Marxism

[Bomb#20]

The meaningful question is what kind of society do we want to live in, and how do we get there. If we can't agree on our destination, can we agree on anything?

Even if we can't agree on what kind of society we want to live in, we should at least agree on what kind we don't want to live in. Who the heck ever benefited from living in the kind of society you get if you hand power over a country to people who say they're going to abolish property, seize the means of production, and implement Marxism?

 

[DrZoidberg]

I don't know where DrZoidberg got his history, but property rights are as old as humanity...

Older. Much much older. Chimpanzees have property rights.

I'm pretty sure John Locke wasn't a chimpanzee.

You're making the classic mistake of thinking that our ancestors thought just like we did. They didn't.

What is your evidence for the second statement? How can you know it is true or even false?
I think that a person living in a different space (another location on Earth) thinks the same way in general (individual differences in some aspects) as other people. Similarly I think that people living in another time (our ancestors) think like us. It's not a matter of thinking differently, but having different data to process. Ask someone what colour is a swan - the Australian will say black, the Brit white. The ancestor had to process how to deal with not being eaten by a leopard, but the thinking process is the same as a modern person (ignoring any differences caused by language and experiences - the modern person is unlikely to have had this experience, but may have had a similar experience).
Note that if you are thinking of an ancient as say a citizen of ancient Rome, that there is also huge differences between a person living in say Spain and one living in say Eritrea. An interesting thing is that about fifty years ago I read Livy's 'Hannibal' and I said to my dad how similar the bureaucracy of ancient Rome that he talks about and the modern bureaucracy I knew of at that time were to each other.

There's a couple of things here:

1. Marx's view of the alienation of the factory was a LARPers fantasy of life as a farmer.

It's hard to overstate the cultural impact the industrial revolution had on humanity. When Marx was writing they still had agrarian cultural values, even though they didn't fit at all the world they were living in. In the 19'th century they kept going on endlessly about the buculic simplicity and innocent pure hearts of farm workers. The Fabian society etc. But it was a complete fantasy. Urban workers had a more fun life, were litterate and knew much more than their rural counterparts just a hundred years prior. Nobody (apart from a handful of well heeled poets) in the 19th century came to the city and thought, nah... not for me. I am going back to farm life.

The main reason the workers of the 19th century wasn't that they were more exploited than workes had been before. It was because they were now litterate and had a space for their own intellectual life. They were in fact less exploited than they'd ever been before in human history. The factory owners were desperate for new laborers which pushed wages up. Those extra wages gave workers the chance to have some free time and to get organised.

It's the same now with young women moving from the countriside of Bangladesh to work in sweatshops. We think they're being exploited. But they don't. Because they're comparing their new life in the factory to the grinding poverty of the farm.

2. We continually keep forgetting the cultural impact of Christianity on Europe. The idea that those at the bottom of the status ladder were worthy of dignity was something that Christianity introduced. That's a super Christian idea. Socialism is super Christian.

We also keep forgetting the monumental shift in thinking that Protestantism came with. The idea that everyone had their own relationship with God and it was up to each of us to find bliss in our own way. Nobody had ever thought like that before. Yes, Luthers goal was to go back to original Christianity. But he fucked up, to put it mildly. Protestant thinking had a huge impact on how western thought developed.

Property rights assume that everyone is worthy of having their rights respected. It also assumes that every individual has a right to shape their life and future as they see fit. Those two assume Christian and protestant values. Those are not universal.

Yes, I am aware the India and China has other traditions that also led to property rights. But that's a massive topic. I'm going to stay Eurocentric here to keep it manageable.

3. Everyone is communist, in their own family. Every family works on the communist principle. We've all seen it work. Society and the early tribes is just an expanded family unit. Assuming that early humans had property rights is silly. We know that the early city states functioned like communist communities. Everyone would farm communaly, going to comunal grain stores, and the priests would divvy it up according to need. Those systems only broke down as empires grew.

To sum up: Free market capitalism works so well that it's easy to think that our ancestors also saw the wisdom in this system. But we have no reason to think that's true. There's no historical evidence for it.

 

[DrZoidberg]

I don't know where DrZoidberg got his history, but property rights are as old as humanity...

Older. Much much older. Chimpanzees have property rights.

I'm pretty sure John Locke wasn't a chimpanzee.

