"throw capitalism at it" ad absurdum

[Jason Harvestdancer]

And once the government is eliminated and we achieve the an-com paradise, the masses will assemble into a *blankout* that will make all the decisions the government used to make. This *blankout* won't actually be a government, because even though it does everything the government does it isn't the government because you say so.

I don't know what you are talking about, and nor do you. We will be hundreds, probably thousands of years clearing up the mess you pillocks have made of our world. People will negotiate through delegates elected for particular purposes, obviously.

And these delegates won't be a government, they'll be a *blankout*.

 

[DrZoidberg]

So I reread Homage to Catalonia. I suggest rereading it in the light of this discussion. You'll read a completely different book. In the first chapter he confirms everything I've written in this thread. If that was your source... yeah. Your rose tinted spectacles are strong.

Yet you have no direct quote.

Orwell did not criticize the Anarchists. He criticized the Spanish Communists that had been infiltrated by the Russians.

Lol, stalling for time. Here you go.

Practically every building
of any size had been seized by the workers and was draped with red flags or with
the red and black flag of the Anarchists; every wall was scrawled with the
hammer and sickle and with the initials of the revolutionary parties; almost
every church had been gutted and its images burnt. Churches here and there were
being systematically demolished by gangs of workmen. Every shop and cafe had an
inscription saying that it had been collectivized; even the bootblacks had been
collectivized and their boxes painted red and black. Waiters and shop-walkers
looked you in the face and treated you as an equal. Servile and even ceremonial
forms of speech had temporarily disappeared. Nobody said 'Senior' or 'Don' or
even 'Usted'; everyone called everyone else 'Comrade' and 'Thou', and said
'Salud!' instead of 'Buenos dias'. Tipping was forbidden by law; almost my first
experience was receiving a lecture from a hotel manager for trying to tip a
lift-boy. There were no private motor-cars, they had all been commandeered, and
all the trams and taxis and much of the other transport were painted red and
black. The revolutionary posters were everywhere, flaming from the walls in
clean reds and blues that made the few remaining advertisements look like daubs
of mud. Down the Ramblas, the wide central artery of the town where crowds of
people streamed constantly to and fro, the loudspeakers were bellowing
revolutionary songs all day and far into the night. And it was the aspect of the
crowds that was the queerest thing of all. In outward appearance it was a town
in which the wealthy classes had practically ceased to exist. Except for a small
number of women and foreigners there were no 'well-dressed' people at all.
Practically everyone wore rough working-class clothes, or blue overalls, or some
variant of the militia uniform. All this was queer and moving. There was much in
it that I did not understand, in some ways I did not even like it, but I
recognized it immediately as a state of affairs worth fighting for. Also I
believed that things were as they appeared, that this was really a workers'
State and that the entire bourgeoisie had either fled, been killed, or
voluntarily come over to the workers' side; I did not realize that great numbers
of well-to-do bourgeois were simply lying low and disguising themselves as
proletarians for the time being.

Does that sound like a free society to you? It's a highly repressive society where equality was forced upon everybody. Those that didn't share the socialist/anarchist ideals were terrified. And living in hiding. They didn't dare speak their mind. The churches had been gutted and turned into all manner of other buildings. I'm sorry, but a society doesn't turn atheist over night. I'm pretty sure any Christian who would dare to speak up would have been shot.

George Orwell just liked it, but he's not shying away from the fact that the repression of non-socialists was pretty extreme.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

No, the fundamental problem is he is attaching an evil connotation to the word where none exists. "Dictatorship" simply describes a power structure, it's carries no inherent good or evil.

Dictatorship => evil.

Since dictatorship is evil using is wrong.

A circular definition.

Dictatorship HAS a negative connotation.

It often is negative. It is not automatically so.

The parent/child relationship is not a dictatorship.

It is a benign dictatorship.

Children and the raising of children are special cases due to the undeveloped nature of children.

You don't get to plead special cases. Dictatorship is dictatorship.

 

[untermensche]

Yet you have no direct quote.

Orwell did not criticize the Anarchists. He criticized the Spanish Communists that had been infiltrated by the Russians.

Lol, stalling for time. Here you go.

