Liberal Forum

Harvey, you an invisible 6' white rabbit?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1SxcbMBdxU

HarveyMushman » 29 Jan 2024, 8:33 am » wrote: ↑

29 Jan 2024, 8:33 am

(Part I of III)



With that said, the nature of anti-Jewish invectives isn't racist, for Jewish people are given to a particular religion, not a "race" or, more precisely, a particular pigmentation. Many people refuse to understand that biological fact, but the reality is that genetic markers cannot determine Jewish "descent" any more than they can decide Unitarian descent. 

The fact that Germany couldn't defeat EARTH is not a 'spectacular failure' of ANY ism. That's silly."

I'm sorry, Cannonpointer, but I don't understand what "couldn't defeat EARTH" means. Will you please unpack that? Thank you, sir. 

(END OF PART I)

First, there are specific diseases that only affect jewish people - so the claim that they are not a specific ethnicity but only a religion is simply false. 

Second, I don't know how much more unpacked the observation regarding Germany under attack can be. The entire industrialized world - save Japan - attacked German on multiple fronts. Germany was a country about the size of Oregon. You made the claim that Germany losing that war proved National Socialism was a spectacular failure. I believe that take is facile to say the very least.

You have now dismissed National Socialism twice - once for not being :real" socialism, which I do not disagree with (it was corporatism, I think), -and once for losing WWII. Neither dismissal gave due consideration to the miracle that National Socialism worked for Germany. I think you owe any critique of National Socialism that much. 

And PLEASE - don't suggest that Germany became an economic power house through plunder. That would be school-girl silly. 
 
I reference to the greater body of your post, I believe that Mao saw tabula raza as his goal - as the Emperor Qin did, before him. Qin gave birth to a juggernaut through that method - as did Mao, WHATEVER people may say. 
 

HarveyMushman » 29 Jan 2024, 8:36 am » wrote: ↑

29 Jan 2024, 8:36 am

IOW, Germnay's capitalist class was confronted with the genuine possibility of losing everything by way of a socialist revolution or losing a little by allowing for reforms that would quash the desire for a socialist society. It chose the former and prevailed in the process. And the same can be said of the American capitalist class during the interwar period of 1918-1939.  

 (END OF PART II)

Well, I certainly agree with that - but it seems you agree that FDR's METHODS (not motives) were in fact socialist in nature - which is where we took issue. This is now twice that you have confirmed it.

Where we seem at loggerheads is in what I perceive as your failure to distinguish between an ECONOMIC model and a cultural one. Socialism is economic. There is nothing more "nationalist" than tribalism - so if socialism can work for a tribe, it can work for a nation state.

Socialism is only international because you say so. It can be intra-national because I say so. 

We have both backed up our claim with equal authority at this point - we just said so. But I will proffer an argument: Socialism is not an opinion, a doctrine, a feeling about the equality of all men. or a religion. It's an ECONOMIC MODEL - and if it cannot work for a country, then it is not worth spit. If the only possible way it can work is for me to join a polity with mongolians and peruvians, it's not going to succeed except through force - and then it is not an economic model at all. It's just another **** dictatorship - with SOMEONE at the top dictating to the glorious peasants. 

I do not believe you have really taken the time to study and appreciate humans and their history. You should take note that if by some trick you could move a seafaring ethnicity to the desert, they would virtually immediately become a desert ethnicity - and the desert ethnicity that you removed to the mountains to make room for the seafarers would become mountain men - and the mountain men you removed to the sea would quickly become seafaring. 

WHERE WE LIVE dictates our economies - and our economies, our polities. You will not find copper smelting among the Inuit, nor seal hunting among Palestinians. I find it utterly preposterous that the only possible way that Socialism can work is if Palestinians and Inuit are under a single governmental umbrella. I find it even MORE preposterous to entertain the notion that anything resembling a democratic zeitgeist could exist in such a massive, top-down system. People with extremely little in common should have their own native lands within which to express their humanity, through the economic systems that their ecological systems impose. Siberian fruit pickers and Congolese steel mill workers aren't a thing. The Congolese will no more benefit from a forced "brotherhood" with Siberians than a mountain gorilla will profit from being put to use as a sheepdog. 
 

HarveyMushman » 29 Jan 2024, 8:39 am » wrote: ↑

29 Jan 2024, 8:39 am

First, I disagree that hierarchies are natural, inevitable, and incontrovertible. Evidence demonstrates that hierarchies are a very recent development vis-a-vis humankind's roughly 200,000 years of existence. Indeed, there have only been hierarchies within human relations since the agricultural revolution a mere 12,000 years ago.

That simply is not true - and CANNOT be true. The desire to breed demands hierarchy. Sexual selection enforces hierarchy. In pre-agricultural (hunter gatherer) societies, the best hunters get the choice cuts of meat, the best sleeping site, the most voice at the fire, and the choice of mates. Pre-agricultural Native American tribes had chieftains and an inviolable pecking order.

