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you're yahoo news comments tier at best.

The difference is you're reading me. So I must be doing something right.

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Haven't read all this, but that sounds like someone actually considering it, even if they disagree. nice.

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The difference is you're reading me. So I must be doing something right.

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that doesn't mean anything tho. just coz I haven't read it all before I replied. lmao

in fact all it means is you say nothing of substance so it takes less time.

but that's just you being a contrarian ignoring that you literally typed less than him, which would take less time to read.

now we're going to do the "I must be good at b8ing because you're responding" go-round. It's not like this is a place you only come to respond to people or anything. lol

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that doesn't mean anything tho. just coz I haven't read it all before I replied. lmao

in fact all it means is you say nothing of substance so it takes less time.

but that's just you being a contrarian ignoring that you literally typed less than him, which would take less time to read.

now we're going to do the "I must be good at b8ing because you're responding" go-round. It's not like this is a place you only come to respond to people or anything. lol

Bruh. This is Spam.

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Bruh. This is Spam.

yeah but you come in acting like you want to have a discussion or reasonably discuss something, but instead you just take the piss when people do respond.

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yeah but you come in acting like you want to have a discussion or reasonably discuss something, but instead you just take the piss when people do respond.

Show me. Show me one place where I acted like I wanted to have a discussion or reasonably discuss this crock.

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Show me. Show me one place where I acted like I wanted to have a discussion or reasonably discuss this crock.

fair enough, I looked in the last 10 or so pages and I don't see anything. maybe I'm going off old info and you stopped pretending.

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fair enough, I looked in the last 10 or so pages and I don't see anything. maybe I'm going off old info and you stopped pretending.

It's like Trump said. I got tired of winning.

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It's like Trump said. I got tired of winning.

That's one way to put it. Not the right way, but a way.

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I mean he brings up valid points still, even if he is shitposting.

Anyways I'll bring up some points I found contradictory/improbable.

"This method, applied to all industries providing goods or services, would eliminate any semblance of Bourgeois elements in society, with all methods of production being owned collectively by the workers who operate them."

Right, and who is going to enforce this? Someone with... more power? I don't see how giving everyone percieved power will fix power structures because eventually somewhere down the line the guy in charge of the military would be able to do whatever, since, well, he has the power.

Welcome to Far-left sectarian bickering 101. Who the fuck does anything?

But anyways, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita argues in his book The Dictator's Handbook that the stability and a strength within a democracy is its egalitarianism. And outside of Bordiga and perhaps Marxist-Leninism if the entire notion of communism is democratic organization on a broader scale then we might have to analyze the basic premise in the book.

In it, dictatorial regimes derive power from investing their nation's resources in a smaller group of offices or supporting roles of the regime, whether this be in the military, the bureaucracy, and/or the businesses. The structure of this government means more distance can be put between the ruler and the people being ruled, but also makes the structure of the government sketchy since at any moment the ruler doesn't make one pillar happy they can pull their support and topple the entire system. This is basically how third-world revolutions happy: the military lets the revolutionaries take power and replace most of the government with their people before re-assuming power under the new government has their new military.

In democratic nations the resources that support the ruling state are distributed more widely among a broader set of institutions and broken down much more. While there are more institutions supporting the government, rewards for service are smaller. However, the broader base on which the government stands is so much so that if any single group decides to revolt against the government the entire system will not collapse on itself.

The notion for communism, or even Anarchy is spreading out the resources and access to resources in a broader sense. There will be no one part of the model with the strength to kill the entire system if they choose to rebel. They might be able to cause some damage, but things will survive.

Bringing this to historical a historical model, American insistence to decentralize power and its long and historical terror of a permanent standing army has given it a great deal of stability. The failure of the Federalist party under Hamilton arguably helped to lessen the power of the Federal government enough it could mature in time by keeping a wide seat. Though it could be argued still that the lack of systematic understanding of this prevents the state from going further. But whatever, I feel I'm digressing; but I've also discussed this long-form several times today so I'm trying to keep it short for my benefit.

But back to Marxism: to prevent or cripple the ability of the military from taking power for themselves, or for the Vanguard government to suddenly become the second Bourgeoisie ruling class he said:



Basically, like with America's second amendment the theory here would be the workers should be allowed to be armed and assemble into militias to defend themselves should a government attempt to reorganize labor and to centralize it. It's a threat of physical terror to keep the Vanguard in check.

It's also notable the time Marx wrote his theories, in the early half of the 19th century. He had access to a different and not entirely fully developed body of scholarly work, study, and industrial development than perhaps the likes of Kropotkin and the development of Anarcho Communism in the later half of the century. Under Marx there would need to be a Vanguard body to guide society to a point of post-scarcity under which they'd dissolve authority to the workers when there needed to be less oversight. Though by Kropotkin's predictions this Vanguard would turn, and forty-years after he wrote Conquest of Bread Stalin happened.

I would suggest that should a revolution happen it needs to happen on a certain American model with power not vested in a single Vanguard body but local or regional bodies handling local affairs with a federal body in a relationship much like what we have or had with the federal government today, and the nature of senators and representatives becoming more like delegates to the national congress. But this gets into a whole other thing.

In short: broader democratic control prevents or makes less likely dictatorial control when all people have the freedom to dictate, discuss, and practice their own government on the understanding there's a mandate that nothing should at least permanently be given to a single person or representative body.

Begin arguing, party splitters.

The problem with this is that the person making the tires is going to be more knowledgable about making tires than the person who cleans the toliet. It would be more productive to let the person making the tires decide how tires should be made/process since he has more technical knowledge. If the guy cleaning the shitter says tires dont need rubber who's going to stop him? Of course, you might say everyone else, but humans can choose the wrong thing to do at times. Who's to say that the toilet guy didn't convince everyone tires should be made of toliet seat covers? Everyone has a "say" in this situation. Your factories would be terribly inefficient. I would assume everything would need to come down to a group decision. Which means little would get done.

One of the big things I get from communists, or used to hear several years back was that in this societal structure people would have free access to the information and education needed to move from one trade to another based on his own whims or wants. This isn't entirely different from what's practiced in the present system, but there's no need to pay. A factory worker today can pay a sum, get a loan, or get a grant to go to college to learn a new trade and then integrate into that field. A toilet cleaner too can transition from cleaning the shitter to going to work at the factory because mechanization at the factory means the change in trade isn't complicated or expensive, you just get to learn what buttons to press and shit to do to keep the line moving; this has been the boon in labor that was the assembly line and consolidated work stations, you just teach people to do the must rudimentary task to make something complicated and then let them work at their station for eight hours a day.

