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caps on caps on caps posted:But what do you think would happen if the next executive and the majority of the legislative in Germany were literal, full on communists with half a brain? It would simply put the country on a path toward communism, because people in those 0,2% parties are believers. They are not in it for the fame. So yeah, given the right party leadership, and the support of the population, I do think we'd get there. Will you have your classless society while Switzerland chills next door. Probably not. But I never claimed this. Your entire argument prior to this was that if people in a country wanted communism they would just vote for a communist party and that party would bring communism, and now you are saying you never said that, so colour me some shade of confused here. caps on caps on caps posted:Edit: And to me being anti communism, as stated earlier. Apparently we have never observed real communism nor socialism anywhere in the world, and it seems I lack the imagination to see how the received literature translates to a different practical application to what was before. It certainly is not your job to convince me and my rasin-sized brain. I just see a lot of hype and I don't understand how it would practically work. Socialism, economically, means two things; worker ownership of the means of production, and the mobilisation of these means to the benefit of society, rather than in the pursuit of the accumulation of capital. The stalinist argument as to why the USSR was socialist would be that the state acted as a representative of the proletariat, and by transitive property the means of production were owned by the working class; I'll leave it to you to decide what part of that is bogus. You could stretch that definition to apply to anything left-of-centre. A hardcore social-democrat could argue that they are representing the working class, and therefore their governments, as stewards of capitalism, can claim to be the vehicle of a worker-controlled economy, and where capitalisms excesses harm society, they intervene to prevent that (again, whether that meets the criteria stated above, I'll leave as a thought experiment).
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Jan 23, 2019 10:35
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YF-23 posted:Your entire argument prior to this was that if people in a country wanted communism they would just vote for a communist party and that party would bring communism, and now you are saying you never said that, so colour me some shade of confused here. No I am still saying that? I just never said that as soon as votes were in, a magical flip would switch and country would immediately be communist. So I guess I have to change my statement: you can vote for a communist party and bring your country on the path to communism as long as the leaders of said party are not dumb and politically inept. If no such party is to be found, then I retract my statement. I also need to amend, given the prior discussion, that failure is possible. YF-23 posted:Socialism, economically, means two things; worker ownership of the means of production, and the mobilisation of these means to the benefit of society, rather than in the pursuit of the accumulation of capital. The stalinist argument as to why the USSR was socialist would be that the state acted as a representative of the proletariat, and by transitive property the means of production were owned by the working class; I'll leave it to you to decide what part of that is bogus. You could stretch that definition to apply to anything left-of-centre. A hardcore social-democrat could argue that they are representing the working class, and therefore their governments, as stewards of capitalism, can claim to be the vehicle of a worker-controlled economy, and where capitalisms excesses harm society, they intervene to prevent that (again, whether that meets the criteria stated above, I'll leave as a thought experiment). The first part of your definition is clear, the second part I don't get. What does "benefit of society" mean specifically? For example, the current constitution of the very capitalist country Germany states that "Ownership (i.e. Captial) is an obligation. Its (capital's) use must benefit society". I know that this sentiment was echoed both after WWI and by the creators of the current constitution after WW2. In contrast, I am not aware that accumulation of capital was a stated goal in that debate. Since the difficulty seems to be to the definition of benefit of society, it is not clear to me how "benefit of society" for socialists differs from "benefit of society" by these "capitalist" thinkers. Frankly, you guys seem to have the same intention! The latter part of your text gives two examples of possibly existing actual socialism. I am aware that there is a lot of debate about the USSR being actual socialists, for example. My simplistic opinion on the matter is that any existing and historic case that was labeled socialism does not seem to be very appealing, in particular the iterations we saw in this very country a few years ago. I guess the difference must be the "benefit of society" part, where I suppose contemporary communist theory has reached some sort of consensus on what that means, even though it seems very nebolous to me. Then again, I am not a intelligent person irl so
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Jan 23, 2019 17:04
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Benefit:socialism may not murder the planet,maybe. Capitalism,by all available evidence,definitely will.
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Jan 23, 2019 17:30
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The planet will be fine. Won't be very hospitable to human life if we continue our current trajectory though.
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Jan 23, 2019 18:45
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Theoretically, the German system is designed so that you can't abolish it from within. If any anti-constitutional party/organization gains enough influence it comes under observation by the police. If it gets dangerously large, it can be outlawed by the courts(this happened only once in history, with the Communist Party). But I don't think anyone is deterred from voting for extremist parties by something like this. Why would they be? Also, I don't think Germany has any serious communist party anymore. IRC the Marxist-Leninist party is some weird political cult that inherited a shitton of money in the 80s(?). They are not a serious political party. Also also, the "The Left"(a moderate social-democratic party) is hovering around 9% right now, so ~90% of voters vote right of "moderate social democracy". There is just no market for traditional socialist/Marxist thought right now. I guess if you could rebrand the ideas and concepts under a new name you could get a much, much better response though.
