Who do I thank for all the free money?Follow

I'm sure you congratulate yourself on convincing others to join up and fight for the cause of worker liberation, while you yourself are part of that middle class which benefits massively as a result of the free market.

Woah, woah, woah. I'm not the proletariat, you're the proletariat. I work for me. I control the means of production, I own my own intellectual property. I derive income form the labors of others.

I'm the first one against the wall when the revolution comes. I mean aside from the shareholders of the Sirrius Cybernetics Corporation, of course.

Damn, Smash, you're right. It is obvious that gbaji has never read Marx.

Your definition of property is not Marx's.

[EDIT]

My favorite part is how he Ctrl+f searched through the manifesto, but failed to even read one or two sentences prior to the passage he quoted.

It's just sad.

Edited, Feb 8th 2012 4:03pm by idiggory

First of all, you were intentionally trying to confuse the issue in the first place. You quoted that passage in order to make a statment, then said that they THEN followed it with talk that they only wanted to abolish one type of property.

False. The entire work is only discussing property as defined by Marx. There IS no other property for him, other than what he defines. You were intentionally trying to pretend that Communists were specifically anti property by common definition, but were trying to mask that with a discussion of a different type of property.

Furthermore, you completely corrupt what Marx says for your own use. It's a ******** move, and is frankly pathetic. If you are so sure you were right, you would present his case in the most generous version possible. That's a fundamental of logical debate--if you disprove the best possible version of their argument (preferably in a way that disproves all the worse versions as well), you effectively cripple an argument.

But no, instead you default to your classic strawman argument. At the very best, that's attacking the version of an argument taken in worst possible forms (those generally being the ones even the proponent wouldn't accept). At worst, like in this case, it's attacking something that isn't at all related to the intention or meaning of an argument.

The cornerstone of Marx is From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs. Marx isn't fundamentally opposed to income dispartiy. He's opposed to the idea of the powerful controlling the lives of those weaker than them, so that they can barely eat or sleep, and live only to work for the advancement of the wealthy.

The fundamental backbone of why Marx ever wrote the Manifesto in the first place is that he was disgusted that so many people were living in abject poverty, with absolutely no way out.

And deferring to the Soviet Union or modern China in any discussion about Communism is a fundamentally absurd move. Both were distinctly incompatible with the tenants of Marx, and no honest economist or political theorist considers them Marxist (or even Communist). This is true of both liberals and conservatives. Why? Because if you make a list of the fundamentals of the political and economic theories of Marxism, they are incompatible most, if not all, of them.

Just a bonus.

Yes. Because that's exactly what they said:



What they're doing is countering the notion that the abolition of private property will hurt the working class by taking away from them the fruits of their labors. That's the "other type of property". The Marxist insist that that other type doesn't really exist and is just an illusion. The property they are taking is really not property at all, but "capital", which serves only the purpose of further enriching the Bourgeois.

What part of that was confusing to you? I understood it right off the bat. Do you need me to hold your hand and explain to you what each word means and how they all work together to form an idea?



Not technically true. It "discusses" property as defined by others, and then discounts that definition. But I think we can (or should) all agree that whether we call the wages earned by workers above that which is needed for basic subsistence "property" or "capital", it's still darn useful to the workers and something that they do work to obtain. It's what gives them a standard of living above just subsistence. The whole argument by Marx is essentially throwing the baby out with the bathwater. He's so concerned that the exercise of the fruits of one's labors might financially benefit someone else that his solution is to make is so that no one has any money to buy anything. That's kinda stupid, isn't it?




Yes. I get that. He's wrong. Or using a meaningless term. As I said, it doesn't matter what label you apply to it, there is absolutely value to the worker to gain wages above that needed for subsistence. And it's that extra wealth that communism attempts to eliminate. He's literally arguing that store owners are evil, so we should take all the money from the people so that they can't buy anything, so as to drive the store owners out of business. But doesn't that hurt the people even more? Yeah. It does.



I don't care what label you use. Make one up if you get confused. Let's call the wages earned above that needed for subsistence "Bob". Does that help? Communism seeks to eliminate all Bob from society because Bob is used to make the owners of the means of production richer. Get it? You're obsessing on a word, but failing to see how it's used. What's strange is you get that Marx is using a specific definition for "property", but then getting so caught up in my counter use of the same word that you missed that I was still addressing exactly the use of the word Marx was using.



Ok. Then counter my statement. Argue to me, using quotes from the source, that Marx is not proposing that we seize all earnings of the workers beyond that needed for subsistence. Can you do that?

You're just repeating "you're wrong" over and over. How about you provide an alternative meaning instead? Wouldn't that be constructive?