HarveyMushman » 29 Jan 2024, 8:39 am » wrote: ↑

29 Jan 2024, 8:39 am

So, yes, I want to destroy the artificial hierarchies that enable the tiny sliver of humanity known as capitalists to hold billions of human beings in bondage while subjecting them to lifetimes filled with material uncertainty and precarity. I want to see the elimination of the hierarchical-induced artificial competition that keeps workers at one another's throats, battling for the few economic crumbs left to them by capitalists.

I want the same - but I do not believe that romancing the past is helpful in seeing the road to that goal. Humanity's past was no shangri-la of utopian egalitarianism. I can promise you that the shorter pygmies prospered above the taller, and the faster and taller Nubians had more access to sex than the slower and shorter. Hierarchies are in fact an inevitability, and in my view it is quite staggering to see a grown person suggesting otherwise.

HarveyMushman » 29 Jan 2024, 8:39 am » wrote: ↑

29 Jan 2024, 8:39 am

For their wholly self-centered reasons, the world's capitalist class' media and other organs of social control have convinced us that hierarchies are natural, inevitable, and incontrovertibly self-constituted, but it isn't so. Humans once lived cooperatively, and we're capable of doing so again.

Yeah, no.

Put me and you on gilligans island, and we're in a battle for ****** before our pant-legs dry off. Hierarchy is bloody well inevitable. AND necessary to evolution, which is never ending. The best suited will be the most successful sexually. That is hierarchy, and that is the immutable voice of evolution speaking its Truth - with a capital T. 

HarveyMushman » 29 Jan 2024, 8:39 am » wrote: ↑

29 Jan 2024, 8:39 am

And since we, the working class, already operate and manage the means of production, why shouldn't we have an equal say in dispensing the economic wealth our labor produces? Why shouldn't we reject the racism, sexism, xenophobia, and all other contrived social pathologies that render us powerless against our capitalist masters?

The Inuit recognize two races of man: The People, and The Others. This never had a thing to do with capitalism.

According to archaeologists, the most violent and genocidal epoch in American history PRE-DATED the arrival of the Europeans and the introduction of capitalism. https://www.science20.com/news_articles ... ved-141847

I am every bit as anti-capitalist as you are. I have authored multiple threads distinguishing free enterprise from capitalism and distinguishing capitalism as statist and parasitic. But rose colored glasses a revolution never won, and fairy tales about the dragon within the human heart being a creation of an economic system (as opposed to the precise reverse) are of no service whatsoever in finding a better way. Nor is demanding that Moroccans share a polity and an economy with Argentinians likely to bear good fruit.

 
 

Cannonpointer » 29 Jan 2024, 6:41 pm » wrote: ↑

29 Jan 2024, 6:41 pm

First, there are specific diseases that only affect jewish people - so the claim that they are not a specific ethnicity but only a religion is simply false. 


 

Let me guess, ZyclonB Disease and Trinitrotoluene Exposure are two of them?

RebelGator » 29 Jan 2024, 7:51 pm » wrote: ↑

29 Jan 2024, 7:51 pm

Let me guess, ZyclonB Disease and Trinitrotoluene Exposure are two of them?

Those, yes, but also lampshadephobia and grubberism. 

Speaking of which: Ever notice that there is no pig leather?

The pig's skin is the closest to that of a human, and it is useless for leather. And before you say football, google it. 

There has never been one single artifact found to back the claim that nazis made lampshades out of jews. It is utter **** - and it is just more proof that the holycost is sensationalized and exaggerated, if not invented entirely. 

Just think of all the mass extermination campaigns in history - the incas, the aztecs, the khans, the pre-Columbian natives of North America, the Byzantines trying to terrorize and keep at bay the islamists (vlad the impaler). Not one of those campaigns left human leather artifacts for historians and archaeologists to examine - and this, for cause. The simple fact is, human skin is useless for leather. Even Buffalo Bill understood this. Even when it puts the lotion on its skin, the product remains non-functional.

So they lied. The jews lied. No one made lamp shades out of them. Why should we believe the rest of their story? Don't answer. Allow me: Because if we don't, we will be punished. That's why. That's the ONLY why. 
 
 

Cannonpointer » 26 Jan 2024, 1:04 pm » wrote: ↑

26 Jan 2024, 1:04 pm

Cannonpointer

 (PART I OF III) 

Cannonpointer: "Divorcing authority from accountability is a fool's game, sir. The worker who votes HIMSELF and HIS generation extra cookies will not pay the long-term price for the short-term benefit."  

