A True Marxist Revolution?

This is ignoring that evolution actually punishes selfishness just as much if not more than someone who is altruistic, and also is ignoring that Socialism isn't based on altruism.

Actually it doesn't , greedy (animals that grab the most food) and lazy (animals that waste energy running around for no reason) animals outlive animals that do as they don't starve as quickly. Also some forms of Socialism might not depend on alaturism but Marxism sure does! "From each according to his abilitry and to each according to his need" can be roughly translated in real life terms "Do as little as you can get away with and grab as much as you can. ".
 
Read Mutual Aid, among other things.

With that, humanity is a social creature. It survived by utilizing group dynamics, which partially meant that individuals had to rely on groups. That means you don't anger the wider group, or it will leave you to starve, among other things.

This isn't even getting into that really, evolution isn't survival of the fittest, but rather the least unfit. This is important actually, because there is a huge difference between these. Additionally, one could probably add survival of the sexiest, as if one can't reproduce, one doesn't pass on their genes. Greedy jerks which rob from the group won't pass on their genes.
 
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Read Mutual Aid, among other things.

With that, humanity is a social creature. It survived by utilizing group dynamics, which partially meant that individuals had to rely on groups. That means you don't anger the wider group, or it will leave you to starve.

This isn't even getting into that really, evolution isn't survival of the fittest, but rather the least unfit. This is important actually, because there is a huge difference between these. Additionally, one could probably add survival of the sexiest, as if one can't reproduce, one doesn't pass on their genes. Greedy jerks which rob from the group won't pass on their genes.

To a certain extent but it IS balanced by the fact you can't be a sucker either. NO ONE respects a sucker and if you are working very hard and the other guy isn't and he gets as much as you I guarantee everyone will take you as a sucker. Evolution did not make it easy for chumps. Eventually society gets brought down to a minimal level. If everyone else is slacking off because they don't want to be chumps there is no stigma attached to it. "The tragedy of the commons." and "The free rider" problem are real life concerns and have to be dealt with.
 
To a certain extent but it IS balanced by the fact you can't be a sucker either. NO ONE respects a sucker and if you are working very hard and the other guy isn't and he gets as much as you I guarantee everyone will take you as a sucker. Evolution did not make it easy for chumps. Eventually society gets brought down to a minimal level. If everyone else is slacking off because they don't want to be chumps there is no stigma attached to it. "The tragedy of the commons." and "The free rider" problem are real life concerns and have to be dealt with.

The tragedy of the commons has been disproven elsewhere.

For free riders, welcome to Capitalism, where one can avoid working a day in their lives through inheritance. That cuts both ways. A lot.

With both of those out of the way, you can't be a jerk, or at least, you can't be obvious about it. Otherwise, mankind would've just evolved into sociopaths, and society as we know it would promptly collapse.
 
The tragedy of the commons has been disproven elsewhere.

For free riders, welcome to Capitalism, where one can avoid working a day in their lives through inheritance. That cuts both ways. A lot.

With both of those out of the way, you can't be a jerk, or at least, you can't be obvious about it. Otherwise, mankind would've just evolved into sociopaths, and society as we know it would promptly collapse.

The vast majority of people DON'T inherit much of anything under capitalism and actually have to WORK for a living. The tragedy of the commons is a REAL issue not a fake one easily dismissed. The tendency to overuse a resource when you don't have to pay for it is real. It was in the group interest of the feudal lords to keep the wages of serfs just above sustenance and that worked UNTIL the Black Death killed a ton of serfs. After that no matter what laws were passed to prevent it the various lords couldn't keep the wages from rising because labor was in such demand the various other lords and other employers found ways around it. It was in the aristocracy's interest in general to keep wages down but it was in the interest of each lord to get more labor. The wages of the serfs then started to rise. The same thing happened in the post-war South. There would be agreements among the planters to keep wages down but they rarely succeeded as it was in the interest of the individual planter's to get the best field hands. Again wages began rising. Both ended up with low wages to be sure but they were considerably higher than before the labor shortage hit. During the Soviet period the peasants fed their swine bread no matter what the CPSU said because the price of bread was subsidized to such an extent that feeding pigs bread was cheaper than feeding them grain. It was in the interest of society as a whole that pigs be fed grain but it was in the interest of the peasant to feed them bread.
 
A true Marxist Revolution?

What about a revolution run by Marx himself? Anyone ever written a timeline about that?
 
