Communism, Marxism, Socialism, Capitalism, What are your thoughts?

[Zardnaar]

When my Maori friend recalls her nana being dispossessed from the land of her ancestors a mere 50 or so years ago I have to wonder how Waitangi matters beyond allowing white New Zealanders to point at it and say "see, we were nice!" A constitutional convention affirming the rights of the Maori would be a lot more meaningful. But that's just me.

It's more important now and the Maori revival started in the 70s.

The principles of the treaty were also added to law in the 80s.

There's been billions paid out to the tribes, it's an ongoing process so a republic raises more headaches.

 

[JohannaK]

Tis as I said: inertia.

 

[Zardnaar]

Tis as I said: inertia.

Perhaps but NZ is generally doing fairly well. Reasonably rich, universal healthcare, welfare, peaceful,well educated, one of the least corrupt countries in the planet. Cops are unarmed etc. Cheap university, free schools, healthcare through age 18. Proportional representation, doctors visits are free to $25 USD. Prescriptions are $3 USD.

It's more egalitarian than the rest of the Anglosphere. Doing well vs Covid relative to most of the world.

We're not perfect but whatever we're doing seems to work.

 

[Commodore]

Nowadays, no one wants to bring back feudalism, and that is surely dead

I don't know if it's dead so much as it's just taken on a new form. One could argue that federal republics are just democratized feudalism.

 

[JohannaK]

Perhaps but NZ is generally doing fairly well. Reasonably rich, universal healthcare, welfare, peaceful,well educated, one of the least corrupt countries in the planet. Cops are unarmed etc. Cheap university, free schools, healthcare through age 18. Proportional representation, doctors visits are free to $25 USD. Prescriptions are $3 USD.

It's more egalitarian than the rest of the Anglosphere. Doing well vs Covid relative to most of the world.

We're not perfect but whatever we're doing seems to work.

I don't deny that. It's an enviable place. It would be even more enviable if it had a Head of State and flag of their own instead of second-hand knock-offs.

 

[Zardnaar]

Furthermore, there is a stark difference between merely pointing out the ills of capitalism. This has been done very well by the utopian socialists of old. What they missed, however, is the way that capitalism works. How it propagates itself. How it historically arose. What flows drive it? I could go on. This is the difference between pointing at something being "bad", and actually knowing why it is bad. But what do I know, a one-liner about the failure of Marxism instantly disproves it.

The reason it won't work is you have to get people into it voluntary.

If you don't do that you're going to have to oppress 30% of the population if not more.

Once you start doing that you're going to run into problems even if you don't send people to gulags.

At a most basic level you need to feed yourselves. Who's going to do that work and how do you pay them?

Farming's hard work you either need to pay them more or compel them to do it. If you pay them more you're just doing capitalism. If you compel them you've just reinvented slavery, if you exploit them (pay them sod all) you're doing the same thing as a capitalist.

If whoever produced the food disagrees they either stop making it or divert it into the black market.

Why bust your gut in a cold, were field when you can go work in the convenient city?

Most Marxists I've met IRL are well educated university types who have very little if any idea if how to produce and deliver food.

They're clueless idiots in other words.

If you've ever picked vegetables for several years under the summer sun or middle of winter lmk. I have picked carrots and brussel sprouts in winter, apples in summer (and potatoes).

Ever thinned a field of lettuce? I have it really really sucks, apples is fun comparatively.

It's why every Communist country struggled to feed itself.

Can't eat dialectic.

 

[red_elk]

I'm ok with socialism/communism.
Unfortunately, all attempts to implement it always met fierce resistance from rich and powerful elites, on a country or on a world level.
Either crushed with direct military force, or, if managed to withstand, strangled economically.

USA should leave Cuba alone and withdraw military base from it. The country has great potential.

 

[Zardnaar]

I don't deny that. It's an enviable place. It would be even more enviable if it had a Head of State and flag of their own instead of second-hand knock-offs.

They had a flag referendum a few years back.

27 million dollars later they could agree on anything better.

This design won the pop culture choice.

https://nzhistory.govt.nz/media/photo/fire-lazar

Basically a F you to the polititians.

 

[JohannaK]

USA should leave Cuba alone and withdraw military base from it. The country has great potential.

