Marxism

so to summarize:
Taxes for things that Faith doesn't agree with = stealing
Taxes for things that Faith does agree with = not stealing

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It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds
soon I discovered that this rock thing was true
Jerry Lee Lewis was the devil
Jesus was an architect previous to his career as a prophet
All of a sudden i found myself in love with the world
And so there was only one thing I could do
Was ding a ding dang my dang along ling long - Jesus Built my Hotrod Ministry
Live every week like it's Shark Week! - Tracey Jordan
Just a monkey in a long line of kings. - Matthew Good
If "elitist" just means "not the dumbest motherfucker in the room", I'll be an elitist! - Get Your War On
*not an actual doctor

But we're fallen creatures.Given our inherent greed, that we should try to take into account when deciding policy, we would find people don't pay what they don't need to pay. As such the taxes would either be so low that there isn't enough money to pay for roads, military, police, schools etc and the only way to fund them would be privately - which would mean fees, subscriptions, levies, tolls, more insurance, etc. So those rich greedy people profit further by extracting even more money from the people that actually build and maintain the roads, police the streets, care for the sick, defend the nation and educate the kids.
Or
The poor can't afford the taxes and starve.The materials to build a clock: 50.
Labour hours to build a clock: 10 hours.
Market will pay for completed clock: 500I give you 50 of materials to build a clock, and let you use my clock building workshop. The value you have added to the materials using my workshop and your labour is 450. What is a fair way to distribute that money?In a capitalist system, the person who owns the workshop and bought the materials decides how to split the money. Because of the 'greed' problem this means they will give the clock maker the least amount of money they possibly can do while retaining their services. So he might give 50 to the clockmaker and therefore makes 400 profit.Marx simply suggested a system that got rid of the struggle between workers wanting to sell the labour for as much as they could and the factory owners who wanted to buy it as cheaply as possible. This is a struggle in favour of the factory owners, purely because the demand to work is always high, and the factory owner is incentivised to employ as few people as possible so supply is ever constrained.The system was that the people that do the work also control the means of production. They are the workers and the factory owners at the same time and they decide communally how to distribute it.The Communist manifesto calls for and to end profiting from the work of others - the exact thing people are often accusing the poor of doing 'scrounging welfare' - but an argument really can be made that people that get paid millions and millions every year are getting some of that wage because they bought labour from someone at below its true value because the person selling their labour wasn't in a position with a great deal of choice.There are many problems with pure Marxist Communism and its handling of the human social problem, especially living in a nation that doesn't do much manufacturing - but it doesn't ignore greed...it was the greed of one group of people who were exploiting another group for every penny they could that inspired it.The people they are purchasing labour from are in a bit of a bind. They need to eat but they don't own any land, and what land they have access to is not sufficient to provide a reliable food source. So in order to pay their landlords for the privilege of having a place to live, the farmers for the privilege of eating and all the other sundry essentials like water, possibly power etc. A person needs the job and can't haggle overlong for 'fair' wages because someone who is more desperate for any money at all will take your place.If this coercion is the best system you can think of - then you're welcome to live in the 19th Century as a wage earner. With minimum wages, and other healthcare options - life is a lot more reliable and comfortable. Without government intervention - the evidence shows capitalist entities will pay the workers pittance...whatever is required to keep them functioning as workers. Which is basically slave labour where the slave gets the privelage of transporting the their own maintenance costs to somebody else.Can we do better? I hope so.

Oops made the mistake of looking back in when I'm trying to work. These are the SOME things I've been saying all along must be paid for by taxes. They are essential to running the society that benefits us all. I have NO objection to taxes for those purposes. I've ALSO tried to be clear that I think capitalism needs regulation and restraints for exactly the reasons you are talking about. You need laws and regulation, as I said. When I said freedom I didn't mean unbridled selfishness, and I did say the freedom stops where others are harmed, which will happen in this situation if completely unrestrained. I have no problem with organizing businesses on this principle wherever you can do it. No problem. But forcing people to shut down their busiensses to make everyone submit to this system, no. If it really works and does what it's supposed to do, it will capture people's interest and increase through its own success and popularity. If it doesn't work and you force it on society you're going to get bureaucratized inefficiency and no solution to poverty. But this is stupid. If someone has a farm or a buisness and hires workers the whole point is to make a profit or he wouldn't do it at all and nothing would ever get done and society would rot. Which did happen in Russia. I'm all for a fair wage standard. Regulation. Sheesh, I really don't know what you think I'm saying. And when the "proletariat" took power they were even more brutal and greedy than the czars. I'm objecting to this silly idea that greed is THE problem in a political system or a class of people, which Marx seems to have promoted, so I'm answering that greed is endemic to the human race for pete's sake. Take it into account, regulate it, but don't pretend workers are any more generous and thoughtful than the factory owner. You are describing a situation of injustice that is long since past, Modulous, and I don't disagree with you that it was reality and that it needed redressing and that unfettered greed and basic inhumanity was certainly the problem. Dickens did a scary job of showing how all that played out in England, Tolstoy did it for Russia, in America we had abolitionists and I'm not sure who stands out for defending the workers. But NOW I'm objecting to this ideological tyranny that is "solving" the problem by trying to make us all puppets and slaves of the government and force us to agree with views we hate and to a bogus idea of "giving" which is not giving. See above. Government intervention is necessary in the form of regulation and restraint. Government intervention in the sense of driving business owners out of business by burdening them with more costs than they can meet, or by requiring the communist form of ownership of production -- which ends up meaning the government owns it, not the workers -- and all that, is NOT THE SOLUTION. For heavens' sake we've DONE better for a hundred years already, on both sides of the Atlantic. The problem NOW is that the ideological hatred of capitalism and wealth and rich people as such, and false ideas of "freedom" taken out of the original context of western civilization and given a Marxist spin, are swinging the pendulum to ANOTHER form of injustice. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

