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However, as so many people like to say, the US is not the rest of the world. There are other countries, with other values, and they aren't necessarily the same as ours. Are they "wrong"? What makes ours "right"? Because we like them?

Because our values are fundamentally designed to minimize human suffering by protecting the weak from the strong, the minority from the majority, the peaceful from the violent. That we don't always perfectly live up to them is not a critique of our values, but of our weakness as a society, our unwillingness and/or inability to thwart those among us who would violate them. The attempt at curtailing power, and its corrupting influence, be it via our guaranteed freedoms, the checks and balances of our government and other Constitutional constrictions, or via anti-trust laws, or via crimial law, etc. are expressions of our belief that everyone should be safe from the destructive whims of the powerful and corrupt.

The moral relativism you express in your posting also happens to have been used as the fundamental philosophical justification for the murderous rampages of Communism during the past century. The short logic goes like this: Everything is relative, there is no absolute truth :: therefore there is no absolute morality :: therefore right or wrong is only what each culture decides it to be. The Communists continued by mixing materialism into the mix, saying that in a materialist existence, human beings have no soul but are rather organic automatons, carrying out our biological programming with no free-will, doomed to go through life responding to stimuli in a predeterimined manner. Therefore, the individual, and her life and happiness, are worth nothing; rather all that matters is the overall happiness of society. Since there is no absolute right or wrong, a society is perfectly justified in maximizing its overall happiness by whatever means it chooses. The Communists chose information control, psychological programming, and mass murder of those who would not be reprogrammed to accept the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Most of this you can verify at Marxists.org.

I don't claim that there is an absolute truth, and if there is I question whether any human can fully know it. However, it should be apparent to all that the values a society adapts and institutionalizes (or fails to) have real consequences for real people. One of the Communists' fallacies was in believing that they could maximize society's overall happiness by destroying the happiness of some individuals, a mindset that instead curtailed the happiness, and lives, of most of the populace.

America's values on the other hand are diametrically opposed - the happiness of the individual is the happiness of society, and while many people are unhappy for a variety of reasons, we are on average much happier, safer, and better off than the average person living under Communist (or to be precise, Leninist/Stalinist/Maoist) values.

Never forget that, regardless of the outcome of the dispute between relativism and absolutism (which we may never know), the values a socity embraces have real consequences for that society. Pay attention to those consequences, and, dare I say it, compare them, evaluate them, and judge them. Some values, and their consequences, are better than others.

I'm afraid you aren't going to find any physicists out there arguing that GR doesn't claim that gravitational mass and inertial mass are equal. It has nothing to do with what any experiment proves. The theory is the theory.

Anyone claiming that General Relativity does not purport that Gravitational Mass and Inertial mass are the same, simply doesn't know the theory.

Here is a direct quote from Albert Einstein (the guy who discovered GR, and widely respected by scientists):

"The gravitational mass of a body is equal to its inertial law"

- source: Relativity: The Special And General Theory, chapter 19.

I just googled that exact phrase and found it at http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/einstein /works/1910s/relative/ch19.htm

I wonder what Chapter 20 is called....

"The Equality of Inertial and Gravitational Mass as an argument for the General Postule of Relativity"

do you think its part of the theory?

The kid lied, and cracked under pressure when his prof started asking pointed questions about inconsistencies. The story should have raised red flags (heh) everywhere, since you can find "original, authorized" copies of the Selected Quotations of Chairman Mao Zedong in most languages (including Chinese) near you: Just Google. "Authorized selected quotations," yet. You clowns will swallow anything. The version at http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/work s/red-book/ is pretty official, but the edition at http://art-bin.com/art/omaotoc.html is downright canonical, since it's a verbatim copy of the Foreign Languages Press (Beijing) edition of 1970.

Just because you call something communism it certainly must not be communism. Communism is until this day nothing more or less than a fundamental and true critique of capitalism. You might want to try to simply read up some of Marx' writings (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c 1/). Communism and the reality in states like the Soviet Union have no more in common than a bread and a piece of concrete...

Or read it online: http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/work s/red-book/index.htm

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/work s/red-book/ coral http://www.marxists.org.nyud.net:8090/reference/ar chive/mao/works/download/red-book.pdf

It is debatable. Here's an interesting take on the subject, even if perhaps somewhat biased.

