The fatal flaw in political Marxism

[MacGyver1968]

A third piece of evidence is the fact that the President never met with the House Minority Leader for over a year after he was sworn in. This separation from the leader of a minority party shows that he believed, and acted in accordance with this belief, that he could run a country that had only one party. Now who's the village idiot?

You are.

1/23/09 1:25 PM EDT

President Obama meets with Congressional leaders in the Roosevelt Room of the White House. From left are House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, House Minority Leader John Boehner and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. AP Photo

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0109/17862.html

3 days after he was sworn in. You're so good at being wrong Benny.

 

[BennyF]

What does dictatorship have to do with one world government?

Dictators dream of ruling the world.

Do you know anything about Marxism prior to 1913?

This is a discussion board, not a history exam. If you want to make a rhetorical point, make it.

Even Lenin, the creator of what you are criticizing probably never envisioned communism becoming what he turned it into prior to 1913. Lenin did get upset with his fellow leftists during WW1 when they abandoned their revolutionary efforts to patriotically support the war efforts of their kings and bad democratic leaders in the stupid pointless imperialistic World War one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Lenin
from the above link: In 1906, "Lenin" was elected to the Presidium of the RSDLP;

It would be interesting to see when and why Lenin became Anti-democratic.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/index.htm

I don't like using Wikipedia. Its' entries can be changed by anyone with a computer. That makes it unauthorattive.

I intend for us to discuss Marxism as a system of government, not as an economic theory, usually referred to as Communism.

Marxism is not a system of government. Marxism is only an economic theory. Any professor or author that told you otherwise was wrong.

I'm using the term to mean a political system run by a dictator, someone that is at the top of the power system in a country but who cannot or will not work with an independent legislature and an independent court system. There's no word that exactly fits this definition unless you convert "dictator" to "dictatorship".

The bottom line remains this:

1. This country needs a middle class to give lower class people a goal they can achieve if they study hard and work hard.

2. Middle classes are usually composed of the employees of large companies and the owners of small companies.

3. A high regulatory burden on a large company, including the cost of health insurance for hundreds of employees, can discourage a large business from hiring, which shrinks the size of the middle class.

4. A high regulatory burden on a small company, including the cost of filling out an IRS 1099 for all $600 purchases, and the cost to service 18 bank regulators in a 15-employee bank, can make the business so costly that it cannot continue to make a profit.

5. Each time the middle class shrinks, the lower classes envy the wealth of the upper classes because it is more difficult to obtain any increase in wealth.

6. Each time the lower classes envy the upper classes, due to a small or non-existent middle class, there is a risk of social unrest, sometimes violently expressed in the form of a riot and store looting, which further reduces the "wealth" of the middle-class store owner.

'7. President Obama and his party have encouraged this envy by introducing legislation that focuses on upper-class symbols like jet airplanes, while forgetting that it is middle-class people that build the jets, own stock in the jet manufacturer's company, sit in the pilot's seat, and maintain the airplane when it's on the ground. These jobs, and others, are lost if the jet manufacturer doesn't have enough customers to stay in business, or if he has so many regulatory burdens that he can't make a profit. This is just another example of the reasons why dictatorships and class-envy always produces bad results.

 

[spidergoat]

You can't do it here, either, if ACORN registers tens of thousands of fake voters, as they did in 2008. The inability of the Federal Election Commission to detect this and to stop it from happening was a discrace and a serious threat to the political process that should be above any serious criticism.

Oh, you mean the ones you know about because ACORN turned them in?

ACORN turns in suspects in Florida fake voter registrations

Or are you talking about Republican vote suppression?

 

[BennyF]

President Obama meets with Congressional leaders in the Roosevelt Room of the White House. From left are House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, House Minority Leader John Boehner and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. AP Photo

3 days after he was sworn in. You're so good at being wrong Benny.

