All Communists are dead-beats

[JimBenArm]

Do not try to use acrostics to hide swear words.

Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: Tricky

 

[Skeptic]

Do you think that if it hadn't had been for Bill Gates and Microsoft that there would have been no personal computer revolution?

I'm inclined to disagree.

Depends what your counterfactual is. Am I claiming Bill Gates had a unique genius that nobody else did? No. I am quite sure that, had he not been there, somebody else would have done something similar. But in that case that person (or small group of people) would have been the gazillionaire Gates became in his stead. He got his money for what he did -- how he helped greatly to spread the computer from a toy / scientific tool to the office and home -- not because he was the only one who could have done so.

I think, not that I think you intended it this way, that what we have here is a somewhat odd insight into why some people like socialism and progressivism so much. They say it's not fair that Gates made so much money because somebody else might have done what he did. Well, true -- but in a capitalist society you get paid for what you do, not for proving you are somehow superior to others and therefore are the only one who could do it.

Many folks, especially better educated and more intelligent folks, are bored and uninterested in doing anything -- like starting a business -- which they consider "below" them since "anybody could do it". They think what should matter is not what they actually do, but whether they could do things others cannot. Thus a society where "to each according to his abilities" is attractive to them, since it would put them (they think) and not those disgusting, mediocre businessmen, at the top, because potential is more important than actual achievement.

 

[zooterkin]

Lenin killed a hell of a lot of people. 5 million died of famine due to grain requisitions.

That's not necessarily evidence that it wasn't Communism; no-one here is claiming that Communism actually works.

 

[Virus]

Change the word Communism to Stalinism and I'd completely agree with you apart from one small detail.

Mao killed more people than Stalin. The Khmer Rouge killed a third of the population. There is no "real" communism. There's the monstrosity that existed or an imaginary form of it.

The Hammer and Sickle image was just badass.

Granted. I also find communist propaganda posters fascinating. There just aren't many things that are that eerie.

 

[bozothedeathmachine]

Again, no.

You seem to fail to understand the very basics of the thing you are ridiculing. Wouldn't that be like me ridiculing capitalism by saying I could buy you if I had enough money?

I admit, I'm being intentionally obtuse here. I also have the sneaking suspicion that in a true Communistic society, one that adheres to communal ownership of land and a centrally planned economy, there would not be students living in large villas and jet-setting about as is guy I commented on.

 

[Cavemonster]

Thus a society where "to each according to his abilities" is attractive to them, since it would put them (they think) and not those disgusting, mediocre businessmen, at the top, because potential is more important than actual achievement.

The phrase is "From each according to their abilities"

From.

 

[MarkCorrigan]

So. Who's going to offer the single, unified definition of "communism" which everyone agrees on, and fits all of the governments which have been labeled with the term.

This will go a long way toward solving Skeptic's "No true Scotsman" issues.

Well, that's actually not possible since the definition of Communism is fairly vauge even within the writings of Marx. However, I can state with absolute certainty that no "communist" state has ever been truely communist, nor has it ever worked towards such an ideal. Why? Simple.

1. Communism is a state without government, where there is no central authority to distribute things because it isn't needed. It's safe to say no "Communist" state has ever been this because it's utterly stupid to assume it's even possible.

2. Socialism, which is defined by Marx as being the pre-cursor to Communism, involves a free and fair society whereby individual property rights are accepted and all production capabilities belong to the State which is run by and for the people. The upshot of this is that the state holds all agricultural and industrial production within the nation and therefore all manufactured goods that are not sold externally will be piled into the state itself meaning that such products will be fairly priced and tightly regulated to produce good quality products. There will be no overall control of any factory or farm by an individual because it will all belong to the state, there will instead be people appointed by the state to oversee the manufacture who will be paid more than a basic worker, but will have little real control over said factory.

This of course breaks down when discussing a nation like China or the USSR, because instead of having the factories overseen by workers for the government, the overseers turned into quasi-owners to the degree that they were left in pretty much the same state that they had been in before, except that they also had to deal with the individuals in the overarching Statist system who took no interest in the actual factories and instead left the managers to do what they liked provided the factory was productive. This left the people out of control of the means of production, the first and only basic tenet of Marxist shared control that there was, rendering the whole system just a bloated capitalist state with even more bureaucracy and corruption draining funds.