You do not know your subject matter. Wrong. This is not Communism this is Fascism

quote:

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Under fascism, citizens retain the responsibilities of owning property, without the freedom to act and without any of the advantages of ownership.

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Source

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a governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism.

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SourceAgain i will stress what has been pointed out before. China, the USSR, North Korea, Cuba, the eastern bloc nations, were not communist. They were not Marxist.The features you keep claiming is Marxist and Communist are in actuality Fascist. Examples please.

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Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts

So communism naturally tends to fascism, so what else is new?I have to leave again. See ya later.

As others have attempted to do here, Faith, I am still looking for an answer to what your alternative is to socialism. When I asked you you said, So making people pay money is stealing, by your definition. And you admit yourself that few people are willing to do it voluntarily, certainly not to the extent that they would be compelled to in a proportional tax system. Surely this should lead to the conclusion that whether you agree with taxes or not, they are necessary in order for society to function. Unless you can come up with something better than I don't see the point of going on about government "stealing" from the rich. I wonder if you feel the same about looking after the environment, though that of course is a different topic. Should people be given their freedom without government interference to litter, pollute the waterways and the air, not bother to recycle if they don't want to, and not give a damn about the consequences for others?There are plenty of people in the world who are concerned about the poor, not just Christians. (One of the Five Pillars of Islam is alms-giving, which is mandatory.) This is lovely, but it's not enough to hold up an entire society. Try imagining, as others here have asked you to, what things would be like if people didn't have to pay taxes. And if they gave to whomever they wanted to. How would we guarantee that people will receive their basic human rights? Who's going to maintain the roads and the schools, the police and the firefighters, in inner cities where only the poor and disadvantaged live? Who's going to make sure that if people are out of a job, there's a safety net so that they don't end up begging on the streets? It won't happen Faith. You'd have complete social disintegration. You might try looking up old families that have passed money down the generations. They come from all political walks of life. We have them here in the UK but they are in the USA as well. Where did you get this idea that every rich American started out as an "ordinary person"? Maybe you also subscribe to the old American dream that you can have whatever you want as long as you pull yourself up by your bootstraps and keep your nose to the grindstone? What else would you suggest? Someone has to decide where the taxes go. You can debate about styles of government but some group in charge is going to have to apportion the tax money. Government-funded healthcare here ensures that anyone can receive the care that they need regardless of ability to pay or insurance policy details. After the new legislation is in force in the USA there will still be millions with substandard or no health insurance. Ah, the trickle-down theory beloved of Ronald Reagan. Ask how many people who lived through that, if they truly believe that the whole of American society benefitted from lower taxes on the rich. (I grew up there in the 80s; I'm sure you know what my own answer would be.) This sounds like a non-sequitur to me. Paying taxes like everyone else is what they should do.If you'd rather that they decided how the money was spent, let's sit and watch someone who loves doggies give all their millions to animal shelters while human beings are fending for themselves on the streets. At least the poor doggies will have homes. Try asking any British person what they think the originally Tory (Conservative) policy of privatisation has been doing to our society for the past 30 years or so. Public transport is more expensive but it doesn't cover many of the areas it used to because it is profit-driven. Hospitals, schools, part of the London Underground and other public areas built with private funding will be paying debts for years and charging the public in order to get the money to do so. To add a slice of personal experience, I am doing substitute teaching. This used to be managed by the local councils, who sent teachers to where they were needed. At some point this was privatised, meaning each school can call any of dozens of different agencies. It's impossible for a substitute teacher to know which agencies every school uses, let alone belong to all of the agencies that cover schools in one area, and each agency pays different amounts depending on their agreements with schools. It's great for schools who want to shop around but awfully crappy for those of us trying to make some money as substitute teachers. The agencies win and we lose; that's capitalism for you. Of course I know where it came from. And you have so far completely failed to prove that any other kind of system would be able to provide for people's human rights. Yet I can think of many examples where this is clearly not the case. It's not hard to think of people I know who work in companies where they are not allowed sick days without losing a day's pay; where they are made to work for months with no time off; where they are not allowed to go to the toilet when they need to; where they are given impossible workloads and deadlines by bosses who assign these without having a clue about the logistics yet hold people to account. These same bosses are the ones who get the bonuses, the company cars, the free "team building" holidays, and the top-salaried positions. There is no logical way you could claim that they deserve what they have because they worked harder than the others who work under them. Look at the people who run factories and the situation is often exaggerated further. Why do you think the union movement began with them? So what do you think is wrong with this extrapolation from Theodoric's source: Horowitz praises the "political incorrectness" of a man who says that whites are more law-abiding and intelligent than blacks, and "immigrants are a slimy mass of brown glop."? You want us to listen to what this guy has got to say. It sounds to me like both of them would be at home in the British National Party.