I may have meant to say the Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

 

[spidergoat]

The bottom line is simple. If the President wants to avoid a violent revolution, then he must increase the number of people who are in the middle class. He must allow large businesses to be profitable enough to hire lots of workers, and he must allow small businesses to have enough profits to stay alive. That means he must reduce the number of regulators who oversee businesses, large and small, he must reduce the number and the strength of the regulations that they enforce, and he must tell the regulators, including the people at the top of each regulatory agency, that their function is to stop the excesses of business, not the businesses themselves.[/SIZE][/FONT]

Obama is doing everything he can to save the middle class, the Republicans are doing everything they can to destroy it. If you think health care is bad for the middle class, you never had to deal with a serious illness in your family, because that is the number one cause of bankruptcy.

Reduced regulation only helps the largest corporations to pollute and profit more, it doesn't help the middle class in the least. Regulation includes the banking industry, which last I checked caused all our financial problems in the first place. Get a clue.

 

[spidergoat]

Dictators dream of ruling the world.

Republicans dream of one world corporation under no law or regulation.

 

[MacGyver1968]

I may have meant to say the Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Then once again...you'd be wrong.

January 23, 2009, 4:09 pm

Fresh from a meeting at the White House with President Obama, Mr. McConnell said he was ready to work with the White House, starting by hammering out an agreement on an economic stimulus package that he said should be ready for the president’s signature next month.

You really should look these things up before saying them.

 

[BennyF]

Obama is doing everything he can to save the middle class, the Republicans are doing everything they can to destroy it. If you think health care is bad for the middle class, you never had to deal with a serious illness in your family, because that is the number one cause of bankruptcy.

If the health care law was so good for businesses, then few businesses would want an exemption from them. Many have asked for exemptions, and the ones that have been granted are tyopically those that are owned by people who have made large political contributions to the Democratic Party. Political favoritism is another sign of a dictatorship.

Reduced regulation only helps the largest corporations to pollute and profit more, it doesn't help the middle class in the least.

Reread what I said about who lives in the middle class. It's largely people who work for large corporations and people who own small businesses like gas stations, variety stores, and boutique stores. It's also the service industry, everyone from carpenters to construction workers to salespeople to office cleaners. If the owners of their businesses go out of business, they lose their jobs.

Reduced regulations mean that the large businesses will find it economicasl to hire more people (producing a larger middle class, filled with employed blue-collar and low-level white-collar jobs) and that more small-business owners will be able to stay profitable (keeping them in the middle class).

Regulation includes the banking industry, which last I checked caused all our financial problems in the first place. Get a clue.

Last I checked, Obama's Treasury Dept was refusing to accept TARP repayment money from some of the banks ...

April 2009 Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal

... and all of the banks were forced to accept the unprofitable regulations of the Community Reinvestment Act.

 

[nirakar]

You can't do it here, either, if ACORN registers tens of thousands of fake voters, as they did in 2008. The inability of the Federal Election Commission to detect this and to stop it from happening was a discrace and a serious threat to the political process that should be above any serious criticism.

The ACORN story was a deception. A little research and honesty on your part would bring to the same conclusion. I understand ACORN. What they tried to do was noble. Their bad registrations were made by homeless alcoholics trying to meet registration quotas in order to get ACORN to give them a little money so they could go get another drink.

ACORN made no attempt at election fraud. ACORNs bad registrations did create some costs for election officials. No fraudulent voting was done as a result of ACORN. ACORN's goal was to increase voter registration among the chronically nonvoting poor.

While ACORN did nothing antidemocratic, dishonest or fraudulent the attempt to shut ACORN down was deliberately antidemocratic, dishonest and fraudulent.

If you want to be scholarly you must dig deeper into your topics. If you have permanently chosen the political team you play for and just want to be loyal then continue as a you are doing. With the Sciforums crowd if you want to help your team you should still repeat the false ideas put out by the political faction you are loyal to but do so in a little bit more intellectually sophisticated manor because Scifoums is a little bit more intellectually sophisticated crowd than the general public so easily disproved assertions will hurt your credibility here.

