What is Occupy Wallstreet?

[FireIceTalon]

[quote='FireIceTalon' pid='190752' dateline='1319669038']
I do not object to your Marxism. Want to claim you're a different kind of Communist? Feel free. Want to claim that there are ways of making Marxism work without recourse to violence and oppression? Claim away. Those claims at least are coherent and not ahistorical nonsense.

-Jester

I am disappointed you come with this remark yesterday.
I mean think about it instead of following the general idea among the public.
When did communism as we know it and extreme free market capitalism start?
Communism maybe around 1900 and extreme free market capitalism during Reagan? or after WW2?
Communist societies fell some 25 to 20 years ago and at this moment it is becoming clear that extreme free market economy is not working.
And just as FIT says, you should make an honest comparison between communism and capitalism, not between capitalism and dictatorship of course because then the answer is simple.

The fact that it is extremely difficult to have a democratic communist society is of course very true, but that is another thing.

Anyway for me it is clear that you have to go somewhere in the middle. A social(ist) society with good protection of the weak but with a free market and of course democratic. (But I guess you also agree with me on this Jester)

Communism was a reaction to the evils of capitalism and social darwinism of the Industrial Revolution. But in truth, communism is much older. Some of the earliest forms of civilization had a form of 'tribal communism', many centuries before Marx was even a speck of dust. Capitalism, of course, was born out of feudalism. I've done some thinking on this whole idea of dialectical materialism being one of struggle between classes throughout history, and for the most part I agree with Marx's historic determinism. The outcome of all events is predetermined, and if you look at it in this context, communism was not yet READY or meant to be successful in the 19th or 20th century. Capitalism at the time, was still very young, and even today most of the world is still 3rd world non-industrialized. For a true communist revolution to take place, the entire world HAS to be industrialized, and we have a long ways to go before that will occur, possibly centuries? So we essentially need a stage of capitalism for Marx's historic determinism to take place. We are still in that stage, though it is progressing as predicted. To add some of my own thoughts into Marx's theory, I believe history is a circle. Tribal communism was the beginning, history will end with what I refer to as "civil communism", which is like tribal communism but of course way more advanced. It is the highest possible form of society, in terms of industrialization, technology, medicine, and so forth. In other words, we will be going back to our roots, but it will be in its most advanced stage, rather than in its most primitive. But for all this to occur, we need global capitalism first. Only then can a global socialist revolution take place, and slowly, very slowly, society will transfer from socialism until it is perfect enough that it can be considered full blown communism. I truly believe this will take place one day, though it does not matter for any of us since we will be long gone. The current state of global capitalism is sparking a new interest in Marx though, and he's probably laughing from the grave saying "fools, I told you so!". Hehe.

The above speculations aside, I still stand firmly that democracy and communism can go together, and in fact they MUST go together for communism to truly exist and not be undermined. Rosa called Lenin on this, and history proved her correct. It is to be a workers revolution, not one for a single nutjob to use as a shield for his own self interests, or to establish a party that calls the shots and thus undermines the entire point of the revolution. That said, I do believe revolution is the only way for this to take place. There is NO reforming capitalism, it is a cancer, and therefore must be abolished entirely. Yes, this means a violent revolution will take place, but I will quote Machiavelli here and say the ends justifies the means. Afterall, it is hardly worse than the violence, war, greed, exploitation, poverty, shallowness, and other countless terrible things that capitalism PERPETUALLY produces. But again, the vanguard for the workers, is the workers themselves, not some party that uses the revolution as a perfect tool to see its interests carried out, and nothing more.