you think happened in 1991 in Russia?
I could give a very long answer, but the short one is that the careerists and apparatchiks won. All the factory bosses, hospital administrators, local party leaders etc. had a class interest against communism, because under communism they couldn't loot society the way they can under capitalism. Under Stalin they were kept in check by the purges but once Khrushchev ended class repression of party parasites they gradually grew stronger until they were able to overthrow the state and steal it for themselves. Many of them became billionaires and a handful even became heads of state, all at the expense of everyone else. It's pretty depressing!

gimp

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Re: 'Who Gets Rewarded by our Economy?' - Salon.com
« Reply #57 on: October 06, 2014, 06:56:04 PM »
Quote
Russia what their view is of the communist years (and of the jackals and turncoats who sabotaged and dismantled Soviet communism) and they are clear: http://rt.com/politics/brezhnev-stalin-gorbachev-soviet-638/

Quote
I could give a very long answer, but the short one is that the careerists and apparatchiks won. All the factory bosses, hospital administrators, local party leaders etc. had a class interest against communism, because under communism they couldn't loot society the way they can under capitalism. Under Stalin they were kept in check by the purges but once Khrushchev ended class repression of party parasites they gradually grew stronger until they were able to overthrow the state and steal it for themselves. Many of them became billionaires and a handful even became heads of state, all at the expense of everyone else. It's pretty depressing!

Hi mods, this will be reported. I don't care. Ban me. It needs to be said:

Dear franklin w. dixon, kindly go fuck yourself. You're a piece of shit. You're a piece of shit for advocating purges to "keep people in check." I have many family members that disappeared out of history and knowledge. They were journalists, professors, doctors, engineers. Some were jews. I'd very much like to see your reasons for lining them up against the wall and summarily executing them.

sol

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Re: 'Who Gets Rewarded by our Economy?' - Salon.com
« Reply #58 on: October 06, 2014, 08:13:01 PM »
You're a piece of shit for advocating purges to "keep people in check."

I don't think he was advocating purges, he was saying that purges happened and they effectively repressed the concentration of power into people outside of the party elite.  That's not a value judgment, it's an observation of the way totalitarian regimes work.  Brutally effective.

The more relevant point being made was that these same cultural elites, the doctors and journalists and engineers you mentioned, can amass much larger spheres of influence under a capitalist system that encourages them to fleece the poor.  Soviet communism had a lot of faults, but at least it wasn't openly founded on the principal of making the rich richer by stealing from the poor, which is the basis of capitalism as practiced in the US.

franklin w. dixon

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Re: 'Who Gets Rewarded by our Economy?' - Salon.com
« Reply #59 on: October 08, 2014, 02:52:16 PM »
You're a piece of shit for advocating purges to "keep people in check."

I don't think he was advocating purges, he was saying that purges happened and they effectively repressed the concentration of power into people outside of the party elite.  That's not a value judgment, it's an observation of the way totalitarian regimes work.  Brutally effective.

The more relevant point being made was that these same cultural elites, the doctors and journalists and engineers you mentioned, can amass much larger spheres of influence under a capitalist system that encourages them to fleece the poor.  Soviet communism had a lot of faults, but at least it wasn't openly founded on the principal of making the rich richer by stealing from the poor, which is the basis of capitalism as practiced in the US.
That's exactly right, and even if the purges "worked," they were abandoned once Stalin was no longer around, so even if one were inclined to periodic bloody catharsis they hardly made for a permanent solution. An interesting contrary example is dekulakization, by which the kulaks really were liquidated as a class, without much violence. Careerism was an insuperable problem because the Soviet system reproduced the class interest of Party members (and not the class interest of kulaks!).

It's worth pointing out that the Chinese attempted to solve the same careerism problem during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, which was much less bloody than the Soviet purges... although it unfortunately also failed. The Cubans have done a pretty good job, but Cuba is a small country in special circumstances so it's dubious how universally their relative success can be extrapolated.


Lyssa

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Re: 'Who Gets Rewarded by our Economy?' - Salon.com
« Reply #60 on: October 09, 2014, 12:56:55 AM »
You're a piece of shit for advocating purges to "keep people in check."

I don't think he was advocating purges, he was saying that purges happened and they effectively repressed the concentration of power into people outside of the party elite.  That's not a value judgment, it's an observation of the way totalitarian regimes work.  Brutally effective.

The more relevant point being made was that these same cultural elites, the doctors and journalists and engineers you mentioned, can amass much larger spheres of influence under a capitalist system that encourages them to fleece the poor.  Soviet communism had a lot of faults, but at least it wasn't openly founded on the principal of making the rich richer by stealing from the poor, which is the basis of capitalism as practiced in the US.

If making peasants harvest under military observation, shooting anybody who dares to "steal" a handful of grains, taking away the entire harvest and letting millions starve to death doesn't count as "stealing from the poor" I don't know what does.
 

Lyssa

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Re: 'Who Gets Rewarded by our Economy?' - Salon.com
« Reply #61 on: October 09, 2014, 01:02:18 AM »
You're a piece of shit for advocating purges to "keep people in check."

I don't think he was advocating purges, he was saying that purges happened and they effectively repressed the concentration of power into people outside of the party elite.  That's not a value judgment, it's an observation of the way totalitarian regimes work.  Brutally effective.

The more relevant point being made was that these same cultural elites, the doctors and journalists and engineers you mentioned, can amass much larger spheres of influence under a capitalist system that encourages them to fleece the poor.  Soviet communism had a lot of faults, but at least it wasn't openly founded on the principal of making the rich richer by stealing from the poor, which is the basis of capitalism as practiced in the US.
That's exactly right, and even if the purges "worked," they were abandoned once Stalin was no longer around, so even if one were inclined to periodic bloody catharsis they hardly made for a permanent solution. An interesting contrary example is dekulakization, by which the kulaks really were liquidated as a class, without much violence. Careerism was an insuperable problem because the Soviet system reproduced the class interest of Party members (and not the class interest of kulaks!).

It's worth pointing out that the Chinese attempted to solve the same careerism problem during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, which was much less bloody than the Soviet purges... although it unfortunately also failed. The Cubans have done a pretty good job, but Cuba is a small country in special circumstances so it's dubious how universally their relative success can be extrapolated.

This is unbelievable. I have no words.

Apparently the only thing wrong with Communist mass murders is they failed to root out "careerism".
« Last Edit: October 09, 2014, 01:20:59 AM by Lyssa »

franklin w. dixon

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Re: 'Who Gets Rewarded by our Economy?' - Salon.com
« Reply #62 on: October 09, 2014, 07:49:25 AM »
This is unbelievable. I have no words.

Apparently the only thing wrong with Communist mass murders is they failed to root out "careerism".
Well, on the subject of "Communist mass murders," someone once asked for an evaluation of the historical merit of those "millions murdered by Stalin" numbers that are thrown around and this is what I came up with:

There's not really a standard methodology for quantifying how many people a particular leader or ideology "killed," so it's not a question with a single or precise answer. But the ones that are employed to run up outlandish numbers for people "killed by Stalin" or "killed by communism" are incredibly suspect. Specifically, they sometimes overstate actual numbers (or accept as accurate high end estimates), and more critically, they scoop up all kinds of different deaths under a "killed by" heading that suggests animus or deliberate action which is in many cases absolutely false. The Black Book of Communism in particular is especially egregious.

