tao: I'd say you are as cynical, dismissive and all-hating as me, whilst also claiming to be all-knowing. Personally, I find it somewhat amusing seeing you and BOAZ battle it out, although it is a bit tired. The thing is though, that despite being pretty anti-religion myself, I don't find BOAZ to be that bad. He seems somewhat personable.

Where most socialists completely miss the boat, I believe, is not over whether or not their particular doctrine is true or not, but the fact that they're so fundamentalist about it and that they have little to no sense of humour. Most of them could quite easily go and join Al Qaeda, the Neo-Nazis or any other ratbag group and no one would know the difference because it has nothing to do with the belief systems and everything to do with the dysfunctional personalities. It's all the same rhetoric. That's precisely why socialism is doomed to fail -- there's a massive irony in a movement that claims to be of or for the people yet is, beneath the surface, so anti-human and so contemptuous of people. Jesus, go and read some Kundera for Bog's sake (or ask some Czechs or Slovaks to tell you about the significance of 21/8/68), or actually go and spend time in the former Iron Curtain. In particular, go and visit the museum in Riga or the former KGB headquarters in Vilnius.

I am a misanthrope, but I'm not hypocritically trying to claim the role of mankind's benefactor.

Look though, maybe I am a smug bastard, but I can sit back and point to the history books. China's not even Communist anymore. Does anyone really think Cuba will outlast Fidel? How long will it be before Venezuela swings to an equally absurd right wing government? So what does that leave us with? Great bastions like Belarus or North Korea. You keep telling yourself that one day we're all going to go to Heaven though, I mean have a Worker's Revolution...if only we see the sins of man and accept Marx as our personal saviour.

Shorbe,

I’ve had the discussion with you before about the difference between socialism and Stalinism. Your “argument” is bereft of serious analysis, and full of superficial and impressionistic opinion.

Instead of being facetious and relying on capitalist perpetuated “common knowledge”, “history” and generalizations, why don’t you actually try to argue a specific point that I’ve made and show me where I’m incorrect?

As for my sense of humour, well you’re just a laugh a minute aren’t you?

Excuse me if I don’t find war and exploitation amusing enough for you. Or is the problem perhaps that I don’t dismiss other peoples’ suffering as irrelevant to my own little world like you do? Why don’t you just trot off to your little self-sufficient plot of land and escape from the world – you don’t need anyone do you?

I can see humour in many things Shorbe, but I’m not about to let “personable” people get away with “friendly” little euphemisms to hide the unpalatable truth of capitalist exploitation just because someone tries to make a joke of it.

And Nietzsche’s not your Marx or Christ?

You seem to closely follow his dictum of offering up depressing negativity, and absolutely nothing constructive to humanity. Where is the originality in what you contribute?

If it’s all so pointless to you why even bother continuing to “contribute” to this forum? What do you have to offer anyone?

Pessimism the great panacea!

Early Christianity was very similar to the ideals and philosophies of early communism.
"From each according to his ability, to each according to his need!" Marx

"And all that believed were together, and had all things common; And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need." (Luke Acts 2:44-45)

Somewhere along the line they both got buggered up.

tao: Your base argument is disingenuous because you want to condemn any other ideology's worst excesses and argue such systems inevitably lead from A to B. However, you're not willing to accept any of the inevitable excesses of Marxism.

At the bottom line, any political ideology that is not pluralistic must force itself upon people who won't toe the line, which is precisely why the tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia on 21/8/68. This didn't spring out of some corruption of the true way of socialism, but was an inevitability of it as it is in any fundamentalist political ideology. It's, "people will accept what's good for them even if we have to force it upon them!" I suspect though, that trying to argue this specific point is like trying to argue with a fundamentalist Christian who believes dinosaurs did (or do) coexist with human beings. Likewise, statistics on national living standards, corruption, etc., will inevitably be dismissed as capitalist perpetuated "common knowledge" in Marxist Newspeak.

You think you're on the side of righteousness, just like any other zealot, but at the end of the day, it's just more of the same (whether the buzzwords are "workers' revolution" or "market system" or "Allah's will" or "Jesus Christ is my personal saviour"). Have you ever considered the old saying, the road to hell is paved with good intentions? What really causes a lot of the suffering in this world is people like you who think they know what's best for everyone else. Maybe you should just mind your own bloody business and stop preaching to everyone. I may be a cynical bastard, but unless you're going to argue that I'm depressing humanity by osmosis (which is a pretty long bow to draw), I'm not really affecting much at all. I don't have some utopian fantasy that I would inflict upon people given enough followers.

Nietzsche isn't my Marx or Christ because I'm quite willing to criticise him as much as any other hack philosopher. Regardless, I'm quite willing to admit I'm as full of crap as anyone else. The trouble with socialists

Tao & shorbe

You're both acting as if a socialism represents a complete system on its own basis, without varying levels of input.

Both capitalism and socialism are fluid, and while they are opposing one systems, they aren't mutually exclusive. Democratic socialism. Look it up, or observe my earlier post.
The 'all or nothing' style of debate really gets us nowhere.

shorbe - you're more guilty of this than tao by assuming we can't have a level of acceptable socialist tendency within a capitalist framework - believe it or not, we already do.

Tao - employers use employees to their advantage. Employees use employers to their advantage. They exploit one another. Generally, the employer has more power than the employee, which means they havem ore potential to exploit, however when unions abuse their power the situation can be reversed. Successful capitalism is about finding a balance - unfortunately, I think we're heading in the wrong direction.

TRTL: Sorry, after just re-reading this thread, I only just noticed your post to me on the 15th of March. I seem to remember your posts as being interesting and balanced, so my apologies for missing that one.

I didn't say we couldn't have variations on a theme. Obviously, I'd be silly not to acknowledge that what the Finns have is very different to what the Americans have, which is very different to what we have and so on. Obviously, there are things I do or don't like within each system, but each system is essentially pluralistic and fluid, which is what I'm arguing for.

I was talking about the brand of socialism tao espouses. It's like how whilst I'm not particularly enamoured with organised religion, most people who are so inclined go about their ordinary lives leaving others alone and don't really believe non-believers are some societal scourge, but it's those who are one-eyed with whom I have a problem.

I think we're fairly well in agreement on this, even though I suspect I'm more right wing than you are on political objectives and ideas, but our differences there don't bother me and I suspect they probably don't bother you either.

Incidentally, regarding your last sentence to tao, care to elaborate?