North Korea Artillery Fire Hits South Island

[quote]jre67t wrote:
Well I do not know the workersdemocracy beliefs, I go by the eyeball test in this world. America is wealthy and powerful so it is obvious we are doing something right to benefit its citizens. Like it is obvious to see that China and NK have not done any good with the exception of the last 15-20 years in China.
The Democracy looks like its failing in the EU nations. Im just asking, I read some of your post and you come off as left-winger. Thats why I ask my friend.[/quote]

yeah I am a leftwinger, I am very far left. good observation LOL.

btw: I did not have any problem with you asking me questions.

I will respond to the rest of your post later, but now I must watch a show.

[quote]florelius wrote:

[quote]Gkhan wrote:

[quote]florelius wrote:
I have read the manifesto, and knowhere did it say:

  1. treat the people badly

  2. have a crazy preson as a god-like figure.

  3. start war with your neigbours.

  4. create a totalitarian capitalist state as china is.

one question: have you read the communist manifesto, or did you mistake it for “the prince” by machiavelli?[/quote]

well if you’re going to put the Marxist Philosophy into practice in the real world that’s one way to go about it, I suppose.

How else would you make the rich give up what they have to be equal with the poor? How else would you ensure everyone does his share of the work to make the Marxist society happen?

Short of a centrally controlled state dictatorship, how else would you do it? [/quote]

The goal of marxism is to free the proletariat from the capitalist classsociety. If you create a oneparty state or something similar, you just exchange the capitalist classsociety with the party`s classsociety. thats stupid and it doesnt take us to the goal. socialists who believe that it is necessary with a oneparty state are called leninist. So the poster I respoded to would be better off pointing out to the works of lenin, not marx.

[/quote]

This whole “class struggle” spiel is nothing more than a hate-mongering doctrine.
It is based on a false logical conclusion that owners and investors of the enterprise are “the enemy” of the ppl they hire.

[quote]ReignIB wrote:

[quote]florelius wrote:

[quote]Gkhan wrote:

[quote]florelius wrote:
I have read the manifesto, and knowhere did it say:

  1. treat the people badly

  2. have a crazy preson as a god-like figure.

  3. start war with your neigbours.

  4. create a totalitarian capitalist state as china is.

one question: have you read the communist manifesto, or did you mistake it for “the prince” by machiavelli?[/quote]

well if you’re going to put the Marxist Philosophy into practice in the real world that’s one way to go about it, I suppose.

How else would you make the rich give up what they have to be equal with the poor? How else would you ensure everyone does his share of the work to make the Marxist society happen?

Short of a centrally controlled state dictatorship, how else would you do it? [/quote]

The goal of marxism is to free the proletariat from the capitalist classsociety. If you create a oneparty state or something similar, you just exchange the capitalist classsociety with the party`s classsociety. thats stupid and it doesnt take us to the goal. socialists who believe that it is necessary with a oneparty state are called leninist. So the poster I respoded to would be better off pointing out to the works of lenin, not marx.

[/quote]

This whole “class struggle” spiel is nothing more than a hate-mongering doctrine.
It is based on a false logical conclusion that owners and investors of the enterprise are “the enemy” of the ppl they hire.

[/quote]

well since the owners take out profit from the labor of the workers, that makes them exploiters. The owning class is the modern day aristocracy, but instead of a king providing them a letter of privilegium, the right to privat property acts as the modern day letter of privilegium. The core in the socialist cause is to alter the modern day understanding of property and by this act establish a society where a human have a real right to the fruits of theire labor not as today where a man has the right of the fruits of his property.

suma sumarum: the proletarian cause is as much hate mongering as the commeners cause in the fedual period.

[quote]florelius wrote:

well since the owners take out profit from the labor of the workers, that makes them exploiters. [/quote]

No, it makes them investors. You need to learn the difference.

[quote]bigflamer wrote:

[quote]florelius wrote:

well since the owners take out profit from the labor of the workers, that makes them exploiters. [/quote]

No, it makes them investors. You need to learn the difference.[/quote]

there is only a difference when you adhere to the markedliberalist paradigm. If you adhere to the
marxist paradigm like me, there are no difference.

