Reading this helped a bit. One thing that always confused me was why America was so scared of Communism when it seems to be the ideals of Democracy taken to their logical conclusions. Why the fuck have we been fighting so hard to fight something that seems so rooted in our own political ideals?
This is the thing, whenever I start delving in I keep finding more reasons for people to start moving towards a more level playing field but people keep screaming that it's more complicated than that. Fucking how? I want the same chance as everybody else and want everybody else to have the same chance I have. That's the core of my personal ideology and for a while I assumed that was the default driving force behind the American ideology, but so many people on all sides seem to feel like I'm wrong.
Cameron Hall
Marx is extremely relevant though and reading Marx will give you actually a very good understanding of today's world. Not everything Marx wrote about applies today and some of it needs to be updated while other stuff was just plain wrong, but ignoring Marx when trying to understand the current global economy would be like ignoring analysis when attempting to understand stochastic.
Sweden is not socialist. There is in fact not a single socialist society currently in existence. I'm afraid you've fallen victim to the very limited range of discourse that is allowed in American politics. In socialism there is no flow of capital, because the organization is not organized around it anymore, capitalism operates on something called the law of value, while socialism would be the step after which organizes the economy around use value. The basis for socialist ideology (socialism is btw just a "nice" term for communism) would be historical materialism, which is an empirical investigation of society and how our societal organization is related to our relationship to the means of production and our material reality (basically, what kind of technology, infrastructure and industry there is, how this forms us and society and how we interact with it).
Perhaps I could interest you in a one hour long video that attempts to visualize Capital by Marx? It's not that hard to understand and makes a good job of describing of describing capitalist organization of society. Disclaimer for the future: David Harvey's understand of "value" is pretty dubious.
*because society is not organized around it anymore
Nathaniel Hill
What should confuse you even more is why people fled to America when communists took over, I mean, why would they flee to an inferior version of what they just got?
It just doesn't make any sense.
William Martinez
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Luke Howard
Not sure if you're OP, but the simple (and often made fun of answer) is that it wasn't "real communism". I would of course agree with that. To gain understanding of the situation requires a lot more reading however and first an understanding of what capitalism is, then of what socialism and communism is and how these concepts as the next steps for society were developed, and lastly of why the (genuine, proletarian) revolution in Russia degenerated into state capitalism.
Jason Wright
I was merely namedropping "scientific socialism" in case you wanted to do any reading on it yourself, not as an argument. As I said I don't want to derail OP's thread.
Ryder Jones
You are going to get pretty solid answers from everyone on the first question. The second is different. There are so many different people with different ideas on how to abolish capitalism and achieve the end result, being communism. What's important is to READ the basic books to really understand for yourself, and then decide what you want to believe in the most efficient way to achieve communism is.
Leo Davis
I may despise leftcoms just as much as the other guy, but come on man!
Marx's main theoretical work was describing capitalism and how it functions. Considering we're still living in capitalism, I'd say it's pretty topical!
'no'
Sweden has social democracy, that is reforms the capitalist government instituted to placate its workers and keep it's capitalism running efficiently. Socialism isn't just government doing stuff, the more government doing stuff being the more socialism.
In terms of McDonalds, don't you want to have more control over your workplace, I bet you spend a lot of time there. The fact is McDonalds isn't run for its workers, or its customers, it's run for its shareholders. Society at large, the workers, the consumers, all have absolutely no formal say in how McDonalds does its business although their corporate decisions effect everyone. The purpose of production in a capitalist society is to make money for the owner, for the capitalist. Workers need to get control of the means of production so that we can begin to move towards production occurring only for personal or social consumption, not for the purpose of enriching a few legally muh privileged capitalists. The reason this is in your self interest is because for one it means better working conditions and better pay in real terms, more production is geared towards meeting your needs, you get the healthcare you need, the housing you need, the food you need, and get your say in how the world around you is run.
Angel Scott
I'm sorry if I was a bit abrasive in this reply. Posting for so long here conditions one to respond to Holla Forumsack trolls.
Just look at the essays that you feel are the most interesting and go from there. check you the reading list thread for more shit: 8ch.net/leftypol/res/1312944.html
