Live data from Hacker News

Engels: The Communist as Hedonist

isi.org

101–110 of 112 posts

Re: Engels: The Communist as Hedonist

#101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am choosing capitalism because it doesn't end with shooting pregnant women and children in empty fields.

So if I can prove capitalism led to shooting some pregnant women and children in empty fields, what position do you plan to switch to?

Hopefully whatever alternative proposed wherein that doesn't happen.

Re: Engels: The Communist as Hedonist

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> under communism everything is about status and nothing is about value that is not quite correct: in socialist countries the elite had their own closed shops, a much higher salary and access to lots of material goods that mere workers just didn't have. These goodies were kept from the public eye, but most people knew about their existence, it was somewhat of an 'open secret'.

I am not sure this contradicts what I said. Those goodies were provided by assigned status.

i just don't know if the actors were in for the status, or for the perks that went with it. Hard to tell what is primary and what is secondary.

Re: Engels: The Communist as Hedonist

#103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if I can prove capitalism led to shooting some pregnant women and children in empty fields, what position do you plan to switch to?

Hopefully whatever alternative proposed wherein that doesn't happen.

There have been countless alternatives proposed. If you're judging this based on consequences rather than ideology the decision to pick capitalism makes no sense. Something untested is the obvious choice

Re: Engels: The Communist as Hedonist

#104
post #90

Mind experiment: In the last paragraph of dang's top post replace "communism" witch "nazism" and "Engels" and "Marx" with "Hitler" and "Mussolini". How would you feel about it? There are probably millions of people in the USA who barely escaped with their lives from vile communist regimes and yet the idea of communism is still entertained as some misunderstood noble thing. Until there will be "Nuremberg trials" equiv…

On the other hand, there are 40+ million U.S. citizens, of African origin, each with at least one ancestor at the bottom of the Atlantic due to the capitalist trans-Atlantic slave trade. Enslaved for four centuries, building capitalist America literally with their bodies as some of the first U.S. millionaires earned their millions from intercontinental human trafficking. There are roughly 5 million Indigenous U.S. ci…

What do you mean by: on the other hand? Are you saying that by not supporting communism one supports imperialism, slave trade and wars? And every time I write communism is bad, do I also have to put a disclaimer that a bunch of other ideologies are also bad? All the things you have enumerated have nothing to do with capitalism. Norway (or almost any other capitalistic country) is capitalistic and as far as I know it hasn't invaded or enslaved anyone for instance. You should also remember that the capitalistic north has defeated the feudalistic south (slave owners) in the civil war.

Re: Engels: The Communist as Hedonist

#105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which of your examples do you think is private property?

Personal property is private property. The term "personal property" is mostly used by Marxists.

That is not correct, the term is used by all kinds of socialists. You may not care about the difference in general, but denying it is not helpful when discussing socialism. You're trying to refute the claim that private property (in the socialist sense) is problematic by defending private property (in the liberal sense), which doesn't make sense because these are two different concepts.

Re: Engels: The Communist as Hedonist

#106
post #60
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not the same as living in excess while preaching solidarity.

Last time I checked communism was not a charity or religion.

Yep, it's a death cult. Murdered around 200 million people in the 20th century.

Re: Engels: The Communist as Hedonist

#107
post #84

When Tom Morello (RATM & Audioslave guitarist) is interviewed the tension between rich rockstar and firebrand anarchist usually provokes some sort of political exchange that ends in " if you're such a communist, why do you X? " To which, he normally responds " I live in capitalist... when the revolution comes..., I'll take part in however music works then. " I've seen him have this dialogue several times. My guess is…

You can look at it as hypocrisy but in the end I have found this concept not so useful. It's more interesting to look at it as contradictions, complexity, and so on. Hypocrisy is an interesting concept because of the self-contradiction in it. It's a word that is only ever applied to others, yet there is not one of us who isn't a hypocrite. Therefore the word is an instance of itself. The day I realized this, indignat…

I am a little confused by what you mean. Here are two definitions that I looked up.

[0] https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/hypocrisy (Lexico powered by Oxford)

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hypocrisy

If you mean to say there are no people that consider themselves to be hypocrites, then I would have to disagree: there are plenty of people who try, fail, and continue to keep trying to not be hypocritical. However, if you mean to say that hypocrisy is something that we almost always hear about when someone applies it to another, then I understand what you are trying to say.

I think I also understand what you mean by choosing to look at things using the lens / identifying a person’s action as a contradiction as opposed to hypocritical in that the former is an observation and the latter is an observation and a judgment/conclusion that may or may not have the full context/complexity taken into account.

Re: Engels: The Communist as Hedonist

#108
post #90

Mind experiment: In the last paragraph of dang's top post replace "communism" witch "nazism" and "Engels" and "Marx" with "Hitler" and "Mussolini". How would you feel about it? There are probably millions of people in the USA who barely escaped with their lives from vile communist regimes and yet the idea of communism is still entertained as some misunderstood noble thing. Until there will be "Nuremberg trials" equiv…

> Mind experiment: In the last paragraph of dang's top post replace "communism" witch "nazism" and "Engels" and "Marx" with "Hitler" and "Mussolini". How would you feel about it?

Similarly to how I react to replacing "communism" with "[economic] liberalism" and "Marx" with "Rand" and "Engels" with "the Chicago boys". Unsurprisingly, changing the words in a text changes its meaning.

> There are probably millions of people in the USA who barely escaped with their lives from vile communist regimes and yet the idea of communism is still entertained as some misunderstood noble thing. Until there will be "Nuremberg trials" equivalent for communism such ideas will unfortunately continue to propagate.

What do you think are the ideas of communism and of Marx and Engels in general?

Re: Engels: The Communist as Hedonist

#109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure this contradicts what I said. Those goodies were provided by assigned status.

i just don't know if the actors were in for the status, or for the perks that went with it. Hard to tell what is primary and what is secondary.

Why is it hard to tell? If you only knew one path was available to fulfill your ambitions wouldn’t you take it?

Re: Engels: The Communist as Hedonist

#110
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can look at it as hypocrisy but in the end I have found this concept not so useful. It's more interesting to look at it as contradictions, complexity, and so on. Hypocrisy is an interesting concept because of the self-contradiction in it. It's a word that is only ever applied to others, yet there is not one of us who isn't a hypocrite. Therefore the word is an instance of itself. The day I realized this, indignat…

I am a little confused by what you mean. Here are two definitions that I looked up. [0] https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/hypocrisy (Lexico powered by Oxford) [1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hypocrisy If you mean to say there are no people that consider themselves to be hypocrites, then I would have to disagree: there are plenty of people who try, fail, and continue to keep trying to not be hypocrit…

I mean that there are contradictions in all of us between our beliefs/concepts/judgments on the one hand, and the reality of how we live/behave/act, and treat others, on the other hand. In that sense we are all hypocrites—but the word 'hypocrite' is mainly used to condemn such contradictions in others. You're right that I shouldn't have said "only ever"—other usages exist—but they're secondary.

Another way of making this point about self-contradiction is to say that anger at others for being hypocritical is itself hypocritical.

Post reply on HN