[quote]florelius wrote:

[quote]ReignIB wrote:

[quote]florelius wrote:

[quote]Gkhan wrote:

[quote]florelius wrote:
I have read the manifesto, and knowhere did it say:

  1. treat the people badly

  2. have a crazy preson as a god-like figure.

  3. start war with your neigbours.

  4. create a totalitarian capitalist state as china is.

one question: have you read the communist manifesto, or did you mistake it for “the prince” by machiavelli?[/quote]

well if you’re going to put the Marxist Philosophy into practice in the real world that’s one way to go about it, I suppose.

How else would you make the rich give up what they have to be equal with the poor? How else would you ensure everyone does his share of the work to make the Marxist society happen?

Short of a centrally controlled state dictatorship, how else would you do it? [/quote]

The goal of marxism is to free the proletariat from the capitalist classsociety. If you create a oneparty state or something similar, you just exchange the capitalist classsociety with the party`s classsociety. thats stupid and it doesnt take us to the goal. socialists who believe that it is necessary with a oneparty state are called leninist. So the poster I respoded to would be better off pointing out to the works of lenin, not marx.

[/quote]

This whole “class struggle” spiel is nothing more than a hate-mongering doctrine.
It is based on a false logical conclusion that owners and investors of the enterprise are “the enemy” of the ppl they hire.

[/quote]

well since the owners take out profit from the labor of the workers, that makes them exploiters. The owning class is the modern day aristocracy, but instead of a king providing them a letter of privilegium, the right to privat property acts as the modern day letter of privilegium. The core in the socialist cause is to alter the modern day understanding of property and by this act establish a society where a human have a real right to the fruits of theire labor not as today where a man has the right of the fruits of his property.

suma sumarum: the proletarian cause is as much hate mongering as the commeners cause in the fedual period.[/quote]

The owners profit (or not) from the final product, when the cost of labor+materials that goes into it is less then what they can sell it for. The profit is their compensation for the risk they take on their investment and their work to set up and run their company. Simple stuff.

As far as that whole “class struggle” bullshit goes - where it totally fails is it assumes that a line worker at Ford has more common interest with a line worker at Toyota than with his own management just because both are “proletarians”. Well guess what - in reality Ford employee is better off if his company does well against Toyota, including his “fellow proletarian” there.

[quote]Dropkick_9 wrote:
I don’t buy the puppet mother china arguement. China has more to lose from a war in NK than the Party Cronies in the north do. The resulting refuge crisis would be insane and China/SK would have to invest significant amounts of money in any post-war solution.

I think its a power move to have Kim’s ‘son’ to have a position of ‘power’ to negotiate from, they must running short on Johnny Walker Blue in the Pyongang.[/quote]

China has a lot to lose in a NK/SK war, but they have a helluva lot more to lose if NK were to be defeated. If you go back and look at the history of China, they have been invaded via present-day NK in several different centuries. NK is essentially a buffer zone that helps to insulate themselves from Japan and the rest of eastern/southeastern Asia. The first one that comes to mind is a series of Mongol invasions from present-day NK into China in the 13th century.

China probably doesn’t want a war, but they are never going to make any concession whatsoever that weakens their buffer zone state. Remember, in the Korean War and the Vietnam War we may have been fighting Koreans on the surface, but in reality we were fighting a proxy war with China. The pilots for both NK and the NVA weren’t Korean or Vietnamese, they were Chinese. I may be mistaken about this, but I’m pretty sure China still does not recognize South Korea OR Vietnam as an independent state.

I don’t understand these war exercises that the U.S. is involved in over there either. It’s stupid and unnecessarily provocative. Sure, as an ally of SK we have the right to come to their aid and perform these war games in their waters, but for what? I have the right to put on a Nazi uniform and goosestep back and forth on my front lawn with my unloaded Weatherby Patrician II 12 ga. shotgun, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea at all for me to do so.

China doesn’t want this anymore than anyone else does, but we would all be foolhardy to think that if push comes to shove they won’t back NK. If SK were to invade NK, with or without our help, you can bet your bottom dollar it’ll be Chinese pilots flying sorties in those North Korean MiGs. The history of the country is a clear indicator of such.