Freedom and choice are great, but the fact is that many people often just want the choice made for them in as sensible a way as possible.

Well, then those people should ask someone who will make the choice for them.

Here or here

What is communsim?
CPUSA

What is communism?
CPUSA

I personally have never seen a study been done that suggested a 40 hour work week is optimal for productivity. I would like to see some sources please.

Even if a study were to exist, you have to take into context the nature of the study. For example, to which end is the productivity rated? Is this the productivity of individual workers on a scale of work done per time unit, or is it some ratio esitimator of productivity per dollar spent, because they're quite different.

Having said that, I do agree with you. Making workers work more hours can definitely lower overall productivity.

France has enacted a law dicatating that 35 hours is the maximum time one should spend working in a week.

While they intended the law to promote hiring new employees, they found that companies resisted and instead demanded higher time unit production quotas. Indeed an interesting result.

Note that our average work week has been shortening since the 13th century.

This is definitely a good thing, although I still don't think it's enough. USA and Canada are still pretty high on the list of time spent at work.

Paul Lafargue's Right to be Lazy (1883) suggests an optimal workday of 2 to 3 hours per day.

Nearly all pre-modernized tribes peoples live with a considerably shorter work week. The Kalahari Bushmen, for example, work on average 12-20 hours per week.

Now the Bushment also don't have TV, computers, cars, planes, etc. But then again they don't have Guns, or Heroine either. And I suspect if a study were done on their happiness or contentment in life, it would probably rate _much_ higher than the average North American.

I'm not saying we should trade it all in for the life of a Bushman, but there has to be a balance. We've got the highest rates of mental disease in the world, we lock up more of our people and spend more money on incarceration per person than a lot of the countries in the world combined.

If we were really getting paid for the service of being available at work, even while we're not being productive, then we wouldn't feel guilty when we get caught reading slashdot. We wouldn't immediately switch away from minesweeper when we see the boss walking down the hall.

The workplace makes us feel like we should be productive even though there are many times when productivity is simply not going to happen.

We're tied to this 40 hour work week (which is often much higher) that forces us into a schedule that minimizes our ability to have any serious daily enjoyment beyond the workplace.

Many of us commute. After an 8 hour day and a commute, doing the daily chores, there's little time to reflect, ponder, play a game of whatever with friends.

We've been pushed into complacency and we all sit back and take it. We're a society that by enlarge lives for the weekend. I really don't consider this an optimal solution by any stretch.

Of monads there is only one authority Leibniz

or how the guy who (sadly) knew this stuff put it:
"What, generally speaking, are the symptoms of a revolutionary situation? We shall certainly not be mistaken if we indicate the following three major symptoms: (1) when it is impossible for the ruling classes to maintain their rule without any change; when there is a crisis, in one form or another, among the "upper classes", a crisis in the policy of the ruling class, leading to a fissure through which the discontent and indignation of the oppressed classes burst forth. For a revolution to take place, it is usually insufficient for "the lower classes not to want" to live in the old way; it is also necessary that "the upper classes should be unable" to live in the old way; (2) when the suffering and want of the oppressed classes have grown more acute than usual; (3) when, as a consequence of the above causes, there is a considerable increase in the activity of the masses, who uncomplainingly allow themselves to be robbed in "peace time", but, in turbulent times, are drawn both by all the circumstances of the crisis and by the "upper classes" themselves into independent historical action."
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1915/c si/ii.htm

True Communists in the spirit of Marx believe that all forms of communication should be put in the hands of the state, and that state should be controlled exclusivly by the Communist Party (read The Communist Manifesto - http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifes to.html).

How is placing all radio, television, newspapers, telephone, and internet, etc. under the absolute control of a single political party not censorship?

According to Marx, free speech is liberal "Bourgeois Sentimentality".

Do Marxists bother to read Marx nowadays? Go to http://www.marxists.org/ and read up.

Jesus, even planned parenthood, national organization for women, marxists.org, infidels.org and the UN are still up. Bushitler is really dropping the ball for the reich-publi-fascists...

