Dems and GOP are fun to bash, but so are Libertarians...

[FireIceTalon]

Well, that can be a valid interpretation. If you want to go look at a worldwide view, then yes, American politics tends to yield to the "right" for any party. "Democrat" would still be considered fairly rightish. But this comes down to the lack of variety and single mindedness, and people are waking up to said issues. Knowledge is a dangerous thing.

Knowledge is only dangerous for the ruling class. Because an educated populace, after all, is a dangerous populace, because they have the potential to be a threat to the status quo. Some say ignorance is bliss, but if it's between ignorance and knowledge, I'm going with knowledge all the way - for me personally at least. I don't think it is any coincidence that anti-intellectualism is rampant in American society.

War is profitable? Hard to say that when it's the core source of money leaking out of the country. People always love to refer to World War II and that great burst of patriotism and industrial era wars, but the business of war, while profitable to some, isn't really that beautiful on the profit margins. When you had conscripts to draft and toss into the fray, and the nature of the factory style economy, then yes, you could say there were many who could provide a war and the profit.

I guess my post wasn't clear, or I made it sound like I agree with and justify it (war). LOL, I'm a Communist, dude. I despise war for any/all reasons. My post was saying that it was profitable for the few, which it is. But certainly not for the many. I think we actually agree here, unless I'm missing something.

And what does this have to do with the US policing the world? The modern means of exploitation do not have to require force. It's in fact, a pretty messy way. A better way is to by law, force the limitation of a service or product that is vital to be extremely limited and force people to buy them at the highest prices of which they can't afford and thus dependent on it. You know, like, the world's largest drug cartel the health care industry.

Nah, it does actually require force, and demonstrably so. There are only two reasons why Capitalism has lasted as long as it has....

1. It exists through deceit. We are told that it is the best system we can possibly have from as early as middle school, and they pound that into the publics heads non-stop. Of course the masses swallow whats spoon fed to them without critically thinking about it.

2. It does indeed exist through State Force, as US Imperialism and our constant wars, policing of the world, and trying to westernize everyone else has demonstrably proven. Not to mention our police force, court and legal system, etc. All these things are Superstructures or parts of Superstructures that exist and function to legitimize the rules that keep the Base (Capitalism) in place.

If these two things disappear, Capitalism goes bye-bye.

That hasn't much do to with capitalism. It does not require capitalism to abuse coercion and force. Capitalism is merely a means and tool of the society but if the underlying society sees it fit to marginalize those that are different from them, then it becomes a pretty efficient way. But that's more of a reflection of the problem, and not the cause.

Uh, No. It actually has almost everything to do with it. The reason is, those who control society economically (meaning those who control the means to production) also control it socially and politically. Class inequality has been the fundamental division through every society in history, but it leads to the other social divisions I mentioned in my prior post. That's because, quite simply, most of Western society has historically been controlled by a certain demographic: wealthy, white, straight, religious males. Chattel slavery may not be legal anymore (in most advanced nations anyway), but it doesn't need to be when the elites have a new and more effective way of ruling everyone else: through economic exploitation and alienation, and social autonomy. No doubt, minorities, women, gays, and the less fortunate economically have long been oppressed groups - but only through state force, which exists to prop up Capitalist system that creates the TRUE fundamental division in society: class. And indeed, people are divided more by class than by anything else. While eliminating racism, xenophobia, sexism, and the like is impossible to do entirely, we feel that these issues would become much more trivialized in a Communist society than they are under the current system.

So what's wrong with that, in and of itself? The government isn't always the best provider of certain services.

It should be fairly obvious by my avatar, and if you have read any of my other posts in past political threads, that the word "Privatized" is a dirty word in my and all Marxists vocabulary - we don't want a small elite few deciding who gets what, because there is no genuine democracy in that. Nor do we want "the government" to provide all services, because there is no genuine democracy in that either. What we do want, in fact, is to do away with the State entirely (eventually) along with the Capitalist mode of production - from the bottom up. The State is a tool by and for the ruling class to keep Capitalism intact. We want a CLASSLESS/STATELESS society, where the means of production and all goods (besides personal items of course) and services are PUBLIC ownership - especially things as essential as education and healthcare, food, shelter, and clothing.

America and the former Soviet Union are two sides of the same coin - only difference is one uses so-called "free market" Capitalism to oppress its working class, the other used State Capitalism under the plutocratic Stalinist (which has NOTHING to do with Communism or Socialism) regime to do so. As a classical Marxist, I deplore both of them. One is more demonized than the other, but both equally suck as far as I'm concerned.