[quote]florelius wrote:

when it comes to the possibility of a workersdemocracy. my answer is I hope so, but i dont know for sure if its possible. Its important to remember that political/ideological ideals are normative, they are not descriptiv.
Hope this answers your question.[/quote]

Ok, I have a question for you… In your opinion, is the attempt to find out if the Marxist “worker’s democracy” is realistically possible worth the extremely high cost of failure with the forms of government that result from failed experiements (dictatorship, one-party oligarchy, USSR style leninist communism, etc) ? And if so, why is that?

Given the high probability of experimental failure and the even more devastating gov’t forms and expansive loss of individual freedoms that failure historically has brought about and which future efforts most certainly rationally entail, my personal opinion is “absolutely fucking not”.

“A [capitalist] representative democracy is the worst form of government, excepting only all the other forms.” As problematic as it is I infinitely prefer it to all other forms of probable government.

[quote]florelius wrote:

[quote]ReignIB wrote:

[quote]florelius wrote:

[quote]Gkhan wrote:

[quote]florelius wrote:
I have read the manifesto, and knowhere did it say:

  1. treat the people badly

  2. have a crazy preson as a god-like figure.

  3. start war with your neigbours.

  4. create a totalitarian capitalist state as china is.

one question: have you read the communist manifesto, or did you mistake it for “the prince” by machiavelli?[/quote]

well if you’re going to put the Marxist Philosophy into practice in the real world that’s one way to go about it, I suppose.

How else would you make the rich give up what they have to be equal with the poor? How else would you ensure everyone does his share of the work to make the Marxist society happen?

Short of a centrally controlled state dictatorship, how else would you do it? [/quote]

The goal of marxism is to free the proletariat from the capitalist classsociety. If you create a oneparty state or something similar, you just exchange the capitalist classsociety with the party`s classsociety. thats stupid and it doesnt take us to the goal. socialists who believe that it is necessary with a oneparty state are called leninist. So the poster I respoded to would be better off pointing out to the works of lenin, not marx.

[/quote]

This whole “class struggle” spiel is nothing more than a hate-mongering doctrine.
It is based on a false logical conclusion that owners and investors of the enterprise are “the enemy” of the ppl they hire.

[/quote]

well since the owners take out profit from the labor of the workers, that makes them exploiters. The owning class is the modern day aristocracy, but instead of a king providing them a letter of privilegium, the right to privat property acts as the modern day letter of privilegium. The core in the socialist cause is to alter the modern day understanding of property and by this act establish a society where a human have a real right to the fruits of theire labor not as today where a man has the right of the fruits of his property.

suma sumarum: the proletarian cause is as much hate mongering as the commeners cause in the fedual period.[/quote]

I don’t buy this and I don’t understand your position. First, everyone has a right to his property, including hired employees–they own homes, they own their income, and they own personal items–tv’s, computers, cars, etc. They have the right to the things they own. Second, the owners do not own the workers–that is called slave labor. They compensate workers for their skills and time. Therefore the workers do in fact “own the fruits of their labor”, since they get monetary and benefit compensation such as health insurance.

Thirdly, a man is compensated in PROPORTION to his ability and skill set. Most people do NOT have the vision and organizational skills to run a company, therefore most people should not get the amount of compensation that this contribution entails. The simple reality is that not everybody is equally smart or talented, and therefore not everybody can do the same job. Therefore those than can do jobs that are highly sought after and highly demanding should be compensated more.

and as much as we might wish that to be the case, some skills and qualities are rarer than others. Not everyone has the skills to operate and plan a business model and adapt as needed to market changes. However many, many more people have the ability to push a button, put a tire on a car in the assembly line, or wrap boxes. It does not make sense to reward the rare qualities the same as the very common skill sets.

Finally this workers democracy model applies readily (if at all) only to industrial companies where the worker works on the factory floor. The modern economy is driven very largely by Service oriented companies in which skill-set is very rare or very sought after. For instance, the biochemical research companies have extremely skilled workers, who can pursue many different careers. In order to to keep the workers with the company it is required to compensate them more than say janitors…both because you want to keep the skilled workers with you to help you, and because janitorial skill sets are pretty much universal among people–everyone can clean even though nobody really wants to do the job. NOT everybody can analyze DNA or protein structure.