It is more commonly attributed to Lenin, but it seems that he didn't really say it either:

"Lenin, it is said, once described left-liberals and social democrats as 'useful idiots,' and for years anti-communists have used the phrase to describe Soviet sympathizers in the West, sometimes suggesting that Lenin himself talked about 'useful idiots in the West.' But the expression does not appear in Lenin's writing. We get queries on 'useful idiots of the West' all the time, declared Grant Harris, senior reference librarian at the Library of Congress, in the spring of 1987. We have not been able to identify this phrase among his published works."

The source of this passage is a work entitled "They Never Said It: a Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, and Misleading Attributions", authored by Paul F. Boller Jr. and John George, published by Oxford University Press in 1989. The text goes on to explain that the phrase apparently first appeared in a John Birch Society pamphlet labeling President Ronald Reagan a "useful idiot" because of some agreement he had negotiated with the Soviet Union.

btw, most of Lenin's writings are available for searching at http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/

1) does this make the universal constant, "c", more like a local, er, variable?!

No, c is the maximum speed an object can travel in space-time. It also happens to be the only speed a massless object cah have.

2) does this mean E=mc^2 sometimes?!

Actually, the real thing is E^2=m^2c^4+p^2c^2. With p=mv/sqrt(1-v^2/c^2). So E=mc^2 is only true for a resting object.

There's a good book here about relativity (by Einstein)

IANAmerican: First of all this is not the kind of issue that people go into bloody battles for, secondly, you should read some of what Lenin wrote about Stolypin reforms. Basically if people are given more opportunity for financial independence, it is [almost?] impossible to get them to participate in a revolution and overthrow the current government.

Are we to take your word for it that communism will work if given the proper setting, when all previous attempts to achieve communism failed? By definition, communism does not allow for capitalism to coexist with it. You can have one, but not the other. To call the Internet "the new communism" is to portray the term "communism" as something other than inherently all-encompassing.

Also, the US government (and quite a few others that were threatened by the Soviet Union) didn't slap the term "communist" on the USSR. It was in 1918 that the Bolshevik Party changed its name to Russian Communist Party of the Bolsheviks. So the misnomer started with the would-be communists themselves, who were already trying to con people into believing that their attempt at communism was successful.

Hello Citizen. We apologize for causing you confusion. Please click on The Link and do not worry yourself with choices.

The Idler magazine
The Idler's Companion
How To be Idle
Why work? Creating Livable Alternatives to Wage Slavery
What is a Wage Slave?
The Right To Be Lazy
In praise of Idleness
Historical Context of the Work Ethic
Anxiety Culture
Importance of Living

And I don't know about you, but my copy of the communist manifesto doesn't say much giving people a choice; it just makes an assumption that communism is a historical inevitability, and that you'd better learn to live with it.

The manifesto is like a pamphlet to describe the general idea of Communism. Throughout much of Marx and Engel's more detailed writings, they not only allude to, but directly state that the Communist economic system must be hand-in-hand with some sort of popular government, a democracy, a republic, etc. In fact, Marx and Engels frequently state throughout their work that the adoption of a Communist economic system must be brought about by the will of the people.

Just like every other communist country is a dictatorship.

The fact that they are Communist is not the reason that they were dictatorships. They were dictatorships because they were modeled after the original Soviet system. It was originally envisioned by Lenin (who grossly modified Marx and Engels work) and later modified by Stalin. When Stalin came to power, Soviet hegemony throughout Asia and Eastern Europe spread, and with it, the Soviet system of government, a dictatorship.

Don't be fooled by people. The Communist Manifesto is not the no-all, end-all of communism, just a simple leaflet compared to what is really out there.

Check out this link for Marx and Engel's real work.

Marx and Engel's Selected Works

I especially recommend that you read "The Principles of Communism".

http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosop hy/works/fr/poincare.htm

What he describes in his paper is quite similar to the Special Relativity of Einstein, although he does not explain it as clearly and as completely as Einstein does. But why history keeps him the shadow I'll never understand.

