Marx was notorious for using 'obfuscated' words for exact translation, if not known what he was really meant and the context.
Engels and Marx both spoke English, and they personally gave their stamp of approval on all of the translations by native speakers.
As mentioned in my previous comment, Marx did not consider the "dictatorship" and "revolution" as the tool of "minority" to "take control" powers. The armed force revolution is the result of old "weaken" societies refuse to transform to new societies, despite the will of the mass (in this case, the proletarian class is a larger group).
And according to his writing, democracies who refused to transform were included in this. (Also of note: He also predicted that communist parties would eventually win in a democracy. Sure, they won some elections, but that never lasted.) First, Marx commented that once communists were elected, then they would gradually gain more power over time. However after that failed in France in 1848 when the communists didn't actually get anywhere, he took a different turn and commented that "bourgeoisie democracy" would overthrow elected communists as kind of a cop-out. He had little faith that democracy would yield his stated goals, and over time started speaking out more that he felt violent revolution is necessary.
In the manifesto (in your comment) above:
You're highlighting the final step of it, which he says democracy will take foot, but only after the overthrow of the "old societies"
And this,
Which is a commentary that modern communists are revising to advertise to the others to join their cause. The communist party elected in Croatia actually did work with everybody at first until it turned out that they were about to be voted out because the working class didn't want to follow their rules (i.e. mandated increased output without extra pay.) They already had an intent of taking over the whole thing and they assumed that they would gain more power over time, but once they saw that people weren't accepting their views and they were going to lose all of their seats, they opted for violent revolution.
Everybody who identifies as communist today is either a useful idiot who doesn't understand this, or they're in on it (most people have wisened up these days, so few communists remain.) Why is this commentary even necessary when worldsocialism.org can simply present the manifesto and Marx's writings and published articles?
In fact, when the USSR gained prominence after WWII and started forcing other states to move to communism, communists everywhere (even in western states that rejected communism) declared that this was "late stage capitalism" in 1945, and they wholly supported what the USSR was doing. (1945 actually began a long era of prosperity and growth that continues to this day in capitalist states. And, it turns out that, late stage capitalism was declared 57 years after capitalism actually had a name, meanwhile we're 73 years after "late stage capitalism" and all of the worlds communist states have either already failed, or are still failing.
No, your previous comment is exactly what AC mentioned. The Soviet economy is actually state capitalism (mentioned above, deformed capitalism economy), which has the properties of capitalism system.
I stated this very plainly in my first reply to you: What communism says it is, and then what it actually is, are two very different things. FFS the concept of being stateless is a required component of communism, and it's impossible to obtain. Really, they propose having no laws, no governing authority, and no borders. Many, many things are wrong with this. I've grilled communists on reddit about people who decide not to follow the communist model and go back to capitalism (they will inevitably exist) and how do they set norms on how much production is necessary to be fair, and all who saw my post eventually conceded that there will need to be people who set the standards and people who enforce them (laws and government, hence it can't be communist by definition.) Laws can't exist without jurisdiction either, otherwise you have no idea where those laws apply, hence you also need borders, which means you have a state. Civilization also can't exist without laws.
And the soviet government WAS socialist as Marx described it. There is still money in socialism, and there are still wages. Profit was only introduced in 1965 (almost half a century after the revolution) when it became obvious that they couldn't compete with the US by having only 40% of our GDP per capita. More importantly, socialism is a planned economy that Marx intended to transform into a very unplanned communism using very vague reasoning.
The case of China is to abandon the monopoly of the state with the economy and (it's important, it happened when China decided to against the Soviet) the Wests were lift off embargo against the country.
No, that's not how China became capitalist or even state capitalist (they never really were this as the state never was profit oriented.) Capitalism was inadvertently introduced when a black market farm was producing so much grain compared to the neighboring areas, that it caught the attention of the Chinese government, and once they realized what was happening, they officially sanctioned it and allowed it to spread in order to solve famine, which it did quite well. But it began to spread so damn fast that it quickly replaced the rest of the planned economy, and so the whole country became capitalist within a period of 4 years. Not only did that solve famine, but it began a period of huge growth and prosperity.
AFAIK there were no communist revolutions on the planet so far.
Just as there have been no true Scottsmen on the planet so far. (Don't combine the past and the present perfect progressive in the same sentence when.)
That is nonsense. Private house owners always existed in the DDR (German democratic republic), and BTW: they where not communist, they where socialist.
No, they were neither, kind of like China and Vietnam now are. Sure, they officially had a socialist system, but in practice the private sector was still allowed to operate there, and over time it began to outproduce the public sector.