Honestly, why beyond intolerable pride, is the US still embargoing the damned place? It cannot be said that Obama was a great President, but one of the good things he did was start the thaw.

 

[JohannaK]

They had a flag referendum a few years back.

27 million dollars later they could agree on anything better.

This design won the pop culture choice.

I'll say the Flag Consideration Committee did their country a massive disservice by going with the three most conservative designs and a token koru for the shortlist. I daresay it was a list designed to end in status quo. People voted familiarity and then, to barely change the flag at all, what for?

Mike Archer and Sven Baker had by far the best two designs. Personally I think the lower flag in the upper flag's colour scheme would have been perfect, but I'm just a flag loving weirdo.

Spoiler :

 

[AmazonQueen]

I'm ok with socialism/communism.
Unfortunately, all attempts to implement it always met fierce resistance from rich and powerful elites, on a country or on a world level.
Either crushed with direct military force, or, if managed to withstand, strangled economically.

USA should leave Cuba alone and withdraw military base from it. The country has great potential.

All attempts to implement it have also resulted in the creation of new elites that have ruled in their own interests rather than of the community.

 

[red_elk]

Honestly, why beyond intolerable pride, is the US still embargoing the damned place?

Because they can.

 

[gay_Aleks]

I don't know if it's dead so much as it's just taken on a new form. One could argue that federal republics are just democratized feudalism.

No. Feudalism has a concise, clear definition in Marxism (mainstream historians deny that, but it is mostly because they see "feudalism" as the Western European model set on the whole world, which is naturally, ludicrous, and not really what Marxism argues about.). In a word, feudalism is a primarily agrarian mode of production, where the land is "owned" by the serfs, who are working for the lords, that are taking a certain surplus from them. Here, as far as land goes, the existence of the commons is crucial, as from them, the serfs can sustain themselves. This is not the case in the current bourgeois mode of production. Here, private property and wage labour are dominant.

The reason it won't work is you have to get people into it voluntary.

If you don't do that you're going to have to oppress 30% of the population if not more.

Once you start doing that you're going to run into problems even if you don't send people to gulags.

At a most basic level you need to feed yourselves. Who's going to do that work and how do you pay them?

For some strange reasons, the Chinese and Vietnamese peasants were ready to throw themselves for this, and yes, they did know how to grow food.

Farming's hard work you either need to pay them more or compel them to do it. If you pay them more you're just doing capitalism. If you compel them you've just reinvented slavery, if you exploit them (pay them sod all) you're doing the same thing as a capitalist.

If whoever produced the food disagrees they either stop making it or divert it into the black market.

Why bust your gut in a cold, were field when you can go work in the convenient city?

Most Narcists I've met IRL are well educated university types who have very little if any idea if how to produce and deliver food.

They're clueless idiots in other words.

If you've ever picked vegetables for several years under the summer sun or middle of winter lmk.

It's why every Communist country struggled to feed itself.

Can't eat dialectic.

Well, what do you know, I have picked vegetables, but I'm still a convinced Marxist, despite being an "university type". Indeed, I don't get the obsession of the Right with universities...my peoples, you got them in your pocket. The most reactionary peoples readily either teach or congregate within universities. People who see Marxism for what it is - a doctrine of liberation - are a rarity within universities, but not because 420 Venezuela iPhone starvation, but because it is a fundamentally bourgeois institution, that enforces its hegemony over the students. How can you explain, then, that after the 30s, there have been no famines in the USSR? Even our beloved friends, the CIA, have this to say: https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP84B00274R000300150009-5.pdf, or, as the opening sentence states, "American and Soviet citizens eat about the same amount of food, but the Soviet diet may be slightly more nutritious.". I suppose that, perhaps, the Americans were also eating dialectics during that period, huh?

I just don't understand how one can be so arrogant as to speak from the point of a nation, settled upon bloodsoaked and stolen land (one of the "good" settler colonial states, to boot!), and call out others on being evil and bad. Amazing.

