Ask a red

[holy king]

how many years of studying economics and all you can come up with to critisize marxism is "man is too greedy" ?

nice.

 

[JerichoHill]

how many years of studying economics and all you can come up with to critisize marxism is "man is too greedy" ?

nice.

Nice that you can add nothing to the discussion. See, now that's trolling.

And your laughing aside, that point is exceptionally valid. Psychology plays a HUGE role in our daily interactions, and if economics is, as some define it "A study of how human beings interact, involving tangible and intangible assets" then the failure to quantify man's psychology is a huge stumbling block. We behave like 5th cousins of homo econimus.

Further, that we aren't all alike and we all act differently with varying degrees of "nice things" and "naughty things" and each have dissimiliar sets of information on which to base decisions utterly confounds any "social welfare planner" from achieving a defined optimal point, however society or you or I define optimal.

Perhaps next time you'll think through what you write before you post it.

 

[Phlegmak]

Ask a red

What books would you ban for your Communist utopia?

 

[pau17]

Did you miss my question, or am I troll?

Do you see science as democratizing, and do you believe the concepts of "truth" and "scientific progress" are valid? Or valid but misused? Or, in your position, are they merely part of a dominant ideology that you wish to overthrow along with economic class relations? (As far as I know, I am aware of Marxist critiques in both veins.) Can you comment on the different approaches to this topic in the revolutionary camp?

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

I am afraid I will have to come back to this.

A while ago you gave me this answer to this question:

My third question is not, per se, about the idea of communism or socialism itself, but rather about the Soviet Union. I can see, to a certain degree, why the government might want to deny things like freedom of speech and such to its people, and I can reasonably understand the principle behind the Soviet "closed cities," but I do not understand the reason for barring their travel. It is my understanding that one needed the proper papers and such simply to travel between provinces, akin to needing a passport to leave your state (lowercase s). This seems to me to be a very "feudal" sort of thing, like a road tax, a means of controlling people simply to remind them that they are controlled; I have read about such things in pre-Revolutionary France, for example. Why did the Soviet Union feel the need to control the movement of its people within the Soviet Union itself? I can reasonably understand why they would want to heavily control the borders of the country, but why the borders of the provinces? It's okay if you don't know the answer to this, but I figured I'd ask; you are probably the most knowledgable person I know about that sort of thing.

I was wondering if you had any further information on this.

Thanks.

 

[Fifty]

Jericho: While you aren't trolling in the sense that you're trying to be malicious, you ARE trolling in the sense that you are using this thread beyond its intended purpose. Perhaps you are just doing this in ignorance of the point of this thread and not intentionally, so let me remind you:

luceafarul is not interested in debating communism here. First of all, CFC is hardly the venue for such a huge debate. Second of all, even if it were such a venue that would not mean that every thread needs to be a debate thread. The purpose of this thread is for luceafarul to try to answer sincere questions about communism as best he can given the constraints of time and willingness. No more, no less.

Now that you do know the purpose of the thread, hopefully you can leave the debate out of it. If you can't then we can only assume that you are trolling, since ignorance is no longer an excuse.



EDIT: And I have a question for luceafarul! You seem to know a lot about the history of terms like "libertarian" and such before they got co-opted and their meanings twisted. My question is, what do you think Chomsky could be referring to when he said (in an interview I saw) that "real conservatism has an honorable tradition". What sort of conservatism might he have been referring to, because obviously he isn't referring to what we now call "conservatism" in the USA.

 

[Newbunkle]

I have another question too. I was snooping around, as I do, and found this thread regarding the restriction of people in North Korea to travel outside of their country. I pulled this quote from one of the later replies:

if the nation finds it necessary to keep its educated and professional workforce inside the country in order to survive and flourish and accomplish its goals, then it must, if the Party finds the conditions prevailing, do what is necessary.

Since I don't know all the various branches of socialism and communism as intimately as you do, can you tell me if this opinion is found outside of this small group? and do you forsee such a thing being necessary in order to make the system work?

