The Politics Thread v2

[Solo]

Even more technically, communal ownership of the means of production. Communal ownership of things such as chairs is not a thing.

From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.
Do you need that chair comrade?
If not, why are you hoarding it?

You do realize the quote refers to the free production and distribution of goods and setvices, correct?

In other words, I will hoard as many chairs as a damn want.

[awaken_D_M_golem]

VOTE muthu'- -ers VOTE


I'm voting.
Judges are up where I am, who'll get to rule on Reapportionment.


edit - fix'd

[Samwise]

You do realize the quote refers to the free production and distribution of goods and setvices, correct?

In other words, I will hoard as many chairs as a damn want.

So chairs are no longer "goods"?
When exactly did that happen?

Perhaps you should have actually read your link instead of just posting it:

I. Nothing in society will belong to anyone, either as a personal possession or as capital goods, except the things for which the person has immediate use, for either his needs, his pleasures, or his daily work.

I suggest you confess your un-soviet behavior at the next meeting of your local workers' soviet and seek appropriate discipline before your hoarding becomes industrial sabotage.
The party will not tolerate reactionary capitalist acquisition behavior to harm the people's state!

[Raineh Daze]

'his pleasures'

Maybe Solo really really gets off on chairs.

Also, the longer Bhu keeps arguing with you, the more hilariously ridiculous things you say. By all means, keep on. Your insistent argument on what defines fascism would make most of Europe fascist by dint of being to the left of what is accepted as the political centre by US standards and tending to encourage local buying etc. I mean, it's not like the whole anti-democratic authoritarian spiel could ever be important to the definition.

[SolEiji]

I'm having difficulty parsing all the odd titles being thrown around (which muddles up an already muddled up topic... people can barely properly define capitalism and socialism, nevermind an Alleynetic Fabiastic Triple Fudge Half-Dragon Double Sundayist), but if I'm parsing things correctly... I believe the accusation here is that everyone from Bill Clinton, Hillary, Obama, and Sanders, are all secretly Nazis.  But in secret guys!

Right.

[Solo]

I'm having difficulty parsing all the odd titles being thrown around (which muddles up an already muddled up topic... people can barely properly define capitalism and socialism, nevermind an Alleynetic Fabiastic Triple Fudge Half-Dragon Double Sundayist), but if I'm parsing things correctly... I believe the accusation here is that everyone from Bill Clinton, Hillary, Obama, and Sanders, are all secretly Nazis.  But in secret guys!

Right.

Far right.

Perhaps you should have actually read your link instead of just posting it:

I. Nothing in society will belong to anyone, either as a personal possession or as capital goods, except the things for which the person has immediate use, for either his needs, his pleasures, or his daily work.

I suggest you confess your un-soviet behavior at the next meeting of your local workers' soviet and seek appropriate discipline before your hoarding becomes industrial sabotage.
The party will not tolerate reactionary capitalist acquisition behavior to harm the people's state!

I would like to point out that you are quoting  the French utopian Étienne-Gabriel Morelly in his 1755 Code of Nature. This isn't the Marxist use of the term, which would be:

In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly—only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!

[Samwise]

'his pleasures'

Maybe Solo really really gets off on chairs.

George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier:

This last type is surprisingly common in Socialist parties of every shade; it has perhaps been taken over en bloc from. the old Liberal Party. In addition to this there is the horrible--the really disquieting--prevalence of cranks wherever Socialists are gathered together. One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words 'Socialism' and 'Communism' draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, 'Nature Cure' quack, pacifist, and feminist in England. One day this summer I was riding through Letchworth when the bus stopped and two dreadful-looking old men got on to it. They were both about sixty, both very short, pink, and chubby, and both hatless. One of them was obscenely bald, the other had long grey hair bobbed in the Lloyd George style. They were dressed in pistachio-coloured shirts and khaki shorts into which their huge bottoms were crammed so tightly that you could study every dimple. Their appearance created a mild stir of horror on top of the bus. The man next to me, a commercial traveller I should say, glanced at me, at them, and back again at me, and murmured 'Socialists', as who should say, 'Red Indians'. He was probably right--the I.L.P. were holding their summer school at Letchworth. But the point is that to him, as an ordinary man, a crank meant a Socialist and a Socialist meant a crank. Any Socialist, he probably felt, could be counted on to have something eccentric about him. And some such notion seems to exist even among Socialists themselves.

