Slashdot Mirror

That is Che Guevara a marxist and a friend of Castros, killed by (allegedly) CIA.

The problem was, that didn't have a chance to occur. People like Stalin used the economic inevitability of Communism to justify replacing the existing government with a totalitarian regime before the economic gains that would bring about Communism were realized. They called this regime "Communist" in order to garner favour with the masses. The Chinese did the same thing in Tibet.

In the 1930s, Lenin was in power in Russia and he started the gulag camps in Russia, which after only a few years grew to some 4800 camps throughout the USSR, enslaingmillions of "traitors".

Wow, that's quite an accomplishment for a guy that died in 1924. Must have been all the borsch and vodka.

From '22 to '53 it was all Joe

"The most rigid form of the opposition between the Jew and the Christian is the religious opposition. How is an opposition resolved? By making it impossible. How is religious opposition made impossible? By abolishing religion."

Yes, communism, from the very beginning, wanted to abolish religion. The quote is from Marx, writing in 1844 on 'the jewish question'.

This article reminds me of memorable passage this passage from Das Capital :

From Vol 1, Part III, Ch 7, Section 2 - "The Production of Surplus-Value"

[The "speaker" here is yer own "Bobble Head" boss]
"Can the labourer," he asks, "merely with his arms and legs, produce commodities out of nothing? Did I not supply him with the materials, by means of which, and in which alone, his labour could be embodied? And as the greater part of society consists of such ne'er-do-wells, have I not rendered society incalculable service by my instruments of production, my [workstation] and my [JBuilder license], and not only society, but the labourer also, whom in addition I have provided with the necessaries of life? And am I to be allowed nothing in return for all this service?"...Our friend, up to this time so purse-proud, suddenly assumes the modest demeanour of his own workman, and exclaims: "Have I myself not worked? Have I not performed the labour of superintendence and of overlooking the [programmer]? And does not this labour, too, create value?" His overlooker and his manager try to hide their smiles. Meanwhile, after a hearty laugh, he re-assumes his usual mien. Though he chanted to us the whole creed of the economists, in reality, he says, he would not give a brass farthing for it.
[end quote]

Most people in this country are sheep.Unfortunately we are all too brainwashed by pop-culture and consumerism to realize it. So we will continue to get fucked over each xmas. I don't know about the rest of you, but I was getting screwed back when the times were GOOD. My boss was paying himself 6-figures where I was barely above minimum wage when you factored in the total hours (he "couldn't be bothered" with over time).

Who cares if you aren't getting a raise. Hey, at least you've got the latest Spider Man DVD, drive an Explorer and have got a new pair of Nikes. Retirement plan? Humbug! Bobble Head and his Board have that well invested in *heh* COMPANY STOCK.

People in NYC are pissed at the Transit Workers Union right now for threatening to strike. Well, I think we could all learn something from them. We should look to them as role models. Maybe if we all grew some balls like they have and had a National Strike demanding CEO compensation reform (like they HAVE in Germany and other EU states) we would not be getting a lump of coal every XMas.

We are bringing it on ourselves by being a bunch of spineless, whining wimps.

This article reminds me of memorable passage this passage from Das Capital :

From Vol 1, Part III, Ch 7, Section 2 - "The Production of Surplus-Value"

[The "speaker" here is yer own "Bobble Head" boss]
"Can the labourer," he asks, "merely with his arms and legs, produce commodities out of nothing? Did I not supply him with the materials, by means of which, and in which alone, his labour could be embodied? And as the greater part of society consists of such ne'er-do-wells, have I not rendered society incalculable service by my instruments of production, my [workstation] and my [JBuilder license], and not only society, but the labourer also, whom in addition I have provided with the necessaries of life? And am I to be allowed nothing in return for all this service?"...Our friend, up to this time so purse-proud, suddenly assumes the modest demeanour of his own workman, and exclaims: "Have I myself not worked? Have I not performed the labour of superintendence and of overlooking the [programmer]? And does not this labour, too, create value?" His overlooker and his manager try to hide their smiles. Meanwhile, after a hearty laugh, he re-assumes his usual mien. Though he chanted to us the whole creed of the economists, in reality, he says, he would not give a brass farthing for it.
[end quote]

Most people in this country are sheep.Unfortunately we are all too brainwashed by pop-culture and consumerism to realize it. So we will continue to get fucked over each xmas. I don't know about the rest of you, but I was getting screwed back when the times were GOOD. My boss was paying himself 6-figures where I was barely above minimum wage when you factored in the total hours (he "couldn't be bothered" with over time).

