a new promise...

[Peter Kropotkin]

as I continue my readings into the existentialism vs Marxism debate,
that decades long debate of the mid 20th century... I, as is my case,
try to look at the big picture...and then I try to bring in the other
20th century ism, capitalism... I am looking at all three in terms
of what they offered and what future did they offer us...

capitalism as I have often pointed out, has nothing to do with
offering us a future... you just make money and that is the entirety
of capitalism future...you get to retire from making money
and that is all that happens... the only point of existence in
capitalism is to make money... it has no other goal or purpose....

and what about existentialism? what is it goal or purpose?
the problem with existentialism is its negative viewpoint...
its take on existence is negative.... it deals with angst, guilt,
and despair, the terror of existence...the crushing weight
of freedom....all of these are prominent factors in existentialism...
and there is no joy or love or happiness in existentialism...
existentialism is about the burden of existence... not the joy of
existence...and there is no future in existentialism...
just more of the same, the burden of existence is just
as strong in existentialism as it is in capitalism...

and what of Marxism? what do we see here...
we also see the burden of existence being prominent in Marxism...
the weight of existence in terms of history and dialectical materialism...
that one cannot escape the burdens of history and its ongoing march
toward completion... Marxism has no problems, along with capitalism,
to destroy anyone who isn't a firm believer...keeping ''one's nose
to the grindstone'' is both a capitalistic and a communistic theme...
working for the betterment of the system.. and our "happiness"
and point of existence is the system, not to any gains we might make
individually...for any individual gains we might make, are in the name
of the system, capitalism and communism...and not about us...

what is needed is to create a system that has a purpose, and that
purpose actually includes us, as human beings...and here is where
communism actually has a say in the final purpose or goal of existence...
Marx is quite clear about this.. that the point of the movement of
history is to come to the final stage of history which is the creation
of the worker state...but of course, Marx is wrong here...
even if, and that is a big IF, that we create the worker state,
that won't be the final stage of history....that will simple be
just another stage of history... with the last stage being the end
of human beings.. and then history stops for us.. but in Marxism
defense, at least it has a purpose, an ending or a goal to pursue
we don't see that in existentialism or capitalism... in Marxism,
we at least have a goal to pursue.. even if it is the wrong goal,
it is something to shoot for, to hope for, perhaps even to die for...
but existentialism and capitalism doesn't have a goal or a purpose...
it just keep on going until there are no more resources and the war
of resources begin and then, perhaps we will destroy the world...
and all because of the major flaw in capitalism.. that greed,
that individual greed drives us to seek out money and resources,
regardless of what impact that greed brings us..
we see that impact in the limitation of resources we see today..
and we will see that impact growing larger and larger..
our great numbers of human beings is forcing us to use more and more resources,
which includes the animals and plants and forest of the world...

scientists say that we are engaged in the 6th great extinction event today...
which is driven by our greed and pursuit of money.. and there is no looking
beyond our present day to see what the result of all that greed will bring us...
all that greed to be wealthy has brought us, beyond the 6th great extinction
event, the reduction of resources, for example we can see that water has
become a commodity that is lacking in the world today... that lack of
water will become worse as time goes by and soon, soon, wars will
be fought to gain water and the resources wars will begin...

the fact is that large parts of the world will no longer be habitable due
to global warming... Phoenix Arizona recently had 30 days of over 110 degrees...
My daughter lives there and she said it was brutal and that is what is going
to happen all over the south.. it will spread to, and is already hitting in
states like Texas, New Mexico, Florida, Louisiana... and it will get worse
in already hot places like Mexico, the Caribbean, large parts of Africa,
and Asia...in many ways, water is the most valuable resource we have....
and the one that is the hardest to get...and soon, wars will be fought to
get that resource...

capitalism's greed has also brought us to the loss of other resources like
forest/tree's, minerals, animals, and even land.... for most land is unusable
for human beings... civilization must be built where there are resources,
like water, power, wood, seaports, to name a few aspects of civilization
that must be present to allow us to build cities....

and what is the promise of capitalism? what does it promise us if we
try to achieve its goals? a desolate society that has no resources and
no ability to exist...with only wars available to us to get those
resources we need, that is the future of capitalism... its promise...