Of course there will always be exceptions and inequities–it is not a perfect system, and as you well know no system in the world is theoretically perfect when it is put into practice, including socialism. However, this system DOES provide an accurate reward system for people based on the value of their contribution to the whole. Also, if you are truly for socialism, then it follows that you should be for a flat tax rate in your model form of gov’t, not a progressive tax rate that takes more from the owners. This progressive tax is contradictory to your statement that each man should have the right to the fruits of his labor, since by your position all men are equal in society and contribution, all men should pay the same into the system and be rewarded the same from the system. To do otherwise is to implicitly say that some men are more valuable in their contribution than others, and this runs directly counter to the socialist ideal.

However, this socialist ideal misses the point that in reality not all qualities are in equal demand or are equally represented throughout the population.

[quote]Aragorn wrote:

[quote]florelius wrote:

when it comes to the possibility of a workersdemocracy. my answer is I hope so, but i dont know for sure if its possible. Its important to remember that political/ideological ideals are normative, they are not descriptiv.
Hope this answers your question.[/quote]

Ok, I have a question for you… In your opinion, is the attempt to find out if the Marxist “worker’s democracy” is realistically possible worth the extremely high cost of failure with the forms of government that result from failed experiements (dictatorship, one-party oligarchy, USSR style leninist communism, etc) ? And if so, why is that?

Given the high probability of experimental failure and the even more devastating gov’t forms and expansive loss of individual freedoms that failure historically has brought about and which future efforts most certainly rationally entail, my personal opinion is “absolutely fucking not”.

“A [capitalist] representative democracy is the worst form of government, excepting only all the other forms.” As problematic as it is I infinitely prefer it to all other forms of probable government. [/quote]

Ok I will try to answer your question.

first off. Leninism is one marxist doctrin out of many.
the reason it failed from a humanitarian point off wiew are many.

  1. Russia was a feudal society with a population where the majority where farmers. A farmer based demcracy would have made more sence in this context dont you think. Ergo workers democracy in feudal Russia equals fail.

  2. leninism was an atempt to create a doctrine wich made it possible to implement socialism in a backward country. To make this doctrine possible, they removed themself from traditional marxist doctrines. example: instead of a massparty, they agitated for a eliteparty. So the obvious conclusion is that Leninism’s elitism was antidemocratic and to expect a democracy to grow out of such an doctrine is moronic. This is why I am not a leninist.

So first of I would say that there must be some conditions to be met before we can even talk about trying to implement a workersdemocracy. The conditions I am talking about are:

1.The hypothetical society wich we are to consider implementing a workersdemocracy must have democratic traditions.

  1. The hypothetical society wich we are to consider implementing a workersdemocracy must have a industrialized economy.

  2. The mayority of the people of this hypothetical society must be wageworkers.

If this conditions are met we can start talk about implementing a workersdemocracy, but now me must start to consider how this is supposed to be done and this depends on how things are in the hypothetical society. If its a country like USA or norway a peacefull approach are the most obvious to follow. This is because we have a tradition of public opposition against the establishment in a peacfull manner. The first step would be to organize a union and a party that had as a primary goal to establish a socialist workersdemocracy. If the society are something like pinnochets chile or similar, a more militant organization would be necessary. In both cases its wery important that a revolution like this doesnt take place without the majoritys support, It could lead down a totalitarian direction and that its stupid obvious.

finaly I would say that no cruel action can be justified because of a idea like socialism or libertarianism etc…

hope this did answer your questions.

That’s another weakness of the marxist doctrine - it only appeals to desperate poor masses and some “bleeding hart” liberals, that’s why countries where marxist takeover was successful are the ones that were/are relatively backward.
I mean, shit, some UAW dude making more with an HS diploma than some folks with college degrees ain’t gonna go and riot and risk losing his job. The most he’ll do is go stand in a picket line if they happen to be on strike, but they know full well that if the company they are “fighting” goes belly up they are fucked.
Which leads to another thing that modern day leftists overlook is that the percentage of unskilled workers in the industrialized society is constantly getting lower, which is one of the main reasons they don’t have too many followers outside of the university campus.