As the methods of manufacture change, so does the input of man into manufacture. There is already discussion today about the impact of automation in the manufacturing industry and the job sector. And automation in the middle of the last century (1960's, 70's, 80's, 90's, and on to today) has already greatly affected manufacture as a job field by cutting more and more people out of the factories. The River Rouge plant here in Michigan was once the biggest of all plants hiring upwards to 90,000 to a 100,000 workers; now only some 10,000 workers work there because so much of the work is automated.

To a communist/anarchist/Trotskyite such as myself this worries me because there's far fewer laborers there, so far fewer people who need to get paid, and owners with nothing to do with the factory are taking in higher dividends for not having to spend so much on wages. There's a point where I'm afraid that the owners will be on top not because they're supporting labor but because they own robots that do all the work with a only ten people in the middle-class needed to make sure it's all moving. And then we're all be cut out of the economy and working society and basically enslaved to them.

What the end goal is is to democratize all the industry so that even if it's fully automated it serves all the people directly and it's not washed through the hands of distant people like the Merchants of London to George Washington and the people of colonial America. If it's in our communities, it belongs to us and we can all benefit.

And group decisions sound more democratic imo, not communist.

Group decision is a fundamental part of communism, and is why Hungary revolted against the Stalinists in the 50's. The argument of strong-Vanguard parties like the Marxist-Leninists is that a strong central authority is needed to guide society to a point where it can be democratically run. But by holding power the Marxist-Leninist institutions of Stalin and Mao created a second Bourgiese class that derailed the goal, and then again come Krushchev and Deng Xiaopeng.

Orthodox Marxism, and even orthodox Luxembourgism/SocDem is that there needs to be democracy in the revolution.

Sounds more like democratic socialism than actual communism.

See above. DemSoc/SocDem is part of the Marxist lineage, though in the west it derailed itself in the twenties and thirties in most of the west to ascribe to Keynesian economics than anything else. Unless it can be fixed, modern SocDem/Labour will probably always be the party of John Meynard Keynes

Uh, would the disabled count? because if they can't produce anything due to a disability, then are they not unneeded in processes of production? Maybe this is bad wording more than actual malice, but still.

To some, the disabled or elderly can still benefit the society as a whole, just not involved directly in the labor process as the younger generation. The old model of the nuclear family would have three generations living in the same house or close together so the elderly can at the least help raise the children as their own children work or perform their own labor to sustain both generations. But if the fundamental goal of Communism is to get to a point where labor is slowly minimized and the means of production of commonly owned by all men then notions of disability and age is all but irrelevant. According to the ends of Kropotkin at least the goals of communism would be to make physical labor irrelevant, ownership nonexistent, and that the individual can put more time into cultural and artistic pursuits to advance society's artistic and cultural richness and less its material.

I feel like you're torn between being democratic and being communist. You say that you want to make it as democratic as possible, but does this not imply you will crack down on anyone who does not support your society? The entire point of democracy is the free expression of ideas. Hardly seems democratic when you're going to make them disappear or exile them or whatever you plan to do.

From a Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist standpoint: Gulag everyone.
From a Marxist-Leninist-Trotskite standpoint: You're going to need their input because any revolution without the input of the people its for has no standing or legitemacy
From an Anarchist standpoint: the state was a spook anyways.

It gets very into the ego of small differences from here. But if violence was totally out of the question we wouldn't have had the liberal revolutions we had, either out of the notable use of violence to achieve it or the threat of violence.



It's a rather unfortunate thing but at this point probably a fact of life for anything. Civil Rights in America probably wouldn't have happened without the Deacons of Defense and Malcolm X spooking the government and the white resistance with their guns into passing legislation to at the least get them to dissolve when their demands are met with legislation. And we ascribe a big portion of India's independence to Gahndi when in reality Bhagat Singh is much more a folk hero in part to his active confrontational and violent praxis. It also helped martyr him, and that at the time of the Indian Independence Movement the United Kingdom was fighting first the First World War and the Second, so were in a sense compelled to release India under threat of violence continually wearing down the Empire.

They certainly didn't let the 13 colonies go without a prolonged war of attrition in America either.

But in the end if there are people who seek to dissolve democracy and to end the equality then for those groups who would be destroyed or their way of life endangered violence or the threat of violence is justified to make them more a danger and to hold the authoritarian powers at bay, or to dissolve the unattached authority of a resource or industry so it may be held by the people its more relevant too.

The Labor movement in America learned this too in the twenties, and simply striking outside the factory didn't do anything when the factory just hires on new people with no Union sympathy or radical politics. To get the demands they wanted it was best for them to physically take control of the factory and literally seize it.

It isn't exactly "free" when the only choice they have is support the government or die/get beaten up/forcibly removed.

Above.

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That's one way to put it. Not the right way, but a way.

Also, quips are much more fun. And effective. I mean shit I never saw you get this riled up over thoughtful pedantry.

@Dinh AaronMk

I'm not going to answer all of these counter arguments since I really should be studying for a midterm instead of being here, but I'll attempt to refute the important points in my eyes/ones worth debating.

"Basically, like with America's second amendment the theory here would be the workers should be allowed to be armed and assemble into militias to defend themselves should a government attempt to reorganize labor and to centralize it. It's a threat of physical terror to keep the Vanguard in check."

And would there not be leaders in these militias? Again, there is still a clear power structure here, just under a different rebranding. If there is no leadership your militia is going to be ineffective because everyone would be off doing their own thing. It becomes indistinguishable from the military, except different leadership.

It does spread out the "keys" of power, but it's still completely corruptible.

"It gets very into the ego of small differences from here. But if violence was totally out of the question we wouldn't have had the liberal revolutions we had, either out of the notable use of violence to achieve it or the threat of violence."

And we've had very shitty revolutions. Not every revolution that permits violence is bad per se, but not every revolution that has permitted violence has been good.

I don't think your revolution is very good if you start killing off everyone who simply may not agree with you.

While you may scream french revolution at me, may I point you towards Pol Pot. Nazis. I can probably go look up other countless pointless "revolutions" where they scream we're promoting greater good when really they're just taking a chance to eliminate political opponents.
I think your system is gov. is flawed when you literally have to start killing EVERYONE who doesn't agree with you. I mean sure, there will always be people you will probably need to crush, but you cannot say everyone who disagrees with you should be killed.

Violence is a tool, not a means to an end. When you start killing anyone who disagrees with you, yes, I am going to seriously question the validity of the change you're proposing to bring about.

In your example, the labor workers used violence to show they wanted to be heard after peaceful protest failed. However, this does not mean they went around lynching everyone who said no I don't agree with you.

