[quote=@Nytem4re] I mean he brings up valid points still, even if he is shitposting. Anyways I'll bring up some points I found contradictory/improbable. "This method, applied to all industries providing goods or services, would eliminate any semblance of Bourgeois elements in society, with all methods of production being owned collectively by the workers who operate them." Right, and who is going to enforce this? Someone with... more power? I don't see how giving everyone percieved power will fix power structures because eventually somewhere down the line the guy in charge of the military would be able to do whatever, since, well, he has the power.[/quote] Welcome to Far-left sectarian bickering 101. Who the fuck does anything? But anyways, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita argues in his book The Dictator's Handbook that the stability and a strength within a democracy is its egalitarianism. And outside of Bordiga and perhaps Marxist-Leninism if the entire notion of communism is democratic organization on a broader scale then we might have to analyze the basic premise in the book. In it, dictatorial regimes derive power from investing their nation's resources in a smaller group of offices or supporting roles of the regime, whether this be in the military, the bureaucracy, and/or the businesses. The structure of this government means more distance can be put between the ruler and the people being ruled, but also makes the structure of the government sketchy since at any moment the ruler doesn't make one pillar happy they can pull their support and topple the entire system. This is basically how third-world revolutions happy: the military lets the revolutionaries take power and replace most of the government with their people before re-assuming power under the new government has their new military. In democratic nations the resources that support the ruling state are distributed more widely among a broader set of institutions and broken down much more. While there are more institutions supporting the government, rewards for service are smaller. However, the broader base on which the government stands is so much so that if any single group decides to revolt against the government the entire system will not collapse on itself. The notion for communism, or even Anarchy is spreading out the resources and access to resources in a broader sense. There will be no one part of the model with the strength to kill the entire system if they choose to rebel. They might be able to cause some damage, but things will survive. Bringing this to historical a historical model, American insistence to decentralize power and its long and historical terror of a permanent standing army has given it a great deal of stability. The failure of the Federalist party under Hamilton arguably helped to lessen the power of the Federal government enough it could mature in time by keeping a wide seat. Though it could be argued still that the lack of systematic understanding of this prevents the state from going further. But whatever, I feel I'm digressing; but I've also discussed this long-form several times today so I'm trying to keep it short for my benefit. But back to Marxism: to prevent or cripple the ability of the military from taking power for themselves, or for the Vanguard government to suddenly become the second Bourgeoisie ruling class he said: [img]https://i.warosu.org/data/lit/img/0063/08/1427175304169.jpg[/img] Basically, like with America's second amendment the theory here would be the workers should be allowed to be armed and assemble into militias to defend themselves should a government attempt to reorganize labor and to centralize it. It's a threat of physical terror to keep the Vanguard in check. It's also notable the time Marx wrote his theories, in the early half of the 19th century. He had access to a different and not entirely fully developed body of scholarly work, study, and industrial development than perhaps the likes of Kropotkin and the development of Anarcho Communism in the later half of the century. Under Marx there would need to be a Vanguard body to guide society to a point of post-scarcity under which they'd dissolve authority to the workers when there needed to be less oversight. Though by Kropotkin's predictions this Vanguard would turn, and forty-years after he wrote Conquest of Bread Stalin happened. I would suggest that should a revolution happen it needs to happen on a certain American model with power not vested in a single Vanguard body but local or regional bodies handling local affairs with a federal body in a relationship much like what we have or had with the federal government today, and the nature of senators and representatives becoming more like delegates to the national congress. But this gets into a whole other thing. In short: broader democratic control prevents or makes less likely dictatorial control when all people have the freedom to dictate, discuss, and practice their own government on the understanding there's a mandate that nothing should at least permanently be given to a single person or representative body. Begin arguing, party splitters. [quote=@Nytem4re] The problem with this is that the person making the tires is going to be more knowledgable about making tires than the person who cleans the toliet. It would be more productive to let the person making the tires decide how tires should be made/process since he has more technical knowledge. If the guy cleaning the shitter says tires dont need rubber who's going to stop him? Of course, you might say everyone else, but humans can choose the wrong thing to do at times. Who's to say that the toilet guy didn't convince everyone tires should be made of toliet seat covers? Everyone has a "say" in this situation. Your factories would be terribly inefficient. I would assume everything would need to come down to a group decision. Which means little would get done. [/quote] One of the big things I get from communists, or used to hear several years back was that in this societal structure people would have free access to the information and education needed to move from one trade to another based on his own whims or wants. This isn't entirely different from what's practiced in the present system, but there's no need to pay. A factory worker today can pay a sum, get a loan, or get a grant to go to college to learn a new trade and then integrate into that field. A toilet cleaner too can transition from cleaning the shitter to going to work at the factory because mechanization at the factory means the change in trade isn't complicated or expensive, you just get to learn what buttons to press and shit to do to keep the line moving; this has been the boon in labor that was the assembly line and consolidated