Fabianism

[Gary Childress]

Who is this "1%" of yours, Mr. 10%?

I don't own anything other than my personal possessions.

You're still in the world's top 10%. So when you redistribute to the people in the Developing World all your worldly goods, as any good Socialist would, then you can start talking about the 1%, I would say. Until then, your complaints ring pretty hollow.

People taking personal possessions from others is NOT part of "socialism". Look at your own definition that you borrowed from Marx. I don't have any "private property". No one needs private property, not even the uber wealthy, except to exert control and authority over others. You know I'm right. Or at least if you were a serious philosopher, you would admit it. Do you admit I am right on this? I've admitted when you've had fair points. Are you going to return the favor?

[Gary Childress]

@IC: To support my claim I give you the following from the Google Search AI:

Where in the communist manifesto did Marx say that "private property" should be abolished?

Marx and Engels explicitly state that the "theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property" in Chapter II (Proletarians and Communists) of The Communist Manifesto.

Context: This statement appears within the section where they argue that the bourgeoisie (capitalist class) has already destroyed private property for nine-tenths of the population, and that communism aims to eliminate bourgeois private property—specifically the means of production (factories, land, capital)—rather than personal possessions.

Clarification: Marx explicitly differentiates this from the "hard-won" property of the individual worker, focusing instead on property that is used to exploit wage labor.

Goal: The goal of this abolition is to transform private property into common, communal property, thereby ending class-based exploitation.

Show me where this is inaccurate. Show me where Marx distinctly says that "socialism" abolishes or eliminates "personal possessions". Show me where I am wrong, and you are right. Look at the Communist Manifesto or any other text written by Marx and show me a quote from it that contradicts my assertion about personal possessions.

[Immanuel Can]

@IC: To support my claim I give you the following from the Google Search AI

I engage only people who can respond. The person who programed GSAI is not here. We cannot ask him to account for the choices he's made...he cannot answer.

And I don't think you know what you want to say. If you did, you'd have said it yourself, in your own words.

[Immanuel Can]

I don't own anything other than my personal possessions.

You're still in the world's top 10%. So when you redistribute to the people in the Developing World all your worldly goods, as any good Socialist would, then you can start talking about the 1%, I would say. Until then, your complaints ring pretty hollow.

People taking personal possessions from others is NOT part of "socialism".

Of course it is. It's called "redistribution," but it really means "covetousness and theft."

I don't have any "private property".

Yeah, you do. And you live in a country where EVERYBODY has some, and certainly more than the Developing World has. Don't you think they have at least a right to live on more than $1 per day...like many of them cannot, but like you most certainly do?

[MikeNovack]

Of course it is. It's called "redistribution," but it really means "covetousness and theft.
"

OK IC, I've had it. Defend your equating with "covetousness" according to the text youn consider sacred. When I read that text, I see "You shall not covet your NEIGHBORS ...." Neighbor, that fellow in the same boat you are. Defend your extention of that prohibition to the rich lord of the land. Notice that the examples are the reverse situation, the lord ofm the land coveting the (relatively) poor man's "sheep" (wife or vinyard depending on whether we are talking about David or Ahab

Theft? Have you never read Proudhon's What is Property

[Immanuel Can]

Of course it is. It's called "redistribution," but it really means "covetousness and theft.
"

OK IC, I've had it. Defend your equating with "covetousness" according to the text youn consider sacred. When I read that text, I see "You shall not covet your NEIGHBORS ...." Neighbor, that fellow in the same boat you are.

Easily done. See Luke 10:25-37.

Defend your extention of that prohibition to the rich lord of the land.

I don't have to. Hashem has already done it. Covetousness is a violation of the final commandment of the Big 10...no matter who does it, or why they do it.

[Gary Childress]

You're still in the world's top 10%. So when you redistribute to the people in the Developing World all your worldly goods, as any good Socialist would, then you can start talking about the 1%, I would say. Until then, your complaints ring pretty hollow.