so of the three ism's of the 20th century, only Marxism has a viable
future... and even that is a promise that isn't really much of a promise...

and what of the religious promise of the future? what promises comes
with religions? to somehow escape the present... to join god in
some far off, not really known place and live forever...
the idea of Christianity is to be at the right hand of god forever...
to seek the next world and ignore/deny this one..... to sit at
the right hand of god.... dam, that sounds like an eternal nightmare
to me..... that is not a future worth living for or dying for...
the false promise of eternal life isn't worth sacrificing the current world...

just as the false promise of capitalism, work hard and you will get rich
and the false promise of communism, work hard and you will get to
its own version of heaven, the worker state... are empty promises...
with no validity to back them up...what is needed is a goal, a purpose
worth seeking, worth spending our lives seeking out... not the false
promise of wealth, which solves nothing, and not the false promise
of heaven, which is not worth reaching for, but a goal worth seeking
in this life and worth seeking out all our lives...

at least communism promise includes all people instead of the few lucky
ones of capitalism...but the hope offered in all three ism's isn't worth
seeking out or spending a life pursuing...so what is needed?

basically we need a new hope...a new promise of what it means
to be human... what ideal can we create that becomes worth
the effort of existence?

Kropotkin

[Iwannaplato]

Civilization is destroying nature. I don't see in particular why capitalism gets the blame. Other formats have been tried and they are hardly ecologically friendly systems.

[Peter Kropotkin]

so if we remove the false promise of the ISM'S, then what is left?

we are born, with no choice, and we die, again, not by choice...
and if the path of being human lays, as Nietzsche suggested,
with us going from animal to animal/human to becoming fully human,
then the choices we have and we have a couple of choices, can go like this....

One, while we live, we choose to seek out our possibilities...
we become what is possible for us.... if by talent and hard work,
it is possible for me to be a great runner, that is my possibility..
to possible break the world record for the 1500, for example...
when I ran cross-country and track, my choice wasn't to reach that
record breaking... I just wasn't that good... it wasn't possible for me to
become anything more than the best possible runner I could be,
to reach my own personal best and then go beyond that... my best time
for the mile was about 4:50... not very good.. but for me to reach my
possibilities, I tried to reach for 4:49 or even 4:48... failed, but I tried very
hard to reach these times...for that was possible for me... the 4:00 mile
was not a possibility for me.. remember I wasn't a very good runner...

and that is the hope.. to reach our possibilities in our chosen field of
endeavor... to reach my artistic possibility or my writing possibility...
to become what was possible for me...today, I am old... and I can't
run anymore or climb mountains like I did before, they are no longer
possibilities for me...and the thing about growing old is that ones
possibilities shrink... what is possible for me today, is far less than
what was possible for me 20 years ago.. that is why its important
to seek out what is ones possibilities while still being young..
as we age, what is possible for us begins to shrink and with
every passing day/year, what is possible, become less and less
possible for me....I can hope for, to seek out what is possible for
me today is to become something like a writer or a thinker or
as I have chosen, to become a great philosopher... that is still
possible for me...and in seeking out these possibilities, I can
still work and still be a "productive human being", a productive
"citizen"

in other words, I can still engage in the larger story of the society/
state while I seek out what is personally possible for me....
but what is needed, is a far better work/personal life equation...
we don't need to spend our entire life, working to make money...
we can spend some time becoming who we are....so one
possibility is to be able to take off some time.. to take a
year or two off, paid and with no penalties... to partake in
this becoming... in seeking out our possibilities...

and what does that leave us? well, in my case, I have worked
for over 45 years... a year or two off, won't hurt my overall
slaving for the state and society for over 4 decades... I have more
than paid the price of our modern day slavery... my body is damaged,
my soul crushed... what more is needed of me?
the reason old people retire is that they can't work anymore... and I am
close, very close to that point... and that shouldn't be the reason to retire...
because you can't work anymore....once again, I seek out what is positive
and of purpose... retirement shouldn't be of working until you can't anymore,
but retirement should be that I have chosen to stop working to
pursue what is important to me... to seek out my possibilities before
it become too late.... and I have no more possibilities left to me...
and that day is fast coming toward me...all that is possible, all that left for
me is to die... this is the stage that my mom is in right now.. nothing left
for her but to die... she is 88... and I don't want to end up that way...
and you shouldn't either...

so what should we be pursuing? what goals are we working for?
what hope should we have at our age? those are the real questions
of existence.. not how much money did I make over my lifetime,
or how long will my money last during retirement?

but what is possible for me to reach, at this present age, in my
current state? that should be the goal/purpose of existence...