There's a difference between using violence to further your goals and support meaningful change, and using violence to suppress anyone you deem a threat to your form of gov., even if they are simply putting their opinions/views out there and not doing anything wrong other than not thinking like you.

You know, I'll be totally honest. I think communism could work in the future. With automation and AI I think it's possible. But I certainly wouldn't support it now. Communist regimes have killed too many people and the communists around the Guild talk about violence against their political enemies so much that it makes me feel violence is a feature of communism, not a bug. Plus there's the fact that communist economies often do so poorly people end up starving to death and I have to eat.

Even if communism is theoretically possible with some major advancements in technology I don't see any reason to risk being killed by an oppressive regime or starved by a failed economy. Nobody in this thread has even proposed answers to the failures of communism.

You know, I'll be totally honest. I think communism could work in the future. With automation and AI I think it's possible. But I certainly wouldn't support it now. Communist regimes have killed too many people and the communists around the Guild talk about violence against their political enemies so much that it makes me feel violence is a feature of communism, not a bug. Plus there's the fact that communist economies often do so poorly people end up starving to death and I have to eat.

Even if communism is theoretically possible with some major advancements in technology I don't see any reason to risk being killed by an oppressive regime or starved by a failed economy. Nobody in this thread has even proposed answers to the failures of communism.

I don't completely agree with communism, but I agree that certain aspects are good and we should at least give those aspects a try, like universal healthcare, universal income.

And to answer your question, most communists believe that removing political opponents is necessary for the gov to exist because people generally rebel. They don't see it as much as a flaw than the system working as intended.

There is also the kind of communist who says a communist utopia would leave all other forms of gov. seen as basically insane and cavemen backwards, and no one rebels.

At least, those are the two most common types of communists I've come across.

Communism inherently views other gov. structures as evil, since they keep the common man down. Correct me if I'm wrong, but a lot of communists feel that they would need to free the common man, even if the gov. is fine and really not doing anything to provoke a war except for the fact they're not communist. Communists see violence to be used liberally to destroy the "elite" class. Or those who simply appose an authoritarian gov.

Then again I may be biased since I abhor communism in it's purest form, so keep that in mind.

@Dinh AaronMk

I'm not going to answer all of these counter arguments since I really should be studying for a midterm instead of being here, but I'll attempt to refute the important points in my eyes/ones worth debating.

"Basically, like with America's second amendment the theory here would be the workers should be allowed to be armed and assemble into militias to defend themselves should a government attempt to reorganize labor and to centralize it. It's a threat of physical terror to keep the Vanguard in check."

And would there not be leaders in these militias? Again, there is still a clear power structure here, just under a different rebranding. If there is no leadership your militia is going to be ineffective because everyone would be off doing their own thing. It becomes indistinguishable from the military, except different leadership.

It does spread out the "keys" of power, but it's still completely corruptible.

While it may, but at this level it's up to however the community wants to organize it. But the entire notion of the militia are armed volunteer citizens. They're not militia-ing full time, but when needed or when they believe it to be so. These groups may be tied to the local government in something like the old New England town council and called up when the men and women there deem it necessary and lead by whoever they pick.

The notion of the militia is that these people are part of the community which they volunteer to defend, where as the standing army is sent to where-ever a government wants them to with or without the communal relationship they have with the area. They're effectively outside the communal structure. A militia as well, being civilian members raised by a civilian console have a far greater range of civilian oversight than their contemporaries in the army. While the US practiced civilian oversight in that active-duty military personnel should not serve in administrative office and are still subject to congressional scrutiny as a civilian body they can't use their military connections or position to pick up greater personal liberties and rights.

And we've had very shitty revolutions. Not every revolution that permits violence is bad per se, but not every revolution that has permitted violence has been good.

I don't think your revolution is very good if you start killing off everyone who simply may not agree with you.

I guess our nation is invalidated now, time to surrender ourselves back to the United Kingdom.

While you may scream french revolution at me, may I point you towards Pol Pot. Nazis. I can probably go look up other countless pointless "revolutions" where they scream we're promoting greater good when really they're just taking a chance to eliminate political opponents.
I think your system is gov. is flawed when you literally have to start killing EVERYONE who doesn't agree with you. I mean sure, there will always be people you will probably need to crush, but you cannot say everyone who disagrees with you should be killed.

Violence is a tool, not a means to an end. When you start killing anyone who disagrees with you, yes, I am going to seriously question the validity of the change you're proposing to bring about.

In your example, the labor workers used violence to show they wanted to be heard after peaceful protest failed. However, this does not mean they went around lynching everyone who said no I don't agree with you.

There's a difference between using violence to further your goals, and using violence to suppress anyone you deem a threat to your form of gov., even if they are simply putting their opinions/views out there and not doing anything wrong other than not thinking like you.

I think we need to look at the preexisting government structures that exist in the nation under revolution. But first, the Nazi comment:

Nazis actually didn't seize power in a revolution. Neither did Mussolinis Fascists in Italy. In either case they took power through election or the native legal processes of parliament and government. And once in power began to utilize their position to strengthen the party's hold in power by using violence to suppress or destroy the opposition. It was the inability of the opposition to recognize them and act accordingly that saw to a rise in both parties in government. The Nazis may have tried a coup once, but that failed and later they got in through the electoral process, used violence to kill off the opposition, and repainted the nation in their colors as if there had been a revolution.

Not all revolutions need to be bloody either, and it might be then argued the very existence of the state provided the groundwork for such relatively negative forces to come to power in the first place. So we should liquidate the state entirely and we'd be better off.

Except we can't, all over the world the state is recognized in some form to be a necessary evil. And whether through revolution or election, someone seizes control of the preexisting state structure.

In the case of the American revolution the nominal notion at the heart of the revolution was for the right of local governance, and in fact and in a way a validation of the Puritanic, Anglo model of self governance in the face of an obtrusive master class across the Atlantic sea. I would argue that given this model, a communist or far-leftist revolution in the United States that took and adapts the notion of local self governance and marries it with notions of communal ownership of local resources and industries we could do a world of good in Communism's image issue, but that's personal conjecture. The point of the matter is the US of A had a stable model of local self determination and flexibility that allows the states to do whatever they want, within the limits ascribed by the later largely Hamiltonian federalist Constitution that managed to tame the dysfunction of competing states into a federal government model which is basically unheard of in Europe.

Other revolutions like the later French Revolution, the much later Russian Revolution, the Chinese Revolution, and even Pol Pot's Cambodia didn't really have a model for local self-rule as America so never adopted a notion of government derived from a mandate - at least in part - derived from its citizens at the bottom and were adopting government structures invented to rule from the very top. The Leninists seized a largely tsarists system and the Peter the Great's Colleges (or: ministries), and while after some time power and self determination was slowly leaked down to the local Soviets it still had a bloated top-down structure that allowed Stalin to re-seize all the assets in the name of defending the state from Nazi invasion and then never letting the fuck go.

