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Was class just Marx’s idea

Tester — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 12:02:09 +0000

In terms of class as a relationship to the means of production was Marx the only person to have come up with this theory or did others do similar work beforehand/at the same time?

Cheers.

Iran Bans Reform Party

Tester — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 12:02:08 +0000

TEHRAN, Iran — President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s hard-line government said Monday it has banned Iran’s largest pro-reform political party in a new strike against an opposition movement that has largely been swept from the streets since last year’s postelection turmoil.

Full Article Here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/0…_n_500298.html

Wow. This jackass is begging for the US to come do some "liberation". -_- Iranians will most likely choose revolution. This + Iran’s talk of developing nuclear weapons(I’m against all nuclear weapons, but everyone has them so it’s their right) will give America the excuse it’s been jonesing for to start ANOTHER war. Anyone still believe in democratic reform?

Mađarski fašisti marširali kroz Suboticu

Tester — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 12:02:06 +0000

http://www.021.rs/novi-sad/vesti/207…stremista.html

Antifašisti protestuju zbog ekstremista

Organizacija Antifašistička akcija Novog Sada protestovala je zato što su u Subotici na svečanosti povodom godišnjice Mađarske revolucije iz 1848. godine bili prisutni i pripadnici ekstremističkih mađarskih organizacija. U saopštenju se navodi da je u ponedeljak ispred zgrade Mađarskog kulturnog centra "Nepker" u Subotici bilo "postrojeno" petnaestak takozvanih "naci-skinheda" i pripadnika ekstremističkog pokreta ”Omladina 64 županije”, koji su autobusom, organizovano, dovedeni na svečanost.
"Jasno je odavno da država Srbija blagonaklono gleda na fašističke bande, bile one srpske ili mađarske, dok se sa druge strane hapse levičari i progresivni ljudi koji se bore za socijalnu pravdu", ocenjuje se u saopštenju.

U.S. to roll out major broadband policy

Tester — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 12:02:05 +0000

The government is going to again fund the corporations and the old infrastructure, perhaps replacing POTS and eliminating the last-mile problem, but wheres the free-access to publicly funded municipalities?

Quote:

U.S. regulators will announce a major Internet policy this week to revolutionize how Americans communicate and play, proposing a dramatic increase in broadband speeds that could let people download a high-definition film in minutes instead of hours.
Technology | Media
Dramatically increasing Internet speeds to 25 times the current average is one of the myriad goals to be unveiled in the National Broadband Plan by the the Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday.
The highly anticipated plan will make a series of recommendations to Congress and is aimed at spurring the ever-changing communications industry to bring more and faster online services to Americans as they increasingly turn to the Internet to communicate, pay monthly bills, make travel plans and be entertained by movies and music.
"This is a fairly unique event," said Paul Gallant, an analyst with Concept Capital. "The FCC really has never been asked to design a broad regulatory shift like this. Broadband is important and difficult because it threatens every established communications sector."
Some details of the plan have trickled out in the last few weeks including how to find spectrum to meet an anticipated explosion of handset devices capable of playing movies and music in addition to handling emails and voice calls.
But some carriers like AT&T Inc and Qwest Communications International Inc were irked last month when the agency’s chief, Julius Genachowski, announced that the FCC would propose in the plan a goal of 100 Mbps speeds to be in place at 100 million American homes in 10 years. The current average is less than 4 Mbps.
In a sign of tension between the FCC and carriers, Qwest called it "a dream" and AT&T reacted by saying the FCC should resist calls for "extreme forms of regulation."
Since the FCC announcement, Cisco Systems Inc announced it would introduce a router that can handle Internet traffic up to 12 times faster than rival products. Google Inc has also gotten in on the hype, saying it plans to build a super-fast Internet network to show that it can be done. The FCC has praised both announcements.
The plans could also touch off tensions with television broadcasters, who will be asked to give up spectrum to wireless carriers who desperately need it for their mobile devices, such as the iPhone and Blackberry.
The FCC plans to let them share in the profits of auctions structured to redistribute the spectrum.
"We’ve developed a plan that is a real win-win for everyone involved and we have every expectation that it will work," Genachowski said in an interview with Reuters.
"We’ve certainly heard from a number of broadcasters who told us they think this is a promising direction and are getting ready to roll up their sleeves with us," he said.
The FCC also wants to make sure that anchor institutions — government buildings, schools, libraries and healthcare facilities — get speeds of about 1 gigabit per second by 2020.
The full broadband plan is expected to be released at a Tuesday meeting among the FCC’s five members who are expected to discuss the results and recommendations of the roadmap, which was mandated by Congress. Congress may have to pass legislation to enact some portions of the plan.
FCC officials have said some of the goals are aspirational and should be viewed as a "living, breathing" document for the next decade in hopes of helping 93 million Americans without broadband get connected.
ACHIEVABLE
"It is both aspiration and achievable," Genachowski said.
The Obama administration has touted the plan as a way to create jobs and make energy use more efficient.
"It will be a call to action," said Blair Levin, who heads the FCC’s broadband task force which has collected data and comments from the industry, academics and the public as well as from three dozen public workshops.
The FCC has placed most of its attention on broadband policy which Darrell West, director of governance studies at the Brookings Institution, called "the signature issue" since Genachowski took over the helm in late June.
"It means that broadband is going to drive other types of policy decisions and it really sets the parameters for telecommunications and new applications," West said.
FCC officials have said that the plan will not take sides on technology or applications, but they want to lay the groundwork to spur innovation and job creation.
Officials have said the plan will ask Congress to fund up to $16 billion to build an emergency public safety system.
It would also tell lawmakers that a one-time injection of $9 billion could accelerate broadband reach to the 4 percent of Americans who do have access. Otherwise they could let the FCC carry out a 10-year plan to realign an $8 billion U.S. subsidy program for universal broadband access instead of universal phone access.
Experts call the plan ambitious but question if the FCC, which plans to spin off a series of rule-making proposals linked to the plan, can realistically make good on its recommendations.
"There’s so little progress on this stuff in Washington," said Rob Atkinson, who heads the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.
"I think Chairman Genachowski has a real opportunity to bring different warring interests under 50-75 percent of the plan."
(Reporting by John Poirier and Sinead Carew, editing by Matthew Lewis)

