Libertarian versus Marxist- equally unreal?

[stokes234]

Oh if we are picking between fantasy worlds I'd go with the Marxist one since it's the one if my life enfolded in the same general way I'd be more likely to still be alive,, but over either of those fantasy worlds the one I'd like the most to live in is the Culture, that sounds like it world be great fun.

Agreed, on all counts. The Culture would be awesome.

 

[Toke]

Marx's statement was "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need."

By definition, you receive the amount you are believed to need no matter how much you actually create for others. My characterization was, you receive the same amount no matter how much you provide for others.

How is that a strawman?

You are taking something that tend to play out as progressive taxation to pay for welfare and describe it as a lack of privileges for some not even "achieved" in the most hardcore communist states.

Even in "communist" America it is recognised that people need to eat and some food stamps are handed out.

 

[Skepticemea]

Agreed, on all counts. The Culture would be awesome.

Indeed. Either Bank's Culture or Hamilton's Commonwealth would be excellent places to live.

 

[EGarrett]

You are taking something that tend to play out as progressive taxation to pay for welfare and describe it as a lack of privileges for some not even "achieved" in the most hardcore communist states.

Even in "communist" America it is recognised that people need to eat and some food stamps are handed out.

I'm not talking about the liberal-economics in the United States. I'm talking about Marxist theory. Don't mix categories.

 

[Toke]

Indeed. Either Bank's Culture or Hamilton's Commonwealth would be excellent places to live.

I have only read Excession, but it does look like an interesting place to live.

 

[Chaos]

I'm not talking about the liberal-economics in the United States. I'm talking about Marxist theory. Don't mix categories.

You wouldn´t happen to want to adress the point Darat makes, would you? Or does he, too, have to start a separate thread for that?

 

[Skepticemea]

I have only read Excession, but it does look like an interesting place to live.

*segue* "Player of Games" or "Consider Phlebas" are two of Bank's I'd recommend to anyone. */segue*

 

[EGarrett]

You wouldn´t happen to want to adress the point Darat makes, would you? Or does he, too, have to start a separate thread for that?

Read post #6. I'm not going to repeat myself. Oh, and I don't suggest you try to create ongoing flaming with me over multiple threads. Because that will not work out well for you.

 

[Toke]

Libertarians believe that people would build a perfect world by sequestering resources based on a sense of greed.

No. Libertarians believe that acknowledging people's primary motivation to provide for themselves and supporting a system that allows them to obtain the most for themselves by providing for others will create a world that is the closest to perfect that we can realistically achieve.

If you want to be seen as knowledgeable, mature, and respectful of other people's time, don't post strawman versions of other people's positions.

So here strawman means that you don't like the word greed?
And since you seems to claim to know something about True Libertarianism^TM you might want to address the issue of government interference in the private marked. E.g. banning food exports in case of shortages.

 

[Skeptic]

This is new information to me, that Socialists are violent or militant,

Then you're rather ignorant of world history.

 

[Chaos]

Read post #6. I'm not going to repeat myself.

That´s not a reply to Darat. That´s the nonsense Darat debunked and ripped to shreds.

And I should hope you don´t repeat yourself... this way we might get a meaningful reply instead of yet another repetition of the same boring old claims.

Oh, and I don't suggest you try to create ongoing flaming with me over multiple threads. Because that will not work out well for you.

Whereever you show up and make the same old claims, I reserve the right to show up and remind you that you have yet to adress the counters to your claims. If that doesn´t suit you, I suggest you leave and seek a forum that prevents people who disagree with you from posting.

 

[Ziggurat]

How can you be so sure this has anything to do with the nature of the ideologies, rather than the fact that there have never been enough Libertarians to achieve anything by force, and that in the only country where there are any significant numbers of Libertarians, the non-Libertarians are too heavily armed for Libertarians to try anything stupid?

