Venezuela jails 100 bourgeois capitalist parasites in crackdown on price-gouging - Polidicks

[QUOTE=Lachz0r;42877845]but what about the socialist policies of countries like denmark & norway? i really think that in cases like this it IS more a failure of the government itself rather than the policies it claims to have[/QUOTE] nordic democracies are only socialist in the sense that they have social programs. i'm not heartless, I believe that social programs for everyone should exist, they're necessary, but they're not even close to socialist, lacking the very essence of the whole thing, which is social ownership of the means of production. nordic democracies have very limited control of their economy, most of it lies in the private sector. hell, i'm willing to say that just going by the numbers, nordic democracies have the fairest governmental systems in the world. [QUOTE=yawmwen;42877879]this socialism you are talking about is a facade. i'll quote chomsky for this: "When the world's two great propaganda systems agree on some doctrine, it requires some intellectual effort to escape its shackles. One such doctrine is that the society created by Lenin and Trotsky and molded further by Stalin and his successors has some relation to socialism in some meaningful or historically accurate sense of this concept. In fact, if there is a relation, it is the relation of contradiction... ...The Soviet leadership thus portrays itself as socialist to protect its right to wield the club, and Western ideologists adopt the same pretense in order to forestall the threat of a more free and just society. This joint attack on socialism has been highly effective in undermining it in the modern period." [url]http://www.chomsky.info/articles/1986----.htm[/url][/QUOTE] no, it's just conveniently not socialism. here, just a few further posts down, you have a socialist claiming that russia and china have socialist governments that work and that reformist socialism of venezuela and ecuador and such doesn't work. you can't decide it's not socialism just because it doesn't work. [QUOTE='[Seed Eater];42877953']Well, but the Paris Commune, Catalonia, Makhnovia, Chiapas, did work. You can't really say this is fair because as a socialist would know, quite literally, only two version of socialism have been put into wide-scale practice, and those are at the reformist (Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, etc etc) and the Leninist (Russia, China, Korea, etc etc etc) camps, which are only two forms of socialism that vary quite differently than the majority of socialist thought for most of its history. If you're going to criticize socialism, criticize it for what deserves criticism. What you have in Venezuela is a rosy version of social democracy, and you could hardly call it Marxist, if at all. I don't hold reservations that Venezuela sucks, but I also wouldn't consider Venezuela developed socialism. To give a comparison: If protestants separated from the Catholic Church, which in this analogy never actually gained power except in small circumstances where it was quite successful, and formed their own form of Christianity, and then it went on to take over half the world and sucked then entirety of its time in power, wouldn't you, as a Catholic, Anabaptist, Assyrian, Anglican, or Orthodox, be angry that every attack on your beliefs was done on the basis of Protestantism? Even if you didn't support Protestantism, or merely thought it was a step better than paganism, wouldn't it be fundamentally incorrect to start claiming that every Christian who wasn't Protestant is just making excuses that Christianity doesn't work, because gull darnit you've seen Christianity (Protestantism) and you know it sucks?[/QUOTE] all of the things you mentioned collapsed, literally. hell, most of them were guerilla shit that just didn't collapse under it's own weight because there was no weight to collapse on, and the more stable forms of government just eclipsed them. there's a point to be made in Russia and China having major economic reforms after being self described socialists after many years, North Korea being one of the poorest countries in the world, and Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia statistically (so long as you don't take the numbers that they themselves give out, considering that the gap between what the government reports and what foreign analysts see tends to be quite large) proven to be worse off now that they have any branch of socialism governing them. you claim that the form of socialism you follow works, but it doesn't exist. it's wishful thinking. I criticize socialism for what it is, I don't want the government to own my shit, I don't want the government to stick its hands where they don't belong, I don't want the government to dictate how useful I am as a person, nor how my future is set out to be, I don't want to work on a god damn field if I can help it, and I don't need no fucking personality cult figure to dictate what's right and what's wrong for me. socialism, is bullshit, it's a lie made to get votes from the poor and uneducated with false promises of free riches, free meals and free houses, it's playing with their anger towards their fellow people to fool them into letting some crook into leading their countries. if you take the parts that don't work out of socialism, you end up with nothing. socialism, as an economic doctrine, is flawed in it's core.