For example, almost all estimates of people "killed by Stalin" include people who died in the GULAG system. But they almost never even attempt to estimate what a normal death rate would be for the incarcerated demographic -- by analogy, would you accept a statistic that counted every single death in American prisons as someone "killed by Obama"? Many prisons in America, such as the Angola prison camp in Louisiana, are identical to GULAGs (except they incarcerate race enemies rather than class enemies). Moreover, the two years in the history of the GULAG system when death rates were very high were both in the darkest days of WWII, when resources all over the Soviet Union were desperately repurposed and thrown into the war effort. I've even seen authors who count people who died during the war in Nazi-occupied territories as "killed by Stalin" for the sole purpose of running up numbers. Certainly these deaths aren't really in the same category as people executed as political dissidents etc!

Even the most fervent anticommunist crusaders have to concede that the large majority of deaths "due to communism" in their ledgers were actually caused by famine. Sometimes there is an attempt to cast famines as having been purposeful or Machiavellian, i.e., populations starved by communist leaders on purpose, but in almost every case the evidence of that is sparse at best. That is certainly not to absolve the governments of responsibility, because the famines that took place in the Soviet Union and China were almost certainly preventable, but it is not what "killed by" usually means. Again, if someone in the United States dies because he cannot afford health insurance, would you say that Obama killed him?

On the subject of famine it is also important to have some perspective regarding the incredible pressures the communist countries were subjected to, and the desperate programs of industrialization they were forced to adopt. From the outset, the west was intensely hostile to communism and placed it under perpetual threat of military defeat. This was true from the early invasion of the newly declared USSR by WWI allied governments, to the runup to and ultimate defeat of Nazism by the Soviet Union, to the Cold war, to the western backing of the Nationalist government in China, to Eisenhower's threats of catastrophic nuclear retaliation against China during the 1950s. In every case, it was absolutely imperative that the communist governments industrialize as rapidly and as thoroughly as possible, costs be damned. In the USSR, the wisdom of the industrialization policy was proven by the defeat of fascism in 1945; but throwing every possible hour of labor into industrialization meant that other aspects of the economy were neglected and catastrophic mistakes like the famine in Ukraine could occur. The exact same motivation and consequence were what caused the Great Leap Forward and the famine associated with it.

Famines in other communist countries, most notably Cambodia and North Korea, have much more direct proximate causes which were not even the fault of their respective governments. The Khmer Rouge in particular worked heroically to forestall famine from the moment it came to power, and failed, but not on account of dunderheadedness or malice; the challenges it inherited from the civil war were simply too great. Pol Pot's government was chauvinist and adventurist but not, you know, stupid -- it's worth pointing out that the irrigation systems used in rural Cambodia to this day date to the mass mobilization of labor by the Khmer Rouge to in desperation attempt to produce enough food.

Ultimately, I don't think it's particularly possible or productive to come up with a figure for people "killed by Stalin" or "killed by communism." But if you winnow out the figures for what "killed by" usually means -- that is to say, political murders and state executions, the number is orders of magnitude lower than what is usually cited (and as discussed above, repression of class enemies in the Party was a worthy goal even if it ultimately failed). On the other hand, if you're going to include every preventable death from sins of omission, accidents, and 20-20 hindsight, you'll get an enormous number which means very little and is dwarfed by whatever figure you'd arrive at as "killed by capitalism" using the same methodology.

Here's some good data about the GULAG system https://web.archive.org/web/20081228031043/http://www.etext.org/Politics/Staljin/Staljin/articles/AHR/AHR.html

Here's an ok contemporaneous article that speaks to challenges the Khmer Rouge faced on taking power http://www.vvaw.org/veteran/article/?id=2261

As English sources go Robert Davies is good for Soviet history stuff that isn't pure anticommunist propaganda & he wrote a whole book about the Ukraine famine.
« Last Edit: October 09, 2014, 07:51:41 AM by franklin w. dixon »

gimp

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Re: 'Who Gets Rewarded by our Economy?' - Salon.com
« Reply #63 on: October 09, 2014, 05:00:30 PM »
This is unbelievable. I have no words.

Apparently the only thing wrong with Communist mass murders is they failed to root out "careerism".

Don't bother. This is the same person who thinks it's okay to have a massive (nearly total, in many cases) death rate in work camps, because obviously the people there are career criminals, and not, you know, the aforementioned engineers and academics and journalists and anyone who had a bit of money or made the wrong joke to the wrong person or was the wrong (or any) religion.

Lyssa

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Re: 'Who Gets Rewarded by our Economy?' - Salon.com
« Reply #64 on: October 11, 2014, 05:18:49 AM »
This is unbelievable. I have no words.

Apparently the only thing wrong with Communist mass murders is they failed to root out "careerism".
Well, on the subject of "Communist mass murders," someone once asked for an evaluation of the historical merit of those "millions murdered by Stalin" numbers that are thrown around and this is what I came up with:

There's not really a standard methodology for quantifying how many people a particular leader or ideology "killed," so it's not a question with a single or precise answer. But the ones that are employed to run up outlandish numbers for people "killed by Stalin" or "killed by communism" are incredibly suspect. Specifically, they sometimes overstate actual numbers (or accept as accurate high end estimates), and more critically, they scoop up all kinds of different deaths under a "killed by" heading that suggests animus or deliberate action which is in many cases absolutely false. The Black Book of Communism in particular is especially egregious.

For example, almost all estimates of people "killed by Stalin" include people who died in the GULAG system. But they almost never even attempt to estimate what a normal death rate would be for the incarcerated demographic -- by analogy, would you accept a statistic that counted every single death in American prisons as someone "killed by Obama"? Many prisons in America, such as the Angola prison camp in Louisiana, are identical to GULAGs (except they incarcerate race enemies rather than class enemies). Moreover, the two years in the history of the GULAG system when death rates were very high were both in the darkest days of WWII, when resources all over the Soviet Union were desperately repurposed and thrown into the war effort. I've even seen authors who count people who died during the war in Nazi-occupied territories as "killed by Stalin" for the sole purpose of running up numbers. Certainly these deaths aren't really in the same category as people executed as political dissidents etc!

Even the most fervent anticommunist crusaders have to concede that the large majority of deaths "due to communism" in their ledgers were actually caused by famine. Sometimes there is an attempt to cast famines as having been purposeful or Machiavellian, i.e., populations starved by communist leaders on purpose, but in almost every case the evidence of that is sparse at best. That is certainly not to absolve the governments of responsibility, because the famines that took place in the Soviet Union and China were almost certainly preventable, but it is not what "killed by" usually means. Again, if someone in the United States dies because he cannot afford health insurance, would you say that Obama killed him?

On the subject of famine it is also important to have some perspective regarding the incredible pressures the communist countries were subjected to, and the desperate programs of industrialization they were forced to adopt. From the outset, the west was intensely hostile to communism and placed it under perpetual threat of military defeat. This was true from the early invasion of the newly declared USSR by WWI allied governments, to the runup to and ultimate defeat of Nazism by the Soviet Union, to the Cold war, to the western backing of the Nationalist government in China, to Eisenhower's threats of catastrophic nuclear retaliation against China during the 1950s. In every case, it was absolutely imperative that the communist governments industrialize as rapidly and as thoroughly as possible, costs be damned. In the USSR, the wisdom of the industrialization policy was proven by the defeat of fascism in 1945; but throwing every possible hour of labor into industrialization meant that other aspects of the economy were neglected and catastrophic mistakes like the famine in Ukraine could occur. The exact same motivation and consequence were what caused the Great Leap Forward and the famine associated with it.