People taking personal possessions from others is NOT part of "socialism".

Of course it is. It's called "redistribution," but it really means "covetousness and theft."

I don't have any "private property".

Yeah, you do. And you live in a country where EVERYBODY has some, and certainly more than the Developing World has. Don't you think they have at least a right to live on more than $1 per day...like many of them cannot, but like you most certainly do?

OK. Fair enough. I own more possessions and of higher quality than most individuals in the developing world do. I don't own factories or plantations or other industries, but I own products created by what could be classed as wage slavery that the makers of those products cannot afford to own for themselves. It seems that Marx would classify that as "Bourgeois property" because it is created by forcing ordinary workers to create surplus that they cannot use for themselves, in order to provide it to the higher classes. And it appears that Marx believes "Bourgeois property" should be abolished. I'm not sure if he further distinguishes between "private property" and "bourgeois property". They almost seem equivalent in some passages; however, clearly, it has to be abolished according to Marx.

So what do we all do now? Do any of us in the developed world deserve what we have when it is created by people who cannot afford what they produce for us? I mean, at face value, it seems scandalous--just another example of how completely fucked God's world is for everyone, including most of us in the developed world who can't even claim a right to own most of what we have. Now what?

[Impenitent]

intellectual property is double plus good

-Imp

[Dubious]

And it appears that Marx believes "Bourgeois property" should be abolished. I'm not sure if he further distinguishes between "private property" and "bourgeois property". They almost seem equivalent in some passages; however, clearly, it has to be abolished according to Marx.

Marx distinguished between private property as ownership of the means of production; personal property - your home and everything in it - was never the target. Marx has to be understood in context. Just to claim he was against "private property" without understanding what he specifically meant by it is extremely misleading and fallacious. Much of what Marx wrote - not everything - is as true now as it was then. It may not look the same in its modern guise, but the paradigms of inequality which he analyzed haven't disappeared. They are in fact becoming more extreme.

[Immanuel Can]

OK. Fair enough. I own more possessions and of higher quality than most individuals in the developing world do.

Yep. That's the point. Selective Socialism is merely Fabianism: one set of rules for the truly poor, and another, with elite status, for us and for the uber-wealthy.

Marx's concept of "property" is very broad...but not as broad as subsequent Neo-Marxists have made it. For them, "property" is not merely factories or computers and tennis racquets, it includes intellectual property, all resources, control of any means of production of humanity, such as media or symbolic value, and even what they now call "whiteness." Anything that affords what they call a "privilege" pretty much becomes "property" for them, and thus illegitimate, in their fevered imaginations.

...it appears that Marx believes "Bourgeois property" should be abolished. I'm not sure if he further distinguishes between "private property" and "bourgeois property". They almost seem equivalent in some passages; however, clearly, it has to be abolished according to Marx.

Now you've got it. And Neo-Marxists have reinterpreted Marx, making him out to refer today to a whole lot more than the basic Industrial Revolution fixtures that Marx himself knew. They'd call it "application," I'm sure.

So what do we all do now? Do any of us in the developed world deserve what we have

Well, "deserving" is a moral category. Materialism, as in Dialectical Materialism (Marxism) offers no grounds for belief in "deserving." Whatever is, simply is: and all of Marx's whining about it is actually incompatible with his own Materialism. There are no moral categories deducible from Materialism. If Materialism is true, then nobody ever "deserves" anything, and nobody can be deprived of a thing they can't possibly even have.

Paradoxically, Marxists always demand their program should go forward for pseudo-moral reasons, like "equality" or "fraternity" or "diversity" or "inclusion" or "fairness." But NONE of these categories can be deduced from Materialism. So either Marx is not actually believing his own Materialism, or he is without basis in his own worldview for the moral claims he attempts to impose on the world.

when it is created by people who cannot afford what they produce for us?

