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by rosa
Friday, Oct. 10, 2003 at 10:17 AM
The following exchange was taken from the 2changetheworld.info website over the question of Freedom of speech after revolution.
The following exchange was taken from the 2changetheworld.info
website over the question of Freedom of speech after revolution.
What about Freedom of Speech?
From RedRebel
Freedom of speech, That's a tough one. I think it is an innate human right,
but the bourgeoisie owns the airwaves and it would be poisonous to The
Revolution if they harnessed that and used it against the proletariat.
i definitely think after The Revolution there should be a bill of rights and
they should be upheld and freedom of speech should be among them but possibly
during The Revolution poisonous thoughts should be suppressed that is not to say
that revolutionary criticism should be suppressed it is a necessary part of The
Revolution.
From oki
And when would the proletariat end?
In history I think there are no examples of communist states that ended it.
It continued and resulted in a totalitarian system. I more hang towards
anarchosyndicalism where this stage is completely skipped. Why is a proletariat
necessary anyway?
Why should, even during revolt freedom of speech be limited? Wouldn't this
lead to just another repressive government form? How can you prevent abuse of
total power during and after a revolution? Isn't a revolution only gonna work if
the people back it up? If they do then you don't need censorship and centralized
power, then the people will act and make it happen.
From Mariposa
The Draft Programme itself contains in a living and practical way many
answers to the questions you all are asking! The RCP has summed up some
hard-learned, lessons to develop this section of the Draft Programme ,
and it is really worth looking at, reading, and digging into. So, I'm going to
make links to the different (short) sections of that appendix for those
interested below.
The appendix starts by saying:
"Having seized power through a wrenching process of struggle,
involving tremendous heroism and sacrifice on the part of millions of people,
the proletariat will suppress any attempts by the overthrown bourgeoisie and
counter-revolutionary forces to restore the old society, with all its horrors
for the masses of people. Not to do so would be a monumental betrayal of the
masses of people, not just in the particular country but worldwide, and of the
proletariat's historic revolutionary mission. And the exercise of this
dictatorship by the proletariat over the bourgeoisie is absolutely essential for
and makes possible the carrying out of radical changes in society which
represent the highest interests of the masses of people and ultimately of all
humanity."
From LittleTimmyAK47
In my opinion...
When the dictatorship of the proletariat has come to exist, the people will
certainly have the right to freedom of speech assembly etc., the oppressors and
reactionaries who despise the people and their rule will not. That is to say,
oppressors from the old society, white supremacists and other reactionary
criminals will not have these rights. The proletariat will exercise democracy
amongst themselves and dictatorship over the reactionary classes to prevent
their re-asserting their power.
As for the idea that we can "skip" socialism, this is a pipe dream.
The walls that have been built by the capitalists inside our own hearts and
minds will not die without a massive struggle, we have to be practical here. The
solution to the workers' problems is not the expansion of our bourgeois-
democratic individual "rights" but building a new society on the new
proletarian way, as for the reactionaries who want to spit poison... fuck em!
The right to try to fool and hoodwink the masses isn't a right, it's a privilege
the reactionaries will want and the masses should never give.
From naxalite
I agree wholehearted with what Lil Timmy said:
"When the dictatorship of the proletariat has come to exist, the
people will certainly have the right to freedom of speech assembly etc., the
oppressors and reactionaries who despise the people and their rule will not....
the solution to the workers' problems is not the expansion of our bourgeois-
democratic individual "rights" but building a new society on the new
proletarian way, as for the reactionaries who want to spit poison.. fuck em! The
right to try to fool and hoodwink the masses isn't a right."
Several people posting in this discussion raise the idea of an absolute right
to "freedom of speech." I think that is naive and wrong: in a civil
war, and especially under situation where the overthrown enemy inevitably has
much more strength than the new born revolutionary forces, it is wrong to allow
the hated reactionaries to organize and raise their heads.