I'm pretty sure John Locke wasn't the first property owner. Why do you keep pushing this narrative where the British invented property rights? Property is one of the items on Dr. Brown's famous list of "human universals" -- features found in every society anthropologists have checked for them in.

I had to google this guy. According to what I can see the universal Dr. Brown says is that each society has norms about property rights. Not that those norms are the same or that each societies norms are universal. Which lines up with what me, Locke, Hume, Rousseau and Marx has said.

I suggest you find some other thinker to back up your claim. Dr. Brown doesn't seem to be helping you.

I'll maintain that our concept of property rights is a product of the English Civil war, protestantism and later British empire. Because British (well... Dutch) free market capitalism worked so well for them, the rest of the world has now copied it. And as long as it keeps working out for countries they'll keep protecting property rights.

Property rights are respected when it benefits the people in power. In a democracy it's the general population who are in power. So democratic nations are likely to have strong protection of property rights.

A good example of how property rights works is copyrights. When USA wasn't producing litterature they didn't care about copyrights. As they got their own authors they started with respecting copyrights. Same deal with China. China didn't give a fuck about intellectual property as long as they weren't producing any of their own. But as China got their act together and their economy grew they started respecting copyrights. Turkey still doesn't respect copyrights. I think copyrights is a good example because it's not obvious that intellectual ideas should be seen as property. But it is now. The same can be extended for anything.

You're making the classic mistake of thinking that our ancestors thought just like we did.

What evidence do you have that I think they did?

You've said that humanity have had the same concept of property rights all the way back to us being chimpanzees.

They didn't.
Obviously. Not even my parents think like me.

Now you're changing what you said earlier.

 

[Spacetime Inhabitant]

I don't know where DrZoidberg got his history, but property rights are as old as humanity...

Older. Much much older. Chimpanzees have property rights.

I'm pretty sure John Locke wasn't a chimpanzee.

You're making the classic mistake of thinking that our ancestors thought just like we did. They didn't.

What is your evidence for the second statement? How can you know it is true or even false?
I think that a person living in a different space (another location on Earth) thinks the same way in general (individual differences in some aspects) as other people. Similarly I think that people living in another time (our ancestors) think like us. It's not a matter of thinking differently, but having different data to process. Ask someone what colour is a swan - the Australian will say black, the Brit white. The ancestor had to process how to deal with not being eaten by a leopard, but the thinking process is the same as a modern person (ignoring any differences caused by language and experiences - the modern person is unlikely to have had this experience, but may have had a similar experience).
Note that if you are thinking of an ancient as say a citizen of ancient Rome, that there is also huge differences between a person living in say Spain and one living in say Eritrea. An interesting thing is that about fifty years ago I read Livy's 'Hannibal' and I said to my dad how similar the bureaucracy of ancient Rome that he talks about and the modern bureaucracy I knew of at that time were to each other.

There's a couple of things here:

1. Marx's view of the alienation of the factory was a LARPers fantasy of life as a farmer.

It's hard to overstate the cultural impact the industrial revolution had on humanity. When Marx was writing they still had agrarian cultural values, even though they didn't fit at all the world they were living in. In the 19'th century they kept going on endlessly about the buculic simplicity and innocent pure hearts of farm workers. The Fabian society etc. But it was a complete fantasy. Urban workers had a more fun life, were litterate and knew much more than their rural counterparts just a hundred years prior. Nobody (apart from a handful of well heeled poets) in the 19th century came to the city and thought, nah... not for me. I am going back to farm life.

The main reason the workers of the 19th century wasn't that they were more exploited than workes had been before. It was because they were now litterate and had a space for their own intellectual life. They were in fact less exploited than they'd ever been before in human history. The factory owners were desperate for new laborers which pushed wages up. Those extra wages gave workers the chance to have some free time and to get organised.

It's the same now with young women moving from the countriside of Bangladesh to work in sweatshops. We think they're being exploited. But they don't. Because they're comparing their new life in the factory to the grinding poverty of the farm.

2. We continually keep forgetting the cultural impact of Christianity on Europe. The idea that those at the bottom of the status ladder were worthy of dignity was something that Christianity introduced. That's a super Christian idea. Socialism is super Christian.

We also keep forgetting the monumental shift in thinking that Protestantism came with. The idea that everyone had their own relationship with God and it was up to each of us to find bliss in our own way. Nobody had ever thought like that before. Yes, Luthers goal was to go back to original Christianity. But he fucked up, to put it mildly. Protestant thinking had a huge impact on how western thought developed.