[quote]florelius wrote:

[quote]Aragorn wrote:

[quote]florelius wrote:

when it comes to the possibility of a workersdemocracy. my answer is I hope so, but i dont know for sure if its possible. Its important to remember that political/ideological ideals are normative, they are not descriptiv.
Hope this answers your question.[/quote]

Ok, I have a question for you… In your opinion, is the attempt to find out if the Marxist “worker’s democracy” is realistically possible worth the extremely high cost of failure with the forms of government that result from failed experiements (dictatorship, one-party oligarchy, USSR style leninist communism, etc) ? And if so, why is that?

Given the high probability of experimental failure and the even more devastating gov’t forms and expansive loss of individual freedoms that failure historically has brought about and which future efforts most certainly rationally entail, my personal opinion is “absolutely fucking not”.

“A [capitalist] representative democracy is the worst form of government, excepting only all the other forms.” As problematic as it is I infinitely prefer it to all other forms of probable government. [/quote]

Ok I will try to answer your question.

first off. Leninism is one marxist doctrin out of many.
the reason it failed from a humanitarian point off wiew are many.

  1. Russia was a feudal society with a population where the majority where farmers. A farmer based demcracy would have made more sence in this context dont you think. Ergo workers democracy in feudal Russia equals fail.

  2. leninism was an atempt to create a doctrine wich made it possible to implement socialism in a backward country. To make this doctrine possible, they removed themself from traditional marxist doctrines. example: instead of a massparty, they agitated for a eliteparty. So the obvious conclusion is that Leninism’s elitism was antidemocratic and to expect a democracy to grow out of such an doctrine is moronic. This is why I am not a leninist.

So first of I would say that there must be some conditions to be met before we can even talk about trying to implement a workersdemocracy. The conditions I am talking about are:

1.The hypothetical society wich we are to consider implementing a workersdemocracy must have democratic traditions.

  1. The hypothetical society wich we are to consider implementing a workersdemocracy must have a industrialized economy.

  2. The mayority of the people of this hypothetical society must be wageworkers.

If this conditions are met we can start talk about implementing a workersdemocracy, but now me must start to consider how this is supposed to be done and this depends on how things are in the hypothetical society. If its a country like USA or norway a peacefull approach are the most obvious to follow. This is because we have a tradition of public opposition against the establishment in a peacfull manner. The first step would be to organize a union and a party that had as a primary goal to establish a socialist workersdemocracy. If the society are something like pinnochets chile or similar, a more militant organization would be necessary. In both cases its wery important that a revolution like this doesnt take place without the majoritys support, It could lead down a totalitarian direction and that its stupid obvious.

finaly I would say that no cruel action can be justified because of a idea like socialism or libertarianism etc…

hope this did answer your questions.
[/quote]

Thanks for your post. Regrettably, although it clarifies your views on your preference of socialist doctrine, it doesn’t answer my question. Let me try to rephrase…

In your opinion, is the attempt to find out if the Marxist “worker’s democracy” is realistically possible…as you said, you’re not sure if it is… but is finding out worth the extremely high cost of failure when failure is historically very probable? The high cost of a failed experiment being the forms of gov’t I listed such as leninist communism, etc. and the documented decrease personal freedoms therein.

And if you believe the experiment is worth such a high cost, why is that?

[quote]ReignIB wrote:
That’s another weakness of the marxist doctrine - it only appeals to desperate poor masses and some “bleeding heart” liberals, that’s why countries where marxist takeover was successful are the ones that were/are relatively backward.
I mean, shit, some UAW dude making more with an HS diploma than some folks with college degrees ain’t gonna go and riot and risk losing his job. The most he’ll do is go stand in a picket line if they happen to be on strike, but they know full well that if the company they are “fighting” goes belly up they are fucked.
Which leads to another thing that modern day leftists overlook is that the percentage of unskilled workers in the industrialized society is constantly getting lower, which is one of the main reasons they don’t have too many followers outside of the university campus. [/quote]

I do tend to agree. In addition, the countrys where marxist takeover happened led to a decrease in personal freedoms, a ruling class oligarchy, and country’s productivity. I don’t think this would fit our friends conception of workers democracy…at least I hope not.

Get this socialist shit on another thread. This one is about North Korea.

[quote]DBCooper wrote:

[quote]Dropkick_9 wrote:
I don’t buy the puppet mother china arguement. China has more to lose from a war in NK than the Party Cronies in the north do. The resulting refuge crisis would be insane and China/SK would have to invest significant amounts of money in any post-war solution.