Who cares if you aren't getting a raise. Hey, at least you've got the latest Spider Man DVD, drive an Explorer and have got a new pair of Nikes. Retirement plan? Humbug! Bobble Head and his Board have that well invested in *heh* COMPANY STOCK.

People in NYC are pissed at the Transit Workers Union right now for threatening to strike. Well, I think we could all learn something from them. We should look to them as role models. Maybe if we all grew some balls like they have and had a National Strike demanding CEO compensation reform (like they HAVE in Germany and other EU states) we would not be getting a lump of coal every XMas.

We are bringing it on ourselves by being a bunch of spineless, whining wimps.

Marx published quite a bit in London, but like most scholars, he traveled a lot.

I am still convinced that you never went to econ 101. And your assessment about the most important conference, the World Summit, tells me all I need to know about where you are coming from.

Free markets are useless without regulation... it's not a paradox, something some people find hard to acknowledge.

Then it's not a free market. It's a regulated market.

What conference is going on at the moment that is probably the most important conference in the last 10 years? The World Summit. And what is it all about? Equitable distribution of wealth generated by sustainable development without environmental damage. And why is it required? Because left to their own devices, companies and governments have done an awful job of this, and so we need a framework to ensure this does happen.

This is called a planned economy. They have this in North Korea, China to some degree, and the former Soviet Union.

I'd love to see the faces in the Shell boardroom if you went in and told them in a very stern face to be honest...

Where did you get this attitude? Corporations are evil and dishonest? Anyway, the best "check and balances" against dishonest corporations is competition, not government. Did you ever think of the government as an evil Monopoly? Who regulates them? But that's not the point.

Here are some action items you probably agree with:

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc.
- from the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx

More:
"Where is the justice of a society that has such extremes of luxury for some, misery for others?...To say that people have an equal right to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, means that if, in fact, there is inequality in those things, society has a responsibility to correct the situation and to ensure that equality." - Prof. Howard Zinn, self-proclamed communist.

I think you are a Marxist whether you realize it or not. I think that is a shame. I hope you study some economics (study Marx and then Adam Smith) and look at the application of their ideas in the world.

Try reading New Ideas from Dead Economists. It covers all the major economic thinkers. Please, the World Summit is a joke. They are not interested in the environment, but they are interested in the equalization of wealth.

Why is the parent flamebate?

Personally I would call opensource, P2P networks &co comunist.

DMCA and all the RIAA lobying is capatilist.

If you don't believe me then lookup what the words comunist and capatilist mean and go and read the communist manifesto

Moding as flame-bate is the only flame here.

Yet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered bourgeoisie when
Das Kapital confirmed that the rate of profit tends to fall
leading to crisis, war and the ultimate destruction of the capitalism
system. Coming on the heels of the latest economic data showing that
the US is entering a deep recession, this news serves to reinforce
what we've know all along. Capitalism is collapsing in complete disarray,
as further exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Economist comprehensive survey.

You don't need to be a Lenin to predict capitalism's future. The hand
writing is on the wall: capitalism faces a bleak future. In fact there
won't be any future at for capitalism because capitalism is dying. Things
are looking very bad for capitalism. As many of us are already aware
surplus value (S) is redistributed among individual capitals by
competition leading to an average rate of profit (r) relative to the
organic composition of capital. In order to improve their position
individual capitalism must increase their production of surplus value;
either by increasing the length of working day, but this has
physiological limits or by increasing the constant capital used but
this leads to a fall in the average rate of profit.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Capitalist leader George W Bush states that there 7000 capitalists.
How about members of the proletariat are there? Let's see. The number
of proletariats in America is roughly 200 million. Therefore
there are about 100000 workers which for each person with an
interest in capitalism. A recent article put the petty bourgeoisie at
a rapidly declining proportion of the population. This is consistent
with the predictions of the communist manifesto.
Due to the troubles of British imperialism, two world wars and so on,
European capitalism went out of business and was taken over by Yankee
imperialism who were also in trouble. Now US imperialism is also dead,
its venality and corruption exposed by its own creation, radical
Islam.

