Maryland abolishes death penalty.

[FireIceTalon]

This is probably unfortunate since it appears that it would be magical, if only the everyday citizen could comprehend how we'd all get to do whatever we wanted without concern since all of our needs would be taken care of. It's bewildering that we are just so darned stupid that we cannot figure this out.

It's not bewildering at all that people haven't figured it out. Considering the bourgeois shoves pro-capitalist ideology down our throats at every turn.

Take my children for example; I live in a small commune. Its me, my wife, and my two boys. They are very eager and willing to take advantage of all the upsides, but drag their feet, procrastinate, and attempt to get out of doing all the hard things. The result is that the responsible people (my wife and I) end up doing most of the work in our kibbutz, while the irresponsible ones (my two boys) get most of the benefits. Why does this not reflect the nature of ALL society? You describe Socialism as having cured this, but you fail to explain how? Nobody has to shovel the coal, and we all get to be ballet dancers, and rock stars? C'mon, its magic. Admit it.

This isn't socialism - this sounds like forced child labor to me. Of course you and your wife do the harder jobs, as YOU SHOULD. What are you gonna do, put your kids in a coal mine and tell them to start shovelin' or else? Cause thats what it sure sounds like to me.

The free rider problem may well exist in a socialist organization of society, but it would be no worse than it is now, and I would argue that it would be drastically reduced. Right now, there is limited management in every place of business, so it is pretty difficult if not impossible to tell who is actually slacking or who is just slower or less abled to accomplish a task. The whole point that people can be fired for slacking or otherwise though is the very essence of why capitalism is a shitty system - people need to work to some degree to survive (yes, even in a socialist society) to produce the things they need to survive, and to fire them is to take away that very livelihood....its most dehumanizing for sure. All because we have a few nitwits that own private property and get to make all the decisions. Why should we have to model our lives around the demands of capitalism and our bosses? The answer is that we shouldn't have to, but as long as this system exists, we are coerced into doing so. Besides, one of the purposes of socialism is so that we DONT have to work as hard. Right now we have work everyday doing the same old menial jobs for paltry wages. We work so we can pay rent and squeek by, and if were lucky, or maybe get ahead if we have that opportunity (much less likely). We aren't motivated to make good widgets or a lot of widgets because we don't then get any of the benifits of creating the better widgets, we just get paid the same wage and we don't get to decide if these are useful or desireable widgets or if we are producing them in the best and most efficient way.

What motivates comrade Petr to work hard in the socialist world? Does he get more? If he gets more does this not create inequity, and there we go descending into classes again? How do you eliminate the free rider problem? Forced labor? Under capitalism, if you and I work at the same place, and I outperform you, I get promoted and you get fired. Now, I find this competition for jobs also distasteful, but there is no simple explanation of how to match the worker to the work that needs to be done. Only by comparing one worker against another can you determine which has more value and whether their contribution is worth the money you pay for it. In that way, we are living cogs in the machinery of production.

You are making people out to be lazy and that we dont like to do things. This is a pretty warped perception. In hunter/gatherer societies, did anyone have to motivate us that we had to go out and get food, find better shelter, learn to make better tools, and so on? No, they didn't. We figured it out on our own. Contrary to what you WANT to believe, people are relatively intelligent and know how to adapt to a wide variety of environments. Humanity needs bosses and capitalists about as much as we need cancer. The whole notion we need some boss telling us what to do, how much to do it, and when to it is nothing more than bourgeois great-man theories rhetoric. There was an old joke some Anarchist told me, "how many capitalists does it take to screw in a light bulb?" Answer: none, because we don't need capitalists to do anything that can be done. Not a funny joke really, but a very true one nonetheless. Maybe YOU think you need someone telling you what your strongest abilities are, what YOU are good at, what you should produce, how to produce it, and when to produce it. I sure as hell do not.

If people find a product or service useful and desirable, that in itself is motivation right there to work. It just becomes a question on how best to democratically organize the completion of the required tasks, and there are many possibilities to do this. For example, at a diner in your community, maybe everyone would decide that to be able to eat at that diner anytime you like, you have to put in a certain amount of labor time working there. We will after all have to labor to some extent to survive, and this could be one way that it can be done democratically, through compromise. Each community can decide based on what suits their particular needs best. Whatever the case may be, we certainly don't need capitalists/bosses to dictate that for us.

