I joined the Communist Party

Originally posted by brukernavn


Under capitalism, you get what the state says you should get.

No. I get what I want based on what I want to do.

You work for a wage, then the government takes what it wants from that wage and gives you whatever they deem is fair.

Yeah, that part is true.

Under communism, you own (along with your co-workers) the means of production.

But that ownership is given to you. Not earned.

You get paid based on what you produce. If you are lazy, which I am not saying you are, you get very little and are booted from "production".

Same for capitalism. If you don't work, you get fired.

When the people own the means of production and see a lazy person trying to leech off of them, they boot them.

So it should be.

It is so much more proficient than capitalism.

I think you mean "efficient" but hey english as a second language, you do quite well.

I have worked in steel mills, lumber mills, road oil, cartography, retail, waiter, police, many things. The lazy get just the same under capitalism. Under communism, laziness is not rewarded.

Not true. Lazy rely on welfare and others.

reply to post by SplitInfinity


Leadership is OK so so long as you can vote on who it will be and then recall them the second they break their promises.

I cannot do either with my boss.

Under capitalism the "leaders" profit more when the workers are exploited more, there may be altruistic saints here and there but mostly capitalists have their own interests at heart which is why it usually always ends with the workers being exploited.

reply to post by xuenchen


Whom wrote that article? I cannot seem to find it.

reply to post by polarwarrior


Amen! People working for capitalists have absolutely no choice in the matter. I cannot see why people are against communism, other than the fact that the West has been lied to and deceived into thinking that communism is evil.

reply to post by beezzer


I must commend you. Instead of attacking me for using the wrong word, you realize that English is not my native language and give me credit for trying. Just for that, I star you. Thank you. We do not have to agree with each other, but at least we maintain a respectful dialogue. Thank you.

Originally posted by brukernavn
reply to post by xuenchen

 

Whom wrote that article? I cannot seem to find it.

It's a Stanford University site.

It seems to slant towards Maoism.


About

reply to post by brukernavn


I used to be against it because its what the mainstream media said, its what the movies said, the teachers at school, my parents all said it was bad.

But I've learned just because a view is common doesn't make it right.

I've since found plenty of people who actually know what communism is like university professors or avid readers about it who, along with plenty of reading of my own, have enlightened me to what it actually is.

When you find out what it really is, its no wonder the media says what they do about it!

Originally posted by xuenchen

Originally posted by brukernavn
reply to post by xuenchen

 

Whom wrote that article? I cannot seem to find it.

It's a Stanford University site.

It seems to slant towards Maoism.


About

Tusen takk. Jeg var litt forvirret. I wish that there was a forum like this in my own language. I may know English well, but it is a bit tiring to try to translate everything in my mind.

The very fact that I am the sole owner of an investment firm... Own my own business, and support communism, ought to say something. I have tried, under a capitalist system, to do things as a communist would. I give my employees more based on what our contracts produce for the company. I feel that the very fact that I am a successful business owner, supporting communism, nullifies most of the arguments agains communism.

reply to post by polarwarrior

I agree with you and at one time this was not so. Companies were run by people who sought to BUILD something not like now where the sum of a Companies parts is worth more than the company.

It will return to be like this again as if it does not...they will be cutting their own throats. Split Infinity

Originally posted by polarwarrior
reply to post by brukernavn

 

I've since found plenty of people who actually know what communism is like university professors or avid readers about it who, along with plenty of reading of my own, have enlightened me to what it actually is.

When you find out what it really is, its no wonder the media says what they do about it!

so why the propaganda machine on communism from the west? what dont they want us to know? why are thing trying to keep a lid on it? in ur opinion.

Originally posted by brukernavn
reply to post by polarwarrior

 

Amen! People working for capitalists have absolutely no choice in the matter. I cannot see why people are against communism, other than the fact that the West has been lied to and deceived into thinking that communism is evil.