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Jan 23, 2019 19:07
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Raspberry Jam It In Me posted:(this happened only once in history, with the Communist Party)
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Jan 23, 2019 19:12
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Orange Devil posted:The planet will be fine. Won't be very hospitable to human life if we continue our current trajectory though. I mean, imma big supporter of jellyfish and those worms that live on volcano vents but im hesitant to call the planet fine if they are the only ones who manage to live here in the late 2100's
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Jan 23, 2019 21:33
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frankenfreak posted:They also banned a nazi party: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Reich_Party The AfD is slowly going the same way, the Verfassungsschutz has now started looking at them as a threat.
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Jan 23, 2019 22:31
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Libluini posted:The AfD is slowly going the same way, the Verfassungsschutz has now started looking at them as a threat.
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Jan 23, 2019 22:52
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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suck my woke dick posted:I'll enjoy the incoming "WIE KÖNNEN SIE ES WAGEN MICH NAZI ZU NENNEN" tears. Recently the AfD walked out of the state parliament in Bavaria because of a Holocaust-Gedenken. They're not even trying to hide it anymore!
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Jan 23, 2019 23:19
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caps on caps on caps posted:What does "benefit of society" mean specifically? For example, the current constitution of the very capitalist country Germany states that "Ownership (i.e. Captial) is an obligation. Its (capital's) use must benefit society". Well, let's say you have a company that produces something that is useful but also harmful. Asbestos, pesticides, whatever. There are good reasons why people would want to use your product, but also good reasons why people would want for your product to be entirely banned and replaced by less harmful alternatives. In a system that is actually, rather than just theoretically, dedicated to putting the benefit of society before some private venture's profits, then your company needs to change its production to one of the less harmful alternatives even if it requires an investment up-front for the reconversion and then reduces your profit margin. In a capitalist system, however, you get to lobby for your product to remain legal despite all scientific evidences that it causes cancer, and if lobbying fails and your product gets banned anyway then you find loopholes (perhaps you can still produce it if it's only for export to countries where it's not banned yet) and you sue the state for prejudice.
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Jan 23, 2019 23:33
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caps on caps on caps posted:The first part of your definition is clear, the second part I don't get. What does "benefit of society" mean specifically? For example, the current constitution of the very capitalist country Germany states that "Ownership (i.e. Captial) is an obligation. Its (capital's) use must benefit society". I know that this sentiment was echoed both after WWI and by the creators of the current constitution after WW2. In contrast, I am not aware that accumulation of capital was a stated goal in that debate. The goal of a capitalist (owner of capital), in capitalism, is profit. This is a constant, not a momentary, demand. The need for profit tomorrow demands that the capitalist invest today's profits in increasing his value of capital. This is not just the need for increasing profits over time - a capitalist that fails to accumulate capital in such a manner risks losing a competitive edge over another capitalist that did accumulate capital. This is a constant drive in capitalism, As an aside, it's also the reason that just having co-operatives within capitalism is not socialism; these co-operatives have to compete with otherbusinesses and each other and in order to do so they must accumulate capital. When you have abolished capitalism, the need to accumulate capital disappears, and that liberates you to use the means of production for literally anything else; I used the vague term "for the benefit of society" here, because that does not exist in capitalism due to the aforementioned reasons. Cat Mattress gave a decent example of this, wherein the accumulation of capital takes the form of maintaining the value of your existing (but harmful) capital; if your asbestos machine becomes illegal it loses its value, so you have to invest money into lobbying to prevent it from becoming illegal. And now, since it's still legal, you can expand your asbestos machine operations instead of switching to a less harmful alternative. For a real world example, you have energy companies doing their damnest to keep using fossil fuels, tobacco companies engaging in mass advertising campaigns to trick people into becoming smokers, corporations outcompetting local/family businesses, Disney outright buying its competition. This is not being done to the "benefit of society", this is capitalism imposing a demand on owners of capital to expand, or die.
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Jan 24, 2019 00:52
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edit: Actually I am just derailing this here thread about Eu politics. Thanks for clarifying to the two posters above.
Haramstufe Rot fucked around with this message at 01:14 on Jan 24, 2019 |
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Jan 24, 2019 01:05
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Libluini posted:Recently the AfD walked out of the state parliament in Bavaria because of a Holocaust-Gedenken. They're not even trying to hide it anymore! This is bad politics on so many levels. Even if you are basically Nazi, why would you do that? What's your basis to argue that such a step would be necessary or even advised, especially in a parliament? I understand that a full born Nazi wouldn't actually be against stuff that his predecessors did, but in what world are you actually able to support or even ignore blatant murder as a political party in the 21st century and get away with it?
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Jan 24, 2019 01:29
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in the post 2016 21st century, unfortunately.
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Jan 24, 2019 01:41
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Huge mobs of kids have been protesting climate change every week for the last few weeks, on strike from school and they always block the parliament and Commission buildings. They're loving awesome and give me hope for the future.  This is like a small fraction and you can hear them a good while before you see them. 
Junior G-man fucked around with this message at 11:32 on Jan 24, 2019 |
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Jan 24, 2019 11:25
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That's incredible. Where's that?