Famines in other communist countries, most notably Cambodia and North Korea, have much more direct proximate causes which were not even the fault of their respective governments. The Khmer Rouge in particular worked heroically to forestall famine from the moment it came to power, and failed, but not on account of dunderheadedness or malice; the challenges it inherited from the civil war were simply too great. Pol Pot's government was chauvinist and adventurist but not, you know, stupid -- it's worth pointing out that the irrigation systems used in rural Cambodia to this day date to the mass mobilization of labor by the Khmer Rouge to in desperation attempt to produce enough food.

Ultimately, I don't think it's particularly possible or productive to come up with a figure for people "killed by Stalin" or "killed by communism." But if you winnow out the figures for what "killed by" usually means -- that is to say, political murders and state executions, the number is orders of magnitude lower than what is usually cited (and as discussed above, repression of class enemies in the Party was a worthy goal even if it ultimately failed). On the other hand, if you're going to include every preventable death from sins of omission, accidents, and 20-20 hindsight, you'll get an enormous number which means very little and is dwarfed by whatever figure you'd arrive at as "killed by capitalism" using the same methodology.

Here's some good data about the GULAG system https://web.archive.org/web/20081228031043/http://www.etext.org/Politics/Staljin/Staljin/articles/AHR/AHR.html

Here's an ok contemporaneous article that speaks to challenges the Khmer Rouge faced on taking power http://www.vvaw.org/veteran/article/?id=2261

As English sources go Robert Davies is good for Soviet history stuff that isn't pure anticommunist propaganda & he wrote a whole book about the Ukraine famine.

Not a reply.

Just preserving this particular gem of propaganda, delusion and brutality.

Lyssa

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Re: 'Who Gets Rewarded by our Economy?' - Salon.com
« Reply #65 on: October 11, 2014, 05:40:36 AM »
This is unbelievable. I have no words.

Apparently the only thing wrong with Communist mass murders is they failed to root out "careerism".

Don't bother. This is the same person who thinks it's okay to have a massive (nearly total, in many cases) death rate in work camps, because obviously the people there are career criminals, and not, you know, the aforementioned engineers and academics and journalists and anyone who had a bit of money or made the wrong joke to the wrong person or was the wrong (or any) religion.

Oh well, you really need to consider how many of those prisoners would have died of cancer or a heart attack anyway!

I know it would never pass the U.S. Supreme Court, but when reading something like this I am quite thankful that Germany has outlawed such kind of pseudo-scientific minimizations regarding the Holocaust.

I really have lost any respect for the remaining western communists/socialists. They never run out of excuses for all the attempts to build the socialist paradise on earth (which always resulted in piles of dead bodies, mass starvation and police states), yet they always decide to continue living in capitalistic hellholes like the U.S., France or Germany (in not so rare cases even being paid by the state, which German socialists not long ago liked to call the "pig system"). Probably the only common sense reply is: Put the rest of yourself where your mouth is or shut the hell up.  And thank goodness you stand no chance to come to power (again).
« Last Edit: October 11, 2014, 12:11:55 PM by Lyssa »

franklin w. dixon

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Re: 'Who Gets Rewarded by our Economy?' - Salon.com
« Reply #66 on: October 12, 2014, 06:17:20 PM »
Oh well, you really need to consider how many of those prisoners would have died of cancer or a heart attack anyway!

I know it would never pass the U.S. Supreme Court, but when reading something like this I am quite thankful that Germany has outlawed such kind of pseudo-scientific minimizations regarding the Holocaust.

I really have lost any respect for the remaining western communists/socialists. They never run out of excuses for all the attempts to build the socialist paradise on earth (which always resulted in piles of dead bodies, mass starvation and police states), yet they always decide to continue living in capitalistic hellholes like the U.S., France or Germany (in not so rare cases even being paid by the state, which German socialists not long ago liked to call the "pig system"). Probably the only common sense reply is: Put the rest of yourself where your mouth is or shut the hell up.  And thank goodness you stand no chance to come to power (again).
I could reply to this in a number of different ways, so I will choose all of them, and enumerate:

1. I certainly agree that Holocaust denial should be a crime.

2. It's always funny how ardently people will cleave to ideology, and doubly so on a forum like this one, where everyone takes great pride in being (or claiming to be), you know, an iconoclast autodidact, who sees through society's tricks and is smarter than your average pathetic consumer. Yet change the topic to literally anything else, as in this case, and your response is a non-argument "pfeh! propaganda! gahooey!" because it differs from prevailing ideology. I have deliberately avoided replying to gimp because I don't doubt that he has family members who experienced bad things in the Soviet Union, but I am not interested in either arguing against an anecdote or fighting with someone who is too emotionally close to the subject to escape the bias of a personal grudge. And for the record, there are far, far more people who have that sort of legitimate personal grudge against the United States than ever did against the Soviet Union.

On the other hand, those of us who have some emotional remove should be able to evaluate historical fact with cool heads. Nothing I've said is even controversial to people who "know anything" about the history of communism (at least, those who aren't bought-and-paid-for pro-Western ideologues). But even if you took Robert Conquest and The Black Book of Communism at face value (which you shouldn't, because they belong in the garbage can), it still wouldn't matter, because...

3. Even if Stalin did "kill" 20 million people and Mao did "kill" 65 million people, those are rounding errors compared to the number of lives that they saved. The advances in public health that took place under communist governments have no historical parallel. In Russia between the 1920s and 1950s, and in China between the 1940s and the 1970s, life expectancy doubled or nearly doubled. No other country has ever done that. While Mao was in power in China, life expectancy increased by more than one year per year. The first objection to these miraculous achievements is that "life expectancy would have gone up anyway," which may be true, but it is very unlikely that it would have risen nearly as far or as quickly. In the Chinese case, we actually have a ready-made historical experiment, because India won independence at nearly the same moment China was liberated, and had similar vital statistics, but did not benefit from communist central planning. As a consequence:



Go ahead; take the integral of those curves and run the numbers on how many additional billions of life-years Chinese have enjoyed as compared to their Indian counterparts. Even by the insane and misleading history of wild-eyed anti-communism, if you consider communist policy in totality, Joseph Stalin was still the second-greatest humanitarian to have ever lived, right after Comrade Chairman Mao Zedong.

4. For all the weepy tears that are shed for the victims of famine in communist countries, and the extremely dubious connections to policy errors that maybe-could-have-been malicious if you look at them really squinty and hold your breath for 90 seconds, it's very curious that nobody seems to "give a crap" about massive famines that were unambiguously engineered and unambiguously callously exploited for the benefit of capitalism. This was true of the Irish famine as well as famines that occurred in India and China in the late 19th and earlier 20th centuries. They are detailed very well in the book Late Victorian Holocausts.

