Exactly. The Russian revolution was powerful because it was promoting the ideas of freedom and solidarity, with the workers controlling the means of production as its primary component, but when it came time to enact those beliefs, Lenin had already started crushing unions and placing the matters of the State above everything else. In just a few years, the Marxist socialist revolution that overthrew the monarchy in order to banish authoritarian rule from the nation became an authoritarian capitalist system that used the ideals and language of communism to its own ends. It's one of the massive hurdles any movement that values liberty over authoritarianism faces when revolutions happen. Sadly, authoritarian often wins because people tend to be afraid of themselves. In the case of the Bolsheviks, they had been used to the monarchy, and even though they despised the authoritarian conservatism which it represented, they ended up choosing a different type of authoritarianism. Sometimes, people look for a strong man instead of trusting themselves to guide their own futures. Again, a giant hurdle. Trump is popular because he is a "strong man," and that appeals to those who wish to be told what to do, what to think, where to go, how to live. So, too, the U.S. had its Bolshevik moment where the ruling class said "hey, we can be in charge and still push the idea of freedom and liberty," and so that's what they did.
Hey, pick on him all you want, but his daughter is amazing...considering what a shlump her father is. Has to be her mother's influence.
You do realise everything he posted there is factually correct? You may not agree with his politics, but his history's bob on.
In all that "Cuba oppresses people and that's why we blockade them!" stuff werew taught in school, not even the one pinko commie teacher I had junior year ever mentions this, nor our role in the dethroning of Iran's Shah in the 1950s and the destabilization that followed because BP wanted cheaper oil.
My ex used to say the same about waxing her bits. I found it romantic at the time. I'd still fuck her.
No separation of church and state, eh? It took us till the 1970s for even the more liberal areas to push back against mandatory prayers in public schools here and even now, prayers before football games in some places aren't uncommon.
Dude, I grew up in the bluest of blue states and my grade school I attended is STILL doing this! In 2019! my school district doesn't suspend students who don't do it but it's still a thing.
Dear god this sounds just awful. And it's not just me, there are a LOT of other people who would feel that this is one of the worst ideas of all time So, what do you do about those people not willing to move over to this anarcho/commie system? And even if this was somehow impossibly pulled off, let's talk about about real estate. Who gets to live in the penthouses? Who gets the waterfront property? Where does the competitive filled desire to innovate come from? What makes you think that people won't start wanting more than their meager existence allows under this system? What do you do with those people? Do you somehow outlaw greed and go full speed ahead on thought crime? This feels like it will have an abundance of problems - from the initial, bloody setting up of it all the way through to the inevitable time when people will abandon it. Which will probably be a bloody affair as well
It's been a while since I watched TNG, but ain't that basically the society that's set up there in the 24th century? Why do you hate Star Trek? ...I'm mostly joking, but while I don't see any avenue in which Amaris' dream would work practically, that doesn't mean our current system is extremely dysfuctional. No, few people die from the government under capitalism, but they do die because they can't afford insulin or decide a perfectly treatable cancer at age sixty would be too much of a burden to put on their family and palliative care is cheaper.
Yeah, the libertarian gets to talk down to folks about how unrealistic their ideas are. Next you'll be telling us how to nail jelly to the roof.
Libertarian ideas aren't all that unrealistic. A lot of libertarian ideas can be found in our founding documents.
