Libertariansim and Anarchism; Delusional and Utopian

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Thanks youve given me quite a bit to digest

You always know how to make me laugh.



Not really. If you predict that someday, there are going to be economic problems, eventually you will be right. Anyways, a number of Marxist predictions have failed to come true. Where is the increasing class divide from Marx's time to today? Why were the Communist revolutions primarily in agrarian countries rather than industrialized regions? Why have the "recurrent crises of capitalism" not been getting worse and worse as Marx predicted? Why does religion still have a major influence in the world? Marx was dead wrong on many, many points.


Engels ran a textile mill. He exploited the proletariat, right? In the end, money mattered more to him than his ideals.


Of course I'm oversimplifying, this is not an appropriate place for a semester course in Soviet history.


He switched views a couple times. At one point he promoted the idea of "No war, no peace" whereby he suggested they just pretend a war wasn't going on and neither surrender nor fight back. He actually managed to get Lenin the rest of the Communists behind this plan. Needless to say, it was a colossal failure and they then had to go with Lenin's original idea of "Give the Germans whatever they want so long as we can get out of this war."


And he was wrong.


Have you read Lenin's testament? He actually criticizes Trotsky pretty heavily in it. The reason Stalin, Zinoviev, and Kamenev banded together against Trotsky was because they feared Trotsky, as Commissar of War, would use the military to seize power as Napoleon once had. There was no other real reason to undermine him, at least from the perspective of Kamenev and Zinoviev. I personally think it would have been much more interesting had Trotsky used his post as Commissar of War to stage a military coup and go on a twentieth-century Napoleonic rampage through Europe to spread his "permanent revolution."


A recession, whoop de doo. We'll recover from it as the market adjusts.
A number of people have cited certain regulations as being a significant part of the problem, so we are not operating within a pure free market environment right now.


Insertion of random, meaningless buzzphrase. What exactly do you mean by putting the means of production into the hands of the majority? That doesn't seem likely to work. The majority are idiots. Anyways, the human greed you see "rampaging" in capitalism will be held in check by others who recognize that such actions are counter to their own interests. The decentralization of a market economy is one of its greatest strengths. A centralized system of socialist control such as you promote simply would be too unwieldy to accomplish anything.

What, you mean the largely anti-communist working class of the US is going to spontaneously rise up in Communist revolt? Marxists are fringe, yet their theories on how it would come into existence *require* mass popular support. That means they are going to fail.

You and your sneaky edits again. When will you learn that nothing gets past Big Brother?

Lenin was supported financially as well, and they guaranteed him safe passage to Russia during WWI. There are German memos discussing the benefits of supporting Lenin and ensuring he got back to Russia, because the Germans wanted to foment revolution in Russia so that they could shut down the eastern front. They saw him as a useful tool, and he completed the task they wanted him to do.

Hey I never said that I had chosen an easy ideology to sell

Fringe at the moment most definitely, hopefully the working class has been betrayed by the union leadership, and radical leftists too many times for these groups to be taken seriously in the coming social upheavals. That leaves either subjugation through depression at the hands of the capitalists, a return to nationalistic fervour or hopefully a major rise in the political contentiousness of the working class and another chance at socialism.

Hey what do you want

*edit* in letters fifteen feet high and in colours more multi than Josephs f*****g dream coat

So... anarchism is is "delusional and utopian" but communism ISN'T? Hmm....

Well, revolutionary Communism has already proven to be a gigantic failure (Soviet Union), though anarcho-communism on a small scale (old native american societies) has been seen to be successful.
The thing about Democratic Libertarianism is that corporations/banks can get enough power from success in the free market to taint the whole system (United States?).
Society is pretty much the only thing that can keep ANY system in check. There is no system of government that can keep balance forever by itself. It all comes down to balance of power.

Last edited by Cyanide on 05 Mar 2009, 4:37 am, edited 1 time in total.

Where is the increasing class divide! after WW2 there were major concessions given to the working classes, since the mid 60's these concessions have been whittled away. There is now a major divide between the working class and the ruling elite, the recurrent crises of capitalism HAVE been getting worse and worse. Today on the radio I heard a professor of Economics (who warned about the present crisis back in 2005) say that what we were going through was not a recession but instead was a depression that would develop to be worse than the 30'(I will get you his website later)

Religion has nowhere near the hold it did back in Marx's day, it has undergone a slight resurgence but is still a shadow of what it was in his day.

So I refute your statement that Marx got it all wrong. Present unfolding events demonstrate the opposite, Marx theorised on the effect of Fictitious Capital and he is being proven correct.

No I have already stated that I do not think communism is viable. I do not believe that humanity has the capability of functioning without a dictating state. To quote Orwell ''the majority are idiots'' I don't fully subscribe to this view but I can see enough truth in it to render communism unlikely

No. The masses have short memories, and besides that are more concerned about their own material well-being than they are about establishing a new form of government.

Current society is much more egalitarian than it was in the 1800s, and social mobility is high. A friend of mine, first-generation college student, is going to Yale. My grandfather never even went to high school, but he sent his sons to universities where they became doctors and lawyers. I have much more opportunity than my parents ever did. Social mobility, at least in the US, is pretty high. We don't have strict stratification, and the analysis I have read suggests that the divide between the working class and the so-called "elite" is largely due to differences in education and the nature of work which requires a higher degree of education in order to get better-paying jobs.


Alarmist nonsense. It's a recession, looks to be a fairly bad one, but we've seen worse. We've certainly never seen a recurrence of the 1930s.


You refute nothing. Many of Marx's predictions were simply wrong, and the economic ideas who took for granted (especially labour theory of value) are also plainly incorrect. I'm not going to be an apologist for the present system which does not match my own ideals, but I am placing blame in a different spot than you are.

We'll see. I think the coming social upheaval and austerity measures might just be severe enough.

And no I am not looking forward to it, I wish capitalism could be fair and caring but the truth is by its very nature it cannot.

Your belief that restrictions have disabled the invisible hand are scary. Australia has one of the only banking systems that are still intact, and we are going into recession only because we rely so much upon exports. Guess what? we have the most regulated banking system in the world. The idea that the markets should be totally free

I should support this because it should make my task easier, although as much as I desire socialism I fear nationalism more and that is the likely outcome, because to quote you once more ''the majority are idiots''. This does not stop me from fighting for socialism instead it is (warning cliche ahead ) strengthening my resolve

MMMmmm the last time the US government nationalised the banking system was .............?

We have never seen what is about to eventuate, why do you think the governments are running around like headless chooks.

Orwell now THIS is what I call an edit

They have not with tuners - but they shall very quickly. The current system suppresses competition, because if you buy an HP you will be struck with HP-toner. If they would standardized and no other would be allow to sell, the market could work.

But this the reason which the EU-commission is in perpetration of a directive to force a unified power supply system for mobiles in the EU.



You just seem not have to much day-by-day experience, what benefits standardisation, especially by government order can have. It allows you to switch providers of goods and services without any further trouble. The only one how force this is the government.

A study of the LSE shows that the social mobility is in highly regulated countries, like the Scandinavian ones much higher than in the free-market countries like the US:

http://www.suttontrust.com/reports/Inte ... bility.pdf