[Pretorian]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('americandream', 'P')ower is a given in politics. It's how you use it that sets the thief apart from the statesman. Stalin was a statesman.

[ian807]

Failure is in the eye of the beholder. Communism aimed high (care for everyone) and depended on significantly more altruism than most humans possess. Capitalism aims low (care only for yourself) and depends on ubiquitous short-sighted greed so in that sense it can be seen as more successful.

In the end, of course, neither is sustainable. Somebody has to work (communist conceptual fail) and growth simply can't continue forever (capitalist conceptual fail).

[deMolay]

And as fast as civilization could be destroyed, free enterprise would immediately take root again and begin a new. I'll trade this meat for that corn. A piece of steel for a shelter etc. Or a skill for a place at the table.

[americandream]

I wouldn't even know where to start with your hero Hitler. Not only was he a mongrel, he professed to be an ethnic socialist whilst doing back room deals with Prussian nobility, using petty hatreds as an excuse for harvesting free labour and the outright theft of the property of the Jewish bourgeoisie and nobility (when have these creatures not used religion, gender, race or some other tool to leverage personal advantage); Swiss banks accounts owned by these pretend socialists lie crammed full with the proceeds of their scam.

Stalin's "sin" was to outwit capitalist scum and setup a workers state armed to the teeth and with the wherewithal to blow the greed menace off the face of this planet. The fact that these greedy scum used the Islamic simpleton to utterly demoralise the class loyalt of the Soviet Red Arny is only testimony to the depths to which these worms will sink in order to protect their access to obsolescence inducing excess and al the other degenerate behaviour we have come to take as natural to the bloated classes.

These bloated worms will piss and shit away our common wealth until is is utterly obvious to all but the most intellectualluy challenged that the cupboards are bare and that we had better do something or risk being yesterday's species.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pretorian', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('americandream', 'P')ower is a given in politics. It's how you use it that sets the thief apart from the statesman. Stalin was a statesman.

[americandream]

deMolay

I absolutely agree with you that Cuba will capitulate back to greed. No doubt about that. In fact, in fully understanding Marx, one realises not only that the free market will and MUST globalise to it's nth degree where capital reigns supreme and labour costs are deflated to the point where two or three jobs are the norm, but free marketeers will in the process sow the seeds for their own demise.

The presence of a vast class of lumpenproletariat is testimony not so much to the supremacy of capitalism but rather the persence of sufficient surplus to induce the capitalist to continue in risk mode and the persistence of the entrepreneurial myth. Where costs increasingly eclipse the return from risk and per unit worker costs are deflated off the radar, is where capitalism meets its Maker.

To use petty arguments that this or that country is capitulating in a bid to establish the long term credentials of capitalism is to utterly misunderstand how capitalism works and interacts with its surrounds and resource base.

[eastbay]

http://www.tgdaily.com/general-sciences ... nce-better


As we in the (real) left have long suspected, another reason to trust and follow Fidel is that socialists are smarter. We understand science better. Research proves it! Communists must be flat out geniuses. Therefore, what happens in Cuba is well worth keeping an eye on. You all might just learn a few things. Get smarter, even.

[Tyler_JC]

Eastbay, the causality is backwards on that one.

It's not that Socialists understand science, it's that scientifically inclined people are often attracted to Socialism.

They look at the world and think, "Why can't the economy be more like my laboratory? Why can't policy makers just add X, perform process Y and get Z?" When they find out that economics doesn't work perfectly like that, they drop out of Econ 101 and take a statistics class instead.

Also, scientists support more government involvement in the economy in part because they believe that they deserve and will undoubtedly receive lots of free research grants from a larger government. They never ask where those resources came from in the first place.

[americandream]

Do you have any scientific evidence that Eastbay's reasoning is backwards whereas your's is the correct one?

Form where I am standing, a view that holds that certain societal outcomes follow as a consequence of certain material determinants sounds a darn sight more scientific than one that holds the view that those outcomes are determined by a grey bearded old fellow seated on high.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Tyler_JC', 'E')astbay, the causality is backwards on that one.

It's not that Socialists understand science, it's that scientifically inclined people are often attracted to Socialism.

They look at the world and think, "Why can't the economy be more like my laboratory? Why can't policy makers just add X, perform process Y and get Z?" When they find out that economics doesn't work perfectly like that, they drop out of Econ 101 and take a statistics class instead.

Also, scientists support more government involvement in the economy in part because they believe that they deserve and will undoubtedly receive lots of free research grants from a larger government. They never ask where those resources came from in the first place.

[eastbay]

AD, I don't think Tyler is a socialist.

Just kidding Tyler.

This is just one study. This study does reveal an interesting conclusion about women, and you are right in that academia seems to attract socialists who are, we can all agree, disproportionately represented among the cognitive elite.

