Knoyleo wrote:You've missed the point totally.
Capitalist societies require violence and the threat of violence to work. Private property is protected by police who will detain and incarcerate those who infringe property rights. This isn't about individuals protecting their property themselves, but the state threatening violence against those who infringe the property rights that are required for capitalism to work. The police will attempt to forcefully evict those who squat in unoccupied buildings. If you are hungry and steal to eat, you will be arrested, and may be imprisoned. If you are a benefit recipient, and you breach a term of the conditions for receipt, the state will threaten to withhold that payment, even if that means you will go hungry. This is all violence, and all is required by the system we live in. Legitimate asylum seekers are currently being held in concentration camps in the US.
Your solution to avoiding violence in a system that absolutely uses it as a tool is basically just "play the game by the rules be don't lose."
So still no answer on whether or not you think violence is acceptable?
Regarding your examples, they're all awful.
Yes, if someone calls the police on you for squatting they will come and boot you out. It's not because of evil capitalist oppression, it's because of crap like squatters rights laws. It's because using something wears it down and then results in repair costs for the owners (flooring, paint, doors etc. all get damaged through use). It's because if the owner let them stay, and then the squatter was injured or died on their property they might be liable.
Literally all your examples are the same, if you take even two minutes to think about why things are like that you would see that there's a logical order here. If you still think that this society is so awful why don't you up and move to Somalia where it's pure anarchy in 95% of the country? See how wonderful it is not to have to worry about police coming in and forcibly removing you from some hut you're squatting in.
Moggy wrote:All 3 also apply to capitalism.
1. Capitalism dehumanises people - under capitalism people just become numbers/cogs in the wheel. Nobody is cared for, they are just meatsacks designed to increase profit.
2. Stealing assets of the people you dehumanise - absolute classic capitalism. Do you think land, resources and people's labour have been fairly divided up?
3. Murder the people you dehumanise - the whole US military industrial complex is designed to increase profit through war. Dehumanise populations, make them your enemy, kill them, make stacks of cash. You also have the capitalist healthcare system that charges utterly disgusting prices for drugs and treatment, which directly kills poor people.
Pure capitalism is just as bad as soviet style communism.
Yes, all 3 apply to pure capitalism, something which no one was talking about. The people here are saying how great communism is over our current system. No one is saying that pure capitalism is the best system here.
I'm saying communism is gooseberry fool, and you're cherry picking examples of places capitalism has failed, when there are countless examples of how it's done a far better job than communism which has been a disaster in every single place it's been tried, but of course as soon as you point that out one of the revolutionary guard will come and tell you "that wasn't real communism so we should try it again".
OrangeRKN wrote:I think your objection is more to revolution than communism itself.
The French Revolution was notoriously violent. The nobility and their associates were dehumanised, their assets stolen, and themselves murdered. It was a bad time. However, which do you think is a better system - the Kingdom of France, or the Republic?
In cases like this revolution was "necessary" because no other avenue of change was open. The existing system was oppressive of the population, incapable of being changed through democratic means.
You should remember that the Russian Revolution was against the Russian Empire, a Tsarist autocracy. Similarly to the French Revolution, gradual change was not possible. There was no democratic process available to the people. (The Russian Republic briefly existed, but I think it's erroneous to separate the revolutions as separate affairs, and no real resolution was achieved until after a lengthy civil war.)
The Russian Revolution and subsequent rise of the USSR was a failure as far as implementing communism goes. Even according to Marx, the initial revolution does not result in communism, but was seen as a necessary first step towards it. The revolution overthrows the existing state and brings about a form of socialism, which must further evolve into the endgame of communism. The USSR never got there, due to a corrupt vanguard and a hijacking of the revolution.
I think you're right in as far as pointing it out as an example of how vanguardism is flawed and corruptible. I myself am definitely more of a gradualist - especially because I live in a democracy (of sorts).
Britain has a history of socialist policy being brought about through democratic process. Nationalisation I would hazard falls under your view of "stealing assets" as it is the enforced transition of property from private to public ownership. There are many examples of this being done peacefully and without a need for violent revolution or upheaval, and certainly without any murder.
If a society votes to bring about communism through a gradual trend of increasingly socialist policy, do you think that would suffer any of those same "fundamental" criticisms?
My objection to communism as told by the likes of Marx et al. is that there is no way to get there than to murder everyone who thinks differently to you, as you said the revolution is a necessary first step. Therefore it's a fundamentally flawed system.
You mentioned the French and Russian revolutions, but what about all the other countries that went through slower shifts from monarchies to constitutional monarchies where a huge chunk of the population didn't have to end up dead?
There are tons of countries where these revolutions left them off far far worse than they were before.
Look at China, over 70 million people died in the great leap forward, and where are they now? Adopting tenants of a free market economy which caused the largest increase in the middle class in history, and yet the common person has virtually no rights when going up against the government. Are you really going to say, well it would be worse if they hadn't had the revolution! Compare them to Taiwan, which while not perfect was built by the people who lost against the communists and is a far more free country...
https://www.worldfreedomindex.com/Consider how we may well reach a post-scarcity world with the advancement of AI workers and autonomous space travel, where we harvest all our resources off world. That future is one brought about by capitalism, democracy, and the organization of huge numbers of people working in tight hierarchies, and again, no engineered famines to wipe out troublesome peoples, no gulags etc.
Regarding nationalisation, I think it's wrong, but I can at least see some benefit for things like utilities provided that those who are being forced to sell are getting a fair deal, something which has never happened in communism as the people who are forced to sell are always just considered parasites who were basically just stealing by owning something.
Karl_ wrote: The "dictatorship of the proletariat" refers to proletarian control of the means of production and the systems of political power. In Marxist philosophy, we currently live in the "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie" because the bourgeoisie are in charge of society. A society can be both democratic, and be a philosophical "dictatorship of the proletariat". Both Marx and Engels explicitly wrote that the goal of a revolution should be the establishment of a direct-democratic constitution that empowers the proletariat. They believed the nation-state would then rapidly "wither away" entirely as socialism progressed to communism.
Doesn't Marx himself say that the revolution basically must be protected by the proletariat? Basically they don't know what's good for them so this dictatorship is justified. In Marx's time before universal suffrage it might have been fair to say we live in a dictatorship, but given that 1 person= 1 vote now a days, the idea doesn't really stand up to scrutiny does it?
Anyways guys, I really should be working on my thesis now so if you reply more don't expect quick replies, it might take me a few weeks as I really shouldn't be getting so distracted on here.