5. You made the remark about where I live snidely, but I take it seriously. From a purely selfish perspective, it would be very foolish for me to leave the United States, because not only am I a citizen of the first world (to which the ill-gotten gains of global labor exploitation and resource theft accrue), but I'm also white, and male, and extremely overpaid. In other words, I am a direct beneficiary of the whole rotten system. I don't like it, but I also have bills to pay and a family that needs health insurance. I don't speak Spanish or Korean (not that the North Koreans are particularly welcoming to would-be defectors, and understandably so). I do speak Chinese, and I would gladly follow in the footsteps of heroes like Norman Bethune and Joan Hinton, but China abandoned the communist project nearly a decade before I was born. The truth is that imperialist capitalism has won so thoroughly in the post-Soviet era that it is not possible to opt out. Everyone is either a capitalist or a victim of capitalism; everyone here (myself included) aspires to own sufficient property that we can be sustained in whole or part by capital returns -- the labor of others! How perverse! But the other alternative, mandatory full employment, with reasonable working hours and egalitarian living conditions, no longer exists, either because it was destroyed by the imperialists, or because it was wrecked from within by a  capitalist-roader comprador bourgeoisie.

6. It is not communists you should fear coming to power; it is the inevitable alternative. A long time ago, Rosa Luxemburg wrote that "The triumph of imperialism leads to the annihilation of civilization." She was writing about World War I, but it is not less true now and it is not a figure of speech. Not so long ago, there was a stable, secular, multicultural, tolerant, well-educated society in Iraq, which had a Sunni government in the socialist Ba'ath party. The Western, capitalist, imperialist countries (all words for the same thing) destroyed it. In its place, as a direct consequence, we now have the Islamic State caliphate. Again, this is not figurative. The exact same individuals who once supported the secular Hussein government, including his own daughter, are now on the side of IS. Caliph Ibrahim's deputies in charge of the Syrian and Iraqi portions of IS are both former military officers from the Hussein era. The people have not changed. Material reality has; because it is impossible to defeat the United States as a secular socialist government, they must do it as mujahideen. The old dichotomy Engels described between "socialism and barbarism" remains true. The more capitalists prevail, the more the world will look like Islamic State, because imperialists always lose, and socialism has been so thoroughly defeated that jihad is the most successful recourse for anti-imperialist resistance. The United States is presently at war in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Libyia, Afghanistan, and Northwest Pakistan. Do you think we will win? What do you think will happen when capitalist imperialism loses? The problem, of course, is that imperialists never think.

sol

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Re: 'Who Gets Rewarded by our Economy?' - Salon.com
« Reply #67 on: October 12, 2014, 08:32:07 PM »
I could reply to this in a number of different ways, so I will choose all of them, and enumerate:

Franklin, I don't necessarily agree with everything you say but I appreciate your contributions anyway.  They are well-written and thoughtful and notably lacking in the sort of vitriolic rhetoric that seems to pervade these kinds of discussions. 

Thank you for trying to make your point reasonably and intelligently.  You've not resorted to name calling.  You've provided primary sources to support your commentary.  And you've failed to once evoke hyperbolic denialist jingoism to support an opinion that reason and history cannot.

So far, I think you're the only one in this thread.

Having important conversations on internet forums is probably always going to be a futile and depressing endeavor, but I like to see people try anyway.

arebelspy

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Re: 'Who Gets Rewarded by our Economy?' - Salon.com
« Reply #68 on: October 12, 2014, 10:33:49 PM »

I could reply to this in a number of different ways, so I will choose all of them, and enumerate:

Franklin, I don't necessarily agree with everything you say but I appreciate your contributions anyway.  They are well-written and thoughtful and notably lacking in the sort of vitriolic rhetoric that seems to pervade these kinds of discussions. 

Thank you for trying to make your point reasonably and intelligently.  You've not resorted to name calling.  You've provided primary sources to support your commentary.  And you've failed to once evoke hyperbolic denialist jingoism to support an opinion that reason and history cannot.

So far, I think you're the only one in this thread.

Having important conversations on internet forums is probably always going to be a futile and depressing endeavor, but I like to see people try anyway.

I am a former teacher who accumulated a bunch of real estate, retired at 29, spent some time traveling the world full time and am now settled with three kids.
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Big Boots Buddha

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Re: 'Who Gets Rewarded by our Economy?' - Salon.com
« Reply #69 on: October 12, 2014, 11:35:06 PM »
I could reply to this in a number of different ways, so I will choose all of them, and enumerate:

1. I certainly agree that Holocaust denial should be a crime.

2. It's always funny how ardently people will cleave to ideology, and doubly so on a forum like this one, where everyone takes great pride in being (or claiming to be), you know, an iconoclast autodidact, who sees through society's tricks and is smarter than your average pathetic consumer. Yet change the topic to literally anything else, as in this case, and your response is a non-argument "pfeh! propaganda! gahooey!" because it differs from prevailing ideology. I have deliberately avoided replying to gimp because I don't doubt that he has family members who experienced bad things in the Soviet Union, but I am not interested in either arguing against an anecdote or fighting with someone who is too emotionally close to the subject to escape the bias of a personal grudge. And for the record, there are far, far more people who have that sort of legitimate personal grudge against the United States than ever did against the Soviet Union.


Wow! Post of the month. One sentence was all it took.

Do I agree with everything you said. Actually, I'd have to think about it. And probably go to the library and spend a few months reading decent books, checking the bibliography and coming to a sound conclusion. VERY FEW people do anything close to this these days. Bravo~

Lyssa

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Re: 'Who Gets Rewarded by our Economy?' - Salon.com
« Reply #70 on: October 13, 2014, 12:09:26 AM »
I could reply to this in a number of different ways, so I will choose all of them, and enumerate:

1. I certainly agree that Holocaust denial should be a crime.

2. It's always funny how ardently people will cleave to ideology, and doubly so on a forum like this one, where everyone takes great pride in being (or claiming to be), you know, an iconoclast autodidact, who sees through society's tricks and is smarter than your average pathetic consumer. Yet change the topic to literally anything else, as in this case, and your response is a non-argument "pfeh! propaganda! gahooey!" because it differs from prevailing ideology. I have deliberately avoided replying to gimp because I don't doubt that he has family members who experienced bad things in the Soviet Union, but I am not interested in either arguing against an anecdote or fighting with someone who is too emotionally close to the subject to escape the bias of a personal grudge. And for the record, there are far, far more people who have that sort of legitimate personal grudge against the United States than ever did against the Soviet Union.


Wow! Post of the month. One sentence was all it took.

Do I agree with everything you said. Actually, I'd have to think about it. And probably go to the library and spend a few months reading decent books, checking the bibliography and coming to a sound conclusion. VERY FEW people do anything close to this these days. Bravo~

Don't miss "The Tragedy of Liberation" and "Mao's Great Famine" by Frank Dikötter. And "Bloodlands - Europe between Hitler and Stalin" by Timothy Snyder.

Just because Gimp and me have learned not to argue with groupies of totalitarianism does not mean they are the only ones doing any reading... 

kyanamerinas

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Re: 'Who Gets Rewarded by our Economy?' - Salon.com
« Reply #71 on: October 13, 2014, 12:28:50 AM »
Franklin thanks for the calm reasoned arguments.
I personally agree with the idea of communism in principle but have to say in that in reality it has largely been very problematic. i cannot see how communism can not be totalitarian and i cannot accept totalitarianism. i strongly dislike capitalism but it does (at least for the moment) seem to leave more room for manoeuvre if you do not totally agree.
however, i think the wrongs and moral failings of capitalism have been wildly under-represented. largely because capitalism controls most of the sources which would produce such information. that is a benefit of the internet.

sol

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Re: 'Who Gets Rewarded by our Economy?' - Salon.com
« Reply #72 on: October 13, 2014, 12:39:37 AM »
i cannot see how communism can not be totalitarian and i cannot accept totalitarianism.

