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.

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.

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.

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.

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

why the fuck is this in spam

<Snipped quote by canaryrose>

Honestly, I expected more Shitposting replies.

@Dinh AaronMk This message you relayed is about someone who is in a political minority ranting that the majority of society doesn't agree with them. It is not the case that everyone in Britain in 1992 wanted Neil Kinnock to win and Major pulled through only from system inertia. The policies of John Major, as disdainfully stale as a young socialist of the time might have found them, were the ideas favoured by the British electorate over any other ideas expressed.

The elite did not kill socialism because they feared it. The people killed socialism because they were against it. All genuine socialists of today, at least in the West, are necessarily in the vein of Blanqui, wanting to enforce the workers' liberation upon them whether they'd like it or not. It is true that democracy cannot be relied upon to produce socialism: not because of the irrevocability of the existing system, but because there is no democratic will for socialism.

@Dinh AaronMk

Isn't the Australian statistic skewed because there is a penalty for NOT voting there? It's better to merely vote anything than have " a fine and potentially a day in court." I'm sure we could higher the voting population in the US if we said you have a fine/jail time if you don't vote.

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.

...

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

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.

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. [+some more snipped stuff, but let's highlight this part first and then seamlessly flow]

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.

But we could still fulfil certain conditions of communism by way of workers control of the means of production with some adaptation.

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.

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.

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.

...

It would be supposed then that if the country's democratic process has become dysfunctional, then action is needed.

Violence if [sic -- "isn't," I think] 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.

More frequently than the proponents of glorious revolution would care to admit, the goons running around cracking skulls are just that -- goons.

NOTABLY: cities run by leftists are also the ones falling apart and/or literally shooting themselves and/or burning themselves down while packed into a warehouse because they can't afford their own inflated rent and/or rioting about the damage in the city while damaging their city. Texas, Salt Lake City, Colorado Springs.... they're doing just fine. Which of course begs the (admittedly pretty partisan) question, why the fuck would we listen to the other guy here? Ya know? I mean that's harsh, yeah, but.... come on now. The world's orange-est capitalist took power 100 days ago and the industry in these old manufacturing towns has been on a non-stop skyrocket ever since, slowing only when rumors began to swirl that he was't going to deregulate quite as much as people thought he might. Who left who behind again? The Rust Belt made their opinions on the matter quite clear, much to the chagrin of -- well, basically everybody else in the world. My own stated perspective aside, I'm taking their word for it.

It just so happens that Capitalism is taking us there, and for the life of me I can't think of a reason we should stop. Shit man that's gonna be awesome.

Dysfunctional is a strong word. For all we know, American politics is just boring (preposterous suggestion after last year, I know). Nonparticipation is only an issue if it's compulsory, and in the US it's only compulsory in the case of convicted felons. I'd hardly call that a crisis. In short: let's not spend too much effort trying to straighten the horns on a bull here. Maybe they SHOULD be curved.

I'm jumbled a bit. Sounds like what you're saying is essentially that the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots. My meme-level response is that Communism doesn't equal liberty and AntiFa ain't patriots -- flesh that out in your mind, what I'm driving at is Franklin, Jefferson, Washington, et al agonized over the decision to go to war with England -- not out of cowardice or their inability to be effective, but out of wisdom. More frequently than the proponents of glorious revolution would care to admit, the goons running around cracking skulls are just that -- goons.

Through deregulation, we are sowing the next recession, and if it is as bad as the last one, god help us all.

Industrialism certainly is.

My fear is that democracy is being slowly stifled by the needs of capitalism, and the inevitable result will be stagnation.

Is it corrupt or is it not corrupt? You are waffling, sir.

AntiFa would be patriotic if

I suppose I can summarize my opinions on this thread in a statement; one of the dumbest things Marxists argue is that their philosophy will "End history", that they have the key to fixing every problem forever and always. I think the most alarming things coming from the capitalist apologist crowd nowadays is exactly that same thing. Capitalism has ended history. This is it. All of our current problems are not problems at all, but instead are the way things are supposed to be.

