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In 1875, Marx attacked the Gotha Program that became the program of Social Democratic Party of Germany (SDP) in the same year in his Critique of the Gotha Program. Marx was not optimistic that Germany at the time was not open to a peaceful means to achieve socialism, especially after German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck had enacted Anti-Socialist Laws in 1878.

"If in England, for instance, or the United States, the working class were to gain a majority in Parliament or Congress, they could, by lawful means, rid themselves of such laws and institutions as impeded their development, though they could only do insofar as society had reached a sufficiently mature development. However, the "peaceful" movement might be transformed into a "forcible" one by resistance on the part of those interested in restoring the former state of affairs; if (as in the American Civil War and French Revolution) they are put down by force, it is as rebels against "lawful" force."

for clearer, this what Marx thought about "dictatorship", not for gaining power, but for disproving the power of the minority (old societies):

While Marx viewed the state negatively as an instrument of class rule that should only exist temporarily upon the rise to power of the proletariat and then dismantled

In the manifesto (in your comment) above:

In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things.
Finally, they labour everywhere for the union and agreement of the democratic parties of all countries.

And this,
https://www.worldsocialism.org...

In 1848, in the Communist Manifesto they wrote:
"We have seen above, that the first step in the revolution by the working class, is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle for democracy."

But note the point, Marx does not refer or say that only a minority of the working class would or need take control of political power during the period of the "transformation of the one into the other.”
.....
We repeat that the dictatorship in Russia is not the “dictatorship of the Proletariat" in the Marxian sense of the term. On the contrary, it has been the dictatorship of a party, a party which in the earlier stages of their conquest of power actually deprived its own members of the power of voting.

Communist revolution? Actually, one must ask there really actual communist revolutions out there!

You're creating an argument based on the "no true Scottsman" concept, which is a logical fallacy. How many times do communist revolutions need to result in failed states before you finally say "gee...I think this whole thing may not work after all."? Capitalist economies prosper all the time, so why has a communist economy never prospered if it is really so much better? There never was a true Scottsman, nor will there ever be.

This is from 1931 article of Socialist party of Great Britain: http://www.worldsocialism.org/... [worldsocialism.org]

This didn't just happen in the USSR, it happened in every so-called communist revolution that lasted any meaningful amount of time. Everywhere it didn't happen, the GDP fell on its ass and people literally starved until a capitalist model was adopted. This is EXACTLY what happened in China and several others.

http://www.businessinsider.com...

Besides, have you ever heard of the Icarians in Navoo, Illinois? Look up how they started, how they operated, how the work rules changed over time by sheer necessity to bring up productivity, and then how they failed. And no, it wasn't because of a fire. Their GDP had already fallen to the point of no return before this happened. If they actually had a strong economy, they simply could have rebuilt, just like Chicago did from a major fire around that same time that was far more devastating and required much more effort to rebuild. The Icarians truly had no capitalism, they truly had a communist economy that was as stateless as you could get, and they had democracy. Then consider how they could have lasted longer if there was no democracy, and if they could prevent people from leaving.

It's a perfect case study, and it fits very well with what most people intuitively think will happen in communism without even having heard of the Icarians.

Disagree? Then prove it: How many communist revolutions were democratically elected? And how many communist revolutions ever allowed free speech? There have been many communist revolutions around the world, so if what you say is true, then at least one should meet both criteria.

Communist revolution? Actually, one must ask there really actual communist revolutions out there!
It's not that "because Soviet was failed so they - communists try to lie that Soviet was not communism". It's ironical that who predict the fall of Soviet and was vocally against Stalinism or Leninism or Trotskyism, etc are Marxists themselves:

This is from 1931 article of Socialist party of Great Britain: http://www.worldsocialism.org/...

The wage-labour system in Russian State industries, like the system here and elsewhere, is a system of Slavery. The spread of piece-work will intensify the slavery ; it will enable the "Communist" rulers to squeeze more surplus-produce out of Russian workers, just as it has helped the Conservative and Liberal capitalists of this country. Alleged "quotations" in support of it from Marx merely brand Stalin & Co. as hypocrites and their followers as ignorant dupes. The Russian Government must make a profit in order to pay interest upon its loans if for no other reason, and this fact alone is sufficient to explode the myth that Russian State industry is run on Socialist lines.