Really?  Because I've always thought communism (an economic system based on equality for all) would fare much better under democracy (a political system based on equality for all) than under authoritarianism.  I've always found it somewhat confusing that we've paired democracy with capitalism, as those two things seem philosophically contradictory to me. 

Like if I were an alien studying human cultures, I might have expected that cutthroat competition of capitalism to thrive under the iron fist of a totalitarian dictator.  Democracy and communism are both sort of feel-good wishy-washy ideas about rainbows and sunshine, they seem a more natural fit.  Accidents of history, I suppose.


Lyssa

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Re: 'Who Gets Rewarded by our Economy?' - Salon.com
« Reply #73 on: October 13, 2014, 12:52:41 AM »
You made the remark about where I live snidely, but I take it seriously.

I was and am dead serious. And I've told Muslim extremists the very same thing. Yet life among the infidels does not seem unbearable after all...

And I also mean what I say now:

Firstly, thanks for pointing out that you take part in a forum all about building your very own Stash, self-reliance, as well as consequences of individual life choices and yet happen to defend pogroms to root out "carrerism". Would be to much cognitive dissonance for me. Then again Marx spend through a few fortunes, impregnated his maid and banished his illegitimate son. So theory and practice always have been two very different things in communism.

And secondly, a heartfelt thank you for demonstrating how this strange alliance of the Western very left and Muslim extremism came and comes about. "Damn, we lost... But look at those guys...". Never mind some of the worlds last practicing socialists (the Kurds) being slaughtered. Or in the words of the spokesperson for "peace-politics" of the German socialist party: "Solidarity with Kobane! Stop U.S. airstrikes!"

kyanamerinas

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Re: 'Who Gets Rewarded by our Economy?' - Salon.com
« Reply #74 on: October 13, 2014, 01:02:50 AM »
i cannot see how communism can not be totalitarian and i cannot accept totalitarianism.

Really?  Because I've always thought communism (an economic system based on equality for all) would fare much better under democracy (a political system based on equality for all) than under authoritarianism.  I've always found it somewhat confusing that we've paired democracy with capitalism, as those two things seem philosophically contradictory to me. 

Like if I were an alien studying human cultures, I might have expected that cutthroat competition of capitalism to thrive under the iron fist of a totalitarian dictator.  Democracy and communism are both sort of feel-good wishy-washy ideas about rainbows and sunshine, they seem a more natural fit.  Accidents of history, I suppose.

yes, I can see where you're coming from but I think fundamentally people want to get ahead (which, i appreciate, is what we all want to do here for whatever end reason). communism either requires everyone to accept it or to be imposed. i know of small-scale communist communities within capitalist countries but recreating this democratically on a larger scale seems improbable.

i think there are more people willing to work for capitalism than communism and therefore capitalism becomes its own driving force whereas capitalism needs the drive of a strong leader. this is just thinking off the top of my head trying to explain thoughts i've been mulling over for a while.

Lyssa

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Re: 'Who Gets Rewarded by our Economy?' - Salon.com
« Reply #75 on: October 13, 2014, 01:06:11 AM »
i cannot see how communism can not be totalitarian and i cannot accept totalitarianism.

Really?  Because I've always thought communism (an economic system based on equality for all) would fare much better under democracy (a political system based on equality for all) than under authoritarianism.

So let's start with the assumption of a democratically elected (overwhelmingly so) socialist government and take it from there.

What if people started founding and voting for parties supporting property rights? What if somebody refused to spend all his income and saved and as a result would not be equal to his neighbor anymore? What if somebody did not want to work in a state-owned corporation but decided to do carpentry on his own? In exchange for money or other goods (like a stay in Hawaii). His non-carpenter neighbor then goes to the nearest party official reporting on his neighbor torpedoing equality because if not anybody can have a stay in Hawaii nobody should! Haven't you promised us equality?
« Last Edit: October 13, 2014, 01:26:03 AM by Lyssa »

Lyssa

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Re: 'Who Gets Rewarded by our Economy?' - Salon.com
« Reply #76 on: October 13, 2014, 01:14:02 AM »
communism either requires everyone to accept it or to be imposed. i know of small-scale communist communities within capitalist countries but recreating this democratically on a larger scale seems improbable.

Agreed.

Small scale voluntary communism in a large non-communist system is possible and can in fact be quite pleasant (think of an Israeli Kibbutz). And the larger non-communist state has no reason to interfere with people going to and leaving such community. A communist state on the other hand needs to put a stop to any "opt-out communities" because they otherwise would soon spread ever faster and wider. Every employee fed up with being paid and promoted "equally" to his lazy co-worker, every capable craftsman, everyone with an entrepreneurial streak would soon join the capitalist enclave. This could not be accepted.

The logical next step is then of course not only to prevent any anti-communist association but to track down anti-communist individuals...
« Last Edit: October 13, 2014, 01:24:50 AM by Lyssa »

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Re: 'Who Gets Rewarded by our Economy?' - Salon.com
« Reply #77 on: October 13, 2014, 06:25:10 AM »
I have to say Dixon lost me forever when he described Joe Stalin as one of the greatest humanitarians.  If you've gone that far down the road of communist apologetics there really isn't any hope.  At the bottom of it is the insidious belief there is no human cost too great, no blood, tears, or sweat shed, no horrible extremity that is unreasonable, no vile, unspeakable acts violating the laws of man, God, or tradition that cannot be embraced for the greater good of humanity.  As as long as it is all borne by somebody else.

Jack

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Re: 'Who Gets Rewarded by our Economy?' - Salon.com
« Reply #78 on: October 13, 2014, 08:02:50 AM »
i cannot see how communism can not be totalitarian and i cannot accept totalitarianism.

Really?  Because I've always thought communism (an economic system based on equality for all) would fare much better under democracy (a political system based on equality for all) than under authoritarianism.  I've always found it somewhat confusing that we've paired democracy with capitalism, as those two things seem philosophically contradictory to me. 

Like if I were an alien studying human cultures, I might have expected that cutthroat competition of capitalism to thrive under the iron fist of a totalitarian dictator.  Democracy and communism are both sort of feel-good wishy-washy ideas about rainbows and sunshine, they seem a more natural fit.  Accidents of history, I suppose.

Now that you've framed it that way, I'd almost expect the opposite: perhaps you must have such a dichotomy in order to compensate for human nature.

Let's say you start with a wishy-washy rainbow-and-sunshine utopia, which is both communist and democratic. What would happen? First, most people in such a system would decide -- correctly! -- that if everybody is equal, then they should let "somebody else" handle anything that seems unpleasant or difficult, which would lead to both economic and political apathy. Second, some people would be ambitious sociopaths who would want to exploit the apathy of the first group, creating capitalistic or authoritarian power for themselves.

Now, let's say you start with the opposite: a capitalistic dictatorship. In that case, the people at the bottom get fed up with being exploited and form unions and/or revolt.

In other words, both extreme societies strike me as being unstable.

sol

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Re: 'Who Gets Rewarded by our Economy?' - Salon.com
« Reply #79 on: October 13, 2014, 10:24:56 AM »
What if people started founding and voting for parties supporting property rights? What if somebody refused to spend all his income and saved and as a result would not be equal to his neighbor anymore? What if somebody did not want to work in a state-owned corporation but decided to do carpentry on his own?

