Communism

[ImprobableJoe]

Well if progress is not rewarded, people are discouraged to progress, thus people won't.

There's no reason why there isn't a reward in socialism... the reward isn't the GDP of a small country, but it still exists.

 

[Rosenrot]

I think you missed the point.
If everyone has the same income and competition makes no sense, there is no reward. Regardless of what you do, you will not achieve anything beyond anyone else; beyond your competition.

 

[Weirdtopia]

Communism is perfect in theory but not perfect in practicability because it makes people do a job that is equal in pay but not equal in work. Communism opens a door for greedy people to take advantage from the working people. If a person that represents the common people can easily steal profit or power.

"When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist." Dom Helder Camara

Capitalism is a based in individual profit to run the economy of the country, that is a problem of it's self. People can trick and take another person's work, for there personal gain of profit. Social classes are defined by who can obtain a job and how educated they are by the profit that there guardians or parents earn to pay the education. If the nation does not have enough resources to keep there country from demand from citizens and corporation must find resources from else were. Guilds look for profit from citizens, they must find a way to get citizens to spend money on there field.
"People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public." Adam Smith

 

[richi1173]

What Rosenrot is referring to is actual socialism - the public or state ownership of the means of production and distribution of goods, and a society characterized by equality for all individuals, with a fair or egalitarian method of compensation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism

What most of us agree on is social equality, which stems from socialism but its not socialism itself.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_equality

I think that is the overall confusion.

 

[Master_Ghost_Knight]

It is with great disappointment that I read the contents of this topic. One would expect that you would use your reason or at least your common sense to arrive at the best conclusion but so far it has been used neither. Even arriving to the point of literally copying someone else's mistakes perpetuating their stupidity, and I personally think that this sort of hype is what's wrong whit politics of today.
As you argue between what group of politics is the best, you tend to cluster together the all thing and I cannot prevent myself to notice that you are arguing about "making a soup made exclusively of water, or a soup without any water what so ever" without even at one time ever crossing your mind that such isn't the way that you "make a soup".
I personally am against labels like communism, socialism, capitalism, democrats, etc"¦ simply because none of those associations tells you anything about what is the best option to be taken. Politics isn't supposed to be done by picking pretty picture at random regardless depending of their name, it should approached has an engineering problem measuring the consequences of the actions, maximizing efficiency, making an objective decision.
I don't care if a certain politics, is communist, socialism or even downright Nazi solution if it defends the best interest of all and ensures a better quality of life for every participant.

And as for:

This graph is as useful as a set of triangular wheels in your car.
If you have a quantity and you have a total price, a straight line can only mean price per product, and in this case demand should be a straight vertical line representing the absorption capacity for such product. And your attempted analysis manages even to fail the junior high standard. Sense you were ambiguous on defining the price axis I can eve give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you meant price per product, that in any of the cases would make more sense but you fail to acknowledge that any of your limitations doesn't prevent from supplying the demand (even better then before) sense the profit would be the total area able to be covered by the graph.
It is so hopelessly wrong that whoever made it should go join the creationist for trying to present a pseudo,graph without even having the junior high knowledge on how to read one.

 

[richi1173]

And as for:
This graph is as useful as a set of triangular wheels in your car.
If you have a quantity and you have a total price, a straight line can only mean price per product, and in this case demand should be a straight vertical line representing the absorption capacity for such product. And your attempted analysis manages even to fail the junior high standard. Sense you were ambiguous on defining the price axis I can eve give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you meant price per product, that in any of the cases would make more sense

Your right, the axis were badly labeled. Yes, I mean the price per product. Your right, the analysis was spotty at best.

but you fail to acknowledge that any of your limitations doesn't prevent from supplying the demand (even better then before) sense the profit would be the total area able to be covered by the graph.

Explain.

 

[Master_Ghost_Knight]

Explain.

Ok let's take a serious look at it.
For the purpose of illustration I will simplify the analysis and ignore the production costs, the fix cost and competition among other factors. A real analysis would be much more complicated.
If you set a price of a product, your profit would be the price of that product multiplied by the amount of the product sold.
i.e. pxQ=Profit (grey area)
To aid on the analysis we will draw an equal profit line. I.e. The collection of values that presents whit the same profit. If you make Profit a constant then
Profit/Q=p
And thus our equal profit line is an inverse proportional curve (blue).
Now the market absorption capabilities (green) changes whit the price per unit that you try to sell. This function is generally unknown (that is why it is spend so much money on statistics to predict it) and represents the total amount of products that the market is willing to buy for a given price, and it generally increases as the prices decreases. And you cannot sell over this curve!
The objective of this is to get the best price/production rates in order to achieve the best profit (i.e. get a bigger area) And we do that by choosing a point in the market absorption curve that corresponds to the biggest profit (equal profit lines added for visual aid).

