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Progressivism/Socialism/Communism; a failed Ideology

Well, I understand that coops have nothing to do with communism.

You do not seem to. As you have said they are worker controlled enterprises with the profits going to the workers instead of a capitalist owner. They are industries where the worker has ownership of the means of production.

Perhaps it might be best if you gave an explanation of what you think communism is.
 
You do not seem to. As you have said they are worker controlled enterprises with the profits going to the workers instead of a capitalist owner.

The workers are the capitalist owners. They are greedy, profit-seeking capitalists who are out for themselves. There is nothing socialist or communist about an employee-owned business competing for profits in a market economy.

Perhaps it might be best if you gave an explanation of what you think communism is.

Sure. From the Communist Manifesto (in blue, my comments in black):



In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.


...


To be a capitalist, is to have not only a purely personal, but a social status in production. Capital is a collective product, and only by the united action of many members, nay, in the last resort, only by the united action of all members of society, can it be set in motion.

Capital is therefore not only personal; it is a social power.

When, therefore, capital is converted into common property, into the property of all members of society, personal property is not thereby transformed into social property. It is only the social character of the property that is changed. It loses its class character.


The goal of a classless society is achieved when capital is converted into common property owned by all members of society. A coop is not owned by all members of society, it is owned by a small group of greedy, profit-seeking, bourgeoisie capitalists.

Marx did however allow for a small one man operation:

We Communists have been reproached with the desire of abolishing the right of personally acquiring property as the fruit of a man’s own labour, which property is alleged to be the groundwork of all personal freedom, activity and independence.

Hard-won, self-acquired, self-earned property! Do you mean the property of petty artisan and of the small peasant, a form of property that preceded the bourgeois form? There is no need to abolish that; the development of industry has to a great extent already destroyed it, and is still destroying it daily.


That would not apply to a coop.
 
The workers are the capitalist owners. They are greedy, profit-seeking capitalists who are out for themselves. There is nothing socialist or communist about an employee-owned business competing for profits in a market economy.



Sure. From the Communist Manifesto (in blue, my comments in black):



In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.


...


To be a capitalist, is to have not only a purely personal, but a social status in production. Capital is a collective product, and only by the united action of many members, nay, in the last resort, only by the united action of all members of society, can it be set in motion.

Capital is therefore not only personal; it is a social power.

When, therefore, capital is converted into common property, into the property of all members of society, personal property is not thereby transformed into social property. It is only the social character of the property that is changed. It loses its class character.


The goal of a classless society is achieved when capital is converted into common property owned by all members of society. A coop is not owned by all members of society, it is owned by a small group of greedy, profit-seeking, bourgeoisie capitalists.

Marx did however allow for a small one man operation:

We Communists have been reproached with the desire of abolishing the right of personally acquiring property as the fruit of a man’s own labour, which property is alleged to be the groundwork of all personal freedom, activity and independence.

Hard-won, self-acquired, self-earned property! Do you mean the property of petty artisan and of the small peasant, a form of property that preceded the bourgeois form? There is no need to abolish that; the development of industry has to a great extent already destroyed it, and is still destroying it daily.


That would not apply to a coop.

Of course it would apply to a coop. A coop is shared property among a society of workers.

Your mistake is in taking marxs word as gospel rather than as philosophical. Marx here speaks only of the greater picture when whole countries become communist. But there is no reason why the same reasoning cannot be reduced to the simple grass level of where it all must begin from to work at that higher level. With the workers themselves.

Coops are run on the principles of a shared society.
Again you need to read and understand where marx is coming from when he speaks. Your quotes here are specific to a reasoning based on the whole of a country becoming communist as is pointed out when you say,"The goal of a classless society". But the philosophy and practice of communism is not bound by an attempted take over of a whole country. It begins with simply workers owning the means of production.

Your also mistaken in purpose by using the communist manifesto. That is not a treatise on communist philosophy that is a handbook for violent revolution to spur the working class into revolting against the upper classes. Its main perpose is to talk about revolution rather than communist philosophy. It was designed to create a revolution in which the working class would take over a whole country.

Where as the communist philosophy itself is nothing more than a theory of economics that can be applies either to a whole country or to groups of individuals. and one factory. It is quite ridiculous of you to refer to a coop as "a small group of greedy, profit-seeking, bourgeoisie capitalists," when the theory of communism is in part a discussion of how profit is distributed among the workers as opposed to your silly notion that seeking profit is only the action of greedy self interested capitalists.

Marxs basic argument was the the capitalist bourgeoisie were unnecessary and exploitative. A coop is a means of ridding the workers of the capitalist while still retaining the economic means of profit.
 
It is a figure of speech.