What gives the impression that I endeavor to divorce authority from accountability? As a supporter of Daniel DeLeon's Socialist Industrial Government concept, I'm in favor of workers' ability in a futuristic socialist commonwealth to recall the elected members of the said industrial government immediately. http://www.slp.org/pdf/statements/siu_chart.pdf 

The comment, "The worker who votes HIMSELF and HIS generation extra cookies won't pay the long-term price for the short-term benefit," is reminiscent of the fourth and final photo in this thread's first response post by "Skans," 05 Jan 2024, 6:03 am. It shows a bar of soap and two men in a shower with the caption, "How Socialism Works," with the subheading "Free Stuff, You, Government." And, of course, the bar of soap is the "free stuff."   

That type of thing has been forever put forward by the apologists for capitalism and, sadly, their working-class supporters. It's a con job intended to prevent workers from understanding that they produce all economic wealth through their labor power alongside nature. Ergo, it's calculated to make workers feel guilty about accepting "free stuff" when they and they alone produce that "free stuff," what little there is. 

Moreover, the manipulatively false assertion that taking "free stuff" is somehow harmful or "enslaving" is laughable. Scandinavian societies provide themselves with an abundance of "free stuff," and they're primarily excellent societies overwhelmingly populated by peaceful and well-adjusted individuals because of it. I surround the phrase "free stuff" with quotation marks because free stuff is indeed not free; it is, once again, produced/paid for by workers via their labor power - blood, sweat, and tears.  

So, too, do such memes serve to distract workers from the reality that it's the members of the capitalist class that partake in free stuff. Starting from the axiom, "Without workers, capitalists would be nothing, and without capitalists, workers would be everything," we can understand that the capitalist class produces nothing while taking nearly everything. In brief, the capitalist class takes free stuff, not the working class. It's the capitalist class that's parasitic.  

Cannonpointer: "Next, can we look for you to demand the enfranchisement of children? If not, why not? A smart six-year-old is less dangerous to a well-ordered society than a 25-year-old moron." 

Since children are unlikely to be working members of any industrial government, I won't be demanding the enfranchisement of children for the reason given. 

Cannonpointer: "You have emulated both Marx and Rand, who - opposites in the more obvious aspects - shared one character flaw: They spent more time thinking about how the people's business ought to be ordered than they did thinking about humans. The most ingenious systems are only of consequence if they're suited to the creatures for whose order they're intended."  

But, as I explained in a previous post, neither Marx nor Engles ever "spent time thinking how the people's business ought to be ordered"; beyond the social ownership and democratic administration, they never delineated how a socialist commonwealth was to be ordered. And the genius of socialism is that it's suited to all creatures.  

(END PART I)
 
 

Cannonpointer » 26 Jan 2024, 1:04 pm » wrote: ↑

26 Jan 2024, 1:04 pm

 

(PART II of III) 

Cannonpointer: "An example: Marx said, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." Lovely statement - but it ignores a few things."  

Cannonpointer either ignores or, like nearly everyone, is unaware that Dr. Marx didn't originate "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs," which changes everything and makes Cannonpointer's point moot. Though popular/capitalist culture inaccurately attributes the quote to Marx as its originator, the mantra was shared within the socialist movement. It's widely thought that the phrase originated with the French utopian socialist Etienne-Gabriel Morelly, who offered it in his Code of Nature..." of 1755, some 65 years before Marx's birth. The French socialist Louis Blanc employed the phrase in his The Organization of Work (1839), which served as the platform for the then-German Socialist Party titled The Gotha Programme. Karl Marx merely critiqued the phrase "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" within his Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875). As readers can see, Dr. Marx only formally used the expression 120 years after its origination. 

This fact changes everything and makes Cannonpointer's point moot because Etienne-Gabriel Morelly and Louis Blanc used the phrase in relation to their vision of socialist society rather than the later stage of socialist society known as communist society.  

In critiquing "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs," Marx wrote: "In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly—only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!" --The Critique of the Gotha Programme. 

So, what Cannonpointer went on to write about economic surpluses and men striving to become useful and their usefulness being rewarded would be true if Marx, like Blanc and Morelly before him, employed the phrase about socialism, but he didn't do that. Instead, as one can see from the lengthy quote above, Marx placed the phrase within the framework of communist society, the classless and, therefore, stateless stage of human social evolution in which the need for work has been eliminated due to automation. Hence, his "... after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished..."  

Nonetheless, much of Cannonpointer's bullet points raise essential issues that must be addressed. For example, he wrote, "People won't be happy having only their needs met. They have wants in addition to needs." To be sure.(To be continued within PART III) 

(END OF PART II)
 

Cannonpointer » 26 Jan 2024, 1:04 pm » wrote: ↑

26 Jan 2024, 1:04 pm

 

(PART III of III) 

(Recapping for continuity purposes.) Nonetheless, much of Cannonpointer's bullet points raise essential issues that must be addressed. For example, he wrote, "People won't be happy having only their needs met. They have wants in addition to needs." To be sure.  