Let's put it like this: If the Klan is still free to organize lynching, will
Black people feel that something deep has changed in society? Will the oppressed
feel empowered to fully act in the next stages of the revolution? If these swine
(and the Oliver Norths and the Rush Limbaughs, etc.) are still speaking over
radio waves, then how can people feel anything has changed? That their
sacrifices, past and future, are worth it?
Some people in this discussion essentially don't want a dictatorship of the
proletariat, and even suggest that if the workers can't hold onto power without
exercising it that way, then they should give it up.
We already have examples of that.... like in Nicaragua, where revisionist
forces, the Sandinistas, (for their own purposes) allowed the U.S. imperialists
to fund "opposition newspapers" and then spend millions on the
election of their "opposition" candidate. What a betrayal of the
people to allow millions to enter a small country to bring back an openly
conservative pro-U.S. regime!
However, what i think is worth thinking through is how the limits are drawn.
Tim says fuck the reactionaries who want to spit poison. Well sure. But the
enemy won't always show up in a brooks brother suit and a top hat. It isn't
always obvious. What if a former reactionary activist raises a true criticism
about how a university is being run? What if a foreign ministry official argues
for establishing major trade with a remaining imperialist power? What if someone
argues for wider wage gaps during a period of economic hardship, or for
abolishing them all at once? What if a seemingly honest person raises seemingly
reactionary things? (Like a special cafeteria for surgeons and top
administrators in hospitals, or something major, like bringing back SATs and
ending the system of picking college students by consulting workers in
factories.)
What I am trying to say is that the world is not so simple--where over here
are the proletarian revolutionaries saying revolutionary things, and over there
the reactionaries and oppressors saying reactionary things.
The enemy will come in new guises--they will couch their arguments in
language and plans that sound attractive to sections of the masses (and even
sections of the revolutionaries). They won't appear dressed in Klan hoods and
skinhead costumes--but will find for a spokesperson someone with real
credentials in the revolutionary struggle.
And this complexity means that there has to be a big arena where things
(within and under the dictatorship of the proletariat) are debated out, broadly
and openly. Where wrong ideas are tested and contested. Where sections of the
people who are influenced by reactionary plans are won over to a more
revolutionary path.
Yes, we need a dictatorship of the proletariat. Yes, ultimately and
fundamentally, those working for a restoration of our oppression need to be
identified, exposed and thwarted in their attempts at a return to power.
But let's understand that this will not be simple--especially once the
obvious reactionaries are defeated and broken up. The process of differentiating
between revolution and counterrevolution, between Marxism and revisionism,
between the paths forward and the path backward--is a complex process. And it is
not mainly a "police process"--of forbidding certain kinds of politics
and enforcing that ban with the new revolutionary organs of power. The
differences between revolution and restoration have to be clear to millions, not
just to the most advanced within the party and the new government. Otherwise,
history shows, the dictatorship of the proletariat can't be expanded in an
"all-round" way. In fact, it can't even survive.
*****
The question here is not whether the proletariat
should exercise dictatorship, but how it should exercise
it. The proletariat, with the leadership of the Party, must control the economy,
as well as politics, the media, culture, and so on. But dictatorship and control
by the proletariat need not mean, and should not mean, that no opposition is
allowed. On the contrary, socialism can only advance to communism in an
atmosphere characterized by vigorous and free-flowing debate and contention,
which will greatly contribute to the identification, analysis, and resolution of
contradictions on an ever higher level.
RCP Draft Programme p. 83
2changetheworld.info
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by a better world?
Friday, Oct. 10, 2003 at 12:09 PM
Thank you for the freedom of speech as long as it agrees with what you have already predetermined is best for all people everywhere.
These are the same people who cry "Fascism!", yet just read about what they want to do and how they find it necessary to silence those with whom they disagree.
You people are real stooges.