Property rights assume that everyone is worthy of having their rights respected. It also assumes that every individual has a right to shape their life and future as they see fit. Those two assume Christian and protestant values. Those are not universal.

Yes, I am aware the India and China has other traditions that also led to property rights. But that's a massive topic. I'm going to stay Eurocentric here to keep it manageable.

3. Everyone is communist, in their own family. Every family works on the communist principle. We've all seen it work. Society and the early tribes is just an expanded family unit. Assuming that early humans had property rights is silly. We know that the early city states functioned like communist communities. Everyone would farm communaly, going to comunal grain stores, and the priests would divvy it up according to need. Those systems only broke down as empires grew.

To sum up: Free market capitalism works so well that it's easy to think that our ancestors also saw the wisdom in this system. But we have no reason to think that's true. There's no historical evidence for it.

I see what you are saying. We were on two different paths; I was thinking more of how people's brains work. You are talking of zeitgeists (worldviews), which affect populations/societies. I agree that zeitgeists of our time are different to those of the past, though I am not sure that I totally agree fully with the specifics that you mention but that is a minor detail.

As regards Marxism (and here I am addressing the general topic of this thread, not replying to you), specifically communism, many people believe that both communism and capitalism are both economic philosophy and government philosophy, but these are separate as for example could have a communist democracy or a capitalist autocracy. Marx envisioned modern communism first arising in a democratic industrialized nation like Germany, not an agricultural autocracy like Russia, which went from autocratic Tsar to autocratic Lenin. This was a setback for socialism as it then got associated with USSR.
Of course most modern governments recognize that need a mixed economy with a capitalist foundation but socialist augmentation.
Fascism is of course a third path that basically advocates for corporate "socialism", and that is what current USA risks becoming.

 

[Bomb#20]

As regards Marxism (and here I am addressing the general topic of this thread, not replying to you), specifically communism, many people believe that both communism and capitalism are both economic philosophy and government philosophy, but these are separate as for example could have a communist democracy or a capitalist autocracy. Marx envisioned modern communism first arising in a democratic industrialized nation like Germany, not an agricultural autocracy like Russia, which went from autocratic Tsar to autocratic Lenin. This was a setback for socialism as it then got associated with USSR.

You can certainly have a capitalist autocracy -- all it takes is a coup. That pretty much describes France under Napoleon III. But it's not clear you can have a communist democracy. Hayek explained why not in The Road to Serfdom. Czechoslovakia voted communists into power after WWII and they abolished democracy when it looked like they'd lose the next election, just as Hayek predicted. Marx envisioned modern communism first arising in a democratic industrialized nation, yes, but by revolution, not by winning elections -- his contempt for bourgeois rule of law was legendary.

 

[lostone]

Have we already had a Right Wing coup yet, or do we have a faction that is in the process of a slow, and carefully planned, coup?

 

[DrZoidberg]

As regards Marxism (and here I am addressing the general topic of this thread, not replying to you), specifically communism, many people believe that both communism and capitalism are both economic philosophy and government philosophy, but these are separate as for example could have a communist democracy or a capitalist autocracy. Marx envisioned modern communism first arising in a democratic industrialized nation like Germany, not an agricultural autocracy like Russia, which went from autocratic Tsar to autocratic Lenin. This was a setback for socialism as it then got associated with USSR.

You can certainly have a capitalist autocracy -- all it takes is a coup. That pretty much describes France under Napoleon III. But it's not clear you can have a communist democracy. Hayek explained why not in The Road to Serfdom. Czechoslovakia voted communists into power after WWII and they abolished democracy when it looked like they'd lose the next election, just as Hayek predicted. Marx envisioned modern communism first arising in a democratic industrialized nation, yes, but by revolution, not by winning elections -- his contempt for bourgeois rule of law was legendary.

How isn't the entire west today democratic communism?

The moment we got state financed universal welfare and medical care based on need I think we became communist.

I think the only reason we don't think that is because of the USSR and they got to define communism. Yes, I am aware of how words shift over time. Today we separate socialism and communism. Ie, socialism is communism light. Which os cool and all. But Marx did win the ideological battle all over the world. Today the ideological debate is more "what kind of Marxist are you"?

I have met libertarians who hold some socialist ideas. That's how far its gone

 

[No Robots]

^I agree with this. It is now time to advance beyond consideration of material conditions to the consideration of spiritual/intellectual conditions.

