Say what you will about those nations, but they're the ones least affected by mass-migration replacement and don't consider themselves "post-nation states."
Neither. And I lived in mainland China for several years. But back then (before Xi Jinping took power even behind the scenes), nobody I met actually believed in communism.
Okay, different question. Do you believe liberal/capitalism can work without colonial exploitation? Can we have non-imperial, non-monopolized free(er) markets? Or will big capital always exploit poor nations and then cannibalize its imperial core nations with cheap labour and a ratchet security state? Because that's what it seems like capitalism wants to do.
Yes, I do think it can work without exploitation. Getting from here to there is no easy trick, but it is certainly within the realm of possibility. "Capitalism" doesn't want to do anything, it's merely a label (created by Marx, if I recall correctly) for "free and voluntary exchange".
The problems are that some large percentage of humanity wants power over others, and that anytime you mix profitable business with any kind of government power, that mix becomes magnetically attractive to the corruptible. The first problem needs a widespread change in philosophy; the second would be addressable after that change by separating government power and economics completely. (And yes, even in that scenario, there will still be psychos and sociopaths. But they'll find it harder to operate in the sunlight, without government cover.)
Lenin describes modern capitalism as imperialism and monopolism. Monopolists stop caring about creating value or growth, and more about keeping their share. Marxist-Leninists would claim this is the inevitable trajectory of any nation(s) that are ruled by capital.
One can also avoid the Marx's and Lenin's failed approached by looking at other rationalist approaches to the rise and fall of societies, such as Cato the Elder, Cicero, Seneca the Younger, Florus, Ammianus Marcellinus, Francis Bacon, Immanuel Kant, Spinoza, Johann Gottfried von Herder, Darwin, G.W.F. Hegel, Sigmund Freud, Oswald Spengler, John Dewey, Charles Peirce, William James, Peter Sloterdijk, Jacques, Michel Foucault, Lacan, Jean Baudrillard, Gilles Deleuze, Hannah Arendt, Slavoj Žižek, Alenka Zupančič, Mladen Dolar, Todd McGowan, Fredric Jameson, Alain Badiou, and arguably Mark Fisher. I think it's all helpful for the interpretation of historical developments.
But the only practical answer is to democratically enforce laws that regulate the abuses and control of the populace by a few wealthy people. If that's not done, abuses of a few wealthy people will destroy the middle class, as we're seeing now in the US, and have seen so many times in history. Our concept of the middle class emerged in the 17th century and the governance model that would protect the middle class emerged in the 18th century. At least 67%+ of a healthy capitalist economy is funded by the middle class. Once that's gone, the wealthy individuals will determine for themselves who to support and who to attack, neglecting everyone else.
What do you mean by Lenin's "failed approach"? Leninism is literally the only successful form of socialist revolution, and the only way they managed to hold power.
This was eventually corrupted and collapsed, but not due to Lenin. Now is this something inherent to the nature of socialist government itself, or is this due to being an island in a world controlled by capitalist imperialists? Were the revolutions too early?
Ultimately the big question is do you believe in Marx's concept of modes of production inevitably changing over time? Primitive -> slavery -> feudal -> capitalist -> socialist(?)
Or is capitalism the last mode of production, and we've got to keep hacking away at it to try to make it work better?
Marxist and Leninist approaches to government have always failed and haven't existed in any practical context for decades. The fearmongering notion of the red scare was also debunked many decades ago, in the late 1950s in that case. Boomers trying to kick that dead horse back to life want us to think that political options are binary, between the awesomeness of capitalism and its free markets and the evil communists. That's cartoonish bullshit, isn't it? It's also quite Marxist to reduce political systems to economic ideologies (socialism, capitalism, communism, and fascism). Politics in any practical sense is about one thing: power. It's used in a variety of ways, none of which is appropriately redistributionist. There are no practically communist or socialist states.
Marxist and Leninist approaches to government have always failed
Yes, failed in the long run, but the Soviet Union didn't "fail" until after Stalin industrialized, educated and raised the standard of living for the vast majority of the poorest of the nation. The subsequent failure is generally blamed on deviations from ML principles, whether by Stalin, his bureaucracy, by Khrushchev, or by general osmosis of capitalist propaganda and interference.
