Red Front
Gold Member
- Jul 7, 2022
- 5,253
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- Banned
- #101
It's not "Utopian", it's just necessary and better. Nations that identify their economies as Marxist are sanctioned, embargoed, bombed, and invaded. Are you going to deny that every single country that has ever identified itself as Marxist, has suffered at the hands of the United States and its allies? Every single nation on Earth that has the "cojones", to say " We're Marxist - Leninists " has had to deal with American-trained and armed rebels, with the assassination of their leaders, coup attempts, sanctions,, embargoes, getting bombed, and invaded. So you capitalists or capitalist fans (ironically you're most likely not even a capitalist yourself, you're a working-class person brainwashed by capitalists), don't have the luxury of claiming socialism "doesn't work". How the hell would you know it doesn't work when it's constantly being assaulted? Capitalists can't allow socialism to fail on its own, they're constantly trying to tear it down. Socialist countries are in a perpetual state of war against the US government. That results in a concentration of power and less democracy.
Let me ask you a question, did capitalism replace slavery and feudalism overnight? Did it happen in less than a century? No, it didn't. Why do people like you insist that if socialism is better than capitalism, it must replace it in a day? Socialism is supposedly ineffective because it didn't take over capitalism in one quick swoop? That's not how capitalism replaced earlier modes of production, it took centuries, yet you capitalist defenders insist that if socialism is a better system of production than capitalism, it must then replace it immediately, like right now! No, it doesn't, that's never how a new and better mode of production replaced a previous one in the past. Historically, it takes a long time of struggle, several revolutions, a long process of trial and error, victories, and defeats. That's how the locomotive of human production advances and evolves.
The nations today that have the courage to identify themselves as Marxists, are the ones most sanctioned, threatened, and attacked by Western capitalists. The American ruling class, the neo-liberal politicians of the United States along with their Western European allies and vassals, do everything they can to sabotage, undermine, and just outright annihilate any nation that identifies itself as Marxist or Socialist. Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Vietnam, Laos, the DPRK (a.k.a. "North Korea"):
These nations specifically identify themselves as Marxist and suffer greatly for it. China is the rare exception, by becoming the manufacturing base of the United States after America abandoned its many factories and gutted its working-class, with supply-side economics/Reaganomics in the 1980s. American capitalists wanted a source of cheap labor and goods, and the Chinese government was unfortunately more than willing to fill that role. That's the only reason China hasn't been bombed to the stone age.
That said, many nations apply socialist principles and policies to their economies and do very well. Socialism saved Russia in the late 1990s, after a period of capitalist looting. Putin nationalized several of its heavy industries. That's Socialism 101. You nationalize all of the major centers of economic power, the so called "commanding heights of the economy" as Marx and Engels termed it, allowing all of that wealth to be used for the public good. Capitalists and their brainwashed fans have a very simplistic, skewed view of socialism. They don't really know what it is. How can they, when most of them don't even know what capitalism is?
Capitalism is a mode of production that is based on wage labor and the pursuit of private capital (money, profits). It's not defined by markets, because markets existed before capitalism. Capitalism didn't create markets. Capitalism is essentially a mode of production entirely dependent upon wage-labor. The slaves and serfs become employees and the slave masters and feudal lords become capitalists/industrialists. Employees aren't property of their employers as slaves were to their masters but they're nonetheless exploited just the same if not worse. An employee sells their labor power (rents their life-presence, time, effort, health) to a capitalist employer for eight hours, maybe sixteen hours a day (two fulltime shifts), becoming part of the means (machinery, facilities) of production. The human element animates the machinery and facilities of production, allowing it to produce goods for the marketplace. The wage-labor is also the paying consumer. So the wage-labor buys the products it produces. Of course, the wage-labor produces much more than it is paid.
Right from the start there's a conflict of interest between the employer and the employee, the capitalists and their labor force. The employer wants to cut the cost of doing business (i.e. the overhead) and human wage labor is a significant part of that expense. Human beings are expensive to employ. They require a wage, and certain conditions in the workplace have to be present, among other things, in order for them to produce and deliver the goods and services their employers are selling. The capitalists want to make a profit, yet they have these expenses cutting into their profits and on top of that, they have to compete with other capitalists in a cutthroat market. So capitalists are always looking for ways to cut the cost of doing business, and how do they achieve that? Well, there's something called "TECHNOLOGY". They will invest in the research and development of technologies that allow them to make production more efficient and if possible eliminate as many of the expensive human elements of production as possible.