no fascism is almost the opposite of Communism .... I would suggest NOT getting your definitions off of Glen Beck's retarded Chalk Board

What is the difference? How is saving you from a fire or keeping a rapist or a murderer off the street not taking care of you? How is it different from helping you recover from a disease?

Voluntary. Taken. Stealing. Coercion. These are the terms you have been using up until now. Ahhhhhh. So taxes are not "stealing" then? Requiring people to contribute whether they choose to or not is not "coercion" then? So actually we all agree that "some things must be paid for by taxes". The question then becomes - What things?I would say high quality public education and health are two things that it is necessary to provide for all if a productive and socially just society is to be achieved. A society where opportunity is not to be almost entirely limited by ones social origins but is instead reliant upon ones talents, abilities and willingness to work. Additionally I would argue that it ultimately benefits all in society to have a healthy and educated workforce and population.

In THEORY communism is not fascism. In REALITY that is what it tends to become.I have never even heard Glenn Beck except on the occasional You Tube clip someone sends me.

I'm inclined to agree that attempting to revolutionise the economy is almost certainly doomed to failure. Stupid? Oh, I see what you did. It's not saying one shouldn't profit at all. That's stupid. It's saying that if your farmer got people to help with the business, he should pay them based on the value they added to his seeds/field/equipment/time etc by sewing, tending, and harvesting it.This is in contrast to the worker doing all the labour and the farm owner reaping all the value of their work, giving them in return the minimum they possibly can. I'm talking about fair from a Marxist point of view. Which would be related to the amount of value they added to the company's product. What I'm saying is that Marx's ideas do take greed into account. It is about the struggle that arises when the greed of the workers conflicts with the greed of the factory owner. It is about one proposed solution: make the workers also the owners. The situation I was describing was the situation that Marx was criticizing and attempting to solve.If you think it is possible to become puppets to your government - that might be true in some sense, but technically the government of America is The People, so if you feel like a puppet - blame the idiots around you!Where you went off the rails a bit there was the 'force us to agree with views we hate'. How would this work? Are you suggesting freedom of speech is being curtailed in some way? And a 'bogus idea of "giving" which is not giving'? I agree that state ownership is very probably a Bad Idea.Just observing that the current system, even with regulations and the like, works in a way which could be construed as unfair. Workers very rarely get their real value. In the present system the difference in true value and paid value is pocketed by the company, and therefore the owners of said company. I think when people put a load of work into something and realize that some amount of that work is to pay for somebody's expensive car and three month cruise rather than, to pay their bills, feed their kids or buy themselves a car that was built this decade - they do tend to get a bit bitter. Especially if it turns out that despite all the hard work they were doing the company failed and yet the people at the top still seem to end up wealthy...Who is the target of the injustice, exactly?

I have no reason to believe ANYTHING about that remark about Horowitz. Produce the original sources please. Why do you want to condemn a man you know nothing about based on one brief insinuation from who knows where? I've read a LOT of Horowitz and NOTHING he says is remotely consistent with that quote.

TAKING CARE OF means supplying basic means of existence. Good grief man. Restraining crime is what government IS supposed to do.

Taxes to run the society are not stealing. Taxes to support other human beings because they cannot support themselves are what is stealing. Is this REALLY that hard to get?Christians object to what their children are exposed to in public education and don't want to support it. And when they educate their own children at home or put them in private Christian schools they excel above the public school products.

except they are defined at two different parts of the political spectrum communism is damn near opposite of fascism.... Just because both have lead to wide spread oppression doesn't mean they are the same thing. You need to understand that you cannot lump Nazis , Socialists and Communists as the same thing because every one of these words has a completely different meaning. If you go far enough to the left you're communist if you go far enough to the right you're a fascist. There is no theory about it.YOU'RE WRONGEdited by DC85, : No reason given.Edited by DC85, : No reason given.