Despite all of that, there was a time by the 1960s that much of the world had gone socialist to varying degrees, with the US actively combating socialist revolutions to make them fail. If socialism is so bad, why do capitalist nations and the CIA go to such great lengths to sabotage them? Shouldn't they just fail on their own?
I'm not even sure what you're arguing for or against. I'm just questioning whether or not the concept of transitioning modes of production as Marx envisioned seems to make sense, and where we are on the timeline. Lenin believed that the timeline could be made now (1917), and in that respect, I suppose ML was wrong.
It doesn't mean it will be wrong forever, and the question is where are we on the timeline? What conditions would need to exist for a developed world socialist revolution? Do we see those conditions now, or are we centuries away?
OK - thanks for the arguments. We disagree on all of these points, but I don't have time to write about it.
To answer your question about CIA: Most of the US government's narratives for its many (120+?) war crimes and military engagements have been lies, made to excuse government actions. US Geopolitics has always been about corporate control, and anything that improves options for the wealthy and for corporations. I'm not trying to be dismissive, and can back up my arguments in most cases regarding specific conflicts.
If you're not sure what I am arguing for: note that I answered your question, "what do you mean by Lenin's 'failed...."
Your reference to socialism in the 1960s might be an interpretation of a handful of countries.
And we very much disagree on Stalin, as well as the notion that the USSR was functionally or realistically socialist. Stalin's rule presented a paradox for living standards: while rapid industrialization brought job growth, education, and expanded healthcare, creating upward mobility and modernizing the nation, it came at a horrific cost, including devastating famines, severe food/housing shortages, strict rationing, and immense personal suffering for most, though party officials and skilled workers saw real gains, making the overall impact deeply uneven and brutal for the masses.
Yes, the CIA works for corporations. For capitalism, against socialism. That's what I was saying. Why do capitalists need a CIA organization to keep socialists down?
While I don't think communists can excuse all of the holodomor away (though amusingly enough, spell check doesn't even recognize holodomor as a word,) I'm skeptical that Stalin is guilty of the scale of crimes he is accused of. If one dismisses Stalin's accomplishments however, it seems you're dismissing pretty much all of socialism's real-world accomplishments.
Because what other real gains were there? The west only got its foundational 20th century social programs because capitalists capitulated to worker demands; they were afraid of the progress people saw in the Soviet Union. Once Stalin was denounced, McCarthy cleared out the MLs, and later as the Soviet Union collapsed, those worker-centred policies also collapsed and were replaced by bourgeois progressivism. The power that had been given to the workers was revoked and handed over to the bourgeois bureaucracy, whose interests are not aligned with "giving power to the workers."
Virtually all the progressive "leftism" remaining today seems to be thinly veiled capitalist goals.
What I see is a certain race of people who evolved to be parasites instead of producers. They evolved to be very good at climbing social hierarchies and weaselling their way into positions of power. Once there, they stop whatever organization they've taken control of from creating value, and it begins extracting value instead, into their pockets. Example: Ford, founded by a White man, used to produce cars that their factory workers could afford to buy, and they were decent vehicles that lasted for years, and could be repaired by their owners with a few tools when they broke. Today, now that Ford is run by jews, they produce useless pieces of shit that are purposely designed to break in just a few years, and to be impossible to fix when they do (unless you take it to the dealer so they can extract more value from you), and they cost so much that even doctors and lawyers think twice about buying them. Meanwhile, Ford supports the eventual elimination of personal car ownership even though they're a car company (but it aligns with the goals of other jewish-run organizations like the WEF and Open Society Foundation).
Marx's family was originally Jewish, and Marx wrote a few less than kind things about Jews. Some call him a self-loathing Jew. Sometimes when you read the theory, one wonders if he was trying to create a Jew-proof system.
Log in
Those are the three moods of Putin?
Say what you will about those nations, but they're the ones least affected by mass-migration replacement and don't consider themselves "post-nation states."
It's really hard to sucker people who actually lived under communism into choosing to live under it again.
Would you rather live in cold war East Germany or in modern day Belgium?
Neither. And I lived in mainland China for several years. But back then (before Xi Jinping took power even behind the scenes), nobody I met actually believed in communism.