So . . . indeed, "maybe". 

Also, the longer Bhu keeps arguing with you, the more hilariously ridiculous things you say. By all means, keep on. Your insistent argument on what defines fascism would make most of Europe fascist by dint of being to the left of what is accepted as the political centre by US standards and tending to encourage local buying etc.

I know this will come as a complete shock to you, but:
http://www.academia.org/liberal-fascism-explained/
http://www.city-journal.org/2009/19_2_HG-wells.html
That isn't just some weird theory of mine.
Indeed as noted, the defining term itself comes from Fabian Socialist H.G. Wells.

I mean, it's not like the whole anti-democratic authoritarian spiel could ever be important to the definition.

"One person, one vote, one time."
Good enough for Lenin and Mao, good enough for Bernie.

[Samwise]

I would like to point out that you are quoting  the French utopian Étienne-Gabriel Morelly in his 1755 Code of Nature. This isn't the Marxist use of the term, which would be:

In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly—only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!

Which doesn't change that Morelly's statement was fundamental to Marx.
Or that your quote from Marx doesn't contradict anything from Morelly, or establish private ownership of personal property.
In fact, by the portion I bolded, your prime want as a good Marxist must only be to labor, and not to acquire goods.

Really comrade, your reactionary and retrograde attitudes towards property are extremely revisionist, and not at all in accord with approved Party Doctrine of the Marxist Dialectic.
I'm afraid the state health and political department is going to have to have an extended discussion with you about this.

[MrWolfe]

to be fair, I do trust a number of them to follow through on their promises.  It's just that the promises include trampling on the constitution more than they accuse Obama of doing, and freely admitting to wanting to get rid of parts.

Also, I'm not so sure this is the best strategy for Graham: "Vote for me!  I'm not smart!"

Hey, it worked for Bush Jr. All part of his campaign "strategery."

Here is a relatively balanced look at the controversy.  People are upset because it creates something of an oligopoly for the next 4 years and is written into the constitution.

This is more in depth

Now there's a case for doing some relative harm assessment.

Also, that rolling stone link appears to be broken.

[Raineh Daze]

Have the dictionary definitions.

1.



Thesaurus »

Categories »
 
 a. Usu. with capital initial. A nationalist political movement that controlled the government of Italy from 1922 to 1943 under the leadership of Benito Mussolini (1883–1945); the principles or ideology of the fascisti (fascista n. 1a). See also fascist n. 1a, Fascismo n., and cf. sense  1b. Now hist.
The movement grew out of the nationalist fasci which became prominent at the end of the First World War (1914–18), esp. with the formation of the militantly anti-communist and anti-socialist Fasci di Combattimento by Mussolini in 1919. After the formation of a coherently organized Fascist party in 1921, Mussolini became prime minister in 1922, leading to the eventual establishment of a totalitarian Fascist state.

b. gen. An authoritarian and nationalistic system of government and social organization which emerged after the end of the First World War in 1918, and became a prominent force in European politics during the 1920s and 1930s, most notably in Italy and Germany; (later also) an extreme right-wing political ideology based on the principles underlying this system. Freq. with capital initial. Cf. fascist n. 1b.
Fascism originated in Italy as an anti-communist and nationalist movement (see sense  1a). In the 1920s and, particularly, the 1930s, political parties and groups were founded on the Italian model in numerous countries, including Britain, Brazil, France, Hungary, Romania, Spain, and above all Germany (see, e.g., Falange n., Iron Guard n. at iron adj. Special uses 2, Nazism n.). These parties typically opposed socialism and liberalism (as well as communism) and advocated ultranationalistic policies, usually espousing ethnocentric ideas of racial superiority, esp. anti-Semitism. Where such parties came to power, as in Italy and Germany, they characteristically formed totalitarian dictatorships, giving special status to a charismatic leader (cf. Duce n., Führer n.) and often pursuing an aggressively militaristic foreign policy. After the defeat of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy in the Second World War (1939–45), Fascism ceased to be a significant political force, although subsequently (chiefly from the 1970s) a number of extreme right-wing nationalist parties have been founded in Europe and elsewhere on similar principles (cf. neo-fascism n., neo-Nazism n.).