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

Civilization is destroying nature. I don't see in particular why capitalism gets the blame. Other formats have been tried and they are hardly ecologically friendly systems.

K: I can't help it that you are blind to the various failures of
capitalism... just another failure is the ecological damage
that capitalism has done to the world... and it isn't that hard
to see...

Kropotkin

[Iwannaplato]

Civilization is destroying nature. I don't see in particular why capitalism gets the blame. Other formats have been tried and they are hardly ecologically friendly systems.

K: I can't help it that you are blind to the various failures of
capitalism... just another failure is the ecological damage
that capitalism has done to the world... and it isn't that hard
to see...

Kropotkin

Nowhere in what I wrote did I deny the failures of capitalism. Did you not see 'in particular'? Did you not see 'other formats' - such as the various communisms, I'll now add since it seems you didn't understand - 'have hardly been ecologically friendly'?

I mean, you quoted me. That's all right there. Nowhere does it say capitalism hasn't had failures. I mean, for fucks sake I'm not pro capitalism.

What leads you to think Marxism protects the planet? I'm sure some Marxist communes have managed nicely, but is there any large scale civilization of any economic system that hasn't been destructive the environment on a par with capitalism?

They've all got their dark satanic mills.

Why don't you stick your insults way up there if you can't read.

[Peter Kropotkin]

Civilization is destroying nature. I don't see in particular why capitalism gets the blame. Other formats have been tried and they are hardly ecologically friendly systems.

K: I can't help it that you are blind to the various failures of
capitalism... just another failure is the ecological damage
that capitalism has done to the world... and it isn't that hard
to see...

Kropotkin

Nowhere in what I wrote did I deny the failures of capitalism. Did you not see 'in particular'? Did you not see 'other formats' - such as the various communisms, I'll now add since it seems you didn't understand - 'have hardly been ecologically friendly'?

I mean, you quoted me. That's all right there. Nowhere does it say capitalism hasn't had failures. I mean, for fucks sake I'm not pro capitalism.

What leads you to think Marxism protects the planet? I'm sure some Marxist communes have managed nicely, but is there any large scale civilization of any economic system that hasn't been destructive the environment on a par with capitalism?

They've all got their dark satanic mills.

Why don't you stick your insults way up there if you can't read.

K: and I have attacked Marxism in several different ways, in several different posts
and in one specific thread.. and even in this thread, I have attacked Marxism..
try again...

Kropotkin

[Iwannaplato]

K: and I have attacked Marxism in several different ways, in several different posts
and in one specific thread.. and even in this thread, I have attacked Marxism..
try again...

Yes, I've noticed that. I didn't say, did I????, that you have no criticisms of Marxism.
But you said....

so of the three ism's of the 20th century, only Marxism has a viable
future... and even that is a promise that isn't really much of a promise...

And I am wondering why? What is capitalism getting blamed for destroying the planet while whatever misgivings you might have about Marxism you said...

so of the three ism's of the 20th century, only Marxism has a viable
future... and even that is a promise that isn't really much of a promise...

I don't think it's really possible to blame existentialism for the destruction of nature. But both Marxist regimes and capitalist ones have been unbelievably destructive. AS have fascist/autocratic with some facets of Western democracy also.

Civilization is destroying things. I can't see any historical pattern that would lead on to conclude that it leads to less destruction of the planet.

[Peter Kropotkin]

K: and I have attacked Marxism in several different ways, in several different posts
and in one specific thread.. and even in this thread, I have attacked Marxism..
try again...