Deconstructionism and this fucking commie bastard

For those who don't know - and for those that do, here's a refresher: Marx's Labor Theory of Value, though much critiqued in recent times, purports the value of product is a product of the various types of labor and resources that go into producing it. Typically, if one wants to lower the value of that product to make it more competitive, labor must be "squeezed". For more information, and a bit more lengthy description, click here. In relation to the issues of EA, as if EA were the only tech company with practices like these, it is obvious that programmers are the labor being squeezed. What makes the case interesting however is that as the economy becomes more competitive sections of labor that formerly considered themselves insulated from the squeeze are now feeling it. In many industries, the value of products reflects more the marketing costs than the actual production costs. I'm not sure about the specifics of EA games, but I'm willing to wager that they spend more money on marketing (NFL endorsements, advertising, packaging, etc.) than paying their developers and production staff. In the 1990's, we were warned about this happening. As more kids were guided into technology jobs - being told it's the way of the future - some bright individuals saw that eventually the high demand would bottom out. We still need programmers today, that's for sure, but just not at the incredible rate we did in say 1995. We have too many programmers for them to be a valuable labor commodity any more. Sorry, that's the truth. Next in line though to lose the value of their labor is likely to be the marketing guys. Not the football players or NFL execs, but the guys who decide which football players and what color to use on the damn box. Business schools are booming with students looking to fill these positions. Students enrolling in CS classes fortunately has leveled off, but students enrolling in business classes continues to climb. After all, you can't make much money doing CS, philosophy, psychology, or very many other disciplines. With marketing guys and business guys starting to be squeezed as well, unless something can be done to unite all labor, we will continue to see wealth concentrated in fewer and fewer individuals. In the US, the middle class is shrinking. Not because they are being paid less outright, but because there are fewer positions that pay what they should and the pay rates do not always reflect inflation and the pressing tax burden. Whether we like it or not, unless the labor movement can be revived, the average man will continue to see less value for his toil. EA is just one small example. In the immortal words of Malcolm X and many before him: "It's the chicken coming home to roost." Perhaps if the fortunate and privileged helped labor back in the past, their could it could have been a chickening coming home to roast instead.

1. The observer would be an intrinsic part of any existant psychic phenomena, and one cannot trust establishment scientists to be neutral, or "rigourous, but in favour", as might be required.
2. Belief in psychic phenomena is persistent, and although there is a high probability that this is simply because such ideas are appealing, there is also a chance that there is some real phenomenon, perhaps as weak as synchronicity*, underlying it. That one is engaged in fighting a war against all apparent superstition is a motive for irrational bias.
3. The funding required is only a small fraction of the total funding available, so this is no threat to science, only (possibly) to the objectors' world-views.

If there is a systematic distortion within the very structure of science, how can we expect scientists to be trusted to address it? Certainly, I think that we need to hold to the scientific method, but funding decisions are most certainly biased by pre-existing prejudice. Such funding is absolutely fine for the bulk of "normal science", but to insist that non-scientific bodies apply the same criteria is what Paul Feyerabend would call "scientific imperialism". Apologies for the link to Marxists.org; I could not find a better reference.

*Possible mechanism for synchonicity: similarity of structure in complex waveforms could be a low-energy, high-entropy state (although a particular structure would be low-entropy), much as photons seek to be in a similar state when trapped in a small cavity (which is how the LASER works).

"THat taxation thing is kinda, ummm. inherently capitalist."

Actually, progressive taxation is inherently Socialist. I'll defer to one of the world's premier Communist writers Frederick Engels (search for progressive taxation) on this one. He is describing the steps to achieve a Communist form of government in this particular paper, but the interim he is describing is clearly a Socialist state. I thought you would've read a few books on the subject. So much for having a well educated Socialist populace.

There are seven keys in the musical scale. The question as to which of these keys is "better" -- do, re, or sol -- is a nonsensical question. But the musician must know when to strike and what keys to strike. The abstract question of who is the lesser evil -- Bruening or Hitler -- is just as nonsensical. It is necessary to know which of these keys to strike. Is that clear? For the feebleminded let us cite another example. When one of my enemies sets before me small daily portions of poison and the second, on the other hand, is about to shoot straight at me, then I will first knock the revolver out of the hand of my second enemy, for this gives me an opportunity to get rid of my first enemy. But that does not at all mean that the poison is a "lesser evil" in comparison with the revolver.
The misfortune consists precisely of the fact that the leaders of the German Communist Party have placed themselves on the same ground as the Social Democracy, only with inverted prefixes: the Social Democracy votes for Bruening, recognizing in him the lesser evil. The Communists, on the other hand, who refuse to trust either Braun or Bruening in any way (and that is absolutely the right way to act), go into the streets to support Hitler's referendum, that is, the attempt of the fascists to overthrow Bruening. But by this they themselves have recognized in Hitler the lesser evil, for the victory of the referendum would not have brought the proletariat into power, but Hitler. To be sure, it is painful to have to argue over such ABC questions. It is sad, very sad indeed, when musicians like Remmele, instead of distinguishing between the keys, stamp with their boots on the keyboard.