The Russian Government has to borrow money to run its industries, like any other capitalist concern, because it has to pay for machinery and raw material, because its employees have to pay for the food, clothes and houses they need; because, in a phrase, all the means by which these requirements are produced are private property. It has not established an oasis of Socialism in a capitalist desert. Had it tried to do so it would have been speedily annihilated.

if you want things you need to capitulate to what others want too

There you go begging the question again... I do not want "things" — except the defense from external enemies and internal criminals. These are the responsibilities of the government according to the Constitution since day one. Everything else — help for the poor, public education, retirement savings, mortgages, space exploration (except where militarily useful) — is mission creep.

The country can not survive without defense and maintaining law-and-order. Everything else is unnecessary and should therefor be done by non-government entities.

Otherwise why don't you go move to Somalia?

This bullshit meme really ought to stop. Somalia's current squalor is due to its past Socialism — your beloved Venezuela is to join the same sorry club soon. No doubt, the same morons currently claiming Somalia to be a "Libertarian paradise" will soon start spreading the same lie about Venezuela...

The wage-labour system in Russian State industries, like the system here and elsewhere, is a system of Slavery. The spread of piece-work will intensify the slavery ; it will enable the "Communist" rulers to squeeze more surplus-produce out of Russian workers

And, Marx claimed that capitalism has "historical mission" to change system of production, which when at highest level, become 'communism'. (Note: in Marx theory, there is no step 'socialism', it's invented by Stalin).

Hence, the credit system accelerates the material development of the productive forces and the establishment of the world-market. It is the historical mission of the capitalist system of production to raise these material foundations of the new mode of production to a certain degree of perfection.

The wage-labour system in Russian State industries, like the system here and elsewhere, is a system of Slavery. The spread of piece-work will intensify the slavery ; it will enable the "Communist" rulers to squeeze more surplus-produce out of Russian workers

And, Marx claimed that capitalism has "historical mission" to change system of production, which when at highest level, become 'communism'. (Note: in Marx theory, there is no step 'socialism', it's invented by Stalin).

Hence, the credit system accelerates the material development of the productive forces and the establishment of the world-market. It is the historical mission of the capitalist system of production to raise these material foundations of the new mode of production to a certain degree of perfection.

The UK is an interesting case. The simple fact was that at the start of the 20th century, most men also did not have the right to a parliamentary vote. While Mrs. Pankhurst and her supporters were fighting for their right to vote, the overwhelming majority of young men sent to the trenches in 1914 lacked any political franchise. Further, while other groups supported universal adult suffrage, such as the Labour movement, the suffragettes advocated a separate bill for wealthy women with property; women such as themselves.

The following extract from the Socialist Standard in 1908 makes clear its opposition to their proposals.

“Men vote at present under the £10 franchise. The suffrage is thus upon a property basis with plural voting for the wealthy. Therefore, according to the proposals of the women Suffragists, only those women having the necessary property qualifications are to be allowed to vote. This excludes not only all those single working women unable to qualify because of their poverty, but it also bars practically the whole of the married women of the working class who have no property qualifications apart from their husbands’. Further, it increases enormously the voting power of the well-to-do, since the head of the wealthy household can always impart the necessary qualifications to all the women of his house, while the working-man, through his poverty, is entirely unable to do so. ...

The limited suffrage movement is consequently only a means of providing votes for the propertied women of the middle class, and faggot votes for the wealthy; possibly tipping the balance of votes against the workers—men and women. Yet the Suffragettes pretend that this is a movement for the benefit of working women! The huge sums spent in this agitation prove that it is not a workers' movement. It is a movement by women of the wealthy and middle class to open up for themselves more fully careers of exploitation, and to share in the flesh-pots of political office, to get sinecures, position and emoluments among the governing caste.”

At the conclusion of the war, women over the age of 30 became eligible to vote in parliamentary elections. Rightly or wrongly, it was argued at the time that the age restriction was necessary to avoid a gender imbalance in voting given that so many young males had lost their lives. By 1928, however, universal suffrage for both men and women over the age of 21 became a reality.

So as you can see the picture was quite complex but had little to do with cultural misogyny or patriarchal power structures as some would paint it today.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_scarcity

Or:
http://www.disinfo.com/2013/01/is-sowing-artificial-scarcity-the-future-of-business/
http://www.cracked.com/article_18817_5-reasons-future-will-be-ruled-by-b.s..html

Or:
http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1990s/1998/no-1124-april-1998/artificial-scarcity
"Technological capacity to produce enough to satisfy everyone's needs already exists globally and has done so for many decades. Yet needs continue to remain unmet on a massive scale. Why? Quite simply because scarcity is a functional requirement of capitalism itself."