Practically every building
of any size had been seized by the workers and was draped with red flags or with
the red and black flag of the Anarchists; every wall was scrawled with the
hammer and sickle and with the initials of the revolutionary parties; almost
every church had been gutted and its images burnt. Churches here and there were
being systematically demolished by gangs of workmen. Every shop and cafe had an
inscription saying that it had been collectivized; even the bootblacks had been
collectivized and their boxes painted red and black. Waiters and shop-walkers
looked you in the face and treated you as an equal. Servile and even ceremonial
forms of speech had temporarily disappeared. Nobody said 'Senior' or 'Don' or
even 'Usted'; everyone called everyone else 'Comrade' and 'Thou', and said
'Salud!' instead of 'Buenos dias'. Tipping was forbidden by law; almost my first
experience was receiving a lecture from a hotel manager for trying to tip a
lift-boy. There were no private motor-cars, they had all been commandeered, and
all the trams and taxis and much of the other transport were painted red and
black. The revolutionary posters were everywhere, flaming from the walls in
clean reds and blues that made the few remaining advertisements look like daubs
of mud. Down the Ramblas, the wide central artery of the town where crowds of
people streamed constantly to and fro, the loudspeakers were bellowing
revolutionary songs all day and far into the night. And it was the aspect of the
crowds that was the queerest thing of all. In outward appearance it was a town
in which the wealthy classes had practically ceased to exist. Except for a small
number of women and foreigners there were no 'well-dressed' people at all.
Practically everyone wore rough working-class clothes, or blue overalls, or some
variant of the militia uniform. All this was queer and moving. There was much in
it that I did not understand, in some ways I did not even like it, but I
recognized it immediately as a state of affairs worth fighting for. Also I
believed that things were as they appeared, that this was really a workers'
State and that the entire bourgeoisie had either fled, been killed, or
voluntarily come over to the workers' side; I did not realize that great numbers
of well-to-do bourgeois were simply lying low and disguising themselves as
proletarians for the time being.

Does that sound like a free society to you? It's a highly repressive society where equality was forced upon everybody. Those that didn't share the socialist/anarchist ideals were terrified. And living in hiding. They didn't dare speak their mind. The churches had been gutted and turned into all manner of other buildings. I'm sorry, but a society doesn't turn atheist over night. I'm pretty sure any Christian who would dare to speak up would have been shot.

George Orwell just liked it, but he's not shying away from the fact that the repression of non-socialists was pretty extreme.

In this passage Orwell is praising the Anarchists. People treated as equals. "I recognized it immediately as a state of affairs worth fighting for".

Orwell liked the Anarchists.

It was the Communists he had trouble with.

You make my case well. Keep going.

 

[untermensche]

Dictatorship HAS a negative connotation.

It often is negative. It is not automatically so.

It is always negative. It is immoral to be a dictator over another.

You are waving your arms desperately trying to distract. We are talking about adults.

Children and the raising of children are special cases due to the undeveloped nature of children.

You don't get to plead special cases. Dictatorship is dictatorship.

In the entirety of systematic morality children have always been a special case.

They are always treated as a case unto themselves. For reasons everybody clearly knows.

You want to abandon traditional morality because you have none.

 

[coloradoatheist]

It often is negative. It is not automatically so.

It is always negative. It is immoral to be a dictator over another.

You are waving your arms desperately trying to distract. We are talking about adults.

Children and the raising of children are special cases due to the undeveloped nature of children.

You don't get to plead special cases. Dictatorship is dictatorship.

In the entirety of systematic morality children have always been a special case.

They are always treated as a case unto themselves. For reasons everybody clearly knows.

You want to abandon traditional morality because you have none.

The negative connotation with dictator is that after it happens there is no free choice with regard to it, and in many cases the dictator prevents the freedom of movement to get away from it. There are many times when there is a dictatorial relationship. One being a child parent. Sometimes normal relationships are too. But it comes when trade is involved. If I hire a babysitter to watch my kids I have a dictatorial role over the babysitter while they are watching my kids. The negative connotation comes when you can't freely choose it, in the base of a babysitter they can choose to follow the rules of the parent to receive the money for babysitting or they can refuse to not babysit. the same applies to a job. Until humans get rid of that pesky thing of needing things to survive, there will be be a dictatorship rule.