Yes, I've noticed that. I didn't say, did I????, that you have no criticisms of Marxism.
But you said....

so of the three ism's of the 20th century, only Marxism has a viable
future... and even that is a promise that isn't really much of a promise...

And I am wondering why? What is capitalism getting blamed for destroying the planet while whatever misgivings you might have about Marxism you said...

so of the three ism's of the 20th century, only Marxism has a viable
future... and even that is a promise that isn't really much of a promise...

I don't think it's really possible to blame existentialism for the destruction of nature. But both Marxist regimes and capitalist ones have been unbelievably destructive. AS have fascist/autocratic with some facets of Western democracy also.

Civilization is destroying things. I can't see any historical pattern that would lead on to conclude that it leads to less destruction of the planet.

K: a couple of things, and then off to work I go...
communism, Marxism has been declared to be dead..
why beat a dead horse? whereas capitalism is still alive
and kicking.. thus we attack what is alive, not dead...

and the blanket statement that ''civilizations are destroying
the environment'' is seriously misleading for the simple reason
that "civilizations" have isms... that is, in part, what makes
a civilizations, the isms that a civilization holds to and runs
it society by.. Rome was a civilization, in part, by its ism's that
Romans used to maintain its civilization...
and your continued defense of capitalism is noted....
but you say, you are not a ''friend'' of capitalism...
ok, prove it by attacking capitalism...
what are the faults of capitalism?

I have, on several occasions attack both capitalism and communism/Marxism..
do the same...

Kropotkin

[Alexis Jacobi]

Capitalism as I have often pointed out, has nothing to do with offering us a future... you just make money and that is the entirety of capitalism future...you get to retire from making money and that is all that happens... the only point of existence in capitalism is to make money... it has no other goal or purpose....

If ever you spend time in those places where really poor people live and try to survive, I assert that your (I think ridiculous and wrongheaded indeed crackbrained) assertions will change, and quickly.

Capitalism, for the poor, means getting a certain quantity of money (by gift or loan or through saving) and investing that money in an enterprise.

Take for example a couple, a family, that invests in a small hot-dog cart. Maybe the woman did not work and the man did day labor. It might have taken a couple of years of saving, or savings combined with a loan, but that small business then enables them to make more money and then, perhaps, by a second cart. If it is managed correctly that enterprise can be, and often is, the beginning of gaining more of a base in an economy, of then being able to send kids to trade-school or university and for the family unit to advance. And the hot-dog carts and the money earned could then evolve into having a locale or a small restaurant. It could be a platform that allows them to buy their own home or apartment.

I know people who have done and are doing exactly this.

To say that the scenario I have described, and witness with my own eyes every day, does not *offer a future* could only be said by someone with no real experience in the real world.

Money and economic strength is the very basis of more advanced cultural achievement. First you need economy, then you can do other things such as read more widely, or take night classes in subjects like literature or philosophy. Again I know of people who have done just that.

I also know people who have come from ultra-poor roots and who have over the course of their lives been able to create economy. And when older they can retire, or assign the business to their kids, and live out their days in relative comfort.

But if there is no ECONOMY there can be none of that.

Economy does not spout out of the ground. It has to be worked for. And I have described how economy is constructed with a simple picture.

To say that creating an economy, advancing, building wealth, has no other purpose is erroneous. It is the basis of being able to have other purposes.

[Alexis Jacobi]

and what does that leave us? well, in my case, I have worked
for over 45 years... a year or two off, won't hurt my overall
slaving for the state and society for over 4 decades... I have more
than paid the price of our modern day slavery... my body is damaged,
my soul crushed... what more is needed of me?
the reason old people retire is that they can't work anymore... and I am
close, very close to that point... and that shouldn't be the reason to retire...
because you can't work anymore....once again, I seek out what is positive
and of purpose... retirement shouldn't be of working until you can't anymore,
but retirement should be that I have chosen to stop working to
pursue what is important to me... to seek out my possibilities before
it become too late.... and I have no more possibilities left to me...
and that day is fast coming toward me...all that is possible, all that left for
me is to die... this is the stage that my mom is in right now.. nothing left
for her but to die... she is 88... and I don't want to end up that way...
and you shouldn't either...