Under capitalism, not only is the majority of the wealth produced by workers appropriated by capitalists, but so is the worker's life activity controlled by others. Therefore, the lives of workers are reduced to that of animals, mainly working to satisfy the material desires of capitalists and producing under the compulsion to meet their immediate needs (e.g., food, clothing, and shelter). Marx referred to that and other aspects of alienation as being separated from one's "species being" or human identity. It's the derivation of, for example, "Happy Hour" - the need to forget the emptiness, boredom, and lack of freedom in one's work life and, by extension, one's personal life. 

The salient thing about socialist society in this respect is that with the members of the capitalist assimilated into the ranks of the working class, the ability to be economically exploited and domineered by others is removed. Not only is the lion's share of worker-produced wealth no longer stolen via a system of bourgeois legality known as private profit, but so is the degrading "my way or the highway" treatment that fosters the need for "Happy Hour." With workers owning and administrating the needs of production through something like this http://www.slp.org/pdf/statements/siu_chart ,they'd be directly involved in decisions related to planning, production, reinvestment, and compensation. To those who will assert that workers are incapable of doing so, remember that we - the working class already run all industries; it's just that we don't own and administer them, and therein lies the problem. With nearly all capitalists being removed from their respective industries' productive processes, they do indeed embody the saying, "Without workers, capitalists are nothing. Without capitalists, workers will be everything." 

Cannonpointerr: "I am not claiming that I have the answer to properly ordering the people's business. I suggest that neither do you." Yes, as I stated a few days ago, it would be an infringement of the basic concepts of dialectical materialism for me or any other Marxist to attempt to "properly order" a futuristic socialist commonwealth. Again, that will be up to those who forge such a society.  Cannonpointer: "Indeed, you don't even HAVE a "people." If that means I'm not a racist, then yes, I don't have "a people." I'm an internationalist and, therefore, anything but a racist.  

(END OF PART III) 

Be well
Good day
"Harvey Mushman"
 

Every social experiment is done to determine how many ancestors stay on message rather than reverting to adapting to the moment life doesn't exceed evolving forward one at a time now.

good day doesn't end by a rotation of the planet or generation gap of a species changing people adapting as displaced one at a time now. Simple compounding chromosomes balancing forward as displaced.

Dishonesty is an individual trait.

Corruption is leading individuals to believe self deception is a virtue saving tomorrow, today by those dishonest about what they are evolving forward specifically here now.

HarveyMushman » 30 Jan 2024, 8:13 am » wrote: ↑

30 Jan 2024, 8:13 am

What gives the impression that I endeavor to divorce authority from accountability?

Your denial that hierarchies are inevitable and essential. Without hierarchy, authority and accountability are estranged.

HarveyMushman » 30 Jan 2024, 8:13 am » wrote: ↑

30 Jan 2024, 8:13 am

As a supporter of Daniel DeLeon's Socialist Industrial Government concept, I'm in favor of workers' ability in a futuristic socialist commonwealth to recall the elected members of the said industrial government immediately. http://www.slp.org/pdf/statements/siu_chart.pdf 

The comment, "The worker who votes HIMSELF and HIS generation extra cookies won't pay the long-term price for the short-term benefit," is reminiscent of the fourth and final photo in this thread's first response post by "Skans," 05 Jan 2024, 6:03 am. It shows a bar of soap and two men in a shower with the caption, "How Socialism Works," with the subheading "Free Stuff, You, Government." And, of course, the bar of soap is the "free stuff."

Skans is a weak jawed halfaqueer who roots for the transgenderization of humanity.

The last guy who compared me to that homo mysteriously had the street light near his home hit with a rock a couple of weeks later. Doesn't pay to "dis" a member of the mighty Weekenders' Moped Club...

HarveyMushman » 30 Jan 2024, 8:13 am » wrote: ↑

30 Jan 2024, 8:13 am

That type of thing has been forever put forward by the apologists for capitalism and, sadly, their working-class supporters. It's a con job intended to prevent workers from understanding that they produce all economic wealth through their labor power alongside nature. Ergo, it's calculated to make workers feel guilty about accepting "free stuff" when they and they alone produce that "free stuff," what little there is. 

Moreover, the manipulatively false assertion that taking "free stuff" is somehow harmful or "enslaving" is laughable.

Glad I never pretended the leather-loafer boys are the producers. I leave such *** to machine republicans like skanny panty.

HarveyMushman » 30 Jan 2024, 8:13 am » wrote: ↑

30 Jan 2024, 8:13 am

Scandinavian societies provide themselves with an abundance of "free stuff," and they're primarily excellent societies overwhelmingly populated by peaceful and well-adjusted individuals because of it.

These news ^ are a bit out of date. The Scandinavians have done your internationalist arguments proud the last few decades, and as a result have a less sane and more aggressive and rapey street than in the past.

When they were "racists" (white, that is), they did well. Then they imported strangers, and now they are dealing with the stranger danger that you recommend for the goyim.