All major surveys show that capitalism has steadily declined in credibility.
Capitalism is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very
dim. If capitalism is to survive at all it will be as a fascist
dictatorship. Capitalism continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could
save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, capitalism is
dead.

Fact : Capitalism is dying.

1
2
3
4
5

• Does anyone know if it's legal to make an e-mail, sent to you personaly, public?

If that isn't investigative journalism, I don't know what is. If the Netherlands doesn't have explicit laws in place to protect that kind of journalism, then I'd be most surprised. Marx (Karl, not Groucho) liked to point out that freedom of the press in Holland didn't prevent crippling national debt or a revolution, and I assume that you've still got some of that left. Freedom of the press, not the debt or revolution, I mean. ;-)

Of course, IANA(D)L, and you might want to consider that access to liar^H^H^H^H lawyers tends to de facto define what the law is at the moment. You'd have to be a brave person to do it, but there's still some of us who respect courage, Dutch or otherwise. ;-)

ok... fine. Let's say you're one of them. You always CAN go get a job then and leave them behind. Now about them. It's their perrogative to not work. They don't owe you anything. You can't make them work. Should they be forced to work , because it's your right as an American citizen to buy from them and have them produce? Or do they have a right to be lazy?

ok... lazy hours? They should be forced to work during those hours, because it's your right as an American citizen to buy from them and have them produce during those hours? Our do they have a right to be lazy?

You know absolutely nothing about communism. Go here read it and stop foaming at the mouth. BTW - at the last turn of the century it was precisely the communists who believed that "human labor is about to go the way of the dinosaurs".

See also Mussolini's definition, and Trotsky's pamphlet Fascism, What is and how to fight it.

See also Mussolini's definition, and Trotsky's pamphlet Fascism, What is and how to fight it.

I think you could have used a bit of your own advice.

Ah well, I suppose I should respond to some of this.

Good question. How exactly did he steal it?

I said *in essence*, Bush is just figure head after all. You can you look at many things, including Florida election policy which favored wealthier areas with voting equipment. Disenfranchisement of minority voters. The unelected right-wing majority of the supreme court which intervened to stop vote counting, and ultimately ruled against vote counting. All of this added up to in essense of a right-wing coup, and an attack on democratric rights.

If this is not enough for you, you can also look on the World Socialist Web Site. They have examined the issue in great depth. You don't have to agree with their politics, to see the reality of what happened.

What, you didn't see all the news shows with people claiming that Bush's election was a fraud? If the networks were cooporating, or even just idly standing by, they wouldn't have gone on about it for weeks (and months, now).

As for the "pundits", I didn't see any serious dissent. There were some remarks made by timid liberals, but that's about it. As for the news media, the overwelming theme was that we should want this election to be over and accept the result no matter who was victorious. Disenfranchisement was played down, as was the decision of the supreme court.

Two things: First, Fascism was Italian nationalism. I don't see much of that here.

Fascism is not Italian nationalism, although Mussolini who coined the term was Italian and Fascism is nationalistic. I think the best definition is from Mussolini himself, you can read it here. To sum up, facism is a nationalist government with a strong dictatorial leadership in perpetual conquest.

Second, historically in our country, it's been the left-wing group that's aligned itself with socialism. Look at the social reformers of the 1920s, specifically the unions. While unions were necessary then, they often proclaimed socialist beliefs and intents.

I have no disagreement here, although just to note the union leadership from the 30's on have allied themselfs with the capitalist Democratic party.

