i remember obama opening up offshore oil drilling. i think it was right after deepwater horizon too. of course i could be wrong.

but obama was in the pockets of oil and gas companies.

did he spend tons of money on mass transit? i think he spent 29 trillion on bank bailouts. i think he spent Xtrillion on imperial wars of aggression

But I probably could have summed everything up much more quickly and easily by saying that (in an ideological argument by assertion) I believe communism leads inevitably to authoritarianism because I believe that the underlying power dynamics theorized in a true communist government cannot and will not function indefinitely or even semi-indefinitely and that the harms of the inevitable authoritarianism far outweigh any theoretical benefits from the communist economic system

capitalism is doing a pretty good job of leading to authoritarianism

I don’t disagree with you, but I also don’t draw the same conclusions that you do as a result.

I am in full agreement that we are currently relatively “too capitalist” and what you say here is a big part of why

see also:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018...al-plants.html

So this again is not exactly wrong, and another big part of the reason I don’t see our current capitalist system as having a viable path forward

That said - one of the main features of capitalism is that there is a countervailing force present in our current system (big business) which can theoretically counter a truly authoritarian government. It would be interesting in an “OMG the world is ending” kind of way to see what would happen in a situation where those two interests were put genuinely and violently at odds

And the lack of that countervailing force in a communist system is a big part of why I say it leads inevitably to authoritarianism

The thread always gets interesting when I have no time for it. Although I'm totally enjoying herbie going from "I'm not really going to participate here" to writing short essays

yes

Lol - standard, not role dependent obviously

lol is there where I give you the speech about you not being concerned with the advancement of truth?

lol, dawg, in capitalism it is the big businesses that represent the authority

Herbie I think one mistake you are making is a poor understanding of what the government/state are. The state exists as a tool of class dictatorship--one class over the other. In the case of capitalism, it is dictatorship of the bourgeoisie over the proletariat. It is nonsensical to say that big business would be a "counter" to the state. The state is a tool of the businesses, which themselves are tools of the bourgeoisie.

whoa.... you think big business is a countervailing force to authoritarian govt?

i thought our govt was there to protect us from big business, not the other way around.

i'm sure birdman can post about countervailing forces in communism way better than i can. he can probably think of one or two that are better than big business

plus i gotta go now and make some money and contribute to usa global empire!

and a genuine welcome to the thread herbie

Also, I want to further challenge you idea of "authoritarianism" because I think it has no practical application the way you are using it. The reason I said some of what you have been saying is ideological is because your views spring out of ideas that have been put in your head from years of Western education and propaganda. Your idea of "authoritarianism" is one that has been given to you for a specific reason. The alternative would be to develop your ideas from reality. For instance, the idea that businesses would somehow prevent authoritarianism is totally divorced from the reality of our society, and, more to the point, your concept of authority is such that you would have difficulty ever characterizing reality in an accurate fashion.

You might give this a gander, Herbie:

https://www.marxists.org/archive/mar.../authority.htm

This is where I get to say that the above is ideological and arguing by assertion, and also manages to be incredibly insulting to boot.

Being able to logically show that something should be true is different than seeing and understanding what actually happens. Sometimes the two don’t match, and insisting that only the former is “truth” is wrong

I should also note that in general I enjoy discussions like this considerably more when you label your opinions as your opinions instead of as statements of incontrovertible fact. The fact that I disagree with you but don’t care to take days of my life researching and countering your arguments means nothing except that I don’t care to do that. It’s not a worthwhile investment of my time or effort to do it. That doesn’t mean that I’ve somehow been brainwashed or lack your depth of understanding of the situation. It also doesn’t mean the opposite, but I’m not really saying it does

It's helpful to define key terms.


It's more helpful to stick with those definitons.

That article goes from "there's always some measure of authority, so authority itself cannot be evil" to "resisting total authority is evil".

What is it with Marxists' total inability to grasp gradation?

Too Platonic, I guess

Birdman do you enjoy having such a negative view about absolutely everything

no

I'm mainly talking about the fact that you ignored like 3/4ths of my post because a few times I said you were being ideological. Did you read the rest of it?