Challenge for the day for all you Maxist and Socialist out there today

JulesKorngold

Argument Topic: Maxist?

@all4actt
What's a "maxist"?  Do you know what a spellchecker is?

Barnardot

@all4actt ;Please name one country socialist country that has thrived without capitalism or a tyrannical government.

Well it deepends on what you meen by thrived and country socialist country because for example in the country socialistic countries can thrive because the government pays all those workers and they own the farms so that the workers don’t get bank rupt any way and dinosaur government s don’t exist any more any way.

all4actt

@Barnardot

I simply asked that a country be named that has successfully been socialistic without capitalism.

all4actt

@JulesKorngold
Oops. what can I say it happens.

Ampersand

Depends on your metrics of socialist, thrived and without Capitalism.

Like you can make a variety of arguments for various countries but depending on how strictly you apply those criteria you may say they are disallowed e.g.:

Allende passed a lot of popular and helpful economic programs in Chile but was then overthrown by the US government.

USSR industrialised Russia and turned it from a rural backwater into a major world power but he didn’t wholly stop Capitalism because as per Marxist theory you needed to progress from agrarian feudalism into Capitalism and then into socialism and Russia was thought of as too early in it’s development have completed the Capitalist stage. Plus it was an authoritarian hellhole, though that seems to be separate from socialism seeing as Romanov and Putin’s Russia are too.

Of course by those measures there may not be any Capitalist countries that have thrived without introducing socialism. After all even countries like the US have a socialistic safety net even if it’s a cruel and basic one.

The main problem of course if that whenever anyone seriously tries socialism they tend to end up getting instantly attacked by monarchists, capitalists and/or nazis.

For your underlying point of “socialism bad”, I don’t think any actual socialist will care as the type of socialism they are trying to enact will be nothing like historical attempts brought about in poor developing nations so they make poor comparisons.

Barnardot

@all4actt ;simply asked that a country be named that has successfully been socialistic without capitalism.

No you didn’t you said some thing completely different so I don’t think you know if your arther or Martha. Have a look at what you wrote and have a look at what I wrote then you can write your apology.

MayCaesar

I would argue that there is no and has never been a country without a tyrannical government in the history of mankind. Some governments - such as the early US government, or the Islandic governments of the beginning of the second millennium AD - were less tyrannical on the overall scale, but all fundamentally were mafia organizations enslaving the population and merely allowing the individuals just enough freedom for them to not rebel and destroy the organization. Even the most liberal governments out there still were kleptocracies, pillaging private lands and resources, either directly for the material gain of their members, or for their emotional satisfaction in pursuit of some kind of "higher" cause or utopia.

A non-tyrannical government would be one that never interferes in people's lives, except when those lives are directly threatened by other people. It would be a government that helps you when your neighbor points a gun at you, but does not do anything when either you become very wealthy or when you are starving. Its role would be sole protection of your basic individual rights, and everything else would be left for the free individuals to sort out.

I am not sure if such a government can be sustainable; I do not see how its eventual corruption can be prevented. The one who owns the biggest gun generally wins over the political struggle, and, by the very design, the government is always the one. Perhaps, some sort of an impartial AI can be trained that would rule like this - although that also can be seen as a tyranny of sorts...
The more I think about these things, the more I realize that existence of government implies tyranny, immediate or eventual one. That is not to say that the absence of government implies lack of tyranny; tyranny of the mob may be much scarier than tyranny of the elites. Lack of tyranny, however, necessitates some sort of a private organization of the society, in which voluntary association is the basis for the social interaction, and that, pretty much, by definition outrules existence of government.

Of course, as far as the tyranny scale goes, Marxist/socialist governments have been at the top of the scale historically, so there is that.

all4actt

@Barnardot

Please name one country socialist country that has thrived without capitalism or a tyrannical government.

That is what I said and that is what I want to know the answer to.  Educate me.

all4actt

@Ampersand

But isn't that what they all thought when initially voting for it?

I mean do you really think giving more power to the government is the answer.  That it is wise to have the government run any program?   Every program they run is bogged down with inefficiencies and wasted money.

Ampersand

@all4actt

Did people think that the USA would help overthrow their socialist government in a coup that installed a military junta that would execute people en masse in football stadium? No, no they didn't/

Government can also be vastly more efficient that the private sector, it depends on circumstances. Take the rail network in my country, it was privatised and turned into a complete mess because it's a natural monopoly where businesses can't be expected to compete and so capitalism fails to be effective. In fact they have to partially renationalise part of the system a few years later (responsible to the infrastructure) because the privatised system was literally responsible for killing people despite being more efficient.