 

[Richard Cribb]

about your stance on "freedom of religion":

dont you think that metaphysics of all kinds are opposed to materialism and thus if embraced hinder people from understanding, well, materialism ?

You are right IN PRINCIPLE, but see my warning about ultra-leftism. We do ourselves a great disfavour if we aleniate us from the many good religious people who should be our allies in various political struggles. Also keep in mind that a mechanic materialism is no guarantee for a deeper understanding of historical processes or progressive politics. Heck, even on this board, yes in this very thread you find reactionaires who are atheists and you find some excellent people who are deeply religious.
Also feel free to have a look at this article about Marx and religion.http://www.marxmyths.org/cyril-smith/article2.htm

Dont worry, I have an authoritarian streak a mile wide, couldnt happen.

""O Solon, Solon! you Greeks are mere children".
Believe me, you have no idea what might happen to you when you reach 40...

Well, identity poltics and such and such aren't as important as economic ideology to me, I agree with you, but you know what, we're two heterosexual (an assumption on my part) white males, so it's not entirely surprising thats how it is from our perspective, and we cant dismiss how these issues affect other people in a different situations lives. I think a lot of these 'isms' do have roots in economic ideology etc, but for a victim of racism, homophobia, sexism etc this is not immediately apparent, and isnt the immediate problem.

Oh I didn't men it might not be important, only that it is secondary. I think like you that the ills that are racism and sexism are pretty much effects of a basically unfair class society.
And yes indeed, I am a heterosexual white male, the heterosexual male part being something I have enjoyed and enjoy immensly, and I am aware that it in most ways make me privileged. But it is not that simple always. You know, contrary to what certain people for different reasons want you to believe, not all women are oppressed by all men. And identity politics can be and are used effectively to divert us from the real important conflicts in society, as you pretty much admit yourself.

Not new, and I'm inclined to think its a good thing. In any case it's totally compatible with socialism, ultra-liberal New Zealand and socialist USSR had comparable women's rights (in the sense of legal gender equality) earlier than anyone else.

"Ultra-liberal" New Zeeland did not give so many rights to the Maoris though.
I think it is pretty obvious that you can't have socialism and gender inequality at the same time, but the point is that gender equality can be achieved within the frames of a capitalist society, while retaining basic injustice.

I actually odnt know what you are referring to, can you link?

I'll see if I can find his words of wisdom inspired by Dr.Love (From askmen.com. no kidding) and the sociopath Gary Becker.
Also keep in mind he he usually jokes about the poor in the USA have cable-TV (courtesy of the heritage Foundation presumably), some nice tents they have there!

Could you elaborate on this?

The far left usually wants to weaken the state, and having found lots of objectionable rules set by states I'm somewhat sympathetic to that goal. I also understand that no "anarchistic" society has ever succeeded (lasted very long) in history, and that a weak state invariably leads to the accumulation of power by a few individuals. Better a strong state under democratic controlthan a weak state which will gradually allow private individual abuses of power,until it collapses - was that what you meant? There's another problem, though: states under democratic control are vulnerable from within too. Both WE social-democratic states and the Eastern blocks could, and many have, been changed or overthrown from within, so the advantage over the far left's ideals here is not clear.

It is frustrating to see the problems but not be sure about what are the best answers...

My point is that one needs to balance between left- and right deviations. As you point out yourself the anarchist societies were basically too much based on idealism, which made them unable to cope with problems posed by reality. The social democrats on the other hand, for a variety of reasons (personally I think they chickened out when capitalists showed then what they could do when they became really angry; keyword: fascism) sold out (It is a depressing to think of that the man in my avatar belonged to a social democratic party, the only place I think you can find genuine social democracy today is Venezuela. Like it or not, I think the best attempt to forward socialism was in the Eastern Bloc before stagnation set in with Breshnev and his minions.

how many years of studying economics and all you can come up with to critisize marxism is "man is too greedy" ?

nice.

Again, please don't feed him.
Apart from that, how does years of studying economics make one especially classified for critisizing marxism?

What books would you ban for your Communist utopia?

