This apparently got deleted before I could post my reply, but I'd like to make it anyway, in case he's still lurking

This apparently got deleted before I could post my reply, but I'd like to make it anyway, in case he's still lurking

Welcome! We're always glad to get new people hanging around.
Holla Forums is a big tent which encompasses widely varying strains of leftist thought brought together by a shared rejection of identity politics. There's a lot of room for disagreement here, and marxists only make up 1/2-2/3 of posters. Marx himself said communism is not some set of policies, some state of affairs to be established, or some set of "ideals" reality must be made to conform to. It is the real movement which resolves the contradictions of capitalism.
We do not want to get people to deny their desires. The basic foundation of Marxism is historical materialism, the belief that social conditions and the course of history develop as a result of material conditions which spawn them, chief among these the "socially necessary labor" required to materially (with respect to objects) produce and reproduce civilization and everyday life, and how in general people tend to respond to their rational self-interest. Communism is not "we should all sacrifice for others," but rather the final realization of the shared proletarian (people who must sell their labor power to survive) interest to overthrow the capitalists (people who own the physical means of production, things we use to perform socially necessary labor) and secure the product of their labor for themselves.
By "working class" we do not just mean physical laborers and those in low-paying or dead end jobs. We mean all those who perform society's necessary labor and must sell their labor power to survive, in contrast to the bourgeoisie, who through their ownership of the means of production can profit off the labor of others while themselves idle and producing nothing of social value. This includes the administrative, organizational, and intellectual labor necessary to coordinate projects/production efficiently and to develop society, all useful/necessary forms of abstract "production," while ownership of the means to do so is merely violently holding hostage the opportunity of others to fully profit from their own labor, never creating these opportunities, as the workers themselves have done the labor in creating these means of production, and been deprived of it.
A post-scarcity society where grating drudgery is a thing of the past and the distinction between intellectual labor, physical labor and personal development/leisure have all vanished is not only possible but inevitable, although we cannot reach it when production is coordinated according to private profit and personal power (security against falling into the proletariat oneself) rather than social need. In fact star trek is the clearest illustration of a "communist society" - that is, not a nation run by communists who would like to maybe reach communism someday, but the society itself where classes, wage labor and money are all obsolete (>inb4 ferengi, political strife, trade and trade conflicts)
Like universal basic income, or allocatively efficient welfare, like that supported by a georgist land value tax? To their credit a lot of libertarians have suggested similar measures, but those, like many other libertarian objectives such as preventing anticompetitive laws, trade barriers etc. which serve the interest of large firms against everyone else, these policies are only stable as long as the bourgeoisie elect to "give back" a portion of their stolen wealth to promote the stability of the system. As capital accumulates into fewer hands and more capitalists must retain more of their wealth to stay out of the proletariat, they become less and less amenable to this sacrifice and less and less willing to make such concessions to the common people. This can only be resolved in the complete liquidation of the bourgeoisie, securing the right of all to their own labor, rational production to meet human need, and increasing automation of all sectors to benefit all in kind and eventually make labor obsolete. This is because the course of history is determined by the aggregate of individual incentives weighted according to one's power and material ability to act according to them.

Though I guess "we're always glad to get new people" is contradicted by the deletion, idk. Maybe I'm just too autistic and take things at face value when I shouldn't.

Even if he was being completely insincere, it's important to remember that there are other people who lurk who could indeed be convinced of socialism by threads like these where we argue out our ideas. The current moderation stance is completely anathema to that and will more then likely slowly kill this board

So would allowing every right winger to run rampant like an autistic bull with the explosive shits in a spiderweb art shop.

That was actually my bad. It was supposed to be a short ban for being incredibly low-effort accompanied with a bumplock for the thread. I accidentally hit the "ban and delete" button instead of just "ban" though.

I coudn't agree more. Always reply to troll threads. Hell, even other leftists playing low-effort devil's advocate in an OP have led to some great discussion before.
Not sure about this, though. As long as I've been here, the moderation has seemed really lax/permissive, and I think that's one of the board's real strengths.

Ah, that explains it. Well, good on you for letting us know.

Nobody said that.

That's not my experience in the last week or so. I keep seeing people getting banned and their posts deleted rather arbitrarily

I know. I'm just saying.

It's… been an interesting time.
It'll probably blow over when BO's wounded pride pieces itself together

I hope it's just the BO and not other mods feeding into his bad decisions. I guess we'll see

Is it just me or is that user basically advocating for full communism?

