Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei

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1. ben_wMar 2023
   You're arguing against an imaginary totem instead of what I actually wrote.

   > Communism and the communist party have never been part of the question

   De facto/de jure. Nobody wants it (de facto), I've demonstrated by linking to the actual parties that de jure it's totally been an option.

   Those parties I linked, you could have voted for, but y'all didn't.

   Given I've explicitly said I'm not talking about dem/rep culture war nonsense, your over-detailed rant about McCarthy (who, you may be surprised to learn, was sufficiently relevant to your politics that his actions are well known on the other side of the Atlantic and his name is likewise used as a derogatory term) was a waste of your own time.

   I am specifically and literally referring the idea of private ownership of the means of production, which is in the actual literal Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei as written by Karl Marx in 1848.

   Which I have in fact read.

   Section 2, English translation, has the following passage:

   """ The proletariat will use its political supremacy, to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i. e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling class; and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible. """ - https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Manifesto_of_the_Communist_Pa...

   That, right there, is why not having Communism in the USA means that rich people get to keep their stuff out of public hands.

   Now, do you know some other political ideology besides communism that wants to remove control of factories from their owners? Because that would be an additional option beyond the dozen or so communist parties of the USA coming 7th-25th in a two-horse race, and the complaint being made against OpenAI is that it's not letting users do whatever with the tools that OpenAI made and own.

   So far as I am aware, none of

   > the rejection of [pastafarianism | soccer/futbol | anarchocapitalism | mandatory left-handedness | manual transmission cars | etc]

   Have any causal connection to

   > why rich people get to own and control businesses

   (Maybe anarchocapitalism?) But that's the specific point of communism.

   Which you as a nation reject, even though they're a thing you're not, AFAIK, banned from voting for.

   I mean, reading what you've written, you and I definitely agree 100% that communists are not politically viable in the USA. I'm just saying that the logical consequences of their non-viability includes "rich people can own and control businesses".

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2. Locke1689Dec 2009
   I understood him to advocate the overthrow of the "bourgeoisie".

   This is mostly correct, although the correct translation for him would be the ruling class.

   It was far more broad, attacking ones citizen neighbors simply because they were landowners, for example.

   Never. One's neighbors are one's allies in the class struggle against the ruling class. Landowners would never be the "neighbors" of a peasant in Czarist Russia. More precisely, it would be a war waged beneath the underclass (in Russia, the serfs and such) and the ruling class. I think you have your view of history tainted by modern preconceptions. Also, you have to be careful of certain translations. Das Kapital and Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei in the original German lead to certain nuances of language that can be lost in a poor translation. Moore's is probably the best, although not perfect.

   The results of "communist" revolutions of the 20th century are orders of magnitude greater than the fallout of any other revolution, before or since.

   Oh, so the October Revolution (Октябрьская революция) had many more casualties than the American Revolution? Or the French Revolution (Liberté, égalité, fraternité!)? Or the American Civil War? Well, no. The incidents to which you refer are the massacres conducted by despotic rulers in so-called Communist countries. In fact, they weren't even called "Communist". They were Stalinist. Or Maoist. You hang these acts around Marx's neck like a noose but he didn't advocate them and would never approve. Marx didn't advocate massacre or mass slaughter or starvation (of the proletariat, no less!). He advocated violent revolution. Once that was done, however, the state was under the control of the people and no more violence was necessary than that needed to keep the peace. And Pol Pot? Pol Pot wasn't even remotely Marxist. Most of the Khmer Rouge attacks were targeted at the intellectuals. The intellectuals?! These were Marx's people! The intellectuals were necessary to help build a global Communist free state. Marx certainly didn't advocate killing himself.

   You see, you have mistaken the acts of depravity that are the responsibility of the ones who committed them as done under the order of the "eternal Marx." In truth, Marx was nothing more than a name and a scapegoat. The people who committed these actions were stark, raving mad and committed most of them out of personal prejudice and thirst for power and control. As far as history goes, nothing out of the ordinary.

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