I guess if you want to call the violent, paranoid militia fringe "libertarian", then maybe you could draw some equivalence. Other than that, though, I'm just not seeing it. And even including them among libertarians, that violent fringe really is a fringe, in marked contrast to Marxism.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

No. Libertarians believe that acknowledging people's primary motivation to provide for themselves and supporting a system that allows them to obtain the most for themselves by providing for others will create a world that is the closest to perfect that we can realistically achieve.

That, however, is so generic that it would include even Lenin's "socialism". Most economic systems ever devised recognize some form of incentives or another, and most arguments for even the most oppressive forms of government at least try to pack their doctrines in some form of "this is how you obtain the most for yourself." I mean, heck, even Marxism was based on the the idea that for 99% of the people a communal ownership would allow them to provide more for themselves and the other proletariat than at least 19'th century capitalism did for everyone who wasn't a trader or industrialist. Heck, even the medieval price-fixing schemes tried to give you SOME incentive, e.g., you go to heaven for it.

So presenting libertarianism as that overly fuzzy and uninformative generality as to cover almost every system we know of from 3000 BCE to 2011 CE, is really too fuzzy and uninformative.

And that common denominator of every society is not what some of us criticize libertarians for.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

I guess if you want to call the violent, paranoid militia fringe "libertarian", then maybe you could draw some equivalence. Other than that, though, I'm just not seeing it. And even including them among libertarians, that violent fringe really is a fringe, in marked contrast to Marxism.

Really? I don't remember mom being particularly violent, and she never grew up and out of being a Marxist somehow

The fact is, nowadays most Marxists are students who never came any closer to violently overthrowing a tyrant than raiding Icecrown Citadel in World Of Warcraft. And even then probably as the healer

You don't think all those Che t-shirts and mugs and whatnot are bought by hardened guerrilla fighters in the jungle, do you? And not even all Marxists are fans of Che, mind you.

Anyway, you'll find more Marxists on a western university campus than in Moscow during the USSR. In the USA though, they might call themselves "left wing libertarians" because apparently over there advocating communal ownership and equal sharing is somehow more acceptable if you somehow call yourself a "libertarian" than if you call yourself a "Marxist" or "anarchist". Do those look particularly violent to you?

 

[Ziggurat]

Really? I don't remember mom being particularly violent, and she never grew up and out of being a Marxist somehow

I didn't say all Marxists were violent, so that's a strawman. But if you can't recognize how common violence is among Marxists, well, you haven't been paying attention to history.

The fact is, nowadays most Marxists are students who never came any closer to violently overthrowing a tyrant than raiding Icecrown Citadel in World Of Warcraft. And even then probably as the healer

You're basically confining your sample to the US. I see no reason to do that.

Anyway, you'll find more Marxists on a western university campus than in Moscow during the USSR. In the USA though, they might call themselves "left wing libertarians" because apparently over there advocating communal ownership and equal sharing is somehow more acceptable if you somehow call yourself a "libertarian" than if you call yourself a "Marxist" or "anarchist". Do those look particularly violent to you?

What the hell are you even talking about? Communal ownership and equal property distribution isn't "left wing libertarian", it's not libertarian at all.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Except for the fact that if you really look at history, and not just as an excuse for spewing political stereotypes, you'll see that actually most actual revolutions weren't particularly Marxist at all. Most actually followed the same pattern of lower class revolts that happened since long before Marx was even born. In fact, you can see the same pattern in the servile wars in ancient Italy, and that's one thing nobody would blame on Marxism. When the conditions for the poor get too unbearable and for too long, they'll pick up their pitchforks and torches and follow some guy who promises them something better to the castle gates.

(And then occasionally it turns out that he doesn't know what to do once he's beaten the tyrants' armies, except prove Peter's Principle. Someone who got promoted to leader by just being willing to kill whoever stands in his way, unsurprisingly might only be good at killing more people and/or want to kill more people. And if you thought I'm talking about just the likes of Lenin and Mao, try Spartacus too. And that one wasn't a Marxist.)

