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

[NoDachi]

idk I think communism as a meaningful ideology can survive if you draw a line under the last century and write it off as an abject horrific failure, and analyse it honestly what made it so terrible and see how you can remake it as a credible and matured alternative to capitalistic societies.

If you want to be serious about communism you need to quickly wipe out any historical romantic notions you hold for it.

[yawmwen]

[QUOTE=NoDachi;42878455]idk I think communism as a meaningful ideology can survive if you draw a line under the last century and write it off as an abject horrific failure, and analyse it honestly what made it so terrible and see how you can remake it as a credible and matured alternative to capitalistic societies.

If you want to be serious about communism you need to quickly wipe out any historical romantic notions you hold for it.[/QUOTE]

that's what communists have been doing for the last century.

that's what socialists have been doing for the last century.

[Sobotnik]

[QUOTE=yawmwen;42878442]civil rights movement
labor movement
feminist movement

there's 3 for you.[/QUOTE]

I never knew the Suffragists and MLK went around shooting people.

[NoDachi]

[QUOTE=yawmwen;42878460]that's what communists have been doing for the last century.

that's what socialists have been doing for the last century.[/QUOTE]

Communism has been a failed ideology for the last century so I don't really think thats entirely true.

I'm talking about now.

[===]

[QUOTE=Big Bang;42878396]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[/QUOTE]
This definition is more like communism than socialism. Socialism only means that the means of production (ex. factories) are in the hands of the workers rather than an individual owner. Socialism does not mean things like welfare, though they often (if not always) go with it, and it doesn't mean the abolition of private property.

[MIR]

[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]

It depends on what you define on problematic. Plus warfare has done a lot for humanity technologically, but that's just a side effect that has nothing to do with the social or ideological outcomes.

Warfare in the recent times hasn't done anything but cause bullshit on a large scale, maybe a few hundred years ago what with the American Revolution or Civil War you could say it "solved" something.

It all depends on what you think is a problem and a good solution.

[yawmwen]

there aren't even a ton of authoritarian leftists who even support the ussr anymore and most people tend to regard it as "state-capitalist".

a lot of analysis has been done and i suggest you explore the writings of communists, anarchists, libertarian marxists(is that what you would classify yourself, seed eater) and the general left before you say that it "needs to mature" or needs to "move beyond" the last century.

[fnox]

[QUOTE=yawmwen;42878437]

your definition doesn't even skim the surface of socialism as a family of ideologies.[/QUOTE]

ANY socialism that doesn't have the government having a big stake in the means of production is just not socialism. that's the defining aspect of socialism, and that aspect, is flawed. hell, I'm willing to say that socialism just doesn't mean what you think it means.

[yawmwen]

[QUOTE=NoDachi;42878471]Communism has been a failed ideology for the last century so I don't really think thats entirely true.

I'm talking about now.[/QUOTE]

i am too.

[QUOTE=Sobotnik;42878469]I never knew the Suffragists and MLK went around shooting people.[/QUOTE]

violence wasn't invented with the gun.

[editline]16th November 2013[/editline]

[QUOTE=Big Bang;42878483]ANY socialism that doesn't have the government having a big stake in the means of production is just not socialism. that's the defining aspect of socialism, and that aspect, is flawed. hell, I'm willing to say that socialism just doesn't mean what you think it means.[/QUOTE]

dude did you read the things i posted?

you are talking to a socialist, someone who has read at least [i]a little[/i] about socialist ideology and telling him that he is mistaken on what socialism means.

[Sobotnik]

[QUOTE=yawmwen;42878485]i am too.

violence wasn't invented with the gun.[/QUOTE]

I don't recall the suffragists and MLK going around and beating up people they didn't like in that case then.

[NoDachi]

The suffragists were damn violent :v:

They even bombed shit and attacked politicians with hammers

[[Seed Eater]]

[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.

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.[/QUOTE]

If you need to use a dictionary instead of going to the source then you're [URL="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIeDjjwOFxA"]doing it wrong[/URL].

