Here we go, a real one! [quote=@Dinh AaronMk] 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. ... 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. [/quote] This provides some insight (to me anyway) on the disconnect within the US. See, here, every time the right wing says "Hey, we really need to decentralize power to avoid a totalitarian state," the left freaks the fuck out. Here in the US, present day, the left and the communists are conflated (to what extent exactly is up for debate, but there's a conflation there). Part of that, certainly, is old-school cold war era propaganda, and also, part of it is the idealistic appropriation of the left. Not intending to point fingers, merely to express this: you're talking about the one thing (small government, empowered population, democratic representation at the local level, etc) and that's a FAAAAAAaaaaar different thing than "communism," as it exists (conceptually or otherwise) in the present day. So to converse properly, we each have to understand one key thing (and I get the sensation that we each recognize it already): that the brand of communism which you discuss is neither the mainstream, nor one that has existed in any nation in the history of the earth. Am I wrong? I'll just continue on the assumption that I'm not wrong. It's more constructive that way, and apparently that matters in Spam of all places. [quote]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.[/quote] It's similarly notable that Marx had a lot less history of Marxist (and/or so-called Marxist) governments to draw from. I'd love to see an intellectually honest follow-up from his ghost, written in 2017, but hey. Anywho I've never heard of Kropotkin in my entire life, so I'm woefully outgunned here. I'll take your word for it. [quote]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] I don't have one single issue with the dissolution of federal power. For that matter, if California wants to go full-on socialist, I don't think Texas should have any power whatsoever to prevent it (property issues notwithstanding), if you catch my drift. If "all politics are local politics" as the adage says, then why are we ruled by 545 strangers in Washington with a single-digit collective approval rating? Split that shit up. One shouldn't have to secede from the union to achieve a degree of self-determination. In my estimation, the disruption of federalization is not a communist issue. In light of that, the snipped, split, and quoted section of your post -- while intriguing and light-shedding and a bit educational -- isn't really relevant to the conversation. Like if I told you that Christianity preaches charitable giving, and you agree that charitable giving is the tits, that's still a bit of a red herring when it comes to the "is there a god" conversation, no? Anyway. The clever bit in all this is, [i]in no way shape or form[/i] does this communist vision, which you're conveying well, resemble whatsoever the version peddled in the OP. So going back to that whole conflation bit, communism has a bit of a branding issue and I think that explains at least part of the at-each-others'-throats nature of any conversation on the subject. Communism apparently means whatever anybody wants, and in (so-called) practice it has only ever produced tyranny, genocide, and abject state failure. So yeah, we on the right tend to come in hot a little bit, but like..... you know..... [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. ... If it's in our communities, it belongs to us and we can all benefit.[/quote] Arguably we all benefit today. The only sticking point is that I don't actually OWN the big shopping mall that agreed to rebuild 60 miles of aging highway in exchange for development rights -- but I still get to drive on it, I still get to shop at the mall, I still get to walk around the park they built. There's a bit of a false-binary here, by which it's implied that the rational self-interest of capitalism benefits only the self, and the shared interest of communism benefits only the community. The limosines of the ruling party, and the electric self-driving space trains or whatever of Elon Musk, should put that right to bed. Interest, benefit, and the common good are not political issues at all. We don't need to radically alter the political makeup to control or achieve them; to do so invites, well, Stalin, Mao, Kim, Chavez, Castro, etc. We, collectively, should only alter the political structure when it is in OUR interest to do so -- when WE are the ones taking advantage (a la American Revolution, French Revolution, and pretty much every other good one in history). Capitalist? Yup. Good for the community? Yup. Backtracking -- because I clipped rather a lot, and got distracted by that last point..... Yeah, the labor picture is gonna be RADICALLY different in a very short while (if you think 3D-printed industrial tools and robot factories are an issue, just wait until we get self-driving semi trucks). What you're leaving out, though, is that the notion of [i]scarcity[/i] is radically changing right along with it. Maybe in a hundred years we're not gonna have the kind of workforce participation we've counted as essential to the functioning of society...... but also you'll be able to fly to New Hampshire in your pickup truck to grab unobtanium for your phase-assembler for like a buck, if and when your phase-assembler ever runs out, and the clever, self-interested money-makers will STILL be looking for better ways to build a mousetrap so they can get more spacebucks. To categorize this as 'slavery to the wealthy' (my words) is rather pessimistic -- slavery, when all labor is robotic anyway? To what extent can tyranny even exist in the first place, in such a world? I garner no horror, no concern whatsoever from the prospect of a mechanized future workforce. It's the part between here and there that concerns the shit out of me. Into what corners will we legislate ourselves in this interim? How much (human, apparently) sacrifice are we going to tolerate, in order to arm the toilet-scrubbers of the Indobekistania with soon-to-be-obsolete manufacturing talents? [i]Why are we revolutioning again?[/i] What is the goddamn point? [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] Democracy is also known (to Toqueville anyway) as the "tyranny of the majority." To consider a revolution with democracy in it is a bit of a conundrum, innit? Because, if your democracy needs to violently compel people to play along, does that represent self-determination anymore? Is that even democracy anymore? Remember that concept of self-determination is what drives revolution in the first place (else what's the goddamn point -- "We VIOLENTLY REFUSE TO HAVE A SAY!"). Communism which must compel even one citizen to participate, dooms itself to counter-revolution. I seem to recall that being part of the whole idea.... whatever. My point is, this can only work at a local level, and even then it's very iffy. [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] Problem. [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] So here's a riddle for you. I'm disabled -- missing a leg. Let's magically transplant me into Communism 2050 -- we've got some pretty sweet robot legs, and I'm part of the community so I own one. Now let's say I want a better one. Who devises it, and why? See today, Ossur invents the Genium X3 because they won a contract from DARPA to develop a microprocessor-controlled knee which can withstand water, sand, fire, and (allegedly) a gunshot, with a battery that lasts a week and recharges in four hours, and weighs less than eight pounds. In exchange, Ossur gets [i]a shitload of money,[/i] and when they make a better leg, they get [i]a shitload more.[/i] So in Communism 2050 -- why are they building an X4? I've already got an X3, and we both already own everything. My accommodation is already sufficient that I should be plenty capable of sculpturing or whatever it is I'm allowed to do. If it costs one unit of unobtanium to feed an average citizen, but two units of unobtanium to build me a better leg, what right do I have to a better leg? It's a riddle. Bear in mind, collectives in the past have not been kind to the differently-abled -- we were offed along with the other undesirables in just about every genocide in history. Frankly we're more trusting than we ought to be, and any disabled person with any kind of experience in social healthcare (be it VA, NHS, or elsewhere) has the scars to prove it. [quote]...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. ... To get the demands they wanted it was best for them to physically take control of the factory and literally seize it.[/quote] Violence is a fickle thing, wielded far more often by those in the wrong than by those in the right. Do not embrace it easily. We (the people arguing against communism atm) are flagging this because it's like "Well, we're gonna have to crack some skulls. OH WELL. We won't shoot guys we like." That's not how you empower a community, that's how you empower a tyrannical group (which may, admittedly, hold a temporary ideological majority, and thus have 'some democracy in it'). Communism in general has a revolution fetish and that should REALLY give you pause.