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[empty vessel]

Chait was mentioning this in regards to greenwald I think it fits perfectly with many on the board as well.

Chait is a fool.

 

[NYCmetsfan]

Chait is a fool.

That adds a lot.

But this statement is to his point, there is no principled disagreement with those of Greenwald's and your Ilk. There is not an opinion. "Chait is a fool"

 

[FyreWulff]

Trying to get rid of early voting is blatant fear. Oh no, more people might have time to get their votes in! gasp

 

[gcubed]

Trying to get rid of early voting is blatant fear. Oh no, more people might have time to get their votes in! gasp

we need to get over ourselves as a country and move from election day to election week

 

[FyreWulff]

we need to get over ourselves as a country and move from election day to election week

Really, once the election participants are locked in and verified, voting should become available. But election week would be a good start.

 

[PhoenixDark]

I'm far more concerned about early voting purges than voter IDs. Granted I think the democrat party has proven they can overcome obstruction with a superior GOTV/registration machine but it's still a concern. The veterans of Obama's campaigns will simply focus on absentee votes in NC and other states; it's unlikely that the GOP will attack absentee voting because it's heavily used by elderly voters.

The aspect of voter ID that gives me pause is DMV access. Offices have been moved out of certain urban areas of the country, perhaps specifically to restrict access to IDs.

 

[Mike M]

WA's vote by mail is fantastic, at least in my experience. It may actually be a logistical nightmare on the back end for all I know.

 

[Angry Fork]

Chait was mentioning this in regards to greenwald I think it fits perfectly with many on the board as well.

I see no reason why it's wrong or I should disagree with that line of thinking. The only reason is if you're truly interested in only changing things through the current electoral process, and think that's the only way possible, and so compromise constantly gets used over and over to try to slowly progress to something positive.

This kind of nonsense is what created right wing democrats in the first place, because there wasn't a sufficient push back as people are afraid of being idealists and radicals in a system where you're forced to be liked by everyone and raise the most money. I understand Obama is better than Romney, this isn't disputed. Socially liberal + shitty everything else > shitty everything. But now because lesser of two evils is so accepted Obama can get away with anything negative due to his cult of personality + he can wave around Romneycare because it's better than nothing on a national level.

I don't want society to function like this, I don't think this is democratic or expresses the will of the people. Most of America is to the left of Obama, even if they don't know it yet. And obviously having small political victories or managing to get further left democrats elected is fine, but the real battles for real dramatic victories will have to happen from below on the streets.

And yet the same liberals who want the same victories (supposedly) shit on these movements and side with the state, hoping police violently crack down on dissent because if the leftists win the liberal worldview and reason for existing is crushed. That's when their true colors show. They're not rational, calculating and justified because they're in the 'real world', they're raging hypocrites who use the 2 party system as an excuse and cover for having awful regressive opinions.

 

[FyreWulff]

The aspect of voter ID that gives me pause is DMV access. Offices have been moved out of certain urban areas of the country, perhaps specifically to restrict access to IDs.

The local government has been continually moving the DMVs farther away from the poorer areas here in my city. Even Social Security got relocated out further west, and it's a bitch to get to even when you're in a car because they put it in some awkwardly located business park. And it was pretty far out in the first place.

It's some shady passive aggressive shit

Guess where the poor areas are! Answer:

Spoiler

Eastern side, from north to south

Spoiler

The DMV office that's supposed to be servicing predominantly black North Omaha is so far north, another couple of blocks and you're driving in the country.

 

[CHEEZMO™]

Also, this is as good as chance as ever to post my favorite web comic ever (again) -

This never stops being amazing.

Also Anarcho-Communism all day

 

[CHEEZMO™]

As far as his predictions go, I think he really underestimated the ability of the ruling classes to "buy off" the workers with some easy concessions (see; Weimar Republic, New Deal, etc.)

