The US welfare system

[nino_savatte]

Nino,



It is an unavoidable effect of believing in a Marxist analysis of history. I am prepared to believe that some people will always be poorer than others; it's just that the terms "working class" and "underclass" are inherently somewhat alien to American culture. By rights, under the Marxist analysis of history, the US, as the most developed capitalist economy, should have become communist before anywhere else, which makes me distrust that theory of history.



I was inviting Red_Jezza to consider whether the solidarity of the working class would be maintained if a workers' revolution succeeded.



You guys seem to all be drinking from the same fountain on this one. But Red_Jezza did claim that the Soviet Union had been socialist for "about thirty minutes", and I was trying to identify when those thirty minutes were. Presumably, they were under Lenin, and I was suggesting that Lenin was a no-good authoritarian bastard himself.

What I resist is this highly misinformed notion that somehow, if men were angels, communism would be OK and would have better effects than capitalism. There is a process inherent to communist theory, and the proposition that you take according to ability and give according to need, that necessarily results in the tyranny of the needs assessors and the turning of non-needs-assessors into beggars. You could equally well maintain that if men were angels, the inequalities prevalent under capitalism would disappear. It's a poor basis for defending the viability of a theory.

Stalin had plenty of theories. His theories, ruthlessly implemented, included the idea that anyone who had risen above the level of subsistence (the kulaks) was a capitalist oppressor who deserved to be liquidated (except, of course, for people who had risen through the Party and the secret police). His theories included the idea that anyone who criticized his ideas was a counterrevolutionary and a spy for foreign powers. His theories included the idea that individual people had no value as individuals, but only insofar as their life or death would advance communism.



Mostly in Wallingford and then in Oxford itself.

You guys seem to all be drinking from the same fountain

And you seem to be nothing but a common or garden red baiter. I'm only surprised you haven't sent out the words "monothought clique" to do battle. I've lost count of the number of times I've seen the name "Stalin" used as a blanket dismissal of anything resembling socialism. It's weak. It's no better than using the name "Hitler" or "Nazi" to dismiss anything coming from the right.

But you seem to be confusing Stalin's policies for theories. He was a paranoid fantasist but I'll be damned if anyone - you included - is going to associate me with that monster. It's muddleheaded thinking of the worst kind.

It is an unavoidable effect of believing in a Marxist analysis of history

Only if all you are accustomed to is a mythological understanding of history - which almost always ties in with the version of history presented by the dominant culture/ideology. One such view of history contends that trade unions had to be smashed by the state; or that the Bonus March was a serious 'communist' threat to the nation.

the US, as the most developed capitalist economy, should have become communist before anywhere else, which makes me distrust that theory of history.

What? Here, you actually admit to accepting the dominant ideology's view of history. Like I say, any mention of Marx often results in an apoplectic response and it's a response that is entirely informed by the dominant ideology which maintains that only certain ideas have approval, while others are dismissed because they appear to threaten the hegemony.

One question before I go, have you ever read Kapital or The Communist Manifesto?

 

[scott_forester]

I was amazed to find all off the UC Citizens I know who work in Europe still have to declare their worldwide earning and are still liable to Federal and State taxes even thou they aren't even living in country. One of my friends pays $15k a year in US taxes even thou he doesn't live there.