Here is Orwell on the spiritual vacuum in which we live:

I do not want the belief in life after death to return, and in any case it is not likely to return. What I do point out is that its disappearance has left a big hole, and that we ought to take notice of that fact. Reared for thousands of years on the notion that the individual survives, man has got to make a considerable psychological effort to get used to the notion that the individual perishes. He is not likely to salvage civilization unless he can evolve a system of good and evil which is independent of heaven and hell. Marxism, indeed, does supply this, but it has never really been popularized. Most Socialists are content to point out that once Socialism has been established we shall be happier in a material sense, and to assume that all problems lapse when one’s belly is full. The truth is the opposite: when one’s belly is empty, one’s only problem is an empty belly. It is when we have got away from drudgery and exploitation that we shall really start wondering about man’s destiny and the reason for his existence. One cannot have any worthwhile picture of the future unless one realises how much we have lost by the decay of Christianity.

Harry Waton maintains that spiritual regeneration should be the primary objective of socialism:

The socialists, therefore, must direct all their efforts to help the proletariat to rise ever higher and higher, mentally and morally, so that it may come nearer and ever nearer to the apex of the pyramid of creation, partake ever more of the natura naturans, and make ever more consciously and effectively their own history. "Nevertheless I say unto you, Hereafter ye shall see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of Heaven." The Son of Man, the proletariat, who, unlike the foxes that have holes and the birds that have nests, has nowhere to lay his head, will, spite of all opposition and difficulty, attain to the right hand of power and will rise to the clouds of heaven and enjoy economic security and supreme happiness.

John Macmurray provides a sound basis for philosophic development on the basis of socialism/communism.

For advanced study, there is the work of Constantin Brunner and his followers.

And of course there is the work of Marx himself as well as that of Hegel.

Taken together, these thinkers provide the necessary foundation for a spiritual/intellectual regeneration within the context of socialism/communism.

 

[No Robots]

^I should also point out that all of the foregoing takes place within the intellectual framework of Spinoza.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

"So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work" - Peter F. Drucker

Good management is invisible in the organisation day to day. Its when management dissapears we notice what they do all day. And suddenly everything gets complicated

I've worked in management most of my working life

They are invisible so long as people are doing their job properly. I work for one of the good ones, he basically tries to automate his job other than innovating, I translate that into code that actually does it.

 

[steve_bank]

The moment we got state financed universal welfare and medical care based on need I think we became communist.

That alleged ideological connection is what is keeping us fro having national health care.

In our conservative thinking national healthcare --> communism --> dictatorship IOW Russian and Chinese communism.

In our general western forms of what call socialist and capitalist systems 'the government' does not fund anything. It is funded by taxes on personal earnings and business.

Remember the Beatles' song Taxman? About British taxation, when you die be sure to declare the pennies on your eyes

And back to what is the definition of communism. Common ownership of the means of production. And what does that en in parcel?

In China the state owns all land at the top level..

By conventional measures, China has 391,000 state-owned enterprises (SOEs), but new analysis of state ownership among all 40 million registered firms in China finds that 363,000 firms are 100% state-owned, 629,000 firms are 30% state-owned, and nearly 867,000 firms have at least some state ownership.

The Chinese constitution describes the country's system of government as a people's democratic dictatorship. The CCP has also used other terms to officially describe China's system of government including "socialist consultative democracy", and whole-process people's democracy.

The Chinese political system is considered authoritarian. There are no freely elected national leaders, political opposition is suppressed, all organized religious activity is controlled by the CCP, dissent is not permitted, and civil rights are curtailed.

A true Marxist state is a fantasy. Without hierarchical structure nothing works. China makes it's version work with rigid control and a quasi private sector.

From what I read and fro someone who lived in China the CCP is always fearful of a counter revolution.

 

[lostone]

In monarchies of the Middle Ages, the king, in theory, owned all the land. Which gives monarchy a whiff of communism.

AI Overview


Yes, theoretically, the king owned all land in medieval monarchies under the feudal system
, granting usage rights to nobles in exchange for service like military support. While the king held ultimate, theoretical ownership, nobles were the practical holders of large estates, with the reality of power constantly being a struggle between the monarch and his powerful vassals.