I think its a power move to have Kim’s ‘son’ to have a position of ‘power’ to negotiate from, they must running short on Johnny Walker Blue in the Pyongang.[/quote]

China has a lot to lose in a NK/SK war, but they have a helluva lot more to lose if NK were to be defeated. If you go back and look at the history of China, they have been invaded via present-day NK in several different centuries. NK is essentially a buffer zone that helps to insulate themselves from Japan and the rest of eastern/southeastern Asia. The first one that comes to mind is a series of Mongol invasions from present-day NK into China in the 13th century.

China probably doesn’t want a war, but they are never going to make any concession whatsoever that weakens their buffer zone state. Remember, in the Korean War and the Vietnam War we may have been fighting Koreans on the surface, but in reality we were fighting a proxy war with China. The pilots for both NK and the NVA weren’t Korean or Vietnamese, they were Chinese. I may be mistaken about this, but I’m pretty sure China still does not recognize South Korea OR Vietnam as an independent state.

I don’t understand these war exercises that the U.S. is involved in over there either. It’s stupid and unnecessarily provocative. Sure, as an ally of SK we have the right to come to their aid and perform these war games in their waters, but for what? I have the right to put on a Nazi uniform and goosestep back and forth on my front lawn with my unloaded Weatherby Patrician II 12 ga. shotgun, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea at all for me to do so.

China doesn’t want this anymore than anyone else does, but we would all be foolhardy to think that if push comes to shove they won’t back NK. If SK were to invade NK, with or without our help, you can bet your bottom dollar it’ll be Chinese pilots flying sorties in those North Korean MiGs. The history of the country is a clear indicator of such.[/quote]

Interesting post. Regarding war games, wouldn’t your statements about China not wanting to lose a NK buffer explain the purpose of the war game? Unless Chinese troops come down, I fear a war w/ NK would probably be short and horrible beyond measure. But the end-game would be a united Korea under Southern rule.

Wikileaks and Korea.

Interesting stuff from the Economist. I thought I’d share.

A glimpse into the dark

Nov 30th 2010, 18:11 by D.T. | SEOUL

IF THE Chinese had been hoping that Hillary Clinton and Kim Jong Il might find some common ground, their mutual hatred of WikiLeaks is perhaps not the first place they would have looked. Among the seemingly endless stream of small revelations this week, we have tantalising bits of evidence to the effect that Beijing is at last tiring of its old ally, the Democratic Peopleâ??s Republic of Koreaâ??a â??spoiled childâ??, in the rather more honest words of one Chinese civil servant.

Most surprising are the details of a meeting between Chinaâ??s delegation to the six-party talks and South Koreaâ??s vice foreign minister, Chun Yung-woo. They suggest that among the younger generation of Chinese officials there is a growing desire to relinquish support for North Korea. One official apparently stated that all of Korea â??should be unified under ROK [South Korean] controlâ??.

The overall impression given by these leaked documents is that of a China torn between past loyalties and present realities. While Xi Jinping, Hu Jintaoâ??s heir-apparent, recently praised his countryâ??s involvement in the Korean War as â??great and justâ??, there are many around him who would seem to place a much higher value on maintaining healthy relationships with those important trading partners farther afield: South Korea, Japan and America.

If these intercepted cables are accurate, they provide a certain amount of vindication to the continued South Korean and American policy of keeping up pressure on the mandarins of Pyongyang by, for instance, refusing them a return to the six-party talks. If Kim Jong Il and his princeling son had been calculating the force and timing of their recent military aggressions with an assumption that Beijing regards them as being eternally useful, they may now have a rethink coming.

Not all of the WikiLeaks trove is so useful, however. It would not require great investigative skill to out the North Korean leader as â??a flabby old chapâ??, to use the words attributed to Singaporeâ??s former prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew. That counts as gossip, perhapsâ??but it says something too, about some of the most inscrutable relationships in East Asia.

[quote]Aragorn wrote:

[quote]florelius wrote:

[quote]Aragorn wrote:

[quote]florelius wrote:

when it comes to the possibility of a workersdemocracy. my answer is I hope so, but i dont know for sure if its possible. Its important to remember that political/ideological ideals are normative, they are not descriptiv.
Hope this answers your question.[/quote]

Ok, I have a question for you… In your opinion, is the attempt to find out if the Marxist “worker’s democracy” is realistically possible worth the extremely high cost of failure with the forms of government that result from failed experiements (dictatorship, one-party oligarchy, USSR style leninist communism, etc) ? And if so, why is that?

