A Thought in Defense of Communism/Socialism

reply to post by ThirdEyeofHorus


I'm not part of any Socialist party and even Socialist Party USA get's it wrong. I've cited many times for you, so have others why is one more time going to be any different? To be honest, I don't feel like digging through all my links at the moment as I'm also doing homework. But shouldn't you being such a rabid anti-socialist have done your research? Etymology? Initial movements?

reply to post by ThirdEyeofHorus

But you keep listening to the propaganda of both the radical leftists and the monied Elites

You wouldn't know radical left if it slapped you in the face. Monied elites? Your assumptions are absurd. The fact that you can relate radical left to monied elites only shows how foolish and blinded by propaganda you are.

which says oh we must tax the wealthy because they sure don't need it

which says, since we're stuck in this ridiculous system of capitalism that creates 'monied elites' let's close the tax loopholes and ensure they pay their taxes into this system that made them so rich in the 1st place.

Warren Buffet

Can take a flying leap...

Originally posted by ThirdEyeofHorus
reply to post by Kali74

 

Here's another excerpt on the Marxist/Leninist strategy from the Forbes magazine

There is another vital point to understand about Marxist-Leninist economics: The greatest damage is done to the middle class. With his customary bloodthirsty malevolence, Lenin said, “The way to crush the bourgeoisie [middle class] is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.”

www.forbes.com...

But you keep listening to the propaganda of both the radical leftists and the monied Elites which says oh we must tax the wealthy because they sure don't need it.....and yet we know that the Warren Buffets of the world though they say tax me bro, they really mean tax everyone else more while I keep my money in my tax shelters.

They have added the terms "middle class" in brackets, when actually bourgeoisie refers to the ruling class in Lenin's and many other marxist writings.

Here is the actual quote,

The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.

www.brainyquote.com...

I'm not too surprised that Forbes was deceptive here.

reply to post by polarwarrior


Wrong, the bourgeoisie even in Marx's time was middle class merchants and business owners.

: bour·geoi·sie
middle class; also plural in construction : members of the middle class

www.merriam-webster.com...

Definition of bourgeoisie the middle class, typically with reference to its perceived materialistic values or conventional attitudes.

oxforddictionaries.com...

I'm sure you would rather it meant the Warren Buffets and the Rockefellers. They are just the high end of the wealthy class. For people like you, you obviously know more than every dictionary....

Here's another one, describing bourgeois as merchants and professional people and LAWYERS

This – the upper echelons of the Third Estate, or non-noble rich people – is the easiest definition that can be given of the bourgeoisie. Some were merchants, others manufacturers, still others professional people, in particular lawyers of various sorts.

www.worldsocialism.org...

Note the emphasis on NON NOBLE

Historically, the mediæval French word bourgeois denoted the inhabitants of the bourgs (walled market-towns), the craftsmen, artisans, merchants, and others, who constituted "the bourgeoisie", they were the socio-economic class between the peasants and the landlords, between the workers and the owners of the means of production. Resultantly, as the economic managers of the (raw) materials, the goods, and the services, and thus the capital (money) produced by the feudal economy, the term "bourgeoisie" evolved to also denote the middle class — the businessmen and businesswomen who accumulated, administered, and controlled the capital that made possible the development of the bourgs into cities.[7]

en.wikipedia.org...

So you can argue all you want here, but the people who are trying to raise taxes are going to raise taxes on all the middle class merchants in the US, while the Warren Buffetts will have their money socked away in tax shelter trusts and Swiss bank accounts. That is what is going to happen regardless of all the silly rhetoric and lies and claiming they want the rich folk to pay "their fair share".

It is never fair when a govt confiscates that which a person makes lawfully and gives it to someone else. I'm not saying that Buffett necessarily made his fortune without compromise, but it is the middle class which will suffer under the burden of higher taxation, and truly they will be ground to a pulp by taxation. Just ask any small business man today. Since lawyers are even in this class of bourgeoisie, lawyers will pay higher taxes too. Everyone will pay more.

Communism is generally hatred of capitalists or business owners. This is why they want the proletariat(the worker bees) to overthrow the bourgeois merchants. But in the end it is really the State which would own the means collectively, because that is the real meaning of Communism, unless you are talking about something which has never existed, because the romanticized version that people here seem to be wanting or talking about is nowhere to be found, as the Soviets found out you have to use force to make things happen. In reality, the workers never own the means of production, and even if they did, can you imagine if everyone just did whatever they wanted, when they wanted and called it worker ownership? It's just not realistic.

In Marxist theory, the dictatorship of the proletariat is the intermediate system between capitalism and communism, when the government is in the process of changing the means of ownership from privatism to collective ownership.[9] In political science, the term "communism" is sometimes used to refer to communist states, a form of government in which the state operates under a one-party system and declares allegiance to Marxism-Leninism or a derivative thereof.[citation needed]

In the Communist Manifesto, Marx does lay out a 10-point plan advising the redistribution of land and production to begin the transition to communism, but he ensured that even this was very general and all-encompassing. It has always been presumed that Marx intended these theories to read this way specifically so that later theorists in specific situations could adapt communism to their own localities and conditions.

en.wikipedia.org...

Marx is considered to be the "father of Communism".

