OOTB's Political Thread . ..
- Thread starter BillyL
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I agree that I didn't give the "reponse of the year", I just didn't feel like writing two paragraphs on it. You could call it a lazy answer.
Just to throw this out, there doesn't seem to be much difference between communism and fascism except that communism seems to rely more on central planning. It's basically who do you want to control that 1%, corporations or politicians?
BTW, I'm waiting for AOC to start fining people for the methan in their farts. It could be like system they set up to fine curing in Demolition Man.
"Joe Blow, you been fined one credit for releasing methane into the atmosphere."
"Joe Blow, you been fined one credit for releasing methane into the atmosphere."
You are so ideologically possessed that you cannot think straight.
More Nazis were killed by communists than any other group. I'm no communist, but those ideologies are not even remotely similar.
In some ways, the stupidity of AOC and the Green New Deal made me think we are living through parts of the movie Idiocracy - just a few hundred years ahead of schedule.
Not just AOC, though.... other parts of our politics (DJT, etc), media, pop culture, consumer businesses - the satire movie isn't that far from reality
Their economies aren't similar, but the rest of their ideology is eerily similar. Both are big government authoritarian states. They just seem to disagree on who should hold the power.
I don't see any reason to make stuff up about the GND. It's already insane as it is. Don't give AOC and her zealots any more ammunition for their case.
You’re conflating communism with Stalinism and Leninism. Once again proving you have no idea what you’re talking about. Go read the manifesto, Marx was no authoritarian.
I'm sure he wasn't. However, he failed to see what would be the natural progression of his policies. If you're going to take away the liberties of others, you will have to be authoritarian at some level, unless you're naive enough to think that everyone will just willingly let you trash said liberties.
He didn’t advocate for taking away liberty. He advocated for stopping other people from stealing liberty through economic oppression. I don’t agree with his means of doing so but claiming that he wanted to take liberties demonstrates a complete ignorance of his arguments.
So, wouldn't he just be repeating Adam Smith at that point in time? How does communism then differ from laissez-faire?
Marx argues that capitalism is a necessary step towards communism. The growth of capital to the point where the population can be sustained must come before the transition. Russia, China and Cuba were agrarian societies that never got close to that point so they weren’t really true communist revolutions according to Marx.
The difference is that Marx argues that individuals should not own capital. That lead to wage slavery, especially as the means of production eradicate the value of specialization in the labor force. Wages plummet as machines become more responsible for production. Smith or Locke on the other hand would argue that ownership of capital is just like the ownership of property as long as it isn’t taken by force.
The simple point is that liberty is defined differently by everyone and to show that I used the most extreme example I could think of. It made perfect sense.
Yeah, this is kind of what I was expecting, and I thank you for Marx's interpretation. That being said, it's still authoritarian to tell someone that they can't keep the fruits of their labor. Now, is it as bad as murdering people? Of course not. That still doesn't change the fact that it needs authoritarianism in order to work, and that's where he didn't seem to fully grasp how that would work out.
Most of the time, you don’t keep the fruits of your labor under capitalism. If you work in a factory you don’t own what you build. You are paid a wage for your time. This was one of the foundational premises of the communist manifesto.
The wages are the fruits of your labor. You didn't think I was using the word "fruit" literally, did you?
The wages are the fruits of your labor. You didn't think I was using the word "fruit" literally, did you?
If the value of your labor didn’t exceed your wage, then you wouldn’t be getting paid that. For the most part, laborers are paid a pittance relative to the value they create for the firm that hires them. That’s why wages are shit and corporate profits are through the roof. Most people are losing the majority of that fruit because they don’t exactly have the choice to just stop working. You take the wage being offered or you starve.
Of course I knew you weren’t being literal. Factories don’t literally make fruit ya dingus.
You sound more like a lawyer than a history teacher.
I’m neither.
It’s common sense.
Yeah, you realize that one reason why wages are so low is that we've flooded the market with immigrants, right? What do you expect anyway, do you expect that an employer pays their employees more than what they earn? Let's not forget that stuff like disability, SS, and payroll taxes cut into how much an employer can pay their employees. Let's say that a worker produces at a rate of $25/hour for me, so after I factor in all fixed and variable costs, I could afford to pay them $19/hour. Then I have to factor in disability, SS, payroll, etc... and now that brings them down to $12/hour. So, by installing all these new laws, the government has cut the workers rate probably even more than the employer has.
Of course, this still doesn't have anything to do with the fact that the wages are considered the fruits of the worker's labor. You did nothing but try to move the goalposts, but I'm happy to debate that issue as well.
Ahh, my bad. I thought someone on here said that you were a history teacher. It honestly doesn't matter, I just thought that was your job.
No, tell me where I was wrong in my assertions and what is right. Don't just tell me, "you don't know anything." That isn't helpful to the conversation.
Yeah, I don't blame you for not wanting to teach. I have a couple good friends who are teachers and I hear the horror stories.
I’m not saying firms should pay laborers the exact value of their labor. But if they were truly getting all of their fruits of their labor, then they would paid exactly their value. The need for a firm to generate profit makes that impossible. But Marx’s theory would state that abolishing the private ownership of capital would eliminate the need for constant growth (profit). This is Marx’s view not mine, just to be clear.
The value of labor started falling well over a century ago when we transitioned from specialized guilds and tradesmen to an industrial economy. You’re missing the argument because you’re so determined to keep going back to this right wing partisan crap.
Those two ideologies (Communism and Facism) have shaped 20th century history. I’d argue at least 75% of anything important historically in the 20th century was related to these two. Saying they aren’t history is confusing when you think about that.
The fruits of their labor has nothing to do with how much they are getting paid. That's a completely different subject that there is justification to discuss. I understand that you don't like the current wage rate, and I'm right there with you. However, that isn't what I was discussing. As for the right wing (I'm guessing that you're talking about the Republicans?), I'm not a fan of theirs either.
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