Given the high probability of experimental failure and the even more devastating gov’t forms and expansive loss of individual freedoms that failure historically has brought about and which future efforts most certainly rationally entail, my personal opinion is “absolutely fucking not”.

“A [capitalist] representative democracy is the worst form of government, excepting only all the other forms.” As problematic as it is I infinitely prefer it to all other forms of probable government. [/quote]

Ok I will try to answer your question.

first off. Leninism is one marxist doctrin out of many.
the reason it failed from a humanitarian point off wiew are many.

  1. Russia was a feudal society with a population where the majority where farmers. A farmer based demcracy would have made more sence in this context dont you think. Ergo workers democracy in feudal Russia equals fail.

  2. leninism was an atempt to create a doctrine wich made it possible to implement socialism in a backward country. To make this doctrine possible, they removed themself from traditional marxist doctrines. example: instead of a massparty, they agitated for a eliteparty. So the obvious conclusion is that Leninism’s elitism was antidemocratic and to expect a democracy to grow out of such an doctrine is moronic. This is why I am not a leninist.

So first of I would say that there must be some conditions to be met before we can even talk about trying to implement a workersdemocracy. The conditions I am talking about are:

1.The hypothetical society wich we are to consider implementing a workersdemocracy must have democratic traditions.

  1. The hypothetical society wich we are to consider implementing a workersdemocracy must have a industrialized economy.

  2. The mayority of the people of this hypothetical society must be wageworkers.

If this conditions are met we can start talk about implementing a workersdemocracy, but now me must start to consider how this is supposed to be done and this depends on how things are in the hypothetical society. If its a country like USA or norway a peacefull approach are the most obvious to follow. This is because we have a tradition of public opposition against the establishment in a peacfull manner. The first step would be to organize a union and a party that had as a primary goal to establish a socialist workersdemocracy. If the society are something like pinnochets chile or similar, a more militant organization would be necessary. In both cases its wery important that a revolution like this doesnt take place without the majoritys support, It could lead down a totalitarian direction and that its stupid obvious.

finaly I would say that no cruel action can be justified because of a idea like socialism or libertarianism etc…

hope this did answer your questions.
[/quote]

Thanks for your post. Regrettably, although it clarifies your views on your preference of socialist doctrine, it doesn’t answer my question. Let me try to rephrase…

In your opinion, is the attempt to find out if the Marxist “worker’s democracy” is realistically possible…as you said, you’re not sure if it is… but is finding out worth the extremely high cost of failure when failure is historically very probable? The high cost of a failed experiment being the forms of gov’t I listed such as leninist communism, etc. and the documented decrease personal freedoms therein.

And if you believe the experiment is worth such a high cost, why is that?

[/quote]

first: I went on a short ramble about leninism and the soviet experiment to show that it doesnt fit in with a more democratic marxian position ergo soviet union and the like is not a good example of “workers democracy”. the reason as I mentioned in the other post is that the bolsjeviks where elitist and they departed from ortodox marxism on important matters.

second: If a people of a country are able to establish a “workersdemocracy” it will work in a everyday sence, but I dont know if it will live up to my normative ideals, wich are a extremely egalitarian society. It might turn into a new “class society”, where you have a class of pencilpusher-workers who dominates the society, and where other wageworkers have less influence than them. It is also a danger that the state becomes to dominant at the expences of workers-councils and communes. So this is what I ment when I said that I did know if it did work or not.

Third: If the mayority of the workingclass in my country push for a change in a more socialist direction I will support them aslong the movement doesnt take a to autoritarian or/and brutal turn.

hope this did answer your question.

florelius.

Sorry for the hijack. Now returning to NK’s insanity…

So why don’t we just let them have it out. Why do we have to police the world, isn’t that one of the many reasons we have such a large deficit.

If we feel there is a threat to our sovereignty, we end the threat and come back like our military was intended to be used, maybe then we could finally control our borders.

This is just the future fearless leader flexing his muscle.