What, exactly, is the dominant theme here? Authoritarianism and extreme nationalism. Defining someone as fascist because they're not at the extremes of the economic scale and haven't said 'the people I want to represent suck and should make economic choices that harm themselves' is ludicrous. Especially if they actually support a democracy. <_<

I think there's a reason people prefer to remember Wells for his sci-fi, rather than his political leanings.

[Solo]

Which doesn't change that Morelly's statement was fundamental to Marx.

By that logic, Jesus's statement was fundamental to Moreley's, and this Marx as well. Interesting.

Or that your quote from Marx doesn't contradict anything from Morelly, or establish private ownership of personal property.

Perhaps this will help clarify the matter?

Most people misunderstand concepts like social-ownership simply because they do not know what Marx and Lenin meant when they talked about “Private Property.”

Private property, when referred to by communists, only refers to private ownership of industry or the means of production; the things you own personally are not private property in this sense. Marx and Lenin would just call them personal belongings.

In fact, by the portion I bolded, your prime want as a good Marxist must only be to labor, and not to acquire goods.

Ah, but as we have seen from what you quoted earlier, you can have a want to acquire goods. It just can't be your main want.

Really comrade, your reactionary and retrograde attitudes towards property are extremely revisionist, and not at all in accord with approved Party Doctrine of the Marxist Dialectic.
I'm afraid the state health and political department is going to have to have an extended discussion with you about this.

Glass houses, Товарищ.

[Samwise]

Have the dictionary definitions.

. . .

What, exactly, is the dominant theme here? Authoritarianism and extreme nationalism. Defining someone as fascist because they're not at the extremes of the economic scale and haven't said 'the people I want to represent suck and should make economic choices that harm themselves' is ludicrous. Especially if they actually support a democracy. <_<

And . . .
Bernie has made it clear that he is an extreme authoritarian and an extreme nationalist.
Why then do you object to describing him as a Fascist?
Because he says he likes democracy as well? Mussolini held elections. Does that mean he wasn't really a Fascist?

I think there's a reason people prefer to remember Wells for his sci-fi, rather than his political leanings.

Because then they have to admit they love Marxist agitprop dressed up as escapist fiction?
Yes, people do often prefer to disconnect unpleasant elements of entertainers they like from the reality of what that entertainment is.

[Samwise]

By that logic, Jesus's statement was fundamental to Moreley's, and this Marx as well. Interesting.

Except of course it wasn't, but whatever.

Perhaps this will help clarify the matter?

First, I was right - you CAN find where "orthodox" Marxism is defined.
You were acting as if such things were never listed anywhere.

As for whether the Houston Communist Party is correct in their analysis of Marxist-Leninist Doctrine, that remains to be demonstrated.

Let's see:

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/comm.htm

Private property has made us so stupid and one-sided that an object is only ours when we have it – when it exists for us as capital, or when it is directly possessed, eaten, drunk, worn, inhabited, etc., – in short, when it is used by us. Although private property itself again conceives all these direct realisations of possession only as means of life, and the life which they serve as means is the life of private property – labour and conversion into capital.

Marx himself seems to disagree.

http://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs181/projects/communism-computing-china/intelproperty.html

This theory, that all property is owned collectively, stipulates that everything a person creates and owns is also collectively shared with everyone else.  The core principle behind the concept of public ownership is that every person is a product of society.  Because each human is a product of society, anything he or she produces is also a product of society by translation.  Therefore, anything that a is produced should be owned by the society itself because no one person has solely produced it.

Those Chinese-type Communists don't seem to agree either.

It seems Houston may be in need of a good purging.

Ah, but as we have seen from what you quoted earlier, you can have a want to acquire goods. It just can't be your main want.

Only a want to acquire goods sufficient to contribute all the labor you are capable of. More than that is deviant.

Glass houses, Товарищ.

Not in the least. I'm no form of Marxist. There is no re-education for me, I just get shot as a counter-revolutionary.

[dman11235]

Have the dictionary definitions.

. . .

What, exactly, is the dominant theme here? Authoritarianism and extreme nationalism. Defining someone as fascist because they're not at the extremes of the economic scale and haven't said 'the people I want to represent suck and should make economic choices that harm themselves' is ludicrous. Especially if they actually support a democracy. <_<

And . . .
Bernie has made it clear that he is an extreme authoritarian and an extreme nationalist.
Why then do you object to describing him as a Fascist?
Because he says he likes democracy as well? Mussolini held elections. Does that mean he wasn't really a Fascist?