A great deal would depend, and in your case most certainly does depend, on how you managed the money that you did make. Here is an anecdote. I have friends in the States who worked for 25 years (they are in their 50s now) but who did not manage their money well. They got money, and a good deal of it -- they both worked -- but they did not save and they did not invest.

These are odd declarations but they reveal a lot:

slaving for the state and society for over 4 decades

I know people who are *wage slaves* (that is what you mean really) who yet buy their homes, send their kids to school, and save for investment and retirement. But the phrasing slaving for the state and society is a strange way to put it. What would you have worked for if there were no state and no society? State and society gave you a platform to live within.

Possibly the need would have been to have better managed the income you did have. I know many people who did not understand money-management and frittered away their income.

my body is damaged, my soul crushed

How did your body get damaged? Who or what *crushed your soul*? I recognize that hard manual labor can be bad for the body. But even in this, and with the knowledge available today, a working man can take care of his body in ways that in former times were unknown.

But I am more curious about who crushed your soul?

retirement shouldn't be of working until you can't anymore

That is true. Retirement should be planned. And one should have spent all of one's working life making those plans.

[Iwannaplato]

K: a couple of things, and then off to work I go...
communism, Marxism has been declared to be dead..
why beat a dead horse? whereas capitalism is still alive
and kicking.. thus we attack what is alive, not dead...

Well, you said you have been attacking Marxism in a previous post so why are you beating it? You say this again later that you have at the end of the post I am responding to here. You attacked it. So, you did it. Just to point out an obvious contradiction.

But here the issue is that you thought Marxism offered hope. I don't know what that's based on. The nations that tried to enact Marxism have had less money to turn the planet into garbage, but they also don't have to even pretend to be ecological. Not with any real energy anyway.

and the blanket statement that ''civilizations are destroying
the environment'' is seriously misleading for the simple reason
that "civilizations" have isms... that is, in part, what makes
a civilizations, the isms that a civilization holds to and runs
it society by..

Yes, they have isms plural. But regardless of which isms rise to the top or what mix isms, they turn the earth into garbage. They may manage to stop doing this. But that's what they've been doing.

Rome was a civilization, in part, by its ism's that
Romans used to maintain its civilization...
and your continued defense of capitalism is noted....

Seriously, you're being an idiot. I didn't defend capitalism.

but you say, you are not a ''friend'' of capitalism...
ok, prove it by attacking capitalism...
what are the faults of capitalism?

You're very entitled. You think you get to accuse me of defending capitalism when I haven't, but somehow I have the onus to attack capitalism.

OK. I'll do it anyway even though your being a dick who contradicts himself and can't admit every anything.