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by nonanarchist
Friday, Oct. 10, 2003 at 12:14 PM
Because there will never be a socialist revolution.
But please, by all means, continue to discuss the revolution and its aftermath.
It's quite entertaining to those of us who live in the real world.
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by krankyman
Friday, Oct. 10, 2003 at 1:09 PM
You mean like the socialist revolution after WWII we had here in America,that made it the great nation that is was,and I mean WAS. Don't ever forget,ladies and gentlemen,that cheap labor conservatives have opposed every progressive standard that made this country great. Cheap labor consevatives have historically OPPOSED ....let me see...ALL child labor laws, ALL civil rights legislation, the Clean Air and Water acts,hmmm this is too easy...they also OPPOSED Medicare and Medicaid legislation. The cheap labor conservative right also OPPOSED Social Security , the G.I. Bill of Rights and ALL minimum wage laws which helped power this nation into the 21st century. They OPPOSE any national health care AND HATE publicy funded education. This is all historical fact. They LOVE the bloated military and they LOVE "free trade" so they can move jobs to any third world cesspool they want. And they SUPPORT the dictators(need I list them) who run these third world cesspool countries. Try to refute that cheap labor conservative greed-heads.
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by Meyer London
Friday, Oct. 10, 2003 at 1:09 PM
Maoists are not an important part of the left, if indeed they are a part of the left at all. Maoism is simply a variety of Stalinsim, an ideology that has been repudiated by virtually all socialist movements around the world and which has proved its political bankruptcy in China and in the former USSR. Its main accomplishment has to give pro-capitalist political "theorists" a good tool with which to slander socialism as tyranny, bureaucratic stupidity, and mass murder. My own suspicion is that most of the leaders, and a fairly large number of the rank and file members of Maoists cults in the USA are government agents or provocateurs who are out to discredit the left. Anyone who thinks that the former seminarian Josef Stalin and the former assistant librarian Mao have anything to offer the working people of the world that will help them to free themselves from oppression should read some of their turgid writings.
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by citizen
Friday, Oct. 10, 2003 at 1:29 PM
--My own suspicion is that most of the leaders, and a fairly large number of the rank and file members of Maoists cults in the USA are government agents or provocateurs who are out to discredit the left.--
Oh good. A conspiracy theory. Let's do explore this.
The RCP are true socialists/communists and reflect exactly what those here who cry "fascism" would rather impose upon the populace. Give the world over to these people and everyone would be cheap labor, or dead labor if you got out of line and complained about it.
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by Meyer London
Friday, Oct. 10, 2003 at 2:07 PM
Unproven statement.
Unproven slander.
A perfect example of how right wingers use Stalinism/Maoism to attack socialism.
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by dress it up
Friday, Oct. 10, 2003 at 2:11 PM
You can dodge it and rename it and put a pretty bow in its hair all you want, but we've seen what happens to people under marxist socialism, and we don't want anything to do with it or people like you you uphold it.
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by fresca
Friday, Oct. 10, 2003 at 2:13 PM
"A perfect example of how right wingers use Stalinism/Maoism to attack socialism."
There are a thousand ways to attack Socialism. It's simply a flawed system. It completely ignores key aspects of human nature and will always be bound to fail.
You know that.
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by Meyer London
Friday, Oct. 10, 2003 at 2:16 PM
Maybe you should spend more time reading and less time dressing up. Or more time talking with people who really are socialists. Where do you get your information about socialism, anyway - from Masters of Deceit by J. Edgar Hoover? From videos of 1950's television shows? From the recorded sermons of Cardinal "I Love Altar Boys" Spellman?
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by antisocialist
Friday, Oct. 10, 2003 at 2:24 PM
I've read your trash. I've seen what happens when your kind take over a country. It's not pretty. Your socialist "dreams" don't fit the reality of what really happens. We want nothing to do with your murdering foolishness.