A communist democracy would have to have constitutional protections of certain rights just like our capitalist democracy does.  We don't allow people to vote for too much racial discrimination, for example, because's it's antithetical to our national ideals.  Similarly, I think a communist democracy wouldn't allow people to vote for too much individual property rights.  Small doses are clearly okay in both cases.

There are many flavors of communism just like there are many flavors of capitalism, and the extreme form of communism you're describing would be just as unworkable as an extreme form of capitalism (think no taxes, no food inspectors, no SEC or bank regulation, etc.).

The defining trait of communism is that the state owns vital industries.  From a worker's standpoint I think this could be implemented in the exact same way it is in America today, with people applying for jobs they are qualified for and working for a boss in exchange for a compensation package.  The only difference would be that the company's profits would basically be 100% tax revenue instead of used to pay Jamie Dimon $20 million dollars while his company is investigated for criminal fraud.

It would have to be a hybrid system.  Just like we have communism or socialism in parts of America (post office, police force, libraries, farm subsidies, universal health care for all veterans and the elderly, free school lunches, the CDC, public street lights, OSHA, the Peace Corps, etc.) I think you would have to have something very akin to capitalism in a communist democracy, including rewarding hard workers with better compensation.  The idea of communism isn't to force everyone to be exactly equal in all ways, it's to ensure a minimum standard below which no one is allowed to fall. 

In a communist state, the elderly would not be allowed to freeze to death under a bridge and children would not be allowed to go hungry, because the state would be obligated to provide for them.  In our capitalist state, old people freeze to death all the time and approximately 15% of our children are undernourished due to poverty.  Think about that, in this wealthiest of all nations, beacon of equality for all the world, our most vulnerable citizens still wither and die because no one will take care of them.  LeBron James will make $72 million this year while back in his hometown of Akron 30% of kids don't get enough to eat.

As a first step toward greater equality, I might suggest we raise the federal minimum wage to a level that would keep a family with a single child out of poverty if one parent is working full time.  That's not communism, it's just recognizing that capitalism is really bad at raising the standard of living for everyone even when the economy is amazingly profitable.  I find it hard to defend capitalism when our vast wealth cannot be used to help our population because it is concentrated in the hands of a minority who would rather buy designer clothes than feed a starving child.

Jack

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Re: 'Who Gets Rewarded by our Economy?' - Salon.com
« Reply #80 on: October 13, 2014, 11:58:35 AM »
It would have to be a hybrid system.  Just like we have communism or socialism in parts of America (post office, police force, libraries, farm subsidies, universal health care for all veterans and the elderly, free school lunches, the CDC, public street lights, OSHA, the Peace Corps, etc.) I think you would have to have something very akin to capitalism in a communist democracy, including rewarding hard workers with better compensation.  The idea of communism isn't to force everyone to be exactly equal in all ways, it's to ensure a minimum standard below which no one is allowed to fall.

By this definition, wouldn't most of western Europe count as "communist?"

sol

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Re: 'Who Gets Rewarded by our Economy?' - Salon.com
« Reply #81 on: October 13, 2014, 12:11:52 PM »
By this definition, wouldn't most of western Europe count as "communist?"

They call it socialism in Europe, and it's a pretty light form of Socialism.  Big corporate firms still concentrate wealth among the elites, still sway elections with campaign dollars, still suppress wages for working class people.  They're a lot farther along towards a Star Trek style utopia than America is, but they still have a long ways to go.

Lyssa

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Re: 'Who Gets Rewarded by our Economy?' - Salon.com
« Reply #82 on: October 13, 2014, 01:04:42 PM »
What if people started founding and voting for parties supporting property rights? What if somebody refused to spend all his income and saved and as a result would not be equal to his neighbor anymore? What if somebody did not want to work in a state-owned corporation but decided to do carpentry on his own?

A communist democracy would have to have constitutional protections of certain rights just like our capitalist democracy does.  We don't allow people to vote for too much racial discrimination, for example, because's it's antithetical to our national ideals.  Similarly, I think a communist democracy wouldn't allow people to vote for too much individual property rights.  Small doses are clearly okay in both cases.

There are many flavors of communism just like there are many flavors of capitalism, and the extreme form of communism you're describing would be just as unworkable as an extreme form of capitalism (think no taxes, no food inspectors, no SEC or bank regulation, etc.).

The defining trait of communism is that the state owns vital industries.  From a worker's standpoint I think this could be implemented in the exact same way it is in America today, with people applying for jobs they are qualified for and working for a boss in exchange for a compensation package.  The only difference would be that the company's profits would basically be 100% tax revenue instead of used to pay Jamie Dimon $20 million dollars while his company is investigated for criminal fraud.

It would have to be a hybrid system.  Just like we have communism or socialism in parts of America (post office, police force, libraries, farm subsidies, universal health care for all veterans and the elderly, free school lunches, the CDC, public street lights, OSHA, the Peace Corps, etc.) I think you would have to have something very akin to capitalism in a communist democracy, including rewarding hard workers with better compensation.  The idea of communism isn't to force everyone to be exactly equal in all ways, it's to ensure a minimum standard below which no one is allowed to fall. 

In a communist state, the elderly would not be allowed to freeze to death under a bridge and children would not be allowed to go hungry, because the state would be obligated to provide for them.  In our capitalist state, old people freeze to death all the time and approximately 15% of our children are undernourished due to poverty.  Think about that, in this wealthiest of all nations, beacon of equality for all the world, our most vulnerable citizens still wither and die because no one will take care of them.  LeBron James will make $72 million this year while back in his hometown of Akron 30% of kids don't get enough to eat.

As a first step toward greater equality, I might suggest we raise the federal minimum wage to a level that would keep a family with a single child out of poverty if one parent is working full time.  That's not communism, it's just recognizing that capitalism is really bad at raising the standard of living for everyone even when the economy is amazingly profitable.  I find it hard to defend capitalism when our vast wealth cannot be used to help our population because it is concentrated in the hands of a minority who would rather buy designer clothes than feed a starving child.

The big questions is of course what industries are "vital" enough that they should be state owned (I can see the point for e.g. water and power supply, basic postal services (otherwise rural northern Europe would largely go without letters since its not economical to deliver to a 23 inhabitants village in the Finish woods), hospitals. Not so much for telecommunications and definitely not for automotive (Volkswagen) or breweries (Rothaus beer). I'm a bit puzzled reg your tax revenue point. In my view the big point in favor of the state owning hospitals and water supply is to relieve those sectors from the pressure to be profitable.

Referring to your second point (don't let people starve) I second Jack's point. By that definition I live in a socialist country. I remember one case of a mentally ill man who locked himself and his ailing mother up in the house, both starving to death. And of course abused and neglected children starving while their overweight parents cuddled the overweight cats and dogs living in the household. Partly the state's fault, no doubt. But not because not enough monetary assistance was provided.

To give you an idea where I stand: Most days I am at peace with paying roughly 45% of my income in taxes and social contributions, though I feel it is the upper limit. More than half would make seriously think about living elsewhere. Economically there is not that much of a difference between 45 and 51%, psychologically "more than half" is huge. At least for me. So I guess I won't make friends with either Communist or Ayn Rand followers any time soon. I wish our tax revenues would be spend differently. Less throwing money at consumption to incrementally mitigate problems, more investing in the future and solving of problems. E.g. mandatory free daycare for dysfunctional families, faster interventions where abuse happens.