Also pls give examples of collective ownership that have failed economically thx

pls give evidence that collective ownership = state ownership or that state ownership = socialism

Yes it arises but it doesn't mean that I agree with it. Further a cult of personality is not necessary, give evidence pls. I don't want the M.o.P. to be owned by the state, so you're very clearly not reading what we're saying. Also here is a list:
Anarchist Ukraine
Paris Commune
EZLN controlled Chiapas
portions of Southern Mexico during the Revolution
Sections of Hungary during their Revolution
Sections of Germany during their failed rebellion
Most of Chiapas and parts of Aragon and Basque during the Civil War and Revolution there
Sections of the American South post Civil War where minor freed slave collectives took control of land
Large areas of Russia and Ukraine between the years 1917-1921
Sections of Korea during their Revolution there against Japanese colonial rule
Sections of China during their civil war there

And most of those didn't need the government wow
The reason why authoritarian socialism fails is that it uses the state as a means of controlling the economy, which is fundamentally flawed because they are seizing the economy, not reforming it. The mindset is still there, and imposing socialism by force is not going to change that. Everyone needs to be on board with socialism for it to work, which is exactly why the EZLN and Catalonia work, while the USSR and China et al. failed over time. One can not sustain a socialist economic system in a capitalist political system- i.e. USSR, Venezuela, et al., nor can one sustain a socialist political or economic system without popular ideological support. Socialism is undermined in many ways, and only makes small steps, because it is corrupted not by its own shortcomings but because it is building itself in an establish ideological context without popular support in most cases.

[Sobotnik]

[QUOTE=Big Bang;42878483]ANY socialism that doesn't have the government having a big stake in the means of production is just not socialism. that's the defining aspect of socialism, and that aspect, is flawed. hell, I'm willing to say that socialism just doesn't mean what you think it means.[/QUOTE]

Beyond "Public ownership of the means of production" there is literally no definition for socialism.

I don't even see a single state claiming to be Socialist by the end of the century.

[===]

[QUOTE=U.S.S.R;42878476]Warfare in the recent times hasn't done anything but cause bullshit on a large scale[/QUOTE]
Are you serious?

[Sobotnik]

[QUOTE=NoDachi;42878496]The suffragists were damn violent :v:

They even bombed shit and attacked politicians with hammers[/QUOTE]

Those are the suffragettes you are thinking of.

The vast bulk of the movement was composed of suffragists.

Even then, most suffragettes weren't really violent like that, that was just sensationalized by the newspapers at the time.

[Explosions]

[QUOTE=yawmwen;42878460]that's what communists have been doing for the last century.

that's what socialists have been doing for the last century.[/QUOTE]

"Comrade, proletariat, bourgeois"

You're not really trying that hard then.

[MIR]

[QUOTE====;42878518]Are you serious?[/QUOTE]

There's Libya which was more or less a success, but I thought that maybe he didn't really consider it one because of the problems they're still having with militia groups.

[editline]16th November 2013[/editline]

Then there's those operations they had going on in Africa, but I'm not too sure about those.

He is probably talking about Afghanistan or Pakistan and all the other "larger" scale conflicts in the name of "righteousness" or whatever.

[[Seed Eater]]

[QUOTE=Big Bang;42878483]ANY socialism that doesn't have the government having a big stake in the means of production is just not socialism. that's the defining aspect of socialism, and that aspect, is flawed. hell, I'm willing to say that socialism just doesn't mean what you think it means.[/QUOTE]

Oh come the fuck on.

Here, let me show you my list of references that I have sitting on my bookshelf:
The Wobblies, 1999 Patrick Renshaw
The S Word, 2011 John Nichols
Anarcho-Syndicalism, 1938 Rudolf Rocker*
An Unfinished Revolution, 2011 Robin Blackburn
Capital Vol 1, Marx*
1917: Russia's Year of Revolution, Roy Bainton
The Essential Karl Marx, Viking Portable Library*
Comrades!, Robert Service
The Red Flag, David Priestland
Anarchism, David Guerin*
Capital Vol 2, Marx*
State and revoltuion, V.I. Lenin*
What is to be Done?, V.I. Lenin*
Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution, Stephen Cohen
The crimes of Stalin, Nigel cawthorne
Leon Trotsky, Ronald Segal
Vision on Fire, David Porter*
The Idea of Communism, Zizek and Douzinas*
Trotsky, Rick Geary
Trotsky and Marxism, Tariq Ali
Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, V.I. Lenin*

Further, here's my digital library:
History of the Makhnovist Movement, Peter Arshinov*
The Unknown Revolution, Volin*
Gramsci and Globalization, William Robinson
The Russian Tragedy, Alexander Berkman*
Homage to Catalonia, Orwell*

*Primary sources or contain primary sources in leftist theory

Plus I've read shitloads more that I don't own a copy of. And you're here trying to tell me, by extension from yawmwen, that we aren't correctly defining socialism?