However: you get some bonus points however when you can explain how democracy actually works in a typical communist/one party system
Easy, they have one party, and within it they have a very concentrated power structure. Marx stated this as well.
the retarded US two party system and a democratic multi party system
By multi party, you are referring to a parliamentary system. But ironically, the two party system of the US provides for a more broad separation of powers with more checks and balances between them than the parliamentary system, which is by and large governed by the party that has the highest number of seats.
And please take extra care to explain why a communist one party system is not or can not be democratic!!
I already did explain it, and it ends up being highly concentrated power, just like Marx prescribed. But here's a nice case in point to add:
Also you might want to go read up on the Icarians in Navoo, Illinois. They really were communist by all definitions of the word, but over time as productivity dropped, strict work rules had to be enforced. The democratic process eventually broke down and there was a major split.
What kind of government got overthrown? What living conditions did the masses have before that?
Hm? You funktards don't know that those revolutions overthrew totalitarian governments where 90% of the populations where bond slaves or "peons" or "peasants" hold like slaves on fields?
Sure, there are many cases where bad governments were overthrown, just as there are many cases where democracy was overthrown. In either case, there are plenty of times when what they overthrew was better than what they had before. Take for example Cuba, under Batista the country was in the top 5 developed countries in latin america, had a GDP similar to most of Europe, and worker wages were increasing. Yes, Batista was an asshole, and yes, he himself overthrew democracy, and yes, he was killing many of his dissidents, and yes, he removed a lot of liberties. Communism did all of that too, AND made people poorer, AND made people starve. If you look at Cuba today, it's basically frozen in 1959. That is saying a lot for communism though, because most communist states at that time were frozen in time from revolutions much earlier. When the communist states fell apart and capitalism took its place (as it naturally does when there is nobody enforcing some other system,) they started growing in wealth almost immediately and became developing economies, with or without democracy, though democracies fared better.
Are you really that dumb and ill educated?
No, but you are dumb and ill educated about communism. All you have to do is read any of Marx's or Engel's writings on the subject of revolution and violence, and it's pretty obvious that while they stated that they wanted democracy, their direction was totalitarianism that was supposed to advance to highly concentrated powers. Mao more or less did this, but most totalitarians never want to give up power.
I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves. Henry Kissinger
All antitrust actions include an expiration date. General Oil was split up, and after the expiration date, they began to merge again. AT&T is no exception, and contrary to your statement, they began merging well before 2006. CenturyLink (which wasn't a Baby Bell in the beginning, but it picked up USWest) AT&T, and Verizon remain.
Sure, 3 is much smaller than the original 7 (tellcore doesn't count because it's only a standards body, and it was bought up by a company who also isn't a phone service provider) but the 3 aren't terribly relevant anymore since people are rapidly ditching landlines, and there are more mobile providers than the original bells, with four of them offering nationwide coverage, which the bells never did. Even then, there are now more landline providers than there were original bells. Sure, the remaining bells now offer internet service, by there are more fiber to the home providers than original bells, let alone cable/dsl providers.
Chapter 4 of the communist manifesto should help clarify:
In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things.
In all these movements, they bring to the front, as the leading question in each, the property question, no matter what its degree of development at the time.
Finally, they labour everywhere for the union and agreement of the democratic parties of all countries.
The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.
Notable in there is Marx's rejection of the Gotha Program. Also pay attention to what Engels says about authoritarianism. Remember, he co-wrote the communist manifesto.
Republicans want to ban porn, condoms, marijuana, etc.
I'm pretty sure that's just catholics on all counts, even many on the democratic side. I don't think I've met a non-cathoilic republican that wanted to ban porn or birth control. Marijuana...actually it seems more republicans are in favor of marijuana. In any of these cases though, I haven't seen any popular demand to close all pornography or condom companies, and strip clubs (which would be the most "risque") seem to be very popular in red states.
Democrats want something more closer to socialism--ie, regulation with restrictions on who can own.
That's not socialism. Socialism stipulates that the means of production is owned by the state. We have very limited occurrences of that here in the US. For example, it's common for water utilities to be effectively socialized because the employees work for and are paid by a governing entity. Many people think medicare is socialism, but it's not, it's actually a form of welfare similar to food stamps, because the government is paying private providers on your behalf so that you can get medical treatment (or food in the case of food stamps.) People often mistakenly label Scandinavian countries as socialism, but it's just not true, the correct term is a welfare state. There are no prosperous states that are primarily socialist.
But regulations on who can own (and I'm not sure what you're referring to by this,) that's more like fascism.