What drives me seriously nuts is people (not you) making excuses for sky high piles of dead bodies while throwing any and all possible accusations in the direction of western democracies. Yes, we could improve. Yes, the U.S. could improve. But both systems are way, way better than any socialist state. And also way, way, way better than any system shaped by Islam and Sharia law. Especially if you happen to be secular. Or a woman. Or gay. Or a Jew. The latter was to be avoided in communist Russia as well.
« Last Edit: October 13, 2014, 01:19:57 PM by Lyssa »

Jack

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Re: 'Who Gets Rewarded by our Economy?' - Salon.com
« Reply #83 on: October 13, 2014, 02:16:14 PM »
The big questions is of course what industries are "vital" enough that they should be state owned (I can see the point for e.g. water and power supply, basic postal services (otherwise rural northern Europe would largely go without letters since its not economical to deliver to a 23 inhabitants village in the Finish woods), hospitals. Not so much for telecommunications and definitely not for automotive (Volkswagen) or breweries (Rothaus beer). I'm a bit puzzled reg your tax revenue point. In my view the big point in favor of the state owning hospitals and water supply is to relieve those sectors from the pressure to be profitable.

I've got to disagree: in my opinion, telecommunications is, by far, the most vital industry in that list because (in the modern era) it is essential in promulgating free speech.

(That is to say, it is essential for telecommunications -- and the Internet in particular -- to be provided to all people, if not equally then at least to some minimum standard. However, I am certainly not saying that the state should be in control of the content transmitted by telecommunications. Quite the opposite: if anything, the government should ensure that nobody (including itself) can censor or otherwise control what people communicate, with strict penalties (e.g. execution) for anybody who tries to do so.)

franklin w. dixon

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Re: 'Who Gets Rewarded by our Economy?' - Salon.com
« Reply #84 on: October 13, 2014, 05:58:27 PM »
And secondly, a heartfelt thank you for demonstrating how this strange alliance of the Western very left and Muslim extremism came and comes about. "Damn, we lost... But look at those guys...". Never mind some of the worlds last practicing socialists (the Kurds) being slaughtered. Or in the words of the spokesperson for "peace-politics" of the German socialist party: "Solidarity with Kobane! Stop U.S. airstrikes!"
It is one thing to be "on the side" of the Kurds in the abstract. Sure, absolutely, I support the PKK. But it is another altogether to believe against all odds that somehow this time America is going to make things better. We have been at war in Iraq for twenty three years. We have been at war in Iraq, against the same people, for so long that there is an aircraft carrier active in present hostilities which is named after George H.W. Bush, who started the first conflict. And again, when I say "the same people," I don't mean metaphorically or in the abstract. I mean the exact same individuals. As I mentioned previously, Islamic State is run largely by former members of the Hussein era military. Abu Ali an-Anbari, governor (for lack of a better term) for the Syrian portion of Islamic State, was a major general -- to be a major general in 2002 he was almost certainly in the military in 1991. We have been at war with that man for over two decades. Do you think that this time we are going to win?

Of course, the other large fraction of Islamic State leadership, including Caliph Ibrahim, is made up of people who were imprisoned in American torture jails and radicalized during the occupation. It was part of our strategy to fight Islamic State back then, when it was called Al Qaeda in Iraq. With over 100,000 American soldiers on the ground we were able to grind AQI down to an artificial peace; is your preferred solution for the United States to occupy Iraq in that fashion in perpetuity? Because that is what it would take to "win" this war.

When Mao said, "Imperialists and all reactionaries are paper tigers," he didn't mean that the western countries couldn't kill a lot of people, which we did, do, and will. He meant that we are still going to lose. In the basest sense, eventually Americans will tire of their soldiers being killed and vote against endless purposeless war. The same thing happened in Vietnam, and the same thing happened to the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, where it is presently also happening to us. It is not possible to win an imperialist war for good without exterminating the occupied population.

Of course I don't "like" Islamic State. But Islamic State exists and is strong because of American imperialist policy. Extending that policy to be more imperialist is not going to help, although it will certainly let us kill a bunch more people in the process of achieving nothing.

The Kurds, as a thanks for being our allies, are doomed, just like the Hmong were. The least America could do is let the hundreds of thousands of displaced Kurds resettle in the United States if they are unable or unwilling to return to their homes in Islamic State. But we are too hateful, racist, and stupid even to do that. We won't even let translators who worked directly for our armies of occupation resettle here, and many of them are now dead thanks to our heartlessness.

There is a lesson from the Hmong and Kurds for other peoples who are forced to take sides in imperialist wars. Mao put it this way: "To work for the fascists and die for the exploiters and oppressors is lighter than a feather."
« Last Edit: October 13, 2014, 09:30:16 PM by franklin w. dixon »

Lyssa

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Re: 'Who Gets Rewarded by our Economy?' - Salon.com
« Reply #85 on: October 14, 2014, 12:44:31 AM »
And secondly, a heartfelt thank you for demonstrating how this strange alliance of the Western very left and Muslim extremism came and comes about. "Damn, we lost... But look at those guys...". Never mind some of the worlds last practicing socialists (the Kurds) being slaughtered. Or in the words of the spokesperson for "peace-politics" of the German socialist party: "Solidarity with Kobane! Stop U.S. airstrikes!"
It is one thing to be "on the side" of the Kurds in the abstract. Sure, absolutely, I support the PKK. But it is another altogether to believe against all odds that somehow this time America is going to make things better. We have been at war in Iraq for twenty three years. We have been at war in Iraq, against the same people, for so long that there is an aircraft carrier active in present hostilities which is named after George H.W. Bush, who started the first conflict. And again, when I say "the same people," I don't mean metaphorically or in the abstract. I mean the exact same individuals. As I mentioned previously, Islamic State is run largely by former members of the Hussein era military. Abu Ali an-Anbari, governor (for lack of a better term) for the Syrian portion of Islamic State, was a major general -- to be a major general in 2002 he was almost certainly in the military in 1991. We have been at war with that man for over two decades. Do you think that this time we are going to win?

Of course, the other large fraction of Islamic State leadership, including Caliph Ibrahim, is made up of people who were imprisoned in American torture jails and radicalized during the occupation. It was part of our strategy to fight Islamic State back then, when it was called Al Qaeda in Iraq. With over 100,000 American soldiers on the ground we were able to grind AQI down to an artificial peace; is your preferred solution for the United States to occupy Iraq in that fashion in perpetuity? Because that is what it would take to "win" this war.

When Mao said, "Imperialists and all reactionaries are paper tigers," he didn't mean that the western countries couldn't kill a lot of people, which we did, do, and will. He meant that we are still going to lose. In the basest sense, eventually Americans will tire of their soldiers being killed and vote against endless purposeless war. The same thing happened in Vietnam, and the same thing happened to the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, where it is presently also happening to us. It is not possible to win an imperialist war for good without exterminating the occupied population.

Of course I don't "like" Islamic State. But Islamic State exists and is strong because of American imperialist policy. Extending that policy to be more imperialist is not going to help, although it will certainly let us kill a bunch more people in the process of achieving nothing.

The Kurds, as a thanks for being our allies, are doomed, just like the Hmong were. The least America could do is let the hundreds of thousands of displaced Kurds resettle in the United States if they are unable or unwilling to return to their homes in Islamic State. But we are too hateful, racist, and stupid even to do that. We won't even let translators who worked directly for our armies of occupation resettle here, and many of them are now dead thanks to our heartlessness.