Which causes which? Well, we can't be sure whether the chickens or the eggs came first in this case but we do know there are chickens laying eggs.

Where would we be without socialist scientists? I bet it's safe to suggest we all would have a lot more oil in the ground if not for their creative genius.

[Pretorian]

there is not one true word in these scribblings. not one.


$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('americandream', 'I') wouldn't even know where to start with your hero Hitler. Not only was he a mongrel, he professed to be an ethnic socialist whilst doing back room deals with Prussian nobility, using petty hatreds as an excuse for harvesting free labour and the outright theft of the property of the Jewish bourgeoisie and nobility (when have these creatures not used religion, gender, race or some other tool to leverage personal advantage); Swiss banks accounts owned by these pretend socialists lie crammed full with the proceeds of their scam.

Stalin's "sin" was to outwit capitalist scum and setup a workers state armed to the teeth and with the wherewithal to blow the greed menace off the face of this planet. The fact that these greedy scum used the Islamic simpleton to utterly demoralise the class loyalt of the Soviet Red Arny is only testimony to the depths to which these worms will sink in order to protect their access to obsolescence inducing excess and al the other degenerate behaviour we have come to take as natural to the bloated classes.

These bloated worms will piss and shit away our common wealth until is is utterly obvious to all but the most intellectualluy challenged that the cupboards are bare and that we had better do something or risk being yesterday's species.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pretorian', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('americandream', 'P')ower is a given in politics. It's how you use it that sets the thief apart from the statesman. Stalin was a statesman.

[ralfy]

There is no Communist country, only those that practice various forms of capitalism, including state capitalism. Cuba is one of them and has been moving towards localization because of peak oil. For more details, view

http://www.powerofcommunity.org

The U.S., China, and other countries will follow. The only ones who think otherwise believe that peak oil is a hoax and that the U.S. economy is "recovering."

The global economy is geared towards free market capitalism, which requires continuous economic growth through increasing production and consumption of resources, in turn supported by increasing amounts of credit, leading to a middle class lifestyle. That is why production and consumption of resources, including oil, money supply, and human population have been increasing significantly.

The problem is that increasing amounts of credit eventually lead to credit bubbles popping, and that's what we saw last 2008. More will follow.

Also, increasing production and consumption of resources leads to a peak in production, and eventually, a decline. Peak oil is an example of that.

Increasing human population because of longer life expectancy rates and lower infant mortality rates leads to increasing consumption of resources. In addition, as more people become part of the middle class, their consumption of resources also increases.

Thus, we have increasing production of resources, eventually leading to peak oil. Meanwhile, people become healthier, increase in number, and need more resources, thus increasing demand for resources. Since resources such as oil are limited, then the system cannot be sustained, and more people will be forced to decrease consumption of resources. With that, life expectancy rates will decrease and infant mortality rates will rise. There will also be more conflict as people fight over remaining resources.

[Timo]

Something i've been thinking aout lately, and it has some level of relevence here, is that our collective global paradigm of who we consider the bad guy has changed dramatically over the past several decades. Communism used to be a threat to all western countries. Well, that threat is simply no more, so we've invented new bogeymen to loathe and keep us in a war-ready state. The real thruth of the matter is that idiological politival movements are all a thing of the past. Not one country is defending itself or attacking another country in some attept to impose a political ideology. Scandinavian countries have shown that some principles of socialism work for them, yet no one is trying to impose their system on anyone else, and likewise, no one is trying to get them to abandon their system in favor of any other. With the horrible exception of the Middle East, all wars now are instigated over physical resources, much like they did in ancient times when one nation tried to gain access to a sea port, or fam lands, or gold...... A whole lot of people are still stuck in the cold-war mentality of assuming that anyone with a different idiological political system is the enemy. These are the people who call Obama a socialist, and that he's pushing a socialist medical system down our throats. Truth doesn't really matter to these people because they were all raised in a cold war political climate, and this type of "warfare" is all they know.

Notice that i don't have any documentation to prove any of this, and i'm sure some of you will accuse me of being full of s*it. Whatever. This is just my opinion. My only point is that Peak Everything has replaced idiology as the driving force for international conflict.

[Serial_Worrier]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('davep', 'A')t least he took fifty years to kill them, unlike Bush.

Seriously, he seems to have a wise old head on him nowadays.

[americandream]

An Iraqi invasion based around questionable legality for running counter to the intent of international law, ring a bell? Every death thereafter is reasonably characterised as being very probably murder, intent to unrestrainedly, unreasonably and excessively overwhelm resistance, in the circumstances, being present.

Of course the international community and the plundering privileged will turn a blind eye to the machinations of Washington and London, both centres being in effect, along with Switzerland, the bank vaults for the elites ruling much of the world. So the true figures as to who did what to whom in Iraq will NEVER be visible. In addition, apologists for murder by the well fed and flatulent will come on here and stand reality on its heads with a mix of ass about face legalism as well as smart ass cynicism.