Communism is definitely much worse at it for it strays so heavily away from the stated ideals
This is by sheer necessity alone. Stalin himself favored a parliamentary system in the beginning, until he realized that it didn't work. Other than that, they actually quite well followed Marx, who said they must violently overthrow democracy, become socialist first, and then become communist. The problem is that move to communism was just too impractical; USSR moved towards the whole stateless thing early on, but they found out the hard way that without codified laws and a governing entity to enforce them, civilization just falls apart, and then people really suffer. A buddy of mine who was born in Poland before the fall of the iron curtain told me that schools would tell the kids that they weren't communism yet, but they are actively working towards that. That was a mere few years before the fall.
the notion that capitalism is some beacon of freedom without government interference
Few people actually believe this to be the case. There are varying opinions on what regulations help the economy and which ones harm it (and both kinds do exist.) It's well known that capitalism feeds on stability, and you can't have stability without the rule of law. Why would you risk your money to start a business if you have no guarantee that a bigger business won't firebomb you to eliminate you as a competitor? Why would you risk investing in another business if you have no safeguards to prevent fraud?
Relevant here: Socialist/communist governments feed on despair because it helps their propaganda machine work: They just blame all of their country's problems on capitalism.
Fascism doesn't necessarily have a racial component to it. After all, it was co-founded by a jew. Nazism does, however, and it is really a superset of fascism, thus you can have fascism without nazism. But yes, the Chinese government economically behaves similar to fascism.
You can downmod me to your heart's content, I honestly couldn't care less about karma points. My comments are completely on topic and relevant. Because you have nothing better to do than follow my posts and mod-bomb, obviously you need to find something else to do far more than I do. So why don't you just go outside and play hide and go fuck yourself?
Venezuela has the second highest homicide rate in the world. Just how much of those killings do you think weren't firearm related? If most of them weren't, that doesn't help the pro gun control crowd at all, and in fact works very much against their argument.
Nevermind that, serialized (TV) shows have massively improved in content quality. Even if they had the money and the technology, they wouldn't have done shows like they're doing now, rather the studios would have just saved that talent for feature length content.
Meanwhile, most high budget movies have been big disappointments over the last 5 years.
In 1946, the communist party won a plurality in Czechoslovakia [wikipedia.org], in an election that was generally considered fair.
The communist party won 38% of the vote, which was achieved by deceiving the public. What they got was the largest number of seats in parliament, what they didn't get was a revolution, and they were expected to lose the next election pretty badly. Of course, being communists, they would have none of that. The revolution happened after the communist party staged a coup and overthrew the democratic government, forcibly removing all of the other elected parties and installing a single-party concentrated rule, as Karl Marx himself proscribed in the past.
So no, that really doesn't count. At all. If the democratic government had been allowed to work as it was intended, the communist party would have been voted out, never to return.
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 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.
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.
While you're at it, could you name one capitalist country that hasn't either economically switched to fascism or quasi-socialism? Or do you think all those factories are spewing out not-as-toxic air because capitalism? Or the ones that do aren't being supported by a fascist regime?
Fascism has a limited element relating to economics, which basically forbids somebody from running a business if the government determines that the business model is bad for society for purely social reasons. In Germany, this manifested in banning pornography businesses, among other things. Many people today, most often democrats, are not philosophically different from this. If you've ever read somebody on slashdot who says "such a business shouldn't be allowed to exist" because it goes against their ideology of what society "ought to be like", (usually their target is corporations in the financial sector) then at least economically, the only difference between them and a fascist is that they hate different things.
"the very cannibalism of the counterrevolution will convince the nations that there is only one way in which the murderous death agonies of the old society and the bloody birth throes of the new society can be shortened, simplified and concentrated, and that way is revolutionary terror."
Make no mistake about it: This IS the language of a would be dictator. He even talks about having a concentrated power structure to boot.
Communist revolutions work by terrorizing and then enslaving (putting into forced labor and forced indoctrination) the local population until it bends to the will of the communist party. Democratic revolutions are the total opposite: They focus on liberating the local population without forcing them to favor any particular political leader or party.
Sure, Marx will talk about having elections (as most dictators do) but even if this does happen, the moment anybody speaks against his principled ideals and gains any kind of traction among the general public, Marx will label them as counter-revolutionary and have them killed and/or decide that the population isn't "educated" enough in a concept that Marx literally invented himself using a very flimsy basis for an argument that it will work. So the election process, if there is one at all, will be severely restricted.
I certainly am not confusing them. It's one thing to talk about what somebody says communism is, versus what it actually is.
Karl Marx himself stated that communism must begin with the violent overthrow of democracy. And as it turns out, that is what communist revolutions always do (besides depriving you of your life savings and turning your home over to the state to do whatever they want with.)