There are a variety of capitalisms, but let's take the current one in the US.
Corporate and Wall St. influence on elections make the US a defacto oligarchy. It is not a democracy (or a republic). To get elected you must either be approved by Finance or be a billionaire.
Corporations have revolving door relationships with governmental oversight. They use money (future jobs for example) to undermine regulatory bodies that might stop them from polluting, for marketing dangerous products, from developing financial tricks like derivatives and other utterly non-productive processes that led for example to the 2008 crash that taxpayers and pension funds and regular people had to fix.
Capitalism honestly tells you in its name who is for: those with capital. There is a huge focus on making money without labor. Interest, investments, including investments that are negative and let's not leave out the banks: banks loan you money. Did you know they create in that moment the money they lend you. The fact that they have loaned you money allows them to invest money that they didn't have before the loan payment was made to you and make money off this hallucinated money. It's like if I loaned you 500 bucks and now I could invest 500 bucks that I didn't have before. They make the money out of nothing but if you default on your loans, they get to take your real stuff: house, car, whatever. People don't believe me when I tell them that banks have this magical power, but they do.
(and by the way all of this is getting worse: most corporations invested in R&D, for example, now they act in higher percentages like finance companies.)
Corporations have draw the US into wars at least since WW1 and some of the barons were honest about that. Most people have no idea how many wars the US went into in Latin America for example, at the behest of corporations. This destabilized Latin America. And they happily called for the undermining of various democratically elected governments - though the intelligence community was involved in this also. It's not just corporations, but they have played a huge role and the politicians have had to make implicit or explicit deals to get into office.
One book I would heartily recommend is about Surveillance Capitalism:
https://www.amazon.com/Age-Surveillance ... 1610395697
a review here....
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/ ... al-privacy
Most people have some sense of this, but think it's just private individuals who are affected and don't really think about it. She shows how these companies ignore laws, diminish democracy and present real opportunities for governments to enact Stasi wet dreams, or fascist wet dreams. Oh, if you didn't realise I value democracy positively.
Oh, let's see....
How about a jump to Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent.
Corporations have concentrated power in media and through the marginalization of any calls for systematic change and slanting media in general, he thought that unlike the Soviet Model, they could create consent not via total censorship, but via mainstream control and flooding people throught their main channels with whatever the powers that be want people to think. He wrote that book with some other guy in 1988. The concentration of power in a few corporations is orders of magnitude worse than it was then.
The founders of the US understood the dangers of corporate power and corporations had charters that could be revoked. Well, those days are long gone. YOu could have defended against many of these problems created by the power capitalism has unfairly given corporations but threatening to revoke or revoking charters. Did you know that Pffizer has been found guilty of human rights violations, lying to the government about research results, labor rights crimes, hiding research from goverment oversight that was problematic and many other crimes. Not information gotten from the right, but from the Left. Did they keep their charter? Oh, yeah. That's just one of thousands of corporations that pull all sorts of shift, pay fines and keep on the same practices. A citizen would get smashed to pulp. Corporations do not.
I'm going to spend less time explaining but just list some of my other criticisms to hatreds of capitalism:
the way advertising is aimed at children, which 1) develops their values indirectly and directly but 2) these corporations use the best cognitive scientists to determine nag time effects. They actually think of how to advertise such that parents much choose between the suffering of the nagging and whining and their own values.
The work world: corporations are regions of fascism. While at work you do not have the freedoms we think of as everywhere in Western democracies. You do not have freedom of speech. You do not have freedom of emotion. You can be told to smile more. To change your attitude. And so on. Within the offices and work time employees are not free. And you don't have to go to a company like Amazon to find this - though that is a hilarious montrosity - but companies in general. And while this fascism certainly hits the working class hard, middle class professionals are also not free. And there have been many instances where what one does in one's free time is also controlled.
There has been a trend in the court system to view the rich with defacto compassion not aimed at other criminals.
I am not merely talking about the radical difference in representation the rich and the poor get.
I am talking about how a hedge fund owner hit and run driver is seen as facing such a huge culture shock, he gets probation. The kind of thinking that is not applied to a plumber committing the same crime. This is not just some unhinged judges, but a systematic shift and one parallelt in governmental pardons at the state and federal levels. The elite is coming out of the closet here.
ON a general note: in my lifetime the capitalists were somewhat favorable to the country of origin's citizens. IOW US corporations, for example, allowed a fairly decent factory income - I am not diminishing the work done by unionists and labor lawyers, etc. - but there was a general acceptance of having a middle class, of letting working class people do fairly well, etc. Well that changed. They don't need their countries of origin to have decent opportunities anymore. I find it funny how many anti-globalists on the right don't notice that corporations were the second globalists after the conquerers. And the biggest globalists going. (some on the right do get this, finally). Anyway the way they used to play states off against each other, they can do with countries. And they don't need americans when they can move factories to China or call centers to India. And with AI, they just cut everyone off.

That oughta do for now, though it's just a piece of what I hate about capitalism.

In exchange for me doing as you asked, I want you to read the following carefully.

You respond to people disingenously. You pick out one piece of their posts and avoid parts that are harder to critique. The way you responded to Phyllo and me in your thread on Dostoyevsky was atrocious, as one example. I don't know what your fucking problem is, but you are often evasive, changing horses in midstreams without admitting it, and just mindread other people based on nothing. You're so stuck on hardening the us them in society any criticism of anything you write must be wrong. You want to be a great philosopher, that's your goal?????? Well, every great philosopher managed to have complicated nuanced dialogue with people. And I see no interest in that from you.

