Dispute with wheelchairman here

[SicN Twisted]

First of all, Marxism is inherintly flawed for the same reasons Christianity is - it's an ideology that attempts to be scientific. It's based on answers, not questions, and it's filled with dogmatic prophesies that are based onmiscalculations of human nature. It's pretty much a religion. Marx is the god, Capital is the bible, Lenin is an idol, and imagery of toiling workers is the stained glass. Communists theorize some sort of second comming, a huge violent revolution that will right the wrongs of you humanity and divulge into a classless utopia. They won't even admit it's a theory, they consider it divine truth and it's that kind of metaphysical Hegelian prophesizing that leads to the justification of mass murder, because commies don't see people as people, they see people as commodities in forwarding some kind of greater good that doesn't exist.

Another problem is Marxism completely divides people into class. Communists see the world in such black and white terms that it's no wonder their policies are dictated so thoughtlessly. They want to get rid of class by embelishing it's importance. This is again the logic that justifies wiping out thousands of innocent people because of their class (which Lenin promptly did upon his biblical flood of a revolution). Any kind of ideology that believes that the ends justify the means has and will cause tyrants to emerge under its name.

I'm simply debating the idea of Marxism as a whole, I won't even bother to mention the blind hypocracy of its forerunners, since you seem to hold them on a pedistel. It's a fucking ideology in it's worst possible form, and history has certainly proven that the prophesized revolution is entirely impossable.

Common, comrad, tell me exactly how your archaic religion still has any validity in this world that's so chaotic. We're both striving for the right things, but I chose the path of anarchism, because it isn't an ideology - it's about questions, not answers. Please don't give me any retarded commie driven about my "bourgeois" decadence. I have more sympathy in my pinky for the struggle of the workers then Lenin had in his whole body, and I proudly sport every element of bougeois culture, especially this magic thing called "thinking for yourself." Your ideology is dead, man. You're beating a dead horse. You're just like any capitalist, turning humans into empty commodities to forward your rediculous ideas.

[RXP]

Nothing to do with this but tell me more about anarchism.

[SicN Twisted]

www.nothingness.org

That has all the information about anarchism you'd need. I'd particularly fond of Situationist International.

[HornyPope]

fun fact:

Sic was a self proclaimed marxist-leninist last year.

[Vera]

Oh please. He must've just been fucked up on something when saying that.

[wheelchairman]

Alright I'm going to all comparisons to prophecies, deities and religious figures because I find them irrelevant and were used mainly to make your 'essay' here more substantial than it actually is.

Marxism is not about prophesizing anything. Criticism is a substantial part of that. Not all theories are correct, that is why they must change. Marx believed that England would have the first socialist revolution, that theory proved to be wrong. When Russia had the revolution a new theory on, what I'm sure you've read, as Imperialism's Weakest link. That is just one example of Marxism renewing itself.

Second, we never have claimed that nature is organized. The first law of Marxism is that everything is influctuation and constantly moving. This to the best of my understanding, corresponds with what we know of science.

Now I find it interesting that you deny the class theory. I see it as blatantly obvious. Do you know not believe that the rich do try and conserve their wealth? That it is in their best interest. And that their wealth can only be accumulated through the exploitaiton of the working class.

Do you not believe that the working class is oppressed? That they are in direct contradiction to the bourgeois. They cannot possibly work together. (And we are going under the marxist definition of bourgeois, not your definition which includes doctors and teachers.)

I think that the class struggle is blatantly obvious. In fact most anarchists I've known, including Bakunin agreed with the class struggle theory. You can't possibly follow that old-right wing swollop that the Proletariat and the Bourgeois must work together?

[SicN Twisted]

No, I entirely believe in the class struggle. I also admit that it's impossible for the bourgeois and the proleteriate to work together because their relationship is somewhat of a serf/noble relationship. I do however acknowledge that a pseudo scientific prophesized second comming, or revolution, or whatever you wanna call it, cannot stop the class struggle since it defines humanity on a basis of only class. I think that in it's most concrete form, class struggle completely masks the shocks and injuries which men live individually. The world is comprised of consecutive suffering for the apparent "great good," be it a communist utopia, higher corperate prophits or the return of Christ. I don't believe in the reduction of human psychology and emotion to mechanisms of exploitation created in industrial societies. The Blocheviks so easily turned their backs on artists by only paying any attention to the demands of workers - Marxists don't realize that slavery is a transcendent aspect of problems that go deeper then the class struggle. Commies only care about the energy torn from workers in their work hours, not their hours of leisure.