Where as in America this same ploy would have had to passed down from the delegates to the states they represented who through individuals elected from local districts would need to ratify such a change and no doubt would get very angry if such an order were to be given without an expiration date. But this notion did not exist in Russia.

The same excuse could be given to Pol Pot. Since the Cambodian state already controlled so much (and the national resources were so scarce and not at all modernized in the first place) what few assets the Khmer Rouge had were easily concentrated in the state and they took over a government that could already do whatever the hell it wanted.

Mao and the Chinese Communist Party adopted a nation which historically had a bloated bureaucratic administration since the time of the Emperors, and it was used to such an effect probably no one in Mao's immediate circle knew what the hell was going on during the Great Leap Forward.

And back to France, while I meme about Robespierre and my admiration for him may be slipping out of the ironic, I will say this: the above applies to them. They were trying to build a system of self determination and republicanism without having that system nationally. They didn't get a Magna Carta like the British so there wasn't ever an evolved parliamentarian system based on a minimum of representation in their government, and the best the French had were the system of courts that ruled France regionally (and could even one-up the King at times, based on precedent).

So, like what it would be to move one King onto a new throne, people die because these people resist. It's certainly a topic the French neoclassicalists would have pointed to in the creation of Rome's republic. And the growing consolidation of power within the Republic boiling over into events such as the assassinations of the Brothers Gracchi and the civil war over the rise of Julius Caesar which was itself not necessarily bloodless. It's a classical underscore that transition in government isn't blood free, and on some level those who might resist need to be defeated or destroyed.

Because you don't get anything great by asking nicely.

@Kratesis Why is equality of outcome even desirable?

@The Nexerus I don't see any reason why it is. In fact I see a number of reasons why it isn't.

Here we go, a real one!

But anyways, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita argues in his book The Dictator's Handbook that the stability and a strength within a democracy is its egalitarianism.

...

Basically, like with America's second amendment the theory here would be the workers should be allowed to be armed and assemble into militias to defend themselves should a government attempt to reorganize labor and to centralize it. It's a threat of physical terror to keep the Vanguard in check.

This provides some insight (to me anyway) on the disconnect within the US. See, here, every time the right wing says "Hey, we really need to decentralize power to avoid a totalitarian state," the left freaks the fuck out. Here in the US, present day, the left and the communists are conflated (to what extent exactly is up for debate, but there's a conflation there). Part of that, certainly, is old-school cold war era propaganda, and also, part of it is the idealistic appropriation of the left. Not intending to point fingers, merely to express this: you're talking about the one thing (small government, empowered population, democratic representation at the local level, etc) and that's a FAAAAAAaaaaar different thing than "communism," as it exists (conceptually or otherwise) in the present day. So to converse properly, we each have to understand one key thing (and I get the sensation that we each recognize it already): that the brand of communism which you discuss is neither the mainstream, nor one that has existed in any nation in the history of the earth.

Am I wrong? I'll just continue on the assumption that I'm not wrong. It's more constructive that way, and apparently that matters in Spam of all places.

It's also notable the time Marx wrote his theories, in the early half of the 19th century. He had access to a different and not entirely fully developed body of scholarly work, study, and industrial development than perhaps the likes of Kropotkin and the development of Anarcho Communism in the later half of the century. Under Marx there would need to be a Vanguard body to guide society to a point of post-scarcity under which they'd dissolve authority to the workers when there needed to be less oversight. Though by Kropotkin's predictions this Vanguard would turn, and forty-years after he wrote Conquest of Bread Stalin happened.

It's similarly notable that Marx had a lot less history of Marxist (and/or so-called Marxist) governments to draw from. I'd love to see an intellectually honest follow-up from his ghost, written in 2017, but hey. Anywho I've never heard of Kropotkin in my entire life, so I'm woefully outgunned here. I'll take your word for it.

I would suggest that should a revolution happen it needs to happen on a certain American model with power not vested in a single Vanguard body but local or regional bodies handling local affairs with a federal body in a relationship much like what we have or had with the federal government today, and the nature of senators and representatives becoming more like delegates to the national congress. But this gets into a whole other thing.

In short: broader democratic control prevents or makes less likely dictatorial control when all people have the freedom to dictate, discuss, and practice their own government on the understanding there's a mandate that nothing should at least permanently be given to a single person or representative body.

Begin arguing, party splitters.

I don't have one single issue with the dissolution of federal power. For that matter, if California wants to go full-on socialist, I don't think Texas should have any power whatsoever to prevent it (property issues notwithstanding), if you catch my drift. If "all politics are local politics" as the adage says, then why are we ruled by 545 strangers in Washington with a single-digit collective approval rating? Split that shit up. One shouldn't have to secede from the union to achieve a degree of self-determination.

In my estimation, the disruption of federalization is not a communist issue. In light of that, the snipped, split, and quoted section of your post -- while intriguing and light-shedding and a bit educational -- isn't really relevant to the conversation. Like if I told you that Christianity preaches charitable giving, and you agree that charitable giving is the tits, that's still a bit of a red herring when it comes to the "is there a god" conversation, no? Anyway. The clever bit in all this is, in no way shape or form does this communist vision, which you're conveying well, resemble whatsoever the version peddled in the OP. So going back to that whole conflation bit, communism has a bit of a branding issue and I think that explains at least part of the at-each-others'-throats nature of any conversation on the subject. Communism apparently means whatever anybody wants, and in (so-called) practice it has only ever produced tyranny, genocide, and abject state failure. So yeah, we on the right tend to come in hot a little bit, but like..... you know.....

One of the big things I get from communists, or used to hear several years back was that in this societal structure people would have free access to the information and education needed to move from one trade to another based on his own whims or wants.

...

If it's in our communities, it belongs to us and we can all benefit.

Arguably we all benefit today. The only sticking point is that I don't actually OWN the big shopping mall that agreed to rebuild 60 miles of aging highway in exchange for development rights -- but I still get to drive on it, I still get to shop at the mall, I still get to walk around the park they built. There's a bit of a false-binary here, by which it's implied that the rational self-interest of capitalism benefits only the self, and the shared interest of communism benefits only the community. The limosines of the ruling party, and the electric self-driving space trains or whatever of Elon Musk, should put that right to bed. Interest, benefit, and the common good are not political issues at all. We don't need to radically alter the political makeup to control or achieve them; to do so invites, well, Stalin, Mao, Kim, Chavez, Castro, etc. We, collectively, should only alter the political structure when it is in OUR interest to do so -- when WE are the ones taking advantage (a la American Revolution, French Revolution, and pretty much every other good one in history). Capitalist? Yup. Good for the community? Yup.