...or, from the carter era, stagflation: when the economy is stagnant but prices *still* rise. i learned about that real-time in my high school economics classes in the late '70s...

the prime rate for loans is currently around 4.5%. do you know what it was in 1980? 20%! 20% prime rate, plus inflation, plus stagnant economy. i remember trying to get a job after high school back then - *very* demoralizing. employers were nakedly contemptuous of job applicants because so many of them swarmed like flies around every job opening.

it can get a lot worse than it is now.

Then such a shift needs to be credited with a higher wage.

This is the classical argument of the marginal value of wage balancing with the marginal disutility of labor for the employee. There is a point at which it becomes more valuable to the employee to NOT work at a given wage, which (in theory) drives up the wage proportionately. If a large enough segment of the labor supply decides not work sufficiently to fill the labor demand, then real wage must rise to meet the marginal disutility of labor.

Of course, such theory is wrong :)

read here

"Above all, it will have to take the control of industry and of all branches of production out of the hands of mutually competing individuals, and instead institute a system in which all these branches of production are operated by society as a whole -- that is, for the common account, according to a common plan, and with the participation of all members of society."

or how about

"(v) An equal obligation on all members of society to work until such time as private property has been completely abolished. Formation of industrial armies, especially for agriculture."

Ummm... How else do you read "participation of all members of society" and "equal obligation on all members of society to work"

In a fascist state only some are forced to work for others, in a communist state everyone is forced to work for the common good.

In a free society people can decide what they work for.

Ahah! You missed it. He did not mean commoditization, in fact he didn't address it in that way. He said Commodification. That's important. Commodification means turning a community resource into a salable propritary item. What he was referring to is the tendency to take open standards and proprietarize them, such as MS has attempted to do with HTML, Java, etc. You may have been led astray by his lightbulb analogy and his mixing the idea of commodification with modularity and fungibility, both of which are desirable in his argument. Commodification is a term often used by marxists to describe the practice of taking desirable community cooperation and turning it into a competitive grab for money (best or first man to have a moderate success wins).

I don't think he is espousing marxism here but simply identifying and clarifying what it is that open standards and the GPL are trying to protect,i.e. the cooperation of different entities to achieve a common base to compete off of. IEEE or W3 or public domain stuff. You can't build or buy a better lightbulb if it won't fit in the socket that most people have.

Think of a laptop power supply line wart. The part that plugs into the wall probably plugs into the line wart with a standard two wire connector whether you got it in Brazil, the UK, Germany, or France: the connector that plugs into the wall will be different in each case, but you could take that piece from the laptop you bought in Botswana and use it on any laptop power supply in Botswana or wherever that piece came from, the linewart will figure out the proper line voltage and frequency. The same does not go for the line wart's connector that actually plugs into the laptop. A Dell linewart will not plug into an HP.

Heh heh heh...

You really need a clue my friend.

Now I'm sure you are very sharp when it comes to doing mathematical calculations or programming in your cubicle so don't take it personally.

Here are two reading assignments for you:

The Reproduction
of Daily Life by Rudolf Rocker.

This will give you an introduction to anarchism and anarcho-syndicalism.

Now that you have a foundation you will want to read this:

Marxism, Freedom and the State by Mikhail Bakunin.

That will will help explain the relationship between marxism and anarchism.

Now that you've read those I bet you feel a little silly...hehe, it's ok at least in the future when a discussion turns to anarchists and anarchism you will be able to join in without humiliating yourself, in fact you will probably know more than most people (at least non-anarchists).

And you thought those crazy guys marching around with black flags at protests were called anarchists because they like to raise hell! hehehe...

Anyway enjoy your new knowledge and next time you and your computer buddies are dissing liberal arts majors remember this encounter!