The Working Class that we must deal with today shows little resemblance to the Working Class of Marx's day. In the days of its infancy, insecurity, and instability, the Working Class was very revolutionary and carried forward the struggle against the bourgeoisie. But through long and bitter struggles, the Working Class has made some inroads into the Capitalist system, carving out a comfortable niche for itself. The advent of Labor Unions, Collective Bargaining, the Union Shop, Social Security, and other special protective legislation has castrated the Working Class, transforming it into the bought-off Labor Movement--a most un-revolutionary, reformist minded movement that is only interested in higher wages and more job security. The Labor Movement has abandoned all basic criticism of the Capitalist system of exploitation itself. The George Meanys, Walter Reuthers, and A. Phillip Randolphs may correctly be labelled traitors to the proletariat as a whole, but they accurately reflect and embody the outlook and aspirations of the Working Class. The Communist Party of the United States of America, at its poorly attended meetings, may raise the roof with its proclamations of being the Vanguard of the Working Class, but the Working Class itself looks upon the Democratic Party as the legitimate vehicle of its political salvation.

As a matter of fact, the Working Class of our time has become a new industrial elite, resembling more the chauvanistic elites of the selfish craft and trade guilds of Marx's time than the toiling masses ground down in abject poverty. Every job on the market in the American Economy today demands as high a complexity of skills as did the jobs in the elite trade and craft guilds of Marx's time.

[...]

The flames of revolution, which once raged like an inferno in the heart of the Working Class, in our day have dwindled into a flickering candle light, only powerful enough to bounce the Working Class back and forth like a ping pong ball between the Democratic Party and the the Republican Party every four years, never once even glancing at the alternatives on the Left.

- Eldridge Cleaver, On The Ideology of The Black Panther Party​

 

[NYCmetsfan]

I see no reason why it's wrong or I should disagree with that line of thinking. The only reason is if you're truly interested in only changing things through the current electoral process, and think that's the only way possible, and so compromise constantly gets used over and over to try to slowly progress to something positive.

This kind of nonsense is what created right wing democrats in the first place, because there wasn't a sufficient push back as people are afraid of being idealists and radicals in a system where you're forced to be liked by everyone and raise the most money. I understand Obama is better than Romney, this isn't disputed. Socially liberal + shitty everything else > shitty everything. But now because lesser of two evils is so accepted Obama can get away with anything negative due to his cult of personality + he can wave around Romneycare because it's better than nothing on a national level.

I don't want society to function like this, I don't think this is democratic or expresses the will of the people. Most of America is to the left of Obama, even if they don't know it yet. And obviously having small political victories or managing to get further left democrats elected is fine, but the real battles for real dramatic victories will have to happen from below on the streets.

And yet the same liberals who want the same victories (supposedly) shit on these movements and side with the state, hoping police violently crack down on dissent because if the leftists win the liberal worldview and reason for existing is crushed. That's when their true colors show. They're not rational, calculating and justified because they're in the 'real world', they're raging hypocrites who use the 2 party system as an excuse and cover for having awful regressive opinions.

That's fine to have your opinion, but when you start saying that they aren't really what they say they are (liberals, left-leaning), they are really republicans, stalinists, just because they don't share you opinions about things and where they'd like to see history go in the future. I don't share the views of OWS that doesn't mean I don't want Single Payer Health care or more accountability on wall st.

I just hate "sell out" notion. They're not "regressive" or anything of the like. These movements aren't automatically "right." People can have different opinions depending on the circumstances. But there is this dichotomy of "for us or against us" that you seem to hoist up. I can be against snowden's leak but think the pentagon papers was a perfectly fine leak. People have opinions which don't fit neatly into ideological frameworks of left vs. right, authority vs. the people.

I just feel like greenwald and his brethren view the world in this dichotomous way (and they have that right) and they attempt to place people who are outside this rigidity in it, and it pushes people away.

And I hate this notion of 'rationality' in its pure form which is something the left in my opinion is overly fond of. Rationality is a construct and isn't the best thing to base policy off of.

- Eldridge Cleaver, On The Ideology of The Black Panther Party​

This is a perfect example of that twisted logic that tries to make liberals or potential allies in certain aspects the real enemy.

 

[CHEEZMO™]

This is a perfect example of that twisted logic that tries to make liberals or potential allies in certain aspects the real enemy.

Don't make me click on my COMBAT LIBERALISM bookmark.

