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Engels: The Communist as Hedonist

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Re: Engels: The Communist as Hedonist

#11

Post by weregiraffe »

CryptoPunk wrote: post #5
eranimo wrote: post #3

About as biased as a source you can find, considering this is from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute [1], a right-wing pressure group designed to spread propaganda in college campuses. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intercollegiate_Studies_Instit...

>>right-wing pressure group That's an odd way to describe human rights advocacy. Almost as disingenuous as describing a person who freely accepts a wage in exchange for providing a service as a "wage slave", or like Engels, decries private property while amassing a fortune in it.

It's odd to describe a person who freely accepts a lifetime of servitude in exchange for his live as a slave. They could have chosen death instead, after all.

/s

Re: Engels: The Communist as Hedonist

#12

Post by fvdessen »

aaron-santos wrote: post #2

What a weird piece. The heart of the argument seems to be that if one is to be a Marxist that one must be 1) poor, and 2) chaste and to be otherwise is hypocritical. Just state the point and be done with it.

How is it not hypocritical to argue for equality and wealth redistribution and at the same time hoard wealth for yourself ?

Re: Engels: The Communist as Hedonist

#13

Post by CryptoPunk »

weregiraffe wrote: post #11
CryptoPunk wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>right-wing pressure group That's an odd way to describe human rights advocacy. Almost as disingenuous as describing a person who freely accepts a wage in exchange for providing a service as a "wage slave", or like Engels, decries private property while amassing a fortune in it.

It's odd to describe a person who freely accepts a lifetime of servitude in exchange for his live as a slave. They could have chosen death instead, after all. /s

Providing a service is not "servitude" in the context of 'slavery'.

As for working as an alternative to starving, as Frédéric Bastiat wrote 170 years ago:

"Man recoils from trouble, from suffering; and yet he is condemned by nature to the suffering of privation, if he does not take the trouble to work. He has to choose, then, between these two evils. What means can he adopt to avoid both? There remains now, and there will remain, only one way, which is, to enjoy the labor of others. Such a course of conduct prevents the trouble and the satisfaction from preserving their natural proportion, and causes all the trouble to become the lot of one set of persons, and all the satisfaction that of another. This is the origin of slavery and of plunder, whatever its form may be - whether that of wars, imposition, violence, restrictions, frauds, etc. - monstrous abuses, but consistent with the thought which has given them birth. Oppressors should be detested and resisted - they can hardly be called absurd."

Re: Engels: The Communist as Hedonist

#15

Post by aaron-santos »

fvdessen wrote: post #12
aaron-santos wrote: post #2

What a weird piece. The heart of the argument seems to be that if one is to be a Marxist that one must be 1) poor, and 2) chaste and to be otherwise is hypocritical. Just state the point and be done with it.

How is it not hypocritical to argue for equality and wealth redistribution and at the same time hoard wealth for yourself ?

You're correct for pointing that out. What is hidden in the article and also my comment is that this is an oblique tu quoque.

Re: Engels: The Communist as Hedonist

#16

Post by jevgeni »

girarda wrote: post #14
artificialLimbs wrote: post #6

I enjoy being able to criticize my government. Please move to China if you love communism. Thank you.

I think you're confusing communism with state capitalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_capitalism

State capitalism is the stable state communism collapses to with enough scale.

Re: Engels: The Communist as Hedonist

#18

Post by noodles_nomore »

> "It is unpractical, and it goes against human nature. That is why it is worth carrying out."

This citation of Oscar Wilde made me curious. It's from his essay The Soul of Man under Communism[1], which turns out to be a really good counterview to the article itself.

[1] https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/wilde-oscar/soul-...

Re: Engels: The Communist as Hedonist

#20

Post by jevgeni »

jevgeni wrote: post #16
girarda wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're confusing communism with state capitalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_capitalism

State capitalism is the stable state communism collapses to with enough scale.

Communists are people who would downvote, when they have nothing to say.
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