1. Seeing that as just Marxists being violent is just silly. I can see why people would prefer to see it as that, rather than face reality though, and, again, it's a pattern we see all through history. None of the nobles wanted to think "man, maybe we've been pushing those peasants to the limit", so they invented some BS explanation instead.

In reality the whole story is that of a breaking point. There's only so far you can push people towards bare subsistence and even below, so you can get a bigger castle, before they show up with torches and pitchforks in front of said castle. If you think it's Marxism that made them violent when that happened in Russia, China or Cuba, then you're just missing the point.

2. There's a reason why they added Lenin to Marx and Engels in the USSR. Because the idea that you can have just a vanguard of True Scotsmen... err... True Communists and just shoot whoever didn't get the class consciousness yet, was actually not very Marxist in the first place.

They had to actually rationalize a revolution that wasn't really much like what Marx envisioned, and in a country that wasn't quite at the point where he envisioned that happening either.

Which again should be enough clue that seeing it as the Marxists being violent is pretty much believing that the tail wagged the dog. What they actually had was more like pushing enough people to the point where they wanted to revolt, and then a bunch of them had to figure out how the heck to fit Marx in there.

 

[gnome]

I can tell you the Libertarian answer to Darat's story of his great-grandfather's family, since (unless I missed a post) none have yet spoken up about it:

In a libertarian society, private charity would take care what needs his great-grandfather's family had as a result of the accident, to whatever extent voluntary donors were willing to contribute. Any more assistance than what voluntary donors were willing to cough up is morally wrong to require of others.

A libertarian would claim that this is not a perfect solution, but better than forcing others to pay for it via government programs or forcing the company to do so via regulations.

If I have mischaracterized the libertarian point of view on this, I welcome being corrected.

Personally, I am firmly in disagreement that assistance for the needy should be by voluntary donations only. I would rather we endured the moral complications of tax-provided assistance in pursuit of more consistent social safety nets, as I think it has tangible benefits for everyone.

 

[Garrison]

I would say that they share a similarity in that they both make unfounded assumptions about human nature that will ultimately cause their plans to fail. Basically neither truly seems to understand that avarice and envy are part of the human condition and some people just don't believe in a 'common good'.

 

[Beat]

Hong Kong is the freest market in the world and their GDP has grown roughly 180 times over since they became such, they also have no minimum wage law and their unemployment rate is half that of the United States. The Netherlands, which from my understanding has legalized "victimless crimes" such as drugs and prostitution," has actually run out of criminals to fill most of their prisons and is looking to offer the space to other countries or convert them for other purposes.

Lol Hong Kong. I remember several years ago when the video game "Kingdom Hearts 2" was about to release on the Playstation 2. One of my friends had been in hong Kong and bought a copy of the game before it released. I asked him how, and he showed me a bootleg yellow colored disk.
The police must have not really cared much about copyright laws back then (and they still might not). Regardless, this was a loss for Square-Enix, the company that actually developed/produced the game. If the police were to actually enforce copyright laws, to what extent would they enforce them without infringing on people's liberties?

 

[Chaos]

I can tell you the Libertarian answer to Darat's story of his great-grandfather's family, since (unless I missed a post) none have yet spoken up about it:

In a libertarian society, private charity would take care what needs his great-grandfather's family had as a result of the accident, to whatever extent voluntary donors were willing to contribute. Any more assistance than what voluntary donors were willing to cough up is morally wrong to require of others.

A libertarian would claim that this is not a perfect solution, but better than forcing others to pay for it via government programs or forcing the company to do so via regulations.

If I have mischaracterized the libertarian point of view on this, I welcome being corrected.

Personally, I am firmly in disagreement that assistance for the needy should be by voluntary donations only. I would rather we endured the moral complications of tax-provided assistance in pursuit of more consistent social safety nets, as I think it has tangible benefits for everyone.

Whatever happened to the good old principle "you broke it, you bought it"? The mine owner caused the injury to Darat´s great-grandfather, so he should have to pay for the consequences.