The Official Conservative Political Thread

There's the "the only real world iterations of marxist dogma wasn'treallymarxist". How do you think this happens, exactly? If in the real world all marxist societies which are tried, in good faith and bad, result in regimes which collapse into despotism more quickly and more thoroughly than alternative complex forms of social regulation?

This isn't throwing 50 dollars at brad so that he can make Everquest4 "done right".

It's why I'd respect Marx's Priests quite a deal more if they would admit that they were priests. They look to change the nature of men. They even look to elevate them against their base tendency.They seek to redefine sin. But they're afraid of it. And don't want to take that much responsibilty when things go horribly wrong. And things always go wrong. History is a almost literally a big old list of "and here is when it went wrong, mark this day." The priests aren't completely fucking stupid. When that happens they want to be able to say, "But those weren'treallyMarxist societies."

They want something for nothing, and they want other people to shoulder the load.

But to clarify: A more equitable world, with a greater empowerment for the men who produce... from each according to their means, to each according to their need? It sounds like a fairly good deal. I'd like to go there as well.

You're not going to get there on that road.

Dumar_sl said:

No communist state has ever existed. Stalinist and Maoist terror regimes were not communist in any sense of the word: they were state-sponsored capitalist systems using the propaganda of communism to oppress and terrorize their people. It never came close to fulfilling communism as described by Marx. We can certainly go into the history of the Soviets all you'd like, try to pulp away.

Click to expand...

I called you on that bullshit earlier. The only defense you liberal nutbags can say about Marxism is that "no one has done it right." Because you don't want to face the facts that the social experiment has failed.

Stop spouting about how Marxism is superior when you can't post quantitative proof that it is. Quantitively, Marxism is on the wane, countries are bailing out of it. Countries like the Soviet Union, India and China have switched to capitalism, and have seen massive increases in GDP, growth, and improved standards of living.

Iannis_sl said:

There's the "the only real world iterations of marxist dogma wasn'treallymarxist".

Click to expand...

Lyrical_sl said:

The only defense you liberal nutbags can say about Marxism is that "no one has done it right." Because you don't want to face the facts that the social experiment has failed.

Click to expand...

No, I'm not redefining anything. I'm providing the original definition: it's laid out explicitly, and the people who don't know are the people who haven't read him, are also the people who are doing the redefining.

The basic requirement of a communistic society is one of free association. Point blank, period. That's the base, the foundational thing that is at the heart of what communism means. What is free association, you ask? A society of men by men, a society where one man cannot use another for his own personal gain, where each is free to partake in activity as he or she chooses. This transforms what labor is and means to people: no longer is it 'work to live', but 'living through activity, through work'. A society like that has never even come close to existing. Socialism is not the same as communism.

Stalin's Russia, Mao's China were not even close to this ideal in any way shape or form. The argument then shifts the playbook into a 'well, they were on the ROAD to communism, therefore what they were doing was right!'. That's wrong too, as Marx said himself: 'Even the equality of incomes which Proudhon demands would only change the relation of the present day worker to his work into a relation of all men to work. Society would then be conceived as an abstract capitalist.'

And here we get at the fundamental complete nonfalsifiability of Marxism. No matter what experiment attempts to do Marxism, it will only be truly marxist if it succeeds. Any failures won't apply to the tenets of Marxism, but will simply point to the failures of the people trying to implement it.

Dumar_sl said:

No, I'm not redefining anything. I'm providing the original definition: it's laid out explicitly, and the people who don't know are the people who haven't read him, are also the people who are doing the redefining.

The basic requirement of a communistic society is one of free association. Point blank, period. That's the base, the foundational thing that is at the heart of what communism means. What is free association, you ask? A society of men by men, a society where one man cannot use another for his own personal gain, where each is free to partake in activity as he or she chooses. This transforms what labor is and means to people: no longer is it 'work to live', but 'living through activity, through work'. A society like that has never even come close to existing. Socialism is not the same as communism.

Stalin's Russia, Mao's China were not even close to this ideal in any way shape or form. The argument then shifts the playbook into a 'well, they were on the ROAD to communism, therefore what they were doing was right!'. That's wrong too, as Marx said himself: 'Even the equality of incomes which Proudhon demands would only change the relation of the present day worker to his work into a relation of all men to work. Society would then be conceived as an abstract capitalist.'

Click to expand...