The problem is, they never actually bring back democracy. They all create a pretend democracy, and even put words like people's, republic, and democratic in the official name of their state. Pretend democracy isn't democracy, it's either an oligarchy or a dictatorship.
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.
Bonus points if you can name one communist revolution that hasn't either economically switched to capitalism, or closed their borders so nobody can leave.
The problem is that communism is incompatible with free speech and democracy. If they had free speech, they'd talk about how much they'd prefer democracy, and if they had democracy, they'd vote out the communists. Naturally, the communists will have none of that, so instead they simply control speech and then set up a system where the communist party decides what candidates may be voted for, even if they're all the same, and then they call that democracy.
That's not regulatory capture. Regulatory capture is granting local cable companies a monopoly and restricting companies like aereo from becoming an MSO after they applied for it. Right now the way around that is streaming video, only cable companies are putting a stop to that by de-prioritizing these providers so that they can't compete for video service since it can't be reliable. That, and they zero rate their own streaming services while adding expensive data overages (and there's zero technical justification for this; it's been proven time and time again that they have plenty of bandwidth.)
Because companies don't plan long-term anymore, the lack innovation power in the short and mid-term.
Of course they do, to think otherwise demonstrates a poor understanding of how the game (business) works: The vast majority of investors only care about growth in the long term; if they thought a company wasn't going to be around in the long term, they wouldn't invest in them and instead they'd be more likely to short them. Kind of hard to raise capital that way, don't you think? Sure, there are companies built to bilk investors, but companies like the one mentioned seem unlikely to do this. Personally, I'm going long on AAPL, even though I hate Apple. Why? Because I'm confident that Apple will grow quite well over the next decade and longer. If I felt that they weren't, then I'd sell and put more shares into NVDA and SNAP. Meanwhile I just sold FB because I'm not confident in their long term growth.
That aside, the premise of there not being enough junior level developer jobs is false, they're just not easy to find in expensive areas like silicon valley and Seattle (besides, good luck affording housing there even if you were a well paid junior developer.) Try going outside of those areas. Hell, there are plenty of coding mills that produce some of the worst crap I've ever seen, and they ONLY hire people straight out of college. Trying to start out in those upscale areas is like hopping on a greyhound to Hollywood and expecting to be a movie star in two weeks.
You're guaranteed to work side by side with morons, you're required to produce rushed code, and debugging and code optimization is discouraged because your customers only asked for cheap and shiny. But on the plus side, it's no doubt stupid easy to get work there, your $45k annual income is really good for Bumblefuck Dakota, and you get experience on your resume, which is all that you really came for.
Though you might also try Texas or Arizona where you can do better than that, and those lines on your resume will be of higher quality. Do about 3 years at the coding mill, then move up the career ladder. This a time tested formula for success in any mature industry, it's only when the industry is small and experiencing rapid growth (i.e. infosec) where they'll take people straight out of college just about anywhere.
I think they screwed up somewhere. From what I understand about half of the male population is gay, so the dating pool should be pretty good no matter which way you swing. Of course, there is the number of lesbians to counteract that, but urandictionary doesn't have any data on that, so I can only guess.
Wouldn't that be a violation of HIS lifestyle choice?
Nobody ever said social justice makes any sense. Using the word justice alone implies that a specific named party has been harmed by another specific named party and the later needs some kind of penalty inflicted upon them, which is stupid because nobody can actually name the later party. I don't know about you, I haven't met one social justice advocate who is good at anything other than protesting, and isn't always negative about every single thing on the planet.
I don't know if it would be fascism, probably more like stalinism. In stalinism you were forced to conform to a constructed ideology, and the judge was also the prosecutor.
You could compare it to nazism, but nazism didn't force you to conform to a constructed ideology so much as it made you conform to traditional german culture, so I think stalinism is more fitting.
Slashdot Mirror
Marx was notorious for using 'obfuscated' words for exact translation, if not known what he was really meant and the context.
Engels and Marx both spoke English, and they personally gave their stamp of approval on all of the translations by native speakers.
As mentioned in my previous comment, Marx did not consider the "dictatorship" and "revolution" as the tool of "minority" to "take control" powers. The armed force revolution is the result of old "weaken" societies refuse to transform to new societies, despite the will of the mass (in this case, the proletarian class is a larger group).
And according to his writing, democracies who refused to transform were included in this. (Also of note: He also predicted that communist parties would eventually win in a democracy. Sure, they won some elections, but that never lasted.) First, Marx commented that once communists were elected, then they would gradually gain more power over time. However after that failed in France in 1848 when the communists didn't actually get anywhere, he took a different turn and commented that "bourgeoisie democracy" would overthrow elected communists as kind of a cop-out. He had little faith that democracy would yield his stated goals, and over time started speaking out more that he felt violent revolution is necessary.