 

[Zardnaar]

No. Feudalism has a concise, clear definition in Marxism (mainstream historians deny that, but it is mostly because they see "feudalism" as the Western European model set on the whole world, which is naturally, ludicrous, and not really what Marxism argues about.). In a word, feudalism is a primarily agrarian mode of production, where the land is "owned" by the serfs, who are working for the lords, that are taking a certain surplus from them. Here, as far as land goes, the existence of the commons is crucial, as from them, the serfs can sustain themselves. This is not the case in the current bourgeois mode of production. Here, private property and wage labour are dominant.



For some strange reasons, the Chinese and Vietnamese peasants were ready to throw themselves for this, and yes, they did know how to grow food.



Well, what do you know, I have picked vegetables, but I'm still a convinced Marxist, despite being an "university type". Indeed, I don't get the obsession of the Right with universities...my peoples, you got them in your pocket. The most reactionary peoples readily either teach or congregate within universities. People who see Marxism for what it is - a doctrine of liberation - are a rarity within universities, but not because 420 Venezuela iPhone starvation, but because it is a fundamentally bourgeois institution, that enforces its hegemony over the students. How can you explain, then, that after the 30s, there have been no famines in the USSR? Even our beloved friends, the CIA, have this to say: https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP84B00274R000300150009-5.pdf, or, as the opening sentence states, "American and Soviet citizens eat about the same amount of food, but the Soviet diet may be slightly more nutritious.". I suppose that, perhaps, the Americans were also eating dialectics during that period, huh?

I just don't understand how one can be so arrogant as to speak from the point of a nation, settled upon bloodsoaked and stolen land (one of the "good" settler colonial states, to boot!), and call out others on being evil and bad. Amazing.

Soviet Union was also very worried about starvation.

The annual harvest was major news each year in Pravda. From the 70 s they were importing food.

China starved millions of peasants. Americans eat to much fat and suger, their diets awful. So do we being honest I personally try to avoid the worst stuff to often.

In the colonialism stuff my family settled in 1880 in part of the county where there where no Maori didn't dispossess anyone. Granddad worked on the ports in small town NZ.

My city was a summer camp for the Maori. No fresh water in sufficient quantities, easy access to the ocean and cold.

 

[amadeus]

How can you explain, then, that after the 30s, there have been no famines in the USSR?

In short, a disproportionate amount of agricultural production came from the private plots that Soviet citizens were allowed to farm on. Other deficits were made up by Soviet imports of Argentine grain purchased with the hard currency earned from the export of oil.

 

[Zardnaar]

In short, a disproportionate amount of agricultural production came from the private plots that Soviet citizens were allowed to farm on. Other deficits were made up by Soviet imports of Argentine grain purchased with the hard currency earned from the export of oil.

USA, Canada, and even NZ also supplied food. Alot in credit which was written off.

Having a nuclear superpower starve probably not a great idea. The Soviets mostly rational having them fall apart starving bad idea in 70s.

 

[amadeus]

USA, Canada, and even NZ also supplied food. Alot in credit which was written off.

I cited only Argentina as they were the most significant exporter of grain, and their position was strengthened even more when then-President Carter imposed a grain embargo on the USSR in 1979 following the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. The embargo was rescinded early on in the Reagan years, but the exports never recovered to what they had been before the embargo. Either way, the private plot farming probably saved them more than imports from non-socialist states did.

 

[Zardnaar]

I cited only Argentina as they were the most significant exporter of grain, and their position was strengthened even more when then-President Carter imposed a grain embargo on the USSR in 1979 following the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. The embargo was rescinded early on in the Reagan years, but the exports never recovered to what they had been before the embargo. Either way, the private plot farming probably saved them more than imports from non-socialist states did.

Yeah their farms sucked. They used the army to help out at harvest time.

Russian food looks nice but it's heavy on the tubers etc just based in the climate. You've got a short growing season and options are a bit limited.

Bread was so cheap you had shortages. Wasn't worth making and first people in line would buy it all.

Quality big life peaked in the 60s post Stalin and before Brezhnev.

 

[red_elk]

USSR was the first-second in the world by wheat and other grain production, in the beginning of 80-s.
https://www.indexmundi.com/agriculture/?country=su&commodity=wheat&graph=production

 

[red_elk]

Bread was so cheap you had shortages. Wasn't worth making and first people in line would buy it all.

I don't remember any shortages of bread actually.
Even in the beginning of 90-s when everything else was in shortage.