There is a lesson from the Hmong and Kurds for other peoples who are forced to take sides in imperialist wars. Mao put it this way: "To work for the fascists and die for the exploiters and oppressors is lighter than a feather."

To summarize:

"Dear Kurds and Yazidis,

I am very sorry you are being killed. This is somehow our fault Therefore we should do nothing about it. And like the great chairman said: This all somehow makes sense to advance the inevitable destruction of imperialism. Sure you understand. Have a good death.

With Socialist greetings

Franklin"
« Last Edit: October 14, 2014, 12:55:36 AM by Lyssa »

franklin w. dixon

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Re: 'Who Gets Rewarded by our Economy?' - Salon.com
« Reply #86 on: October 14, 2014, 07:19:08 AM »
To summarize:

"Dear Kurds and Yazidis,

I am very sorry you are being killed. This is somehow our fault Therefore we should do nothing about it. And like the great chairman said: This all somehow makes sense to advance the inevitable destruction of imperialism. Sure you understand. Have a good death.

With Socialist greetings

Franklin"
We shouldn't "do nothing." We should let people displaced by IS emigrate to the United States if they need to, as I said. But we won't. Instead, we're going to kill additional thousands of people and still lose. As Bell Hooks once said: "This is what the worship of death looks like."

Zamboni

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Re: 'Who Gets Rewarded by our Economy?' - Salon.com
« Reply #87 on: October 14, 2014, 06:12:48 PM »
Back on topic:

My favorite part of this article was the concept that so many people have bullshit jobs.  Which is completely true, of course.  Especially in the the white collar world, some huge percentage of "work" people do at work is made up stuff to keep busy, or at least look busy, or impress others around us with other bs jobs that we work the hardest at our bs job and therefore deserve a little promotion.

While this can be annoying, at the same time it is very liberating.  What do I really need to get done to do my job well? What is the essence of what needs to be done today?  And once that is done, what else do I want to do?  Do I really care if I get a promotion?

clifp

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Re: 'Who Gets Rewarded by our Economy?' - Salon.com
« Reply #88 on: October 14, 2014, 06:48:07 PM »
Could you also give some kind of source? I am inclined to agree with your statement that the article's perspective on the USSR was overoptimistic, but I'd rather base that opinion on more than anecdotes.

Having said that, I don't think this example was central to the article.

No reason to trust a random guy on a forum, but usually this is called a primary source. In this case, I am the source. Was born there. Saw some shit... left, thankfully. Shitty, dirty country. It's a lot better these days as people transition into American-style functional alcoholism. Don't fool yourself, Joe Six-pack is an alcoholic, but he drinks after work, and wakes up sober enough to drive legally. It's a lot better than that other thing.

That is exactly what I assumef  when I read you post, sound likes somebody who was born there. I spent roughly a month in Russia/Ukraine in the late 80s and early 90. My favorite quote about work from the Russians I meet was "We pretend to work, they pretend to pay us."  My experience in other communist countries, China, and Cambodia was similar all the the Chinese definitely seemed to work harder.

clifp

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Re: 'Who Gets Rewarded by our Economy?' - Salon.com
« Reply #89 on: October 14, 2014, 07:37:59 PM »
3. Even if Stalin did "kill" 20 million people and Mao did "kill" 65 million people, those are rounding errors compared to the number of lives that they saved. The advances in public health that took place under communist governments have no historical parallel. In Russia between the 1920s and 1950s, and in China between the 1940s and the 1970s, life expectancy doubled or nearly doubled. No other country has ever done that. While Mao was in power in China, life expectancy increased by more than one year per year. The first objection to these miraculous achievements is that "life expectancy would have gone up anyway," which may be true, but it is very unlikely that it would have risen nearly as far or as quickly. In the Chinese case, we actually have a ready-made historical experiment, because India won independence at nearly the same moment China was liberated, and had similar vital statistics, but did not benefit from communist central planning. As a consequence:



Go ahead; take the integral of those curves and run the numbers on how many additional billions of life-years Chinese have enjoyed as compared to their Indian counterparts. Even by the insane and misleading history of wild-eyed anti-communism, if you consider communist policy in totality, Joseph Stalin was still the second-greatest humanitarian to have ever lived, right after Comrade Chairman Mao Zedong.


The key to your argument is that you believe the numbers of life expectancy.  The source of which is primarily the Chinese communist government.  The kill the messenger was commonly practiced in the Qin Dynasty, and perfected over thousand years.  I am not sure if the Communist did a better job of it then the various Emperors, but not being the barrier of bad news was art form.  Certainly in Communist Russia, if the Stalin said this factory needs to produce 1,000 tank in month, then that factory produced 1,000 tanks (the fact the guns couldn't fire and they couldn't get out of 1st gear was irrelevant.) because the alternative was the factory manager was shot.

One has to believe that if the 5 year plan for the Chinese minister of health was increase of life expectancy of of 2 year, then we got a 2.1 year increase in life expectancy, or Mao got a new minister of health.  The source of your figures is the head of the UN population projections.  Now under normal circumstances this would be a good source. However, the UN is notorious for being non-confrontational with bad governments and taking their numbers at face value.

As the author of these figures points out.
Quote
With these and other statistics demographers have tried to reconstruct the number of famine-related deaths. Estimates of the number of casualties vary greatly and are difficult to verify. Conservative estimates assume that from 1958 to 1961, over 14 million people died of starvation, and the number of reported births was about 23 million fewer than under normal conditions. Other authors have estimated the number of famine-related death of up to 30 million or higher.

Doing a back of the envelope calculation using the high numbers puts the Chinese life expectancy below that of India's during the relevant period. Certainly nobody would hold up India's government as model of efficiency, a Democracy yes but that is about it.

What was obvious to me as American visiting the place is since China embraced the market system. Chinese are no longer short and this is backed up by statistics.  Capitalism has lead to more food, specifically more protein. This has lead a 6 centimeter increase in the average height of the Chinese male in last 2 decades.

I think skepticism is completely warranted when dealing with government statistics in general, and triply so when using statistics from authoritative regimes.


Mod Edit: Fixed quote tags.
« Last Edit: October 15, 2014, 06:12:47 PM by arebelspy »

franklin w. dixon

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Re: 'Who Gets Rewarded by our Economy?' - Salon.com
« Reply #90 on: October 14, 2014, 09:17:11 PM »
Here is the actual data you are misremembering: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2006-12/31/content_772367.htm

The correct years are 1975-2005, not "the past two decades," and the data is for the height of children, not of adults. The source is the Chinese Ministry of Health, so I guess you do selectively believe "government statistics."

No one disputes the United Nations numbers on Chinese life expectancy, so I'll chalk the rest of your post up to pure ideological paranoia. Life expectancy did go down during the famine, which is why the overall gain for the period 1955-1960 was only 4 years.

Lyssa

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Re: 'Who Gets Rewarded by our Economy?' - Salon.com
« Reply #91 on: October 14, 2014, 10:38:06 PM »
Dear Clifp, could you please fix the quotes in your last post and take my name out of it (whole post is a Franklin quote)? Thx!

MOD NOTE: Quote tags fixed.
« Last Edit: October 15, 2014, 06:12:25 PM by arebelspy »