Heh heh heh...

You really need a clue my friend.

Now I'm sure you are very sharp when it comes to doing mathematical calculations or programming in your cubicle so don't take it personally.

Here are two reading assignments for you:

The Reproduction
of Daily Life by Rudolf Rocker.

This will give you an introduction to anarchism and anarcho-syndicalism.

Now that you have a foundation you will want to read this:

Marxism, Freedom and the State by Mikhail Bakunin.

That will will help explain the relationship between marxism and anarchism.

Now that you've read those I bet you feel a little silly...hehe, it's ok at least in the future when a discussion turns to anarchists and anarchism you will be able to join in without humiliating yourself, in fact you will probably know more than most people (at least non-anarchists).

And you thought those crazy guys marching around with black flags at protests were called anarchists because they like to raise hell! hehehe...

Anyway enjoy your new knowledge and next time you and your computer buddies are dissing liberal arts majors remember this encounter!

Many books changed my life, this is the last one to do so, you can read it online here:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1936 -rev/

You can't really understand last century without Trotsky analysis.

Ideal communism (as opposed to Soviet and Chinese communism) doesn't allow for copyrights (it would fly straight in the face of the communal model of sharing), and while the GPL relies on copyright for keeping the source open, under communism you would have to share source code you write, since it belongs to the state for everyone's use, so both achieve the same noble end.

Under ideal communism there is no state. Workers who produce anything own both the means of production and the products which they produce - absolutely and without anyone else having any say. Workers are expected to share the fruits of their labour with anyone who needs it - but the exact mechanism by which this happens is lost in hand-waving.

Thus free software is as compatible with ideal communism as it is with ideal capitalism. It's really orthogonal to both, since both are rooted in exchange based economies and free software operates in a gift economy.

Develop your life in a way that suits your personality, whether through social interaction outside work or reflection. I personally do Tai Chi. The way I deal with stress at work is to make everything into a joke -- my boss, for example, is insanely negative and insulting. All of us in the department used to get very upset about it. But with enough talking amongst ourselves and building of a mutual solidarity, we now pretty much laugh in his face: we take control of our environment and refuse to let him dictate stress onto us. He doesn't like it that much obviously, but we do. Something that REALLY helps is to think: what is the worst that can happen to me? As the Tao Te Ching says: Do your work, then step back.

musides

you do realize of course that you could have done a lot better at karma-whoring then to berate the parent BY POSTING A WORKING LINK YOURSELF!

http://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/f/a.htm#fal ling-rate-profit

<a href="http://my.site.com/"> Description </a>

The US is simply the pinnacle of the world's capitalist empire, and as such, is the most glarying obvious example of what capitalism is really about: profit at any cost.

Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism by Vladimir Lenin. I just love when a 87-year work can be just as relevant as if written yesterday. Or do I actually hate it?..

And *why* is socialism a bad idea? Don't hear much complaints about it from the Swedes. Oh, what's that, Sweden doesn't exist, its not in the Real World? Communism is merely supposed to be a transitional gov't state to Anarchistic gov't. (Which does not mean anarchy, BTW.) If its not moving to local gov't collectives, its not Communism. Don't mistake ideological perversion as Communism. Even that distorted Communism you accuse as unworkable hasn't disappeared in Cuba, and in fact, results in more infants surviving than in the USA.

There is no socialism in Sweden. In Sweden there is a mixed economy. If there were socialism, the means of production would be in the hands of the state. That is, there would be no private property. e.g. You wouldn't be able to buy ericsson shares in the stock market. You wouldn't even have a stock market.
Sweden is a perfect example of a successful mixed economy.
In Sweden your house is yours, your work capacity is yours. You pay a lot of taxes, but, I repeat, it is not socialism.
In practice, socialism (and communism) can only be applied by force because it implies the abolition of private property.
Regarding Cuba, You have no idea of how people live in Cuba. In Cuba you can't go to a supermarket and buy food. You get the food the government thinks you need. Then they only get one chicken a month. The practically do not know what beef is (the government gives them some crap called carnic paste). In Cuba, for a few dollars you can have all the sex you want, because many girls there are desperate. Fidel once said that cuban jineteras (cuban name for hookers) are the only ones with university titles. The sad part is that it is true.
I have friends who have visited Cuba and they tell me it was very sad what they saw. My friends gave away all the toothpaste, toilet paper, soap, underware and other things they had left to the hotel employees because they have very limited or no access to those products.
OK, the communist regime still exists, but that is only because it is a dictatorship where the goverment has all the military power.
Why do you think so many Cubans take the risk of being eaten by sharks to escape Cuba and go to Florida in self-made rafts?