In the manifesto (in your comment) above:
You're highlighting the final step of it, which he says democracy will take foot, but only after the overthrow of the "old societies"
And this,
Which is a commentary that modern communists are revising to advertise to the others to join their cause. The communist party elected in Croatia actually did work with everybody at first until it turned out that they were about to be voted out because the working class didn't want to follow their rules (i.e. mandated increased output without extra pay.) They already had an intent of taking over the whole thing and they assumed that they would gain more power over time, but once they saw that people weren't accepting their views and they were going to lose all of their seats, they opted for violent revolution.
Everybody who identifies as communist today is either a useful idiot who doesn't understand this, or they're in on it (most people have wisened up these days, so few communists remain.) Why is this commentary even necessary when worldsocialism.org can simply present the manifesto and Marx's writings and published articles?
In fact, when the USSR gained prominence after WWII and started forcing other states to move to communism, communists everywhere (even in western states that rejected communism) declared that this was "late stage capitalism" in 1945, and they wholly supported what the USSR was doing. (1945 actually began a long era of prosperity and growth that continues to this day in capitalist states. And, it turns out that, late stage capitalism was declared 57 years after capitalism actually had a name, meanwhile we're 73 years after "late stage capitalism" and all of the worlds communist states have either already failed, or are still failing.
No, your previous comment is exactly what AC mentioned. The Soviet economy is actually state capitalism (mentioned above, deformed capitalism economy), which has the properties of capitalism system.
I stated this very plainly in my first reply to you: What communism says it is, and then what it actually is, are two very different things. FFS the concept of being stateless is a required component of communism, and it's impossible to obtain. Really, they propose having no laws, no governing authority, and no borders. Many, many things are wrong with this. I've grilled communists on reddit about people who decide not to follow the communist model and go back to capitalism (they will inevitably exist) and how do they set norms on how much production is necessary to be fair, and all who saw my post eventually conceded that there will need to be people who set the standards and people who enforce them (laws and government, hence it can't be communist by definition.) Laws can't exist without jurisdiction either, otherwise you have no idea where those laws apply, hence you also need borders, which means you have a state. Civilization also can't exist without laws.
And the soviet government WAS socialist as Marx described it. There is still money in socialism, and there are still wages. Profit was only introduced in 1965 (almost half a century after the revolution) when it became obvious that they couldn't compete with the US by having only 40% of our GDP per capita. More importantly, socialism is a planned economy that Marx intended to transform into a very unplanned communism using very vague reasoning.
The case of China is to abandon the monopoly of the state with the economy and (it's important, it happened when China decided to against the Soviet) the Wests were lift off embargo against the country.
No, that's not how China became capitalist or even state capitalist (they never really were this as the state never was profit oriented.) Capitalism was inadvertently introduced when a black market farm was producing so much grain compared to the neighboring areas, that it caught the attention of the Chinese government, and once they realized what was happening, they officially sanctioned it and allowed it to spread in order to solve famine, which it did quite well. But it began to spread so damn fast that it quickly replaced the rest of the planned economy, and so the whole country became capitalist within a period of 4 years. Not only did that solve famine, but it began a period of huge growth and prosperity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... (this Wikipedia is sourced well on all points, so I'm just using it directly.)
Karl Marx himself stated that communism must begin with the violent overthrow of democracy.
No, he did not say that.
You are an idiot.
It's in the communist manifesto, and he stated it in other publications as well.
https://slashdot.org/comments....
AFAIK there were no communist revolutions on the planet so far .
Just as there have been no true Scottsmen on the planet so far. (Don't combine the past and the present perfect progressive in the same sentence when.)
https://slashdot.org/comments....
That is nonsense. Private house owners always existed in the DDR (German democratic republic), and BTW: they where not communist, they where socialist.
No, they were neither, kind of like China and Vietnam now are. Sure, they officially had a socialist system, but in practice the private sector was still allowed to operate there, and over time it began to outproduce the public sector.
However: you get some bonus points however when you can explain how democracy actually works in a typical communist/one party system
Easy, they have one party, and within it they have a very concentrated power structure. Marx stated this as well.
the retarded US two party system and a democratic multi party system
By multi party, you are referring to a parliamentary system. But ironically, the two party system of the US provides for a more broad separation of powers with more checks and balances between them than the parliamentary system, which is by and large governed by the party that has the highest number of seats.
And please take extra care to explain why a communist one party system is not or can not be democratic!!