All you keep doing is keep making the argument, "No one has done it right yet" but with different words.

It's either "not done right," or sucks so bad no one is willing to "do it right." Either way, it weakens Marxism as any sort of valid Economic system, to the point of absurdity.

Dumar_sl said:

How do you feel about the Constitution? Do you think it's a well-written document? And this is an open question to all.

Click to expand...

In the context of the times in which it was created, it was incredible. In the context of our times now, it's pretty shitty. Giving it the credit or even a majority of the credit for our current standing in the world is naive.

Lyrical_sl said:

No it hasn't. None of those countries you listed are worth a shit.

Click to expand...

Hilariously ignorant and wrong.

Sebudai_sl said:

Hilariously ignorant and wrong.

Click to expand...

Please post quantitative proof as to why I am wrong. The only thing you nutbags can do is mock, because your shit doesn't work.

I don't care about your beliefs, tell me what you know (which clearly isn't much).

At the end of the day, the crux behind your ilk's modus is ideology, and not thought leadership.

You want me to provide evidence that the nordic countries are "worth a shit"? Okay, which metrics would you like to use? Social mobility? Inequality? Median incomes? Poverty? GDP per capita? Happiness? Health? Education? Crime rates? Who are we comparing them to? Lets lay down some ground rules.

Yeah, saying the Nordic countries are shitty is dumb. I think the US overall is a better country, personal preference and all that, but if I had to live anywhere else in the world, it would probably be there.

Huh? Pretty much any quality of life statistic you can think of lists the Nordic countries far ahead of the United States.

If you're a part of the lower middle class or lower, there's absolutely no reason to stay in the US at all. If you want to live the American Dream,move to Denmark.

That video mentions every single statistic you can imagine.

Sebudai_sl said:

You want me to provide evidence that the nordic countries are "worth a shit"? Okay, which metrics would you like to use? Social mobility? Inequality? Median incomes? Poverty? GDP per capita? Happiness? Health? Education? Crime rates? Who are we comparing them to? Lets lay down some ground rules.

Click to expand...

There are no ground rules, other than to make a quantitative and compelling argument, which none of you can do. For every example you pull out, there are more and wider examples where it didn't work. Feel free to pull out a few examples in teeny countries, but fair warning, I'll be calling out China, Russia, and India where trillions were lost. And in particular, if we are going down this path, I will illustrate how much things got better for those countries when they switched to capitalism.

The handful of times where it's worked is a tiny drop of dew compared to the ocean of failure.

Dumar_sl said:

Huh? Pretty much any quality of life statistic you can think of lists the Nordic countries far ahead of the United States.

If you're a part of the lower middle class or lower, there's absolutely no reason to stay in the US at all. If you want to live the American Dream,move to Denmark.

That video mentions every single statistic you can imagine.

Click to expand...

You can't equate a handful of countries to the huge failures that happened in Russia, China and India. It does not compute.

I don't think Lyrical actually understands the terms we're using right now. But his attempt to move the goal posts after he undoubtedly wiki'd the Nordic countries for the first time in his life and learned that they're basically the nicest places to live in the history of Earth is pretty hilarious.

Now we're comparing China to Finland! Both are totally socially democratic countries following the Nordic model!

Lyrical_sl said:

You can't equate a handful of countries to the huge failures that happened in Russia, China and India. It does not compute.

Click to expand...

Yes, because a totalitarian state that supports itself with terror, assassination, and forced labor camps is the same as Nordic democratic socialism. I think we should compare the US to the laissez-faire utopia of Somalia next.

Just because a country flies a certain banner means nothing with respect to the reality under it. Let me give you an example since you generalize at such a high level. The USSR was a pure Marxist state? Okay. Under whom? Stalin? Lenin? What about Trotsky? Lenin hated Stalin, and Stalin assassinated Trotsky - were all of them on the same Marxist team in your mind? Did all of them agree on the ideal communist state? Then why did they hate and kill each other?

The answer, like most of history, has little to do with ideology and more to do with power: a power grab with the right propagandistic excuse behind it. The USSR had as much to do with textbook communism as flying purple unicorns except to use it as an excuse to seize power. Welcome to history.

Liberal nutbags, look at GDP growth in the countries that are free market, compared to the ones that aren't, and explain to me how Marxism is better. Look at the huge growth rates in the countries that switched from Marxism to Capitalism.