Politics: What should I be reading?

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Politics: What should I be reading?

Post by shirak »

I recently realized that I don't have a political opinion per se. I am a Communist because of family tradition and because I really can't bring myself to vote the piles of shit that are the other factions around here. But I barely know what Communism entails, much less know enough to have a discussion and decide if it's the thing for me.

So, I decided to correct this. First step is reading the manifesto probably but I am interested in all kinds of movements. If you're looking for a blank slate to convince, here's your chance!

And, please, keep it civil folks. Fbmf is away and we don't want to make him go ape the first time he gets back now do we?
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Re: Politics: What should I be reading?

Post by MrWaeseL »

What is it with this forum and communists :confused:
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Re: Politics: What should I be reading?

Post by shirak »

MrWaeseL at [unixtime wrote:1183488476[/unixtime]]What is it with this forum and communists :confused:


MWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!! :lol:
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Re: Politics: What should I be reading?

Post by Username17 »

The Manifesto is interesting historical reading, but it's not much of a rallying point anymore. Indeed, if you look at their big demands, almost all of them have been met. Keynes' attempt to revive Capitalism by giving it self perpetuation mechanisms borrowed heavily from Communist critiques. After all, spot-fixing the individual problems that Marx (correctly) said were tearing Capitalism apart is a pretty good way to keep Capitalism going for a long time.

Unfortunately, both Das Kapital (Marx) and The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (Keynes) are dreadfully boring and incredibly hard to read. The fact that they are both brilliant critiques of economic theory is often lost in the fact that just understanding either one (let alone explaining it to someone else) is really hard.

For a good intro, I suggest:
Marx for Beginners

It's actually a Kid's book (assuming "Kids" in this case is children 12-16), but it provides a surprisingly good grounding in Marxist thought that is put in simple enough terms that you can share it with others. It's all well and good to have a feeling for dialectical materialism, but until you can put it into layman's terms it's not much use.

---

Seriously though, here are some of the radical demands of the original Communist Manifesto (the ones that aristocrats would shoot you for):
  • Graduated Income Tax.
  • The creation of National Banks.
  • National Postal Services and State Funded Roads.
  • National Land Use Plans.
  • Industrialization of Agriculture.
  • Free Public Schools.


Uhh... right. We'll get right on that. Of course, some of the other stuff they wanted (abolishment of inheritance, Seizure of all land ownership by the state, institutionalized obligation to work) has yet to be delivered on. But seriously, out of their 10 demands, six of them are now standard even in the US!

MrWaesel wrote:What is it with this forum and communists


Min/maxxing. It is readily obvious that people working together towards a common plan are inherently more efficient than people working separately towards secret goals.

And to that extent the basic promise of Communism - that each participant can work towards the common goal and each person share in the rewards of its achievement - is really obviously a more efficient way of doing things. So the min/maxxer who is willing to maximize the effectiveness of the PCs against Team Monster is probably also willing to maximize the effectiveness of their nation against starvation and poverty.

And that means socializing more things. Sure, you could have private medical insurance instead of socialized medicine. But then you'd have shadowy groups of stockholders taking money out of the system in exchange for less people getting the treatments they need. And so on for pretty much everything else.

---

There are lots of theories about what the common good actually is. And there are lots of theories about how the common good should be ensured. But profit-making corporations really obviously aren't the answer to either question, and the only other serious modern alternatives that have yet been put forward are:
  • Fascism This has certain problems that I will avoid Godwin's Law only by trailing off right here...

  • Communism The corporations are dispossessed and then you use whatever system you use for the Fire Department for Healthcare, Food Production, and creation of consumer goods.


Is one method of descision making really right for everything? Probably not. But it's the best we've been able to come up with so far.

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Re: Politics: What should I be reading?

Post by MrWaeseL »

But no doctor will ever work for the same salary as a garbage man. Working towards a common goal does not mean everyone puts in an equal amount of work.
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Re: Politics: What should I be reading?

Post by Username17 »

MrWaeseL at [unixtime wrote:1183491178[/unixtime]]But no doctor will ever work for the same salary as a garbage man. Working towards a common goal does not mean everyone puts in an equal amount of work.