There's an internal contradiction here. Have you picked it up yet? The capitalists want to eliminate as much of their human labor as possible in order to cut the cost of production, but they need human labor in order to make a profit.
NO HUMAN WAGE-LABOR = NO PAYING CONSUMERS = NO BUSINESS = NO CAPITALISM
Modern capitalists are today aware of this "contradiction" more than ever, due to the advent of advanced technology.
Some of them have even become "compassionate capitalists" :
"UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME - FREE MONEY FROM THE STATE, FOR EVERYONE! HOOOWEEEE!"
Modern capitalists are today aware of this "contradiction" more than ever, due to the advent of advanced technology.
Some of them have even become "compassionate capitalists" :
"UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME - FREE MONEY FROM THE STATE, FOR EVERYONE! HOOOWEEEE!"
Socialists, communists, we don't want or need their UBI. They can keep the "free money", we don't need it, much less want it. UBI is a ploy devised by capitalists to put capitalism on life support for a few more decades.
CAPITALISM ON LIFE-SUPPORT
The capitalists, the ruling class, want to maintain their power and social status, hence they're willing to use the state, to hand everyone a monthly check, in order to create paying consumers (magically generate, conjure up like a magician, paying consumers). Everyone needs to consume and will always be a consumer, but what they won't be is paying consumers. In order for you and I to be "paying consumers" we need an income. There has to be someone making a wage, getting paid by a capitalist, for there to be paying consumers. If technology replaces too much of the wage labor (it doesn't have to be all of it), then there's a devastating economic crisis, due to high unemployment. When people start going hungry and see themselves homeless, that's the catalyst for the pitchforks to come out and the billionaires are smart enough to see that. So they've now become, by necessity, "compassionate capitalists" :
The answer to the issue of technology replacing wage labor is easy and known by all economists and well-educated capitalists and that's socialist central planning. A centrally, rationally planned economy, with a mode of production that is for the sake of meeting human needs rather than human greed. Producing everything that people consume, not for the marketplace or for profits, but simply to meet our needs. In the past, it was more difficult to do that, due to the lack of technology but today in the early 21st century, we've reached a level of computing power, robotics, automation, and engineering, that allows us to very easily socialize and democratize production. We don't need to be an "employee" for an employer, working in an absolute dictatorship, earning a wage in order to buy products..etc. All of that is the past, and we can evolve into the future, and that's called "socialism". Each member of a socialist society could work 20 hours weekly in the field of their choosing, simply to maintain the system of production that provides them with a very high standard of living.
Socialism is not a utopia, it's not perfect, but it is nonetheless the next stage in the evolution of human production. It's the in-between stage between capitalism and high communism (Hightech Communism). A well-planned and organized socialist system of production designed to meet all of our needs is the solution to the problem of unemployment due to technological progress. Socialism is a social process, that leads to high communism, through the democratization and eventual personalization of production and property ownership. Communism is defined by Marx as:
A Stateless society (a society without a state), that has no socioeconomic classes or need for money.
Socialism is the process that leads to high communism.
PRIVATE PROPERTY VS PERSONAL PROPERTY
Private property is that which someone can use to exploit others. In a socialist society, people can own a home, apartment/condo, and even a plot of land provided it is not used to exploit others for personal gain and the community allows it (I don't see why a socialist or communist community can't allow its members to own a plot of land. I'm personally all for it and defend the idea). Your home, your vehicle, your toothbrush, your personal computer, your shoes..etc, = personal property. In a socialist society, housing is considered a human right, unlike in a capitalist-run society. If someone is homeless in a socialist country, it's due to mental health issues. The person is running out of their house and choosing to sleep out in the street (that actually use to happen in the USSR and it occurs today in China, Vietnam, Cuba, and North Korea. Crazy people sleeping outside, even when they have a home). A communist society might institutionalize that type of person to protect them and effectively treat them. Your personal property is actually more secure in a socialist country than in a capitalist one where your livelihood depends upon a capitalist to hire you for a wage. If you fail to pay your rent or mortgage or your property taxes to the capitalist state, you end up homeless. That would never occur in a socialist society. Never.
