Maryland abolishes death penalty.

[kandrathe]

It's not bewildering at all that people haven't figured it out. Considering the bourgeois shoves pro-capitalist ideology down our throats at every turn.

Ummm, we were here first.

This isn't socialism - this sounds like forced child labor to me. Of course you and your wife do the harder jobs, as YOU SHOULD. What are you gonna do, put your kids in a coal mine and tell them to start shovelin' or else? Cause thats what it sure sounds like to me.

Right. Doing dishes and cleaning out their pets litter box is like child labor, and akin to coal mining. Did you ever have to clean your room, or make your own bed? Did you ever cook, or do the dishes? Or, did mommy wait on you hand an foot?

The free rider problem may well exist in a socialist organization of society, but it would be no worse than it is now, and I would argue that it would be drastically reduced. Right now, there is limited management in every place of business, so it is pretty difficult if not impossible to tell who is actually slacking or who is just slower or less abled to accomplish a task.

Not really. You may not know in a week, and a month, but over time you'd know who is productive and who's sandbagging.

The whole point that people can be fired for slacking or otherwise though is the very essence of why capitalism is a shitty system

Ergo, you are implying that in your system no one would get fired.

- people need to work to some degree to survive (yes, even in a socialist society) to produce the things they need to survive,

Let's hold this thought until we get down to where you suggest hunter-gatherer societies for the model for a new system.

...and to fire them is to take away that very livelihood....its most dehumanizing for sure. All because we have a few nitwits that own private property and get to make all the decisions. Why should we have to model our lives around the demands of capitalism and our bosses?

That would be like 100% of people who own some private property and get to decide what happens to their property?

The answer is that we shouldn't have to, but as long as this system exists, we are coerced into doing so. Besides, one of the purposes of socialism is so that we DONT have to work as hard. Right now we have work everyday doing the same old menial jobs for paltry wages. We work so we can pay rent and squeek by, and if were lucky, or maybe get ahead if we have that opportunity (much less likely). We aren't motivated to make good widgets or a lot of widgets because we don't then get any of the benefits of creating the better widgets, we just get paid the same wage and we don't get to decide if these are useful or desirable widgets or if we are producing them in the best and most efficient way.

Coerced as in "you are fired", not as in "I'll break your knee caps." How do you define paltry compared to what? In most companies I've seen, the "owners" are the many thousand stock holders, including pensioners. A profit margin of 5-10% is decent these days, meaning 90% of the gross revenue is expenses, of which labor is usually to largest cost. Doubly so, in non-capital intensive companies, like services. So, then the thousands of owners split up the 10% profit of the gross revenue in dividends, and the hundred or two workers split up say 50% of the gross revenue as wages. There is the valid point that some executives earn multiple times more than the lowest paid workers. But, overall, who does well? Everyone, and even more so when the workers get stock as a profit sharing bonus. If every job is valued equally, and rewarded equally, then can I please be the mattress tester?

You are making people out to be lazy and that we don't like to do things. This is a pretty warped perception. In hunter/gatherer societies, did anyone have to motivate us that we had to go out and get food, find better shelter, learn to make better tools, and so on? No, they didn't. We figured it out on our own.

So, in essence we have gone nowhere. When I am a hunter-gatherer, and I take down an elk, who gets to eat the elk? Me, and my family, then my extended family, then my friends. If there is any remaining, I would jerk it and store it for a hungrier day. If your tribes warriors came to take some, we'd kill you then we'd go find your village and burn it down. Starvation and tribal survival is a brutal society.

Contrary to what you WANT to believe, people are relatively intelligent and know how to adapt to a wide variety of environments.

Meaning what? If we drive them from the city, Khmer Rouge, Pol Potts style, they'll figure it out or die?

Humanity needs bosses and capitalists about as much as we need cancer. The whole notion we need some boss telling us what to do, how much to do it, and when to it is nothing more than bourgeois great-man theories rhetoric.

How do you feel about http://www.kickstarter.com ? Isn't it the democratization of capital? It allows almost anyone with a good idea a way to raise funding without selling your soul to the bankers.

There was an old joke some Anarchist told me, "how many capitalists does it take to screw in a light bulb?" Answer: none, because we don't need capitalists to do anything that can be done. Not a funny joke really, but a very true one nonetheless.

Q: How many Marxists does it take to screw in a light bulb? A: None, the light bulb contains the seeds of its own revolution. Funnier -- see cuz it revolves on its own...