 

[untermensche]

That is not the moral problem with dictatorship.

The relationship is immoral.

It is a master/slave relationship.

Dictating over others is immoral.

The fact that the vast majority of workers in modern capitalist societies cannot escape it because there is no alternative just makes it much worse.

 

[LordKiran]

You don't get to plead special cases. Dictatorship is dictatorship.

So what are you implying exactly? That adults and children are the same in their relationships with authority? If not then your point is hollow and might as well not be made. If so then might I direct you toward the mountain you must now climb up? Pick your poison LP

 

[coloradoatheist]

That is not the moral problem with dictatorship.

The relationship is immoral.

It is a master/slave relationship.

Dictating over others is immoral.

The fact that the vast majority of workers in modern capitalist societies cannot escape it because there is no alternative just makes it much worse.

You are saying that dictating over others is immoral. So telling your kid that bedtime is 9pm is immoral. Except you are defining immoral as, "My belief in immoral" As long as trade is involved they will be dictations on how that trade is conducted. If you ask a plumber to fix your toilet, you can dictate the terms of what to fix and other rules, and the plumber dictates other things. It's not a master/slave relationship. It's a beneficial mutually agreed upon trade.

- - - Updated - - -

You don't get to plead special cases. Dictatorship is dictatorship.

So what are you implying exactly? That adults and children are the same in their relationships with authority? If not then your point is hollow and might as well not be made. If so then might I direct you toward the mountain you must now climb up? Pick your poison LP

Unter is saying dictatorship is immoral though that's not supposedly the case in either a parent/child relationship or a student teacher one. So what defines what a dictatorship is and when is it evil? It's arbitrary.

 

[untermensche]

That is not the moral problem with dictatorship.

The relationship is immoral.

It is a master/slave relationship.

Dictating over others is immoral.

The fact that the vast majority of workers in modern capitalist societies cannot escape it because there is no alternative just makes it much worse.

You are saying that dictating over others is immoral. So telling your kid that bedtime is 9pm is immoral. Except you are defining immoral as, "My belief in immoral" As long as trade is involved they will be dictations on how that trade is conducted. If you ask a plumber to fix your toilet, you can dictate the terms of what to fix and other rules, and the plumber dictates other things. It's not a master/slave relationship. It's a beneficial mutually agreed upon trade.

Try to keep up.

Children are a separate case. But even with children some conditions must be met.

You cannot morally chain your child to a sewing machine and have it make clothing 12 hours a day.

In capitalism, minus government regulation, that is just fine.

The children are free to starve if they don't like it.

 

[Axulus]

That is not the moral problem with dictatorship.

The relationship is immoral.

It is a master/slave relationship.

Dictating over others is immoral.

The fact that the vast majority of workers in modern capitalist societies cannot escape it because there is no alternative just makes it much worse.

You have defined all trade as an immoral dictatorship using your bizzare definition. If I offer you something to do something for me or to give something to me, then I am a dictator.

 

[untermensche]

That is not the moral problem with dictatorship.

The relationship is immoral.

It is a master/slave relationship.

Dictating over others is immoral.

The fact that the vast majority of workers in modern capitalist societies cannot escape it because there is no alternative just makes it much worse.

You have defined all trade as an immoral dictatorship using your bizzare definition. If I offer you something to do something for me or to give something to me, then I am a dictator.

A dictatorship is a formal relationship between people. It is a structure of power. Master:Slave.

It is not an activity, like trade.

 

[Axulus]

You have defined all trade as an immoral dictatorship using your bizzare definition. If I offer you something to do something for me or to give something to me, then I am a dictator.

A dictatorship is a formal relationship between people. It is a structure of power. Master:Slave.

It is not an activity, like trade.

Employment is just one kind of ongoing trade relationship: you do X for me in exchange for something you want that I am willing to provide.

Real dictatorship is not that. It's you do X for me or else I'm going to lock you up or punish you in some fashion.

That is a _huge_ difference from the so-called dictatorship you are talking about. It is an insult to those living in actual dictatorships who face threats of death or labor prison camps if they refuse to obey.