Backtracking -- because I clipped rather a lot, and got distracted by that last point.....

Yeah, the labor picture is gonna be RADICALLY different in a very short while (if you think 3D-printed industrial tools and robot factories are an issue, just wait until we get self-driving semi trucks). What you're leaving out, though, is that the notion of scarcity is radically changing right along with it. Maybe in a hundred years we're not gonna have the kind of workforce participation we've counted as essential to the functioning of society...... but also you'll be able to fly to New Hampshire in your pickup truck to grab unobtanium for your phase-assembler for like a buck, if and when your phase-assembler ever runs out, and the clever, self-interested money-makers will STILL be looking for better ways to build a mousetrap so they can get more spacebucks. To categorize this as 'slavery to the wealthy' (my words) is rather pessimistic -- slavery, when all labor is robotic anyway? To what extent can tyranny even exist in the first place, in such a world? I garner no horror, no concern whatsoever from the prospect of a mechanized future workforce. It's the part between here and there that concerns the shit out of me. Into what corners will we legislate ourselves in this interim? How much (human, apparently) sacrifice are we going to tolerate, in order to arm the toilet-scrubbers of the Indobekistania with soon-to-be-obsolete manufacturing talents? Why are we revolutioning again? What is the goddamn point?

Group decision is a fundamental part of communism, and is why Hungary revolted against the Stalinists in the 50's. The argument of strong-Vanguard parties like the Marxist-Leninists is that a strong central authority is needed to guide society to a point where it can be democratically run. But by holding power the Marxist-Leninist institutions of Stalin and Mao created a second Bourgiese class that derailed the goal, and then again come Krushchev and Deng Xiaopeng.

Orthodox Marxism, and even orthodox Luxembourgism/SocDem is that there needs to be democracy in the revolution.

Democracy is also known (to Toqueville anyway) as the "tyranny of the majority." To consider a revolution with democracy in it is a bit of a conundrum, innit? Because, if your democracy needs to violently compel people to play along, does that represent self-determination anymore? Is that even democracy anymore? Remember that concept of self-determination is what drives revolution in the first place (else what's the goddamn point -- "We VIOLENTLY REFUSE TO HAVE A SAY!"). Communism which must compel even one citizen to participate, dooms itself to counter-revolution. I seem to recall that being part of the whole idea.... whatever. My point is, this can only work at a local level, and even then it's very iffy.

See above. DemSoc/SocDem is part of the Marxist lineage, though in the west it derailed itself in the twenties and thirties in most of the west to ascribe to Keynesian economics than anything else. Unless it can be fixed, modern SocDem/Labour will probably always be the party of John Meynard Keynes

Problem.

To some, the disabled or elderly can still benefit the society as a whole, just not involved directly in the labor process as the younger generation. The old model of the nuclear family would have three generations living in the same house or close together so the elderly can at the least help raise the children as their own children work or perform their own labor to sustain both generations. But if the fundamental goal of Communism is to get to a point where labor is slowly minimized and the means of production of commonly owned by all men then notions of disability and age is all but irrelevant. According to the ends of Kropotkin at least the goals of communism would be to make physical labor irrelevant, ownership nonexistent, and that the individual can put more time into cultural and artistic pursuits to advance society's artistic and cultural richness and less its material.

So here's a riddle for you. I'm disabled -- missing a leg. Let's magically transplant me into Communism 2050 -- we've got some pretty sweet robot legs, and I'm part of the community so I own one. Now let's say I want a better one. Who devises it, and why?

See today, Ossur invents the Genium X3 because they won a contract from DARPA to develop a microprocessor-controlled knee which can withstand water, sand, fire, and (allegedly) a gunshot, with a battery that lasts a week and recharges in four hours, and weighs less than eight pounds. In exchange, Ossur gets a shitload of money, and when they make a better leg, they get a shitload more.

So in Communism 2050 -- why are they building an X4? I've already got an X3, and we both already own everything. My accommodation is already sufficient that I should be plenty capable of sculpturing or whatever it is I'm allowed to do. If it costs one unit of unobtanium to feed an average citizen, but two units of unobtanium to build me a better leg, what right do I have to a better leg?

It's a riddle. Bear in mind, collectives in the past have not been kind to the differently-abled -- we were offed along with the other undesirables in just about every genocide in history. Frankly we're more trusting than we ought to be, and any disabled person with any kind of experience in social healthcare (be it VA, NHS, or elsewhere) has the scars to prove it.

...if violence was totally out of the question we wouldn't have had the liberal revolutions we had, either out of the notable use of violence to achieve it or the threat of violence.

...

To get the demands they wanted it was best for them to physically take control of the factory and literally seize it.

Violence is a fickle thing, wielded far more often by those in the wrong than by those in the right. Do not embrace it easily. We (the people arguing against communism atm) are flagging this because it's like "Well, we're gonna have to crack some skulls. OH WELL. We won't shoot guys we like." That's not how you empower a community, that's how you empower a tyrannical group (which may, admittedly, hold a temporary ideological majority, and thus have 'some democracy in it'). Communism in general has a revolution fetish and that should REALLY give you pause.

<Snipped quote by The Nexerus>

Yes. Kings have job descriptions too, but when you get rid of them society doesn't fall apart.

Actually, it kind of does. When you remove a figure head like that via revolution, to replace it with a new government, you are taking the previous society apart and rebuilding it with the recycled bricks. This has been going on for ages, and is the reason we DON'T have kings right now. But you're comparing kings and business owners in the wrong way. Some kings did just live a privileged life, letting the church or advisers rule their country while they relaxed. Other kings made laws, managed the economy, discussed military strategy during times of war, etc.

<Snipped quote by BrobyDDark>

Marxism/Leninism doesn't work because it is predicated on the belief that democracy doesn't work, and once you've made that decision than you have decided that the people cannot rule themselves, which defeats the purpose of trying to put the people in charge of the economy.

Someone will always step up and take charge, because there's no way everyone can control the economy at once. Everyone needs a representative, who will look like the leader and, like it or not, that person will have more power over the economy at that point onward. That's how I view it, anyways.

I personally believe that aristocrats throughout history have been frauds. I think the historical pattern where aristocrats continue to leach power from their civilization until they take too much and their civilization stagnates and either goes through revolution, collapses, or becomes undefendable, is telling. I think the United States is currently entering that stagnation process.