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUST…7:b31843482:z0

Communist University: Origin of Family, Property and State

Tester — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 12:02:04 +0000

Origin of Family, Property and State

There are two CU supplementary texts to back up “The State” in this Basics course. One is “The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State”, which we dealt with in January, here.

It may now be easier to read this text, and to see how the State, as the instrument of domination of all other classes by one ruling class, is a product of a historical development of property relations. The transition from prehistoric communism took place a long time ago in some parts of the world. In other parts it was a much more recent phenomenon.

The arrival, together, of property and the State of class-domination was also the occasion for the downfall of the women. This is something that Frederick Engels demonstrates with more clarity than any other writer (with the possible exception of Evelyn Reed, almost a century later, in her book “Woman’s Evolution”, which is not available in electronic form). Therefore the Engels text, difficult as it may be, is indispensable even in a basic course.

The simultaneous nature of this triple catastrophe (property, state, downfall of women) also means that the abolition or “withering away” of the State is a feminist issue.

Communism is a feminist necessity. The reversal of the downfall of the women can only be achieved by the abolition of property and the State. Likewise, the abolition of property and the State cannot be achieved without the conscious restoration of women to their proper place in human society. All three goals have to be achieved together. The three goals are actually the same goal, and the name of it is communism.

Downloads:

1109a, Origin of Family, Private Property, and State, C9, Engels

Main text:

Lenin’s Lecture on The State

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Posted By DomzaNet to Communist University —————–
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Monopoly (not the board game)

Tester — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 12:02:04 +0000

Most discussions about the plausibility of market anarchism or anarcho-capitalism usually taper off into a debate over whether or not vast concentrations of market power such as monopolies, oligopolies, cartels, etc. could possibly arise without the assistance of government intervention. So I decided to create a thread devoted entirely to this issue alone.

What free marketeers generally believe with regards to this subject can be summed up by this Rothbard quote:

"A monopoly price and a monopoly by any usable definition arise only through the coercive grant of exclusive privilege by the government."

Now, surely it’s true that government can stifle competition through excessive tariffs, subsidies, intellectual property related legislation, and of course outright government grants of monopoly power. However, isn’t it a bit presumptuous to arrive at the conclusion that government alone is responsible for all forms of monopoly without any consideration of possible market barriers to entry? How about high fixed costs, economies of scale, the existence of imperfect competition in certain markets, etc.? Couldn’t these all possibly contribute to the formation of monopoly and its variations even in the absence of state intervention?

So, bearing that in mind, what do you all think?

Money and Barter

Tester — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 12:02:03 +0000

I am branching out of my area of expertise, as I am a math teacher, but let me first pose a question. Is money in itself viewed as a vice or is it that money presupposes property and property is the vice? I am aware that I am probably lumping various revleft strands of thought with this question.
I ask this because, in my spare time, I have been working on a model of global barter. Whereas, individuals would still barter as if local, but have access to the globe.

The "charity" argument

Tester — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 12:02:01 +0000

This is an argument I’ve been hearing quite a bit lately. I suspect because Glenn Beck’s been pushing it. It goes something like this:
-People giving to charities is good.
-When government taxes people to help others, it’s more inefficient than charities and just bad.
-Therefore socialism is evil.