bail me out pls

[QUOTE=Big Bang;42878156]nordic democracies are only socialist in the sense that they have social programs. i'm not heartless, I believe that social programs for everyone should exist, they're necessary, but they're not even close to socialist, lacking the very essence of the whole thing, which is social ownership of the means of production. nordic democracies have very limited control of their economy, most of it lies in the private sector. hell, i'm willing to say that just going by the numbers, nordic democracies have the fairest governmental systems in the world. no, it's just conveniently not socialism. here, just a few further posts down, you have a socialist claiming that russia and china have socialist governments that work and that reformist socialism of venezuela and ecuador and such doesn't work. you can't decide it's not socialism just because it doesn't work. all of the things you mentioned collapsed, literally. hell, most of them were guerilla shit that just didn't collapse under it's own weight because there was no weight to collapse on, and the more stable forms of government just eclipsed them. there's a point to be made in Russia and China having major economic reforms after being self described socialists after many years, North Korea being one of the poorest countries in the world, and Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia statistically (so long as you don't take the numbers that they themselves give out, considering that the gap between what the government reports and what foreign analysts see tends to be quite large) proven to be worse off now that they have any branch of socialism governing them. you claim that the form of socialism you follow works, but it doesn't exist. it's wishful thinking. I criticize socialism for what it is, I don't want the government to own my shit, I don't want the government to stick its hands where they don't belong, I don't want the government to dictate how useful I am as a person, nor how my future is set out to be, I don't want to work on a god damn field if I can help it, and I don't need no fucking personality cult figure to dictate what's right and what's wrong for me. socialism, is bullshit, it's a lie made to get votes from the poor and uneducated with false promises of free riches, free meals and free houses, it's playing with their anger towards their fellow people to fool them into letting some crook into leading their countries. if you take the parts that don't work out of socialism, you end up with nothing. socialism, as an economic doctrine, is flawed in it's core.[/QUOTE] ok before you go any further, can you please define socialism because you aren't actually really talking about socialism in any broad sense but you are talking about state-capitalism and authoritarian socialism.

[QUOTE=Big Bang;42878156] all of the things you mentioned collapsed, literally. hell, most of them were guerilla shit that just didn't collapse under it's own weight because there was no weight to collapse on, and the more stable forms of government just eclipsed them. there's a point to be made in Russia and China having major economic reforms after being self described socialists after many years, North Korea being one of the poorest countries in the world, and Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia statistically (so long as you don't take the numbers that they themselves give out, considering that the gap between what the government reports and what foreign analysts see tends to be quite large) proven to be worse off now that they have any branch of socialism governing them. you claim that the form of socialism you follow works, but it doesn't exist. it's wishful thinking. I criticize socialism for what it is, I don't want the government to own my shit, I don't want the government to stick its hands where they don't belong, I don't want the government to dictate how useful I am as a person, nor how my future is set out to be, I don't want to work on a god damn field if I can help it, and I don't need no fucking personality cult figure to dictate what's right and what's wrong for me. socialism, is bullshit, it's a lie made to get votes from the poor and uneducated with false promises of free riches, free meals and free houses, it's playing with their anger towards their fellow people to fool them into letting some crook into leading their countries. if you take the parts that don't work out of socialism, you end up with nothing. socialism, as an economic doctrine, is flawed in it's core.[/QUOTE] Well, Chiapas hasn't. Further, I don't want any of those things and neither do literally most socialist thinkers pre-1932. And yet somehow I'm a socialist that can get along with and talk with most socialists and agree with most of them. Should I restate my analogy for you, because you're attacking protestantism and not christianity.

[QUOTE=Lachz0r;42877845]but what about the socialist policies of countries like denmark & norway?[/QUOTE] Denmark is going downhill and Norway is an efficient country with alot of oil. [QUOTE='[Seed Eater];42877953']Well, but the Paris Commune, Catalonia, Makhnovia, Chiapas, did work. [/QUOTE] You can't really say they prove an ideology when its governments (lackof) have only lasted 2 years. Authoritarian Communism worked wonders for a few countries in their early years. [QUOTE]Despite being rich in resources, Chiapas, along with Oaxaca and Guerrero, lags behind the rest of the country in almost all socioeconomic indicators.[64] As of 2005, there were 889,420 residential units, with 71% having running water, 77.3% having sewerage, and 93.6% having electricity.[/QUOTE]

Communism is dead, get over it.