What do you mean "no choice in the matter"? I can and have simply walked away.

reply to post by polarwarrior

Haha what a myth, most people are born into wealth, its just that the media loves a good rags to riches story to keep the masses always hoping that next week will be there time in the sun. They gotta convince you there's room at the top for everyone.

Business make their profit by not compensating their workers for the full cost of their labor, ie exploitation. So the business was built off the hard work of the workers, therefore they should rightfully own it.

Haha I'd like to see the boss out there doing all the work on his own! Then yes, it would be built from his hard work.

The inane comments never cease to amaze me... Sigh! Care to back that assertion up that most people are born into wealth?

Second I was not talking about just the very rich. The average business man that makes a decent living has wealth too it just may not be as much is his rich neighbor.

And last but not least the boss/owner was the one out there doing all the work on his own to get the business started and when he had more work then he could handle he began hiring employees so he can handle the increasing load. He made a name for the quality he produced did the advertising to get the name out and bring in the business, worked day and night to keep it going probably even spent a ton of his on money and wages in the beginning till the business was self sustaining, long hours and late nights to get it up and running not 9-5 like the workers who think it should be there's when they did nothing to build it. And you think the worker he hires down the road deserve to just take all that from him? No that is theft! Let the worker start his own business and do the leg work it takes to build it that large if he wants a business like it.

The worker is not forced to work for him if he thinks the wage is unfair go somewhere else or start his own business. You guys who think this way are nothing but lazy thieves who want something for nothing!

Originally posted by brukernavn
The very fact that I am the sole owner of an investment firm... Own my own business, and support communism, ought to say something. I have tried, under a capitalist system, to do things as a communist would. I give my employees more based on what our contracts produce for the company. I feel that the very fact that I am a successful business owner, supporting communism, nullifies most of the arguments agains communism.

Why don't you do the right thing and hand it over to the employees then? Whats stopping you?

The irony in all this is those who appose socialism are the same people who appose government handouts, but of course fail to realise that is liberalism, a direct result of capitalism, and under socialism there would be no government handouts.

Socialism gives those who complain about big government and state intervention what they want. The right have always been state interventionists, they just lie to appease the 'commoners', as we all still are to them.

The original political meanings of ‘left’ and ‘right’ have changed since their origin in the French estates general in 1789. There the people sitting on the left could be viewed as more or less anti-statists with those on the right being state-interventionists of one kind or another. In this interpretation of the pristine sense, libertarianism was clearly at the extreme left-wing.

www.la-articles.org.uk...

The meanings have only changed in our common everyday language, but the original definitions still actually apply. The capitalists have to have an authoritarian system to protect itself, to protect its capital interests, and to keep the 'commoners' passive. You might not think you live in an authoritative system because it's all you know.
The capitalist class knows only too well what has happened in history, revolutions are a problem for the capitalist class, so it was in their best interest to demonize the left and promote liberalism. Liberalism was the compromise, capitalism with a social safety net. The government hand-outs you all complain about.

The original socialists did not want government handouts, they wanted to be able to produce without restrictions of authority (private ownership) or the state. Welfare would be unnecessary.

So capitalist supporters it's your system that created liberalism, remember that next time you complain about welfare. Stop blaming socialism for something that came about as a result of private ownership, capitalism.

reply to post by hawkiye


I do hand it over to them. I give them whatever they earn over the excess. I believe that they are worth what they produce. I laugh in the face in anti-communist for the facts that I give my employees the difference of what we earn.

Originally posted by brukernavn
reply to post by hawkiye

 

I do hand it over to them. I give them whatever they earn over the excess. I believe that they are worth what they produce. I laugh in the face in anti-communist for the facts that I give my employees the difference of what we earn.

Paying them more is not handing it over you are still the owner. Lots of businesses do that its called profit sharing it has nothing to do with communism it is in fact a distinctly capitalist practice. LOL

Hand over the business to them so it is worker owned like you all claim you want. You won't because you feel you built it and earned it! You can't even admit the truth to yourself You're a hypocrite. Turn the business over to your employees you exploiter and don't give me that BS that capitalism prevents you. Come on what will be your excuse now?

reply to post by polarwarrior

used to be against it because its what the mainstream media said

Do you regard history books as mainstream media? After the fall of the Berlin wall everyone said communism was dead.
But let me tell you, Alexsander Sozhenitsyn wrote books on the gulags. It was his personal account as a prisoner held there.....