HarveyMushman » 30 Jan 2024, 8:13 am » wrote: ↑

30 Jan 2024, 8:13 am

So, too, do such memes serve to distract workers from the reality that it's the members of the capitalist class that partake in free stuff. Starting from the axiom, "Without workers, capitalists would be nothing, and without capitalists, workers would be everything," we can understand that the capitalist class produces nothing while taking nearly everything. In brief, the capitalist class takes free stuff, not the working class. It's the capitalist class that's parasitic.

These news are old news on my shores. ^ I have trumpeted them to hoarseness.

HarveyMushman » 30 Jan 2024, 8:13 am » wrote: ↑

30 Jan 2024, 8:13 am

And the genius of socialism is that it's suited to all creatures.

Except nationalists.

Not those, you said - with vague references to the anti- nation-state character of an economic system that - by your admission - has not been thought through to its actual implementation. 

 
 

HarveyMushman » 30 Jan 2024, 8:16 am » wrote: ↑

30 Jan 2024, 8:16 am

Cannonpointer either ignores or, like nearly everyone, is unaware that Dr. Marx didn't originate "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs," which changes everything and makes Cannonpointer's point moot.

It is from Marx's Critique of the Gotha Programme - available on Ebay.

If it were not (and it is) an aphorism with which Marx was sanguine, it would be quite easy to quote him saying the reverse. He was known for saying stuff.

HarveyMushman » 30 Jan 2024, 8:16 am » wrote: ↑

30 Jan 2024, 8:16 am

In critiquing "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs," Marx wrote: "...only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!" --The Critique of the Gotha Programme. 

Sweet Jesus.

You JUST GOT THROUGH denying he said it, and now you quote him saying it.

What the ****.

HarveyMushman » 30 Jan 2024, 8:16 am » wrote: ↑

30 Jan 2024, 8:16 am

So, what Cannonpointer went on to write about economic surpluses and men striving to become useful and their usefulness being rewarded would be true if Marx, like Blanc and Morelly before him, employed the phrase about socialism, but he didn't do that. Instead, as one can see from the lengthy quote above, Marx placed the phrase within the framework of communist society, the classless and, therefore, stateless stage of human social evolution in which the need for work has been eliminated due to automation. Hence, his "... after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished..."  

I gotta say, all of the endless conditions attached to achieving the glorious ends of Marx's dogmas make it sound more like barroom banter than serious scholarship.

The more dependencies and contingencies you build into a system, the larger-writ is Murphy's Law in the matter.

The road to "true" communism appears so fraught with peril that a century and a half later, we're still seeing the spirit of Thomas Aquinas rearing its head. I have donned a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches and poured a stein just to feel legit discussing the matter.

You have confessed that Marx did indeed make the utterance for which he is the very most famous. Will you now clear up the question whether he authored, "And I'd have gotten away with it, too - if not for those meddling capitalists"?

HarveyMushman » 30 Jan 2024, 8:20 am » wrote: ↑

30 Jan 2024, 8:20 am

(PART III of III) 

(Recapping for continuity purposes.) Nonetheless, much of Cannonpointer's bullet points raise essential issues that must be addressed. For example, he wrote, "People won't be happy having only their needs met. They have wants in addition to needs." To be sure.  

Under capitalism, not only is the majority of the wealth produced by workers appropriated by capitalists, but so is the worker's life activity controlled by others. Therefore, the lives of workers are reduced to that of animals, mainly working to satisfy the material desires of capitalists and producing under the compulsion to meet their immediate needs (e.g., food, clothing, and shelter). Marx referred to that and other aspects of alienation as being separated from one's "species being" or human identity. It's the derivation of, for example, "Happy Hour" - the need to forget the emptiness, boredom, and lack of freedom in one's work life and, by extension, one's personal life. 

The salient thing about socialist society in this respect is that with the members of the capitalist assimilated into the ranks of the working class, the ability to be economically exploited and domineered by others is removed. Not only is the lion's share of worker-produced wealth no longer stolen via a system of bourgeois legality known as private profit, but so is the degrading "my way or the highway" treatment that fosters the need for "Happy Hour." With workers owning and administrating the needs of production through something like this http://www.slp.org/pdf/statements/siu_chart ,they'd be directly involved in decisions related to planning, production, reinvestment, and compensation. To those who will assert that workers are incapable of doing so, remember that we - the working class already run all industries; it's just that we don't own and administer them, and therein lies the problem. With nearly all capitalists being removed from their respective industries' productive processes, they do indeed embody the saying, "Without workers, capitalists are nothing. Without capitalists, workers will be everything."

It sounds as if your (and Marx's) program, then, is no program at all. It's a wish list. It's a set of contingencies wistfully desired and unlikely ever to be met, in which a number of extremely difficult-to-achieve ends - each one eye-rollingly unlikely as a stand-alone - would all have to align in a proper orbit around an as-yet unnamed star in order to produce a paradise dreamt up in a state of intellectual ecstasy.