Theoretical ownership

• The king was at the top of the feudal hierarchy and considered the ultimate owner of all land in the kingdom.
• He granted large parcels of land (fiefs) to his loyal nobles, who became his tenants-in-chief.
• In return for holding this land, the nobles were expected to provide the king with military service, counsel, and financial support.
  • This system applied to all land, including that which made up large cities like London.

Practical realities

• While a king might theoretically own all the land, his personal control was limited, and power was not absolute.
• The practical power of a monarch was constantly challenged by the nobility and the church, who were also major landowners.
• Lords held their land based on their promises to the king, but they often had their own allegiances and power struggles.
• Over time, the system of land ownership evolved, but the theory of the crown's ultimate ownership has persisted in some legal systems, like modern-day England.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

In today's western world of extreme abundance everyone, (everyone not retarded) could be rich if they put their minds to it. What prevents us is our priorities.

Or otherwise disabled.

And the price we pay for a more humane society is less wealth across the board. A unhinged free market will lead to greater wealth for all. I just don't think the price is worth paying.

Yup, we have to balance present consumption with future consumption. But an awful lot on the left are all about present consumption, eat the seed corn.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

One thing many leftists don't understand is that there's high churn on the top. That's a technical investment banker jargon. It means that the richer you are the easier it is to lose your money. It's extremely hard to stay rich. It's not particularly difficult to climb and become rich. Assuming you put in the work and hours.

While a lot of rich people were born wealthy or well off, what they inherited that is more valuable is a lifestyle and habits that lead to wealth. That's what typically sets rich people apart from poor people. That's why class differences tend to become entrenched. But all of that can be broken.

I somewhat disagree.

The thing is almost everyone who reaches very high wealth does so by being a great success in one place. It's an all your eggs in one basket type situation, if something happens to that basket you fall. But there is the Warren Buffet type wealth (his success was in recognizing value rather than in making something), he's very diversified and thus not going to fall.

I used to know a couple in the 9 figures range. Perhaps they even reached 10 figures. One basket that failed, I don't know their current finances but I doubt it's even 9 figures.

Very definitely agree on what causes class differences. Wealth causes attitudes, those attitudes tend to cause wealth. But that's anathema to many on the left.

 

[DrZoidberg]

The moment we got state financed universal welfare and medical care based on need I think we became communist.

That alleged ideological connection is what is keeping us fro having national health care.

In our conservative thinking national healthcare --> communism --> dictatorship IOW Russian and Chinese communism.

In our general western forms of what call socialist and capitalist systems 'the government' does not fund anything. It is funded by taxes on personal earnings and business.

Remember the Beatles' song Taxman? About British taxation, when you die be sure to declare the pennies on your eyes

And back to what is the definition of communism. Common ownership of the means of production. And what does that en in parcel?

In China the state owns all land at the top level..

By conventional measures, China has 391,000 state-owned enterprises (SOEs), but new analysis of state ownership among all 40 million registered firms in China finds that 363,000 firms are 100% state-owned, 629,000 firms are 30% state-owned, and nearly 867,000 firms have at least some state ownership.

The Chinese constitution describes the country's system of government as a people's democratic dictatorship. The CCP has also used other terms to officially describe China's system of government including "socialist consultative democracy", and whole-process people's democracy.

The Chinese political system is considered authoritarian. There are no freely elected national leaders, political opposition is suppressed, all organized religious activity is controlled by the CCP, dissent is not permitted, and civil rights are curtailed.

A true Marxist state is a fantasy. Without hierarchical structure nothing works. China makes it's version work with rigid control and a quasi private sector.

From what I read and fro someone who lived in China the CCP is always fearful of a counter revolution.

I think the conceptual shift that communism gave us was from the royal paternal guidance, to meritoctatic parental responsibility. The state doesn't act to guide us nowadays. The state is nowadays responsible for our well being.

Christian welfare came from volontary donation. Communist welfare comes from an enforced duty.

Today we often forget what a monumental shift this way of seeing the state is. But its communism. This way if thinking is completely socialist. I doubt Marx invented it. It was the zeitgeist then. What he did was write it down.

Anyway... Today, in the west, every country just takes this paternal caring governmental attitude as a given. You don't need to travel around non-democratic countries much to get a completely different state - citizen relationship. One of exploitation

 

[steve_bank]

Paternal? That is a laugh. So, Love Big Brother?

As I see it as individuals we are responsible for our own well being, the state can provide assistance.

Here in Washington and Seattle we are chronically short of budget yet social programs grow. Programs that support small numbers of people and fine details.