The natural follower of socialism is communism, which is simply socialism applied to politics. The government owns everything and decides what is right for the people. While the claims of communism are that the government will eventually dissolve itself, I don't think that's ever happened. Communist governments just turn into dictatorships or oligarchies.

I think you have a misunderstanding of communism. Communism is a utopian society, the modern conception hasn't yet existed. When communists talk about the disolving of the state, they are talking about a world-wide phenomenon. The beginings of this can be seen in globalization. Yes, socialism is one country has been tried (Stalin, Mao, Castro), and it has failed for the most part. However, to even attempt socialism in one state is to go against socialism, which is the international struggle for the working class.

It's funny you mention oligarchies, because that is precisly the form that our "democracy" has taken on. In essence the supreme power resides in those few who have the lion's share of wealth.

The one common denominator is that ideologies that draw from socialism emphasize that the state has a responsibility to ensure at least a minimum of quality of life for it's population, and that certain basic needs should be secured to some extent by the state.

What separates them are why, and how.

Fascist argumentation for this is that the state is everything, and a strong state should be the goal for everyone, and to achieve this, the state must ensure that all members of society are productive.

One of the common social-democratic arguments is that "common decency" mandates that one should not let people suffer when society is wealthy enough to cover basic needs without adversely affecting it's other citizens.

The Marxist argument is that socialism is a stage on the way to communism, where control is transferred from the capitalist upper classes to a state apparatus controlled by the working classes, and presupposes a socialist revolution where the workers have taken control.

For an interesting (while certainly biased) presentation of other widely diverging socialist ideologies, read the last chapter of the Communist Manifest (available online), which is a critique of different socialist ideologies that ranges from reactionary to hopelessly utopian.

I'm not sure the extent he succeded in putting his theories into practice, and I'm not in the position to asses his legacy on socialism. The archives above should answer these questions to some extent.

I'm not sure the extent he succeded in putting his theories into practice, and I'm not in the position to asses his legacy on socialism. The archives above should answer these questions to some extent.

Maybe this quote will help better explain:

"From the moment all members of society, or at least the vast majority, have learned to administer the state themselves, have taken this work into their own hands, have organized control over the insignificant capitalist minority, over the gentry who wish to preserve their capitalist habits and over the workers who have been thoroughly corrupted by capitalism -- from this moment the need for government of any kind begins to disappear altogether. The more complete the democracy, the nearer the moment when it becomes unnecessary. The more democratic the "state" which consists of the armed workers, and which is "no longer a state in the proper sense of the word", the more rapidly every form of state begins to wither away. "Then the door will be thrown wide open for the transition from the first phase of communist society [Socialism] to its higher phase [Communism], and with it the complete withering away of the state. Vladimir Lenin The State and Revolution Chpt 5. The higher phase of Communist Society

Taken from the Marxists Internet Archive

I'm not a US citizen, so I could be wrong on this, but didn't Buchanan have something like 30% support across the Republican party nationally? What did that get him in this election?

If you want people to believe your claim that Palm Beach might be genuinely different, what were Buchanan's primary votes like in neighbouring areas in 1996? In order for your position to be defensible, they must be significantly lower.

I would like to remind everyone that the electoral college works. Just because New York and California really really want Gore to win doesn't mean that the rest of the country wants what Gore represents. Imagine if the EU existed during Hitler's rise to power, and Nazi Germany dominated the popular vote for the elections to president of the EU. This is all hypothetical, but I'm simply afraid that a lot of people don't understand the power balancing that the electoral college brings.

I suggest you read a little more about Hitler's rise to power before you make claims like this. Hitler never won a popular vote in the Weimar Republic. The closest he got was about 44%, and that was in an election where he had massive media backing and substantial support from Germany's industrialists.

Rhetoric aside, your argument is that some people's votes should inherently be worth more than others, because of where they live. That is bad enough, but it also seems that your claims are motivated solely by your desired outcome, rather than on any coherent set of electoral principles.

(sorry for sounding harsh :)

Well, I'm sorry to say, but you're totally wrong here.