 

[LordKiran]

Unter is saying dictatorship is immoral though that's not supposedly the case in either a parent/child relationship or a student teacher one. So what defines what a dictatorship is and when is it evil? It's arbitrary.

Oh I'm following along perfectly, and a (perhaps unintended) implication of LP's argument is that the parental relationship between child and parent is the same or at least similar to the relationship between you and your government.

So now LP has two options:

Retract that statement, rendering the point of contention moot.

Support the case made, which I foresee being quite the tall order.

 

[coloradoatheist]

Unter is saying dictatorship is immoral though that's not supposedly the case in either a parent/child relationship or a student teacher one. So what defines what a dictatorship is and when is it evil? It's arbitrary.

Oh I'm following along perfectly, and a (perhaps unintended) implication of LP's argument is that the parental relationship between child and parent is the same or at least similar to the relationship between you and your government.

So now LP has two options:

Retract that statement, rendering the point of contention moot.

Support the case made, which I foresee being quite the tall order.

I am confused then. Unter is saying that a relationship at work between an employee and employer is a dictatorial relationship, then how does that definition follow from the traditional relationship of government and you?

 

[DrZoidberg]

Lol, stalling for time. Here you go.

Practically every building
of any size had been seized by the workers and was draped with red flags or with
the red and black flag of the Anarchists; every wall was scrawled with the
hammer and sickle and with the initials of the revolutionary parties; almost
every church had been gutted and its images burnt. Churches here and there were
being systematically demolished by gangs of workmen. Every shop and cafe had an
inscription saying that it had been collectivized; even the bootblacks had been
collectivized and their boxes painted red and black. Waiters and shop-walkers
looked you in the face and treated you as an equal. Servile and even ceremonial
forms of speech had temporarily disappeared. Nobody said 'Senior' or 'Don' or
even 'Usted'; everyone called everyone else 'Comrade' and 'Thou', and said
'Salud!' instead of 'Buenos dias'. Tipping was forbidden by law; almost my first
experience was receiving a lecture from a hotel manager for trying to tip a
lift-boy. There were no private motor-cars, they had all been commandeered, and
all the trams and taxis and much of the other transport were painted red and
black. The revolutionary posters were everywhere, flaming from the walls in
clean reds and blues that made the few remaining advertisements look like daubs
of mud. Down the Ramblas, the wide central artery of the town where crowds of
people streamed constantly to and fro, the loudspeakers were bellowing
revolutionary songs all day and far into the night. And it was the aspect of the
crowds that was the queerest thing of all. In outward appearance it was a town
in which the wealthy classes had practically ceased to exist. Except for a small
number of women and foreigners there were no 'well-dressed' people at all.
Practically everyone wore rough working-class clothes, or blue overalls, or some
variant of the militia uniform. All this was queer and moving. There was much in
it that I did not understand, in some ways I did not even like it, but I
recognized it immediately as a state of affairs worth fighting for. Also I
believed that things were as they appeared, that this was really a workers'
State and that the entire bourgeoisie had either fled, been killed, or
voluntarily come over to the workers' side; I did not realize that great numbers
of well-to-do bourgeois were simply lying low and disguising themselves as
proletarians for the time being.

Does that sound like a free society to you? It's a highly repressive society where equality was forced upon everybody. Those that didn't share the socialist/anarchist ideals were terrified. And living in hiding. They didn't dare speak their mind. The churches had been gutted and turned into all manner of other buildings. I'm sorry, but a society doesn't turn atheist over night. I'm pretty sure any Christian who would dare to speak up would have been shot.

George Orwell just liked it, but he's not shying away from the fact that the repression of non-socialists was pretty extreme.

In this passage Orwell is praising the Anarchists. People treated as equals. "I recognized it immediately as a state of affairs worth fighting for".

Orwell liked the Anarchists.

It was the Communists he had trouble with.

You make my case well. Keep going.

ha ha... your rose tinted spectacles are strong. You can't see it even when you're reading it.
Yes, he liked the anarchists. Or "socialists" which is what he called them all collectively, including himself. But at no point does he shy away from describing the repression. The enforced socialist values onto everybody, regardless if they wanted it or not. He acknowledges that non-socialists were terrified and in hiding. Not a sign of a free society.