Also not that efficiency isn't always the main metric or even always good. Shell oil is incredibly efficient at extracting fossil fuels and denying climate change, but that could literally lead to the end of all human civilisation. 

Barnardot

@all4actt ;That is what I said and that is what I want to know the answer to.  Educate me.

Your changed again and I am not a teacher so I can’t educate you but the greatest teacher ever is Jesus and he will give you all the answers that you want so you just need to bring the lord into your life and then you will know every thing.

all4actt

@Ampersand

What I want to know is if there has been any country that has successfully survived under Socialistic rule without Capitalisim.  

In my research so far countries who have tried it have either fallen to tyrannical governments leading to a 2 class system of the very rich and the very poor.

In other words you have not answered my question.

all4actt

Try looking way back into Sweden's past and what happened to them when they embraced the full democratic socialist agenda.

all4actt

@Barnardot

You obviously are not familiar with me b/c I am a Christian.

Again that is not an answer to my question.

all4actt

@Ampersand

Please cite articles to each thing you mentioned.  I would be interested in researching both incidents and then maybe I can give you a informed answer to each.

Ampersand

@all4actt

The former is Chile where in the 1973 coup the democratically elected socialist president was overthrown and a free market capitalist military junta installed.

There is little to no dispute that the USA did everything they could to bring about a coup, with records from the national security archives (https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB8/nsaebb8i.htm ) showing that they tried to bring about a coup when Allende came to power by plotting terrorist actions against a general who was supporting the Chilean constitution and acting to stop a coup(https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB8/docs/doc27.pdf) and when that failed Nixon okayed a plan to keep an “outwardly cool posture" while working behind the scenes to undermine the Allende government, which ultimately lead to the coup https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB8/docs/doc24.pdf.

The only real argument his how much covert stuff happened that was more direct that has never been admitted. That they did everything they could to sabotage the country’s economy to bring about enough societal chaos that a coup would happen is not in doubt, with Nixon specifically giving orders to “make the economy scream” in order to "prevent Allende from coming to power or to unseat him”.

The human rights abuses of Pinochet are well documented and easily looked up, though I’d give particular mention to Operation Condor where the US supported a pan South American scheme to arrest, kill and torture political opponents (such as opposition politicians, trade unionists, nuns, etc) of the various US supporting military juntas in the region.

I’m UK based and the deaths and inefficiencies were exposed following in vesting actions into the Hatfield crash. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatfield_rail_crash

This resulted in the nationalisation of the rail infrastructure company.

Bogan

@Barnardot

Well it deepends on what you meen by thrived and country socialist country because for example in the country socialistic countries can thrive because the government pays all those workers and they own the farms so that the workers don’t get bank rupt any way and dinosaur government s don’t exist any more any way.

Just correcting Barnadot's spelling and grammar.    What you should have written is.....

Well it depends on what you mean by thrived and country?    Because for example, in socialistic countries workers can thrive because the government pays them.    The workers own the farms so that they don’t get bankrupt .     And dinosaur government s don’t exist any more, any way.

Now that the grammar and spelling are corrected, can anybody make any sense of this gibberish?

Bogan

Th example of Chile given by Mr Ampersand is a classic example of youthful left wing thinking.

It is true that Chile had an elected socialist government which was overthrown by the military.    As a person who supports democracy, I see that as a bad thing.    On the other hand, what Mr Apersand failed to understand was the degree to which the modern day Marxists in Chile managed to stuff up the economy of Chile, resulting in unimaginable suffering to all Chileans, even the ones who initially enthusiastically supported the Marxist government.

This is an important point which Ampersand either ignored or is ignorarnt about.

Other points are.    Since when has an elected Marxist government which is unpopular ever allowed itself to be voted out of office? 

All Marxist government are famous for doing exactly the same thing that the Pinochet government did to stay in power.    They kill or imprison their political opponents, they prevent free speech.    But at least the right wing socialists like Pinochet usually  respect other people' private property.   So whining about right wing totalitarianism without looking in the mirror at left wing totalitarianism, looks like an exercise in ignorance.

Of course the USA supported Pinochet and seek to undermine Allende.    If a government decided to "nationalise" your house and business, I presume that Ampersand would oppose that government?      That is what Allende did to US owned businesses in Chile.     

Here in Australia, governments were involved with the building of the first railways with the result that Australia's rail system is a joke.     Victoria's rail system is 5 foot 3 inch gauge.    NSW's is standard at 4 foot 11 and a half inches, while Queensland and South Australia are 3 foot 6 inches.     You can imagine how that stuffs up inter state rail transportation around Australia.