I already did explain it, and it ends up being highly concentrated power, just like Marx prescribed. But here's a nice case in point to add:
https://slashdot.org/comments....
Also you might want to go read up on the Icarians in Navoo, Illinois. They really were communist by all definitions of the word, but over time as productivity dropped, strict work rules had to be enforced. The democratic process eventually broke down and there was a major split.
You people should really start to read some books ...
And you should read the communist manifesto itself. I've detailed this in another post.
https://slashdot.org/comments....
The to big revolutions were in China and Russia.
What kind of government got overthrown? What living conditions did the masses have before that?
Hm? You funktards don't know that those revolutions overthrew totalitarian governments where 90% of the populations where bond slaves or "peons" or "peasants" hold like slaves on fields?
Sure, there are many cases where bad governments were overthrown, just as there are many cases where democracy was overthrown. In either case, there are plenty of times when what they overthrew was better than what they had before. Take for example Cuba, under Batista the country was in the top 5 developed countries in latin america, had a GDP similar to most of Europe, and worker wages were increasing. Yes, Batista was an asshole, and yes, he himself overthrew democracy, and yes, he was killing many of his dissidents, and yes, he removed a lot of liberties. Communism did all of that too, AND made people poorer, AND made people starve. If you look at Cuba today, it's basically frozen in 1959. That is saying a lot for communism though, because most communist states at that time were frozen in time from revolutions much earlier. When the communist states fell apart and capitalism took its place (as it naturally does when there is nobody enforcing some other system,) they started growing in wealth almost immediately and became developing economies, with or without democracy, though democracies fared better.
Are you really that dumb and ill educated?
No, but you are dumb and ill educated about communism. All you have to do is read any of Marx's or Engel's writings on the subject of revolution and violence, and it's pretty obvious that while they stated that they wanted democracy, their direction was totalitarianism that was supposed to advance to highly concentrated powers. Mao more or less did this, but most totalitarians never want to give up power.
I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.
Henry Kissinger
That's fine, but I don't care about Kissinger.
All antitrust actions include an expiration date. General Oil was split up, and after the expiration date, they began to merge again. AT&T is no exception, and contrary to your statement, they began merging well before 2006. CenturyLink (which wasn't a Baby Bell in the beginning, but it picked up USWest) AT&T, and Verizon remain.
Sure, 3 is much smaller than the original 7 (tellcore doesn't count because it's only a standards body, and it was bought up by a company who also isn't a phone service provider) but the 3 aren't terribly relevant anymore since people are rapidly ditching landlines, and there are more mobile providers than the original bells, with four of them offering nationwide coverage, which the bells never did. Even then, there are now more landline providers than there were original bells. Sure, the remaining bells now offer internet service, by there are more fiber to the home providers than original bells, let alone cable/dsl providers.
Chapter 4 of the communist manifesto should help clarify:
In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things.
In all these movements, they bring to the front, as the leading question in each, the property question, no matter what its degree of development at the time.
Finally, they labour everywhere for the union and agreement of the democratic parties of all countries.
The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.
https://www.marxists.org/archi...
More sources here if you want to read everything about how Karl Marx proposed creating a dictatorship of the proletariat:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Notable in there is Marx's rejection of the Gotha Program. Also pay attention to what Engels says about authoritarianism. Remember, he co-wrote the communist manifesto.
Republicans want to ban porn, condoms, marijuana, etc.
I'm pretty sure that's just catholics on all counts, even many on the democratic side. I don't think I've met a non-cathoilic republican that wanted to ban porn or birth control. Marijuana...actually it seems more republicans are in favor of marijuana. In any of these cases though, I haven't seen any popular demand to close all pornography or condom companies, and strip clubs (which would be the most "risque") seem to be very popular in red states.
Democrats want something more closer to socialism--ie, regulation with restrictions on who can own.
That's not socialism. Socialism stipulates that the means of production is owned by the state. We have very limited occurrences of that here in the US. For example, it's common for water utilities to be effectively socialized because the employees work for and are paid by a governing entity. Many people think medicare is socialism, but it's not, it's actually a form of welfare similar to food stamps, because the government is paying private providers on your behalf so that you can get medical treatment (or food in the case of food stamps.) People often mistakenly label Scandinavian countries as socialism, but it's just not true, the correct term is a welfare state. There are no prosperous states that are primarily socialist.
But regulations on who can own (and I'm not sure what you're referring to by this,) that's more like fascism.