Communism (as in USSR & China) didn't survive into this century, not because its an unworkable form of gov't, but because it focused on trying to militarily compete with the Western (capitalist) nations. A more conscientious ruling elite probably would have resulted in the USSR's survival. If Communism is unworkable, how can Cuba still be communist, even with the demise of its benefactor?
Communism (as defiend by Marx) is a form of government where there is no state (and therefore no government, no courts, etc.). It is a state of utopia. It is unimplementable in practice. In practice what you have is a government that owns everything (including you capacity to work) and distributes wealth to each according to its need.
For more information con communism read this Totalitarianism (or monarchy), by your rule, must also be a good idea, because it can work in practice. Why, some Totalitarian gov'ts (like historical China) have lasted centuries! And totalitarian gov'ts exist to this very day. I think I did not explain myself clearly. When I say an idea works in practice I mean it works well in practice. That is, the people live decent lives and are happy with the government. You can study, and if you are willing to work it is not very difficult to find a job, and if you have a job you can eat well and you can feed your children welland give them good education. You can have a place to live. You can have a car. You can expect reasonable levels of public security. Totalitarian systems can last because they own the military power and nobody can oppose them. That does not mean the people living there are happy with the government. I live in a neo-fascist quasi-totalita

Progress comes from testing new ways of doing things. Experience shows that most new ideas fail. (Consider -- for most problem areas, there are an infinite number of ways to be very wrong than close to correct.)

Yes things fail but so what? As I said, we wouldn't be where we are without trying and failing. Being scared of failure will simply result in no progress at all.

tried. The left non-capitalist methods have repeatedly had the same results as nazism, only worse...

Clearly a right-winger such as yourself (if you are indeed one) considers the so-called Communism worse than Nazism. But I'll bet that most people would consider Nazism to be worse.

(The left-wing people explain this like the christians explain all the horrors of religion, "it is not an error in the religion, only what men do when implementing it! Please ignore that part about eternal torture (/dictatorship by the 'people'), by the way!".)

But the difference is that WE learn from our past mistakes. Religion, on the other hand, doesn't. The difference is that religion is static while left wing thought is not.

I am, of course, willing to happily embrace a better way of doing things -- when a working society has been implemented, worked for a few decades and there are good arguments why it will continue to work. There are none now.

If you don't want to try changing society, that's fine. You'll just lag others. The day will come when others DO succeed. If you are a conservative and want to live in Plato's cave, that's fine.

I think it is difficult for you to see what change is necessary. You live in Sweden and it is one of hte top countries in the world. So the status-quo is very attractive to you. On top of it, it has some socialist ideals so the country isn't as badly off as USA (how many homeless are there in Sweden?). Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the majority of the world's population. The vast majority of people on earth are simply economic slaves! Visit or read up on South America and see if the status quo there is good enough.

A "fun" fact is that all idealist (religious and political) theories I've seen on how to organize a society make assumptions on human nature and behaviour -- something we don't know enough about to predict(!) and most of which seems to change in a random fashion with the culture in each generation!!

That's not entirely true. In some cases it's true; in others it's not. Some people like to seperate econopolitical systems (like socialism, capitalism, fascism, etc) into two categories. One are UTOPIAN systems. The other is called (I forget the name so let's just call it) "pragmatic" systems. Utopian systems involve coming up with a notion of utopia and then building a system from that. The other systems involve no advanced conceptions but instead involve coming up with ideals on-the-fly. What you are referring to are utopian systems. An example of a utopian system is communism. This system assumes certain things about the world. An example of a non-utopian system is anarchism. Anarchism, for example, does not assume as much as you imagine. I'm not saying one is better than the other. All I'm saying is that not all econopolitical systems have built-in assumptions.

There are minimum levels of education and wealth to have a functioning democracy. I'd put the date for modern democracy somewhere after the first world war (women got the vote here in Sweden about then).

