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Read the rules in the OP before posting, please.In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up! NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action. |
On May 02 2017 10:45 Plansix wrote:
We need a victims of capitalism day too, because there are more of those.
Don't feed the troll, in a minute we'll get a demonstration that social programs = stalinian mass murders.
In all seriousness those body counts are stupid. "Communism" has never worked (it's supposed to be the disappearance of the state, in case) and its leninist interpretation has added "totalitarian dictatorship" to the equation. Which Marx didn't theorized at all and which usually means a lot of deads.
I'm all for blaming leninism. But the body count has basically nothing to do with communism, which to clarify I believe to be a failed idea. It's as idiotic as saying that the crime of south american dictatorships in the 70's are the crimes of capitalism.
All of it having strictly and absolutely nothing to do with the modern left and its ideas.
Not very interesting altogether. The "big government - OH LOOK STALIN" tactic of the right is offensively stupid, and I suspect that's where people promoting the whole thing want to go. We can leave this kind of crap to Fox News really.
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On May 02 2017 12:08 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On May 02 2017 10:45 Plansix wrote:
We need a victims of capitalism day too, because there are more of those. This is the place I visit to hear that capitalism has the bigger body count. And from people I can legitimately believe are not trolling just for a reaction. Keep it going, bros.
It totally depends on how broadly you define capitalism. I'd like Plansix to substantiate his claim...
@Biff The Understudy
As far as I know, Marx and Engels advocated for a violent revolution and deposition of the capitalist class. They used the nonsensical labor theory of value to justify the violence. The body count of communism can certainly be traced back to its early ideologues.
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Since capitalism has had a much bigger spread over a longer period of time than communism it wouldn't be strange if it had more deaths. I find that statement plausible before starting to look into the facts. Things like black lung (2013 25,000 a year), slavery/inequality and mono crops (India starvations etc) are things I can think up in under 30s.
A simple problem is if you want to include Germany WW2 as a capitalistic system, fascism isn't exactly an economic platform incompatible with capitalism's outer edges. You let a large part of the economy run on capitalistic grounds but take over the portion needed for the government goals. Wiki says: Fascists opposed international free market capitalism, but supported a type of productive capitalism.
If you compare it year to year at the peak of the Communist purges then of course Communism has much more deaths. Communism just covered too small part of the population for too short of time to ever have ramped up the same amount of deaths.
I will happily admit I could be wrong though since a quick google look didn't find me anything and I don't want to dig. I will also state that I think regulated capitalism is a good system with much higher pros than cons. Unregulated it is a shit system for the average person alive at the time.
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On May 02 2017 20:00 maybenexttime wrote:Show nested quote +On May 02 2017 12:08 Danglars wrote:On May 02 2017 10:45 Plansix wrote:
We need a victims of capitalism day too, because there are more of those. This is the place I visit to hear that capitalism has the bigger body count. And from people I can legitimately believe are not trolling just for a reaction. Keep it going, bros. It totally depends on how broadly you define capitalism. I'd like Plansix to substantiate his claim... @Biff The Understudy As far as I know, Marx and Engels advocated for a violent revolution and deposition of the capitalist class. They used the nonsensical labor theory of value to justify the violence. The body count of communism can certainly be traced back to its early ideologues.
Where do Marx and Engels advocate for violence? Citation please, and no, that single 1848 newspaper article doesn't really compare with published work.
Edit: For clarity's sake, the issue here is that many, many people have attempted to superimpose a wide variety of alternative ideas on top the more fundamental tenets of Marxist thought. While Marx and Engels most certainly make reference to the need for some kind of class-based deposition in furtherance of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the how, why, and what of that process is the stuff of centuries-long debates.
Edit2: It's also important to note that "violence" is a very complicated concept relative to Marxism in that the processes of reification, fetishization, and valuation inflict their own kinds of violence on society and are oftentimes the focal points of counterrevolutionary actions encouraged by Marxist doctrine.
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On May 02 2017 20:00 maybenexttime wrote:Show nested quote +On May 02 2017 12:08 Danglars wrote:On May 02 2017 10:45 Plansix wrote:
We need a victims of capitalism day too, because there are more of those. This is the place I visit to hear that capitalism has the bigger body count. And from people I can legitimately believe are not trolling just for a reaction. Keep it going, bros. It totally depends on how broadly you define capitalism. I'd like Plansix to substantiate his claim...
Capitalism, religion, communism, nationalism and all the others are abstract concepts. Constructions created by humans as an artifice to house world views. They do not have agency or the ability impact the world independent of humans. Blaming deaths on them is reductive and pure bait, which is oh to common on the internet.
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United States44204 Posts
On May 02 2017 08:59 biology]major wrote:Show nested quote +On May 02 2017 08:33 Nevuk wrote:
If they get rid of pre existing conditions coverage they're forfeiting the house in 2018. They still might think it's worth it though. This is such a farce, the media has essentially set up pre existing condition coverage as a non negotiable. There can definitely be an adequate insurance system that doesn't cover for pre existing conditions but politically it's basically suicide rn.