Nothing is free.

Here in the area somebody went paddle boarding in a river with a dangerous spot. no warning posted. He went under. state was sued for not warning people, other similar situations. The 'nanny state'.

No personal responsibility. Unprepared people periodically go into the back court and end up needing to get rescued.

Is the state reposeful for saving you from your own irrepressible actions as if you are a child?

But that is not the issue. It Marxism-communism on the scale of a USA.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

You have an obsession about the "wrong thinking" of the left, and also a class warfare attitude. BTW I am not of the left so your thoughts about the left are irrelevant to me on a personal level. You say it is easy for a rich person to become non-rich. The reverse is the case in regard to the rich becoming not rich - that it is difficult. That it happens often is because lots of rich people who didn't earn their wealth squander it and use their wealth unwisely.

In regard to pleasure, for lots of them gaining more wealth is a form of pleasure, plus many other pleasures. You are confused if you think staying rich requires hard work. Where it does require hard work there are minions and employees (workers) to do that. Also you seem to think all rich people are super-wealthy, but some are comfortably rich and don't have an obsession with becoming wealthy beyond reason. They are not all the same as each other.

You say money and wealth are two different things. You'll have to explain that. Some of the people on this board are very economically literate; I am sure they will be interested to hear your ideas about this. I just looked at an article that says money is only a component of wealth, but the other components of wealth they listed are just money transformed into other aspects.

It's not warfare! It's simply reality--you can have more now, or even more later. "Class warfare" is pretending you can have your cake and eat it too.

 

[Bomb#20]

I don't know where DrZoidberg got his history, but property rights are as old as humanity...

Older. Much much older. Chimpanzees have property rights.

I'm pretty sure John Locke wasn't a chimpanzee.

I'm pretty sure John Locke wasn't the first property owner. Why do you keep pushing this narrative where the British invented property rights? Property is one of the items on Dr. Brown's famous list of "human universals" -- features found in every society anthropologists have checked for them in.

I had to google this guy. According to what I can see the universal Dr. Brown says is that each society has norms about property rights. Not that those norms are the same or that each societies norms are universal. Which lines up with what me, Locke, Hume, Rousseau and Marx has said.

I suggest you find some other thinker to back up your claim. Dr. Brown doesn't seem to be helping you.

I'll maintain that our concept of property rights is a product of the English Civil war, protestantism and later British empire.

In the words of the master, now you're changing what you said earlier. You didn't say "our concept of property rights". You said

"Modern economic theory, (ie how mercantilism was abandoned) comes from trying to explain why Spain's economy was so [cruddy] despite swimming in gold and silver. Property rights come from that. And before that evolved out of the Magna Carta and English civil war. It also comes from analysing the many bad decisions that were made leading up to and during the French Revolution. We got a whole bunch of natural experiments to use for analysis."​

"Property rights come from that.", not *"our concept of property rights comes from that. ". No, property rights do not come from modern economic theory, Magna Carta and the English Civil War. You made an absurd claim so lpetrich and I pointed out it was wrong. If you wanted to claim only that our modern concept comes from the British sources you list, in the words of the master, this is a different conversation.

The concept of property rights prevalent in the modern west isn't actually British; it's American. It dates to our revolutionary period. The old British theory was that the most economically important commodity, land, was all owned by the King, and was parceled out feudally to family lineages in return for vassalage. This meant two things in practice: that the king could take it back when he wanted, and that the "owner", the vassal holding the fief, couldn't sell off or even mortgage his land and thereby disinherit his eldest son, who was legally entitled to continue the same relationship with the king once his father died. This was called "fee tail"; the "fee" part literally means "fief". The abolition of "fee tail" in favor of "fee simple", where you and not your lineage owns your land, began in American states beginning in 1776, and leaked back into British law in the 1800s and early 1900s. And when we got around to enacting our Bill of Rights in 1791, we included a rule against the government taking land without just compensation, which is what it takes to make individual land ownership the real deal. It's worth remembering that the Bill of Rights isn't an abstract theory of good government, but a laundry list of British practices the colonies were sick and tired of.

A good example of how property rights works is copyrights. When USA wasn't producing litterature they didn't care about copyrights. As they got their own authors they started with respecting copyrights.

Lousy example. Copyrights aren't property in the USA; they're contracts. They weren't property in Britain either -- they started as a Tudor censorship scheme, then became a mercantilist tool to enrich publishers, and only after 200 years evolved into a tool to pay authors. The whole notion of "intellectual property" is French as all hell. The French way of thinking has regrettably infected our legal profession.