I tend to hurt my credibility here by saying things well out of the mainstream but I do that on purpose because when the mainstream might be wrong there is no way say the mainstream might be wrong without hurting ones credibility. But I try to only say what I can back up. The problem with only saying what you can back up is that only saying what you can back up requires previous knowledge or research and doing research is time consuming and can take time away from other parts of life that are perhaps more worthy of your time.

If you want to be scholarly and accurate then reexamine the credibility of whatever sources you got your opinion on ACORN from and be open to being highly skeptical of anything those sources have to say in the future. Whatever sources you got your view on ACORN from had little regard for fact checking and accuracy.

Whoever gave you the idea that such a thing as a Marxist form of government existed also had little regard for accuracy.

 

[nirakar]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Lenin
from the above link: In 1906, "Lenin" was elected to the Presidium of the RSDLP;

It would be interesting to see when and why Lenin became Anti-democratic.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/index.htm

I don't like using Wikipedia. Its' entries can be changed by anyone with a computer. That makes it unauthorattive.

Your complaint about Wikipedia is valid but Network News, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal are also quite inaccurate and always have been quite inaccurate. The internet is killing newspapers but the media praise of their own accuracy and the need for gatekeepers is self-serving and disregards their own problem with accuracy.

The encyclopedias that I grew up with also had problems with bias and accuracy though they were somewhat superior to Wikipedia for accuracy. Wikipedia has quite a bit more detail on almost every topic than the encyclopedias of my youth did and has many topics that were not included in encyclopedias.

Wikipedia is a good starting point for research but you are right that it should not be trusted but rather be a source of questions to be investigated and alleged facts to be checked.

Wikipedia is far more accurate than Limbaugh.

I did not just give you Wikipedia. I gave you a link to the collected writings of Lenin.

 

[nirakar]

Dictators dream of ruling the world.

Dictators dream of ruling the world but that has nothing to do with Marxism. That has to do with human nature. "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely". It may have something to do with testosterone.

Napoleon dreamed of ruling the world.

The Project For A New American Century which Rumsfeld and Cheney where members of dreamed of ruling the world.

 

[BennyF]

The ACORN story was a deception. A little research and honesty on your part would bring to the same conclusion. I understand ACORN. What they tried to do was noble. Their bad registrations were made by homeless alcoholics trying to meet registration quotas in order to get ACORN to give them a little money so they could go get another drink.

ACORN made no attempt at election fraud. ACORNs bad registrations did create some costs for election officials. No fraudulent voting was done as a result of ACORN. ACORN's goal was to increase voter registration among the chronically nonvoting poor.

"A Nevada judge on Wednesday gave ACORN, the defunct grass-roots community organization, the maximum fine for its illegal voter-registration scheme in that state."

August 10, 2011 Article in Fox News

 

[spidergoat]

It's almost impossible to register anyone to vote these days under Republican REGULATIONS, without doing something that results in a fine. Most voter registration organizations can't afford to do it anymore, like the League of Women Voters. This is all according to plan, the Cons want as few people voting as possible, especially if you are a minority.

 

[nirakar]

What does dictatorship have to do with one world government?

Can you find me a Marx or Engels quote advocating for "one world government"?

Can you find me a Marx or Engels quote criticizing democracy?

Can you find me a Marx or Engels quote advocating for a form of government?

Do you know anything about Marxism prior to 1913?

Even Lenin, the creator of what you are criticizing probably never envisioned communism becoming what he turned it into prior to 1913. Lenin did get upset with his fellow leftists during WW1 when they abandoned their revolutionary efforts to patriotically support the war efforts of their kings and bad democratic leaders in the stupid pointless imperialistic World War one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Lenin
from the above link: In 1906, "Lenin" was elected to the Presidium of the RSDLP;

It would be interesting to see when and why Lenin became Anti-democratic.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/index.htm

This is a discussion board, not a history exam. If you want to make a rhetorical point, make it.

