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[Zipperfish]

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A more deliberate and cruel crime I feel in China was the hundred flowers thing. The killing off of intellectuals I feel is an artifact of societies with massive illiteracy rates where the divide between the intellectual and the common man was more clearly divided by class. The intellectuals, in the eyes of many peasants and their representatives, were fucking them for their own self-righteous greed and glory. And by and large, they were correct.

I don't think this is a feature specific to communism, and I think it's an issue that would be non-existent in a country with 95%+ literacy rates. Marx wanted the revolution to happen in a country already in a stage of late capitalism. China, Russia, Cuba, these were not developed capitalist countries when their people rose up. I don't believe they should have waited and sat out while their rulers fed on them, but I think skipping capitalist development fucked them. Marx had a lot of good to say about capitalism for a reason; he considered it a fundamental step in the history of class relations, the progresses of which allow for a communist revolution to succeed.

I know squat about Marx, other than he wrote the Communist Manifesto. But the lining of troublesome intellectuals and artists is a common theme in fascism as well as communism. The main stench of fascism of the current alt-right, is their loathing of artists and intellectuals. And what's not to hate? We're a troublesome lot. ha ha ha.

$1:

Which plans for the world do not end in ism? My problem with that whole concept of abandoning "isms" is that it has absolutely no plan. The status quo? That shit is an ism. Voting? That's an ism. Trying to change the conditions of your existence in any way? That's a paddlin' ism.

Evidence over -isms. Avoidance of extremis conditions and principles.

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[Thanos]

Public_Domain Public_Domain:

Thanos Thanos:

You mentioned food hoarding in one of your other posts. In that documentary I sent you the Committee of Public Safety appeased the urban poor in Paris by feeding them with what they stole from the peasants who had as hard and tragic a life, both under the nobility and afterwards, as any of the sans culottes ever did. Same thing got played out in Ukraine, where they were basically starved to death in order for the cities to be appeased. Ditto in Mao's China. Ditto in today's North Korea. All this shows is that when the state becomes controlled by extremists they're more than willing to sacrifice another group of victims in order to maintain their power over another group of downtrodden.

And thus, bring down your leaders, kill your heroes, no matter how much they claim to fight in your name. I didn't start this thread so I can defend Kim Jong Un. I do however fail to condemn every action taken in these countries.

The decision of what should happen to starving people should not come down to anyone but those people themselves. Not to foolhardy bureaucrats distrustful of intellectualism, and not to corporate psychopaths who need more wealth they can't possibly spend.

Therein lies the root of all human failure, and also the main cause of the deplorable human condition:

1) nothing gets done without leaders
2) the leaders usually turn out to be criminals, degenerates, and psychopaths

$1:

Yep, we're fucked
-W. Axl Rose

[BartSimpson]

Zipperfish Zipperfish:

Agreed. They should have known, but of course, lining up all the intellectuals against the barn is the first thing you do after any revolution.

Of course! The most dangerous people around after a successful revolution are the successful revolutionaries! Any self-respecting dictator knows this rule and acts on it!

Zipperfish Zipperfish:

And then of course there was only top-down management. There was no feedback mechanism to signal command to change course, because questioning authority got you re-educated.

Sounds like the Hillary campaign. Hillary was going to win because she said so and anyone who thought she needed to pay attention to shit states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan were defeatists!

Zipperfish Zipperfish:

The biggest fucking argument against capitalism and communism is that they both end in ism. Isms become ideologies, ideologies become idolatry.

The difference between capitalism and communism is that no one has to organize a capitalist state. It just happens organically. Look at Russia, the USSR collapsed and within a week private businesses sprang up to fill the void left by the collapsed state industries and enterprises.

Communism has to be imposed. You have to force people to not have businesses. You have to force people to work on the farms. You have to force them to do pretty much everything in a communist state.

And that's why it always fails.

Sooner or later people realize the futility of working their asses off for the Almighty State when the fucking state can't even provide them with a roll of toilet paper or a decent pair of Levi's. Some fucking Utopia you got there when you're starving, you're poorly dressed, and you can't even wipe your ass.

Give me the freedom to be a capitalist and the freedom to fail. That's far better than the security of near certain poverty and probable starvation.

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[andyt]

Didn't he say revolution is the opiate of the intellectuals?

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[Thanos]

"Drain the swamp" usually turns out to be code-word for eliminating anyone (both figuratively and literally) who knows what they're doing, mostly because these are the kind of people who are best able and most likely to call out the leaders on their bullshit and lies or tell them how much destruction their idiotic plans are going to cause. It's as true in Pol Pot's Cambodia, where they exterminated anyone with eyeglasses or had a university degree, as it is in GOP/Trump Washington, where they're going to cashier anyone of any significance in the bureaucracies who keep the system functioning.

[BartSimpson]

One of the things that you're missing here, PD, is that Marx was mostly railing against the class structures of the European monarchies that no longer exist as they did in his time.

I wonder if Marx would bother with a revolt in Canada when Canada is clearly better off as it is.

[BartSimpson]

Thanos Thanos:

"Drain the swamp" usually turns out to be code-word for eliminating anyone...

You're outraging yourself again by railing against something that doesn't actually exist.

"Drain the swamp" refers to Washington DC - which was built on a swamp and is still referred to as 'the swamp' by DC insiders and critics.

http://bobarnebeck.com/swamp.html

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[Thanos]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

Thanos Thanos:

"Drain the swamp" usually turns out to be code-word for eliminating anyone...

You're outraging yourself again by railing against something that doesn't actually exist.

"Drain the swamp" refers to Washington DC - which was built on a swamp and is still referred to as 'the swamp' by DC insiders and critics.

http://bobarnebeck.com/swamp.html

Give it time and we'll see. At this stage I expect the Trump Admin to be filled with sycophants and incompetents of such depraved depths that they'll manage to make the Bush "you're doing a heck of a job, Brownie" effort in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina look as successful as the logistics/planning effort behind the D-Day invasion of Normandy in comparison.

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