In come cases, that's true: for example, our Nike sneakers might be made in a factory in Thailand or China, by people who live on meager wages. But in a Materialist-Marxist world, one devoid of objective moral categories, on what basis is that to be criticized? There can be nothing "wrong" with such a situation if nothing can ever be objectively "wrong."

I mean, at face value, it seems scandalous

Why? You're a Socialist, aren't you? "Scandalous" is a category of moral condemnation. Are you condemning such a situation morally? If you are, you're not thinking like a Materialist, and hence, not like a Dialectical Materialist (Socialist). Remember that in Marxism, dialectical conflicts are said to be inevitable, a permanent feature of reality, and to require unrelenting, unceasing struggle. They aren't something one can condemn on moral grounds, because they're a universal feature of reality. There's no "other way" things could be, if Marxism were true.

You ask what's to be done. Good question. By the light of Marxism, nothing is to be done about our moral situation: a perpetual class struggle, bitter, violent and interminable, is going to be with us always. It might as well be this one. But by the light of the Judaism and Christianity that Marx despised, much is to be done; for we live in a world that has objective moral principles woven through it, and what we do to others God will call us to account for. We are to be grateful for all we have, and be generous to those who have less -- but we are not to look at those who have more than we have with envy or covetousness, for we will answer for our greed, if we do that. So the rule should be peace and gratitude, charity and mercy, for both the poor and the rich have God as their Maker and Judge.

Pick your world, I guess.

[Immanuel Can]

...your home and everything in it - was never the target.

And yet, in every Marxist regime, it has been the target. And more than that: Neo-Marxists even want your family destroyed and your children turned into little State drones.

Much of what Marx wrote - not everything - is as true now as it was then.

This is the case, but not as you may intend the line. Almost nothing Marx ever claimed turned out to be true at all...so yeah, "as true now as it was then" is right.

Marx had no vision beyond Industrial Revolution conditions, and England in particular. But England would not have Marxist Revolution: only feudal Russia and China would. Marx insisted history had to pass through "capitalism" for Socialism to take over; but apparently, it didn't. Likewise, Marx thought the key struggle was between the industrial proles and the mercantile middle class, or bourgeoisie. But he failed to see how industrialization would end up raising the lower classes to levels the pre-industrial world could not dream of.

Marx got many things verifiably wrong, if we look at how the century after Marx unfolded. This is why the Neo-Marxists, like the Frankfurt School or the '60s Communists, had to go on a kind of ideological "rescue mission" to make out that Marx could any longer be relevant at all. But all they've succeeded in doing, so far, is ginning up a whole lot of racism, sexism and other forms of hostility and ressentiment (pace Nietzsche), and making misery. What they haven't done is made Marx right.

[Immanuel Can]

Starmer's hanging on for dear life, while the knives flash all around him.

Think he's addicted to power, much? Even his own party wants him gone, but he can't give it up.

[Dubious]

...your home and everything in it - was never the target.

And yet, in every Marxist regime, it has been the target. And more than that: Neo-Marxists even want your family destroyed and your children turned into little State drones.

Much of what Marx wrote - not everything - is as true now as it was then.

This is the case, but not as you may intend the line. Almost nothing Marx ever claimed turned out to be true at all...so yeah, "as true now as it was then" is right.

Marx had no vision beyond Industrial Revolution conditions, and England in particular. But England would not have Marxist Revolution: only feudal Russia and China would. Marx insisted history had to pass through "capitalism" for Socialism to take over; but apparently, it didn't. Likewise, Marx thought the key struggle was between the industrial proles and the mercantile middle class, or bourgeoisie. But he failed to see how industrialization would end up raising the lower classes to levels the pre-industrial world could not dream of.