One of my boys gets to clean the windows, and the other has to change our the litter box. I would say under Capitalism it is in fact more fair in that I exchange labor for money, and then money for goods. What is my labor worth? Whatever someone is willing to pay for it. What are goods worth? Whatever someone is willing to pay for them. This is the price mechanism, which is an invaluable economic tool that balances supply and demand, both for labor, and goods.

This logic is nearing insanity. So lets pretend for a moment, im the boss, you are the worker. You pick fruit for 12 hours a day in the hot blazing sun, and I am willing to pay you $1 per hour. Therefore, your labor is worth a dollar an hour. Do you not see the absurdity in this, and in the whole rationality (or irrationality I should say) of the capitalist system? The whole concept of supply and demand is folly, because the purpose of capitalism is to maximize profits. To do this, you have CREATE demand to get people to buy shit they otherwise wouldn't, outside of what they need to survive. This of course, results in an over abundance of goods, which in turn creates the so-called 'poverty in the midst of plenty' since people do not have the purchasing power to obtain many of these goods or services. Thus the capitalists begin to experience a falling rate of profit after awhile and that is when unemployment increases and wages go down, exploitation goes up. I think you not only do not understand socialism, you don't get capitalism either.

And, as for class struggle... It has lost its meaning in a post industrial age. My children are dirt poor, and so they are in the destitute dependency class. When they are 18 they will still be poor, and will hopefully be in college. By the time they are in their 20's or 30's they may be middle class, or upper middle class. After that, depending on the choices and opportunities they get they could possible become upper class. Meanwhile, I will get old, and won't be able to work anymore, so I will get poorer as I burn through any remaining savings after putting them through school. In my life, I've probably already peaked, but who knows, there may be some opportunity out there for me yet too. The point is that you've failed to show or account for the massive amount of mobility. Yes, there is a 1%, and a 10%, but the population of who is in it changes over time. We don't have the post-agrarian landed gentry anymore. Whatever happened to Sean Quinn?

That's because the cultural hegemony of capitalism has done an outstanding job at denying that class struggle somehow doesn't exist anymore (it does, or the ruling class wouldnt require a state to protect itself), and I would even go farther to say that we don't like to talk about class anymore because it goes against the whole idea of the Horatio Alger myth, that we can go from rags to riches and to talk about class at all is not on the agenda of capitalist interests. Massive mobility? LMAO...where is this massive mobility you speak of? How can I account for that which does not exist? And even if there IS some mobility, this doesnt change the fact that capitalism is an inherently exploitative system, and we shouldn't have worry about mobility in the first place.

Capitalists do diddly squat. Mmmhmmm. Are you sure? There are some silver spoon trust fund brats I'd like to kick in the teeth, but by and large most billionaires actually did something substantial to earn it. There are numerous examples; Bill Gates, Oprah, Roman Abramovich, Steve Jobs, Li Ka-shing, Sheldon Adelson, etc. etc. etc. No. No. No, you say. They were just lucky. Really? I've got my complaints about the system, but not mobility and entrenchment.

Indeed, it takes a very substantial amount of labor exploitation of MANY, MANY workers, to make one man very, very rich. The fact Apple's products are made in factories of oppressed Chinese workers that are paid a dollar a day really shows Steve Jobs worked his ass off , or that the children of Sam Walton who now own more wealth than 50% of the US population combined without ever having to lift a finger to do it. And we call people like these our heros and leaders. Yuck. As far as im concerned, they are elitist scum, and the world would be a much better place without them and their bourgeois protectors in DC.

Right, because you entirely missed the fact that Marxism has to do just what you say religion does. That it, "convince their followers that their particular doctrine is the right way of life" Because people are just flocking to the stupendous Marxist system... Right? And... While you might find value in having the world described scientifically, that doesn't mean those that describe it unscientifically do not similarly find the same value. For most people it matters very little if we described gravity scientifically as a force of attraction, or mystically that the Earth just loves us and refuses to let us go. Either way, we're all just stuck here.

Yea, because the bourgeois goes to extremely great lengths for good reason, to demonize, misrepresent, and in general, slander Marxism because it presents a multiplicity of real problems with the capitalist system. The easiest thing to do is sweep anything under the rug that is contrary or inconvenient to the interests of the ruling class, which Marxism is. And its pretty easy to do, since they control the schools and dictate what agenda is up for discussion in the media, etc. What do you expect us Marxists to do? Just go along with everything capitalists say about Marxism and socialism, and say "yea, uh huh, the capitalists are right and we are wrong".....come on man, use your common sense here. I know you have some, even if some of your thoughts about things are a bit wacky to me.