Now what happens whit price control?
A max price is fix for the product, although you can no longer achieve the optimal profit, you can exploit the market absorption to increase the production (and thus increase the profit then what you would get if you just cut prices) and so in fact you supply more (you just don't win has much).

Now what happens whit a shortage?
You can no longer supply has much, and you have a fixed maximum production capability.
It is a bit of the optimal level (maximum profit), but the market is capable to absorb has much for a higher price. And we exploit this to increase the profit (compared to what would happen if we did nothing).

As you can see this analysis doesn't look like anything that you have presented.
I know that this mistake isn't yours, I know too damn well who made it, and it is purposefully deceitful in order to promote a political agenda.
And now that you know how it works, do not repeat the mistake yourself.

 

[COMMUNIST FLISK]

this is my view on how (if i could create one) my communist country would be like....

in terms of

people are more important than money

money property etc should be shared amongst everyone (if we all work together, our species can really advance)

buisness should be government owned and the "profits" put back in to the system for everyones benefit (to avoid the current system of coorperation owners screwing the rest of the world up)

banking should be very very regulated (to stop the banks being stupid with where they put there money, to avoid a collapse) and also government owned, banking should not be about profits but about helping the people

there should be a government, with proportional representation from every region and every ethnic background

religion should be abolished (for the good of mankind, science, technology in general)

the entire population should vote on every civil issue, but no political one (ie. not run by a dictatorship but a large government comprised of a lot of people, instead of the 2 party state (us) or 3 party state (uk) etc., it wouldn't be a government as such more like a large commitee, purely for administration mainly, as civil matters are ones of popular vote)

(addition) ALL crimes to be punished by them being hung, drawn and quartered, the reason is simply that crime slows down a countries advancement, and is a hinderence to the rest of the poppulace, criminals are not wanted in my society, and jail is stupid because taxpayers money should not go into housing criminals and looking after them, either kick them out of the country permenantley (i dont know where) or the above punishment (/addition)

 

[Ozymandyus]

(addition) ALL crimes to be punished by them being hung, drawn and quartered, the reason is simply that crime slows down a countries advancement, and is a hinderence to the rest of the poppulace, criminals are not wanted in my society, and jail is stupid because taxpayers money should not go into housing criminals and looking after them, either kick them out of the country permenantley (i dont know where) or the above punishment (/addition)

Where do I sign up to make sure I never end up in your communist utopia?

 

[COMMUNIST FLISK]

you have nothing to fear if you dont break the law

 

[Ozymandyus]

Yeah, and how specific is 'the law' and what chance is there that I may be blamed by someone else, or that something innocent would be claimed crime, or that I simply acted out of anger when I wasn't thinking right? How finely defined is crime? What does it mean that religion is abolished? This society is beyond scary to me.

Also this sort of society will not last long. As soon as you put someone to death who someone else thinks may have been innocent(even if they weren't), dissent will spread and people will want a new system. Furthermore, it doesn't have the necessary flexibility of structure to allow for societal advancement nor checks to power that can guarantee limits to abuses on power.

 

[COMMUNIST FLISK]

as you can tell my view are pretty extreme.

by no religion i mean it and everything that goes with it is illegal, its presence brings society to its knees, no more will it be tolerated.

law wise what a crime is will mostly stay the same from what it is currently in the uk.

factors such as intent/lack of and it being an accident would call on most likley a harsh fine

mistakes would try not to become reality when convicting an offender, of course due to the punishments no one would want to admit to it, so investigative precedures must be enhanced

 

[GoodKat]

religion should be abolished (for the good of mankind, science, technology in general)

I disagree rather heavily with most of your post, but this part struck me as particularly misguided. I would love to see the downfall of religion just as much as the next guy here, but outlawing it puts most religions in a "persecuted" mindset, driving its adherents to be all the more fanatical, and causes the public to sympathize with them. The only feasible way to stamp out religion in a country is a very good education system with a focus on logic, philosophy, and comparative religious history, and none of it can be propaganda, or the students will realize that you're full of it, just like they do in regard to America's anti-drug "education". Religion must be viewed by the public not as "evil", but as stupid and deserving of ridicule. The people should not be unable to be religious, they should be unwilling.

There is also the moral problem of telling people what they can and cannot believe, this inevitably ends up violating people's rights and stunting social progress. The same with restricting free speech and expression. A politician could easily abuse your law by labeling any criticism of the government as religious, and then you would be in a situation where the government is no longer accountable to the public. No man should be told by the government what he cannot think or say.