This web page includes suggestion by me on ways to transcend artificial scarcity as the basis of our modern economy:
http://www.artificialscarcity.com/

Anyway, it was a great video as piece of performance art related to the idea, which also connects to "planned obsolescence" or even, to a lesser extent, "fashion".

There is a huge diference with Communisam-Socialisam and that of true Socialisam http://www.worldsocialism.org/ Educate Yourself first before you try to draw up comparisons to Communisam!!

The only brainwashed fuck here is you.

Those socialists who advocated destroying private property rights in production, such as yourself, sure thought places like the USSR, Cambodia, Cuba and North Korea represented the the form of socialism they intended, as they supported those regimes, repeated their lies, spread their propaganda, worshiped their dictators, and rationalized and denied their crimes.

There is a huge diference with Communisam-Socialisam and that of true Socialisam http://www.worldsocialism.org/ Educate Yourself first before you try to draw up comparisons to Communisam!!

'the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat... In destroying the existing conditions of oppression by transferring all the means of labour to the productive labourer, and thereby compelling every able-bodied individual to work for a living, the only basis for class rule and oppression would be removed. But before such a change could be effected a proletarian dictature [Fr. Dictatorship] would be necessary, and the first condition of that was a proletarian army' (Marx, Engels and Lenin, 1975).

"I have written this calendar software. I hereby demand that anyone who wishes to use this software pay me $50 for the right to use it. If you do not may me $50, you may not use my software."

Fair enough. But once I pay you $50 for the software, it becomes my software, and I'm free to give it away to my friends and family if I choose to do so.

At that point, my copy of the software is MY property, NOT yours. You have NO RIGHT to tell me what I can do with MY PROPERTY. Taking away the rights of people to use their own property in the manner they choose is called Communism, and I think history has proven very well (1 billion people murdered in a 50-year period) that it doesn't work.

How can you OWN something that you've already SOLD or GIVEN AWAY to SOMEONE ELSE? If you SELL it, it isn't YOURS anymore, it belongs to WHOEVER YOU SOLD IT TO.

I'm talking morally, not legally. The law hasn't yet caught up with morality.

Learn truth; don't be idiodic.

So, Jon, is it time to stop complaining about capitalism and start investigating some alternatives yet? Or is merely complaining enough for you?

It bothers me that you're allowed to write this kind of stuff, and I have yet to ever see you reply to a single comment posted to one of your stories. You constantly sing doom and gloom, and I have never seen you once offer any kind of solution for the countless situations you go on moaning about all the time. Bah.

The government in China is not socialist nor does it have much of anything in common with most of the ideas of Marx. Anyone from the World Socialist Movement would be able to tell you that. Please stop associating an abusive state capitalist China with the ideas and writings of Karl Marx. This is a misconception convieniently put forth by our lovely American government in the elementary and high schools to remind us how naughty socialism is and how wonderful capitalism is. I know the Libertarian ideals abound on this site full of well-fed IT professionals, but believe it or not, America is not so much better than China than it likes to pretend it is. The WSM put out literature during the Soviet and Chinese revolutions stating they were not socialists then, and their opinions are still true today. Likewise, Marx did not approve of the Soviet revolution at the time it occurred. Now you know better.

Thank you, and carry on.

--a hot communist chick

If someone responsible can find out who is visiting a site that posts illegal information, then they can get better data on how to fight that particular crime.

From there it's not too long until someone realizes that someone "responsible" can find out who is visiting a site that posts unpopular informaiton so they can get better data on how to fight that thought crime. It's just a another step until unpopular becomes "unamerican," and suddenly your curious browsing of, say, the World Socialism pages lead to you answering the question, "Are you now, or have you ever been a communist?" You need real privacy to listen to free speech. Without privacy, free speech is worthless.

With this, he is falling right into the most dangerous of socialist ideas: that that we, who know better, should by law protect the common man from his own stupidity. I find such thinking arrogant, disgusting, and a much bigger threat to freedom (witness what past implementation of socialism accomplished) then anything Doubleclick does with my cookies.

Socialism oppressing freedom? You must mean Stalinism. Socialism is an egalitarian, democratic system, and has never been implemented. Next time, get your terminology straight.

Regards,

Might I point out that communism is actually
the opposite of that: there is no government.
If you're thinking Soviet Union style it's a
state capitalism-dictatorship, *not* communism.

The World Socialist Movement