I don't have any utopia, and I see no point in banning books except for when being in a state of war. But I would like a system with taxation on bad literature because it damages ones health. Just similarto the ones used on cigarettes, alcohol, sugar etc..

Did you miss my question, or am I troll?

No you are not, even if I still don't understand your purpose of quoting me in that thread where you all dogpiled in aelf only because he had the audacity to make a good, if uncomfortable point.
As far as my opinion on science goes, I think it is basically progresive. I will expand on this later.

A while ago you gave me this answer to this question:




I was wondering if you had any further information on this.

Thanks.

I think you need to be more specific here. I know that there are internal travel restrictions in not so few countries, and mostly that has to do with military zones.

Jericho: While you aren't trolling in the sense that you're trying to be malicious, you ARE trolling in the sense that you are using this thread beyond its intended purpose. Perhaps you are just doing this in ignorance of the point of this thread and not intentionally, so let me remind you:

luceafarul is not interested in debating communism here. First of all, CFC is hardly the venue for such a huge debate. Second of all, even if it were such a venue that would not mean that every thread needs to be a debate thread. The purpose of this thread is for luceafarul to try to answer sincere questions about communism as best he can given the constraints of time and willingness. No more, no less.

Now that you do know the purpose of the thread, hopefully you can leave the debate out of it. If you can't then we can only assume that you are trolling, since ignorance is no longer an excuse.

Thanks for clearifying that, but I am afraid we haven't seen the last of this yet.

EDIT: And I have a question for luceafarul! You seem to know a lot about the history of terms like "libertarian" and such before they got co-opted and their meanings twisted. My question is, what do you think Chomsky could be referring to when he said (in an interview I saw) that "real conservatism has an honorable tradition". What sort of conservatism might he have been referring to, because obviously he isn't referring to what we now call "conservatism" in the USA.

I should have some written referance to this somewhere, but I think it must be on my old laptop; I will see if I can track it down and then I will do an update.
What I think he refers to is late Enlightenment thinkers as Wilhelm von Humboldt, who was critical to a system where people worked under the command of others. To him, that represented a form of slavery.
By the way, out of curiosity and completely unrelated: Which marxist economists did you study (Yes, I do read a lot of threads in which I am not trolling!)?

I have another question too. I was snooping around, as I do, and found this thread regarding the restriction of people in North Korea to travel outside of their country. I pulled this quote from one of the later replies:

First of all, I regard juche as more of a form of nationalism than socialism.

Since I don't know all the various branches of socialism and communism as intimately as you do, can you tell me if this opinion is found outside of this small group? and do you forsee such a thing being necessary in order to make the system work?

I can hardly see any system that wouldn't try, by negative or positive incentives, to keep highly educated people to fullfill important tasks in society. What makes socialism specifical concerning this topic, is that in socialist countries society pays for people's education and consequently has a right to demand something back. This does not mean that it will be necessary with that form of restrictions though.
I see this as a problem in the future for virtually any country, but I don't know how this will be solved. It is situational.

 

[pau17]

No you are not, even if I still don't understand your purpose of quoting me in that thread where you all dogpiled in aelf only because he had the audacity to make a good, if uncomfortable point.
As far as my opinion on science goes, I think it is basically progresive. I will expand on this later.

My purpose was to point out merely that you embraced some form of constructive, political action, as I have heard others in your camp also say. It was funny, actually, how closely the two figures I cited, one being yourself, paralleled each other both in intellectual profile as well as the actual words they used, specifically the term "responsible." I think this last word is what I was getting at...responsibility, regardless of whatever idealistic notion one may have. But I don't want to derail the thread.

I look forward to your comments.

 

[Newbunkle]

First of all, I regard juche as more of a form of nationalism than socialism.

I can hardly see any system that wouldn't try, by negative or positive incentives, to keep highly educated people to fullfill important tasks in society. What makes socialism specifical concerning this topic, is that in socialist countries society pays for people's education and consequently has a right to demand something back. This does not mean that it will be necessary with that form of restrictions though.
I see this as a problem in the future for virtually any country, but I don't know how this will be solved. It is situational.