Maxism is history now. The Soviet Union is history. Mao is history.

The very premise of this thread, your OP was a historical inaccuracy.

 

[Tiassa]

Could you please come back to reality long enough to make even a little bit of sense?

The economy, including the fact that a sixth of our citizens live in poverty, is only one piece of evidence that our President doesn't like governing in a Constitutionally-based nation.

That is an intriguing thesis, Benny. Please demonstrate its validity.

Another piece of evidence is the fact, already stated, that the Federal Election Commission, a part of the Executive Branch of our government, and under his control, failed miserably to carry out one of their primary responsibilities - that of ensuring an honest election.

Which election was that? I mean, we need to figure out what you're talking about, in order that you can support these assertions of fact.

A third piece of evidence is the fact that the President never met with the House Minority Leader for over a year after he was sworn in. This separation from the leader of a minority party shows that he believed, and acted in accordance with this belief, that he could run a country that had only one party.

As people have reminded, your assertion of fact leaves something to be desired; in this case, accuracy.

Furthermore, given the large amount of discussion on the subject, and the long determination of the Republican Party to oppose President Obama regardless of the issue at hand, I think you've made something of an extraordinary assertion that Obama "believed, and acted in accordance with this belief, that he could run a country that had only one party".

If you intend to maintain such an extraordinary assertion, you will need to support it.

Now who's the village idiot?

That person shall not be named at this time; you are, however, making an admirable challenge for the title.

Well, you're very humble, speaking for everybody else, especially since I'm referring to him as a dictator, not as a Commie.

Look around. The proverbial writing on the wall isn't so hard to read.

Well, you're very humble, speaking for everybody else, especially since I'm referring to him as a dictator, not as a Commie.

Referring to whom? See, part of the problem with your argumentative non sequiturs is that continuing to make sense becomes a serious stumbling block for you.

If this is too much proof of the undemocratic nature of a dictator for you to understand, I can live with that.

I sincerely doubt the undemocratic nature of dictators is something you needed to establish.

Let me guess. You didn't know that any country that has no middle class has a lot of envy of the upper class by the lower class. The existence of a middle class (large-business employees and small-business owners) provides a path for lower class people to improve their living standards. The parents of each middle-class family can say to their children, "If you study hard in school and work hard in your job, you can be better off than I am." However, if there's no middle class, because small businesses are going out of business, and large businesses are not hiring because they fear regulations, including the requirements of the Health Care Law, then these lower-class parents can't offer a better life to their lower-class children, who then become resentful (for the wrong reasons) of upper-class families, and riots start.

In other words, that's a yes, there is something amiss with the books of the bank you mentioned as an example?

If you had respect for other posters, you wouldn't insult them.

Even though respect isn't something that people earn from me, it is still a two-way street. If you go out of your way to make clear to people that you do not want their respect, they are usually happy to oblige.

Don't try to whitewash your paranoid, ignorant conspiracy theories as patriotism; you insult people when you try to deceive them, and even more so when you fail so miserably as to suggest you really do think they're simply that stupid.

Seriously, if you're going to try to con people, put some effort into it.

No, the topic is "really" about what I said it was about - the flaws of political Marxism.

In other words the topic really is about something you made up off the top of your head?

Okay, that's fine. Now people know.

President Obama is simply one example of a dictator, unable to rule and issue commands to a subservient people as he obviously wants to do because we still have a constitution and a strong two-party system.

I can't wait for you to develop that thesis into something coherent and even remotely related to reality.

That's a political factor for your consideration, in case you didn't realize it.

And you made it up all by yourself? Super job, Benny!

But it doesn't change the fact that the transition from elementary history to the Third Amendment to Obama and the separation of powers was a non-sequitur.

I'm "on" the benefits of the United States Constitution, including the history of it and the current threats to it.

If you intend to assert the history of the United States, it might be helpful if you actually learned about it first.

These threats include, as I said earlier, a Supreme Court that uses foreign law to help them arrive at their decisions ...