[thisispain]

this ideological dilly-dallying about is a waste of time rofl

communism cannot exist anymore because theres no international labour movement anymore. in this day and age to become communist is to become isolated from the world, disconnected from global price markets. China's change in policy isn't revisionism, its survival.

[[Seed Eater]]

[QUOTE=Explosions;42878550]"Comrade, proletariat, bourgeois"

You're not really trying that hard then.[/QUOTE]

There's really no reason to diavow perfectly sound language still being used in an academic setting for this sort of class analysis. The reappropritation of words is a capitalist [URL="http://anarchism.pageabode.com/afaq/secI1.html"]thing[/URL].

[editline]15th November 2013[/editline]

[QUOTE=thisispain;42878621]this ideological dilly-dallying about is a waste of time rofl

communism cannot exist anymore because theres no international labour movement anymore. in this day and age to become communist is to become isolated from the world, disconnected from global price markets. China's change in policy isn't revisionism, its survival.[/QUOTE]

Yes

[MIR]

[QUOTE=thisispain;42878621]this ideological dilly-dallying about is a waste of time rofl

communism cannot exist anymore because theres no international labour movement anymore. in this day and age to become communist is to become isolated from the world, disconnected from global price markets. China's change in policy isn't revisionism, its survival.[/QUOTE]

The beginning of the information age and the birth of globalization sealed the deal.

And the huge increases in the standard of living throughout the west and most of the pacific rim as a result of all of that means Anarchy isn't going to happening in any first world countries for an indefinite amount of time, no matter how "oppressive" people might see the NSA or the UK's monitoring laws.

[thisispain]

[QUOTE=Big Bang;42878483]ANY socialism that doesn't have the government having a big stake in the means of production is just not socialism. that's the defining aspect of socialism[/QUOTE]

i dont think you have a clue what you are talking about
socialism is very simple, social ownership of the means of production. the idea of creating a society where abundance and social welfare are more important than profit.

socialism can exist in anything from a completely anarchist state to a repressive totalitarian regime.

[editline]15th November 2013[/editline]

[QUOTE=Explosions;42878550]"Comrade, proletariat, bourgeois"

You're not really trying that hard then.[/QUOTE]

if we replace comrade with 同志 would that help

[SgtCr4zyGunz]

[QUOTE=Explosions;42878550]"Comrade, proletariat, bourgeois"

You're not really trying that hard then.[/QUOTE]

i'm sure the comrade thing was just a little joke lol.

and proletariat, bourgeoisie, etc. are all legitimate terms used in leftist economic theory and if you're going to stereotype on that then that's kind of your problem not leftists. it's pretty intellectually dishonest of you guys to go "LOL COMMIES" and criticize word choice in order to deflect the argument.

[Explosions]

Never said the terms weren't valid, but using them links your ideology to the movements of the past. That was what I was referring to.

[Lachz0r]

[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]

i'd like to consider myself a pacifist too but i think like yawman said, there comes a time where you either bow down or fight back

[editline]16th November 2013[/editline]

if you like the status quo i guess it's fine

[Sobotnik]

[QUOTE=Lachz0r;42878915]i'd like to consider myself a pacifist too but i think like yawman said, there comes a time where you either bow down or fight back[/QUOTE]

What sort of fighting back? Does it entail killing people?

[Lachz0r]

[QUOTE=Sobotnik;42878954]What sort of fighting back? Does it entail killing people?[/QUOTE]

i guess that depends on the severity of the situation

[Sobotnik]

[QUOTE=Lachz0r;42878975]i guess that depends on the severity of the situation[/QUOTE]

If the country is a democracy and the conservatives are voted in and end up raising retirement ages to 68 or something. Then?

[HumanAbyss]

[QUOTE=Sobotnik;42879018]If the country is a democracy and the conservatives are voted in and end up raising retirement ages to 68 or something. Then?[/QUOTE]

No

I don't think that's what they're talking about

[Sobotnik]

[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;42879120]No

I don't think that's what they're talking about[/QUOTE]

Well when?

When is killing people justified?