The price is set under conditions of competition (presumably, at least). Now if you have monopolies (or effective monopolies) providing goods that people can't do without without severe sacrifices to quality of life, then you're looking at an exploitative state of affairs (and one that wouldn't be protected by police enforcement under a properly socialist system).
Mikhail and Hodj's Political Thread
- Thread starter Araysar
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It's not the "end game" though. That's nonsense. There's no reason to believe you have to hand over all the economic power to some dick who claims to be taking it in everyone's best interest to reach a point where workers directly control their own means of work.
Everything was controlled by the state. Not by the workers. I'm sure, under the conditions of decades of agreement by American and Soviet propaganda on the issue, it probably did seem like socialism. It wasn't. It never was.
hodj
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There is perfect reason to believe that there will be a transition period in which the State will own all the means of production. Its literally the most proposed mechanism, even today, by which we reach that state. Marx proposed it, Engels proposed it, Mao proposed it.
I'm not really sure how you can't think that the end game of communism isn't supposed to be where all the means of production are in the hands of the working class. That's literally the entire point of the fucking thing. That once all of society is part of the working class and has a direct hand in, and equal share of, production and profits, that all social ills of poverty, class distinction, unfair labor exploitation, etc. will disappear.
Alienating people even further from their work isn't communist, no matter how much the person responsible claims to be a communist. If I claimed to be a capitalist, but I was dead set against markets you'd tell me I wasn't a capitalist (and you'd be right). If I then said "NO TRUE SCOTSMAN" you'd tell me I was crazy. When you're talking about categorization there are necessary and sufficient features and even allowing for the fuzziness of the real world, the systems you describe do not pass the most basic of muster.
I'm talking about self-defense. I'm saying people need to defend themselves against non-socialist "socialists" in addition to the capitalists because both the non-socialist "socialists" and the capitalists will absolutely slaughter everyone until there's no one left to present the threat of a good example.
hodj
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And what was their justification for taking control of everything?
And what is your argument justifying revolution again?
So this leads us to the most salient point.
Why should we believe that your revolution won't end the same way?
I mean if what you're saying is true, then any calls for a revolution of the workers must be treated with disdain and outright rejection, because every instance in the past when people made the same calls for revolution that you're making today, using the same rhetoric, same justifications, they were simply exploiting the naivety of others to gain power for themselves, so why should we ever take any communist who calls for a worker's revolution seriously again?
If the past revolutions weren't valid, real attempts to create communism, then why should we ever think a real valid attempt to create a communist utopia can work? All I see is you setting yourself up for charges that you, yourself, want to be the next Mao, or the next Lenin or Stalin or Pol Pot. And really, that's the truth of it. Communism is ultimately a call by people who want the power, to trick stupid poor people to give them the power.
It really was. And you're just gonna have to learn to live with that.
Loser Araysar
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Well
1. That's true because time works in a particular direction.
2. What Marx said is immaterial.
I realize that you're retarded so this won't mean anything to you, but Marx had economic and political theories and those weren't the same thing at all.
hodj
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No, I'd call you confused and misinformed.
Its very Orwellian, really, the way that communist apologists try to rewrite 150 years of history by just hand waving away literally 200 million people mass slaughtered and intentionally starved to death, far far far more intentionally dead than the Fascists ever hoped in their wildest dreams to kill, and pretending that "Well, that wasn't REALLY communism, anyway, so it doesn't count"
No, it counts. Sorry bro. But it counts.
So now you're using words you clearly don't understand. Marx's economic theories != Marx's political theories != Marx's particular philosophical approach. You're taking several different ideas and trying to conflate them so that you can ignore that "meet the new boss same as the old boss effect" despite the fact that it happens to be a totally critical factor in any rational attempt at political taxonomy.
hodj
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Anyway, Mikhail, I know you want to pretend Marx doesn't matter to any conversation but, well
The Marxist Dialectic by Karl Korsch
Marx defined the paradigm.
The Marxist Dialectic by Karl Korsch
That's why he'll always be relevant to this discussion. And why socialism is called Marxism and Marxist thought is called Marxist even when it came from Fromm or Bakunin or Mao or whatever.
Marx defined the paradigm.
These appeals to authority are idiotic. "Marx said it, therefore following it is socialism even if the system is produces doesn't actually get rid of the capital relations that Marx himself attacked as the very impetus for socialism in the first place." That is fucking stupid.
It's not the "end game" because it's just as easily the start of the game. Marx may have said otherwise, but his political theories were wrong. That doesn't mean his evaluation of capitalism was wrong.
hodj
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Strawman. My argument is that if you operate from the Marxist dialectic while running your Revolution against the Proletariat and your subsequent nation, then you are in fact a Communist. Its very simple. No appeals to authority needed. But, if anyone was an authority on Communism, it would be Marx, since he literally wrote the book on it.
This is a nothing masturbatory semantics manipulation.
The goal of socialism is communism. The goal of communism is to put the means of production and equal share of the profits, into the hands of the workers. What happens after that is entirely speculation. Marx called it the end of history. Someone else might think its the start of the Star Trek prequels.
That's all irrelevant to the discussion at hand.
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