Agnapostate
Banned
- Joined
- Sep 18, 2008
- Messages
- 5,497
- Reaction score
- 912
- Location
- Between Hollywood and Compton.
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Libertarian
Wow, perfect 30-30 tie.
Wow, perfect 30-30 tie.
I'm not interested in your crude jingoistic sentiments. The Constitution itself is admittedly rather anti-democratic in a number of ways, and we're rather far removed from the agrarian conditions in which classical liberals presumed egalitarianism would flourish since presently existing corporate capitalism has radically altered previously existing settings, but the fundamental point is that I favor libertarianism and participatory direct democracy. I don't particularly care for arbitrary nationalistic distinctions; the maximization of liberty and democracy, fundamental ingredients in our capacity for self-governance and improved happiness are the relevant aspects. :shrug:
This simply illustrates more ignorance of political economy. I never claimed that "real communism has never existed"; on the contrary, I claimed that some degree of libertarian communism was implemented throughout the Spanish Revolution
Notice how he fails to answer the question, yes of course this man wants to see the US Constitution dissolved that is because he does in fact hate the Republic and everything it stands for.
As for his "direct democracy" and "workers cooperatives" what this man is describing is Castro's Cuba and Soviet Democracy, there's a reason why Communism always leads to dictatorship and that is because the workers need their strongman to get things done, his assertion that workers cooperatives are highly efficient in governing the needs and wants of a society are laughable, to the contrary they are highly inefficient outside of a society with less than say one thousand people which is why the communists always turn to the planning boards which again are highly inefficient.
Using meta-analytic techniques, the author synthesizes the results of 43 published studies to investigate the effects on productivity of various forms of worker participation: worker participation in decision making; mandated codetermination; profit sharing; worker ownership (employee stock ownership or individual worker ownership of the firm's assets); and collective ownership of assets (workers' collective ownership of reserves over which they have no individual claim). He finds that codetermination laws are negatively associated with productivity, but profit sharing, worker ownership, and worker participation in decision making are all positively associated with productivity. All the observed correlations are stronger among labor-managed firms (firms owned and controlled by workers) than among participatory capitalist firms (firms adopting one or more participation schemes involving employees, such as ESOPs or quality circles).
There's a reason why the Communists always have to turn to this example and that of the Paris Commune as their glowing examples of "
their" brand of Communism, that is because they didn't last longer than a year and didn't have time to devolve into totalitarian statist hell holes.
Nothing like a well placed thanks-grubbing post, no matter how platitudinous. :2razz: Yes, of course I'm joking.
Stop trying to cloud the convo with semantics. The fact of the matter is your post attempted to tie the far right in with racism. The only thing that would make the far right synonymous with racism is posts like yours.
I'm still trying to find the relevance of your point in relation to this thread, btw.
Fine. Dissolve the goddamned thing already; republicanism is inherently inferior to participatory direct democracy, and there are other existing elements in both the Constitution and republicanism in general that inhibit the maximization of libertarian principles. And as I said, I don't care about your crude jingoistic nationalism; my primary allegiance is to liberty and the corresponding maximization of human happiness that results from it rather than arbitrary national distinctions.
These are most ridiculous comments to make. The USSR and Cuba (though Cuba to a far lesser extent) were and are dependent on a level of authoritarianism completely inimical to the maximization of direct democracy in workers' cooperatives, which was a reality grimly noted by libertarian socialists and anarchists at the time, and indeed, predicted of the more hierarchical elements of Marxism as early as the nineteenth century.
into As for the similarly absurd comment about the "inefficiency" of workers' cooperatives, the empirical literature almost unanimously indicates the precise opposite. For example, consider Doucouliagos's Worker participation and productivity in labor-managed and participatory capitalist firms: A Meta-Analysis.
As previously mentioned, the Spanish Revolution endured for approximately three years, and involved about 40% of the population. Aside from that, there's nothing but sheer and blatant lunacy and positively obscene corruption of the political spectrum involved in referring to anarchism as "totalitarian" and "statist." :roll:
-I personally believe that the far left is much more dangerous to America, simply because it seems that they don't see America as something worth defending.
In the words of Bill Clinton "I would rather be strong and wrong than weak and right".
-
And when was the last time America needed defending and the 'far left' didn't defend America???:roll::roll::roll:
-
Historically? They took their que from the Soviet Union, for example when the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact was signed the far left in the U.S. was anti-war but when Hitler invaded poof they were magically pro-war. Funny how that works huh?
Then don't claim not to hate America when you want to see its foundations completely destroyed.
Both the USSR and Cuba used what is known as "Soviet Democracy" which sounds exactly what you are calling for when it is implemented on a mass scale.