You DO NOT need minimum levels of ANYTHING for democracy!!! If you believe such a thing, you are nothing more than an elitist. Your argument is the same as those used by aristocrats several hundread years ago, and imperialists rul

Actually, it's probably closer to "Imperialism", or at least how the Marxists look at it.

Actually, it's probably closer to "Imperialism", or at least how the Marxists look at it.

Because he WASN'T like the other hard line "commies." Gorby was the first of the next generation of the Communist (Bolshevik) party. Here, what follows is the birth and death dates of the rulers (since the name of the post changed a lot) of the USSR.

Lenin 1870-1924
Stalin 1879-1953 (note this period)
Khrushchev 1894-1971
Brezhnev 1906-1982
Andropov 1914-1984
Cherenko 1911-1985
Gorby 1931-????

Note that everyone up to Gorby was not only alive during the Lenin years but was policialy indoctrinated in the Stalin years. Gorby came too late for that. Born in 1931, Gorby's school years got him nearly all the way through the Stalin period.

Consequently, Gorbachev was really a product of the Khrushchev years rather than Stalin. Realize that Khrushchev's break with Stalin (as mentioned in grandparent post) was not looked upon favorably by the hard line commies you refer to and their move on power following his tenure instituted a period of reactionary extremism.

Gorbachev then, represented a fundamental ideological break with the old hard line elements in the party. If Reagan (note I'm fixing my spelling. All you ACs who bitched about it clearly didn't read the sig) had really been the deciding factor in the fall of the Soviet Union one would expect to see a re-centering of the political climate under Cherenko, Brezhnev, and Andropov all of whom held power during Reagan's first term of office. Instead, what you see is the exact opposite. These three are Stalinists they don't move to the center, but rather further to the extremes.

Reagan's evil empire musings and his overtly hostile attitude towards the Soviet Union weren't terribly helpfull in the big picture. In fact Reagan's saber rattling nearly plunged us into thermonuclear war during the Able Archer exercises, a little publicized intelligence/war-game debacle that got way out of hand.

As for the spending of the 1980s, the United States dug itself into a multi trillion dollar hole in the process. Most of that money went into the military industrial complex. While I've no real issue beefing up the military (as having the 2nd best isn't good for much) its a real pity that some of the social programs so badly needed in this country go un-funded so we can sink another billion into systems both unneeded and unwanted by the Pentagon.

Getting back to the point... Gorby did what he did because he saw the ruin being perpetuated on his country by the lies and secrecy of the Stalinists. He genuinely believed he could redeem the Soviet Government and put to rest some of the injustices done in the name of the Party under Stalin and his followers. He was wrong.

When the dust settled Bush and Reagan got to grin at the world and tell it what a great job they did because no one was left to disagree with them.

Oh, and you can read about it all in this piece by Engels, if you want.

Hollywood, I am your messiah and I'm unemployed :)

The messiah you're not. That should have been modded as funny, considering it's one of the more asinine theories I've heard and doesn't take into account the philosophical underpinning of the trilogy that actually does explain how the machines are able to program humans. Read up on the Materialist philosophies of Hegel, Marx, and Lenin for starters.

http://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/m/a.htm#mat erialism

What so many people don't seem to understand is that many of the explanations we seek are available in the philosophy of the past ~400 years (since the Enlightment). There's a reason the Oracle, Merovingian, Morpheus and Architect spend so much of their dialogue speaking philosophically. Just b/c you can't be bothered to educate yourself doesn't mean the movies are flawed in that respect, and theories you pull out of your ear with no relation to the philosophical clues in the movie are utterly specious.

Another free/open online library is the Marxists Internet Archive, which publishes material across the spectrum of the left. It contains around 30,000 files (books, documents, letters, etc), and is published in 30 different languages, the latter of which beats Project Gutenberg by quite alot. They have everything from Adam Smith to Lao Tzu to Karl Marx. A very impressvie collection!

The person who wrote about this was Paul Lafargue, a French philosopher in the late 1800s. He was the son-in-law of Karl Marx. Check out The Right to Be Lazy.

Good point, I'd forgotten about that. And I was reading Look to Windward the otherday, too.

To be fair, you could go back to the original.