The mentality of socialism versus capitalism

Dude, you and your pal (the other cafe socialist) aren't even in the race to lose it. It's pretty much shooting fish in barrels.

 

So you DONT charge rent??
And your tenants are your collective?
In that case marx would award you a medal for being the best example of a Marxist of the Month.

 

Marx was a ****ing toff, guy. A BORED toff. And a hubristic god-playing asshat.

Private property is the single biggest gain of power that the peasantry has ever seen. People like you (and the Asshat Toff) would destroy that, and in so doing, are lining the pockets of the elite. Don't kid yourself that that isn't what's happening. Open your eyes. Wake up.

Why on earth did you think I was opposed to capitalism as a state model?

Still no clue what you're talking about with this 'tenants you attract' business. None of us pays rent.

 

None of us pays rent, because all our property is owned outright. That's the POINT of it.

 

What in hell are you talking about now? We all work, we own all the property outright .. there are no mortgages to service, and we house people who would otherwise not be in a position to live rent free for life, with full access to all the benefits of land/timber/water/housing. What are YOU doing? How many people are you sharing your stuff with?

 

Of course they do. Where on earth did you think they came from? The gods or something?

Everything 'moral' is built upon some action which promoted survival. ALL of it has roots in utility - and that utility was survival of the pack/tribe. Woman, children, and old people are protected because they're essential to continuation of the pack. Children eat first because they're growing. Old people are looked after because they're needed to care for children while parents are out hunting/farming, etc etc. And so on until today. It's all about enhancing survival ... so when you take survival out of the equation, the old moral impulses start to erode. We become greedy, selfish, and mean.

 

Certainly property owning is power.
Marx knew that and saw it as the property owning class exploiting those who didn't own property.
As I said, if you don't charge rent, marx would be delighted. You are a true socialist no matter how you dislike it. In fact I am still puzzled as to why you declare yourself a socialist and then spend weeks attacking socialism. However your use of the term "tenant"implies you do charge rent.
I leave it to your conscience.

 

Landlords who own property own it outright too and also charge rent to tenants.

 

So you allow people to share your "stuff" without paying for it? Marx as I said would be jubilant.
Fatback would be aghast. He should be criticising you roundly.

 

Well as long as you don't read what I actually write, you're going to stay confused.

Once again for the non-readers: I am a collectivist (aka, living socialism in my day to day life), who is thoroughly opposed to State "Socialism" - which is an ENTIRELY different beast. The latter is just totalitarianism with a name which gormless First Worlders find palatable. I am also thoroughly opposed to the Welfare State, because it's a tool of the arch corporatists and power hungry. It's a means to an end for them .. that being the dismantling of the independence of the working and middle classes gained in the past 100 or so years. They want a return to the medieval model of an aristocracy and peasantry, and the 20thC self-determination which arose out of so much advance for the common man, is their achilles heel. It's the one thing standing between them and ownership of the masses. They want you utterly helpless, entirely dependent upon their goods and services to stay alive.

The only way that the common man can retain any kind of power going forward, is to defend our capitalist democracies. It's the only context which allows those without wealth, to gain independence and self-determination. It's therefore the only truly egalitarian model, and all of us should be infinitely grateful for it.

 

Dude, we are COMMUNITY. We have all known each other for decades. We're a circle of trust. You should try it some time.

And Marx would hate it, because he'd have to get his precious toff hands dirty.

 

But crank...you are the welfare state of your own community!
You give freely without any input from others.
In seeing property ownership as power, you are reverting back to what caused the property owning class in Russia to wield oppressive power over those who don't own property.
Therefore you are the antithesis to socialism. You are going back to the "property is power" thing.
Socialism moved against that.

 

Marx was against property owning and very much into self sufficiency. As I said he would applaud you.
I cannot reconcile your Marxist lifestyle with your dislike of a less pure Marxism, socialism, in a wider context, the state.
Why in a state should everyone not contribute (taxation) and take out what they need? IE operate on socialist principles.

 

And right there you've inadvertently explained why socialism has never worked, will never work and failed to work during the grand socialist experiment of the 20th Century:

1) We don't live in an ideal, theoretical world inhabited by ideal, theoretical people

2) Socialism is inconsistent with human nature and doesn't account for human nature.

That was the point William Bradford made in his diary that I cited for you in the discussion we had about the Pilgrims at Plymouth Colony and how the switch from the "ideal and theoretical socialist community" without property ownership and free enterprise that failed miserably to the practical, real world community with property ownership and free enterprise that succeeded and enabled the colony to permanently survive on its own. Here it is again:

Property

...The experience that was had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years and that amongst godly and sober men, may well evince the vanity of that conceit of Plato's and other ancients applauded by some of later times; that the taking away of property and bringing in community into a commonwealth would make them happy and flourishing; as if they were wiser than God. For this community (so far as it was) was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. For the young men, that were most able and fit for labour and service, did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men's wives and children without any recompense. The strong, or man of parts, had no more in division of victuals and clothes than he that was weak and not able to do a quarter the other could; this was thought injustice. The aged and graver men to be ranked and equalized in labours and victuals, clothes, etc., with the meaner and younger sort, thought it some indignity and disrespect unto them. And for men's wives to be commanded to do service for other men, as dressing their meat, washing their clothes, etc., they deemed it a kind of slavery, neither could many husbands well brook it. Upon the point all being to have alike, and all to do alike, they thought themselves in the like condition, and one as good as another; and so, if it did not cut off those relations that God hath set amongst men, yet it did at least much diminish and take off the mutual respects that should be preserved amongst them. And would have been worse if they had been men of another condition. Let none object this is men's corruption, and nothing to the course itself. I answer, seeing all men have this corruption in them, God in His wisdom saw another course fitter for them.