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by Meyer London
Friday, Oct. 10, 2003 at 2:24 PM
Of course, in former times, other reactionaries made the same statements about attempts to abolish slavery, child labor, indentured servitude, debtors's prisons, divine right monarchy, serfdom, feudalism, flogging, and torture to produce confessions. The same objections were made by these same people to demands for universal suffrage, equal rights for women, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, legalized labor unions, progressive income taxes, and public defenders for people who could not afford lawyers. Why do I have this feeling that if you were around then, Fresca, you would have agreed with them?
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by Meyer London
Friday, Oct. 10, 2003 at 2:28 PM
Unproven slander.
Intellectual dishonesty showing intellectual bankruptcy.
Obvious ignorance of or indifference to the masses of people murdered by Kissinger, Nixon, both Bushie boys, the CIA, and others in the name of capitalism.
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by antircp
Friday, Oct. 10, 2003 at 2:30 PM
>slavery, child labor, indentured servitude, debtors's prisons, divine right monarchy, serfdom, feudalism, flogging, and torture to produce confessions, no universal suffrage, no equal rights for women, no freedom of speech, no freedom of the press, no legalized labor unions, no progressive income taxes, and no public defenders for people who could not afford lawyers
Sounds like the end results of socialism, as so clearly demonstrated in histroy everywhere its been tried.
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by fresca
Friday, Oct. 10, 2003 at 2:38 PM
"Why do I have this feeling that if you were around then, Fresca, you would have agreed with them?"
Because you're an idiot.
Trying to lump in the "struggle" for the inanity of socialism with the struggles that ended slavery, allowed woman to vote and created the civil rights movement, for example, is not only ridiculous but insulting.
Socialism is great for those who wish to be taken care of by others and sucks for those charged with being the caretakers.
Why do I have this feeling that you fall firmly in the former group?
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by Meyer London
Friday, Oct. 10, 2003 at 2:48 PM
Socialists not only took part in all these struggles but played an active leadership role in most of them.
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by TY
Friday, Oct. 10, 2003 at 2:50 PM
"Socialists not only took part in all these struggles but played an active leadership role in most of them."
Thanks. The Soviet Union was a real hoot.
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by Meyer London
Friday, Oct. 10, 2003 at 3:09 PM
Obvious non sequitur.
Fairly frank admission of ignorance and inablity form
a coherent written argument.
Obvious failure to consider the fact that anyone could
could also say that industry remained under private
ownership during the Hitler regime and German
capitalists made fabulous profits under Hitler until
his disasterous defeat in the Soviet Union. They had
also financed his Nazi movement. Therefore anyone
who like capitalism is also for Nazism. Nazi
Germany - what a hoot!
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by Krusty
Friday, Oct. 10, 2003 at 3:14 PM
"Cheap labor conservative! Cheap labor conservative!"
I'll bet your scabby little fingers just FLY over the keyboard whenever you type that.
Buy a new record, idiot.
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by beentheredonethat
Friday, Oct. 10, 2003 at 3:26 PM
My roommate at Cal-Berk was a socialist, a big campus organizer. A little messy, but a good roomate. Unlike you, he has since matured and joined the real world, but I'll never forget him and his "comrades" sitting around the TV when the Berlin Wall was coming down. They were crying their eyes out. "Oh NO! The perfect society has given in to the evil capitalists and fascists!"
In the following days, they and a bunch of others from around other campuses and the SF Bay Area community were working on how they were going to "spin" it for all the new recruits who were questioning their marxists/socislaitic views. I got to listen in on these damage control secessions since several of them took place in our apartment. They determined that it really wasn't socialism in the USSR, they would call it "state monopoly capitalism". It was determined that the reason socialism didn't work in the USSR was because it wasn't really done the right way by the right people, that the Bolshevics confiscated socialism and turned it into something it wasn't. They essentially said whatever they had to say to prop up socialism as the answer to all the worlds ills. These were the same people who were signing the praises of the USSR in the previous years before the fall. Hypocrites!