If you want the more diplomatic version, I believe some people on the far left adopted concepts that make it very difficult for them to filter their ideas properly. For example, arguing that speech one considers "hateful" should be outright banned by force. A related theme is the kind of knee jerk reaction these people have of casting the problem as a matter of lacking empathy: people on the right are not confronted based on the content of their views, so much as on the presumption that not adopting left-wing views is a form of cruelty. For some people, it is a knee jerk kind of reaction. Some students criticized Ben Shapiro and Denis Prager, both practicing religious jews and staunch defenders of Israelis' right to have a state of their own, for being antisemitic... That comes from college-educated people, so they are smart enough to know this requires both of them to engage in hypocritical behavior and self-loathing, as well as the loathing of their entire families and children. Knee jerk reaction: they disagree with me, ergo they are evil and why would you engage the Devil in a serious discussion? The concept of microaggression does the same kind of thing.

My guess is that people who adhere to identity politics proper live in an echo chamber. They aren't literally lunatic or crazy, but they absolutely sound and behave like lunatics. It's exactly like listening to neo-nazis: they can only talk among themselves, so they do not exactly sound like mentally stable people. Experience, facts, and debates help filter out the really bad ideas.



Your thin line is a line shared by almost everyone who values freedom of speech. Calling for some people to be attacked or killed is manifestly not what freedom of speech is intended to protect. You do not have a right to call for the assassination of anyone.

My problem is not with some Imam who calls for the killing of infidels to be silenced. By all means, do not let people advocate for genocide. My problem concerns milder issues where conservatives are routinely being silenced. This includes everything related to affirmative action, discrimination, sexuality, sexual orientation, etc. I disagree with conservatives on many of those topics, but I think it is rather idiotic to try to pass a disagreement about ethics or policy as a matter of one side being compassionate and, the other, cruel and hateful. for example, I do not think that when one of them wants to talk over the issue of how we should manage the issue of interacting with transgender people, they are engaging in a form of violence. There is nothing in statements such as "a man cannot become a woman" which can be validly related to any suggestion that these people are second class citizens, that they should be ostracized or that they should be attacked. The right thing to do, I think, is to hash out our differences of opinion in an open discussion. As long as no one is advocating violence, or engaging in slander, it seems acceptable to me.

Ben Shapiro got that accusation for calling jews that voted for Obama not real jews. That is antisemitic and people who are jewish can be antisemitic.
Ben Shapiro’s ‘hateful’ attack on his fellow Jews

Prager i dunno what he did to get that accusation but lets just say what he says on his videos are the more “tame” of his views.

Im glad we agree on the thin line of speech.

I do not think many conservative commentators have been silenced on a majority of platforms, in many cases they have been louder than ever. I would consider calling a transgender woman a man despite all available evidence to the contrary to be a form of dehumanization that often makes someone that is in all likelihood suffering a good bit of mental distress because of how society treats them go further into thinking of suicide. That is the type of punching down that Ben Shapiro engages in frequently. Unfortunately conservative commentary has drilled into the minds of their viewers a sort of twisted pseudo Spock like demeanor.
 
If you look at facts, you can derive measures of certain things: biological sex, gender identity (what the person declares), gender expression (how the person dresses, acts and talks relative to social norms) and sexual orientation. I don't think you need me to conduct a worldwide study to realize these 4 variables are extremely correlated. Think about it just for a second. Virtually every single man and woman declares their gender to correspond to their biological constitution, enact prevailing social norms and are mostly attracted to the opposite sex. Of course, over tens of millions of people, proportionally small exceptions such as homosexuals, bisexuals and transgender people amount to very large numbers. Likewise for people who dress in gender-bending ways, so to speak. The point is obviously not that they do not exist, or that they are wrong because they happen to be outliers in a statistical sense. The point is that these 4 variables are strongly related.

I understand that you can say that there is sex as a biological fact and there is also how sex is operationalized in a social context, calling the later "gender." However, the aspects of gender that we can think about seem to be strongly tied to biology. Even if you assume that 50% of men and women are not heterosexual, you still end up with a correlation of 0.5 -- and the reality is much closer to 90%... It's like that with all those variables. I only have a problem with the idea that social facts just float in the air, detached from material reality.



I appreciate the apology. I must admit that some of my replies were not as civil as they could have been either. I also apologize for that.

The bolded has not been true for the entirety of human civilization nor across all cultures. Sexuality has varied all across different cultures from embracing homosexuality as a means of promoting close comradery among the men who fought in wars in ancient times, to rampant polygamy, to monogamy. What society has favored and does favor does not correlate with any biological necessity nor facts. It is socially constructed. Likewise, what society considers to be a boy or a girl or even a gender to begin with. Men are not biologically designed to wear suits and ties, nor is blue corresponding to boys and men pointing to a biological fact. These things are socially constructed and pervasive enough that we believe these things are the natural norm.
 
What you wish to share and what you wish to refrain from saying is not the primary concern expressed by "Dans la Lune." He wasn't referring to your personal wishes, but to your best interpretation of Christian theology.

If I am not mistaken, there are repeated injunctions in the New Testament that sins are to be forgiven through Christ. It does sound very much like an ultimatum: either accept the theological belief that Christ died on the cross for our sins or be cast into the damned. However, I don't remember enough about the scripture to be able to say if this is an interpretation, or if it is litteral -- meaning there's something literally saying that the unbelievers will be damned. That would be closer to the objection raised by "Dans la Lune."