This is obviously not what Marx intended, but due to the way the Soviet system began with the introduction of Marxist-Leninism rather than pure Marxism, some corruption of this nature was bound to take place. The further breaking from the actual beliefs of Marx by Stalin rendered any semblance to an actual Socialist state as defined by the people who created the ideology completely non-existent, thus to describe the USSR or any of the bastard children of the Stalinist system (Cuba, China, Vietnam, NK) as being "Communist" is laughably inaccurate.



Now, I feel I must interject here and state that I am NOT a Communist. I don't defend the system because I think it's just as insane as a fully Capitalist no boundries system. It's just as prone to corruption and it's just as likely to fall apart before it's even begun. I consider myself to be a fairly liberal Democratic Socialist, in that I believe some methods of production and services should be state controlled merely to prevent the kind of system that's sprung up in the US over healthcare, or the total balls-up that the UK has made of it's rail system since it was privatised. I don't believe that Marx was anything more than a deluded dreamer with some good ideas but no concept of the bigger picture, and I fully and totally believe in the ideals of liberal democracy and regulated and limited capitalism. I just can't stand it when people make stuff up to mock or attack Communism. The ideology is stupid enough as it is without people making things up about it.

 

[paximperium]

I admit, I'm being intentionally obtuse here. I also have the sneaking suspicion that in a true Communistic society, one that adheres to communal ownership of land and a centrally planned economy, there would not be students living in large villas and jet-setting about as is guy I commented on.

The only "true" communist comminunities in modern society are some of the hippie communes that existed(still exist?).

 

[MarkCorrigan]

Mao killed more people than Stalin. The Khmer Rouge killed a third of the population. There is no "real" communism. There's the monstrosity that existed or an imaginary form of it.

Of course you're right, although I would like to point out that Maoism is a bastardisation of Stalinism, which is a bastardisation of Marxist-Leninism.

Otherwise for once I think you and I are in complete and total agreement. I just get hacked off when I see people, and it is always the SAME people, lying about what the ideology actually is. These are always the same people who whine about how their opponents use strawmen of their positions, so the hypocrisy is simply stunning.

Granted. I also find communist propaganda posters fascinating. There just aren't many things that are that eerie.

My favourite piece of Communist propaganda is a comic book that has Stalin fighting in a magic wizards duel with Hitler, complete with appropriately decorated cloaks. If that isn't one of the most epic things you've ever heard I will smite you down where you sit.

 

[Virus]

The problem with this "real" communism stuff is that it's like saying you've invented a new form of transport that involves strapping wooden wings to your arms and jumping off a cliff. Then claiming that everyone is doing it wrong and the real form of it has never existed because on paper, it involves flying from Paris to Moscow.

 

[Virus]

My favourite piece of Communist propaganda is a comic book that has Stalin fighting in a magic wizards duel with Hitler, complete with appropriately decorated cloaks. If that isn't one of the most epic things you've ever heard I will smite you down where you sit.

Pics?

 

[MarkCorrigan]

The problem with this "real" communism stuff is that it's like saying you've invented a new form of transport that involves strapping wooden wings to your arms and jumping off a cliff. Then claiming that everyone is doing it wrong and the real form of it has never existed because on paper, it involves flying from Paris to Moscow.

So so very true.

Shame really.


The whole comic complete with translations.

 

[quadraginta]

Depends what your counterfactual is. Am I claiming Bill Gates had a unique genius that nobody else did? No. I am quite sure that, had he not been there, somebody else would have done something similar. But in that case that person (or small group of people) would have been the gazillionaire Gates became in his stead. He got his money for what he did -- how he helped greatly to spread the computer from a toy / scientific tool to the office and home -- not because he was the only one who could have done so.

I don't quite understand why you reiterate exactly what I said (note Gary Kildall reference) as if it was somehow a creative disputation of my point.

You made a statement about Microsoft, Bill Gates and how unique he was. I disagreed. You said,

But if it weren't for Microsoft, "computers" would still be the mainframe in the university's or bank's basement, and the "internet" some weird thing for armed forces research people.