Basque finally surrendered its last arms, and Spain is cool now I guess, but for the record, Spanish revolutionaries didn't stay cool forever. Granted, all I really learned of the Spanish Civil War came from Pan's Labyrinth, and at least in that depiction the government wasn't exactly cool either. I can find absolutely nothing negative to post about the Zapatistas, and as much as I generally appreciate Kurdish efforts to blast away at nasty people in the middle east, apparently lots of Kurdish groups are themselves terror networks and it's goddamn impossible for me to separate all the who's from all the other who's over yonder. Confuzzling. Anyway. I only commented to throw some more gas on that 'revolution fetish' catchphrase I pseudo-invented in the previous post, primarily because romanticizing the nobility of any one particular quasi-terrorist struggle is inherently dangerous. I'm sure Spanish anarchocommunists were generally sweet from (at a minimum) a few perspectives -- just saying.

Yeah Yugoslavia didn't really, ah, break that whole genocidal mold we were worrying about, in the end.... But you're certainly (implicitly?) correct that it's pretty unfair to lay THIS PARTICULAR mass-slaughter wholly at the feet of communism.

NOTABLY: cities run by leftists are also the ones falling apart and/or literally shooting themselves and/or burning themselves down while packed into a warehouse because they can't afford their own inflated rent and/or rioting about the damage in the city while damaging their city. Texas, Salt Lake City, Colorado Springs.... they're doing just fine. Which of course begs the (admittedly pretty partisan) question, why the fuck would we listen to the other guy here? Ya know? I mean that's harsh, yeah, but.... come on now. The world's orange-est capitalist took power 100 days ago and the industry in these old manufacturing towns has been on a non-stop skyrocket ever since, slowing only when rumors began to swirl that he was't going to deregulate quite as much as people thought he might. Who left who behind again? The Rust Belt made their opinions on the matter quite clear, much to the chagrin of -- well, basically everybody else in the world. My own stated perspective aside, I'm taking their word for it.

Or any number of things in-between, or nothing. Teach a man to fish and he'll drink on weekends, give a man a living basic income and he'll eat forever. Give a man a 105" UHDTV and he'll forget he's supposed to eat. Inequality only matters in a context of scarcity. You walk past some untold number of Starbucks mugs every day, and even if you're not currently holding a starbucks mug yourself, it's simply not a big deal -- of course, if you're on a life raft in the middle of the ocean and the other guy is holding a snicker's bar, that's worth killing for.

The point being this: in a distant future where work is no longer required for production, even first-world problems are (logically and presumably) as rare as an actual genocide. Case in point -- nobody goes to war for control of emojis. You can already have as many emojis as you need, want, or accidentally utilize. Scarcity of emojis does not exist. The concept of struggling over them is ludicrous (at least it should be, I'm sure there's a guy). In the future we're talking about, basically everything is as readily available as emojis. I'll grant you that capitalism isn't prepared to deal with that -- sure. Communism DAMNED SURE isn't ready either; nobody is. It just so happens that Capitalism is taking us there, and for the life of me I can't think of a reason we should stop. Shit man that's gonna be awesome.

....and I started going forwards and realized you addressed some of that, but fuckit, we're doing long srs posts in spam now, this am me srs face.

...but like, why? We're in the garden of Eden, arguing over who gets to name the apple. Just fucking take some, have a bushel, call them Krauttestes if you want.

I absolutely get what you're saying -- it's just that this is so radically and empirically inferior to this. And I'm not, like, super patient about the gradually-improved-over-time process for like my actual limbs. I say that with the utmost respect and appreciation for all you small-arms dealers out there -- you're doing an awesome thing, and I hope someone's paying you lots of money to do it. Just.... you know. We've had, what, all of human history to figure out prosthetics? Then in the last fifteen years we started throwing actual money at it, and went from hooks and strings to fucking Evangelion in a decade. As the interested party, I'm going with money on this one.

I mean compare it to the similar period east/west counterparts. Capitalism generated wealth and Meemaw got to eat Chef Boyardi from her microwave oven. Communism generated poverty and Babushka got buried in a mass grave with political dissidents (assuming she hadn't been executed by the state for wearing glasses).