Maybe YOU think you need someone telling you what your strongest abilities are, what YOU are good at, what you should produce, how to produce it, and when to produce it. I sure as hell do not.

But, in your idea of a society, who drives the bus? Who gets to be trained as the school teacher? Who gets stuck with cleaning the toilets? If we all just get to pick our jobs, then I'd like to travel around the world and write travel guides, ok? Will you fund it?

This logic is nonsense. So lets pretend for a moment, I'm the boss, you are the worker. You pick fruit for 12 hours a day in the hot blazing sun, and I am willing to pay you $1 per hour. Therefore, your labor is worth a dollar an hour. Do you not see the absurdity in this, and in the whole rationality (or irrationality I should say) of the capitalist system?

Well, the going rate for picking fruit is $8.70 per hr. for up to 56 hrs per week. So, I'd tell you to take your slave wages and shove it. S & H Farm Labor pays better, provides housing, health insurance, and free bus transportation to and from the work site.

The whole concept of supply and demand is folly, because the purpose of capitalism is to maximize profits. To do this, you have CREATE demand to get people to buy shit they otherwise wouldn't, outside of what they need to survive.

This is not true. Once people have taken care of their needs, they then focus on their wants.

This of course, results in an over abundance of goods, which in turn creates the so-called 'poverty in the midst of plenty' since people do not have the purchasing power to obtain many of these goods or services.

No. It drives down the price of those abundant goods until people can afford them. This is why producers are keen to not build up excess inventory.

Thus the capitalists begin to experience a falling rate of profit after awhile and that is when unemployment increases and wages go down, exploitation goes up. I think you not only do not understand socialism, you don't get capitalism either.

And, when it comes to economics, you've utterly failed. Labor is a commodity. If you have more of it the wages fall, when there is a shortage, wages go up. The key to being well paid is to have a skill that is rare, and in demand.

That's because the cultural hegemony of capitalism has done an outstanding job at denying that class struggle somehow doesn't exist anymore (it does, or the ruling class wouldn't require a state to protect itself),

Which culture is that exactly? How can capitalism have a culture? Capitalism, as an economic system, has been an aspect of western European culture since the middle ages - probably centered on the Netherlands.

and I would even go farther to say that we don't like to talk about class anymore because it goes against the whole idea of the Horatio Alger myth, that we can go from rags to riches and to talk about class at all is not on the agenda of capitalist interests. Massive mobility? LMAO...where is this massive mobility you speak of? How can I account for that which does not exist? And even if there IS some mobility, this doesnt change the fact that capitalism is an inherently exploitative system, and we shouldn't have worry about mobility in the first place.

No. No. That's right. We'd just have to worry about elk hunting, and gathering berries. Let's ask the mythical Oprah how she did it? Ragged Dick is a myth --

This chart; is not.

Indeed, it takes a very substantial amount of labor exploitation of MANY, MANY workers, to make one man very, very rich.

Let's ask the mythical man Oprah, how many workers she exploited.

The fact Apple's products are made in factories of oppressed Chinese workers that are paid a dollar a day really shows Steve Jobs worked his ass off

How much did they make planting rice in the paddies before China built the plant with Apples money?


Again, your butt must be sore with all these facts you pull from there. My research shows that Foxconn, Apples China supplier, pays between $375 to $450 per month, which is about 20% higher than the median wage. Leave it to the Chinese Marxists to screw over their own workers... But, that insight aside. You know nothing about how Jobs made his fortune. It was Pixar, which he bought from Lucas, while he was trying to build Next. 10 years later, Apple bought Next, and Jobs returned to Apple. So, to imply that Jobs built his wealth on the backs of China's workers is just downright false.

or that the children of Sam Walton who now own more wealth than 50% of the US population combined without ever having to lift a finger to do it. And we call people like these our heros and leaders. Yuck. As far as im concerned, they are elitist scum, and the world would be a much better place without them and their bourgeois protectors in DC.

So, where do you find your facts? In 2011 six members of the Walton family have the same net worth as the bottom 30% of American families combined. But, considering that most people start out after college, in debt with a negative self worth, 30% is surprisingly low.

Yea, because the bourgeois goes to extremely great lengths for good reason, to demonize, misrepresent, and in general, slander Marxism because it presents a multiplicity of real problems with the capitalist system. The easiest thing to do is sweep anything under the rug that is contrary or inconvenient to the interests of the ruling class, which Marxism is. And its pretty easy to do, since they control the schools and dictate what agenda is up for discussion in the media, etc. What do you expect us Marxists to do? Just go along with everything capitalists say about Marxism and socialism, and say "yea, uh huh, the capitalists are right and we are wrong".....come on man, use your common sense here. I know you have some, even if some of your thoughts about things are a bit wacky to me.