I would add only that the fundamental nature of man would also have to be remade in the image of a saint, for Marxism's ends to be met. 

I believe the prayers of dervishes as substantial as the dogmas of Marxists - and history certainly seems to align with my view. You may argue that history is being written by the capitalists - but that argument would be an admission of the failure of Marxist dreamers. If their dogmas had born fruit in the century and a half since the Marxists' inception, it is they who would would be writing the histories.

I put Marxism alongside Peak Oil and Climate Pseudo-science in its relevance to anything relevant. You may accuse me of being too simple-minded to understand the thing that I am dismissing. But if it requires a bigger brain than mine to understand it, it will require bigger brains than mine to implement it and to guard it against the base and perverse nature of man which gave us capitalism in the first place. And THAT, sir, bespeaks hierarchies. Hierarchies within hierarchies. Hierarchies like turtles, all the way down. 

 
 

Nostradamus'omh » 29 Jan 2024, 11:39 am » wrote: ↑

29 Jan 2024, 11:39 am

Harvey, you an invisible 6' white rabbit?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1SxcbMBdxU

No, sir, I'm afraid it's nothing that creative, for I, Harvey Mushman, am merely the late Steve McQueen's alter ego. 

Be well
Good day
"Harvey Mushman"
 

Harvey Mushman » 31 Jan 2024, 8:14 am » wrote: ↑

31 Jan 2024, 8:14 am

No, sir, I'm afraid it's nothing that creative, for I, Harvey Mushman, am merely the late Steve McQueen's alter ego. 

Be well
Good day
"Harvey Mushman"
 

Taipan, you're back. From Charles Branson, to George Kennedy to now Steve McQueen's alter ego. Patterns of a mind that follows anything else is possible trying over and over to be anything other than all one was when conceived.

Nostradamus'omh » 31 Jan 2024, 8:22 am » wrote: ↑

31 Jan 2024, 8:22 am

Taipan, you're back.

Yes, Inscrutable, I am back.   

Cannonpointer » 30 Jan 2024, 6:24 pm » wrote: ↑

30 Jan 2024, 6:24 pm

 

(PART I OF IV) 

Cannonpointer: "First, there are specific diseases that only affect Jewish people - so the claim that they are not a specific ethnicity but only a religion is simply false." 

I once informed my politically liberal wife that her steadfast belief that Jewish people constitute a "race" places her in agreement with Nazis. She wasn't pleased. But Cannonpointer has reinforced my point. She'll be displeased again.  

Cannonpointer: "Second, how much more unpacked can the observation regarding Germany under attack be?"  

I see. I asked because I wasn't sure what "EARTH" pertained to. 

Cannonpointer: "The entire industrialized world - save Japan - attacked Germany on multiple fronts. Germany was a country about the size of Oregon. You claimed that Germany losing that war proved National Socialism was a spectacular failure. Your take is facile, to say the very least." 

Yes, but I also stated something to the effect of, thanks to the US, fascism lives on in the form of the many fascist dictatorships installed by the US since 1945. So, you have that. And, though not in name, US and European-spawned fascism plagued poor countries for generations by way of imperialism. As Frantz Fanon observed, the Nazi holocaust was European imperialism coming home to roost. 

It's also the case that, during the initial stage of WWII, the Nazis' Western European "enemies" barely fought them on the Western Front. Known as the Phoeny War, or Sitzkrieg to the Germans, only a single and very limited offensive was carried out against the Nazis on the Western Front during the first eight months of the war. Indeed, Britain and France were hoping that the Nazis and the Soviets would "bleed each other white." But, as we all know, the Soviets eventually stomped the Nazis on the Eastern Front. Therefore, although much of the world was indeed allied against the nine-nation-Axis powers, the Soviets were primarily responsible for defeating the Nazis, though certainly not fascism which will live on for as long as capitalism does. It's that which shows us that WWII was a war fought between competing capitalist powers rather than one that fought fascism. It fought fascists but not fascism. And, in that sense, National "Socialism" wasn't defeated by EARTH. 

Cannonpointer: "You've now dismissed National Socialism twice - once for not being real" socialism, which I agree with (it was corporatism, I think) -and once for losing WWII. Neither dismissal gave due consideration to the miracle that National Socialism worked for Germany. I think you owe any critique of National Socialism that much. And PLEASE don't suggest that Germany became an economic powerhouse through plunder. That would be school-girl silly." 

As readers have seen, I've not dismissed National "Socialism." And, of course, Nazi Germany didn't become an economic powerhouse through the plunder of foreign countries. They fought for the control of natural resources in the USSR and Africa, but they failed to gain control, let alone begin to extract those resources.  The Nazis turned Germany into an economic powerhouse primarily through the hyper-exploitation of German workers. They slashed wages, pensions, and unemployment compensation. They privatized state-owned industries. They also imposed import tariffs and created public works projects, such as building the Autobahn, while paying workers much less than they were paid before 1933. 