Okay, different question. Do you believe liberal/capitalism can work without colonial exploitation? Can we have non-imperial, non-monopolized free(er) markets? Or will big capital always exploit poor nations and then cannibalize its imperial core nations with cheap labour and a ratchet security state? Because that's what it seems like capitalism wants to do.
Yes, I do think it can work without exploitation. Getting from here to there is no easy trick, but it is certainly within the realm of possibility. "Capitalism" doesn't want to do anything, it's merely a label (created by Marx, if I recall correctly) for "free and voluntary exchange".
The problems are that some large percentage of humanity wants power over others, and that anytime you mix profitable business with any kind of government power, that mix becomes magnetically attractive to the corruptible. The first problem needs a widespread change in philosophy; the second would be addressable after that change by separating government power and economics completely. (And yes, even in that scenario, there will still be psychos and sociopaths. But they'll find it harder to operate in the sunlight, without government cover.)
The magic that distinguishes "government" from any other terrorist mafia, is their "legitimate" "right" to have and use their monopoly on violence.
The solution to communism, capitalism, all tribalisms, and all government myths is to dispel the most dangerous superstition.
Lenin describes modern capitalism as imperialism and monopolism. Monopolists stop caring about creating value or growth, and more about keeping their share. Marxist-Leninists would claim this is the inevitable trajectory of any nation(s) that are ruled by capital.
I feel like we see this all around us.
One can also avoid the Marx's and Lenin's failed approached by looking at other rationalist approaches to the rise and fall of societies, such as Cato the Elder, Cicero, Seneca the Younger, Florus, Ammianus Marcellinus, Francis Bacon, Immanuel Kant, Spinoza, Johann Gottfried von Herder, Darwin, G.W.F. Hegel, Sigmund Freud, Oswald Spengler, John Dewey, Charles Peirce, William James, Peter Sloterdijk, Jacques, Michel Foucault, Lacan, Jean Baudrillard, Gilles Deleuze, Hannah Arendt, Slavoj Žižek, Alenka Zupančič, Mladen Dolar, Todd McGowan, Fredric Jameson, Alain Badiou, and arguably Mark Fisher. I think it's all helpful for the interpretation of historical developments.
But the only practical answer is to democratically enforce laws that regulate the abuses and control of the populace by a few wealthy people. If that's not done, abuses of a few wealthy people will destroy the middle class, as we're seeing now in the US, and have seen so many times in history. Our concept of the middle class emerged in the 17th century and the governance model that would protect the middle class emerged in the 18th century. At least 67%+ of a healthy capitalist economy is funded by the middle class. Once that's gone, the wealthy individuals will determine for themselves who to support and who to attack, neglecting everyone else.
What do you mean by Lenin's "failed approach"? Leninism is literally the only successful form of socialist revolution, and the only way they managed to hold power.
This was eventually corrupted and collapsed, but not due to Lenin. Now is this something inherent to the nature of socialist government itself, or is this due to being an island in a world controlled by capitalist imperialists? Were the revolutions too early?
Ultimately the big question is do you believe in Marx's concept of modes of production inevitably changing over time? Primitive -> slavery -> feudal -> capitalist -> socialist(?)
Or is capitalism the last mode of production, and we've got to keep hacking away at it to try to make it work better?
Ultimately the big question is how can we fight corruption and absurd inequity, regardless of what systems or labels you apply?
The difference between socialism and capitalism is their spelling. The results are the same to us small folks.
We need a fair balance for the individual and collective and "leaders" that can be stable and sustainable. But who/how is fair decided?
"What do you mean by Lenin's 'failed approach'"
Marxist and Leninist approaches to government have always failed and haven't existed in any practical context for decades. The fearmongering notion of the red scare was also debunked many decades ago, in the late 1950s in that case. Boomers trying to kick that dead horse back to life want us to think that political options are binary, between the awesomeness of capitalism and its free markets and the evil communists. That's cartoonish bullshit, isn't it? It's also quite Marxist to reduce political systems to economic ideologies (socialism, capitalism, communism, and fascism). Politics in any practical sense is about one thing: power. It's used in a variety of ways, none of which is appropriately redistributionist. There are no practically communist or socialist states.