 

[TacticalFox88]

I see no reason why it's wrong or I should disagree with that line of thinking. The only reason is if you're truly interested in only changing things through the current electoral process, and think that's the only way possible, and so compromise constantly gets used over and over to try to slowly progress to something positive.

This kind of nonsense is what created right wing democrats in the first place, because there wasn't a sufficient push back as people are afraid of being idealists and radicals in a system where you're forced to be liked by everyone and raise the most money. I understand Obama is better than Romney, this isn't disputed. Socially liberal + shitty everything else > shitty everything. But now because lesser of two evils is so accepted Obama can get away with anything negative due to his cult of personality + he can wave around Romneycare because it's better than nothing on a national level.

I don't want society to function like this, I don't think this is democratic or expresses the will of the people. Most of America is to the left of Obama, even if they don't know it yet. And obviously having small political victories or managing to get further left democrats elected is fine, but the real battles for real dramatic victories will have to happen from below on the streets.

And yet the same liberals who want the same victories (supposedly) shit on these movements and side with the state, hoping police violently crack down on dissent because if the leftists win the liberal worldview and reason for existing is crushed. That's when their true colors show. They're not rational, calculating and justified because they're in the 'real world', they're raging hypocrites who use the 2 party system as an excuse and cover for having awful regressive opinions.

So we're not true liberals, simply because we don't agree on the best way to implement social change at a slow and steady pace?

Get the fuck over yourself. You sound like a petulant child who's mad because you weren't allowed to eat the cookie out of the jar.

 

[Jooney]

So who will play Mitt Romney in HBO's Game Change 2: Electric Boogalo?

Ted Danson.

And the chick who plays Diane from Cheers as Ann Romney.

 

[Ignatz Mouse]

As a left/moderate, the hardcore left kinda scares me. I believe in a hybrid capitalist/socialist system, and when I read things like "the workers sold out by accepting higher wages/job security" I just twitch. Is it selling out if you get what you want?

Socialist reforms to the US's capitalist system did a ton of what Marx seems to think of as ideal-- it certainly weakend the caste system dramatically. It appears to have worked even better in Europe, which doesn't have as strong a reactionary bent. My concern is those who would undo those reforms, and take us backward (of which there are far too many, and too well organized).

 

[B-Dubs]

Ted Danson.

And the chick who plays Diane from Cheers as Ann Romney.

That might actually be watchable...

 

[zero shift]

If you're looking for a 2012 Mitt Romney campaign retrospective, this book seems like a good place to start.

It confirms what we already knew: Mitt Romney genuinely believed he was going to win.

By the time Election Day approached, Romney was confident he was going to win, as was widely reported. But Balz adds another gem to the story line: Vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan was even more confident.
​

Also, Chris Christie really does have a temper. But we already knew that too.

The Republican National Convention, Balz reports, was chaotic. Christie threatened to drop an F-bomb during his primetime speech if organizers cut down his introduction video by three minutes (they were nervous about getting everything done by 11 p.m.). Organizers relented. Meanwhile, Clint Eastwood's primetime address to an empty chair caught Romney's team completely off guard -- which one Romney adviser confirmed to The Huffington Post.​

This makes me fearful that he became so close to winning. Between this and "why can't everyone else open a business and become millionaires?", he i immensely delusional.

I can talk about communism. Karl Marx was originally an economist and philosopher. He thought that the society, since the beginning, is divided into two main castes: the proletarians* (worker who only own their hands to work and their children**) and the "rich people" (the bosses, those who own the production means). He said that there is a fight between these two, because "rich people" ( or bourgeois capitalist) tend to exploit the proletarians. The Industrial Revolution in Europe permited technological progress, we saw the apparition of factories and mass production but the condition of the proletarians became unbearable: their tasks were exhausting, they had to work in the rhythm of machines like machines, they could not educate themself, etc.

The final goal of marxism (and not socialism, because it can mean a lot of things) is to reach the end of this unfair relationship by destroying castes; there would be no State at the end because, for him, it is always led by the bourgeois; people would organized themself alone, electing people for their localities; there we see similarities with anarchism (In the global idea).