(END OF PART I) 

http://www.slp.org/pdf/statements/siu_chart.pdf  

 
 

Cannonpointer » 30 Jan 2024, 6:24 pm » wrote: ↑

30 Jan 2024, 6:24 pm

 

 (PART II OF IV)

Cannonpointer: "About the greater body of your post, Mao saw tabula rasa as his goal - as Emperor Qin did before him. Qin gave birth to a juggernaut through that method - as did Mao, WHATEVER people may say." 

That's an exaggeration. But, yes, whatever.  I wrote: "Germany's capitalist class was confronted with the genuine possibility of losing everything by way of a socialist revolution or losing a little by allowing for reforms that would quash the desire for a socialist society. It chose the former and prevailed in the process. And the same can be said of the American capitalist class during the interwar period of 1918-1939."
  
Cannonpointer's response: "... it seems you agree FDR's METHODS (not motives) were socialist - which is where we took issue. That's twice that you've confirmed it." 

Not once have I confirmed any such thing. So, I will reiterate what I wrote before the abovementioned quote. It first appeared in this thread's post #259 and read:

"A better way for me to have explained it would have been to write, Although the American capitalist state didn't wish to allow for reforms concerning homeownership, desegregation, investments in education, public healthcare, etc., it was compelled to do so in the face of the success of the Bolshevik Revolution that American workers took notice of.

 "As I previously stated, these capitalist "reforms" were likened to defensive fortifications erected by an army in response to an advancing enemy army. Although the US government/capitalist state would have preferred not to give an inch, it was forced to in light of that battle for hearts and minds and because of the strong demand for socialism by American workers at the time. 

"Toward a more complete understanding of that phenomenon, it's vital to understand the derivation of such "reforms." Germany, under Otto Von Bismark during the 1880s, was the first capitalist state to foster social reforms. In the 1870s, the German state passed several anti-socialist laws to thwart the then-burgeoning demand for socialism within Germany's working class. But those laws failed their intent. So, during the 1880s, the German capitalist state enacted social "reforms," e.g., unemployment insurance and old age pensions, intended to appease German workers, thereby lessening the demand for socialism. It worked like a proverbial charm. Within a few years, once-vibrant socialist parties were dissolved or rendered irrelevant." 

In brief, and to restate again, FDR's methods had nothing to do with socialism. They were capitalist reforms intended to thwart the then-popular demand for establishing a socialist society in the US, and they worked like a proverbial charm. Like Otto Von Bismark's social reforms, they served as defensive fortifications against socialism. Toward the end of his life, FDR stated that his greatest accomplishment was "saving capitalism," and he was correct. 

Cannonpointer: "Socialism is not an opinion, a doctrine, a feeling about the equality of all men. or a religion. It's an ECONOMIC MODEL - and if it cannot work for a country, then it isn't worth spit. If the only possible way it can work is for me to join a polity with Mongolians and Peruvians, it won't succeed except through force - and then it isn't an economic model at all. It's just another **** dictatorship - with SOMEONE at the top dictating to the glorious peasants." (To be continued in PART III) 

(END OF PART II) 

http://www.slp.org/pdf/statements/siu_chart.pdf 
 

Cannonpointer » 30 Jan 2024, 6:24 pm » wrote: ↑

30 Jan 2024, 6:24 pm

 

(PART III OF IV) 

Continuing from PART II)

Socialism is primarily an economic system — the social production of goods and services. But, because the socialist movement was created to liberate the working class from subordination to a dominating, exploiting class, it's also about the general issue of the well-being of human beings in society. Therefore, it is a socioeconomic system. 

And, as I have explained in several posts, socialism can, has, and does work for individual countries. It has lifted billions of people from poverty in several countries and created some of the world's most robust economies. However, since socialist projects are always viciously attacked by capitalist powers because of the threat to capitalism, the more socialist countries there are, the more likely they will survive the onslaught. Ergo, socialists strive toward a worldwide and thus borderless socialist project while simultaneously building socialism country by country. And there's nothing to suggest that anyone would have to adopt a collective identity with anyone else. Indeed, given the newfound ability to develop oneself as a human rather than continue to function as a mere appendage to a privately held means of production, people would finally be free to identify as they wish. And, with the economic motivations behind racism being removed, an ever-increasing number of people would no longer see themselves as being superior to people of different pigmentation. 

I wrote: "First, I disagree that hierarchies are natural, inevitable, and incontrovertible. Evidence demonstrates that hierarchies are a very recent development vis-a-vis humankind's roughly 200,000 years of existence. Indeed, there have only been hierarchies within human relations since the agricultural revolution a mere 12,000 years ago." 