Trump campaigned on covering those with pre-existing conditions. But honestly there can't really. Insurance doesn't reduce costs, it spreads costs over time. If you're poor and have a pre-existing condition then those costs will still be unaffordable, even when spread over time. The only way to make insurance affordable for people with pre-existing conditions is to create risk pools where most the people don't have pre-existing conditions and spread the cost across the pool.
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United States44204 Posts
On May 02 2017 20:00 maybenexttime wrote:Show nested quote +On May 02 2017 12:08 Danglars wrote:On May 02 2017 10:45 Plansix wrote:
We need a victims of capitalism day too, because there are more of those. This is the place I visit to hear that capitalism has the bigger body count. And from people I can legitimately believe are not trolling just for a reaction. Keep it going, bros. It totally depends on how broadly you define capitalism. I'd like Plansix to substantiate his claim... @Biff The Understudy As far as I know, Marx and Engels advocated for a violent revolution and deposition of the capitalist class. They used the nonsensical labor theory of value to justify the violence. The body count of communism can certainly be traced back to its early ideologues.
They didn't advocate for it, they simply viewed it as inevitable. They had a deterministic model of history in which there is constant conflict between those who create wealth and those who own the means of wealth creation and monopolize the profits of that wealth creation. The conflict between the serfs working the land and the effete landowning class, then the conflict between the labourers working in the factories and the factory owners and finally, in late stage capitalism, those who own the capital that is profitably invested vs those whose labour creates those profits.
They saw the overthrow of the capitalist class as being as inevitable as the end of divine right monarchy. They also thought it would naturally come about in the industrial west of Europe. We can't necessarily lay the blame on them for the fact that some ideologues decided that they couldn't be bothered to wait for history to happen by itself and therefore they needed to take over part of the world, set themselves up an absolute dictatorship and give history a shove. It's no different than if somewhere in a coffee shop says "Ragnarok sounds good but it might not happen in my lifetime, let's trigger it by scorching the earth with nuclear weapons". You wouldn't blame the Vikings, you'd blame the guy who thought it was a good idea to nuke everyone.
I think Marx and Engels would have been as horrified as anyone else by Leninism. Especially from inside the Gulag he surely would have put them in.
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On May 02 2017 22:11 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On May 02 2017 20:00 maybenexttime wrote:On May 02 2017 12:08 Danglars wrote:On May 02 2017 10:45 Plansix wrote:
We need a victims of capitalism day too, because there are more of those. This is the place I visit to hear that capitalism has the bigger body count. And from people I can legitimately believe are not trolling just for a reaction. Keep it going, bros. It totally depends on how broadly you define capitalism. I'd like Plansix to substantiate his claim... Capitalism, religion, communism, nationalism and all the others are abstract concepts. Constructions created by humans as an artifice to house world views. They do not have agency or the ability impact the world independent of humans. Blaming deaths on them is reductive and pure bait, which is oh to common on the internet.
All those concepts have very concrete consequences as ways to manipulate the behaviour of huge masses of people. You can even add "good" concepts like environmentalism, femninism, human rights or anti-racism.
Blaming a concept is blaming the people who follow its principles, not the concept itself. But... I think it is very important to know about each one. When the UK was struck by a lot of IRA terrorist attacks in the 80s, they blamed IRA, not ALL Irish people, ALL catholics or Irish nationalism itself. With concepts more foreign to us, we are likely to do that.
Fighting wars is also much easier by reducing the enemy to a simple "commie" "bolshevik" or "nazi" so we can forget they are actual human beings with friends and family.
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On May 02 2017 22:43 Slydie wrote:Show nested quote +On May 02 2017 22:11 Plansix wrote:On May 02 2017 20:00 maybenexttime wrote:On May 02 2017 12:08 Danglars wrote:On May 02 2017 10:45 Plansix wrote:
We need a victims of capitalism day too, because there are more of those. This is the place I visit to hear that capitalism has the bigger body count. And from people I can legitimately believe are not trolling just for a reaction. Keep it going, bros. It totally depends on how broadly you define capitalism. I'd like Plansix to substantiate his claim... Capitalism, religion, communism, nationalism and all the others are abstract concepts. Constructions created by humans as an artifice to house world views. They do not have agency or the ability impact the world independent of humans. Blaming deaths on them is reductive and pure bait, which is oh to common on the internet. All those concepts have very concrete consequences as ways to manipulate the behaviour of huge masses of people. You can even add "good" concepts like environmentalism, femninism, human rights or anti-racism. Blaming a concept is blaming the people who follow its principles, not the concept itself. But... I think it is very important to know about each one. When the UK was struck by a lot of IRA terrorist attacks in the 80s, they blamed IRA, not ALL Irish people, ALL catholics or Irish nationalism itself. With concepts more foreign to us, we are likely to do that. Fighting wars is also much easier by reducing the enemy to a simple "commie" "bolshevik" or "nazi" so we can forget they are actual human beings with friends and family.
Love, sex, family, self worth, pride and the threat of violence also have been used to manipulate people. All those concepts were used by people manipulation other people. The phrase “all the people killed by communism” evokes the idea that communism has some level of self determination and agency. But the communism of the 1920 is not the communism of the 1960 or 2000. Communism in the US is not communism in China.
