No...It Isn't What You Think

[Minimalist]

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/12310-...racies-die

"Picture a country at the height of its international power and prestige. It has military forces stationed around the globe. It is an intellectual leader...." It's not the one you're thinking of.

[jonb]

I'm british, been there done that.

[TaraJo]

The fall of the Roman Empire went along similar lines, too, didn't it?

Honestly, we've watched stupid shit like this happen with nation after nation after nation. I'm starting to think a certain brand of anti-intellectualism must be needed for all this to happen, too. I don't know about Rome or France, but in America, especially in Texas, we have a major political party who put, as part of their party platform, that they discourage critical thinking skills.

[cratehorus]

the estrangement from France of much of its millionaire class and the right-wing groups they supported was such that they adopted the slogan "Better Hitler than Blum!" Their preference for a German dictator who had spoken and written for 15 years about his unshakable determination to militarily subjugate France to a government that had proposed a 40-hour work week requires no further analysis.

sounds almost identical to the right wing slogan "ABO", "Anyone But Obama"

[JohnDG]

Poor Obama, honestly he isn't really doing anything too different than any other preisdent (what hes told) and the socialized healthcare was a long time coming. In all honestly mitt rommney isn't going to do shit to change the economy but hey at least he's white. America could never fall, if it was in the hands of it's people but that may not be the case these days.

[kılıç_mehmet]

Democracies are already dead before they're born. Every party that has ever came to power in a democracy has not done so due to any firm set of ideals that it represented, but simply to appeal the base masses. Like say, I'm going to create jobs for you, or I'm going to feed you, or I'm going to put cheaper gasoline into your cars, and etc.
This is why democracies and parties in these democracies sought short term gains, as short term gains are also visible in short time, and parties only have a short time until the next election: investing into long term, greater deeds is simply not profitable for a political party, as they could simply be ousted by the public in the next election. So what really is the point of having a system that doesn't really do anything?
It wasn't during times of "freedoms" or "democracies" that anyone was able to archive anything significant.

This piece of writing once again thinks that every problem in today's world are "class related" problems, and that right-wing politics are about making the rich even richer, while making the poor, poorer. Such an ignorant statement is due to the ignorance of people, who cannot comprehend that right-wing and left-wing politics are not a matter of economics: it's a simple matter of ideals that run the deal.

Under that context, I see only two worldviews. Either you're left, or you're right. Centre, in my opinion is non-existant, as right and left are the polar opposites of eachother just as in words as they are in core set of ideals. From how I see it, the world has moved from Empires to smaller nation states. This, for me, represents a world that moves from the left, to the right. On the other hand, leftism proposes a worldwide system-it cannot work without being applied worldwide. It's economics, on the other hand, are applicable on smaller-nation scales, and are not exclusive to the left-wing-something leftists would rather love to claim, however it's the context and the way in which they're applied. Leftists try to apply these policies by gaining the sympathy of the lower classes, either the working class, or the impoverished and jobless ones, and give them a pink dream of a world where they will be the masters. They create this by fueling class-wars. In their impression, capital owners who created the evils of the world, and they had to be toppled, with their capital dispersed amongst the populace, of course, distributed by a like-minded government. Indeed, due to human nature of greed, capital owners are likely to impose policies that maximizes their profit in all things. This also includes screwing their workers.
However the right way to protect the workers, while allowing them to really earn what they have earned from their hard labor is not through the way of demonizing one, while exalting the other, its to exalt both. Both the capital owner, and the worker are members of society. Leftists do not try to actually inject a sense of fairness and appreciation for labor into capital owners, instead they call for the blood and money of capital owners. On the other hand, they motivate the lower classes with both promises of wealth and a world, where everything will be supplied to them by an unknown power.
They are the same to me, as the capitalists are.
Capitalists too, are in many ways, left-wing. Their worldview too, cannot survive without the whole world sharing their views. Capitalists cannot truly thrive without international trade, and they too, promise lower classes things like luxurious lifestyles, and they perpetrate this by allowing consumerism to run rampart. What difference is there between a communist and a capitalist? Only economic. In ideals, they both are the same. Classifying left-wingers as protectors of humanity and the poor, while declaring right-wingers as opressors of the impoverished, and as suckers of capital owners and the rich, is and was always a habit of left-wingers ever since communism started creeping throughout Europe and Asia. They cannot even truly present examples in which their accusations truly hold, neither can they show any examples of their system working properly anywhere.

[Autumnlicious]

The problem with both is that they coddle men with more resources than they possibly can spend and have no history of investing it significantly.

Tiberius et al might claim it is their right to keep their gains, but I've been of the firm opinion that your rights end when you stand by and don't even support those less fortunate than you, with respect to basic human rights like basic housing, food and health care.

If someone is starving not out of their own volition in your country and you have the riches and resources to stop it, you have a moral obligation.