Communist gulags

Five years ago, I wrote about the unknown Holocaust in Ukraine. I was shocked to receive a flood of mail from young Americans and Canadians of Ukrainian descent telling me that until they read my column, they knew nothing of the 1932-33 genocide in which Josef Stalin's Soviet regime murdered seven million Ukrainians and sent two million more to concentration camps.
How, I wondered, could such historical amnesia afflict so many? For Jews and Armenians, the genocides their people suffered are vivid, living memories that influence their daily lives. Yet today, on the 70th anniversary of the destruction of a quarter of Ukraine's population, this titanic crime has almost vanished into history's black hole.

So has the extermination of the Don Cossacks by the communists in the 1920s, the Volga Germans in 1941 and mass executions and deportations to concentration camps of Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians and Poles. At the end of World War II, Stalin's gulag held 5.5 million prisoners, 23% of them Ukrainians and 6% Baltic peoples.

Among these monstrous crimes, Ukraine stands out as the worst in terms of numbers. Stalin declared war on his own people in 1932, sending Commissars V. Molotov and Lazar Kaganovitch and NKVD secret police chief Genrikh Yagoda to crush the resistance of Ukrainian farmers to forced collectivization.
Ukraine was sealed off. All food supplies and livestock were confiscated. NKVD death squads executed "anti-party elements." Furious that insufficient Ukrainians were being shot, Kaganovitch - virtually the Soviet Union's Adolf Eichmann - set a quota of 10,000 executions a week. Eighty percent of Ukrainian intellectuals were shot.

During the bitter winter of 1932-33, 25,000 Ukrainians per day were being shot or died of starvation and cold. Cannibalism became common. Ukraine, writes historian Robert Conquest, looked like a giant version of the future Bergen-Belsen death camp.

www.ukemonde.com...

Enjoy your armchair communism while you can, because the real deal is really bad.

reply to post by ANOK


Since you are mixing up the terms here, I thought I would just get the Merriam Webster definition of socialism. If you have a problem with the Merriam Webster definition, feel free to write to them and them they are not up to snuff with 18th century French socialism.

Definition of SOCIALISM


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


3

: a stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done


See socialism defined for English-language learners »


See socialism defined for kids »

www.merriam-webster.com...

More stuff on socialism

It is often thought that the idea of socialism derives from the work of Karl Marx. In fact, Marx wrote only a few pages about socialism, as either a moral or a practical blueprint for society. The true architect of a socialist order was Lenin, who first faced the practical difficulties of organizing an economic system without the driving incentives of profit seeking or the self-generating constraints of competition. Lenin began from the long-standing delusion that economic organization would become less complex once the profit drive and the market mechanism had been dispensed with—“as self-evident,” he wrote, as “the extraordinarily simple operations of watching, recording, and issuing receipts, within the reach of anybody who can read and write and knows the first four rules of arithmetic.”

In fact, economic life pursued under these first four rules rapidly became so disorganized that within four years of the 1917 revolution, Soviet production had fallen to 14 percent of its prerevolutionary level. By 1921 Lenin was forced to institute the New Economic Policy (NEP), a partial return to the market incentives of capitalism. This brief mixture of socialism and capitalism came to an end in 1927 after Stalin instituted the process of forced collectivization that was to mobilize Russian resources for its leap into industrial power.

But there was a vast and widening gap between theory and practice.

Mises in particular contended that a socialist system was impossible because there was no way for the planners to acquire the information (see Information and Prices)—“produce this, not that”—needed for a coherent economy. This information, Hayek emphasized, emerged spontaneously in a market system from the rise and fall of prices. A planning system was bound to fail precisely because it lacked such a signaling mechanism.

www.econlib.org...