[QUOTE=Sobotnik;42878219]Communism is dead, get over it.[/QUOTE] it never lived, but it will one day if i have anything to do with it.

[QUOTE=yawmwen;42878232]it never lived, but it will one day if i have anything to do with it.[/QUOTE] I have no problem with Communists, unless they try to justify killing someone.

[QUOTE=Sobotnik;42878239]I have no problem with Communists, unless they try to justify killing someone.[/QUOTE] i have no problem with capitalists, until they justify an institution of violence and coercion. oh wait so i guess i do have a problem with capitalists =\

[QUOTE=yawmwen;42878248]i have no problem with capitalists, until they justify an institution of violence and coercion. oh wait so i guess i do have a problem with capitalists =\[/QUOTE] And the solution is to kill?

[QUOTE=Sobotnik;42878264]And the solution is to kill?[/QUOTE] the solution is to use self defense to dismantle violent institutions by whatever means is effective and moral.

[QUOTE=Rangergxi;42878199]Denmark is going downhill and Norway is an efficient country with alot of oil. You can't really say they prove an ideology when its governments (lackof) have only lasted 2 years. Authoritarian Communism worked wonders for a few countries in their early years.[/QUOTE] Except that most of Chiapas is still technically under Mexican government control and this isn't an indicator of the revolutionary forces there, this is an indicator that this is a neglected, traditionally backwards part of a heavily agricultured, heavily jungled area of the country that literally has always lagged behind and has and still lives in third world conditions within a second-world country. When I say Chiapas I was referring to the EZLN controlled sectors, which have been acting to introduce schooling, agricultural reform, and collective ownership and have generally been successful, with the exception of the coffee collectives that were disbanded because of bureaucratic corruption. Most of the actions of the government o aid in the socioeconomic development of the region have fell flat because they are shrouded counterinsurgency programs. The EZLN insurgency has been in place for 19 years with good action so far. While I make no claim that they would have been effective in the long run, the fact of the matter is that they, esp. revolutionary Catalonia, enacted socioeconomic reform that had promising results and I see no reason why that would not be continued. And I agree that it authoritarian socialism worked well in the early years, but failed in the long run because as any 19th and 18th century political theorist would tell you, dictatorships are effective and awesome so long as the dictatorship functions.

[QUOTE=yawmwen;42878232]it never lived, but it will one day if i have anything to do with it.[/QUOTE] ;_;7 [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2YlbiyiuMc[/media] [editline]16th November 2013[/editline] [QUOTE=yawmwen;42878268]the solution is to use self defense to dismantle violent institutions by whatever means is effective and moral.[/QUOTE] how do you dismantle capitalism through self defence

[QUOTE=yawmwen;42878268]the solution is to use self defense to dismantle violent institutions by whatever means is effective and moral.[/QUOTE] How do you destroy an entire economic system by defending yourself from people hurting you? [QUOTE=NoDachi;42878273];_;7 [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2YlbiyiuMc[/media] [editline]16th November 2013[/editline] how do you dismantle capitalism through self defence[/QUOTE] I prefer this one: [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGofoatz-20[/media]

[QUOTE=NoDachi;42878273];_;7 [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2YlbiyiuMc[/media] [editline]16th November 2013[/editline] how do you dismantle capitalism through self defence[/QUOTE] Because it's a collection of subjugating, imposing, coercive institutions that take away the value of your labor, and use economic violence (and when the institutions fail, forceful violence) as a means of imposing their will. That is, they take from you what you make, they take from you what you deserve, and they impose on you what you do not agree to. When they do not get what they want, then they shoot and stab you or they put you behind bars and take away your freedom. When it suits them, they topple governments. When you refuse to subject to them, they stare you and freeze you in the streets.

[QUOTE=NoDachi;42878273]how do you dismantle capitalism through self defence[/QUOTE] that's a complicated question with a complicated answer depending on what form of insurrection you want to look at. i personally like to believe a policy of nonviolent insurrection via agitation of communities and erosion of government legitimacy lay a great foundation but ultimately it will be the responsibility of those in the communities to pick up guns and defend their revolution from police, military, and capitalist alike who want to enforce their system of institutional violence on the masses.

so like the wako siege

Besides the rhetoric, how do you stop capitalism at its root? I.e when a farmer sells excess grain to an artisan in return for some new cooking pots, and they refuse to give their goods to other people unless they have something they want, how do you prevent this?