But before that, there must be a revolution where will ermege a powerful but temporary State (led by proletarians) that will end the property era and begin the collectivist one: nationalisation (all the private firms belong to the State, the "people"), planning (the system wants results, they fix some objectives, like production rate, and they must meet it at the end of the year), culture and education (the worker, the human being must improve his mind and understand what's around. In fact, communist regimes, like cuba or USSR, have or had a pretty strong school institution). Work is essential in Marx's philosophy, he thought that a human being has to work to develop himself. That's why there is always all this focus on the Worker and the Industry (the good one, not the capitalist one ).

The issue is that communism require a well developed proletarian caste to be effective. Marx didn't imagine Russia as the model, but UK and France where there were thinkers and well organized trade unions. If there is not enough maturity in the proletarian caste, there are important risks of abuses.

Now Socialism: the real socialism is a different approach to marxism. The point is that they are trying to reach equality by reforms in a democratic system (communism is not democratic). There is no revolution. But Socialism is kind of dead ideologically, parties don't refer anymore to marxism because equality and social improvement is difficult to support in a liberal economical context, it is now social democracy (social capitalism, lol)

Personnally, I am kinda socialist (marxist), French stuff you know.


*That's a 19th century concept, but we can universalize it to all the poor workers.

**Except slaves I guess.


Edit: Very interesting stuff, Karl Marx also predicted that there would be a revolution anyway, or a big end at least. I explain myself: as economist he saw that capitalism was a very bad system that tend to create inequalities and pauperization phenomenons that will make it collapse from itself. Who could buy that this insane way of life could last eternally? Some yolo thinkers like Adam Smith?

Thank you for this post.

Yeah, I love Marx, I think he was brilliant in a lot of ways, but this is where I usually end up disagreeing with him. I believe that the State is an emergent development of basically any population of sufficient size and that if you do successfully abolish it, even after the described revolution and temporary period of a strong State, eventually another State will arise and it might be the foundation for such a caste system all over again. Hence why I'm more in the "lets get to a state that is controlled by the people" area.

Of course even that is complicated when we get to things like the meaning of "control" and the problems of information management and why direct democracy is terrible, etc etc.

My problem with Communism and Anarchism is the whole "the people must own everything". I mean I get why oil companies shouldn't be privately ran, but I don't like the idea of having such limited choices in what I should buy. If I want a WiiU I should be able to buy a WiiU.

- Eldridge Cleaver, On The Ideology of The Black Panther Party​

Good post.

 

[Jooney]

That might actually be watchable...

Watchable? The first Game Change was great. Dat smangable Julianne Moore

 

[CHEEZMO™]

As a left/moderate, the hardcore left kinda scares me. I believe in a hybrid capitalist/socialist system, and when I read things like "the workers sold out by accepting higher wages/job security" I just twitch. Is it selling out if you get what you want?

Socialist reforms to the US's capitalist system did a ton of what Marx seems to think of as ideal-- it certainly weakend the caste system dramatically. It appears to have worked even better in Europe, which doesn't have as strong a reactionary bent. My concern is those who would undo those reforms, and take us backward (of which there are far too many, and too well organized).

Why treat the symptoms when you can remove the disease? This is one of the things that distinguishes Liberals from Leftists.

Accordingly, with admirable, though misdirected intentions, they very seriously and very sentimentally set themselves to the task of remedying the evils that they see. But their remedies do not cure the disease: they merely prolong it. Indeed, their remedies are part of the disease.

They try to solve the problem of poverty, for instance, by keeping the poor alive; or, in the case of a very advanced school, by amusing the poor.

But this is not a solution: it is an aggravation of the difficulty. The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible.

If you support a Capitalist system with Socialist elements, you admit that Capitalism causes serious problems that need to be fixed.

You are simply repairing with the left hand what you destroy with the right.

 

[B-Dubs]

Watchable? The first Game Change was great. Dat smangable Julianne Moore

I know but I didn't think it would be possible to make the Romney campaign not look like a giant flaming dog turd.

 

[Aaron Strife]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=euVkDbQz144

If this is McConnell's best, he's going down

 

[Hitokage]

Why treat the symptoms when you can remove the disease? This is one of the things that distinguishes Liberals from Leftists.