https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch16s1.html

It has been said that socialists (and socialism itself) seek to build an impossible world for an impossible humanity, and it's true. Others who have noted the religious aspects of the socialist faith, that it is akin to an attempt to force our way back into the Garden of Eden - to create Heaven on earth. Sheer folly, either way.

 

LOL - Marx was a bum who mooched off his buddy Engels. He set the standard for the socialist "work ethic".

As Frédéric Bastiat correctly pointed out in The Law, in the real world and practical terms, the socialist rejection of property articulated by François-Noël Babeuf

"Nature has given to every man the right to the enjoyment of an equal share in all property"

is just license to plunder.

 

OTOH licence to own everything you can in a society which gives power to property owners is an open licence AND MOTIVE to plunder.

 

@Talon
I am not going into the religious aspect of a social construct.
If socialism doesn't work, why do most successful nations practise it to a greater or lesser extent INCLUDING THE USA?

 

I'm not aware of any such society - probably because it doesn't exist (or it exists solely in the fevered imaginations of socialists).

Even on a purely theoretical libertarian level, there is no license to plunder everything you can and destroy other people's property rights - the latter of which is a fundamental tenet of socialism.

 

It's a faith, but if you don't want to get into that it's your prerogative....

Because those successful nations are capitalist nations that permit private property ownership and free enterprise, and it is from the surplus of capitalist success that they are able to fund their social welfare programs. Without capitalism, that socialism cannot and would not exist.

And as any American including this one can tell you, our limited yet growing embrace of socialism has come at great cost, both on a financial and human level. We're $30 trillion in debt with over $100 trillion in unfunded liabilities, and then there's unintended consequences of our Great Society and War on Poverty programs:

From the wild Irish slums of the 19th century Eastern seaboard, to the riot-torn suburbs of Los Angeles, there is one unmistakable lesson in American history; a community that allows a large number of men to grow up in broken families, dominated by women, never acquiring any stable relationship to male authority, never acquiring any set of rational expectations about the future — that community asks for and gets chaos. Crime, violence, unrest, disorder — most particularly the furious, unrestrained lashing out at the whole social structure — that is not only to be expected; it is very near to inevitable...
--Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY)

Today, we've gone from grappling with the problems associated with capitalism that surfaced during the height of the Industrial Age and the Great Depression to grappling with the problems associated with socialism that are surfacing now at the height of our welfare state. We're on the same unsustainable social and economic path that many bankrupt and extinct socialist states have stumbled down.

 

The countries i refer to are mixed economies which i have said more than once are my preferred economic system. But they are more or less socialist.
Some have state run transport.
State run education.
State run health service.
State run social services.
State appointed judiciary. (Choice limited by EU regulation to stop the state creating its own legal takeover).
Some housing is financed and owned by the state.
Large industries enjoy huge state investment.
Banks work in tandem with state policy.

Most countries ask private companies to bid for contracts which are paid for by public money.

I have repeatedly said Marxism doesn't exist (or actually never did).
A pure socialist country doesn't exist and the USA contains some state supported services.

My issue is the poor understanding of what socialism is and that even the USA lives happily enough with it.
It is not an evil destroyer of freedoms.
It won't turn the USA into a terrorist's oppressive state.
The degree of state ownership and control is embedded in political manifestos and is up to the electorate.

 

FFS, why won't you read what I write? Are you so determined to prop up your rapidly imploding narrative under this barrage of truth telling, that you've just resorted to pretendies?

1) NO ONE gets a free lunch. Socialism is 'work to eat'. Learn the basics, and you'll have some hope of getting past your fantasies.

2) Property (and the community which arises out of familiars invested in place) is the only power the peasantry has ever had. You - and the elites you carry water for - want to see that end, so that the people become helpless vassals of the overlords. Meantime - how the **** do you position "those who don't own property" as a victim group, while simultaneously demonising property for the ordinary man? Apparently you'll say whatever you have to say to make empowerment of the lower classes an evil. They should give you a pay rise.

3) Property and Community. Those ARE the things which give the peasant his power. If you're actually claiming that being a vassal of the overlords gives him more power, then I suspect you're not only on the payroll, but some kind of area manager.

4) You're talking about State "socialism". Totalitarianism. This has NOTHING to do with that, and you know it. Stop this pretending FFS.

 

Taxation is NOT socialism. Not in any way, shape, or form. It's the profits of capitalism, and you best embrace that capitalism if you expect the freebies those profits pay for.

 

Every one of us has a responsibility to own a small piece of property, precisely so that the elites (whom you apparently work for) can't buy it all up to rent back to us.

 

Not a single First World nation has even a molecule of State socialism. Not one.

 

Bingo!