That's a really bad example. In 1999, a Physician made an average of $65,832 (according to Economics: Institutions and Analysis, Third Edition). A sanitation worker with no diploma makes $44,200 to start. Throw in some overtime and... that's right, you make more than the Physician Median Income. A better example might be Fire Fighters and Retail Customer Service.

But that's not really relevant to anything. Communism doesn't mean that everyone gets paid the sme amount. It means that pay-based incentives are consistently determined the same way.

When the economy is nationalized, then whatever system you use for determining how much people get paid gets applied to each and every job. Jobs that are considered to be more needed or less desirable for how needed they are may well be incentivized with higher wages or larger amounts of leisure time or greater levels of prestige or some combination.

Communism does not mean "everyone puts in whatever they want and everyone gets out the same amount" - it means that you don't leave goods undistributed and you don't let people starve.

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Re: Politics: What should I be reading?

Post by Maj »

MrWaesel wrote:Working towards a common goal does not mean everyone puts in an equal amount of work.


The problem, as I see it, is with this notion of working towards a common goal. What, exactly is this common goal that everyone is working towards?
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Re: Politics: What should I be reading?

Post by shirak »

Maj at [unixtime wrote:1183494803[/unixtime]]The problem, as I see it, is with this notion of working towards a common goal. What, exactly is this common goal that everyone is working towards?


The way I understand it is that Communism is a form of Democracy in the Ancient Athenean sense of the word. All voting Citizens decide on a goal and all voting Citizens by default agree to work towards any goal decided.
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Re: Politics: What should I be reading?

Post by Draco_Argentum »

MrWaeseL at [unixtime wrote:1183491178[/unixtime]]Working towards a common goal does not mean everyone puts in an equal amount of work.


Right. The amount of cargo you get should be determined by what you're putting in in a fair manner. What shouldn't happen is letting luck + your current cargo stash determine what you get for your effort.

Also, you communists need to rebrand yourselves. The USSR ruined the communism brand for good. Relaunch the product with a name that dosen't have the connotation "rule by the evilist arsehole available."
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Re: Politics: What should I be reading?

Post by PhoneLobster »

What and Capitalism has a GOOD name?

Pah-leeease.

You can call it what you like. The right immediately attempts to utterly marginalize any opinion left of Dick Chenney with baseless "brand" tainting attacks as it is.

Frankly there isn't really much point in what left leaning folks call our selves these days, liberals, greens, socialists, communists, leftists, unionists, they are ALL fine traditions that have shaped modern society for the better, far better than anything "conservative" or "capitalist" has and all are treated as lunatic pariahs.

No, we can call ourselves anything now, we could call ourselves the stark raving loony party and get more respect than we are currently accorded, by the right.

Better to stick to a name, like communist, socialist etc... and attempt to just remind everyone that we stand for all the good things in life, like public health, racial equality, feminism, public education, womens rights, human rights, more women, and cute fluffy bunny rabbits.

You, whoever any of you are, owe EVERYTHING you have to a continuous march of leftist political movements starting somewhere around or before the god damn enlightenment, and that includes your lovable neighbourhood communists.

It might be time to just get over Stalin and admit that Marx really did you, personally, a few pretty damn good favours.

I mean fvck its not like the right doesn't get an endless number of freebies on their loosely affiliated lunatic assholes.
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Re: Politics: What should I be reading?

Post by CalibronXXX »

I've been wondering for a while. Is Communism a Meritocracy in any major way? And if so how? The idea of a fairly socialistic government based in heavy meritocracy has appealed to me for quite some time.

Also the left gets no respect from the right these days because you are viewed, and rightly so in my opinion, for being the main cause of major moral breakdown and social decline thats been plaguing the U.S. and western Europe for decades. Leftist movements, and I'm using a vary wide definition in this case, have historically been composed of several good ideas mixed with several bad ones. Often in the past society has mostly been able to sift the good from the bad after a time of upheaval and come away the better for it, but in the last few decades the everyman has been indiscriminately been swallowing both good bad aspects of leftist movements. As a symptom of this some fairly mainstream movements are composed of far more bad ideas than good ones, but the masses are so desensitized that they don't even notice.