Communism is definitely much worse at it for it strays so heavily away from the stated ideals
This is by sheer necessity alone. Stalin himself favored a parliamentary system in the beginning, until he realized that it didn't work. Other than that, they actually quite well followed Marx, who said they must violently overthrow democracy, become socialist first, and then become communist. The problem is that move to communism was just too impractical; USSR moved towards the whole stateless thing early on, but they found out the hard way that without codified laws and a governing entity to enforce them, civilization just falls apart, and then people really suffer. A buddy of mine who was born in Poland before the fall of the iron curtain told me that schools would tell the kids that they weren't communism yet, but they are actively working towards that. That was a mere few years before the fall.
the notion that capitalism is some beacon of freedom without government interference
Few people actually believe this to be the case. There are varying opinions on what regulations help the economy and which ones harm it (and both kinds do exist.) It's well known that capitalism feeds on stability, and you can't have stability without the rule of law. Why would you risk your money to start a business if you have no guarantee that a bigger business won't firebomb you to eliminate you as a competitor? Why would you risk investing in another business if you have no safeguards to prevent fraud?
Relevant here: Socialist/communist governments feed on despair because it helps their propaganda machine work: They just blame all of their country's problems on capitalism.
Fascism doesn't necessarily have a racial component to it. After all, it was co-founded by a jew. Nazism does, however, and it is really a superset of fascism, thus you can have fascism without nazism. But yes, the Chinese government economically behaves similar to fascism.
You can downmod me to your heart's content, I honestly couldn't care less about karma points. My comments are completely on topic and relevant. Because you have nothing better to do than follow my posts and mod-bomb, obviously you need to find something else to do far more than I do. So why don't you just go outside and play hide and go fuck yourself?
Venezuela has the second highest homicide rate in the world. Just how much of those killings do you think weren't firearm related? If most of them weren't, that doesn't help the pro gun control crowd at all, and in fact works very much against their argument.
Nevermind that, serialized (TV) shows have massively improved in content quality. Even if they had the money and the technology, they wouldn't have done shows like they're doing now, rather the studios would have just saved that talent for feature length content.
Meanwhile, most high budget movies have been big disappointments over the last 5 years.
In 1946, the communist party won a plurality in Czechoslovakia [wikipedia.org], in an election that was generally considered fair.
The communist party won 38% of the vote, which was achieved by deceiving the public. What they got was the largest number of seats in parliament, what they didn't get was a revolution, and they were expected to lose the next election pretty badly. Of course, being communists, they would have none of that. The revolution happened after the communist party staged a coup and overthrew the democratic government, forcibly removing all of the other elected parties and installing a single-party concentrated rule, as Karl Marx himself proscribed in the past.
So no, that really doesn't count. At all. If the democratic government had been allowed to work as it was intended, the communist party would have been voted out, never to return.
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.
While you're at it, could you name one capitalist country that hasn't either economically switched to fascism or quasi-socialism? Or do you think all those factories are spewing out not-as-toxic air because capitalism? Or the ones that do aren't being supported by a fascist regime?
Fascism has a limited element relating to economics, which basically forbids somebody from running a business if the government determines that the business model is bad for society for purely social reasons. In Germany, this manifested in banning pornography businesses, among other things. Many people today, most often democrats, are not philosophically different from this. If you've ever read somebody on slashdot who says "such a business shouldn't be allowed to exist" because it goes against their ideology of what society "ought to be like", (usually their target is corporations in the financial sector) then at least economically, the only difference between them and a fascist is that they hate different things.
"the very cannibalism of the counterrevolution will convince the nations that there is only one way in which the murderous death agonies of the old society and the bloody birth throes of the new society can be shortened, simplified and concentrated, and that way is revolutionary terror."
https://www.marxists.org/archi...
Make no mistake about it: This IS the language of a would be dictator. He even talks about having a concentrated power structure to boot.
Communist revolutions work by terrorizing and then enslaving (putting into forced labor and forced indoctrination) the local population until it bends to the will of the communist party.
Democratic revolutions are the total opposite: They focus on liberating the local population without forcing them to favor any particular political leader or party.
Sure, Marx will talk about having elections (as most dictators do) but even if this does happen, the moment anybody speaks against his principled ideals and gains any kind of traction among the general public, Marx will label them as counter-revolutionary and have them killed and/or decide that the population isn't "educated" enough in a concept that Marx literally invented himself using a very flimsy basis for an argument that it will work. So the election process, if there is one at all, will be severely restricted.
I certainly am not confusing them. It's one thing to talk about what somebody says communism is, versus what it actually is.
Karl Marx himself stated that communism must begin with the violent overthrow of democracy. And as it turns out, that is what communist revolutions always do (besides depriving you of your life savings and turning your home over to the state to do whatever they want with.)