So, you may try and fool people, and you may think that getting in the last word makes you feel superior, but I've been there and lived it when this current "spin" you spew was being formulated. I know exactly what you and your ilk really believe. I heard it with my own ears. And this lead article is one of the best illustrations of what people like you say when you're behind closed doors with your comrades .
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by Meyer London
Friday, Oct. 10, 2003 at 3:33 PM
because his college room-mate was a campus radical. That's good enough for me; I'll defer to anything you say on the subject. Of course, if your room-mate had been a pre-med student I'd let you diaganose any ailment I had and if he had been and engineering enthusiast I'd blast off to the moon in any aluminum rocket you built in your backyard. And if he had been a "marketing" major (there actually are such things) I'd let you sell me the Brooklyn Bridge.
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by s
Friday, Oct. 10, 2003 at 3:41 PM
Denying what you REALLY believe is part of the formula, too. That is, until they grow deeper into the indoctrination. Then you can fill them in on the "finer points". Isn't that right, Meyer?
Yeah, I've seen how it works.
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by fresca
Friday, Oct. 10, 2003 at 3:45 PM
"Socialists not only took part in all these struggles but played an active leadership role in most of them."
That socialists took part in these struggles is, of course, no reflection on socialism in and of itself.
People from all sorts of groups participtated.
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by Meyer London
Friday, Oct. 10, 2003 at 3:56 PM
He's seen it when watching various Rambo movies or John Wayne epics, and videos of I Led Three Lives, Captain Midnight, and other 1950's television shows. He's also seen it described during various impassioned speeches by nuts at Republican National conventions.
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by Meyer London
Friday, Oct. 10, 2003 at 3:58 PM
Conspiculously absent from most of these struggles were capitalists and pro-capitalist political movements. They were on the other side most of the time.
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by anti-socialist
Friday, Oct. 10, 2003 at 4:04 PM
Face it. Socialism is a failure. Reasonable people don't want anything to do with it. Take it somewhere else.
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by Randolph
Friday, Oct. 10, 2003 at 4:30 PM
Is there IS no where else to take it. This is Indymedia. Where else could you find such an impassioned defense of socialism?
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by 000
Friday, Oct. 10, 2003 at 5:09 PM
I think this quotes sums it up:
"And the exercise of this dictatorship by the proletariat over the bourgeoisie is absolutely essential for and makes possible the carrying out of radical changes in society which represent the highest interests of the masses of people and ultimately of all humanity."
keep your dictatorship to yourself. i don't want any part of it. What shining examples do you have for us to look to? Let me guess: China, N. Korea, the Shining Path...all wretched and dispicable despots.
I am not pro-capitalist by any means, but i am certainly will resist Maoists as much as capitalists.
000
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by fresca
Friday, Oct. 10, 2003 at 5:10 PM
"Conspiculously absent from most of these struggles were capitalists and pro-capitalist political movements."
Almost everyone by definition, involved was capitalist. Capitalists don't label their "movement". If you honestly beleeve that any of these gains could have been made without the overwhelming support of average veryday Americans, ie. Capitalists, then you are even more of a fool than your make yourself out to be.
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by Meyer London
Friday, Oct. 10, 2003 at 5:11 PM
The only problem is that no Maoists have been posting here since the beginning of the thread - hours ago.
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by free
Friday, Oct. 10, 2003 at 5:16 PM
Maoists. Socialist. Not a pennies worth of difference between them when the end result of what they desire is viewed.
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by Meyer London
Friday, Oct. 10, 2003 at 6:04 PM
Unsubstantiated allegation.
Shows poor reasoning skills.
Shows poor writing skills.
Shows lack of knowledge; only a person ignorant of the subject would say something as ridiculous as socialism = Maoism.
Shows crude political prejudice rather than wide reading and thinking.
Shows that this person probably relies upon Fox News as a major source of information and ideas.