So where you people were once beneficial, nay integral, to healthy social advancement, you are now the cancer that is killing the western world; to continue this metaphor laziness and apathy is the vitamin deficiency thats stops the body from repairing the precancerous cells, or bad ideas, and ignorance and lack of education are the abundant carcinogens in the immediate environment.
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Re: Politics: What should I be reading?

Post by PhoneLobster »

Thats hillarious, the fvcking Osama Bin Laden argument against the west as a means of saying how naughty the left is!

Oooh us naughty lefties and our moral corruption!

What the heck is that code for, you know, specifically.

Don't like womens rights?

Social Equality?

Racial Equality?

Secularism?

Oh, I see, probably code for gay hate right?

Its got to be SOMETHING because you know frankly the left has brought you health, wealth and equality, and thats really their core thing, we aren't exactly like all "give in to your anger, through anger you will gain power through power you will gain nasty, through nasty you will gain corruption ahahahah!"

And see the sad news is that you Calibron, personally not only benefit economically from the policies of the left you benefit from OUR social policies as well. Our naughty left wing social policies are where you get ALL your rights and freedoms, from your right to vote, to your right to marry freely, have sex freely, work freely, travel freely, even worship sky fairies freely.

So anyway, what specifically is this big naughty doomy "moral corruption" the left brings? The idea that everyone has rights? That money is not more important than human life?

Whats the grand moralism of the right? That the rich fvcking own you? That racism totally rocks? That women belong in the kitchen bare foot and pregnant?

The right is the moral cesspool of humanity what sort of moral upper hand do you IMAGINE they have?
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Re: Politics: What should I be reading?

Post by Username17 »

Osama Bin Laden wrote:Subsequently, the regime has stopped ruling people according to what God revealed, praise and glory be to Him, not to mention many other contradictory acts. When this main foundation was violated, other corrupt acts followed in every aspect of the country, the economic, the social, government services and so on.


Calibron wrote:Also the left gets no respect from the right these days because you are viewed, and rightly so in my opinion, for being the main cause of major moral breakdown and social decline thats been plaguing the U.S. and western Europe for decades.


Pretty much. Yeah Calibron, since you in fact are using the Osama Bin Laden argument, pretty much word for word, I'm afraid you're going to explain yourself.

Draco wrote:The USSR ruined the communism brand for good.


Actually, if anything, the USSR was a perfect proof of concept. There's no real thing as a worst case scenario as things can always get worse. But a very bad case is a great test from a scientific standpoint. And having a leadership that is murderously insane and is willing to murder large amounts of its own people to stay in power while refusing to listen to the voice of reason as regards the environment or human comfort is a pretty good VBC. And yet despite that, as a model of economic focus and development, Communism was so successful that:
  • In a single generation, the USSR went fromhaving peasants with horse-drawn carts to winning the Space Race.
  • Right through starving and shooting a bunch of their own people, the Soviet Union managed to provide so much more and better food, shelter, and medical care that life expectencies literally doubled.
So really, you can throw in criminally insane leadership, and yet by objective measurement it's still one of the most successful governments in history.

Maj wrote:What, exactly is this common goal that everyone is working towards?


  1. Survival.
  2. Propagation.


Not just of the individual, but of the society. Modern Capitalism has already failed us. We liteally cannot hand our way of life to our children. We're going to run out of fish. If the Iraq war clears up, we'll run out of oil as well.

Capitalism throws so much away that it is seriously destroying its ability to pull more resources from the land and the sea. Plus, there really isn't any "away" so it's also destroying the land, the sea, and the air while it's doing it.

And I don't think that Capitalism can stop, because agile capital being what it is, the criteria by which decisions are made literally does not value the prospect of not running out of fish in the sea.

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Re: Politics: What should I be reading?

Post by CalibronXXX »

Damnit! I had a almost a whole argument written up. Fvck! I'll fix it later, I need to go to bed.

But two things first, I don't know what the "Osama Bin Laden Argument" is, and I'd like the question from my previous post answered if it's not too much trouble.
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Re: Politics: What should I be reading?

Post by Catharz »

Calibron at [unixtime wrote:1183576042[/unixtime]]But two things first, I don't know what the "Osama Bin Laden Argument" is, and I'd like the question from my previous post answered if it's not too much trouble.