The vast majority of people DON'T inherit much of anything under capitalism and actually have to WORK for a living. The tragedy of the commons is a REAL issue not a fake one easily dismissed. The tendency to overuse a resource when you don't have to pay for it is real. It was in the group interest of the feudal lords to keep the wages of serfs just above sustenance and that worked UNTIL the Black Death killed a ton of serfs. After that no matter what laws were passed to prevent it the various lords couldn't keep the wages from rising because labor was in such demand the various other lords and other employers found ways around it. It was in the aristocracy's interest in general to keep wages down but it was in the interest of each lord to get more labor. The wages of the serfs then started to rise. The same thing happened in the post-war South. There would be agreements among the planters to keep wages down but they rarely succeeded as it was in the interest of the individual planter's to get the best field hands. Again wages began rising. Both ended up with low wages to be sure but they were considerably higher than before the labor shortage hit. During the Soviet period the peasants fed their swine bread no matter what the CPSU said because the price of bread was subsidized to such an extent that feeding pigs bread was cheaper than feeding them grain. It was in the interest of society as a whole that pigs be fed grain but it was in the interest of the peasant to feed them bread.

http://infoshop.org/page/AnarchistFAQSectionI6

Happy reading. Additionally, the Tragedy of the Commons really applies more to things like lassieze-faire capitalism actually than Socialism.
 
http://infoshop.org/page/AnarchistFAQSectionI6

Happy reading. Additionally, the Tragedy of the Commons really applies more to things like lassieze-faire capitalism actually than Socialism.

My, my, my a FAR, FAR LEFT blog wants to disprove the tragedy of the commons. I am SO surprised. :rolleyes: The former Eastern Bloc had far worse environmental tragedies then the West ever had. China's is as bad as well. BTW lassieze-faire capitalism has no more existed than pure Communism. Neither works well in the real world because the real world is NOT ideal.
 

RousseauX

Donor
What about the Paris Comune? Wasn't that close to a comunist revolution?
No, because the Paris commune was not composed of Communists: the Commune was made up of a confusing composition of Liberals, Republicans, Constitutional Monarchists, reform Socialists, revolutionary Socialists, Anarchists, and lots of people who were simply pissed off at the Second Empire for losing the war banding together under the French tradition of Parisian revolutions.
 
My, my, my a FAR, FAR LEFT blog wants to disprove the tragedy of the commons. I am SO surprised. :rolleyes: The former Eastern Bloc had far worse environmental tragedies then the West ever had. China's is as bad as well. BTW lassieze-faire capitalism has no more existed than pure Communism. Neither works well in the real world because the real world is NOT ideal.

Read it first, than comment on it. It's hardly a blog, considering it's FAR better cited than many right wing papers I've seen, to say the least.

Besides that, as has been gone over in other threads, the Soviet Union, Maoist China, and similar countries weren't Socialist because they weren't democratic. Because of Socialism's origins as a movement, this inherently disqualifies them.

With that, the Tragedy of the Commons primarily applies to capitalism actually, because it's talking about individuals screwing over society by doing what they need to do most.
 

RousseauX

Donor
One's an untestable supernatural claim, supported only by theology. The other is a testable empirical claim hindered by the simple fact that all historical situations are, to a great extent, sui generis, yet is based upon observable trends in the dynamics of a social system.

I'll leave you to decide which one is which. Save your smug condescension for elsewhere. Because foolish posts like this one are frankly way below your intelligence level. You're more than capable of making a rational argument without resorting to this kind of fallacious drivel.
Ok, I guess I would agree with you that Marxism is more rational than religion. But I hope you realize when you are religious, religion is substantiated by any number of miracles and historical events, the same is true of essentially any number of internally consistent belief systems.

I mean, if Marx's predictions have came true then you might have a point: but the simple truth is that even when it comes to stuff that's pretty much purely economical his predictions have being pretty wrong. His predictions in general (ok, outside of the ones like "there will be resource wars") have had a slightly better record than Nostradamus at coming true. To the point where Marxists end up reinterpreting Marx over and over again until it's not something which is outright wrong, and ends up claiming that his predictions will come true at some point in the indefinite future.

And this is where the similarity to religion comes in "All the other prophets (revolutions) who have came before have being false and did not adhere to the doctrine in this book closely enough". "The previous prophets (revolutions) of this have being heretical, one day in the future the true prophet (revolution) will emerge and lead us into the promised land (Socialism)". Because you really sort of are riding on "well, you can't prove our internally consistent system wrong so how do you know it won't happen in the indefinite future"?
 
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If a Communist movement stays true to the ideology, it gets crushed in a few months. If it does not want to be crushed, it has to adapt, usually by becoming Leninist. Once it becomes Leninist, it can survive, but it doesn't meet the ideological requirement.

What Marxism says and what it achieves are two different things.
 

RousseauX

Donor
If a Communist movement stays true to the ideology, it gets crushed in a few months. If it does not want to be crushed, it has to adapt, usually by becoming Leninist. Once it becomes Leninist, it can survive, but it doesn't meet the ideological requirement.