[Immanuel Can]

Civilization is destroying nature. I don't see in particular why capitalism gets the blame. Other formats have been tried and they are hardly ecologically friendly systems.

K: I can't help it that you are blind to the various failures of
capitalism... just another failure is the ecological damage
that capitalism has done to the world... and it isn't that hard
to see...

Kropotkin

Speaking of Marxism, have you seen what China is doing to the environment lately? All the disasters of the European Industrial Revolution combined don't come up to what China is doing and will do as it modernizes. The same's likely going to be true for India and South America.

But what's your alternative? Are you going to keep those people poor and starving? Or are you going to let them industrialize?

[Iwannaplato]

Speaking of Marxism, have you seen what China is doing to the environment lately? All the disasters of the European Industrial Revolution combined don't come up to what China is doing and will do as it modernizes.

This is true, but it should be added that in context they are some weird hybrid of certain kinds of communist practices, fascism, capitalism, state control of the economy and libertarianism. I know you responding to PK here and not me, but just to mention this is part of my point. Regardless of the ism, civilization has been very harsh to the planet. PK sees some hope with Marxism. I have no idea what he is basing that on. And all Marxist attempts slide into capitalism. So if capitalism is bad, then Marxism is bad because however much it turns from capitalism in the beginning it slides back towards it.

The same's likely going to be true for India and South America.

Which also present mixed isms, India is a mix of socialist and capitalist isms. South America is all over the place since it is many different countries with many different mixes.

[Immanuel Can]

Speaking of Marxism, have you seen what China is doing to the environment lately? All the disasters of the European Industrial Revolution combined don't come up to what China is doing and will do as it modernizes.

This is true, but it should be added that in context they are some weird hybrid of certain kinds of communist practices, fascism, capitalism, state control of the economy and libertarianism. I know you responding to PK here and not me, but just to mention this is part of my point. Regardless of the ism, civilization has been very harsh to the planet. PK sees some hope with Marxism. I have no idea what he is basing that on. And all Marxist attempts slide into capitalism. So if capitalism is bad, then Marxism is bad because however much it turns from capitalism in the beginning it slides back towards it.

All one has to do to know what Marxism does to the planet is to visit China.

I have noticed, though, that Marxists always claim that every Marxist state is "not real Communism / Socialism." Always they say, "Well, that's more of a dictatorship...or fascist...or...semi-capitalist," or whatever. According to them, never in the previous history of the world has there been a genuine Socialist state.

So what does one make of that?

Well, one obvious thing is that either they're lying, or else they need to explain why all those billions who have tried (and presumably failed so miserably) to implement Socialism were all fools -- China, full of fools; Russia, likewise: Cambodia and North Korea, loaded with them; Cuba and Venezuela, sure, fools too; and Bulgaria, Romania, Albania, Zimbabwe, Congo, nothing but fools in any of them -- but that this Communist apologist/i], whoever it is that is speaking, is so brilliant that he alone knows how to create a Socialist state that would have worked. In other words, the problem with China is that Xi in control; but if they, the Marxist apologist himself, was the one who was dictating the terms of Socialism, it would be "real Socialism," and would work.

Does anybody believe that kind of arrogance, that level of contempt for all previous Marxist regimes, that lame sort of excuse? Or are we wiser to think that maybe, just maybe, there's a little something not quite right with Socialism itself...that it crashes economies and kills people...because if there were not something inherently wrong with Socialism, it's inexplicable why so many people with good brains tried and utterly failed to implement it. By the Marxist advocate's account, all of them got it wrong, and only the NEXT dictator, the advocate himself, would have gotten it right.

I don't believe it. I think he's a liar.

[Harbal]

Or are we wiser to think that maybe, just maybe, there's a little something not quite right with Socialism itself...that it crashes economies and kills people...

In Britain we have the National Health Service, which is a socialist enterprise, and although it might have on occasion inadvertently killed a few people, it generally saves lives. Any country with a welfare system is putting a form of socialism into practice. Socialism can be a very good thing; it is totalitarianism that we need to beware. And religion, of course.