Now you seem to be agreeing with me. Why not just say so?

I think, not that I think you intended it this way, that what we have here is a somewhat odd insight into why some people like socialism and progressivism so much. They say it's not fair that Gates made so much money because somebody else might have done what he did. Well, true -- but in a capitalist society you get paid for what you do, not for proving you are somehow superior to others and therefore are the only one who could do it.

Who are these "some people", specifically. Are they composed perhaps of the dried stalks of cereal plants?

Many folks, especially better educated and more intelligent folks, are bored and uninterested in doing anything -- like starting a business -- which they consider "below" them since "anybody could do it". They think what should matter is not what they actually do, but whether they could do things others cannot. Thus a society where "to each according to his abilities" is attractive to them, since it would put them (they think) and not those disgusting, mediocre businessmen, at the top, because potential is more important than actual achievement.

I suspect that "many folks" are harvested from the same fields as "some people" are.

 

[burpy]

Speaking of Bill Gates and the internet. It was free-market capitalists that invented satellite technology wasn´t it? Oh wait... Sputnik. Ok then, it was the the capitalists who pumped money into U.S. science education in order to keep up with the USSR, thereby precipitating much of what has been achieved in terms of technological advancements since then, wasn´t it?

 

[TubbaBlubba]

I think communism considers ideas worthy of study, and has certainly been important for worker's movements and the like, but True McCommunism is a pipe dream.

Of course, when people bring up Stalinist CCCP in order to criticize communism, that's a bit silly.

 

[quadraginta]

Well, that's actually not possible since the definition of Communism is fairly vauge even within the writings of Marx. However, I can state with absolute certainty that no "communist" state has ever been truely communist, nor has it ever worked towards such an ideal.

<snip>

So the upshot is that there is no intrinsic meaning to the word "communism" as used in normal parlance. It is simply a pejorative (or not) with whatever meaning the user at the time wishes to attribute to it ... at the time.

This makes it fairly useless as a term to be employed in intelligent discourse, because the implication is that there is some common understanding of what is being discussed, when in fact that is not true.

It is not unlike hearing someone use the word "horses" and then discovering that they actually mean "aardvarks". At least until the next usage of the same word, when it turns out the subject has somehow become "quahogs".

 

[Undesired Walrus]

Mao killed more people than Stalin. The Khmer Rouge killed a third of the population. There is no "real" communism. There's the monstrosity that existed or an imaginary form of it.

If the US constitution is perversly interpretated, does that mean it only exists in 'imaginary form' and the perverse version means the constitution is a disaster?

 

[Alt+F4]

we have more then a few here in NYC.

Really? I suspect I'm older than you, I've lived in NYC for my entire life. I'm in a teacher's union and almost everyone else in my family is in a union and I've never, ever met anyone who admitted to being a communist.

Where do you hang out?

 

[Captain.Sassy]

Give me one example of a communist state that was different.

Kerala
: D

Montevideo
: D

Republican Spain
: D

I used to be a communist.

It was great.

We ran the neo-nazi skinheads out of downtown.

 

[quadraginta]

Speaking of Bill Gates and the internet. It was free-market capitalists that invented satellite technology wasn´t it? Oh wait... Sputnik. Ok then, it was the the capitalists who pumped money into U.S. science education in order to keep up with the USSR, thereby precipitating much of what has been achieved in terms of technological advancements since then, wasn´t it?

Who "invented satellite technology" can cover a rather broad field. It is arguable that being the first to actually place a medicine ball sized radio transmitter into orbit, while a significant engineering landmark, isn't necessarily the most valid metric. It was, I agree, largely a matter who was willing to throw the most money at the problem the fastest. I don't think that this is reflective of a capitalism vs. communism philosophical dichotomy.

I'm not sure just what makes satellites a necessary element of the internet in your judgment, but insofar as they are involved the earliest well known proponent (he was scooped by a Slovene, but only a handful of SF types noticed) of practical satellite usage for communications was Arthur C. Clarke, whose 1945 paper on geostationary orbits has been immortalized by the term "Clarke Belt". This predates Sputnik somewhat. And Clarke wasn't a Communist.