This is a gripe I have with talking about the current state of things, and talking about politics and the economy. A lot of people seem to think that the US is currently undergoing its demise- we're on our deathbed, even though we have been chugging along fine for years. Our death won't happen because of our current economic system, and it wouldn't happen if we were communist, or socialist, or lived in a dictatorship. Our death would happen when we tried to change all of that, because switching our economic ideology will make us very weak, as we're suddenly getting rid of people that make a lot of money they use to fund the government.

My main beef with the far left is the sectarian nature of it. I think most of those beliefs are endangered because they are always too worried about the rules, like someone holding up the game to read the rulebook until everyone gets annoyed.

I kinda agree. It's the same way with AnCap people. If you tell them they're wrong, they'll tell you everything will be OK because of the NAP

I also think the far left throughout history usually fails. Aristocrats are frauds, but they are really good frauds. So if I had to put money on it, I wouldn't bet that the left will win and we'll enter some Star Trek future, rather I'd bet that our civilization is going to stagnate and fall apart. What that'll look like in the modern world is hard to tell. I'm just reaaallly hoping that it waits until I die before any of the really hairy shit happens. Let me be the last generation of the waning civilization, not the first generation of the First Intermediate Period of the Anglo-Saxon civilization.

I think everything's going to be fine, for at least another 100 years.

Here we go, a real one!

<Snipped quote by Dinh AaronMk>

This provides some insight (to me anyway) on the disconnect within the US. See, here, every time the right wing says "Hey, we really need to decentralize power to avoid a totalitarian state," the left freaks the fuck out. Here in the US, present day, the left and the communists are conflated (to what extent exactly is up for debate, but there's a conflation there). Part of that, certainly, is old-school cold war era propaganda, and also, part of it is the idealistic appropriation of the left. Not intending to point fingers, merely to express this: you're talking about the one thing (small government, empowered population, democratic representation at the local level, etc) and that's a FAAAAAAaaaaar different thing than "communism," as it exists (conceptually or otherwise) in the present day. So to converse properly, we each have to understand one key thing (and I get the sensation that we each recognize it already): that the brand of communism which you discuss is neither the mainstream, nor one that has existed in any nation in the history of the earth.

Am I wrong? I'll just continue on the assumption that I'm not wrong. It's more constructive that way, and apparently that matters in Spam of all places.

To address what is the meat of this part, then yes admitting up front what is more or less on the table is that of Marxism-Leninism. Though among the far left the fact it exists does not often validate that its correct among Communist or even Anarchist theorists and this sort of leads into the next point about Karl Marx's ghost coming back to write about his theory as it was adapted, and we have then in particular the number of anti-Stalinist/ML communist or socialist movements themselves which has taken quiet a bit of their own analysis of the matter.

It's similarly notable that Marx had a lot less history of Marxist (and/or so-called Marxist) governments to draw from. I'd love to see an intellectually honest follow-up from his ghost, written in 2017, but hey. Anywho I've never heard of Kropotkin in my entire life, so I'm woefully outgunned here. I'll take your word for it.

While we can't fix dead the best possible answer we have to re-examining his works compared to its historical use as it applies to the Eastern Bloc the next best thing we have are the writers, politicians, and such and such that have come and gone offering their observations. But first: Kropotkin.

As a quick primer on Kropotkin was born as a Russian aristocrat, entered into the army, and did some work in Siberia. He was eventually called out on his anarchist activism and exiled from Russia for forty years in the middle of the 19th century where in Western Europe he wrote some books and shit on communism, notably the Conquest of Bread. He returned home as a commie after the Bolshevik uprising, but became dispirited with Lenin's centralized practice of communism and called him out on it.



Needless to say he promptly left after the October Revolution.

He's not necessarily alone in his criticism of the Leninist state, and Trotsky soon came to be a critic during Stalin's time leading to his own exile over his criticisms of a centralizing state and eventual assassination. Trotsky's criticism focuses on the lack of participation in policy by the Russian workers and population and the rising isolation of the Soviet state from the people by wrapping itself in bureaucracy. In wordier terms this generally stands as being one of the more thorough analysis of the fall of Soviet styled socialism by Trotskyites and Anarchists (without getting into the combative relationship between them).

History after this then tends to follow the course prescribed by Soviet intervention by Stalin and the Soviet state and into that realm of ideological impurity by sides known as the Cold War.

Communists and Anarchists partook in part during the Spanish Civil War in the thirties and among the Republican ranks held considerable sway and actually administrated their own land. I have heard in cases they were more productive in their use of land and labor than before and George Orwell has written positively about the revolutionary egalitarian spirit found in Anarchist Spain at the time, calling it the mystique that attracts men to Socialism in the first place.

Later in the mid 50's the people of Hungary overthrew their Stalinist leadership to implement a style of Council Communism. Knowing they were pretty weak and that the Russians could just steam-roll them back into the fold they made appeals to the international community to help them out, but none came when the Russians eventually dissolved them 4:1. But the Council Communist experiment lasted long enough in its independence to provide some insights, namely in that nothing broke down when effective full communism was put in place.

More recently we have post-Bookchin groups like the Zapatistas in Southern Mexico advocating for absolute horizontal democracy among the population there and the Rojava Kurds asking very much the same, the present mood having shifted from classic Marxism to Left-Libertarianism or Libertarian Socialism, basically the same thing. Whether or not this is particularly relevant is up to you, but I will say something I'll say again: welcome to Sectarianism.

I don't have one single issue with the dissolution of federal power. For that matter, if California wants to go full-on socialist, I don't think Texas should have any power whatsoever to prevent it (property issues notwithstanding), if you catch my drift. If "all politics are local politics" as the adage says, then why are we ruled by 545 strangers in Washington with a single-digit collective approval rating? Split that shit up. One shouldn't have to secede from the union to achieve a degree of self-determination.

In my estimation, the disruption of federalization is not a communist issue. In light of that, the snipped, split, and quoted section of your post -- while intriguing and light-shedding and a bit educational -- isn't really relevant to the conversation. Like if I told you that Christianity preaches charitable giving, and you agree that charitable giving is the tits, that's still a bit of a red herring when it comes to the "is there a god" conversation, no? Anyway. The clever bit in all this is, in no way shape or form does this communist vision, which you're conveying well, resemble whatsoever the version peddled in the OP. So going back to that whole conflation bit, communism has a bit of a branding issue and I think that explains at least part of the at-each-others'-throats nature of any conversation on the subject. Communism apparently means whatever anybody wants, and in (so-called) practice it has only ever produced tyranny, genocide, and abject state failure. So yeah, we on the right tend to come in hot a little bit, but like..... you know.....

Welcome to Sectarianism.

