1. In what ay do I need to be more specific about the German/Dutch Left-Communist current.
2. If a non-communist does not know what I am talking about they can gladly go look it up an learn something.
3. If a communist doesn't know what I'm talking about, well I quite frankly would question their 'communism'.
4. Where did I ever write that the state has no role in the transition of society? Your quoting of the manifesto to prove a non-point to myself is of no use.
1. Socialism is not the government controlling 'what's supposed to be private'. This is rubbish on two counts. One it assumes "stuff that's meant to be private" and wrongly equates it with property. And two, and more importantly, socialism has nothing to do with government control. That is what we call state capitalism. If you have bothered to read anything by the German/Dutch left-communists you would know this.
2. Socialism and Capitalism aren't 'systems of governemnt' you can compare side by side and choose the better one. Socialism is the real expression of working class oppression and the historic tendency toward it's realisation. Go read a book and come back when you have half a brain.
The first question that needs answering is how do we define 'normal'?
Right from the get go I don't believe that you can have an adequate definition of 'normality' even on the basis of anthropology and biology.
In short, normality is subjective.
A paedophile is a person. Most have 2 arms, 2 legs, a mouth, a nose, eyes, a brain and all the other bits and pieces that make a human and are to this extent 'normal'.
Please, think with your head before you make stupid debates.
Would you care to explain why 18 is some magical age where everybody suddenly gains an understanding's of their own interests and the right to decide what to do with their own lives. This is horse shit. It's my body, if I'm 16 and I want it plastered on the internet or on billboards I should have no restrictions to do so. Why is it up to a 'responsible adult' to decide a child's life for them. Please, drop the paternalism then you might be able to think without the moralistic and authoritarian hazy that surrounds your argument.
I would reject the very question on the basis that it is essentially useless. How do we define 'right' and who are you or I to say what is objectively 'right' or 'wrong'. Moral judgements are all essentially useless and serve no value. It is on this basis that I do not object (not claim it is 'right) to such photographs.
I disagree with both positions. Religion does not exist soley in the clouds and in the minds of men. It has it's basis in the existing material conditions of society.
You can argue all you like about whether religion in the fuedal era was a positive or negative force, but the fact that it was a force, and a force that could not be done away with due to the existing material and social conditions makes the question void.
Revolutions need no justification, they are simply the reflection of the material conditions of the present society.
"Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past." - Marx from the 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon.
Revolution is the rebellion of one class against the rule of another. It is the call for the birth of a new society. So long as the material conditions of a particular society necessity and give rise to revolutionary movements they need no justification.
Have you even bothered to read Marx or any other Marxists?
The incentive to work is found in real human needs. People labour for the satisfaction of human needs and wants. In a capitalist society this natural human drive is perverted by the profit motive where by mans truely human functions become animal, and his animal functions (eating, sleeping, procreating) become self fulfilling and his whole human purpose.
It is entirely possible to destroy religion, however, it can not b condcted in the realm of philosophy and theory.
A critique of religion is necesaarily a critiqique of the social conditions whose spiritual aroma is religion. When the social/material conditions which necessitate religion are destroyed (alienation) religion will disapear.
Read Marx
1. Capitalism is the "best" (most progressive) economic system TO DATE.
2. It is not true that capitalism provides freedom. Your statement is total idealism. Real men have real material needs and so long as these needs require satisfaction for a continued life and existence, men have no choice in their need to work and eat and breath.
I am a wage slave. I don't willingly give up the product of my labour to my employer but i am forced to by the power of capital that he exerts over myself. Further, I am not even compensated the whole value of my product, rather it is appropriated from me. I am alienated by this process from my product, from my life activity and from my fellow man.
3. You say that capitalism allows innovation. This is because of a failed understanding of real human needs, a by-product of your idealism. Advancement and innovation in the means of production, in technology and in living conditions is not a result of the profit motive, rather it is the product of man's life activity, his labour and it's ability to satisfy his real needs. Why else did we see advancement in the age of the hunter-gatherer, or in the age of the feudal aristocrat?
The manifestation of the incentive to invent in the form of the profit motive is simply a result of the self-alienation experienced by man in the capitalist mode of production.
4. Socialism is not diluted communism, read a book you philistine.
How to we define better?
I refuse to use wishy-washing short-sighted humanist ideas of equality and humanity.
Man can no more choose his particular mode of production more than he can choose the weather.
Capitalism, like all class based societies sows the seeds of it's destruction in the oppressed classes. This is why capitalism is today moving ever closer to it's revolutionary destruction.
Socialism is the new revolutionary mode of production, "destined" to overtake capitalism, just a capitalism overtook feudalism.
We can no more combine the best of both worlds, more than we can combine absolute monarchy and liberal democracy. They represent real historical stages and not theories floating in the realm of ideas ripe for the piping and applicable where desired
To destroy poverty you must destroy the roots of poverty. The cause of poverty is fundamentally a problem of capitalism in it's defining characteristic of the extraction of surplus-value from labour.
Today we have embodied in society the means to end poverty, we have the contradiction of private property, of capitalism, in the modern proletariat.
Modern society is like no other. We have industry on a scale sufficient to satisfy the needs of all those in poverty, we have enough agricultural product to satisfy every hungry mouth. Why do we have poverty? Capitalism, the mindless search for profits overriding real human needs.
The destruction of capitalism is the destruction of poverty
(If anyone says "Communism is poverty" you are a moron, read Marx you philistine)