I don’t object to the discussion about communism’s short comings, which there are many. My objection is to the framing that is an independent actor.
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Can anyone hook me up with a link so I can educate myself to understand the context of his tweeting?
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On May 02 2017 22:34 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On May 02 2017 08:59 biology]major wrote:On May 02 2017 08:33 Nevuk wrote:
If they get rid of pre existing conditions coverage they're forfeiting the house in 2018. They still might think it's worth it though. This is such a farce, the media has essentially set up pre existing condition coverage as a non negotiable. There can definitely be an adequate insurance system that doesn't cover for pre existing conditions but politically it's basically suicide rn. Trump campaigned on covering those with pre-existing conditions. But honestly there can't really. Insurance doesn't reduce costs, it spreads costs over time. If you're poor and have a pre-existing condition then those costs will still be unaffordable, even when spread over time. The only way to make insurance affordable for people with pre-existing conditions is to create risk pools where most the people don't have pre-existing conditions and spread the cost across the pool.
I'm always really curious how many people who say covering pre-existing conditions is not necessary (like biology) are actually old enough to remember when pre-existing conditions were not covered. I'd wonder the same about how many people who think that have a pre-existing condition, but I can't imagine there's an overlap there.
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It's pretty hilarious to see the POTUS with a party majority in the House and Senate pushing for a "shutdown" in September. I guess he's talking about shutting down the Dems and not shutting down the government (?), but it's still highly questionable word salad choice and it's not like there are September elections well, ever.
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"Communism" or "Marxism" are as nebulous of terms as they come. They can refer to the original ideas as put forward by Marx and Engels, any of the systems of central planning that were attempted within the past century, nations which do pretty much nothing "communist" but that nominally refer to themselves as communists, strawmen put forward by East Europeans to create a certain narrative to their liking, or even loopy impractical ideas debated by pot-smoking hippies in university philosophy class.
We are all of course victims of all of these and we need to be sad about it.
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On May 02 2017 23:42 TheTenthDoc wrote:
It's pretty hilarious to see the POTUS with a party majority in the House and Senate pushing for a "shutdown" in September. I guess he's talking about shutting down the Dems and not shutting down the government (?), but it's still highly questionable word salad choice and it's not like there are September elections well, ever.
Simply because majority control is not control due to the filibuster. Which it looks like Trump is saying should be totally abolished not just for appointments. Which I could see happening. Trump* shuts down the government by refusing to sign a spending bill until they pass a different bill that he wants, Senate changes the rules to break the impasse.
And the filibuster era ends up as an anomaly in the history books (of the late 20th early 21st centuries, since that was when you could use the filibuster as a veto)
*It could also be a group of Republican Senators holding up a spending bill, since republican control is slim.
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This was actually the most egregious case of a cop being on video gunning someone down in cold blood.
A white former South Carolina police officer planned to plead guilty Tuesday to violating the civil rights of an unarmed black motorist he shot and killed as the man ran from a 2015 traffic stop, according to a copy of the plea agreement obtained by The Associated Press.
The 13-page document also notes that as part of the deal, state prosecutors would drop a pending murder charge against Michael Slager, effectively bringing to a close both parallel cases against the former North Charleston police officer.
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"The defendant willfully used deadly force even though it was objectively unreasonable under the circumstances," according to the plea agreement. "The defendant acknowledges that during the time he used deadly force, he knew that the use of deadly force was unnecessary and excessive, and therefore unreasonable under the circumstances."
www.yahoo.com
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On May 02 2017 23:37 Artisreal wrote:Can anyone hook me up with a link so I can educate myself to understand the context of his tweeting?
The Senate has a rule (or rather, a tradition) where you can basically talk/stall a bill to death called filibustering, where dissenters can literally go up and talk a bill to death. In order to stop this, the Senate needs to invoke cloture (an end of debate) which requires 60 votes. This gives the minority party a more outsized level of power as long as they stay over 40 Senators, and forces the majority party to compromise resulting in more centrist legislation.
There are various ways to avoid a filibuster, like how the AHCA was being passed via budget reconciliation (which also has certain limitations). On the other hand, the filibuster is a rule of the Senate, meaning it's effectively a tradition vs. a statute/ Constitutional article/ amendment. A simple majority of 51 Senators could change the rules and kill the filibuster. However, this has not been done because the balance of power swings back and forth, and the majority party of today knows that even if they killed the filibuster to pass some stuff now, in the future they'd likely end up as the minority party and be irrevocably fucked.
If anyone knows more about parliamentary procedure, please chime in.
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So basically what we all expected from the beginning. Try something mostly shitty --> not shitty enough for HFC --> make it shitty enough for HFC --> everyone is like "lol what are you thinking"
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It should be noted that removing the filibuster is seen as a net loss for Republican/conservatives over the long term. Removing entitlements is harder than putting them in place and the Democrats could create more social programs and taxes without Republican buy-in if the filibuster is removed.
Also the Senate is pretty unified in keeping the rule in place. They do not want to become the house where only a simple majority is required to pass a law. The prevailing view is that it is a net loss for the courtry.
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EPT