Cannonpointer: "That isn't true, and CANNOT be true. The desire to breed demands hierarchy. Sexual selection enforces hierarchy. In pre-agricultural (hunter-gatherer) societies, the best hunters get the choice of cuts of meat, the best sleeping site, the most voice at the fire, and the choice of mates. Pre-agricultural Native American tribes had chieftains and an inviolable pecking order." CC Given time restraints, we must agree to disagree while moving on. 

I wrote: "For their wholly self-centered reasons, the world's capitalist class' media and other organs of social control have convinced us that hierarchies are natural, inevitable, and incontrovertibly self-constituted, but it isn't so. Humans once lived cooperatively, and we can do so again." 

Cannonpointer: "Yeah, no. Put me and you on Gilligan's Island, and we're in a battle for ****** before our pant legs dry off. Hierarchy is bloody well inevitable AND necessary to evolution, which is never-ending. The best-suited will be the most successful sexually. That's a hierarchy, and that's the immutable voice of evolution speaking its Truth - with a capital T." 

When I speak of hierarchies, it's always within the context of fully industrialized capitalist societies - the best-suited societies to be transformed into socialist societies. I'm thinking in terms of societies that have the potential to eliminate material suffering and ones in which their citizenry is interdependent upon one another. I'm not thinking of a desert island on which a few people compete for sex partners. The dynamics of those two hypotheticals are separate and distinct from one another. One concerns the emancipating possibilities of a fully formed socialist society, while the other relates to some form of neo-feudalism. 

(END OF PART III) 

http://www.slp.org/pdf/statements/siu_chart.pdf  

 
 

Cannonpointer » 30 Jan 2024, 6:24 pm » wrote: ↑

30 Jan 2024, 6:24 pm

 

 (PART IV OF IV) 

With that said, it would be in error to confuse my opposition to the artificial competition between workers that capitalism fosters and natural and healthy forms of competition, such as sports. Competition for competition's sake benefits people, while, for example, pitting workers against workers for capitalism's limited employment opportunities is very destructive for the individual and society. Moreover, beyond the competition for sex partners between a few people on "Gilligan's Island," and assuming that everyone wouldn't already be having sex with everyone else, it would be imperative for those few people to band together to some degree to increase their chances of surviving. Had "Chuck Noland" been able to animate "Wilson," then common sense would dictate that they would work together to shield themselves from the elements, collect food and water, and build a raft. That demonstrates that, save for competition for its own sake, cooperation is superior to competition. 

Cannonpointer: "I'm every bit as anti-capitalist as you are. I have authored multiple threads distinguishing free enterprise from capitalism and distinguishing capitalism as statist and parasitic." 

That's interesting. Please direct me to one or two of those threads. Thank you. 

Cannonpointer: "But rose-colored glasses, a revolution never won, and fairy tales about the dragon within the human heart being a creation of an economic system (as opposed to the precise reverse) are of no service whatsoever in finding a better way. Nor is demanding that Moroccans share a polity and an economy with Argentinians likely to bear good fruit. 

I've not proffered fairytales, only down-to-earth and practical solutions to the world's working-class' socio-economic predicament. 

I wrote: "As a supporter of the Socialist Industrial Government concept, I'm in favor of workers' ability in a futuristic socialist commonwealth to recall the elected members of the said industrial government immediately. http://www.slp.org/pdf/statements/siu_chart.pdf [Cannonpointer's] comment, "The worker who votes HIMSELF and HIS generation extra cookies won't pay the long-term price for the short-term benefit,' is reminiscent of the fourth and final photo in this thread's first response post by 'Skans,' 05 Jan 2024, 6:03 am. It shows a bar of soap and two men in a shower with the caption, 'How Socialism Works,' with the subheading 'Free Stuff, You, Government.' And, of course, the bar of soap is the 'free stuff.'" 

Cannonpointer: "Skans is a weak jawed halfaqueer who roots for the transgenderization of humanity." How charming. 

I didn't discuss "Skans." I only mentioned his use of the meme above to manifest a point. The point, which Cannonpoint didn't address, reads as follows and in part: 

"That type of thing [Skan's meme] has been forever put forward by the apologists for capitalism and, sadly, their working-class supporters. It's a con job intended to prevent workers from understanding that they produce all economic wealth through their labor power alongside nature. Ergo, it's calculated to make workers feel guilty about accepting 'free stuff' when they and they alone produce that 'free stuff, what little there is." 

Accepting "free" healthcare or "free" higher education doesn't constitute being enslaved by the government any more than getting "free" police and fire protection embodies being enslaved by the government. Again, it's a bait-and-switch designed to ensure that the vast majority of free stuff keeps flowing to the non-productive capitalist class. 

(END OF PART IV) 

http://www.slp.org/pdf/statements/siu_chart.pdf 

Be well 
Good day 
"Harvey Mushman"