No.

I'm sure everyone that walks out of their first class of a social science in college thinks of that, but unfortunately, this in itself is its own chains. You are still in the well with the rest of us, and looking down on the rest of us who are also stuck on it is counterproductive.

Feel free to question the world around you, feel free to be disappointed in those that won't listen to you, but never, ever, consider yourself some part of an exclusive group of wisdom. That just never leads to anything good and will keep you from finding out the truth just from stagnation. And that, as I've mentioned above, is exactly what certain folks want. We already have a political system which both sides delves in absolutes, already. Everyone knows better, while those of privilege and power are just laughing their ass off as the country burns.

Change only happens with unity. Someone, of which you are most likely a huge fan of, wrote that as the closer to their book.

I assume you are talking about Marx, who stated "workers of the world unite" at the end of the Manifesto. Indeed I am very much a Marx enthusiast obviously, though a lot of my thinking also is heavily influenced from other leftists/progressive thinkers, from like Rosa Luxemburg to Chomsky and Howard Zinn, Malcolm X, and so on. Be as it may, Marx himself would tell you this:

As long as we have a Capitalist system, or any system of class antagonisms, we will never have unity. Period. And thinking that we can have unity, peace, all the while keeping Capitalism propped up, is basically Utopian Socialism - which Marxism rejects.

As for me being in any sort of chains or being trapped by a form of thought control, hardly. I simply have CLASS consciousness, though of course, it wasn't always this way. It took not one social science class, but several, in addition to self-education and my own research, to finally understand it - it didn't just happen over night. And even though my views are pretty much written in stone, that doesn't mean I still dont learn. I am still in the middle of my education, and learning constantly - and I probably will be long after I am finished. That being said...most people do not have have class consciousness, they have false consciousness. The latter is an easy thing to garner, because there is so much propaganda, distortion of facts, historical revisionism, and myths propagated through years of anti-Communist rhetoric, as well as culture wars to hide the real issues, that achieving class consciousness is far from being an easy thing to do. Especially in times of crisis, where reactionary ideals become very attractive (even though it was reactionary ideals that were the source of the problem to begin with). It is much easier to blame another group of individuals for our problems than it is to critically analyze the shortcomings of the Capitalist system. People want immediate solutions to very complex problems, and it simply doesn't work that way. Agree or disagree all you like, but no, none of us are wearing any chains actually - except for the Capitalist chains that force me or anyone else who doesn't have any ownership in the means to production to sell our labor to some Bourgeois scum that will keep 95% of the value produced by it, for themselves - NOW THOSE are the fundamental chains that are dividing us. And I want to help break them. But people need to start realizing their true economic and class interests, and focus less on trivial bullshit like who someone marries, what a pregnant woman does with her body, religion, or somehow believing their country and culture is superior to another (its not, nor has it ever been, nor will it ever be!). Not to mention even more trivial bullshit like who won the latest episode of American Idol or whether or not Lindsey Lohan likes licking other women's private parts.

Indeed, the rulers are laughing their ass off as THE WORLD burns (as a Communist, I am an Internationalist - America, nor any other nation, doesn't come first - the WHOLE world does). And it really depresses me to see it - because I know we can do much better. So we agree that there is a lack of unity. Where we may not agree is the cause of that lack of unity, or how to obtain it? For my part, I believe class consciousness and a classless/stateless society, free of exploitation, economic insecurity, war, poverty and despair is the only answer.

It may sound like I am just some radical that thinks he knows better than everyone else, and that I am not trying to help the situation. That isn't my intent, although having class consciousness is certainly a particular awareness of circumstances that one either has, or doesn't have. However, it is important to note that the Marxist perspective is not grounded in idealism, it is grounded in materialism....meaning, we look at historical, material facts and conditions within a given society, and we use them to see what went/is wrong and why, and also use them to look for solutions to the problems. Mainstream perspectives such as Realism, Liberalism, and Identity constructs are grounded in Idealism and identify the causes and effects of conflicts very differently from Marxism, and from one another. Realism focuses on power, Liberalism on cooperation and institutions, and Identity on a particular agenda or ideology (such as democracy, religion or culture). Critical Theory is the methodology used by modern Marxists, and it relies purely on scientific analysis with given facts rather than Idealism, although many classical Marxists don't like CT but thats irrelevant for this discussion.