The "Osama bin Laden Argument", I would guess, is...

1) You're a souless piece of shit if you don't believe that morality is handed down from on high.

2) All of the expressions of personal freedom which I disagree with, such as (but not limited to)...
sexy clothes, the practice of religions I
currently am opposed to, recreational
drug use, sex in a manner not explicitly
allowed by my dogma, volunteering in
non-religious social aid programs which
make my religion look bad, and eating
pork...
all show that you're inherently evil, and that you need my religion to come and tell you what to do. Have a nice day.


[Edit]
And as to your second question, every government is inherently a meritocracy. Isn't evolution a wonderful thing?
[/Edit]
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Re: Politics: What should I be reading?

Post by Username17 »

Calibron wrote:Is Communism a Meritocracy in any major way? And if so how?


The answer is: possibly.

Communism is a planned economy. What that plan actually is, or how it is arrived at is an open question. If the plan is "everyone piles giant rocks on the pyramid during the flood months, and everyone farms during the dry months" - then that's what you do. More likely, you have some sort of system in which labor is divided and various types of labor are incentivised in a number of ways.

In any plan I can imagine being implemented, competence would be rewarded and vital and difficult tasks would carry incentives. What the rewards and incentives actually are would depend upon what the plan was, but they'd certainly be there.

In the post-scarcity system of Star Trek, for example, the only things there are to bargain with are prestige and authority. Being a member of Starfleet carries more risks and more demands on comptence, and grants more prestige and more authority than does sitting around on some planet making paintings. That's an extreme example - one in which even keeping track of "money" is no longer worth people's time.

In a more near-future system you're probably going to have limited amounts of luxury goods available. So your societal plan is going to have to allocate them in some manner (most likely this will involve allocating more luxury goods to people who perform better at their tasks or perform more important or difficult tasks).

Calibron wrote:I don't know what the "Osama Bin Laden Argument" is


It's the idea that society is falling apart because modern secularists are eroding traditional morality and creating corruption in its place. It's the justification Osama Bin Laden gave for the WTC bombing, so you should tread lightly when making it.

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Re: Politics: What should I be reading?

Post by tzor »

So, this thread is about reading materials right? Unfortunately I can't think of a good book right now. I would like to grab a few quick wiki definitions. It pays to have a common set of definitions.

various wiki quotes wrote:
  • Communism is an ideology that seeks to establish a classless, stateless social organization based on common ownership of the means of production. ... Self-identified communists hold a variety of views, including Marxism Leninism, Trotskyism, council communism, Luxemburgism, anarchist communism, Christian communism, and various currents of left communism, which are generally the more widespread varieties
  • Capitalism generally refers to an economic system in which the means of production are mostly privately owned and operated for profit, and in which investments, distribution, income, production and pricing of goods and services are determined through the operation of a free market. It is usually considered to involve the right of individuals and groups of individuals acting as "legal persons" or corporations to trade capital goods, labor, land and money.


I'll just simplify my own comment; they both potentially equally suck. I came to this conclusion while hearing someone from India talking about why things in India were so politically down the toilet. He stated that the average person there has no sense of national responsibility. I think in the end the whole thing does evolve around personal responsibility. Where capitalism succeeds is where personal responsibility is encouraged. (And where it is faild it is where it is forgotten.) Likewise any socialistic or even communistic society that manages to encourage personal responsibility will succeed.
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Re: Politics: What should I be reading?

Post by Maj »

tzor wrote:Where capitalism succeeds is where personal responsibility is encouraged. (And where it is faild it is where it is forgotten.) Likewise any socialistic or even communistic society that manages to encourage personal responsibility will succeed.


Personally, I see capitalism as being wonderful at promoting individual responsibility, and communism as being wonderful at promoting societal reponsibility. Unfortunately, I don't see either of them developing both, and responsibility for ourselves and others is a requirement if we are to coexist.
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Re: Politics: What should I be reading?

Post by Neeek »

Calibron at [unixtime wrote:1183549789[/unixtime]]
Also the left gets no respect from the right these days because you are viewed, and rightly so in my opinion, for being the main cause of major moral breakdown and social decline thats been plaguing the U.S. and western Europe for decades.