Yes, failed in the long run, but the Soviet Union didn't "fail" until after Stalin industrialized, educated and raised the standard of living for the vast majority of the poorest of the nation. The subsequent failure is generally blamed on deviations from ML principles, whether by Stalin, his bureaucracy, by Khrushchev, or by general osmosis of capitalist propaganda and interference.
Despite all of that, there was a time by the 1960s that much of the world had gone socialist to varying degrees, with the US actively combating socialist revolutions to make them fail. If socialism is so bad, why do capitalist nations and the CIA go to such great lengths to sabotage them? Shouldn't they just fail on their own?
I'm not even sure what you're arguing for or against. I'm just questioning whether or not the concept of transitioning modes of production as Marx envisioned seems to make sense, and where we are on the timeline. Lenin believed that the timeline could be made now (1917), and in that respect, I suppose ML was wrong.
It doesn't mean it will be wrong forever, and the question is where are we on the timeline? What conditions would need to exist for a developed world socialist revolution? Do we see those conditions now, or are we centuries away?
OK - thanks for the arguments. We disagree on all of these points, but I don't have time to write about it.
To answer your question about CIA: Most of the US government's narratives for its many (120+?) war crimes and military engagements have been lies, made to excuse government actions. US Geopolitics has always been about corporate control, and anything that improves options for the wealthy and for corporations. I'm not trying to be dismissive, and can back up my arguments in most cases regarding specific conflicts.
If you're not sure what I am arguing for: note that I answered your question, "what do you mean by Lenin's 'failed...."
Your reference to socialism in the 1960s might be an interpretation of a handful of countries.
And we very much disagree on Stalin, as well as the notion that the USSR was functionally or realistically socialist. Stalin's rule presented a paradox for living standards: while rapid industrialization brought job growth, education, and expanded healthcare, creating upward mobility and modernizing the nation, it came at a horrific cost, including devastating famines, severe food/housing shortages, strict rationing, and immense personal suffering for most, though party officials and skilled workers saw real gains, making the overall impact deeply uneven and brutal for the masses.
Yes, the CIA works for corporations. For capitalism, against socialism. That's what I was saying. Why do capitalists need a CIA organization to keep socialists down?
While I don't think communists can excuse all of the holodomor away (though amusingly enough, spell check doesn't even recognize holodomor as a word,) I'm skeptical that Stalin is guilty of the scale of crimes he is accused of. If one dismisses Stalin's accomplishments however, it seems you're dismissing pretty much all of socialism's real-world accomplishments.
Because what other real gains were there? The west only got its foundational 20th century social programs because capitalists capitulated to worker demands; they were afraid of the progress people saw in the Soviet Union. Once Stalin was denounced, McCarthy cleared out the MLs, and later as the Soviet Union collapsed, those worker-centred policies also collapsed and were replaced by bourgeois progressivism. The power that had been given to the workers was revoked and handed over to the bourgeois bureaucracy, whose interests are not aligned with "giving power to the workers."
Virtually all the progressive "leftism" remaining today seems to be thinly veiled capitalist goals.
IFIFY:
...democratically, with direct democracy, enforce laws that regulate the abuses...
Fuck all "representatives".
What I see is a certain race of people who evolved to be parasites instead of producers. They evolved to be very good at climbing social hierarchies and weaselling their way into positions of power. Once there, they stop whatever organization they've taken control of from creating value, and it begins extracting value instead, into their pockets. Example: Ford, founded by a White man, used to produce cars that their factory workers could afford to buy, and they were decent vehicles that lasted for years, and could be repaired by their owners with a few tools when they broke. Today, now that Ford is run by jews, they produce useless pieces of shit that are purposely designed to break in just a few years, and to be impossible to fix when they do (unless you take it to the dealer so they can extract more value from you), and they cost so much that even doctors and lawyers think twice about buying them. Meanwhile, Ford supports the eventual elimination of personal car ownership even though they're a car company (but it aligns with the goals of other jewish-run organizations like the WEF and Open Society Foundation).
Marx's family was originally Jewish, and Marx wrote a few less than kind things about Jews. Some call him a self-loathing Jew. Sometimes when you read the theory, one wonders if he was trying to create a Jew-proof system.
Answered your own question.