On the other hand, if it is what the text is saying, it conflicts with a core message of Genesis. God promised Abraham that all the nations shall be blessed through him and likewise to Isaac and Jacob. It's clear from this that not everyone was to adopt the same rituals and theological beliefs (i.e., become a Jew in this instance). It's also clear from how God acted against the whole world, Sodom, Gomorrah and, later Egypt in Exodus, that the thing he cares about is how people behave. Some laws were issued only for Jews and, others, for all mankind. Being a Christian is a matter of theology (how you answer certain questions regarding the New Testament), but pleasing God is a matter of behavior. Of all the laws listed in the first five books, only the command to not covet concerns a sin of thought. What you actually do of your own accord is therefore of paramount importance as it should, insofar as God is indeed just. This accords with my impression that either what the Bible says is relevant to all of humankind, or it is irrelevant.

Moreover, notice that God's existence is never questioned. It is always assumed. The problem of someone who might doubt that God exists doesn't seem to be a concern. Faith and belief are mentioned in scripture, but in most instances, I can call to memory, it makes no sense to read this in the modern sense of "belief that God exists." It always makes sense to read it as "having trust in God." When something is important, you repeat it. Either the idea of a godless universe was thought to be so silly that it was not worth addressing, but that raises a problem for anyone who is intellectually honest and believes the Bible was divinely revealed: manifestly, many very smart people do not find the question so easy to answer. Or, that wasn't the important part of the book.

To round up this thought, I like how Jordan Peterson answered this question. His first answer was that he acts as though God is real. His second answer is that if someone was truly convinced of the truth of biblical scripture, they should be deeply concerned not to step out of line. So much so that it would take great courage to claim they believe in God, lest God smites them on sight for laying claims to beliefs to which they do not fully commit. There is yet another way in which you can understand what believing in God means, one which I peculiarly enjoy as an economist: what you believe is what you actually do. The rest is hot air.

I have been exposed to quite a bit of theological and practical thoughts about Islam lately. In many ways, there is not much difference between the three in terms of obedience to God and to the personal goals of a good follower. At the core of the three religions is faith, a belief in the goodness of man, a desire to be as good a person as one can, a path towards redemption and forgiveness and a desire to live with others in peace even if they are not followers. What corrupts these messages is the ego, the pride, the greed and the ambition of some who portray themselves as Jews, Christians or Muslims but forget the duty to actually be a good follower.
 
The workers are the capitalist owners. They are greedy, profit-seeking capitalists who are out for themselves.
These "capitalist owners" are the captains of industry and the movers and shakers of progress that lifted western civilization from dark age monarchy to freedom and democracy.

They're the builders of great ships, factories, skyscrapers, cities, and nations, which created jobs that built great economies and a prosperous middle class and the fattest poor people in the world.

They're the heroes and visionaries that Ian Rand wrote about in her novels that brought about great advancement in science, medicine, invention, and a new awakining of humanity.

There is nothing socialist or communist about an employee-owned business competing for profits
There's no incentives for socialists/communists to compete in the confines of their own economy; except maybe the threat of an ever-looming Big Brother.

in a market economy.
A "market economy" is inherently a free economy which is non-existent in a socialist/communist economy.

Sure. From the Communist Manifesto (in blue, my comments in black):

In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.
Not to mention "abolition of freedom" which is why disarming the proletarian class is among their first acts.
...

To be a capitalist, is to have not only a purely personal, but a social status in production. Capital is a collective product, and only by the united action of many members, nay, in the last resort, only by the united action of all members of society, can it be set in motion.

Capital is therefore not only personal; it is a social power.

When, therefore, capital is converted into common property, into the property of all members of society, personal property is not thereby transformed into social property. It is only the social character of the property that is changed. It loses its class character.
The proletarian class will receive very little "capital" and absolutely no "power".

The lions share of wealth and power is invariably restricted to the Party Elites at the peak of the pyramid.

The goal of a classless society is achieved when capital is converted into common property owned by all members of society. A coop is not owned by all members of society, it is owned by a small group of greedy, profit-seeking, bourgeoisie capitalists.
A "coop" is owned by the group of people that envisioned, built, and payed for it.

The "classless society" you long for actually has two classes; the haves(party elites) and the have-nots.(proletarians)

Marx did however allow for a small one man operation:
Well wasn't that sweet of Karl Marx to "allow a small one man operation".

But of course if he should grow and expand his business; big brother will come take it away.

And if he's lucky, they just might give him a job...bless their communist hearts.

We Communists have been reproached with the desire of abolishing the right of personally acquiring property as the fruit of a man’s own labour, which property is alleged to be the groundwork of all personal freedom, activity and independence.

Hard-won, self-acquired, self-earned property! Do you mean the property of petty artisan and of the small peasant, a form of property that preceded the bourgeois form? There is no need to abolish that; the development of industry has to a great extent already destroyed it, and is still destroying it daily.


That would not apply to a coop.
You should get out in the world and work to build your own Utopia rather than hoping for Big Brother to come and take somebody else's to give to you.
 
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