What can often be analyzed per Russia as the faults of the Soviet theory being its lack of input from its participatory citizens and a fast and dangerous exercise of rapid modernization as being that notable theory's lack of viability (ignoring the whole explosive GDP growth during the Great Depression despite the Holdomor). We then have Tito.

Of the nations to pursue communism in the post-war years Yugoslavia developed its own state and theory outside of the Stalinist model because the Red Army didn't get involved in the liberation of Yugoslavia. Tito's philosophy was to allow workers in the factory the ability to share in profits from that factory and of factory self-management (the workers either elected specialized managers, a body of such, or refused any notion of factory management). Tito's notions of each constituent country coming to communism in their own way put him at odds with the Soviet model where they had to out-compete the west, as opposed to cooperation which also likely doomed the Soviet model.

Tito's major flaw though would probably have been his penchant for allowing greater and great autonomy among the constituent nations of Yugoslavia and/or a failure to ensure a stable government for after his passing and failure to negate nearly an entire region's history of animosity towards one another.

And to come back to the Christian example, one can't really say there can only be one type in much the same way it couldn't be said there can only be one Church, and then there was many. So this sort of addresses the point where we're arguing Communism on the basis that the only Communism to Communism is Marxist-Leninism.

I'd also like to comment we could go into God and like Human Nature that's something I ask to be defined before heading in because you could grapple the entire notion in a debate before the debate, and the one of God I would enjoy having but never get the chance to do so. But that's off-topic.

Arguably we all benefit today. The only sticking point is that I don't actually OWN the big shopping mall that agreed to rebuild 60 miles of aging highway in exchange for development rights -- but I still get to drive on it, I still get to shop at the mall, I still get to walk around the park they built. There's a bit of a false-binary here, by which it's implied that the rational self-interest of capitalism benefits only the self, and the shared interest of communism benefits only the community. The limosines of the ruling party, and the electric self-driving space trains or whatever of Elon Musk, should put that right to bed. Interest, benefit, and the common good are not political issues at all. We don't need to radically alter the political makeup to control or achieve them; to do so invites, well, Stalin, Mao, Kim, Chavez, Castro, etc. We, collectively, should only alter the political structure when it is in OUR interest to do so -- when WE are the ones taking advantage (a la American Revolution, French Revolution, and pretty much every other good one in history). Capitalist? Yup. Good for the community? Yup.

To tackle this: good for you. However, it doesn't do much to change the fact there's a wealth shift going on in this country. Peter Temin of MIT has released a study on this, here's an article. And here's another. The basic idea is we're falling apart fast, and as he's even quoted:

“America is not only reverting to developing-country status, it is increasingly ripe for serious social turmoil that has not been seen in generations.”

And while the area around a new mall has repaved the highway to make it first world, Detroit, Baltimore, Appalachia, and Newark are falling apart as the eyes and interests of the nation leave them behind because now they got to spend on the fashionable coast where the middle class are going.

While the free capitalist market may have been a good thing, or if it was controlled better to preserve a viable middle class then perhaps we wouldn't be having this discussion. But because of lack of input by the people who find that the economy matters to them and for the system then like Stalinism its leaving them behind.

So while it can be said that Communism under the Stalinist image disenfranchises undesired groups, or enacts aggressive policies that change things faster than they can be managed and thereby kills thousands, capitalism does the same on simple neglect for the supposed market they're left to care for.

Yeah, the labor picture is gonna be RADICALLY different in a very short while (if you think 3D-printed industrial tools and robot factories are an issue, just wait until we get self-driving semi trucks). What you're leaving out, though, is that the notion of scarcity is radically changing right along with it. Maybe in a hundred years we're not gonna have the kind of workforce participation we've counted as essential to the functioning of society...... but also you'll be able to fly to New Hampshire in your pickup truck to grab unobtanium for your phase-assembler for like a buck, if and when your phase-assembler ever runs out, and the clever, self-interested money-makers will STILL be looking for better ways to build a mousetrap so they can get more spacebucks. To categorize this as 'slavery to the wealthy' (my words) is rather pessimistic -- slavery, when all labor is robotic anyway? To what extent can tyranny even exist in the first place, in such a world? I garner no horror, no concern whatsoever from the prospect of a mechanized future workforce. It's the part between here and there that concerns the shit out of me. Into what corners will we legislate ourselves in this interim? How much (human, apparently) sacrifice are we going to tolerate, in order to arm the toilet-scrubbers of the Indobekistania with soon-to-be-obsolete manufacturing talents? Why are we revolutioning again? What is the goddamn point?

To answer the end question first: my primary concern over the course of things is letting such a small group of people have such control over our lives, and to without necessary input of labor by the consuming body of the population enjoy a quality of life in excess of the rest of us. This may either lead to a sort of hardcore Swedish-”Socialism” by necessity with living wages granted to every individual irregardless of activity, or we riot and everything goes full post-Rome as Vilage doesn't want to happen in his life-time.

It is also this future may not really merit any future progress in the first place if we're on fixed incomes and not producing any sort of labor that can be used in exchange for greater material resources, this is a Proudhonian argument. If we're all doing nothing but living on a wage given out by our state benefactors for the purpose of consumption and living, then what is the point for advancing technology to a better model if no one will be able to afford it?

Matters of having a Y better than X, I consider this more a matter of competition than it is of additional funds, since monetary capital can be replaced with any sort of capital and it'll function the same. The reason we worry about the monetary aspect of capital is we're told it's important and we believe it is because we're told that so much we're lead to believe it is important. I could go on about spooks and legitemate memes and shit but that may be digressing.

But we could still fulfil certain conditions of communism by way of workers control of the means of production with some adaptation. While not explicitly Communism, Anarcho-Mutualism is perhaps the safest synthesis to approach this. Written by Proudhon before Marx even, Proudhon proposed workers control of the shop or the factory, but had their labor all the same rewarded by maintaining the same sorts of market forces in the economy at that time. It would basically be if we turn everything into Mondragon Corp.

We then go into my own personal theory. But moving along.

Democracy is also known (to Toqueville anyway) as the "tyranny of the majority." To consider a revolution with democracy in it is a bit of a conundrum, innit? Because, if your democracy needs to violently compel people to play along, does that represent self-determination anymore? Is that even democracy anymore? Remember that concept of self-determination is what drives revolution in the first place (else what's the goddamn point -- "We VIOLENTLY REFUSE TO HAVE A SAY!"). Communism which must compel even one citizen to participate, dooms itself to counter-revolution. I seem to recall that being part of the whole idea.... whatever. My point is, this can only work at a local level, and even then it's very iffy.