I say Marxism has no frame work, and you claim "stupendous and logical system of analysis for understanding ". Right. So it has no framework by which to run a society. Just a way of analysing things which pretty much always results in the answer being "Capitalism Sucks!" Why doesn't this work? We are trapped in our fetishes! We must cleanse ourselves of our Capitalist thoughts. Say three hail Engels and four comrade Marxs... Then, essentially you cave to "the future is too hard to predict" What? What will we eat tomorrow? Whatever we planted last month. Not really hard. Not really.

Marxism indeed doesn't have a framwork, because it IS a framework, and it is that framework that serves as a guide for those fighting for socialism. You want it to predict EXACTLY how socialism will look, and that is impossible because it depends entirely on the material conditions of the time, should socialism become a reality. Artisans (who ultimately became todays capitalist class) during the feudal era could not predict exactly how capitalism would work, just socialists cannot predict exactly how socialism will look. We each have our own set of values respectively and society will be setup to reflect those values as they have been in prior epochs of history. Your notion is almost as absurd as asking a biologist to predict the evolution of a particular species of insect. Predicting the future of history depends on way to many interacting factors, much in the same way predicting the course of evolution does. Modes of analysis are used to understand current conditions to show which futures are possible and not possible. We'll leave it up to religious fundamentalists to make bold predictions like The Rapture being inevitable outcomes of our social existence, or capitalists who predict this system is the be all end all despite its countless contradictions, inefficiencies, and the fact it creates the very seeds of its own destruction (as all class based systems before it did). At the end of the day, Marxism is perfectly honest (and brutally so) in its analysis and its intentions. Capitalism on the other hand, is a complete sham, that so desperately relies mystification, fancy slogans, propaganda, manipulation, and religious-like overtones (the "invisible hand") because it is constantly fighting for its very survival.

I say, "people like to own stuff" and you ignore that and point out the inequity. But, let me just hop on your straw man for a minute. Show me where any non-capitalist system has generated wealth for the workers.

Impossible, since capitalism has not yet been destroyed. People liking to own stuff or not is irrelevant to the objective laws of motion that govern capitalism as an economic system. If indeed people do like to own stuff, then capitalism has done a piss poor job at meeting that demand, and it continues to do a piss poor job. And naturally so, because it is only efficient at creating profits. In terms of actual use, its extremely inefficient, wasteful, misuses peoples abilities and potential, and drives down wages by making labor more simple and demeaning. These are cold hard facts that you have yet to acknowledge, regardless of whether people like to own stuff or not.

I say, "coercion is bad", and you ignore that every attempt at communism so far has resulted in repression and coercion. Is coercion bad? I'd say yes. Even in the system we are in now.

And that is because the international bourgeois has done a wonderful job at destroying every opportunity for an international proletarian movement to be realized, then they turn around and say "see communism doesnt work!!". Its like beating a child with a stick than saying "see, he/she is nothing but a crybaby!!"

At least you recognize that capitalism is indeed coercive and oppressive, thats about the most reasonable thing you said in your entire post.

I say "illiterate people don't read or understand Marx". You blame that on all the capitalist schools... wait. They're government run. "The U.S. average per student expenditure for public elementary and secondary schools in 2011–12 fall enrollment

Hmmm, I think we were referring to two different things here - you with enrollment/access to education, and me with the context of the curriculum. There are certainly problems with both though. The fact they are government run at the primary level doesn't really change anything however.

The state is an organ of class oppression, designed by its very nature to legitimize and keep capitalist social relations intact. As I said a couple posts ago it doesn't matter if industries are owned by private individuals or by the state - they are capitalist either way, and therefore the institutions (schools included) within a capitalist society naturally promote bourgeois ideology and values.

And, where oh, where did Marx ever explain how his workers paradise would resolve the exploitation of nature?

And thus why there were many Marxists after Marx himself, and in fact Marxism as a system was not developed until after he died. There were many things Marx didnt touch on, such as cultural hegemony within capitalist society, and that is why many Marxists after him built upon his theories, to make the analysis more concise and comprehensive....nevertheless, it was he (and Engels deserves equal credit here too) who laid the foundation for Marxism as a system to become as prominent as it has. If you are so interested in the socialist view of the environment, why don't you go over to revleft.com and read some of the discussions on that topic?

Anyways, I doubt either of us are going to budge from our respective positions regardless of how this discussion turns out: You very clearly like capitalism and I am long disillusioned with it. I suppose I'll end it here and let you have the last word. Have fun in your capitalist dystopia.