If you support a Capitalist system with Socialist elements, you admit that Capitalism causes serious problems that need to be fixed.

You are simply repairing with the left hand what you destroy with the right.

What if you don't live in Dogmaland?

 

[Angry Fork]

So we're not true liberals, simply because we don't agree on the best way to implement social change at a slow and steady pace?

Get the fuck over yourself. You sound like a petulant child who's mad because you weren't allowed to eat the cookie out of the jar.

No you are a true liberal, my point was I think liberals do damage to the goals and ideals they claim they hold.

What if you don't live in Dogmaland?

Everyone lives in dogmaland. Pro-capital, pro-surveillance state dogma.

 

[Ignatz Mouse]

Why treat the symptoms when you can remove the disease? This is one of the things that distinguishes Liberals from Leftists.

If you support a Capitalist system with Socialist elements, you admit that Capitalism causes serious problems that need to be fixed.

You are simply repairing with the left hand what you destroy with the right.

Pure Capitalism has issues. Pure Anything has issues. A mixed approach is the best approach for stability and the highest success for the most people.

I haven't seen any political system that can ignore market forces and actually work. Better to work with them than the pretend they don't matter. Capitalism and private property are not the disease. They are elements.

 

[NYCmetsfan]

Why treat the symptoms when you can remove the disease? This is one of the things that distinguishes Liberals from Leftists.

They don't see it as a disease? They're not ideologues and I don't mean to use that disparagingly

I think that a fundamental different. My end goal is not based around ending capitalism (I am a fan), but improving lives. Through either 'socialist' methods like socialized health insurance (not health care) or capitalist methods like the consumer goods market. The outcome matters.

I'm a conservative in the sense that I don't like change for change's sake I think you need to show why the current system isn't working and why your proposed system is better using more than "reason" e.g. previous reforms that worked.

The E.U. over regulation is the kind of liberalism I don't like, its based on ideals and not on facts many times.

 

[Hitokage]

Everyone lives in dogmaland. Pro-capital, pro-surveillance state dogma.

Projection.

All of this is like saying the proper way to fight obesity is to surgically remove all fat tissue.

 

[NYCmetsfan]

No you are a true liberal, my point was I think liberals do damage to the goals and ideals they claim they hold.



Everyone lives in dogmaland. Pro-capital, pro-surveillance state dogma.

The goals and ideals YOU claim they hold.

I'm a liberal but I'm not the same kind of liberal as you. This purity you demand undermines your stated goals, you really think the masses you are "supporting" agree with everything you put forward? Its the same thing as the tea party.

 

[Angry Fork]

Projection.

All of this is like saying the proper way to fight obesity is to surgically remove all fat tissue.

I don't understand what you mean, virtually all democrats and republicans with the exception of the so called radicals and idealists support economic policies in favor of large businesses over workers and putting a foot down on civil liberties. That is the dogma they espouse and the one we live under.

The goals and ideals YOU claim they hold.

I'm a liberal but I'm not the same kind of liberal as you. This purity you demand undermines your stated goals, you really think the masses you are "supporting" agree with everything you put forward? Its the same thing as the tea party.

You say you want better regulation, proper healthcare for everyone etc. maybe even some kind of stronger welfare state. If this was the case it would be in your interests to support the Occupy movement if only to turn the national discussion towards the left, which would in turn create a stronger dialogue and national push for these things.

 

[Clevinger]

Angry, I like your posts, but oh god that avatar. Nightmare fuel.

 

[NYCmetsfan]

I don't understand what you mean, virtually all democrats and republicans with the exception of the so called radicals and idealists support economic policies in favor of large businesses over workers and putting a foot down on civil liberties. That is the dogma they espouse and the one we live under.

This isn't true. Its what you want to be true.

I'm pro-union I'm pro-smart regulation, pro-worker protection for example. How far I go on each of those is probably different than you though.
The fact I disagree with certain aspects, tactics and claims of say the labor movement doesn't automatically make me "favor large businesses over workers"


Edit:
LOL nice job

 

[The Librarian]

No you are a true liberal, my point was I think liberals do damage to the goals and ideals they claim they hold.