[QUOTE=yawmwen;42878297]that's a complicated question with a complicated answer depending on what form of insurrection you want to look at. i personally like to believe a policy of nonviolent insurrection via agitation of communities and erosion of government legitimacy lay a great foundation but ultimately it will be the responsibility of those in the communities to pick up guns and defend their revolution from police, military, and capitalist alike who want to enforce their system of institutional violence on the masses.[/QUOTE] As an aside to this, as a syndicalist I would prefer to see militant workers' unions seize the means of production over time and create the economic institution of socialism from within capitalism. Roughly the same concept, but as a Marxist to yawmwen's anarchist, I put more emphasis on the economic aspects of socialism. While there's nothing wrong with community structuring, economic foundations are where it's at for me.

[QUOTE='[Seed Eater];42878325']As an aside to this, as a syndicalist I would prefer to see militant workers' unions seize the means of production over time and create the economic institution of socialism from within capitalism. Roughly the same concept, but as a Marxist to yawmwen's anarchist, I put more emphasis on the economic aspects of socialism. While there's nothing wrong with community structuring, economic foundations are where it's at for me.[/QUOTE] So you intend for a series of labour monopolies to be created, thus increasing the price of labour to stupendously high levels? How do you prevent people from taking advantage of increased wages and/or building machinery and other labour saving devices, or the encouragement of immigration?

[QUOTE='[Seed Eater];42878325']As an aside to this, as a syndicalist I would prefer to see militant workers' unions seize the means of production over time and create the economic institution of socialism from within capitalism. Roughly the same concept, but as a Marxist to yawmwen's anarchist, I put more emphasis on the economic aspects of socialism. While there's nothing wrong with community structuring, economic foundations are where it's at for me.[/QUOTE] either way there will come a point where any revolutionary movement that hopes to have success will need to violently defend their revolution from reaction and state. nonviolent insurrection is great. however, eventually the thugs and pigs with guns and bombs will be destroying everything you have created and you can either bow to them or shoot them.

Give me a just war.

I'm not gonna take sides but violence is not objectively wrong and killing or using violence to impose an ideology is not objectively wrong. You can say it is objectively wrong, but it isn't. It can be really damaging to many people and ultimately end up as just a plain disaster, but whether or not it is wrong is up to the hands of the individual, not the humanist or whathaveyou populace that believes in natural law.

[QUOTE=Sobotnik;42878321]Besides the rhetoric, how do you stop capitalism at its root? I.e when a farmer sells excess grain to an artisan in return for some new cooking pots, and they refuse to give their goods to other people unless they have something they want, how do you prevent this?[/QUOTE] Why would we stop this? Trade is not unsocialist, the private control of property is. When those who hoard hoard, then those who need will take. The point of socialism, from my view (and yawmwen can feel free to disagree with this, we are of course of different tendencies), is to create an economic institution whereby goods get where they need based on need. If that means that trade of personal property is needed, then sure, let it happen. But relative excess is what needs to be stopped. Marx, of course, held the small artisan, whose entire labor went into his product, and the product of which he was free to sell or keep as he saw fit, in high regard relative to the economic classes of the day. And of course you're going to do the whole "but how do you do need" thing and we'll get into that conversation for the eighth time. Preferably, the need to directly trade goods would be eliminated so no one would need to trade their goods for pans, but an intermediary of collective stores or something along those lines could be used instead.