If that's true, then prove it's a strawman. Tell us what Marx really meant with that section of the manifesto. Saying something is a strawman doesn't make it so. You need to show how the other guys interpretation is wrong, by providing an alternative (hopefully more accurate) version. If you can't do that, then isn't my interpretation correct by default?



I am exactly quoting the words written and explaining what they mean. If you have some other interpretation, by all means provide it. If you can't then stop insisting that mine is wrong.



Except that the means he wishes to use to prevent that control of the workers by the wealthy is to eliminate any means to acquire wealth and personal advancement. Income disparity in his eyes is what leads some to control others. Those with more gain more and become Bourgeois. Those with less lose what they have (and the ability to gain more) and become Proletariat. He posits this as a starting condition in the world around him.

His problem, as I've explained several times now, is that the real world did not cooperate and form itself according to how he thought it would. What actually happened is that the free market created a vibrant middle class. Instead of everyone being sucked to one side or the other, a whole range in between was created. He couldn't have known that this would happen, so I suppose he can be excused the extreme measures he proposed to deal with the problem.


But those who still espouse the same ideas today have no excuse. They should know better. But most just skip over the parts where he describes the natural condition and right to the solution parts. But even the best solution is wrong if the problem you're trying to solve isn't what you started out to fix.



Except that he was wrong. Horribly, painfully, wrong. There were many people living in abject poverty. But there had been just as many living in that state prior to the rise of the free market and industrialization. He made the mistake of assuming that the same rules applied, but with different folks at the top. He applied Feudalistic economic principles (cause that's what he knew) to this new paradigm and concluded that the owners of production would simply become wealthier and more powerful and the workers would continue to be pooer and less powerful. Then he set out to imagine a way to solve this problem.

But, at the risk of repeating myself (again!), he was wrong. What happened is something he and his fellow socialists and communists did not consider. The rise of free markets and industrialization, while initially negative to the workers (we're talking about the first half of the 19th century here), resulted in significant increases in the standard of living for the working classes. Not just a little bit, but an astounding amount. The complaints that capital just made the owners richer were made irrelevant in the face of the fact that the desire by them to get richer required both that they pay their workers enough so that they could buy products in the free market *and* that the products thus sold become better and cheaper and more available over time.

That's what Marx didn't see. He lived in a time when all of this was new enough that he could not accurately predict what would happen. He certainly could not have predicted something which had never happened in the history of mankind. Again, he can be forgiven for being so wrong. But those today who still spout his ideas really can't be. They are ignoring the conditions which Marx assumes and not realizing that they don't apply in the real world.



No. It's not. They are the outcome when ever a political movement attempt to apply the principles of communism. I think it's quite relevant to point this out. I even quoted the section of the manifesto where they talk about doing exactly what those countries did. Now, Marx and Engels imagined that those controlling things would have some egalitarian motives and would only use that power and wealth for good. But what we've seen is that this doesn't seem to happen very often (or at all). Best of intentions and all of that.




But they aren't incompatible to the methods. That's the point. We can assume that the Soviets weren't "true communists" because they didn't follow up their seizure of all property with the creation of a communist utopia. But that sure didn't stop them from convincing the people to rise up in a communist revolution by quoting Marx, then seizing all the property, and then turning into an oppressive authoritarian regime. It's a meaningless distinction to make. The workers taking part in a communist revolution can't possibly know what their leaders will do with all the power they give to them when the revolution is over. They wont know until after those leaders have all the power and control if they are "true communists" or not.


But so far, every single time it's been tried on even a semi-large scale, it's resulted in massive oppression of the workers. Ever. Single. Time. As I said earlier, the methods they propose are exactly like putting the chains around your own neck, handing the keys to someone else, and then hoping that he's not going to abuse that power. If someone came up to you promising that if you help them clean up some legal problems in Nigeria, they'll be able to get a big fortune out and then they'll share it with you, do you trust them to actually follow up on the promise? No. You don't. And you'd be an idiot to fall for it.


But that's exactly the sort of scam the communism is. It promises that if the workers sacrifice everything they have to help the leaders take control of the wealth and power, that those leaders will turn around and give them a wonderful life much better than what they had. Why would anyone fall for this? And what are the odds that those leaders really mean to do what they promise versus them being the equivalent of scam artists just using you to gain wealth and power for themselves?


It's a stupid ideology. It really is. I mean, even the outcome promised doesn't make any sense. They provide no explanation as to how the state control of all wealth will make things better for the people. None at all. They just declare that it is because it'll free everyone from the "Free Market". It's pretty circular. You must first assume that the free market produces a worse result than otherwise. But that clearly and demonstrably isn't the case, is it?