There’s quite a few holes in this argument. Number one being government intervention and welfare isn’t socialism. Next would be the proof that charity shows why we need socialism, because the current system is so inefficient in meeting people’s needs that there needs to be patches (either charities or state intervention) to patch up its weak points. Why donate when you can fight for a system that solves the problems that require donation before they start? Next would be a Marxist argument, that over time capitalists will be competing so heavily with each other that they won’t have the money to donate to charities without being forced out of the market.

So what do you think? Do you have any of your own arguments against it?

The second argument was shamelessly stolen from Daniel DeLeon from something that he wrote 110 years ago: http://marxists.org/archive/deleon/w…900/001225.htm

Quote:

Originally Posted by Daniel DeLeon

If so many mouths must be fed at the expense of others, and if thousands, or hundreds of thousands, will get but the meager dinner to which they are accustomed from day to day, then prosperity is distributed so unevenly that that such a large proportion of the people are cut out of it, that it is better to abolish the whole thing and substitute a little justice…

There was a time here when it would have been an insult to a man to offer him his Christmas dinner. He was capable of providing all that he needed. He is no longer. He must depend on what charity doles out to him. He is made a suppliant for Christmas cheer. He is no longer capable of providing for himself, and must depend on what is given him…

There is not a wage worker in the world who may not truthfully say that he may not be a candidate for a public dinner at the next Christmas. The list is growing proportionately larger. The number to be fed increases. The victims of capitalism are so plentiful that a helping hand cannot be held out to all, but some are assisted so that the wheel may not grind too finely. Charity is an insult. Charity is a degradation. But charity is also a weapon in the hands of the capitalist, and it is one that he uses with dire effect.

Such a “merry” Christmas cannot come unless there is some great and terrible wrong. Such a state of affairs works the ruin of all who take part in it. Its increase betokens disaster. Its continuance breeds crime.

A merry Christmas should be a Christmas that finds all men capable of producing their own merriment, instead of having it ladled out to them, to a chorus of self-praise and gratulation on the part of the givers.

What is economics?

Tester — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 12:02:00 +0000

What is economics from a leftist and rightist perspective. I’ve always viewed economics as a disicpline that constructs models for how people trade in the real world or that uses mathematics to analyze earnings etc. For example, revenue and cost is important in economics. Revenue = company’s income from selling units; cost = amount required to manufacture units. The break even point is when Cost = revenue. This is important so that companies can know how much they have to sell. This example also really is more basic common sense than economics (economics equations = far more difficult and involve calculus).

I also view economics as versatile, like arithmetic. You could use it to analyze the government as well as analyze business. There is a point at which you ask yourself whether economics is really just mathematics and statistics being used to analyze the economy.

It makes sense that rightists like this view as they can show GDP or whatever is increasing and claim capitalism is the cause it, but leftists also use it show that capitalism is failing in other areas.

That’s basically all it is. Our Agorist and Austrians here seem to abscribe to economics weird and odd mysticism that has nothing to do with mathematics or statistics. I’ve never heard of leftists sharing this view. Why should anybody accept this view?

Is Maoism liberal? [Not my opinion]

Tester — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 12:01:59 +0000

Quote:

Originally Posted by dada

i always had this pet theory about maoism. it seems to me that a lot of the stalinist derivatives, including maoism is just really violent liberalism on steroids. i mean, you have all these people speaking about the masses, democracy, stageist new democracy, etc that it is basically just a bunch of those godawful metaphysics that bordiga railed against so relentlesly in the early 20th century. i think this is an important point because the maoists love to talk about how they are not really liberals because they are violent gangsters but in reality the foundations of their thought is based on the same enlightment deadspeak as the 18th century enlightened petit bourgeoisie. namely, some really fuzzy references on democracy, opression, the masses, etc.

it is also important to point out how there is a tendency in maoism to treat the sheer will of a few militants as the drive behind a supposed, future societal change. so you have all these philosophy and sociology college dropouts forming armed gangs, which in turns lets to an isolation and warrior mentality that little by little gangsterizes them, to the point that they end up operating as a verage criminal gangs. the worst example is probably sendero luminoso.

maoism is also integrated to the discourse of international capital. the maoists always try to form policies for states and their relation to each other. communist speak about the destruction of the capitalist state and maoists always want to tell the state what to do - whether to get into international treaties, call for national liberation, etc

Since this was originally discussed in the Left-Com forum, I wanted to bring this up for Learning discussion.

I don’t think Maoism is "violent liberalism on steroids" at all, unless one equates liberalism with Jacobin ideology.