What Marxism says and what it achieves are two different things.
Yeah, it's basically this
 
Yeah, it's basically this

Yep, it has to adapt to the REAL WORLD not isolated in some hypothetical one. It has to deal with real world problems, strengths and weaknesses . Marx was an idealist and that is the problem. The world is FAR from ideal. Killer300 wants to play the game "I deal with a hypothetical, perfect system that doesn't have to deal with real world problems and you get stuck with real life systems that have to deal with real life problems." The USSR was as close to Marxism as you can find in the real world and it failed miserably. You can't compare a hypothetical system with a real one as the real one will lose every time if you want it to. You can make all sorts of assumptions in a hypothetical system that makes it look good while being blind to all that could and would go wrong once it becomes reality. I have yet to see someone who could foresee all the potential problems a big project will have ahead of time.
 
Okay, lets set down some things, shall we?

Of the economic schools that currently exist, NONE of them can accurately predict anything beyond the most broad of assumptions. All of them have to have hypothetical models, because it isn't possible to test economics in a scientific manner in real world conditions.

This is important. Why? People say Marx's predictions didn't come true, and for exact, of course they didn't. NO economic school though can claim that. The reason why this matters though is so many economic schools claim to be scientific when they do not fulfill the criteria.

So why do I bring this up? Because any one of you who claims that because Marx's predictions not coming through invalidates his theory are hypocrites. I don't care what economic school you follow, ALL of you have an economic school whose predictions failed to come true repeatedly. All of them are at least somewhat based on ideological bias because it's inherently culturally biased.

Austrian, Neo-Classical, Keynes, or Producerist, they all suffer from this, because macro-economics inherently can't have anything more than the most broad of predictions.
 

RousseauX

Donor
This is important. Why? People say Marx's predictions didn't come true, and for exact, of course they didn't. NO economic school though can claim that. The reason why this matters though is so many economic schools claim to be scientific when they do not fulfill the criteria.
Keynesianism have a better record than Marxism as far as I'm concerned. But if you really believe what you wrote we probably shouldn't have a revolution that's going to kill millions of people based on those predictions being correct.
 
Keynesianism have a better record than Marxism as far as I'm concerned. But if you really believe what you wrote we probably shouldn't have a revolution that's going to kill millions of people based on those predictions being correct.

For the latter, please keep in mind I'm not a Marxist, but rather get dragged into these debates because they affect the radical left as a whole. Besides that, you have to take risks on ideologies. Otherwise, there would never be ideological progress. Millions of people were killed in the process of introducing Capitalism, as well as millions before hand introducing ideologies.

For Keynes... that's a bag of worms I'm not going to get into. However, partially, he doesn't claim to be scientific, and with that, while it has a better record, it certainly isn't anywhere near flawless enough to be scientific.

Anyway, look, I'm going to drop out, because I'm not going to add anything else productive at this point, and Jello can argue for his own ideology better really.
 
Okay, lets set down some things, shall we?

Of the economic schools that currently exist, NONE of them can accurately predict anything beyond the most broad of assumptions. All of them have to have hypothetical models, because it isn't possible to test economics in a scientific manner in real world conditions.

This is important. Why? People say Marx's predictions didn't come true, and for exact, of course they didn't. NO economic school though can claim that. The reason why this matters though is so many economic schools claim to be scientific when they do not fulfill the criteria.

So why do I bring this up? Because any one of you who claims that because Marx's predictions not coming through invalidates his theory are hypocrites. I don't care what economic school you follow, ALL of you have an economic school whose predictions failed to come true repeatedly. All of them are at least somewhat based on ideological bias because it's inherently culturally biased.

Austrian, Neo-Classical, Keynes, or Producerist, they all suffer from this, because macro-economics inherently can't have anything more than the most broad of predictions.

The difference is that you don't have to push for me to admit that all economic theories have their shortcomings in the real world. Pure capitalism doesn't work in the real world either. I am NOT a disciple of Ron Paul! The real world is a messy place. However, capitalism as a whole has proven more adaptable than socialism. Under capitalist theory you don't have to plan everything 5 years in advance. You can more easily deal with surpluses and shortages by various means. Adaption is key in the real world.
 
The difference is that you don't have to push for me to admit that all economic theories have their shortcomings in the real world. Pure capitalism doesn't work in the real world either. I am NOT a disciple of Ron Paul! The real world is a messy place. However, capitalism as a whole has proven more adaptable than socialism. Under capitalist theory you don't have to plan everything 5 years in advance. You can more easily deal with surpluses and shortages by various means. Adaption is key in the real world.

Once again, ignoring that not only does most Socialism not follow 5 Year Plans, but that under theories such as Mutualism, you actually have Socialist markets. You REALLY need to learn more about Socialism before critiquing it.
 
Once again, ignoring that not only does most Socialism not follow 5 Year Plans, but that under theories such as Mutualism, you actually have Socialist markets. You REALLY need to learn more about Socialism before critiquing it.

The problem is that it is another UNTESTED THEORY. If some government in Europe decides to adopt its practices as a result of a free election I would have no real objection to it as it would be the choice of the citizen's of that country and they would have to live with the consequences both good and bad. I would be interested in the results, but until then we can't compare it to real life capitalism as we DON'T know its strengths and weaknesses. Only real life application would show that.
 
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