I think copyrights is a good example because it's not obvious that intellectual ideas should be seen as property. But it is now.

Show your work. It's not obvious. Monkey-see-monkey-do is the ancient law of our race; it's so fundamental to our way of life we named it after ourselves: "aping". Seeing intellectual ideas as property is stupid.

You're making the classic mistake of thinking that our ancestors thought just like we did.

What evidence do you have that I think they did?

You've said that humanity have had the same concept of property rights all the way back to us being chimpanzees.

I've said nothing of the sort. Why are you so systematically unwilling to fact-check your beliefs? The discussion up to now is freely available. Chimpanzee property rights are pretty much limited to their meat-sharing practices. From such humble beginnings, so much has evolved...

They didn't.
Obviously. Not even my parents think like me.

Now you're changing what you said earlier.

No, that would be you.

 

[Bomb#20]

... these are separate as for example could have a communist democracy or a capitalist autocracy. ...

You can certainly have a capitalist autocracy -- all it takes is a coup. That pretty much describes France under Napoleon III. But it's not clear you can have a communist democracy. Hayek explained why not in The Road to Serfdom. Czechoslovakia voted communists into power after WWII and they abolished democracy when it looked like they'd lose the next election, just as Hayek predicted. Marx envisioned modern communism first arising in a democratic industrialized nation, yes, but by revolution, not by winning elections -- his contempt for bourgeois rule of law was legendary.

How isn't the entire west today democratic communism?

By being mostly capitalist. "Communism" means seizing the means of production and abolishing private ownership of it. Name one country in the west that has done that besides Cuba.

The moment we got state financed universal welfare and medical care based on need I think we became communist.

Normally people say that only if they're right-wingers trying to smear the welfare state with guilt-by-association, or if they're left-wingers trying to trick listeners who like the welfare state into approving of communism, so they can pull a bait-and-switch. You appear to have been fooled by one or the other of those propaganda sources.

I think the only reason we don't think that is because of the USSR and they got to define communism.

The reason we don't think that is because it isn't true. State financed universal welfare and medical care based on need is not communism, because private ownership of the means of production isn't abolished. That's not the USSR's definition. That's Marx's definition.

Why would anyone think nationalizing health care means we have communism? What's so special about health care? Why didn't we become communist the moment we got state financed universal grade school? For that matter, why didn't we become communist the moment we got state financed universal military defense? If government providing one service to everyone based on need is enough to make a system communism, then why wasn't the British Empire communist in 1812? It's not like the Canadians paid for saving their own asses when the Americans invaded -- the taxpayers back in jolly old England paid for that.

Communism means nationalizing the economy as a whole, not one or three sectors. The point of nationalizing education or health care or charity is to make it independent of profit because you think for-profit providers won't give it to everyone, so instead you make up the losses with taxes on the privately owned profitable parts of the economy. The point of communism is for the government to own and operate the profitable parts of the economy itself so it won't have to share the profits with private owners. You can't run an entire economy at a loss and subsidize the loss-making sectors out of subsidies from other loss-making sectors.

Yes, I am aware of how words shift over time. Today we separate socialism and communism. Ie, socialism is communism light. Which os cool and all.

Sure. Venezuela nationalized a third of its economy, enough to make it socialist but not communist. When Britain nationalized key industries after WWII, that wasn't enough to even make it socialist. You can tell, because the government didn't seize the means of production -- they bought it. The previous owners were paid compensation. There's no way you can do that to a third of an economy. You can't raise taxes on the remaining two thirds enough to pay for that much expropriation, without destroying it.

But Marx did win the ideological battle all over the world. Today the ideological debate is more "what kind of Marxist are you"?

Maybe in your head, not in everybody else's. People are fond of making claims like that, but it's just projection. To channel Nietzsche, Marx is dead; but given the way of men, there may still be caves for thousands of years in which his shadow will be shown -- and we -- we still have to vanquish his shadow, too.

I have met libertarians who hold some socialist ideas. That's how far its gone

That's not going far; that's returning to the roots. What, didn't you know the libertarians who believe in laissez-faire capitalism stole the name "libertarian" from socialists? (Which was perfectly fair game, since the socialist libertarians had stolen the name themselves, from the people who believe in contra-causal free will.)