Which occasion set you off? And how does it differ from prior occasions?

... a Federal Election Commission that fails to detect and prevent voter fraud, and a President whose party commits voter fraud ...

Please offer some support for your accusations of voter fraud.

... as well as forcing legislation down our throats that hinder business so much that the middle class is shrinking and a sixth of our citizens live in poverty.

I sincerely doubt I'm the only one waiting with anxious amusement for you to fill out that thesis with some manner of fact.
____________________

Notes:

Hulse, Carl and Adam Nagourney. "Senate G.O.P. Leader Finds Weapon in Unity Senate G.O.P. Leader Finds Weapon in Unity". The New York Times. March 16, 2010. NYTimes.com. September 20, 2011. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/17/us/politics/17mcconnell.html

 

[nirakar]

The bottom line remains this:

1. This country needs a middle class to give lower class people a goal they can achieve if they study hard and work hard.

2. Middle classes are usually composed of the employees of large companies and the owners of small companies.

3. A high regulatory burden on a large company, including the cost of health insurance for hundreds of employees, can discourage a large business from hiring, which shrinks the size of the middle class.

4. A high regulatory burden on a small company, including the cost of filling out an IRS 1099 for all $600 purchases, and the cost to service 18 bank regulators in a 15-employee bank, can make the business so costly that it cannot continue to make a profit.

5. Each time the middle class shrinks, the lower classes envy the wealth of the upper classes because it is more difficult to obtain any increase in wealth.

6. Each time the lower classes envy the upper classes, due to a small or non-existent middle class, there is a risk of social unrest, sometimes violently expressed in the form of a riot and store looting, which further reduces the "wealth" of the middle-class store owner.

OK but this relates to the motivation for class revolution. It does not connect with what form of government would be created by a class revolution. Are you backing away from your idea that such a thing as a Marxist structure of government exists?

What you have written above is economic/political/socio-emotional theory. What you where presenting before was more of a historical assertion.

'7. President Obama and his party have encouraged this envy by introducing legislation that focuses on upper-class symbols like jet airplanes, while forgetting that it is middle-class people that build the jets, own stock in the jet manufacturer's company, sit in the pilot's seat, and maintain the airplane when it's on the ground. These jobs, and others, are lost if the jet manufacturer doesn't have enough customers to stay in business, or if he has so many regulatory burdens that he can't make a profit. This is just another example of the reasons why dictatorships and class-envy always produces bad results.[/SIZE][/FONT]

So this thread was never about Marxism or the Soviet Union? This thread is really about Obama?


The Jobs were lost because the dollar was allowed to be inflated to high by foreign investors seeking the perceived stability of the dollar and by nations using the US willingness to have it's currency inflated as a way to suppress their own currencies. It is primarily the over inflated dollar that made American workers uncompetitive and led to outsourcing.

Even if the USA had no taxes on corporations and wealthy people, and no environmental or safety regulations or regulations of any kind and banned unions the high dollar would still make American workers uncompetitive and lead to outsourcing and unemployment.

 

[spidergoat]

Talking about Marxism makes them feel intellectual, as if their religion has a basis in fact. If businesses are so holy they cannot be taxed, then he should love Obamacare, since it hands the insurance industry millions of new customers. If the corporations are the job creators, then all our problems will soon be solved by Obamacare, we get health care and jobs!

 

[nirakar]

"A Nevada judge on Wednesday gave ACORN, the defunct grass-roots community organization, the maximum fine for its illegal voter-registration scheme in that state."

August 10, 2011 Article in Fox News

First you complain about the accuracy of Wikipedia then you cite Fox News. Wikipedia is far more accurate than Fox News but I am not disputing the core facts in the Facts in the Fox News article.

The article says:
"The group paid a bonus to workers to sign up 21 or more voters per shift, calling the program "21," or "Blackjack."