Um... Ok.

So they were arguing that those "other forms of property" didn't really exist, so when they talk about eliminating personal property, they aren't talking about those "other forms". Isn't that what I started out saying and you jumped all over as wrong?


And at the risk of repeating the same thing again, I'm still waiting for you to come up with some alternative interpretation of that section which means something other than "we intend to take all earnings from the workers above that needed for a subsistence living". I mean, it's fun to argue over the semantics of whether or not Marx mentions "other forms" of property, or dismisses them as invalid, or not real, or whatever the hell you want to spin the words around to mean. But at the end of the day, isn't it more important to look at what they were actually talking about in terms of their proposed actions?


The fact is that no matter what you call it, they believed that any earnings held by workers beyond that needed for subsistence was just a tool which benefited the bourgeois. And I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that most people don't think that's a great idea. Do you agree?

Yes. Thus making it clear that he was speaking only of one specific type of property when saying that they wanted to "abolish private property". I don't understand why you said my statement was wrong, then after you explain further, it turns out that you're agreeing with what I originally said.

How about I simplify this for you: When I said that Marx was only arguing for the abolishment of a single type of property, I was *not* suggesting that he believed there were multiple forms of property and he was just abolishing one. I was saying that Marx believed that only one form of property existed, and that it was bad, so it was ok to abolish it.

Is that better? I'm kinda scratching my head trying to figure out why you're arguing this with me.



Yes. Which makes me wonder why you assumed I was saying something else. I got immediately that he was speaking of other definitions of property and rejecting them. I didn't say anything that should have given you the impression otherwise. It's like you looked for an interpretation of what I wrote that made no sense, and argued against that, while ignoring the very logical, reasonable, and consistent interpretation that I meant.




That's not a strawman. That's exactly what the Communist Manifesto says. I've quoted it for you several times. I guess I have to quote again the relevant portion:



It does not get any more clear than that. They believe that all people should receive from their labors only that which they need to maintain a subsistence existence. Hell. You talk about the words "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs", but you miss the meaning. What are the "needs" of the people? To the people, they get only what they "need". Not what they want. Not what they'd like to have. Only what they need.


Because to have more opens up the possibility of using that excess, that "wealth" as a means to conduct free trade. And that leads us back to the evil Bourgeois situation again.



Holy hell! It is exactly what Marx is saying.

I'll ask again: If you believe otherwise, then provide an alternative explanation for that section. You keep refusing to do this. What do you think they meant?



Someone is going to be in charge though. Always is. It's the part that Marx kinda leaves out. There's no information on the form of government that would result from all of this. You're assuming some kind of utopian outcome where everyone would just collectively agree on everything, with no clear leaders, no one in positions of power, etc. Do you honestly think that is possible? I don't. No sane person should. Thus, a small number of rulers will be in the position of power to determine what everyone gets out of the pool of wealth they've taken.

The communist system *will* take all away from the workers and give back just that which the system believes those workers need.



But his alternative solution doesn't change that. What it does is change the nature of oppression. He calls the need to work for wages to buy things from those who already benefited from the work "oppression". However, that oppression results in greater standard of living and luxuries for the workers than any other system ever in the history of man.

On the flip side, his solution results in direct oppression by a state that controls all aspects of the economy. He justifies taking away all property because the proletariat don't really have any anyway. Ok. Fine. But he doesn't give anything of equivalent value back. Under capitalism your labor is rewarded with pay, which you can use to buy things that may make your life better. The more valuable your labor for others, the more you get paid. Under communism, you get nothing for your labor. Instead, the state takes all the fruits of your labors and provides you with what it thinks you need.


Which of those enslaves the workers? I'm honestly confused how anyone can read that work and not recoil in horror at it. It's a blueprint for using the work force to turn themselves into slaves. It uses the argument of unequal pay to make everyone equally poor. It's stupid. How the hell anyone fails to see this is beyond me.



Ok. Pick a different context. Find a context in which the quoted statements from the manifesto result in something other that what I've said. I'm not even talking about whether I think it would result in greater total productivity, nor have I spoken about incentive to work, or any of those other classic pro-capitalism arguments. I'm looking purely at the statements by the communists in their own manifesto in terms of what they would do with the fruits of the labors of all workers under their system.


Can you find *any* context in which that would be a good thing?

What Ari said.

But then you end up with a whole new class of Proletariat: the robots.

Works when directed at Alma,also.

In 2077, the prolbot uprising will enslave the sheeple.

I plan on being transferred into a RAcast body and live forever.