Mikhail and Hodj's Political Thread

Mikhail Bakunin_sl said:

So now we get to do the next part of the dance: any economic system where workers aren't in control over the means of their work isn't socialist in character. At all.

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It is a no true scotsman fallacy. The entire system of economics in these states was predicated on labor value surplus theory. The entire point of a government usurping the entirety of industry and nationalizing it is that it is giving the reins of power back to the proletariat from the upper classes.

You don't get to have your cake and eat it too. When Venezuela nationalizes an oil rig, it claims to be giving that resource back to the people of Venezuela from the evil corporatists who stole it. Same went on in Soviet Russia, Maoist China, Il Sung's North Korea, etc.

What we have here is another case of special pleading, as well. You don't get to pick and choose who isn't communist. They literally predicated their entire societies on Mao's and Marx's documents, called themselves communists, nationalized entire economies, and marched people out of the cities into the fields to make them labor on the farms while giving up their houses to multiple families all in the name of enacting Marxist and his followers ideology.

So no, you don't get to innoculate your ideology from reproach by pretending that only an incredibly narrow sliver of completely impossible economic situations are the only things you get to consider socialism.

By that logic, capitalism has never existed, America isn't a capitalist economy because government regulates economies, etc.

Just no.

Sorry pal. But this argument is basically you admitting you're wrong and you know it, so you have to try and plead a special case for your ideology alone.

And note, this is the exact argument every communist in your position makes. Because its the only argument you have left, to claim that every instance of communism which ever existed wasn't really communism just because basically you said so.

You didn't define communism. Marx and Mao and Engels and others did. And every single state mentioned was and in some cases still is, communist. Period.

Cambodian Genocide | World Without Genocide

The Cambodian Genocide refers to the attempt of Khmer Rouge party leader "Pol Pot" to nationalize and centralize the peasant farming society of Cambodia virtually overnight, in accordance with the Chinese Communist agricultural model.This resulted in the gradual devastation of over 25% of the country's population in just three short years.

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But they weren't communist. Even though they were approaching their economic reshaping from a agrarian communist paradigm. They weren't communist because Mikhail and all his buddies, aware that 2.2 million urban educated citizens being marched to the fields and machete massacred to death to create the perfect Communist Utopia, need to deny these people were communists to fit their political and propaganda agenda.

But they were.

Mikhail Bakunin_sl said:

It's not a no true scotsman fallacy. Any system which doesn't give control over the means of work to workers maintains capital relations which ultimately leaves them vulnerable to the socialist critique. There is no way around this. You can't still have capital relations and be a socialist society. Their elimination is a necessary feature of socialism.

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Again, the entire point of nationalizing industries during a communist revolution and the subsequent communist domination is to give control over the mean of work to the workers.

This is the crux of why your ideology doesn't work, Mikhail. This is the reason it fails. No one is going to give the workers control over the means of the work. The workers who seize control will merely be the new elites. Why would they ever give that up? Even if all the workers rose up together to take over the factory, some of them would be leaders. Those leaders will insulate their power. They will try to keep MORE THAN THEIR SHARE.

So yes, it is a no true scotsman fallacy, and a special pleading fallacy.

The reason it fails every time its tried is because every time its tried, people are involved in seizing the power, and once they have it, they don't want to let it go.

Its the core flaw in the ideology. Its why the revolution always ends in a more CONSERVATIVE government, by the classic definitions. Once the status quo changes hands, the new status quo holders fight even harder to maintain the new status quo than the old ones did.