Change is bloody. If you think capitalist systems started out of the kindness of people's hearts, or that transitions occurred without a lot of blood spilled by people who knew they had a lot to gain by standing on top of it, then you are woefully ignorant of people in times of uncertainty. There are a lot of blocks that need to be laid down before the foundation is strong enough and stable enough to handle anarcho-communism. It's not something you can truly do overnight and expect it to last. I'm in favor of baby steps, taking careful action to advance ideas forward that people will understand and accept. We're in this position now because capitalists spent centuries telling feudalists how much better their lives could be if they would just walk away from their Lords and embrace an economic idea that worked on merit, rather than a caste system that kept them imprisoned, chained to the land, to their Lord, all their lives. As for "what about innovation?" that always cracks me up. History is replete with people who invented, who innovated, and then gave it all away for the betterment of humanity. If anything, capitalism acts as a parasite and uses innovation to build fortunes for people who then suppress further innovation due to competition. Capitalism is dragged, kicking and screaming, into new phases because capitalism relies on stability, predictability to function. Disagree? Watch the stock market when something unexpected happens. As for penthouses, waterfront property, people will have to work that out with their local communities. People do know how to work things out. We had communities before we had real estate agents. We had doctors before we had insurance companies. People built houses, went fishing, gathered food, all without shareholders. That's a bit simplistic, but the point is that the framework you think people must have is something they don't actually need, not in the long run. You also buy the anti-communist propaganda that people will live poorly, and a meager existence under anarcho-communism, because you can only see it the way it was handed to you by capitalist systems that needed you to reject it out of hand. I cannot dissuade you from that silliness, as propaganda is far more potent when you're benefiting from it, which you are. Hell, you don't even realize you've been inundated with capitalist propaganda your entire life, and you just accept it as the natural order of things. I mean, with communism, you know almost nothing about it beyond the belief that you hate it. It doesn't even occur to you that you spend most of your life just trying to have a place to live. It never occurs to you that you can just have a home. There's one massive expense out of the way. You can have food. There's another one. You can have medicine that you need to live. There's a third. To you it's a fairy tale because the one you already believe has convinced you of such. It's like when Christians laugh at another religion "don't you know that's a myth?" Well guess what, sweetheart. Change doesn't happen immediately. People have to become acculturated to the notion that the system in which they live is not the optimal system, that there are better options. To prevent this, they are kept stressed so they lack the peace of mind to stop and look around them, exhausted so that they don't have the power to think, and distracted so that they don't have the time or focus to put it all together. You live in a system that depends upon you towing the line, producing thousands of dollars of profit for your boss, while receiving pennies on the dollar in return. You live on the basis that your worth is pennies on the dollar, even though it's your muscle, your brain, your time, your effort, and your boss's equipment. You even believe that if you don't produce value thousands of times more than you will ever receive for yourself, then you're the one in the wrong. You've taken the biggest goddamn hook and ran with it, and you think I'm the one that lives in a fantasy world. The world you advocate is a world of slavery, where people think they've got the better deal because they managed to bleed and sweat themselves into a home they could have had in a better system, but at least they've been convinced by their boss that they're the lucky ones. Don't forget to keep your salary to yourself. We don't talk about salaries, and we don't talk about unions. Can't trust those unions, we have an open door policy and a culture of family here at Big Box Mart. Don't be late or you'll be let go, and I don't care if you have kids to feed. You, though, you've got it pretty good. A blind man among blind men, but one who has a jeweled cane. As it stands, capitalism has managed to bring the world's climate to its absolute limit, and it's done so in just a few hundred years. Congratulations, I guess there's one area where capitalism can take the cake. Oh, and the biggest failing? People have become so used to capitalism, that even in the face of extinction, they have the utter shortsightedness to say "how will we motivate the wealthy to help us?" No they won't.
A libertarian society is just slightly more realistic than @Amaris ' pipe dream of an anarcho/commie one, but not by very much
And a lot of socialist ones. Like any ideology, taken too far, they're unrealistic. But you won't afford Communism that out, despite the fact that Libertarianism chose to fuck capitalism in the butt the same way fascism fucked Communism back in Stalin's day.
Your biggest problem J is that you don't have an accurate grasp on what is happening in the world today You haven't even left Bumfuck, Ohio or wherever it is you live. I'd be surprised if you even had a passport You take the worst examples of what is happening right now and pretend that's the status quo and think that most people are subject to these atrocities in life. They aren't We are at the height of civilization. More people are are housed, fed, educated, happy, have money, are healthy than ever before. We are trending up in all the most important aspects of life, not down And you want to change all that. By force and all bloody like, no less Imagine being that much of a cunt
Yeah, and we just had to fuck the climate and the rest of the world over to do it. Life's pretty sweet right now, yeah. Ain't going to stay that way.
Again, libertarianism. Ooh, let's all rely on enlightened self-interest. When the only way you can enlighten 99% of the fuckers who believe in libertarianism is to put 40,000 volts through them.