So, we live in the Alice in Wonderland reality of a world in which a man like Castro is demonised as a butcher whilst the bloated are feted as the harbingers or freedom.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Serial_Worrier', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('davep', 'A')t least he took fifty years to kill them, unlike Bush.

Seriously, he seems to have a wise old head on him nowadays.

[americandream]

In the absence of a reasonable rebuttal, I take it that you in effect agree with me. To further deepen your education. I have added some little openers into Herr Hitler's supposed socialism for the German Aryan brotherhood, specifically his socialist love for industrialists, a foreign industrialist in this instance interestingly (in these times of outsourcing and the general betrayal of indigenous workers, it's interesting to note that our nationalist pals even in thiose non-globalise days appeared to be infected with an equal propensity for wining and dining foreign money). Wikipedia, in an item on the life of Henry Ford, noted Hitler's intense affection for Ford as follows:

"[size=85]Ford and Adolf Hitler admired each other's achievements.[39] Adolf Hitler kept a life-size portrait of Ford next to his desk.[39] "I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration," Hitler told a Detroit News reporter two years before becoming the Chancellor of Germany in 1933.[39] In July 1938, four months after the German annexation of Austria, the Nazi government awarded Ford the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, the highest medal for foreigners.[39]"

This is merely one example of Hitler's love affair with the financial, landed and corporate elites. Make google your friend and educate yourselves as to the true credentials of this gangster for the elite. Let's remind ourselves that this mongrel ubermenschen/Aryan also professed to be a socialist whilst evidently nursing a hardon for Ford. Basic socialist rules contemplate no overlapping of the social and the private. Where such exists, one is in effect confronted by bogus opportunism and crass manipulation of the masses, corporate fascism in other words.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pretorian', 't')here is not one true word in these scribblings. not one.


$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('americandream', 'I') wouldn't even know where to start with your hero Hitler. Not only was he a mongrel, he professed to be an ethnic socialist whilst doing back room deals with Prussian nobility, using petty hatreds as an excuse for harvesting free labour and the outright theft of the property of the Jewish bourgeoisie and nobility (when have these creatures not used religion, gender, race or some other tool to leverage personal advantage); Swiss banks accounts owned by these pretend socialists lie crammed full with the proceeds of their scam.

Stalin's "sin" was to outwit capitalist scum and setup a workers state armed to the teeth and with the wherewithal to blow the greed menace off the face of this planet. The fact that these greedy scum used the Islamic simpleton to utterly demoralise the class loyalt of the Soviet Red Arny is only testimony to the depths to which these worms will sink in order to protect their access to obsolescence inducing excess and al the other degenerate behaviour we have come to take as natural to the bloated classes.

These bloated worms will piss and shit away our common wealth until is is utterly obvious to all but the most intellectualluy challenged that the cupboards are bare and that we had better do something or risk being yesterday's species.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pretorian', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('americandream', 'P')ower is a given in politics. It's how you use it that sets the thief apart from the statesman. Stalin was a statesman.

[davep]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Serial_Worrier', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('davep', 'A')t least he took fifty years to kill them, unlike Bush.

Seriously, he seems to have a wise old head on him nowadays.

[Plantagenet]

So after 50 years it turns out that Castro is a now counter-revolutionary gusano and capitalist roader who is out to wreck the hard won gains of the revolution.

Life can be so hilariously ironic....

[Serial_Worrier]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('davep', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Serial_Worrier', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('davep', 'A')t least he took fifty years to kill them, unlike Bush.

Seriously, he seems to have a wise old head on him nowadays.

[eastbay]

I bet most of you didn't know Che was half Basque and half Irish.

In q few years it will be popular to call our economic mess the result of capitalism. Which it will NOT be. Just like in Cuba, it will be the result of a loss of cheap oil.

[americandream]

The end of what was in effect an almost free source of surplus as industrialists are increasingly driven to that other perennial source of surplus, human labour. There will consequently be a variety of attempts to keep the cost of labour depressed in the run up to peak oil as resourcing costs rise and the true nature of capitalist profit comes to the fore.

It will be something of an illusionists trick as industrialists and financiers collude to ensure that labour is sufficiently funded (through debt) to maintain its other pivotal role, consumer of its labour in order to release the surplus locked within. The internal contradictions between deflationary labour and growth of surplus imperatives MUST eventually give way to a death struggle between industrialists and industrialists and financiers and financiers, identifiable in the race to the bottom.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('eastbay', 'I') bet most of you didn't know Che was half Basque and half Irish.

In q few years it will be popular to call our economic mess the result of capitalism. Which it will NOT be. Just like in Cuba, it will be the result of a loss of cheap oil.