Pretty much, only he's advocating for "super capitalism" or "capitalism, but more so" because we have different definitions for the term "capitalism" and he thinks the necessary resolution/destruction of its contradictions means "the best capitalism."
It sucks, because when we can talk about our ideas without saying "communism" or anything else with a prior association, a lot of people will agree with most of it, but we can't discard labels altogether because a technical vocabulary is necessary for any serious, nontrivial theory. I just wish more people coming in could see the real substance of what we argue.

Good effort. Unfortunately most posters like that that guy just want to yell fuck commies and argue in bad faith. He was just disregarding every argument.

Original thread OP here.


meh some good points and i understand more about your beliefs now, but to me it all appears as self delusion.

im still not seeing anything conrete about how you could possibly oust the modern bourgeois and return the means of production to the average worker in this day and age where the modern worker in a first world country like america is either an uneducated McDonald burger flipper or a uni graduate that didn't actually learn anything valuable and is now working 9-5 in an office with no actual means of production.

most of the worlds shit is produced in third world countries these days and those suckers are so fucking stupid they could literally not learn or probably even understand this ideology thanks to various aspects of their culture, genetics, diet and lack of education or mass propaganda.

even further than this, the means of production arnt as simple as it was a century ago. do any of you have any idea how complicated the machines that make the machines that make the parts that make the machines that make soda cans are? a loooonnnnngggg fucking line of time and precision and engineering is involved, furthermore, without the burgios and their wealth no individual or even the majority of individuals with the correct amount of training education and experience could AFFORD to set up a factory on their own even in a true and successful communist country due to the sheer amount of resources and logistical support needed to do so.

honestly from my point of view, this world has grown much too complicated for a Marxist ideology to succeed on a national or international scale.

nigga how is any of that shit real just kill the upper class nigga like build a guillotine hahaha

the upper class have an army
the upper class have welath
the upper class have dozens of intelligence gathering agencies
the upper class have a different lists of people who they are going to kill the moment anything like a workers revolution occurs
the upper class are 99% jewish and connected in so many ways that merely suprise attacking one group would alert the rest
furthermore marxism was created and trumpeted by the jews, the worst capitalists of all

good response nigger.

And your solution is to collaborate with the rich instead? You're nothing more than a cuck and an apologist for the status quo, you might aswell be an "end of history" fukuyamaist neoliberal.

bitch i never said you need to collabarate with the rich, i said that without their vast amount of wealth the average worker or groupof workers would never be able to create a factory because of how complicated they are today.

They already run the factory. "Worker" does not mean blue collar worker, even actuaries and accountants are workers because porky is too retarded to manage his own finances.

its cool, i have come to realise that all you liberal marxist cucks are merely ideological delusionists who will never be able to put your ideology into practice because you cant answer the hard questions of how your going to put your ideas into practice or grasp the complicated state of the modern world in all its shittiness.

gg faggets get rekt and talk more shit about how your untested economy would work and how if only the working class would realize how great it is. im outta here.

every time

kek i knew you faggets would gloat the moment i posted that shit.

remind me again how your going to oust the elite?
whats your plan on managing those thousands of factories?
how are you going to feed all those third world shitholes that produce absolutely nothing?
how are you going to deal with all the radical relgions all around the world?
what about those centuries of racial hatred between various foreign countries?

rekt fagget.

the only arguments you cucks ever win are the ones where your opponent has already left.

what did he mean by this?

so are you leaving or not

it was bait fagget, but keep it up. im sure youll win this argument eventually by discrediting your opponent rather than asnwering his questions.

reminds me of a jews tactics.

...

lmao

how does it feel to know that every attempt at communism in all of history has failed and that we now have a front row seat to a live example of a communists countries collapse.

if you do not understand the difference between an ideological and a practical problem then you are probably too autistic for real world politics like an austrian "economic" libertard

...

wow so you basically just admitted that your ideology cant be applied to real life in any meaningful way.
what? is marxism a religion now?

well, by your standards literally every modern political movement is a religion because they aren't capable of solving societal problems either

ayy i never asked you to solve societal problems i merely asked you what how your going to deal with the problems that capitalism already deals with?

your beliefs rely on national and international cooperation and unity whereas capitalism doesn't.