The problem is, they never actually bring back democracy. They all create a pretend democracy, and even put words like people's, republic, and democratic in the official name of their state. Pretend democracy isn't democracy, it's either an oligarchy or a dictatorship.
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.
Bonus points if you can name one communist revolution that hasn't either economically switched to capitalism, or closed their borders so nobody can leave.
The problem is that communism is incompatible with free speech and democracy. If they had free speech, they'd talk about how much they'd prefer democracy, and if they had democracy, they'd vote out the communists. Naturally, the communists will have none of that, so instead they simply control speech and then set up a system where the communist party decides what candidates may be voted for, even if they're all the same, and then they call that democracy.
Fidel Castro was pretty open about this.
That's not regulatory capture. Regulatory capture is granting local cable companies a monopoly and restricting companies like aereo from becoming an MSO after they applied for it. Right now the way around that is streaming video, only cable companies are putting a stop to that by de-prioritizing these providers so that they can't compete for video service since it can't be reliable. That, and they zero rate their own streaming services while adding expensive data overages (and there's zero technical justification for this; it's been proven time and time again that they have plenty of bandwidth.)
Because companies don't plan long-term anymore, the lack innovation power in the short and mid-term.
Of course they do, to think otherwise demonstrates a poor understanding of how the game (business) works: The vast majority of investors only care about growth in the long term; if they thought a company wasn't going to be around in the long term, they wouldn't invest in them and instead they'd be more likely to short them. Kind of hard to raise capital that way, don't you think? Sure, there are companies built to bilk investors, but companies like the one mentioned seem unlikely to do this. Personally, I'm going long on AAPL, even though I hate Apple. Why? Because I'm confident that Apple will grow quite well over the next decade and longer. If I felt that they weren't, then I'd sell and put more shares into NVDA and SNAP. Meanwhile I just sold FB because I'm not confident in their long term growth.
That aside, the premise of there not being enough junior level developer jobs is false, they're just not easy to find in expensive areas like silicon valley and Seattle (besides, good luck affording housing there even if you were a well paid junior developer.) Try going outside of those areas. Hell, there are plenty of coding mills that produce some of the worst crap I've ever seen, and they ONLY hire people straight out of college. Trying to start out in those upscale areas is like hopping on a greyhound to Hollywood and expecting to be a movie star in two weeks.
Here, try these guys:
https://eaglecrkcareers.silkro...
You're guaranteed to work side by side with morons, you're required to produce rushed code, and debugging and code optimization is discouraged because your customers only asked for cheap and shiny. But on the plus side, it's no doubt stupid easy to get work there, your $45k annual income is really good for Bumblefuck Dakota, and you get experience on your resume, which is all that you really came for.
Though you might also try Texas or Arizona where you can do better than that, and those lines on your resume will be of higher quality. Do about 3 years at the coding mill, then move up the career ladder. This a time tested formula for success in any mature industry, it's only when the industry is small and experiencing rapid growth (i.e. infosec) where they'll take people straight out of college just about anywhere.
I think they screwed up somewhere. From what I understand about half of the male population is gay, so the dating pool should be pretty good no matter which way you swing. Of course, there is the number of lesbians to counteract that, but urandictionary doesn't have any data on that, so I can only guess.
Well, let's look at some of what is written:
- Unwelcome comments regarding a person's lifestyle choices and practices, including those related to food, health, parenting, drugs, and employment.
So saying things like drug abuse or being overweight is unhealthy, or that anchovies are gross, is a violation.
- Physical contact and simulated physical contact (e.g., textual descriptions like "*hug*" or "*backrub*") without consent or after a request to stop.
This one is a real winner. So you have to ask for permission to *hug* them.
- Continued one-on-one communication after requests to cease.
Isn't this what an ignore function is for?
And there's an unwritten rule that you also can't disagree with the CoC either:
https://www.reddit.com/r/freeb...
This is a pretty clear-cut case of politics taking precedence over technology. FreeBSD is now the planet fitness of operating systems.
I think GPs goal was to trigger somebody. It looks like he succeeded.
Wouldn't that be a violation of HIS lifestyle choice?
Nobody ever said social justice makes any sense. Using the word justice alone implies that a specific named party has been harmed by another specific named party and the later needs some kind of penalty inflicted upon them, which is stupid because nobody can actually name the later party. I don't know about you, I haven't met one social justice advocate who is good at anything other than protesting, and isn't always negative about every single thing on the planet.
I don't know if it would be fascism, probably more like stalinism. In stalinism you were forced to conform to a constructed ideology, and the judge was also the prosecutor.
You could compare it to nazism, but nazism didn't force you to conform to a constructed ideology so much as it made you conform to traditional german culture, so I think stalinism is more fitting.