 

[Master_Ghost_Knight]

COMMUNIST FLISK, you have a very skewed vision of things, and your views of politics are very immature. Your ideas are no different to what lead to the most hatred totalitarian regimes. In this case a comparison whit regime's like Hitler's, Stalin's, Mussolini's or other examples alike is inevitable. The problem isn't that the political system is totalitarian (all those countries had a vast history of powers concentrated on the king and that didn't seamed to bother until then) but because of the people in the head of it, more specifically their ideas.
The values of fairness, justice and freedom are more than fundamental for any good society, but many people don't understand any of these concepts and they make a huge chaos out of it.
Freedom isn't a right, it's a duty, it is saying that you have no right to prevent the freedom of others.
Justice isn't torturing or punishing every one that doesn't do good as if that would change anything after the fact. The act of imprisonment serves no other purpose than to discourage any future perpetrator, if people think that wrong actions have consequences they will not be so keen on making it. If for a suspension of the laws of nature could guarantee that there would be no more crime after that accounted last one, punishing the last criminal would be completely pointless.
Fairness isn't giving you everything open handed, it is giving you equal opportunity if you have the capability for whatever you are trying to achieve.

Politics shouldn't be taken light headed; many people's lives depend on it and mistakes may be paid whit a high price.

 

[COMMUNIST FLISK]

would you say i take things a little to the extreme then?

 

[Master_Ghost_Knight]

Something of that sort.

 

[luckyirish67]

I agree with portians of your ideal society COMMUNIST FLISK and understand your reasoning behind the ones i don't. In the society that you described there wouldn't be need to break the law unless it was just out of recklessness or hate. This wouldn't probably be that bad of a society except for the fact that the average person wouldn't stand for it. There would be dissent among the mass population for a while about the harshness but it would soon be ended due mainly to the harshness of the punishments and after that, as long as you keep the people paid and fed enough and keep oppression down enough it would last for your lifetime at least. And also try to keep away from mass purges. Those only lead to more purges.

 

[XC(A)libur]

"You would have to ignore human nature if you think communism can be fully successful. People are inherently lazy and if there is no reward for striving hard then why bother - i.e. you only get your share no matter what you do, then why do anything at all. Why try that little bit harder to make your life better as your efforts need to be shared with everyone. "

Communism as a common ownership of production of goods also means the abolition of all capital. Humans are not inherently lazy, but they do not and should not be forced or coerced into wage slavery in a hierarchal society. Wage slavery is not the same as work, the goal of wage slavery being no progression for the working class or manifestation of such, but just a method of exploitation. Is it any wonder the working class would rather rebel in a refusal to take part in wage slavery than to serve themselves and their own production as a commodity!

Human nature does not exist, easy to see as the light of day. The progression articulated in the manifesto could easily happen, it would just require the manifestation of the working class. I myself being an anarchist communist declare myself, usually, an adversary to the teachings of state-socialism and the declaration of such in Marx theory, but you state such blatant statements without accusation, it refelcts how narrow minded capitalists truly are in their own arena.

I would say no intended offense, but I cannot say so. I understand you may be confused on the Marx theory and the historical accounts preceding the "human nature" argument, but have yuo at least ever read the manifesto? HAS ANYONE HERE WHO IS A CRITIC OF COMMUNISM EVER READ THE MANIFESTO?

 

[Ozymandyus]

HAS ANYONE HERE WHO IS A CRITIC OF COMMUNISM EVER READ THE MANIFESTO?

I am, and I have. I also believe there is such a thing as human nature though, so you are going to have to prove that one before we can even begin to argue the finer points.

If there is no such thing as human nature, then why bother reorganizing society to try something else? We should just teach people to love their 'wage slavery' and not bother with all this anarchist crap.

 

[XC(A)libur]

I am, and I have. I also believe there is such a thing as human nature though, so you are going to have to prove that one before we can even begin to argue the finer points.

If there is no such thing as human nature, then why bother reorganizing society to try something else? We should just teach people to love their 'wage slavery' and not bother with all this anarchist crap.

You prove to me your belief in human nature and we'll talk. The nature of humans is determined by the ruling class. The set of standards and morals the society is mostly used to determines the true nature of the society. For instance westernized civilization is mostly used to capitalism, therefor capitalism is most prevalent. In Switzerland and Sweden, the nationalistic free-markets of the west is projected as insanity, they are most used to regulated markets and their state withering away, as the US government is becoming bigger by the day. Humans are usually always acceptant of other cultures, this is obvious, as there is simply no reason to harm anyone who has a different lifestyle than anyone else. It is only when the ruling class or the elite infringe upon daily life and culture that humans abondon all reasoning and favor war.

As for your last paragraph, we have been taught to accept our roles in society as wage slaves, and mostly not to ask questions about it. But if that's the society you respond mast happily to, one that accepts wage slavery as their method of production, I won't try to stop you. have fun.