As for needing the enormous wealth of the bourgeoisie, this is where small community and workplace organizing comes in. There is no perfect plan to bring about change, no Leftist who knows anything will deny this.

And here comes part two of the assburger manifesto: the rhetorical trap

Some combination of general strike, industrial sabotage and armed struggle supported by built up systems of dual power to ensure the takeover of the state by the workers.
let the employees manage their own workplaces as they already do, now also deciding what to do with the the product of their workplaces and investing in themselves through democratic management. Industry could be managed by syndicates collaborating across industries to ensure supply chains are running.
Got any examples? Most of the third world is abundant in resources including food. The resources are there, the issue is distribution and ownership of capital by overseas corporations. With those industries in the hands of the native workers they would have more than enough to feed themselves and build socialism and prosperity in their homelands.
Enforced secularism and the suppression/dismantling of organised religion all together. Not necessarily any sort of compulsory atheism but preachers who advocate reactionary systems of organisation and any return to pre-socialist modes of production get reeducation camps if not executions. Same goes for cultural/religious 'traditions' which conflict with libertarian values.
Examples? Most people don't care all too much about other countries and messing with them. As long as people own the land they work and can build their lives freely without interference they'll be no cause for strife.

Apologies for intruding onto personal matters, but I must participate in this discussion momentarily by asking the following:
Have you perhaps been diagnosed with some kind of learning disability or something in that manner? Your reading comprehension, vocabulary experience, and knowledge regarding common concepts speaks quite heavily in favor for such a unfortunate state of personal affairs.

capitalism doesn't deal with these problems because it doesn't see them as problems to begin with, conflicts of identity are a divide and conquer tool and third world shitholes forming coherent societies is antithetical to exploiting them for their natural resources

capitalism is the reason thirdies are flooding europe

but capitalism does answer the questions.


are you retarded?


so basically a cabal of socialists tyrants enforces your socialism though violence and executions because otherwise it isnt possible?


oooh another retard that cant come up with a response and instead questions my upbringing.


so basically capitalism has made lots of thrid world shitholes stay shitholes? for the resources? wow that sounds like a solution that benefits capitalism.

i mean, criticism of capitalism doesn't make sense if you don't care about the human condition, so…

fuck off moralist. capitalism isn't bad because its mean, its bad because its inefficient and self-conflicted. Capitalism as a process naturally tends towards self-destruction.

that is my point, they literally don't care because they are misanthropes

wdhmbt?

we've got an aggressive status-quo defender here

...

It's not moralism to care about the wellbeing of individuals you edgefag. Capitalism is bad for many reasons, a big one is because of how horribly it treats people.

What, were they made with magic?

Yeah, that user was definitely saying communism won't work because it's not FALC, so… Something something Holla Forums until we get FALC.

"Cooperative Economy" and "Workplace democracy" are terms that work really well for those who haven't quite taken the leap yet.
And anti-corporate is a good substitute for anti-capitalist.

Lol that retard doesn't even understand that the board of directors for a capitalist corporation can be replaced with a workers council and keep everything else in place.
Instant fucking socialism.

Eh, moralism is not simply "caring," but claiming something "ought" or "ought not" according to some fixed value system. "It's inherently wrong for a system to treat people badly" is something many of us can agree on, albeit with disagreements over the meaning of "treat" and "badly," but it still pulls an "ought" out of thin air. The idea with Marxism is "capitalism treats people badly, in these specific ways, and causes these specific undesirable outcomes, people acting according to their rational self-interest tend, over time, to direct the course of history according to the weight of the opposing pressures on society brought on by these material interests, and as such the end of capitalism is both in line with the interests of the proletariat and a historically necessary resolution of the fundamental conflict its existence presupposes.
The strength of such thinking is that it brackets morality completely. It's completely unnecessary to make any kind of moral case for communism whatsoever (in terms of the strength/validity of the theory - moral appeals can indeed win allies, and all political activity, even extracting surplus labor, is implicitly the result of an moral appeal or "ought" one makes, it goes without saying)

Contrast with right-libertarianism, which absolutely requires a deeply suspect notion of god-given property rights to consistently claim "right" actions opposing the rational self-interest it also (superficially) embraces.

this is probably a little overly pedantic, but the distinction is still important

I want to argue about moralism, but I don't want to upset the retard in this thread. Basic economy astounds this guy, I can not imagine how he would feel about even the tiniest bit of philosophy.