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Jan 24, 2019 12:09
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bruxelles
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Jan 24, 2019 12:11
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double nine posted:bruxelles Yep. Every week there's more of them too. A whole generation of activists
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Jan 24, 2019 12:14
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That's lovely. I guess I would have abused the situation to skip school, but they actually go through with this.
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Jan 24, 2019 12:27
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Ah, youthful optimism, when one still has faith that adults can be reasoned with... They won't have any impact because A) they don't vote and B) they don't fund political parties.
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Jan 24, 2019 12:28
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You say that now but when a bunch of them storm the building and rip Tusk limb from limb who'll be laughing.
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Jan 24, 2019 12:32
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Tesseraction posted:You say that now but when a bunch of them storm the building and rip Tusk limb from limb who'll be laughing. The polish duckman acytes
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Jan 24, 2019 12:35
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Goons Are Great posted:That's lovely. I guess I would have abused the situation to skip school, but they actually go through with this. I read that some school(s?) demanded that the students show a picture of themselves at the marches, otherwise they're reported as absent without permission.
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Jan 24, 2019 12:35
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I would chuckle at least, and welcome our new eco feral children overlords.its gotta be better than the poo poo we have now.
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Jan 24, 2019 12:36
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Tesseraction posted:You say that now but when a bunch of them storm the building and rip Tusk limb from limb who'll be laughing. They need to also get Juncker, and Selmayr, and anyone from a fossil fuel lobby and/or the German automobile industry if they want to actually achieve something.
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Jan 24, 2019 12:43
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Well yeah once you pop you can't stop. It's like pringles but with more guillotines.
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Jan 24, 2019 12:46
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Cat Mattress posted:They need to also get Juncker, and Selmayr, and anyone from a fossil fuel lobby and/or the German automobile industry if they want to actually achieve something. Oh man you're not even close to having a full list. I'm happy to be of service and point out the places and build you need to storm.
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Jan 24, 2019 12:51
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double nine posted:I read that some school(s?) demanded that the students show a picture of themselves at the marches, otherwise they're reported as absent without permission. They had one principal on the radio who said his students aren't allowed to go, because you aren't supposed to protest during school or work hours. The rest they had on work with selfies of the students in Brussels, one when they arrive and one in the afternoon to prove they didn't just gently caress off back home.
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Jan 24, 2019 12:58
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nimby posted:They had one principal on the radio who said his students aren't allowed to go, because you aren't supposed to protest during school or work hours. Now there's an educator who understands protests and striking.
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Jan 24, 2019 12:59
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Junior G-man posted:Now there's an educator who understands protests and striking. Well I don't know how the city of Belgium does it, but in many countries students are not actually allowed to strike, so by law he's right. Get the tear gas ready boys, time to rally up some bitches and lock them into classrooms.
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Jan 24, 2019 13:27
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Goons Are Great posted:Well I don't know how the city of Belgium does it, but in many countries students are not actually allowed to strike, so by law he's right. That's going to be fun with the generation that's absolutely guaranteed to have forty zillion cameras aimed in all directions at all times.
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Jan 24, 2019 13:53
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Cat Mattress posted:Ah, youthful optimism, when one still has faith that adults can be reasoned with... Actually I like their rhetoric a lot because they're calling adults on their bullshit. Things like: "Why should I prepare for a future when you are destroying that future?" "Why should I go to school to learn facts when you ignore the facts in your policies anyway?" I wish every politician the best of luck answering those questions. Shoutout to Greta Thunberg for starting this and may more follow in her footsteps soon.
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Jan 24, 2019 21:19
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Orange Devil posted:Actually I like their rhetoric a lot because they're calling adults on their bullshit. Things like: "These are difficult and complex issues which have to be considered in a level of detail you, actual children, cannot understand."
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Jan 24, 2019 22:33
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suck my woke dick posted:"These are difficult and complex issues which have to be considered in a level of detail you, actual children, cannot understand." "Counterpoint, we do understand how guillotines work"
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Jan 25, 2019 00:21
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While these kids protest for the right thing, Greeks protest violently about North Macedonia. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/25/angry-greeks-take-to-the-streets-over-deal-to-rename-macedonia I guess it's nothing new, Balkans, nationalism, etc, but why is the left also in this? Are they socialists and communists only in name? socialist party leader Fofi Gennimata posted:“You have surrendered the monopoly of the name Macedonia. You have given up Greece’s geostrategic position.” quote:KKE communist party, which had also called on followers to protest against the landmark name-change deal, unfurled a giant banner across the great walls of the ancient Acropolis
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Jan 25, 2019 12:42
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Pretty sure one of the Greek posters said it's literally because they don't want Tsipras to take the credit because they want to be the ones to do it.
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Jan 25, 2019 12:54
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Ah, the classic No True Macedonian.
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Jan 25, 2019 13:05
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The wokeness of the current generation to political issues makes it absolutely necessary for the voting age to be lowered.
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Jan 25, 2019 13:12
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In the Netherlands we have a province called Noord-(=North)Brabant. I do now wonder if Belgium is sweating bullets that we shall one day will claim their Brabant and take it away from them.
Mierenneuker fucked around with this message at 13:23 on Jan 25, 2019 |
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Jan 25, 2019 13:19
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