Honestly, what defines a "true liberal"? Am I a true liberal? That seems about as ridiculous of a term as "real America."

 

[CharlieDigital]

A mixed approach is the best approach for stability and the highest success for the most people.

You know what's interesting is that this is how nature works in terms of biology, favoring mixing of genes over asexual reproduction.

Pragmatism over ideology FTW!

 

[NYCmetsfan]

wat

I worded that poorly.
I dislike rationality in the abstract, thought experiments. I'm more of an empiricist best described as a pragmatist.
Politics isn't a logic game. I'm not saying I dislike reason as it does provide useful insights.

 

[K-19]

What is the aim of Capitalism?

 

[Ignatz Mouse]

What is the aim of Capitalism?

What is the aim of gravity?

 

[Angry Fork]

Honestly, what defines a "true liberal"? Am I a true liberal? That seems about as ridiculous of a term as "real America."

Generally I attribute it to people who support capitalism but want a welfare state, willing to compromise this welfare state at any time and other ideals, would rather be nice to the opposition and treat them as friends/acquaintances/work mates, fearful of radical ideas even if they make sense and are ethically superior, so on and so on.

It's also ironic that many, maybe most elected democrats are now more Leninist than much of the far left, in that they're staunch on democratic centralism. When it comes to Obama 'party discipline' must be invoked, they can squabble along the way but once a decision has been made they fall in line and support the leader, regardless of whether or not the policy is moral or just. Except this is all done in the name of big capital.

I get sometimes you need to do that if only to prevent factionalism, but they seem to have no limit to where they'll go, there is no ideal they aren't willing to compromise on, and it gets to the point where democrats become Reaganites and Republicans become Objectivists. At some point a split in a party would be healthy if things get too extreme and I think that is now.

 

[empty vessel]

I worded that poorly.
I dislike rationality in the abstract, thought experiments. I'm more of an empiricist best described as a pragmatist.
Politics isn't a logic game. I'm not saying I dislike reason as it does provide useful insights.

Yet you deny that the US incarcerating more people than any other country in the world has relevance to its status as a free state. I think you may well think you are an empiricist, but I don't think you are a very good one. I think you have nationalistic blinders on. That's not really an insult, mind you. Almost everybody does (regardless of what country they are from).

 

[NYCmetsfan]

Oh, you mean Randian "rationality."

I consider ignoring empiricism and/or political realities to be pretty irrational.

It cuts both ways. I hate the free market rationality that the right espouses but also the rationality of a controlled economy. In theory, in utopia, both might work. In reality neither will.

 

[K-19]

What is the aim of gravity?

Aside making more money. I mean, what is the vision for the human kind? Just big house, big car and a nice garden? Nobody tried to theorized its long term benefits?

 

[NYCmetsfan]

Yet you deny that the US incarcerating more people than any other country in the world has relevance to its status as a free state. I think you may well think you are an empiricist, but I don't think you are a very good one. I think you have nationalistic blinders on. That's not really an insult, mind you. Almost everybody does (regardless of what country they are from).

How does that make me a bad empiricist? I don't deny the numbers. I deny the fact that makes us not a free state. We differ on the conclusions that are drawn.

 

[CHEEZMO™]

What is the aim of Capitalism?

http://exiledonline.com/recovered-e...-kept-poor-or-they-will-never-be-industrious/

 

[NYCmetsfan]

Aside making more money. I mean, what is the vision for the human kind? Just big house, big car and a nice garden? Nobody tried to theorized its long term benefits?

It doesn't have a vision. All it states is that private control is the best means to allocate resources fairly and effectively.

My vision of capitalism is one of a well-regulated economy with both private and public sectors (not the randian every man for himself, the government always sucks kind)

 

[K-19]

http://exiledonline.com/recovered-e...-kept-poor-or-they-will-never-be-industrious/

Thanks, I'll try to look for Perelman's studies.

edit: are those comments from this article real?

 

[Ignatz Mouse]

Aside making more money. I mean, what is the vision for the human kind? Just big house, big car and a nice garden? Nobody tried to theorized its long term benefits?

I don't think of it as having an aim. It happens. It's an economic force.