Spain 1933, let's go with that. In this case turbulence in the country at the time forced King Alfonso to call municipal elections during which the socialists and liberal Republicans won a vast amount of the seats, forcing the abdication of King Alfonso to Portugal and preparation for attempted coups against the elected Socialist-Republican government in Madrid by nationalist forces to launch in 1936. Adding the French Revolution in as an example as well I would say if there was to be violence, then there'd be no stopping it; even if against a popularly elected government.

So here's a riddle for you. I'm disabled -- missing a leg. Let's magically transplant me into Communism 2050 -- we've got some pretty sweet robot legs, and I'm part of the community so I own one. Now let's say I want a better one. Who devises it, and why?

See today, Ossur invents the Genium X3 because they won a contract from DARPA to develop a microprocessor-controlled knee which can withstand water, sand, fire, and (allegedly) a gunshot, with a battery that lasts a week and recharges in four hours, and weighs less than eight pounds. In exchange, Ossur gets a shitload of money, and when they make a better leg, they get a shitload more.

So in Communism 2050 -- why are they building an X4? I've already got an X3, and we both already own everything. My accommodation is already sufficient that I should be plenty capable of sculpturing or whatever it is I'm allowed to do. If it costs one unit of unobtanium to feed an average citizen, but two units of unobtanium to build me a better leg, what right do I have to a better leg?

It's a riddle. Bear in mind, collectives in the past have not been kind to the differently-abled -- we were offed along with the other undesirables in just about every genocide in history. Frankly we're more trusting than we ought to be, and any disabled person with any kind of experience in social healthcare (be it VA, NHS, or elsewhere) has the scars to prove it.

This comes back around to the Proudhonian tradition mentioned earlier, and being too lazy to re-affix to this as opposed to the previous time I mentioned it I'll shrug and call back to it.

But this argues that reward is necessary for something to become better. But the recent trend towards opensource/open access software and hardware. While perhaps it may not survive a nuclear blast, Easton LaChapelle's open-source prosthetic hand is totally open and free to tinker with on your own time. Just like the code for the internet. It's not going to be massive an noticeable sweeping change like with what you would get for getting a DARPA grant, the method of open sourcing effectively means that the product will be gradually improved over time, and in the spirit of open source may even become part of the product for free for the next guy.

This has been an attributable aspect to the success of the Android phone since it got built on the free and openly available stage of internet code, and Linux, or GNU. But mostly Linux. And GNU. There's a reason Stallman is God for those that care.

But to move to the disability bit: the Soviets – back to Marxist-Leninism – adapted the Bolshevik definition and approach to disability. But at a time where the west and capitalist world basically ignored the shit out of disability the Soviet government at the least attempted to provide for lost earnings of the disabled person and didn't send them to some hospital forever or they were expected to live on some saved personal pension. The Soviets provided a wage and to those who were still able retraining in a field to provide for themselves before the US instituted Social Security in 1935 and formalized workplace insurance in 1917.

And then Stalin.

It would be argued that disability in east and west traveled on much the same course so attempting to compare the two is a strained effort because it's comparing something from the 40's or 70's to today. While it wasn't pretty there, it wasn't any better in the west either with the UK passing anti-disability discrimination law in 1995. And it wasn't until about the seventies anti-disability discrimination in the US picked up steam and 1990 when the ADA was signed formally into law. And in 1999 it finally became illegal to detain someone for being disabled, mentally.

Violence is a fickle thing, wielded far more often by those in the wrong than by those in the right. Do not embrace it easily. We (the people arguing against communism atm) are flagging this because it's like "Well, we're gonna have to crack some skulls. OH WELL. We won't shoot guys we like." That's not how you empower a community, that's how you empower a tyrannical group (which may, admittedly, hold a temporary ideological majority, and thus have 'some democracy in it'). Communism in general has a revolution fetish and that should REALLY give you pause.

Then would it be better if for now I dropped the Robespierre meme'ing?

Because moving ahead there's a perception even among the apathetic that American democracy isn't at all responsive and if you're going to vote then it doesn't matter. At consistently below 50% of the population participating in elections at all, it might be said that government in the US has a very low mandate to even exist.



Compared to Australia (97%, figure 3), France (79% as of 2012 election, and the UK (Making it recently one of the lowest and closest to America in political apathy, but still higher).

It would be supposed then that if the country's democratic process has become dysfunctional, then action is needed. Whether or not that's to storm the polls to try and vote in a party in election where historically only two parties ever have a chance at all of doing any thing. Or to actually go smashy bashy. Personally, I would rather the smashy bashy is held off until someone actually attempts a coup like in Spain, but that's just me. But the notion isn't going to stop lone crusaders.

But the belief that violence is necessary to affect change stems from the belief that European parliamentary politics shuts out the common man, as proposed by Rosa Luxemborg. This is also enforced in part by the present awareness of the use of big money in the elections, where the men and women running for office are campaigning on a platform supported by corporate interests out of the necessity that elections need funds, so they take funding from rich kids wanting someone to play out the policies they want. So in order to unfuck the system, you gotta crack some skulls. This is the logic of the theme on the revolutionary side.

Per just getting things done simply playing your cover of John Lennon's Imagine isn't going to compel the ruling class to begin democratizing more aspects of society and give up more power. And bringing them back up again Civil Rights didn't advance as it had simply because the Southern Baptist Congregation wasn't taking the Hillary high-road and letting the Klan beat the shit out of them, and per that purpose they had the Deacons of Defense backing them up, or the Deacons themselves running armed self-defense against Jim Crow law to make them a thornier bunch to silence in Jim Crow. Or even the more radical Black Panthers being spooky about the whole struggle.

It is in this case the notion that a group can defend themselves, or has a purpose they will arm themselves that can compel change when all other avenues are lost, or perceived as such. Again, I repost this comic:



It is not that King Louis made the conscious decision to become the People's King during the early setting of the French Revolution, but that the people of France showed a particularly bitter resentment towards his office, one that for a time LaFeyette helped keep them safe by negotiating with the radicals to permit them as a body in the France to come at the National Assembly. And it wasn't their asking nicely that had his powers reorganized, or the King John was asked nicely by the rebels to sign the Magna Carta, or the Continental Congress asking King George to let them go all nice and polite. Violence if preferable, but of the actions it's one that produces results, it's just the political management after and how the pre-existing structure of the previous state is managed to conduct what ends are needed.

I'm going to use this post as an opportunity to post some shit I found browsing /leftypol/ and found a thread that so far isn't sectarian shit-throwing (so far). And there was a post that inspired me to double check and cross reference with the earlier graph of UK election turnouts. I'll copy-pasta the posts here up until the one that discusses a particular UK election and let it hang, or go one after.