I think there's a reason people prefer to remember Wells for his sci-fi, rather than his political leanings.

Because then they have to admit they love Marxist agitprop dressed up as escapist fiction?
Yes, people do often prefer to disconnect unpleasant elements of entertainers they like from the reality of what that entertainment is.

I'm sorry, when exactly did Sanders say he was an authoritarian and nationalist?  Was it when he was railing against the big interests controlling government and putting power to the people?  Or was it when he was advocating a more international approach and accepting stance in the world?  When did he say "I want absolute power in the president, and USA!  USA!"?

[bhu]

Different Nazis, different specific platforms.

As far as that goes with the specific points you noted compared to the platform, I think we can both agree that Nazis in general barely manage to avoid being totally dissociative between their stated ideology and their practical ideology. The fact that they can worship Hitler for what he did to the Jews while engaging in Holocaust denial demonstrates they are almost as fundamentally incompatible with reality as R'lyeh.

The thing is, that's going to leave us at an impasse over what defines Nazism versus what defines individual morons who like to say they are Nazis, and how that relates to others with similar platforms.

They aren't dissociative at all, at least not in the sense psychiatrists mean.  Saying one thing while doing another is part and parcel of any totalitarian system.  Lie until you've consolidated power and don't need to lie anymore.

The Nazis I mention aren't really all that different.  Ohio has had a long tradition of immigrants from Germany settling here.  Most of them are decent people, but there's an unlikeable subset of them that come here specifically because Germany outlaws Nazism and it's symbols.  Some of them have even restructured as a variant of Christianity to achieve more protections under the law.  These aren't just podunk racist skinheads (of which Ohio also has plenty of), they trace their ancestry to German members of the Nazi party, only marry with other Germans, and won't accept racists who aren't German as well.  They vote in lockstep with the GOP for the most part because politically they believe the republicans/tea party have similar goals.  The Nazis oppose homesexuality, immigrants, minorities, civil rights, human rights, women's rights, etc, and they're fairly certain the GOP does too (mostly because they do.  The local republicans are more fascist than libertarian.).  They don't support religious freedom laws, which is their only break from the GOP, mostly because unlike the local Republicans they realize under the constitution religious freedom will not solely apply to protestant christians.  They despise the democrats because they view the Democrats acceptance of voting blocs they want dead as a form of betrayal to humanity.

Anywhere else I'm sure they'd be crushed like bugs, but Ohio is rife with racist militias in some parts.  If they ever get into too much trouble they hold their noses long enough to hide out with them.  It also probably doesn't hurt that it was socially acceptable here to refer to African-Americans as 'nigger' instead of their name into the early 90's.

[awaken_D_M_golem]

I voted

(and fix'd the Vote thing above)

[SolEiji]

I voted

(and fix'd the Vote thing above)

Also voted.  Next up, more promoting Sanders.  Hopefully he gets Iowa, dem fights be tough.

[stanprollyright]

I voted

(and fix'd the Vote thing above)

Also voted.  Next up, more promoting Sanders.  Hopefully he gets Iowa, dem fights be tough.

Same.  I think Bernie has a better chance of winning the general election than Hillary, and also a better chance of inciting people to go out and vote for a democratic congress.  If he can win the primary.

[altpersona]

we just elected another mother fucking carpetbagger.... this time its the governor 

[MrWolfe]

There was an election today? Huh. I'm still registered, but I don't even get the notices anymore. Helps that I avoid the news like the bile-spewing plague that it is.

Oh well, I'm sure my time was better spent working on my novel for NANOWRIMO than voting for which particular flavor of authoritarian jackboot I'd like to be kicked with--particularly considering how fucking conservative my district is.

(A friend of mine once described the area as: "Like they transported a section of rural Alabama to to California coast." )

[edit]

Does this qualify as "political?"

Protesters Rappel From Sports Stadium During Monday Night Football Game to Protest Bank of America

It's certainly hilarious. Haven't seen protesters with that kind of showmanship since, well, before my time really. Here's hoping we see more like this in the coming years.

[/edit]