Now, if you mean free-market policies towards capitalism, that's a different question. But I don't believe in a completely hands-off approach, as I have stated.

 

[AndyD]

This might just be a semantic argument, but I'd also consider something that doesn't work in reality to not be rational. I feel like you're talking more about people reasoning from first principles and ignoring the real world, rather than actual rationality.

Right. Rational does not necessarily equal ideal/utopian.

 

[Oblivion]

I can talk about communism. Karl Marx was originally an economist and philosopher. He thought that the society, since the beginning, is divided into two main castes: the proletarians* (worker who only own their hands to work and their children**) and the "rich people" (the bosses, those who own the production means). He said that there is a fight between these two, because "rich people" ( or bourgeois capitalist) tend to exploit the proletarians. The Industrial Revolution in Europe permited technological progress, we saw the apparition of factories and mass production but the condition of the proletarians became unbearable: their tasks were exhausting, they had to work in the rhythm of machines like machines, they could not educate themself, etc.

The final goal of marxism (and not socialism, because it can mean a lot of things) is to reach the end of this unfair relationship by destroying castes; there would be no State at the end because, for him, it is always led by the bourgeois; people would organized themself alone, electing people for their localities; there we see similarities with anarchism (In the global idea).

But before that, there must be a revolution where will ermege a powerful but temporary State (led by proletarians) that will end the property era and begin the collectivist one: nationalisation (all the private firms belong to the State, the "people"), planning (the system wants results, they fix some objectives, like production rate, and they must meet it at the end of the year), culture and education (the worker, the human being must improve his mind and understand what's around. In fact, communist regimes, like cuba or USSR, have or had a pretty strong school institution). Work is essential in Marx's philosophy, he thought that a human being has to work to develop himself. That's why there is always all this focus on the Worker and the Industry (the good one, not the capitalist one ).

The issue is that communism require a well developed proletarian caste to be effective. Marx didn't imagine Russia as the model, but UK and France where there were thinkers and well organized trade unions. If there is not enough maturity in the proletarian caste, there are important risks of abuses.

Now Socialism: the real socialism is a different approach to marxism. The point is that they are trying to reach equality by reforms in a democratic system (communism is not democratic). There is no revolution. But Socialism is kind of dead ideologically, parties don't refer anymore to marxism because equality and social improvement is difficult to support in a liberal economical context, it is now social democracy (social capitalism, lol)

Personnally, I am kinda socialist (marxist), French stuff you know.


*That's a 19th century concept, but we can universalize it to all the poor workers.

**Except slaves I guess.


Edit: Very interesting stuff, Karl Marx also predicted that there would be a revolution anyway, or a big end at least. I explain myself: as economist he saw that capitalism was a very bad system that tend to create inequalities and pauperization phenomenons that will make it collapse from itself. Who could buy that this insane way of life could last eternally? Some yolo thinkers like Adam Smith?

So Marxism, like communism, has no practical way of actually existing in practice?

 

[NYCmetsfan]

I feel like you're talking more about people reasoning from first principles and ignoring the real world, rather than actual rationality.

Maybe I am.

I think there is a difference between a rational thing, or the way we use the word in everyday parlance, and rationalism in a philosophic sense.

 

[Gotchaye]

Maybe I am.

I think there is a difference between a rational thing, or the way we use the word in everyday parlance, and rationalism in a philosophic sense.

There is, but I'm not sure that that sort of rationalism has ever been a big deal in communist or socialist circles. See Frenchie's post, for example - Marx was pretty rooted in the empirical study of societies, and had a well-developed strategy for making people the sort of people for whom communism would work. I don't think rationalism is a big deal in political philosophy outside of libertarians and some anarchists, who argue that certain sorts of social arrangements are superior almost regardless of what people are actually like (mostly because they think some arrangements are morally superior, and so they don't care much about practicality).

 

[NYCmetsfan]

From Texas:

And

@HansNichols 6m
WH to delay employer mandate in health care law by a year. Scoop by @mikedorning @aawayne

Edit: article for the above tweet
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-02/health-law-employer-mandate-said-to-be-delayed-to-2015.html