work stations, you just teach people to do the must rudimentary task to make something complicated and then let them work at their station for eight hours a day. As the methods of manufacture change, so does the input of man into manufacture. There is already discussion today about the impact of automation in the manufacturing industry and the job sector. And automation in the middle of the last century (1960's, 70's, 80's, 90's, and on to today) has already greatly affected manufacture as a job field by cutting more and more people out of the factories. The River Rouge plant here in Michigan was once the biggest of all plants hiring upwards to 90,000 to a 100,000 workers; now only some 10,000 workers work there because so much of the work is automated. To a communist/anarchist/Trotskyite such as myself this worries me because there's far fewer laborers there, so far fewer people who need to get paid, and owners with nothing to do with the factory are taking in higher dividends for not having to spend so much on wages. There's a point where I'm afraid that the owners will be on top not because they're supporting labor but because they own robots that do all the work with a only ten people in the middle-class needed to make sure it's all moving. And then we're all be cut out of the economy and working society and basically enslaved to them. What the end goal is is to democratize all the industry so that even if it's fully automated it serves all the people directly and it's not washed through the hands of distant people like the Merchants of London to George Washington and the people of colonial America. If it's in our communities, it belongs to us and we can all benefit. [quote=@Nytem4re] And group decisions sound more democratic imo, not communist. [/quote] Group decision is a fundamental part of communism, and is why Hungary revolted against the Stalinists in the 50's. The argument of strong-Vanguard parties like the Marxist-Leninists is that a strong central authority is needed to guide society to a point where it can be democratically run. But by holding power the Marxist-Leninist institutions of Stalin and Mao created a second Bourgiese class that derailed the goal, and then again come Krushchev and Deng Xiaopeng. Orthodox Marxism, and even orthodox Luxembourgism/SocDem is that there needs to be democracy in the revolution. [quote=@Nytem4re] Sounds more like democratic socialism than actual communism. [/quote] See above. DemSoc/SocDem is part of the Marxist lineage, though in the west it derailed itself in the twenties and thirties in most of the west to ascribe to Keynesian economics than anything else. Unless it can be fixed, modern SocDem/Labour will probably always be the party of John Meynard Keynes [quote=@Nytem4re] Uh, would the disabled count? because if they can't produce anything due to a disability, then are they not unneeded in processes of production? Maybe this is bad wording more than actual malice, but still. [/quote] To some, the disabled or elderly can still benefit the society as a whole, just not involved directly in the labor process as the younger generation. The old model of the nuclear family would have three generations living in the same house or close together so the elderly can at the least help raise the children as their own children work or perform their own labor to sustain both generations. But if the fundamental goal of Communism is to get to a point where labor is slowly minimized and the means of production of commonly owned by all men then notions of disability and age is all but irrelevant. According to the ends of Kropotkin at least the goals of communism would be to make physical labor irrelevant, ownership nonexistent, and that the individual can put more time into cultural and artistic pursuits to advance society's artistic and cultural richness and less its material. [quote=@Nytem4re] I feel like you're torn between being democratic and being communist. You say that you want to make it as democratic as possible, but does this not imply you will crack down on anyone who does not support your society? The entire point of democracy is the free expression of ideas. Hardly seems democratic when you're going to make them disappear or exile them or whatever you plan to do. [/quote] From a Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist standpoint: Gulag everyone. From a Marxist-Leninist-Trotskite standpoint: You're going to need their input because any revolution without the input of the people its for has no standing or legitemacy From an Anarchist standpoint: the state was a spook anyways. It gets very into the ego of small differences from here. But if violence was totally out of the question we wouldn't have had the liberal revolutions we had, either out of the notable use of violence to achieve it or the threat of violence. [img]http://img.booru.org/lefty//images/2/28c2bcbcc51b4789c109bbde0950195c1c1bc8f3.jpg[/img] It's a rather unfortunate thing but at this point probably a fact of life for anything. Civil Rights in America probably wouldn't have happened without the Deacons of Defense and Malcolm X spooking the government and the white resistance with their guns into passing legislation to at the least get them to dissolve when their demands are met with legislation. And we ascribe a big portion of India's independence to Gahndi when in reality [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhagat_Singh]Bhagat Singh[/url] is much more a folk hero in part to his active confrontational and violent praxis. It also helped martyr him, and that at the time of the Indian Independence Movement the United Kingdom was fighting first the First World War and the Second, so were in a sense compelled to release India under threat of violence continually wearing down the Empire. They certainly didn't let the 13 colonies go without a prolonged war of attrition in America either. But in the end if there are people who seek to dissolve democracy and to end the equality then for those groups who would be destroyed or their way of life endangered violence or the threat of violence is justified to make them more a danger and to hold the authoritarian powers at bay, or to dissolve the unattached authority of a resource or industry so it may be held by the people its more relevant too. The Labor movement in America learned this too in the twenties, and simply striking outside the factory didn't do anything when the factory just hires on new people with no Union sympathy or radical politics. To get the demands they wanted it was best for them to physically take control of the factory and literally seize it. [quote=@Nytem4re] It isn't exactly "free" when the only choice they have is support the government or die/get beaten up/forcibly removed. [/quote] Above.