Dysfunctional is a strong word. For all we know, American politics is just boring (preposterous suggestion after last year, I know). Nonparticipation is only an issue if it's compulsory, and in the US it's only compulsory in the case of convicted felons. I'd hardly call that a crisis. In short: let's not spend too much effort trying to straighten the horns on a bull here. Maybe they SHOULD be curved.

what I'm driving at is Franklin, Jefferson, Washington, et al agonized over the decision to go to war with England

Just saying, "You didn't build that." Yeah, I get it, we should be careful about how we assign credit for all these wonderful things, but at the same time, the argument that capitalism has NOTHING to do with all these wonderful things is wholly unsupportable. Especially in light of all those command-economies in industrialized nations that failed miserably. Hypothetically, sure, we coulda got here without it in a thought experiment -- but we're here, and capitalism got us here.

One man's terror group is another person's freedom fighters.

It's so of hard to go about things when specific cases aren't used. Though I also don't want to sound like I'm someone to try and defend the Holocaust, because I don't. But in most situations as I have learned about them it's less active malevolence on the part of the state (unless we're discussing someone like the Tatars, then there was a targeted effort there).

I live near one of those major industrial American, rust belt cities.

I haven't seen shit.

As I'm sure I already pointed out before, this too is the goal of communism.

The difference being when its achieved I'm not paying Applebucks to get an Applecoffee, or that I need a basic income anyways to get what's needed because the system has already been altered where every means of production is now the public property and if there's any one thing I want I can get it. What's different is how the approach is made.

Marxists (or in this case, Marxist-Leninists) would argue there needs to be a strong state to oversee the change from A to B while Anarcho-Communists argue there needs to be immediate change from A to B since the transitional period is irrelevant. Where-as Market Communists would suggest that in order to effectively shift to communism we need to - for a while - play nice in the global market place because there is at the moment still capitalist countries that can derail the revolution in much the same way Napoleon derailed the Revolution and when he got deposed Europe just replaced the entire French power structure with a king (to then depose).

Because it shouldn't be Steve Job's property if he isn't laboring to actually grow the apple, and if in the future is laboring to grow the apple then it stands that no one should own the apple.

Fucking eat the apple and stop worrying about spooks, you'll feel better.

By market rules the most accesible product on the market is the most succesful. There's a reason Apple's iPhone actually doesn't lead the smart phone revolution despite being in some ways the superior product because it's such a carefully crafted self contained environment. But it's the Android and phones like it because they used open source Linex as its operating platform and didn't spend so much money for people to stare at paper on polished wooden tables in highly polished fiber-glass office-labs while sipping twenty-dollar mocha-capacinos. Android just did it and it's a tool that works well enough, can be used as a future platform for other shit, and is cheaper than the iShit.

Can I get a helicopter ride?

Last I checked folks like Jefferson wanted more people to be involved because if there weren't more people involved then the system isn't valid.

He may have told slaves and women to fuck off, but at the least he wasn't saying the bankers and speculators should be the only ones to be involved.

They didn't send a strongly worded letter. They fucking committed what we would happily call terrorism today.

Insofar as growth is a necessary precursor to 'lack of growth,' sure.

Just saying, "You didn't build that." Yeah, I get it, we should be careful about how we assign credit for all these wonderful things, but at the same time, the argument that capitalism has NOTHING to do with all these wonderful things is wholly unsupportable. Especially in light of all those command-economies in industrialized nations that failed miserably. Hypothetically, sure, we coulda got here without it in a thought experiment -- but we're here, and capitalism got us here.

All fears are valid, I suppose. Mine is that we're increasingly saying "fuck democracy, we'll just do it with administrative or judicial power." If anything is killing democracy, in my estimation, that's it.

My argument is simply "this is working." Communism never has, and with the RoboLabor Singularity right around the corner, I think it's pretty silly to switch from a winning horse to a losing horse in the middle of the race.

I'm rambling. The Tea Party would never pass for terrorism. Unless you consider pouches of Earl Gray as citizens...... wait are you British?

If it weren't for all that, honestly our shenanigans never really rose to a level which should've warranted a war. Except maybe that Declaration... I guess that would probably merit a royal bitchslap.

Can I get a helicopter ride?

I still don't fully understand this meme.

I need to learn more about the different sects? Sects, right? Whatever. I think we're overstating the role of the government. Innovation isn't.... well, isn't USUALLY a product of the state. I don't know enough about like Roman aqueducts and that sort of thing.

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.