Communists talk all about class struggle without referring explicitly to everyday life. Why do you think marxists constantly critisize "bourgeois" decadence? Because they have sticks up their ass. Because it's impossible to trifle humanity out of the bureacratic nature of a command economy. That's why I think any Communist revolution is doomed to turn into either a system of state capitalism like the USSR, or a third world shithole. The economic problems of marxism go along with the social ones, command economies don't respect the general flow of everyday life, so they can't possibly determine what direction the economy will take. That's why they've never worked. Soviet workers weren't any better off then British workers. Any kind of state is flawed for the same things Lenin critisized about Tsarist Russia in his well known "To the rural poor." It's impossable for bureaucrats to determine the needs of an ever changing people in an ever changing culture. That's why the dormant theoretical nature of communism is it's curse.

Lastly, marxism is as much of a changing entity as christianity is. It's still a religion in every meaning of the word. They're still striving for some sort of prphetic chance and are willing to take any means to get there, including murdering thousands of innocent people. I've yet to here you address Lenin's murder of thousands of innocent people.

[Moose]

i like how something says "nothingness" and yet is based on something...

[wheelchairman]

Marxism isn't about grouping people uncritically into a category based on class. Hardly, there are very backwards workers while there are very progressive bourgeois. The point was always to educate and liberate the workers.

As far as human nature goes, I honestly don't think human nature truly exists. It changes from society to society, time to time, age to age. Human nature is merely defined by whatever the philosophers of the period decide to define it as.

As far as purges in the bolsheviks based on class, how on Earth would you explain Molotov's rise in the party? He came from an utterly wealthy party, and ended his days in retirement back in like '82 or something.

And the planned economy was never meant to be permanent, it is merely meant to be transitional and was supposed to degrade and decentralize. It however lasted far too long.

As far as these purges you claim to talk about. I would doubt these people are innocent. I hardly doubt it was based purely on class. Active and violent treason to the state was often the base of these. I hardly support the death penalty. But during a civil war, when nothing is certain except that you have more enemies than allies, things must be done. During the beginning of the revolution, when they had captured enemy soldiers, they just had them promise to not fight against the state and then they released them again. The soldiers would then go back and fight. This strategy that they had was obviously not helpful to the state. So they stopped it.

And honestly, you must be completely oblivious to the debates going on right now, and that are always going on. It's usually purely inner party, and the American parties are rather small, so that's not surprising. But there are several lines inside marxism these days, everyone from red libertarian to old fashioned authoratarian, Stalin style.

[Mota Boy]

Not to mention how much communism fails from an economic standpoint. To read Marx is to read a tribute to the law of supply. Marx has obviously thought this out a lot, and he has decided that diamonds are worth more than shale because diamonds are really hard to find, and that tailor-made suits are more expensive than rags because tailor-made suits take a lot of time and effort to make.

What Marx never picks up on, of course, is the law of demand. People don't give a shit about tungsten necklaces, despite the metal's rarity, and tulip bulbs were the Beanie Babies of seventeenth-century Holland despite requiring absurdly little labor to manufacture. I don't really blame Marx for this mistake - economics was a fledgling science around his time, it's understandable that one could get caught up in thinking that the market was driven only by supply or only by demand... but that people today still make this mistake is inexcuseable.

That one simple mistake led to many incorrect assumptions. For instance - boiling such distinctions as "skilled labor" and "unskilled labor" down to mean a mere different in time required to perform their task. This assumed that you could take any man out of the manufacturing process and, giving him a bit more time, allow him to churn out a finely made coat. It ignored the sevice sector of the econmy entirely - that people will pay based on quality as well as cost. It assumed that a centrally planned economy was not only feasible, but the best way to run the market, a horrendously incorrect assumption. The government wouldn't ignore demand - it just would be too slow to respond to it. And the period in between the time that demand shifts and the government responds is responsible for bleeding the economy dry in wasting resources on the overproduction of a certain good.

Now, that's only one of the fundamental flaws of communism, but listing them all at once would detract from a solid debate.