Shows that this person probably voted for Bush and Schwartzenazi.
Shows that this person probably believes that there are wmds buried in Iraq or Lebanon and that the story of Noah's Ark is true.
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by krankyman
Saturday, Oct. 11, 2003 at 12:23 PM
AAAAAHHHHH...so cheap labor conservative is a little too much for you. Too fucking bad. Just point to one thing that the CHEAP LABOR CONSERVATIVE RIGHT WING NUTSO'S have done for the working man in this country besides try to screw him every which way. Or are you going to give me that clap-trap about the free market and the invisible hand bull-shit. The invisible hand of the market that invariably ends way up the ass of the american worker. Come on show me ??? Because you fucking can't. Period.
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by Krusty
Saturday, Oct. 11, 2003 at 2:00 PM
I asked you in another thread, what is your idea? Of course the owner of a business is going to pay as little as he can for labor, even you ought to be able to understand that. But if this was krankyland, how would YOU have it? Take all the monthly receipts and split 'em up among the employees? Does that make sense to you? The owner put up all the capital (sorry to use an obscene word) takes all the risk that the biz might go under (happens every day) and so, IMHO, he deserves the profits.
He pays as little as he can, BUT as an employee becomes more valuable, he makes the boss more money, and now is worth more, so he gets paid more, or he goes somewhere else. I could hire someone cheaper, but starting from scratch training someone, etc. is a big pain and not the most efficient use of funds.
So again, how would YOU prefer the world worked? You keep moaning about "cheap labor conservatives", a real trendoid leftist phrase, but after the complaining, what happens. Do tell.
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by krankyman
Saturday, Oct. 11, 2003 at 9:09 PM
The reason the CHEAP LABOR CONSERVATIVES are called that is because they have always sided against the regular working schmoe. CHEAP LABOR CONSERVATIVES have consistently voted against welfare, child labor laws, minimum wage, medicare, medicaid, the freakin' G.I. Bill, unions, have always hated social security, how many more etc's do I have to put up for you. Because when you don't give any one a decent social safety net we are at the MERCY, in other words, over a barrel, so you cheap labor conservatives can give us whatever YOU want. The CHEAP LABOR CONSERVATIVES look at people as pipelines that fill their own pockets. Does that explain it to you or do you more?
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by insomniac
Monday, Oct. 13, 2003 at 10:11 AM
"Almost everyone, by definition, involved was capitalist." - fresca
That's not much of a definition of capitalism. Say it defines everything but a "socialist" and you define nothing. A captialist, in my thinking, is someone who is a proponent of Capitalism and Capitalists, and identifies as such. (I know this is vague, but, self-identification is, I think, important.)
In any society, Captialists constitute a minority. Part of being a Capitalist requires living off the "surplus labor" or profit that other people produce -- in other words, living largely on dividends from investments. Not many people do that.
Everyone else who calls themselves Capitalists... they are Capitalists too, but only because they identify as such. Someone who gets, say, 00 in stock dividends a year, might get a good feeling from being on the same team as the Bushes, but he's really nothing more than a fan on the sidelines. He's not even a bench warmer or a waterboy in the Capitalist bowl game. Still, this person supports the Capitalist and the Capitalist positions.
By my definition and guesstimation, some capitalists were involved in those listed social movemets, but not in leadership roles.
(BTW - I think that the 00 dividend recipient is just Middle Class or Bourgeois. They own something to retire on, and so are not mere wage slaves, but, they don't own enough to stop working forever, and don't own enough to live off the interest.)
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by insomniac
Monday, Oct. 13, 2003 at 10:25 AM
Kranky - the idea that the person who first capitalizes the business deserves all the profit has, IMHO, only limited merit. It's legal, but, flawed.
When a bank lends a business start-up money, they get profits from the business only as long as it takes to pay off the principal plus interest.
