Is there a communist element to the police brutality protests?

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Ah -- Like Sweden or Denmark, then.

I was unaware that the means of production in Sweden or Denmark were collectively owned.

Perhaps you are confusing a safety net with socialism or communism.

It is a common mistake. Rightists like Underseer make that mistake all the time.

 

[Valjean]

You're right, of course. I was using the term in the sense that the reactionary right has made pretty much the common understanding -- that any involvement by the government in social programs is creeping Socialism (and, therefore, pernicious).

 

[Bronzeage]

So Vatican City, Monaco and Nauru are nations, while the Hells Angels is not? Why, because countries officially recognize each other? Is nationhood just an old boys club?
What about internal laws, regulation of commerce, organized defense, foreign relations and 'international' treaties? Aren't these 'national' qualities?

If you want to create your own definitions and then craft arguments around your definitions, there really is no point to the discussion. A Boeing 747 has wings and it flies in the air, yet is not a bird. A gas stove has a pilot, yet is not an airplane. The swallow may fly south with the sun or the house martin or the plover may seek warmer climes in winter, yet these are not strangers to our land. You seem to be confused by the conditions of sufficient and necessary.

 

[Davka]

You're right, of course. I was using the term in the sense that the reactionary right has made pretty much the common understanding -- that any involvement by the government in social programs is creeping Socialism (and, therefore, pernicious).

Yeah, all those evil Socialist programs like the Post Office and the public schools need to be dismantled before the Reds overrun the place!

 

[Bomb#20]

Right. Also, none of these kinds of communities abolish private ownership, not even private ownership of the means of production. They're established in the context of legal systems that will enforce their members' private property rights against collective demands.

Some do some don't. Rules and organizational structures vary widely. Hutterites, for example, hold all property in common. Houses, clothing, vehicles, food, money -- all community property. Hutterites work in assigned jobs, cook in a communal kitchen and eat in a communal refectory.
How would "communist" not apply to them?

The same way living in company housing and driving a company truck while wearing a company-provided uniform isn't communist. A Hutterite community is pretty much just an employee-owned corporation. If a Hutterite writes a book about the experience and receives fat royalty checks, or walks over the border onto a normal farm and gets paid farmhand wages, or inherits a furniture factory from his great-uncle who quit the community and became a Mennonite fifty years ago, that's all his. Unlike in a communist country, if the community votes to take it away and he doesn't consent to that, the courts will back him up, the same as if a corporation steals from its employee/tenant. Private ownership isn't something a collective can abolish merely by acquiring a whole lot of collectively owned stuff.

 

[Valjean]

If you want to create your own definitions and then craft arguments around your definitions, there really is no point to the discussion. A Boeing 747 has wings and it flies in the air, yet is not a bird. A gas stove has a pilot, yet is not an airplane. The swallow may fly south with the sun or the house martin or the plover may seek warmer climes in winter, yet these are not strangers to our land. You seem to be confused by the conditions of sufficient and necessary.

We're obviously operating from different concepts of government and nationhood and we're unlikely to come to any understanding unless you clarify what government is, not just what it's not.
See post #36.