Aeolius posted:

Odobenidae posted:

Please do not inflict the punishment of something awful forums membership upon others.

rudatron posted:

Point was you haven't expended any effort in trying to justify why the nomenklatura doesn't count as another class associated with production, other than the say repeatedly, 'well they're not capitalists'. Is it because they did literal work? Because spoiler alert: capitalists also work. You think they just sit around all day, doing nothing? Nope, they do perform actual labor, and that is more and more true the smaller the business is. Again, the party has zero accountability, chooses its own members and has special privileges, also it has complete control over the direction of production. How is that not another 'class'?

I also want to make a few things clear: at no point did I ever say that the USSR wasn't socialist because it was bureaucratic or centralized. Bureaucracy is effectively the State Of The Art if you're dealing with an organization larger than a book club, it's existence is a fact of life for any modern political system. Similarly, levels of centralization have to do with arguments about economies of scale more than they do anything else. My argument is that classifying the party as inseparable from the workers is nothing but propaganda, and idealist at that - at the basic material reality of the USSR, members of the party were not treated and did not act like the vast majority of the population.

Imagine I come to your house, and start driving your car around, while preventing you from ever driving it. It's not like I ignore your interests, I do your shopping and chauffeur you around when you need, but I don't ever let you drive it. You call the police, they come, but like a good communist (in your opinion), they determine that since we are both similar, my control is automatically in your interests. Also it turns out I'm a better driver than you, so everything works out in the end, right? You protest that you should at least have final say on whoever drives your car, even if that's not yourself for practical reasons, but he points out that that isn't necessary, ergo if you continue to protest, he will arrest you, to protect your property, from yourself. Do you own that car?

The point about soviet goods is to try and impress that your argument (that people would give up the situation now to return to the USSR) isn't strictly true. That's not to downplay or dismiss any of the advantages of the USSR (which did exist), but to point out that it's not necessarily the case that the people today would have been materially better of, had it continued.

Shayu posted:

Communist ideology is like a pyramid scam, you join apart of it first in the hopes you will end up on top and get all the luxuries but first you need to invite your friends and family to make the revolution. I am not a communist because I am unlucky, I would always be on the bottom just eating some potatoes and waiting in the line for soup. I already do that.

Baloogan posted:

*Waits 7 years to buy a car*

Baloogan posted:

*Waits 7 years to buy a car*

Baloogan posted:

sovern self replicating war machines locked in eternal conflict is totally our future

Odobenidae posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nWhQO6joQs

DOCTOR ZIMBARDO posted:

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2017/jan/14/aid-in-reverse-how-poor-countries-develop-rich-countries cool article about imperialism here

DOCTOR ZIMBARDO posted:

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2017/jan/14/aid-in-reverse-how-poor-countries-develop-rich-countries cool article about imperialism here

Prav posted:

it's amazing how much criticism trump gets for not wanting to murder all russians

rudatron posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erw1JcWrUTs

Dreddout posted:

i don't uunderstand what this has to do with the dialect...

rudatron posted:

Point was you haven't expended any effort in trying to justify why the nomenklatura doesn't count as another class associated with production, other than the say repeatedly, 'well they're not capitalists'. Is it because they did literal work? Because spoiler alert: capitalists also work. You think they just sit around all day, doing nothing? Nope, they do perform actual labor, and that is more and more true the smaller the business is. Again, the party has zero accountability, chooses its own members and has special privileges, also it has complete control over the direction of production. How is that not another 'class'?

I also want to make a few things clear: at no point did I ever say that the USSR wasn't socialist because it was bureaucratic or centralized. Bureaucracy is effectively the State Of The Art if you're dealing with an organization larger than a book club, it's existence is a fact of life for any modern political system. Similarly, levels of centralization have to do with arguments about economies of scale more than they do anything else. My argument is that classifying the party as inseparable from the workers is nothing but propaganda, and idealist at that - at the basic material reality of the USSR, members of the party were not treated and did not act like the vast majority of the population.

Imagine I come to your house, and start driving your car around, while preventing you from ever driving it. It's not like I ignore your interests, I do your shopping and chauffeur you around when you need, but I don't ever let you drive it. You call the police, they come, but like a good communist (in your opinion), they determine that since we are both similar, my control is automatically in your interests. Also it turns out I'm a better driver than you, so everything works out in the end, right? You protest that you should at least have final say on whoever drives your car, even if that's not yourself for practical reasons, but he points out that that isn't necessary, ergo if you continue to protest, he will arrest you, to protect your property, from yourself. Do you own that car?

The point about soviet goods is to try and impress that your argument (that people would give up the situation now to return to the USSR) isn't strictly true. That's not to downplay or dismiss any of the advantages of the USSR (which did exist), but to point out that it's not necessarily the case that the people today would have been materially better of, had it continued.

R. Guyovich posted:

you ever think about how money is just, like, paper

asdf32 posted:

Heh

Pener Kropoopkin posted:

What if, instead of having a currency backed by credit - we had a hard currency made of a precious commodity?

Peel posted:

there's some marxist theorists who are goldbugs and i've never been able to determine quite why

i assume it's some combination of attachment to an assumption of a material standard in marx due to the realities of his time, and the occasional marxist habit of adopting rightist critiques of institutional capitalism but with a 'and that's why capitalism is unfixable' spin