A business owner can be considered similarly. If they provide start up capital, they have a claim to profits (if any) until their capital is restored, and perhaps some reasonable profit.
If the owner also works in the business, then they should also get paid. If they sacrifice and take reduced pay for a long time, then they should get paid for that lost money too. But, who deserves the profit after all these debts are paid?
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by free-speech
Monday, Oct. 13, 2003 at 10:42 PM
The ignoramus dictators at NYC IMC already practice this Maoist abomination, this pseudo-intellectual, gymnastic contortion.
They don't even read what they censor, they act like pavlovian dogs, responding only to 'superficial' impressions of a perceived 'enemy.'
For example, they permit a story that is a complete fiction: Radical Recipes (linked in the story link below). It is a fake story, designed to appeal to a superficial 'radical' mentality. the story remains on the wire (as do others) days after its posting.
If you use > view > source, you can read the 'actual story' : A criticicm of the NYC IMC editorial collective, embedded in the html formatting but concealed from view only as a result of its formatting.
The whole outrageous scenario is explained in detail:
http://nyc.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=77752&group=webcast
If ignoramuses like those at NYC IMC are 'leading' a revolution, it doesn't stand a chance. And if, by some perverse joke, such a crew of Maoist cretins ever did come to actual power, you can bet it would be twice the hell it now is even as a state run by merciless 'bourgois' capitalists.
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by krankyman
Tuesday, Oct. 14, 2003 at 2:04 PM
I am not railing against capitalism per se, I am railing against the anti labor policies that the cheap labor conservatives have touted for as long as anyone can remember. Even Abraham Lincoln(first GOP president) said that labor was more important than capital. But show me just one instance of the cheap labor conservatives taking the side of the working man, the earner in the middle class, the portion of the population that made this country great. No other nation had a middle class like ours DID. And if left up to the cheap labor conservatives our nation will become like every other. The rich elites at the top(you know we are not the only country where you can become rich) and the everyone else fighting for the scraps , not even at the table, but under it.
It used to be the average CEO's salary was a couple of hundreds times what the average workers was. Now it is something like 800 or 900 per cent more than the average workers. With the average workers actual take home pay going down the last 20 years in spending ability. And of all the great myths,"liberal media" name me one newspaper,just one, that has a daily "Labor" section instead of "Business". Where's the PENSIONS people USED to get. Where is the HEALTH CARE people used to get. Where are the PAID VACATIONS people used to get. Gone so corporate greedheads can make more and more and more. Now for our retirement we have to look more and more at that Ponzi scheme called the stock market.
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by Krusty
Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2003 at 10:39 AM
I need to respond to both of you, in order,
Insomniac- I see where you are going with your idea of "once the capital is paid back, the capitalist doesn't get to keep all the profit" Fair enough, in a lefty sort of way, but who gets to decide when? Should there be a federal department of how much is enough? And who is going to start up a business, take tyhe risk, when all he will get out of it is his money back, and maybe a job for himself? What if the business fails? At which point do the employees help pay the debts of the company? I can answer that one for you, never. They would cash their last check, and be off like a shot, and God bless them. That's not what they signed on for. In my business, busy times or slow, the employees got paid first. But I get what's left.
And the inimitable kranky. Where did all your entitlements go? Look at the taxes, FICA, all the bullshit on your paycheck. You want your boss to pay all that, AND everything else you want? How valuable an employee are you, anyway?
And if you're still looking for a newspaper with a "Labor" section, try Pravda. I daresay they've got one.
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by Future College Student
Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2003 at 11:05 AM
capitalismvssocialism.jpg, image/jpeg, 700x1200
Here are two photos -
One shows a a group of corrupt and depraved Capitalist college students with impure thoughts.
The other shows a group of Socialist college students with only pure thoughts and high moral values.
I'm trying to decide which college to attend. Do I embrace the revolution and study in China? Or do I take my chances with the evils of Capitalism?