Communism is the complete personalization of production. What the hell does that mean? It implies that the consumer has complete control over the means of production. Atomic precision manufacturing machines will allow consumers to manufacture practically anything in the comfort of their homes.
Nanofactory Animation
A nanofactory is a proposed system in which nanomachines (resembling molecular assemblers, or industrial robot arms) would combine molecules to build larger ...
www.youtube.com
The consumer will eventually, in the future, have the machinery of production at home. If they want to manufacture a large product that doesn't fit in their home, they could go to a community production center and get the space to build their fishing yacht or whatever large product they want to create. You will have full creative and productive "sovereignty". Technology will allow you to produce everything on your own without anyone else's input. That's the end of the socialist state apparatus and the beginning of a high-tech communist society where everyone lives together by choice, in extreme abundance. Everyone is wealthy.
Capitalists and their employees are in a way, afraid of advanced technology (especially production-oriented technology). The more technological progress we have, the more jobs are lost. The more the market shrinks. The less-paying consumers there are buying products. Smart capitalists and their employees realize this and sometimes opt to undermine technological progress. For example, the billionaires in the fossil fuel industry, keep us all hooked on fossil fuels when we could very easily rely on clean, safe nuclear energy (i.e. MSRs- Molten Salt Reactors).
Thorium: Kirk Sorensen at TEDxYYC
Kirk Sorensen discuss "Thorium" at TEDxYYC 2011.Kirk Sorensen is founder of Flibe Energy and is an advocate for nuclear energy based on thorium and liquid-fl...
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LFTRs in 5 minutes - Thorium Reactors
A short video of Kirk Sorensen taking us through the benefits of Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors, a revolutionary liquid reactor that runs not on uranium, b...
www.youtube.com
We don't need to rely on fossil fuels, so why are we still hooked on dinosaur oil and fart gas? Money. The wealthy ruling class wants to continue making a profit selling oil, coal, and gas at the great expense of society. That's capitalism. It can often undermine technological innovation and progress, due to capitalists investing a large sum of money into a certain technology and market, only to have that technology and market completely disrupted and rendered obsolete by new and better technology. As communists, we love technology. We welcome it, because the more advanced our technology is, the higher our standard of living. The more control we have over our environment (the material world), the more resources we'll have available for everyone. We eliminate scarcity through advanced technology, so we welcome it. We don't care about profits, all we care about is the public good. Unlike capitalists, we don't buy the patents and throw that disruptive, new technology in a basement somewhere for 100 years, to keep it off the market. That's what capitalists do to protect their profits and power. We use all of the latest, most advanced technology because we don't care about profits.
WE DON'T PRODUCE FOR PROFITS, WE PRODUCE TO MEET OUR NEEDS.
So how would socialism resolve the issue of technology replacing wage labor?
We establish a socialist society, that produces everything that people consume without the profit motive but rather for the purpose of meeting our needs. We organize human labor in order to supervise the system.
Let's say, you and I work, if we can, 20 hours weekly, five days a week, in the field that we choose. There might be a requirement for human work and participation in jobs that are labor intensive and unsavory. For example, supervising mining robots 300 feet under a mountain. A socialist pr communist society would have a vanguard of members of the communist party, that will volunteer two or three days a month, to do the dirty, hard work.
Maybe they'll volunteer to do that work even more often than a few days a month and those are the people society honors, just like we honor our veterans. We award them because they're willing to sacrifice their comfort and even their health and lives for that others don't have to. They place themselves at risk and experience pain for everyone else. As technology advances those dirty, difficult jobs will be completely eliminated, with robots, nanobots, self-driving vehicles..etc. So eventually, we won't have to work the mines, because the robots will take care of all of the mining, and the transporting of raw materials to a processing plant.etc, without much human supervision or input.
Capitalism needs wage labor, we don't. All we need is technology and we will together, organize labor to produce everything we need and want. The more advanced the technology the less we have to work to produce what we consume. We can dedicate most of our time to our hobbies, to art, exploring the ocean, traveling to other planets, riding our motorcycles, inventing new technology, the research and development of new treatments and cures for disease..etc.
So what type of world can socialism and communism create? This:
This is what a modern communist society looks like. We started with primitive communism tens of thousands of years ago:
We end with modern, high-tech communism (i.e. communism):
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