Marx got many things verifiably wrong, if we look at how the century after Marx unfolded. This is why the Neo-Marxists, like the Frankfurt School or the '60s Communists, had to go on a kind of ideological "rescue mission" to make out that Marx could any longer be relevant at all. But all they've succeeded in doing, so far, is ginning up a whole lot of racism, sexism and other forms of hostility and ressentiment (pace Nietzsche), and making misery. What they haven't done is made Marx right.

Most of what you write is completely wrong, prejudiced and distorted. Nothing unusual here! What's the point of arguing with someone who is so insanely biased making him immune to any accepted fact. In short, from one who forever claims the precedence of his own ideological tendencies and two thousand-year-old religious beliefs over observed and incontrovertible fact as discovered and gathered through time...meaning that which requires effort, not revelation or some manufactured dogma or gospel for its veracity.

Arguing with a cultist, as claimed innumerable times, is absolutely useless being tantamount to an inescapable mental cul-de-sac whose fixed position remains forever the same. So, think as you like about Nietzsche, Marx or anyone who rendered your god into a non-functioning entity...it changes nothing where fact or its highest probabilities are concerned.

[Immanuel Can]

...your home and everything in it - was never the target.

And yet, in every Marxist regime, it has been the target. And more than that: Neo-Marxists even want your family destroyed and your children turned into little State drones.

Much of what Marx wrote - not everything - is as true now as it was then.

This is the case, but not as you may intend the line. Almost nothing Marx ever claimed turned out to be true at all...so yeah, "as true now as it was then" is right.

Marx had no vision beyond Industrial Revolution conditions, and England in particular. But England would not have Marxist Revolution: only feudal Russia and China would. Marx insisted history had to pass through "capitalism" for Socialism to take over; but apparently, it didn't. Likewise, Marx thought the key struggle was between the industrial proles and the mercantile middle class, or bourgeoisie. But he failed to see how industrialization would end up raising the lower classes to levels the pre-industrial world could not dream of.

Marx got many things verifiably wrong, if we look at how the century after Marx unfolded. This is why the Neo-Marxists, like the Frankfurt School or the '60s Communists, had to go on a kind of ideological "rescue mission" to make out that Marx could any longer be relevant at all. But all they've succeeded in doing, so far, is ginning up a whole lot of racism, sexism and other forms of hostility and ressentiment (pace Nietzsche), and making misery. What they haven't done is made Marx right.

Most of what you write is completely wrong, prejudiced and distorted.

You'll find it's not. Just read Marx. And read Mao. And read the Frankfurt School. You'll see it...if you're willing to.

[Dubious]

And yet, in every Marxist regime, it has been the target. And more than that: Neo-Marxists even want your family destroyed and your children turned into little State drones.
This is the case, but not as you may intend the line. Almost nothing Marx ever claimed turned out to be true at all...so yeah, "as true now as it was then" is right.

Marx had no vision beyond Industrial Revolution conditions, and England in particular. But England would not have Marxist Revolution: only feudal Russia and China would. Marx insisted history had to pass through "capitalism" for Socialism to take over; but apparently, it didn't. Likewise, Marx thought the key struggle was between the industrial proles and the mercantile middle class, or bourgeoisie. But he failed to see how industrialization would end up raising the lower classes to levels the pre-industrial world could not dream of.

Marx got many things verifiably wrong, if we look at how the century after Marx unfolded. This is why the Neo-Marxists, like the Frankfurt School or the '60s Communists, had to go on a kind of ideological "rescue mission" to make out that Marx could any longer be relevant at all. But all they've succeeded in doing, so far, is ginning up a whole lot of racism, sexism and other forms of hostility and ressentiment (pace Nietzsche), and making misery. What they haven't done is made Marx right.

Most of what you write is completely wrong, prejudiced and distorted.

You'll find it's not. Just read Marx. And read Mao. And read the Frankfurt School. You'll see it...if you're willing to.

Marx is not responsible for what anyone said. Marx is responsible for what Marx said and not the distortions carried forward in his name, none of which he could have known about, or from what I've read, agreed with.