Right. And, that you've no good examples of a working system in the hundred and sixty five years since the publication of the communist manifesto. It's.... Just... That... Capitalism.... Won't.... Fricking.... DIE!!!!! If only people would stop doing what they do, and start doing something undefined then we could figure out how to make a system without bosses, where we all get to do what we want. Woohooo! (If what you want to do is to hunt elk, and gather berries.)

Marxism indeed doesn't have a framwork, because it IS a framework, and it is that framework that serves as a guide for those fighting for socialism. You want it to predict EXACTLY how socialism will look, and that is impossible because it depends entirely on the material conditions of the time, should socialism become a reality.

No, really. If this were socialism, you'd give me food, and housing, and health care, and clothing for me and my family, and I'd get to do whatever I want right? Ok, I'd work. I'm very, very good at making garnishes.

Artisans (who ultimately became todays capitalist class) during the feudal era could not predict exactly how capitalism would work, just socialists cannot predict exactly how socialism will look.

Not really true, either. "The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape, opened up fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie. The East-Indian and Chinese markets, the colonisation of America, trade with the colonies, the increase in the means of exchange and in commodities generally, gave to commerce, to navigation, to industry, an impulse never before known, and thereby, to the revolutionary element in the tottering feudal society, a rapid development." - Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto.

So, not artisans. Investors in sea voyages.

We each have our own set of values respectively and society will be setup to reflect those values as they have been in prior epochs of history.

I imagine at this point you just whacked yourself in the head with a hammer, and this crap poured out of it though the keyboard. Yes, we each have mores and values, and collectively we comprise a society...

Your notion is almost as absurd as asking a biologist to predict the evolution of a particular species of insect. Predicting the future of history depends on way to many interacting factors, much in the same way predicting the course of evolution does.

No. I'm asking very simple questions. What job will I do? If you supply me my housing, food, clothing, and medical care, ostensibly, you will need to coerce somebody to build my house, grow my food, make my clothing, and tend to my medical needs. How will you do it? How do you make it any more equitable than what we have now?

Modes of analysis are used to understand current conditions to show which futures are possible and not possible. We'll leave it up to religious fundamentalists to make bold predictions like The Rapture being inevitable outcomes of our social existence, or capitalists who predict this system is the be all end all despite its countless contradictions, inefficiencies, and the fact it creates the very seeds of its own destruction (as all class based systems before it did).

No. No. I just want to not die of starvation, while we all become ballet dancers, and rock stars.

Impossible, since capitalism has not yet been destroyed. People liking to own stuff or not is irrelevant to the objective laws of motion that govern capitalism as an economic system. If indeed people do like to own stuff, then capitalism has done a piss poor job at meeting that demand, and it continues to do a piss poor job. And naturally so, because it is only efficient at creating profits. In terms of actual use, its extremely inefficient, wasteful, misuses peoples abilities and potential, and drives down wages by making labor more simple and demeaning. These are cold hard facts that you have yet to acknowledge, regardless of whether people like to own stuff or not.

Ah, yes. You can't tell me what it looks like until we abandon the system we have, and magically, this next one with arise eliminating all the issues we have now.

And that is because the international bourgeois has done a wonderful job at destroying every opportunity for an international proletarian movement to be realized, then they turn around and say "see communism doesn't work!!". Its like beating a child with a stick than saying "see, he/she is nothing but a crybaby!!"

So, then obviously the international bourgeois is the dominant social philosophy, rendering international proletarian movement its weaker, dead prey. Social evolution in action!

And the state is an organ of class oppression, designed by its very nature to legitimize and keep capitalist social relations intact. As I said a couple posts ago it doesn't matter if industries are owned by private individuals or by the state - they are capitalist either way, and therefore the institutions within a capitalist society naturally promote bourgeois ideology and values.

Compulsory state funded k-12 education is one of the more socialist endeavors in our society. How would your system differ, other than obviously forcing them to study Marxism? Anarchy-education? I can teach you how to hunt elk if you like. I only know a few of the berries though.

There were many things Marx didn't touch on...

Yes, I know. I've lived for a pretty long time. I first read about Marx with my beret wearing friends in 1973.

Bottom line: Marxism is based on the false premise that a bureaucrat with absolute power to seize and distribute resources will do so impartially - or competently.