[QUOTE=yawmwen;42878183]ok before you go any further, can you please define socialism because you aren't actually really talking about socialism in any broad sense but you are talking about state-capitalism and authoritarian socialism.[/QUOTE] so·cial·ism noun \ˈsō-shə-ˌli-zəm\ A way of organizing a society in which major industries are owned and controlled by the government rather than by individual people and companies 1. any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods 2. a. a system of society or group living in which there is no private property b. a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state that's what I'm referring to as socialism, and that's what I'm saying that doesn't work, that, as a core, doesn't work, and it has been proven to not work, if you ditch that core tenet then you no longer have socialism. the state should NOT own everything, and private property should NOT be outlawed, planned economies have not worked in the past and they will not work in the future. [QUOTE='[Seed Eater];42878195']Well, Chiapas hasn't. Further, I don't want any of those things and neither do literally most socialist thinkers pre-1932. And yet somehow I'm a socialist that can get along with and talk with most socialists and agree with most of them. Should I restate my analogy for you, because you're attacking protestantism and not christianity.[/QUOTE] Chiapas exists as part of Mexico, the fact that the Zapatist guerillas still exist but unarmed doesn't mean that it's a system that hasn't collapsed. Chiapas is also poor as shit. you may not want that part of socialism, but guess what, it arises no matter what, because there's just no way to make socialist reforms without a cult of personality a la Chavez (where people don't complain because they still fear Chavez will punish them somehow), or authoritarianism where you arbitrarily take the shit that people rightfully own for the little oligarchy of the government, or arrest dissidents. you don't like that, do you? but you can't name a single country, or any sort of actual country that follows the benign, benevolent socialism where the means of production are just magically granted to the state without anybody complaining. your system doesn't exist, and when it exists, it becomes what you hate. ergo, it's a flawed policy, and you can't get it to work in any other way that doesn't turn into what you hate.

Ideology is the basis for society, and it needs to be imposed forcefully sometimes. Complain all you want, that's how it works, and you're being intellectually dishonest by calling it objectively wrong.

[QUOTE=U.S.S.R;42878397]Ideology is the basis for society, and it needs to be imposed forcefully sometimes. Complain all you want, that's how it works, and you're being intellectually dishonest by calling it objectively wrong.[/QUOTE] I'm a pacifist. I don't think there can be any justification for any form of warfare or violent revolution because there has never been a single violent conflict in the history of humanity that has resolved a problem.

[QUOTE=Sobotnik;42878373]Give me a just war.[/QUOTE] the class war. no war but the class war. [QUOTE=Big Bang;42878396]so·cial·ism noun \ˈsō-shə-ˌli-zəm\ A way of organizing a society in which major industries are owned and controlled by the government rather than by individual people and companies 1. any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods 2. a. a system of society or group living in which there is no private property b. a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state that's what I'm referring to as socialism, and that's what I'm saying that doesn't work, that, as a core, doesn't work, and it has been proven to not work, if you ditch that core tenet then you no longer have socialism. the state should NOT own everything, and private property should NOT be outlawed, planned economies have not worked in the past and they will not work in the future. [/QUOTE] lol don't use a damn dictionary to define socialism. [quote]Socialism is an economic system characterised by social ownership of the means of production and co-operative management of the economy.[1] "Social ownership" may refer to cooperative enterprises, common ownership, state ownership, citizen ownership of equity, or any combination of these.[2] There are many varieties of socialism and there is no single definition encapsulating all of them.[3] They differ in the type of social ownership they advocate, the degree to which they rely on markets or planning, how management is to be organised within productive institutions, and the role of the state in constructing socialism.[4][/quote] [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism[/url] [quote]Libertarian socialism (sometimes called social anarchism[1][2] or left-libertarianism)[3][4] is a group of political philosophies that promote a non-hierarchical, non-bureaucratic society without private property in the means of production. Libertarian socialists believe in converting present-day private productive property into common or public goods, while retaining respect for personal property.[5] Libertarian socialism is opposed to coercive forms of social organization. It promotes free association in place of government and opposes the social relations of capitalism, such as wage labor.[6] The term libertarian socialism is used by some socialists to differentiate their philosophy from state socialism,[7][8] and by some as a synonym for anarchism.[1][2][9][/quote] [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism[/url] your definition doesn't even skim the surface of socialism as a family of ideologies.

[QUOTE=U.S.S.R;42878397]Ideology is the basis for society, and it needs to be imposed forcefully sometimes. Complain all you want, that's how it works, and you're being intellectually dishonest by calling it objectively wrong.[/QUOTE] i really hope you never have kids. this is exactly what an abusive parent is all about. hell I really hope you don't have a pet either.

[QUOTE=Sobotnik;42878427]I'm a pacifist. I don't think there can be any justification for any form of warfare or violent revolution because there has never been a single violent conflict in the history of humanity that has resolved a problem.[/QUOTE] civil rights movement labor movement feminist movement there's 3 for you.