And when enough people forget that moral obligation, then it falls to the government to enforce that until people voluntarily pick up the slack.

Every rich man collected money from his community.

Old-style conservatives and old-style liberals both knew and embraced that. They also talked big about contributing back to their country.

The new ones simply care only about their own riches and fuck everyone who has less than them.

[cratehorus]

In ideals, they both are the same.

No, they're not..............

Communism as the positive abolition of private property as human self-alienation, means the real appropriation of human entity by and for man; thus the complete, conscious return – accomplished inside all the riches of the past development – of man for himself qua social, that is, as a human being. This Communism is, as perfect Naturalism, identical with Humanism, and as perfect Humanism identical with Naturalism; it is the real solution of the antagonism between man and nature, between man and man; the genuine solution of the conflict between existence and essence, between objectivisation and self-affirmation, between freedom and necessity, between the individual and the species. It is history’s solved riddle and is conscious of being the solution.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/norman/m...y/ch02.htm

Communism has existed before and it is INEVITABLE that it will exist again

Since Hook does not see in Das Kapital the uncovering of the laws of social movement but only the critique (conditioned by the will of the proletariat) of bourgeois economics, so Das Kapital is not to him the theoretical actualization of materialist dialectics but “the application of historical materialism to the ‘mysteries’ of value, price, and profit (page 187).” In other words, since, according to Hook, the relations of production determine the thinking and actions of human beings, Marx developed from the standpoint of the proletariat his critique of bourgeois economics, which is simply criticism and nothing else. If the proletariat wins, then as a consequence Marx’s Capital remains merely as an historical document, filled with the thoughts of a class which suffered under the rule of capitalism. Historical materialism here is not a part of the dialectical development but divorced from it; not a productive element, but a view of life (Weltanschauung). “Yet,” as Marx wrote concerning his Russian critic in the preface to the first volume of Capital, “what else is he describing but the dialectical method?” But to Hook, Das Kapital is only an ideology

http://www.marxists.org/archive/mattick-...bility.htm


Capitalism, was invented by Karl Marx, calling yourself a "Capitalist" is just as silly as calling one's self a "Plutocrat"

I know you are a turkish nationalist, or an ottoman imperialist, or some stupid crap like that, so here's your assigned reading: chapter 3 of Karl Marx's 1867 classic Das Kapital
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/

[kılıç_mehmet]

No, they're not..............

Then I guess you wish to show me what the real difference between them. Capitalists too, claim to bring people prosperity, just as the communists do. They have a vision of a worldwide empire, where capital is allowed to flow freely from one location to the other. The communists have a similar vision of a "worldwide" or "international" empire where the only difference lies in where the capital is. In the case for communists, it's at the hands of the government, therefore, in the hand of a select few that run it. Similarly in capitalism, it exceedingly moves toward establishing worldwide monopoly, again bringng capital to the hands of a select few. In both cases, these select few are ruthless and ambitious invidiuals.
They are essentially the same, friend.
The only difference lies in how they reach their goal.

Communism has existed before and it is INEVITABLE that it will exist again

And it has failed. It existed only with the brutal oppression of everyone that lived under it. Let it be known that whenever communism will rear it's ugly head again, it will be crushed.
The commie who wrote that article is obviously trying to distance himself from the glorious archivements of previous communist regimes, an apologist of huge proportions.

Capitalism, was invented by Karl Marx, calling yourself a "Capitalist" is just as silly as calling one's self a "Plutocrat"

I call myself by my own ideology. It's name is not "capitalism".

I know you are a turkish nationalist, or an ottoman imperialist

I'm a Turkish nationalist, true. But I'm not an "imperialist" let alone an "Ottoman" imperialist, a dynasty long out of power.
In fact, I'm anti-imperialist, and I'm against every kind of imperialism. The capitalist American imperialism is my enemy, as was the communist Soviet imperialism.

And his classic of 1867 is now nothing more than a "classic" perhaps. His propositions are outdated, and not on par with the current technological advances that minimize human labour and maximize efficiency.
Your dreams of a proletarian dictatorship are over, and to be honest, it was over before it even began. In no country that has went through a phase of communist dictatorship, the proletariat has brought about the rise of communism, instead, it was brought in by either the higher educated middle classes, or by force(as was the case with Germany, Hungary and others).

[downbeatplumb]

No, they're not..............

Then I guess you wish to show me what the real difference between them. Capitalists too, claim to bring people prosperity, just as the communists do. They have a vision of a worldwide empire, where capital is allowed to flow freely from one location to the other. The communists have a similar vision of a "worldwide" or "international" empire where the only difference lies in where the capital is. In the case for communists, it's at the hands of the government, therefore, in the hand of a select few that run it.

You have just described the polar opposite of communism.

In Marxist communism every person is supposed to have an equal share in the capital. Don't mistake communism for what happened in Russia.