Communism is not a totalitarian, authoritarian version of socialism. If you read Marx, you will find that it actually favours the abolition of bourgeios totalitarianism, and the management of the state by committees of average workers. It does not favour state ownership, but communal ownership by the people. In fact, a key target of Communism is the abolition of the state, and governance by the workers for the workers.

I think you are making the common mistake of confusing Stalinism and Maoism with Communism. I urge you to go to The Marxist Archive to learn what Communism is really about.

Ok. So I don't know much about communism. Is there a short, easy to read definition anywhere?

You might want to visit www.marxists.org. It's got a lot of information, and it's students section has a nice introduction to Marxism. You might also want to read the Communist Manifesto, but remember, it was written with the aim to incite a revolution, so it's a bit confrontational.

I thought communism was about gov't taking care of most things, like telling people how to work (not what job). A small power class in control... Am I way off?

Well, the aim of Communism is to overthrow the bourgeoisie (the ruling class - the wealthy), and to form an egalitarian society of mutual cooperation, and communal property. So the description you have just given is more like the current Capitalist system than true Communism. Unfortunately, an egalitarian society is hard to maintain, and a new ruling class has always asserted itself whenever a Communist revolution has occurred. You may want to read "Animal Farm" for more information on this.

Marxism is primarily responsible for the existence of the forty-hour work week; this quote is out of Engels's 1890 preface to the Manifesto:

...Because today, as I write these lines, the European and American proletariat is reviewing its fighting forces, mobilized for the first time, mobilized as one army, under one flag, for one immediate aim: the standard eight-hour working day to be established by legal enactment, as proclaimed by the Geneva Congress of the International in 1866, and again by the Paris Workers' Congress of 1889. And today's spectacle will open the eyes of the capitalists and landlords of all countries to the fact that today the proletarians of all countries are united indeed.
If only Marx were still by my side to see this with his own eyes!

as well as government pensions for retirees, and a large number of other things which working citizens of modern developed economies, like yourself, presently take entirely for granted. Would you personally care to work seventy hours a week for subsistence wages? The seventy-hour-a-week worker of 1844 ;, and I should emphasize to you that in all the industrial countries of the world that was the worker of median income, had virtually no opportunities to "go out and double (his) productivity, gain new skills, etc, (so he) can get a raise or a better paying job and make drastic improvements in (his) family's standard of living." He lacked that opportunity because he was too exhausted and undernourished.

Unless you happen to have been born a millionaire's heir, you owe Marxism. It was Marxists all over the world who, during whole generations of political struggle, got their heads busted in in order to get you a legally-mandated limited work week, and job conditions so you don't run a three-to-one chance of being maimed on the job before you reach your grey hairs, and free public schools for all, and the rest of the program of the International. Instead of merely parroting trashy third-hand anti-red propaganda, why don't you go learn a little bit of the history of labor? There is an ocean of difference between the historical facts and all that weightless moral-theoretical ahistoric nonsense that union-busting capitalists and their captive schools and news media have crammed into your head.

Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net

And in any case, who the heck told you that Capital was a short book? Volume 1 alone runs to five hundred pages in my Penguin edition! If you've just read the manifesto, then fair enough, but you miss a lot of subtlety (and not a little boredom).

Anyway, if any masochistic slashdotters want to check it out for themselves, the link's here

"From each according to his abilities to each according to his work." (trotsky) - how is this different to open source stuff - those who can code it do it, those who can't download it.

I suspect that we will only realise what a revolutionary period we are living in at some point in the future.

I think that the logical extension of free softwear is free beer. And the logical extension os that is free everything :-)

It'll dawn on everybody at some point that the best way to organise society is for everybody to do what ever they want - that is true communism. It's FA to do with the USSR or any of that shit.

The argument against that is "who will empty the bins or clean the sewers" - it's simple if nobody> want's to do it then just throw enought resources against it and have robtic bins which empty themselves.

Open source software is the very interesting in as much as it seems to be to be the only example of the free association of the producers and consumers which has ever come about under capitalism.

the revolution will not be televised... it'll be live