Russia has already become a Soviet Republic only in name. The influx and taking over of the people by the 'party,' that is, predominantly the newcomers (the ideological communists are more in the urban centers), has already destroyed the influence and constructive energy of this promising institution - the soviets. At present, it is the party committees, not the soviets, who rule in Russia. And their organization suffers from the defects of bureaucratic organization. To move away from the current disorder, Russia must return to the creative genius of local forces which, as I see it, can be a factor in the creation of a new life. And the sooner that the necessity of this way is understood, the better. People will then be all the more likely to accept [new] social forms of life. If the present situation continues, the very word 'socialism' will turn into a curse. That is what happened to the conception of equality in France for forty years after the rule of the Jacobins.
lol employee stock options are not the same thing as worker cooperatives. This was a study of a capitalist system in which workers work with owners and management not a study of workers cooperatives and where do we go to find actual large scale worker cooperatives?
Well that would be in highly inefficient economies like that of Chavez's Venezuela.
The current economic expansion began when the government got control over the national oil company in the first quarter of 2003. Since then, real (inflationadjusted) GDP has nearly doubled, growing by 94.7 percent in 5.25 years, or 13.5 percent annually.
Like most Latin American economies, the Venezuelan economy deteriorated during the 1980s and most of the 1990s. From 1998 to 2003 real per capita GDP continued to stagnate while the Chavez government survived two general strikes by the largest Venezuelan business association, a military coup, and finally a devastating two month strike by the state owned oil company. However, after Chavez survived the opposition sponsored recall election, annual economic growth was 18.3% in 2004, 10.3% in 2005, and 10.3% in 2006, and the unemployment rate fell from 18.4 % in June 2003 to 8.3% in June 2007. Moreover, most of the growth was in the non-oil sectors of the economy, as the oil sector barely grew during 2005 and 2006. While this impressive growth would not have been possible without the rise in international oil prices, it also would not have been possible had the Chavez government not ignored the warnings of neoliberal critics and pursued aggressive expansionary fiscal and monetary policies.
New worker-owned cooperatives not only provided much needed jobs producing much needed basic goods and services, they also featured what was soon to become a hallmark of Bolivarian socialism -- popular participation at the grassroots level. When Chavez was first elected President in 1998, there were fewer than 800 legally registered cooperatives in Venezuela with roughly 20,000 members. In mid-2006 the National Superintendence of Cooperatives (SUNACOOP) reported that it had registered over 100,000 co-ops with over 1.5 million members.3 Generous amounts of oil revenues continue to provide start-up loans for thousands of new cooperatives every month, and the Ministry for the Communal Economy continues to spearhead a massive educational program for new cooperative members. However, the ministry provides more than technical assistance regarding technology, accounting, finance, business management, and marketing. It also teaches participants about cooperative principles, economic justice, and social responsibility.
The idea that you can run an efficient business democratically is laughable.
Not to mention that a society in which all businesses are ran this way would simply grind to a halt and resort to the centralized planning board IE welcome to the Soviet Union. "How much rice do we want to produce this year?" "Let's put it to a vote." Oops now the masses are starving.
Production and exchange represent an undertaking so complicated that the plans of the state socialists . . . would prove to be absolutely ineffective as soon as they were applied to life. No government would be able to organize production if the workers themselves through their unions did not do it in each branch of industry; for in all production there arise daily thousands of difficulties which no government can solve or foresee. It is certainly impossible to foresee everything. Only the efforts of thousands of intelligences working on the problems can co-operate in the development of a new social system and find the best solutions for the thousands of local needs.
I think I'll do without the mass executions of your supposed non-statist libertarian communists. lol the basic principle of libertarianism is that the use of force itself is immoral and yet your glowing example of libertarian communism implemented mass executions against those they considered bourgeois.
Communism (from Latin: communis = "common") is a socioeconomic structure and political ideology that promotes the establishment of an egalitarian, classless, stateless society based on common ownership and control of the means of production and property in general.
...communism is a leftist ideology.The two most influential theoreticians of communism of the 19th century were Germans Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels,
And you call yourself a Centrist. Hahahahahaha :rofl Proves my point about moderates and centrists over and over and over.The right wing extremists are by far the more dangerous of the two.
The left is full of eco-terrorists who want to protect the environment.
The right is full of greedy, business-owing ****bags that seek get keep the rich, rich, the poor, poor and the middle class paying for everything.
The far right supports corporate welfare; the left supports welfare for the working class.
I suppose if I were a far right wing business owner I would feel different; however, I am a poor, overworked, middle class American.
As obviously subjective as this question is; I believe the right extremists are far more dangerous for the majority of Americans.
Did you read his 'leaning'?Not really; isn't he a neocon?
On what do you base this?I believe the far right is more dangerous to America because they don't see democracy as something worth defending.
On what do you base this?
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?