Ignoring the rest of the problems with the position, I have to ask: Where did you get the completely insane notion that people used to be more "moral"? And what exactly do you mean by "moral"?


On reading materials, I'd recommend "A Theory of Justice" by Rawls.
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Re: Politics: What should I be reading?

Post by nova88 »


my mostly irrelevant two cents:

Economic communism is a very pretty theory based on
a flawed premise,the labor theory of value.Once that
theory is set aside,the whole thing falls like a house of cards.

Pure capitalism is based on human and economic self-interest.Well,people do not always act in their best
interest.Sometimes they are petty,greedy,spiteful,
and even occasionally altruistic.Capitalism has no
efficient mechanism for any of these ,especially the latter.

Russian communism is/was no more for substituting
autocratic rule by the czar for the party heads,said rule
in both instances carried out by secret police and a huge
bureaucracy,all indifferent to the average citizen.The
U.S. and the rest of the West might have been able to get away with business as usual upon the transfer of
power if we had not gotten involved with that stupid little
private war the Ukranian POW's started against the Bolsheviks .20/20 hindsight.

what to read-try The New Republic,either magazine form or online.
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Re: Politics: What should I be reading?

Post by tzor »

Maj at [unixtime wrote:1183584612[/unixtime]]Personally, I see capitalism as being wonderful at promoting individual responsibility, and communism as being wonderful at promoting societal reponsibility.


"Responsibility" is an easy to misuse term. Generally speaking financial responsibility comes through an effective economic system. Moral responsibility doesn't come through any economic system but through our collective moral system.

Moral responsibility promotes social responsibility. It in turn promotes civic responsibilty.

This is why the 1st century Christians who apparently lived a life more communist than under any Soviet tyrant overcame the opposition of Rome and expanded into the world, not because of their economics, but their moral outlook. It is, in the end, the reason why the Soviet Union failed.

If anything this is why I generally do not like the left, because in their well meaning attempt to promote moral and social issues they in effect decrease moral responsibility by moving that responsibility to the state. (Ironically Kennedy is known for saying "Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.") The opposite problem is that the right doesn't try to promote moral responsibility either.

Who should help the poor and the needy? Me. Responsibility is personal, and only corporate in that we form a corporation of collected individuals. Unless you can convince me that I should out of necessity help the poor and needy the latter will only suffer. You can try to mislead me by taking my money from me and doing those things, but that only makes me upset at you and it also forces the level of compassion to that of the compassionate level of the state, generally consisting of breucrats who only want to keep their jobs for four more years.
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Re: Politics: What should I be reading?

Post by Maj »

No offense, tzor, but I deliberately didn't want to include morality in my response. All I was trying to say is that capitalism tends to drive the "me" factor, while communism tends to drive the "us" factor. I don't like the extremes of either one of those views.
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Re: Politics: What should I be reading?

Post by Crissa »

You're responsible to pay your taxes. To not break laws. To not litter or do harm.

How does understanding that the greatest good can come from the greatest number of people working together - the government - reduce responsibility?

Or by responsibility you do not measure the effectiveness but merely... Wait, I don't know what you're measuring. No more money was donated before Social Security and Medicare and the ADA were implemented than after. No less, either, oddly...

What are you measuring?

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Re: Politics: What should I be reading?

Post by Catharz »

Maj at [unixtime wrote:1183584612[/unixtime]]
Personally, I see capitalism as being wonderful at promoting individual responsibility


What do you mean by "individual responsibility"? Isn't responsibility inherently social?
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Re: Politics: What should I be reading?

Post by Draco_Argentum »

tzor at [unixtime wrote:1183595627[/unixtime]]This is why the 1st century Christians who apparently lived a life more communist than under any Soviet tyrant overcame the opposition of Rome and expanded into the world, not because of their economics, but their moral outlook.


No, they got the emperor on side and ended up leading a corrupt decadent empire.

Frank, unfortunately last century's attempts at communist states were all dictatorships. The perception now is that communism = dictatorship. Seeing as a goodly chunk of Marx's demands have been met its time for someone else to write a book asking for new stuff. That way we can start the cycle of the people in power being force to make concessions again.
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