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by Future College Student
Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2003 at 11:05 AM
capitalismvssocialism.jpgzxofdd.jpg, image/jpeg, 700x1200
Here are two photos -
One shows a a group of corrupt and depraved Capitalist college students with impure thoughts.
The other shows a group of Socialist college students with only pure thoughts and high moral values.
I'm trying to decide which college to attend. Do I embrace the revolution and study in China? Or do I take my chances with the evils of Capitalism?
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by Meyer London
Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2003 at 2:20 PM
Even in the United States, there are serious universities and colleges devoted to the life of the mind. But giving the only two choices you offer, I think that you should enroll in the first. It shows future yuppies - spoiled, living on generous monthly checks from Mommy and Daddy, convincied that capitalism is good because everyone must live like they do, thinking that life is about "having fun" and having other people wait on you, and all or nearly all of them white. You will fit right in.
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by bbsouter
Wednesday, Mar. 31, 2004 at 7:14 AM
So you think that Maoists are as bad if not worse than the people who control the world today? You seem to even suggest that they're the same thing.
I suppose you wouldn't be able to distinguish the difference between China before and after 76. There is a difference.
But if all commies are evil and there is no difference between the Stalinist Soviet Union and Maoist China or even between China today and during the Cultural Revolution, what are you left with?
Communists and their parties are the only ones who have managed to actually engage in modern revolutions, save the Iranian revolution. I sure don't see any anarchists or trotskyists putting their lives on the line.
And don't tell me the EZLN is revolutionary, they're an indigenous movement with narrow goals and poor results not a revolutionary movement. They're also not anarchists or trots.
If Maoists and Soviet Communists are the same thing then why did the Soviet army (along with help from the CIA) massacre the Maoists in Afghanistan during the 80s? Why did the Soviet Union split with China during the Cultural Revolution? Because the Soviet Union was not revolutionary. If you know anything about China and the Cultural Revolution you know that despite its shortcomings it was quite possibly the most democratic expression of bottom up politics in world history.
If the Chinese government from 76 on was Maoist why did they execute members of the gang of four, and jail Chiang Ching (a major female revolutionary leader and Mao's wife) for life. Why did they break up the agricultural communes? Why did they massacre people in Tieneman? When Mao was alive and millions of people flooded Tieneman criticizing the Party (a large part of the Cultural Revolution was criticism of the Party from the newly empowered poor) no one was massacred. In fact members of the government stepped down.
All you have to do to know that the connection is no longer there as it concerns the Chinese Communist Party is to look at their website where it mentions Mao by name once and none of his revolutionary ideas, instead it talks of Deng Xiaoping Thought (Deng is the guy who ordered Tieneman). Why aren't they supporting Maoist revolution in Nepal? Because they aren't Maoists.
If Maoists are just as bad as capitalists then why are capitalists so eager to kill them? You'd think they would get along like the French Communist Party or the CPUSA with the ruling class. Instead in India, Nepal, Peru, Bolivia, Iraq, Iran, Turkey, The Philipines, Bhutan, Bangladesh and others places around the world where Maoists are actually fighting (unlike you IMC punks) US, British and imperialist interests in general are fighting tooth and nail to stop it. In the process they're massacring hundreds of thousands of women, men and children.
Socialism isn't inherently flawed it is inherently difficult. Thus the MANY mistakes that have been made in the world. But please the next time you decide to preach to the "irrelevant" maoists about how evil and corrupt their top down "dictatorship" is say it to the faces of the people in the third world who have put their lives on the line for it. Say it to the people in the slums of Lima or the people of Ayacucho. Or to the maoists who were murdered in Afghanistan, Turkey, Nepal, The Philipines, and India. Tell it to the maoists who were murdered by the Ayatollahs after the CIA gave him all the information and names of the revolutionaries (in 1980 after the islamic revolution which supposedly made enemies of the US and Iran). Tell it to the dead, because I'm sick of hearing it.
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