Cool, thanks for clearing it up!

 

[Richard Cribb]

Just a reminder that this thread is still open.
I will post a couple of answers to questions posted elsewhere in a couple of days and perhaps linkto some articles as well.

 

[philippe]

How do you think about the assembly line and the impacts it has on labour?

 

[RedRalph]

Just a reminder that this thread is still open.
I will post a couple of answers to questions posted elsewhere in a couple of days and perhaps linkto some articles as well.

What are your views on the following people?

Tito
Nasser
Putin

 

[Munch]

What are your thoughts on automation?

I don't believe that it is far fetched to say that we will have in the next few years (if not now) the capacity to automate a large amount of (unskilled?) labour. For instance, agriculture could make moves towards being largely controlled by machines. Not 'intelligent' machines of course, but machines programmed to plant, grow and correctly harvest crops, with little or no human involvement except for maintaining the machines.

Is automation something to be resisted, or is it something of a new emancipation from labour?

 

[RedRalph]

What are your thoughts on automation?

I don't believe that it is far fetched to say that we will have in the next few years (if not now) the capacity to automate a large amount of (unskilled?) labour. For instance, agriculture could make moves towards being largely controlled by machines. Not 'intelligent' machines of course, but machines programmed to plant, grow and correctly harvest crops, with little or no human involvement except for maintaining the machines.

Is automation something to be resisted, or is it something of a new emancipation from labour?

Personally I'm all for it. We're not Luddites you know

 

[Munch]

Personally I'm all for it. We're not Luddites you know

I'm all for it too, but what happens to the large number of workers whose jobs are obsoleted each time new machines are invented? Won't there be resistance to the mass unemployment which would be caused?

 

[RedRalph]

I'm all for it too, but what happens to the large number of workers whose jobs are obsoleted each time new machines are invented? Won't there be resistance to the mass unemployment which would be caused?

No, because new jobs always come up... it may well lead to shorter working hours though. People probably thought when electricity first emerged that it would do everything for us, but it didnt happen, the same will go for mass automisation. Besides, robots cant do everything, they will always need us.

 

[Munch]

No, because new jobs always come up... it may well lead to shorter working hours though. People probably thought when electricity first emerged that it would do everything for us, but it didnt happen, the same will go for mass automisation.

Hmm, perhaps. There will be new jobs, but will there be enough work for billions of people? I suppose robots wouldn't be able to do all the unskilled labour (particularly jobs involving human interaction), but perhaps the majority. Of course, lack of jobs isn't a problem if automation is regarded as the next stage of emancipation, in fact it's the whole point. I'm interested though in how society would work if human labour wasn't important.

Besides, robots cant do everything, they will always need us.

Us? They may always need specialists, like mechanics/engineers/scientists/..., but they won't need the average member of society. That is, assuming the average member of society isn't a mechanic etc and instead remains ignorant of the working of the technology.

I'm not sure I'm articulating my point here very well.

 

[holy king]

technological advances = possible cut in work hours.

 

[RedRalph]

Hmm, perhaps. There will be new jobs, but will there be enough work for billions of people? I suppose robots wouldn't be able to do all the unskilled labour (particularly jobs involving human interaction), but perhaps the majority. Of course, lack of jobs isn't a problem if automation is regarded as the next stage of emancipation, in fact it's the whole point. I'm interested though in how society would work if human labour wasn't important.

Dont forget, this is a political, not just an economic issue. If robots made billion unemployed, it would lead to revolutions, and not many politicians are interested in those. Personally, I think there will always be work for most people, but what is considered menial work will become progressively more and more complex. Just think, menial workers now include people who have to use highly sophisticated equpiptment, and it certaintly didnt 200 years ago. the 'menial worker' of the future will probably have skills far beyond the workers of today.

Us? They may always need specialists, like mechanics/engineers/scientists/..., but they won't need the average member of society. That is, assuming the average member of society isn't a mechanic etc and instead remains ignorant of the working of the technology.

I'm not sure I'm articulating my point here very well.

the robots might not directly need us but the mechanics/engineers/scientists always will.