German philosopher Karl Marx saw primitive communism as the original, hunter-gatherer state of humankind from which it arose. For Marx, only after humanity was capable of producing surplus, did private property develop. The idea of a classless society first emerged in Ancient Greece.[10] Plato in his The Republic described it as a state where people shared all their property, wives, and children: "The private and individual is altogether banished from life and things which are by nature private, such as eyes and ears and hands, have become common, and in some way see and hear and act in common, and all men express praise and feel joy and sorrow on the same occasions."[10]

Sounds lovely and fun, huh, sharing wives, nothing private or individual

And then there's this:

At one time or another, various small communist communities existed, generally under the inspiration of Scripture.[13] In the medieval Christian church, for example, some monastic communities and religious orders shared their land and other property (see Religious and Christian communism). These groups often believed that concern with private property was a distraction from religious service to God and neighbour.[citation needed]

I'm sure that will go over well with the seculars, but note that most of the people promoting Socialism and Communism today are quite wealthy. Take Nancy Pelosi, for instance, she is DSA, and quite wealthy, promoted Obamacare quite vigilantly. Warren Buffett pretends he wants to be taxed more. He knows he has more money than the gods, but he likely has most of it protected in trusts and tax shelters. Gates.... well he is philanthropic, but again, if you are going to use your definition of bourgeois....isn't he it? He is busy giving away vaccines laden with sterilants to people in third world countries.
techrights.org...
celebritydialogue.com...:bill-gates-on-reducing-world-population&catid=49:any&Itemid=59

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, along with David Rockefeller’s Rockefeller Foundation, the creators of the GMO biotechnology, are also financing a project called The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) headed by former UN chief, Kofi Annan.

oops there we go... Agenda 21/aka the new Communism with pretty green sounding words.

Originally posted by ThirdEyeofHorus
Wrong, the bourgeoisie even in Marx's time was middle class merchants and business owners.

I'm not talkin about the use of the word in broader society, as I said in my first post I'm talking about the use of the word in Lenins writings (seeing as that is where the quote came from).

In marxist terminology words carry a slightly different meaning to what they do in everyday speech. For instance working class refers to someone who is employed for a wage, not lower class laborers or tradespeople or anything.

At least Wikipedia gives both definitions in their opening paragraph from their article on the word...

In Marxist philosophy, the term bourgeoisie denotes the social class who owns the means of production, and whose societal concerns are the value of property and the preservation of capital, in order to ensure the perdurance of their economic supremacy in society

There you have it, by definition the bourgeoisie own the means of production. Whereas its possible to be a middle class worker (ie employed), not all the middle class in America are business owners with "economic superiority in society".

I found a definition of the marxist meaning in a non-Marxist dictionary for you, seeing as how you love links so much...

bourgeois - (according to Marxist thought) being of the property-owning class and exploitive of the working class

www.thefreedictionary.com...

And the Marxist definition from a marxist, lenin is one of the sources...

Marxist-Leninists define the bourgeoisie or capitalist class as

"...the class of modern capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labour". (Friedrich Engels: Note to: Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels: 'Manifesto of the Communist Party' in: Karl Marx: 'Selected Works', Volume 1; London; 1943; p. 204).

The capitalist class includes persons whose remuneration may come nominally in the form of a salary, but which is in fact due to their position in the capitalist class (e.g., the directors of large companies). It also includes persons who are not employers, but who serve the capitalist class in high administrative positions:

"The latter group contains sections of the population who belong to the big bourgeoisie: all the rentiers (living on the income from capital and real estate...), then part of the intelligentsia, the high military and civil officials, etc. (Vladimir I. Lenin: 'The Development of Capitalism in Russia', in: 'Collected Works', Volume 3; Moscow; 1960; p. 504).

It also includes the dependents of these persons

Don't know what this has to do with anything...

Originally posted by ThirdEyeofHorus

Historically, the mediæval French word bourgeois denoted the inhabitants of the bourgs (walled market-towns), the craftsmen, artisans, merchants, and others, who constituted "the bourgeoisie", they were the socio-economic class between the peasants and the landlords, between the workers and the owners of the means of production.

Because I'm not talking about how the word was used in medieval France! If you read my first post you will see I'm talking about the marxist meaning which Lenin used in his writings.

Originally posted by ThirdEyeofHorus
Wrong

Right back at ya buddy

reply to post by freedomrains


Did I advocate the American system anywhere in my post? NO. I think you should go read it again, unless your fractured American educational system has ensured that you didn't attain a high enough level of education to understand basic sentence structures.

As for taxation, I've lived in countries where the tax rate is as high as 80%. Can't complain, free education, free healthcare, good infrastructure, roads, airports, ports, hospitals, highways, affordable housing, subsidized goods, cheaper petrol, subsidized machinery (especially for farmers), and the list goes on.

Currently, I live in Australia. We have a progressive tax system with the tax free threshold at $18,600 (meaning no one, not even billionaires, pay tax on the first $18,600 they earn in that financial year). From that point on it gradually progresses till around 45% in the highest tax bracket.

Many Americans don't comprehend our tax system, because they have the idiocy of theirs to ingrained into their heads to understand the logicality and rationality of ours. But essentially, I prefer the progressive tax system to the American tax system. Poverty is far lower in Australia, equity far higher, healthcare is readily available and education is cheap (in fact it is technically free, public schools aren't allowed to bar people who do not pay for education from attending the school - however, seeing our educational system is far better than that in the US, almost everyone does pay).

Australia is also far more livable, and our institutions and our system is no where near as socialistic as those of, say, Norway. However, I would love to live in Norway. I think their system is even better. Too bad the climate sucks.