You could take this section and just replace all the words with corresponding ISIS words it would read pretty much the same. A repressive government in power using group think and collective punishments to keep people in line.

But I think you are a lost cause. You seem impervious to facts.

 

[untermensche]

ha ha... your rose tinted spectacles are strong. You can't see it even when you're reading it.
Yes, he liked the anarchists. Or "socialists" which is what he called them all collectively, including himself. But at no point does he shy away from describing the repression. The enforced socialist values onto everybody, regardless if they wanted it or not. He acknowledges that non-socialists were terrified and in hiding. Not a sign of a free society.

You could take this section and just replace all the words with corresponding ISIS words it would read pretty much the same. A repressive government in power using group think and collective punishments to keep people in line.

But I think you are a lost cause. You seem impervious to facts.

You simply can't read.

Fascist scum that wanted to dictate over others were in hiding.

They did not like this state of human equality very much.

You are merely a supporter of fascism if you have problems with this section from Orwell.

 

[untermensche]

A dictatorship is a formal relationship between people. It is a structure of power. Master:Slave.

It is not an activity, like trade.

Employment is just one kind of ongoing trade relationship: you do X for me in exchange for something you want that I am willing to provide.

Real dictatorship is not that. It's you do X for me or else I'm going to lock you up or punish you in some fashion.

That is a _huge_ difference from the so-called dictatorship you are talking about. It is an insult to those living in actual dictatorships who face threats of death or labor prison camps if they refuse to obey.

A great deal of employment in a capitalist scheme is not free.

It is a coerced compliance to a dictatorial relationship out of necessity, not desire.

It mostly represents a lack of options, not a free choice.

Again, dictatorship is a power relationship. It is a Master:Slave relationship. It is one who gives orders and one who follows or faces consequences.

Your claims that the dictatorial relationships in capitalism is not so bad because other relationships are worse is irrational. That is like saying stabbing somebody is not so bad because some people are blown up by drones.

One either supports the idea of dictatorial relationships among adults or one does not.

It is as simple as that.

Anarchists long ago rejected this kind of relationship.

It is why they have been attacked by those desiring to be petty dictators ever since.

 

[DrZoidberg]

ha ha... your rose tinted spectacles are strong. You can't see it even when you're reading it.
Yes, he liked the anarchists. Or "socialists" which is what he called them all collectively, including himself. But at no point does he shy away from describing the repression. The enforced socialist values onto everybody, regardless if they wanted it or not. He acknowledges that non-socialists were terrified and in hiding. Not a sign of a free society.

You could take this section and just replace all the words with corresponding ISIS words it would read pretty much the same. A repressive government in power using group think and collective punishments to keep people in line.

But I think you are a lost cause. You seem impervious to facts.

You simply can't read.

Fascist scum that wanted to dictate over others were in hiding.

They did not like this state of human equality very much.

You are merely a supporter of fascism if you have problems with this section from Orwell.

ha ha... so everybody who was a Christian who wanted to keep going to church was fascist scum? Lol.

Nah, you're dehumanising everybody who doesn't agree with you by denouncing them as class traitors, ie fascists. Well done, comrade. That's not how you create a free society. That's how you create a totalitarian state. Which is what most of these socialist experiments ended up being.

There's a lot about late 19'th century and early 20'th century socialism that's unsavoury to modern ears. Those socialists often wanted to force equality onto people. It's easy to pass off Maoist uniforms as imposed from above. But anarchists from the first half of the 20'th century also wore uniforms, even though nobody was forcing them to. They all did. That requires some more unpacking than just saying that all free people enjoy looking exactly the same.

It was a social experiment. And like all social experiments of this type some was good and some was bad.

 

[iolo]

I don't know what you are talking about, and nor do you. We will be hundreds, probably thousands of years clearing up the mess you pillocks have made of our world. People will negotiate through delegates elected for particular purposes, obviously.

And these delegates won't be a government, they'll be a *blankout*.

They 'll be delegates, elected to discuss and settle particular issues and then go home. You fascist are obsessed with masters, aren't you?