That is exactly the sort of thing I said ACORN does. This is why ACORNs poor homeless workers made up and registered fake people. ACORN did not care if fake people were registered as long as real poor habitual non-voters were also registered. The Republican party does not want real poor habitual non-voters registered.

The article says :
"It is illegal in Nevada to pay bonuses to register voters."

Why is it illegal in Nevada to pay bonuses yo register voters? There is the real crime which is legal and can't be punished. I would like a world wgere the poor get off their ass and register themselves and some do but I don't object to groups making it easy for the poor to register but the Republican party does object to making it easy for the poor to register. The poor move more than wealthier people.
Many of the poor are to some degree handicapped physically, mentally or emotionally. Many of the poor work two jobs and have little time for things like registering. Most of the poor are completely jaded about politics and see registering as pointless or almost pointless. ACORN tries to overcome this tendency of the poor to stay out of politics by registering them to vote at their grocery stores.

But ACORN also has never had much money and believes in hiring the homeless as a means of rehabilitating the homeless into productive workers.

ACORN should not have broken Nevada's law but Nevada's law should never have been written. In perfect world paying people to register others would look like something outside money would do to influence an election and perhaps letting outside money influence an election should be illegal. But what are campaign advertisements? Campaign advertisements are an extreme form of allowing outside money influence elections and the supreme court just ruled that "Free Speech" requires allowing outside money to influence elections. Supreme Court says "Money is Speech" and "Corporations are People". So how is Nevada's law that ACORN broke constitution if it is unconstitutional to restrict campaign contributions and political advertising?

Still ACORN should not have broken the law regardless how unconstitutional and deliberately anti-democratic the unstated intent of the law was. Did ACORN even understand the law? They have always been a dysfunctional impoverished organization with somewhat saintly bul unrealistic goals. Did ACORN get a lawyer or anybody competent to read Nevada election law?

I stand by my position that ACORN was a victim of Republican criminal behavior and that ACORN caused no harm to the electoral process but rather was an asset to the electoral process. I don't belive anybody has ever found a single fraudulent vote cast as a result of ACORN's actions. The voters that the Alcoholics homeless people created never showed up to vote and most of them never got past the screening for bad registrations.

 

[BennyF]

Maxism is history now. The Soviet Union is history. Mao is history.

There are people in Russia now who are nostalgic for the Soviet Union, and the people who run China are most often called Communists. Mao is dead, but the place where he's buried still gets millions of visitors every day.

What matters are the principles, including the necessity for a strong middle class to prevent envy of the upper class by the lower class and a government that accepts the need to have the people's approval for what they do. It wold help a lot if their government is structured according to a constitution, but England has centuries of history as their tradition, as well as the marriage of their two main royal bloodlines.

The British Royal Family

Princess Diana's geneology

 

[BennyF]

Which election was that? I mean, we need to figure out what you're talking about, in order that you can support these assertions of fact.

I posted a link yesterday to the news story that told which election I was referring to. You must not have read it.



The following quote is from the same Fox News story that I mentioned yesterday. Another link to the story is provided at the bottom.



"District Court Judge Donald Mosley was blunt and unsparing in his criticism of the discredited activist group. Citing the long history of voter registration fraud allegations that engulfed ACORN across the country, he slapped the group with a $5,000 fine for violating Nevada election law during the 2008 presidential election.

Mosley, reading the pre-sentence report, listed a series of voter registration fraud allegations against ACORN workers. He said that if the claims have been true, then "It is making a mockery of our election process. If I had an individual in this courtroom...who was responsible for this kind of thing, I would put that person in prison for 10 years, hard time, and not think twice about it," he said. "To me this is reprehensible. This is the kind of thing you see in some banana republic, Uruguay or someplace, not in the United States."

In Nevada, ACORN pleaded guilty to one felony count of unlawful compensation for registration of voters, stemming from an illegal voter registration scheme in its Las Vegas office during in the 2008 race."

August 10, 2011 Fox News story




This isn't some banana republic, this is the United States.