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Plato vs Jesus vs Marx

Days

Commentator
All three men left us models of distribution. Jesus was more about spiritual transformation, but he still spoke enough about society and attitudes to constitute a model of distribution. Marx worked a top down model and he sought to balance the wealth as well as distribution.

Plato worked with the institutions that were already in place... democracy. This was not a democracy of all the people, it was a democracy of the ruling class. Plato sought to balance the earnings between the ruling class and the laboring class. A Platonic corporation would limit the CEO earnings to 6x the average wage of those laboring for the same corporation. Imagine the different world that would set up.

Marx wanted to eliminate the ruling class altogether. His corporations would have no CEO or would pay the CEO the same as the laborers. I'm not sure how anyone would become a CEO in that type of model. Everyone who has tried to achieve the Marx model in the real world can not overcome the leaderless factor in his model. Consequently, so-called communist nations end up being the most imbalanced models of distribution and wealth on the planet. Right now, the nation with the most billionaires is China, and they are all members of the Communist Party and ruling class in China.

Jesus is supposed to return and set up a kingdom where the ruling class is composed of the saints raised from the dead, so they have no need for wealth. Jesus model achieves the objectives of the Marx model and he gets there by exterminating the prevailing ruling class; which, would include those billionaires ruling over China as well as the billionaires ruling over America. Any billionaire who says he is a communist or a Christian is pulling your leg, billionaires are capitalists, cunning, and ruthless, and have no desire to be balanced with those laboring for them.

Social constructs are all about the money. Native Americans have the correct perspective on this short life; we come from the land, we return to the land, the land owns us, no one owns the land. Men are free, no man can own another man. But governments seek to restrict freedom, in order to maintain a cohesive society. Everyone wants a safe and happy existence but man is not safe or happy when distribution models allow for the 1% at the top to own everything and make slaves of the labor force.

When change only comes through force ... revolution and war ... the problem is leadership. The kind of people that foment revolution are not the kind of people who care about fair distribution models. So the leaders of revolts are more apt to set up the same problem they revolted against - only this time with them in power - than they ever come close to fixing the social ills they fought against. Meet the new boss - worse than the old boss.

We teach our best and brightest to become monsters ... go for the money. And the ones that "succeed" are the ones that take the most from the pie for themselves. Capitalism keeps tilting toward tyranny; the imbalance of wealth only becomes more and more tilted in favor of the tyrants until the inevitable revolution. And the revolution yields the same problem all over again. Civilization - in the past 6000 years - has not figured out a workable model of distribution, let alone how to get there.

Christians keep thinking that Christ will return and fix it all. But the scriptures say that we are the anointing, we are the appearing, we are the presence, the parousia of Christ, that Christ is returning in us. Maybe it is time we started thinking about the problem as if we were capable of solving it?
 
If you have Netflix, look up the BBC series genius's of the modern world, genius of the ancient world. There are two different shows, one is modern and it covers Marx, Nieztche and Freud. The other one is ancient and covers Socrates, Confucius and Buddha. The narrator is wonderful, lots of location shots with experts.
 

Days

Commentator
If you have Netflix, look up the BBC series genius's of the modern world, genius of the ancient world. There are two different shows, one is modern and it covers Marx, Nieztche and Freud. The other one is ancient and covers Socrates, Confucius and Buddha. The narrator is wonderful, lots of location shots with experts.
tks Woolley!

don't have NetFlix, but I will search YouTube for it.

 
What you will find is that all of them were far better people then modern people care to admit. My favorite was Buddha. What an incredible person and life. But watch them, I know you will enjoy the series and as an added bonus, the narrator starts to grow on you and before long, she becomes a goddess.
 
All three men left us models of distribution. Jesus was more about spiritual transformation, but he still spoke enough about society and attitudes to constitute a model of distribution. Marx worked a top down model and he sought to balance the wealth as well as distribution.

Plato worked with the institutions that were already in place... democracy. This was not a democracy of all the people, it was a democracy of the ruling class. Plato sought to balance the earnings between the ruling class and the laboring class. A Platonic corporation would limit the CEO earnings to 6x the average wage of those laboring for the same corporation. Imagine the different world that would set up.

Marx wanted to eliminate the ruling class altogether. His corporations would have no CEO or would pay the CEO the same as the laborers. I'm not sure how anyone would become a CEO in that type of model. Everyone who has tried to achieve the Marx model in the real world can not overcome the leaderless factor in his model. Consequently, so-called communist nations end up being the most imbalanced models of distribution and wealth on the planet. Right now, the nation with the most billionaires is China, and they are all members of the Communist Party and ruling class in China.

Jesus is supposed to return and set up a kingdom where the ruling class is composed of the saints raised from the dead, so they have no need for wealth. Jesus model achieves the objectives of the Marx model and he gets there by exterminating the prevailing ruling class; which, would include those billionaires ruling over China as well as the billionaires ruling over America. Any billionaire who says he is a communist or a Christian is pulling your leg, billionaires are capitalists, cunning, and ruthless, and have no desire to be balanced with those laboring for them.

Social constructs are all about the money. Native Americans have the correct perspective on this short life; we come from the land, we return to the land, the land owns us, no one owns the land. Men are free, no man can own another man. But governments seek to restrict freedom, in order to maintain a cohesive society. Everyone wants a safe and happy existence but man is not safe or happy when distribution models allow for the 1% at the top to own everything and make slaves of the labor force.

When change only comes through force ... revolution and war ... the problem is leadership. The kind of people that foment revolution are not the kind of people who care about fair distribution models. So the leaders of revolts are more apt to set up the same problem they revolted against - only this time with them in power - than they ever come close to fixing the social ills they fought against. Meet the new boss - worse than the old boss.

We teach our best and brightest to become monsters ... go for the money. And the ones that "succeed" are the ones that take the most from the pie for themselves. Capitalism keeps tilting toward tyranny; the imbalance of wealth only becomes more and more tilted in favor of the tyrants until the inevitable revolution. And the revolution yields the same problem all over again. Civilization - in the past 6000 years - has not figured out a workable model of distribution, let alone how to get there.

Christians keep thinking that Christ will return and fix it all. But the scriptures say that we are the anointing, we are the appearing, we are the presence, the parousia of Christ, that Christ is returning in us. Maybe it is time we started thinking about the problem as if we were capable of solving it?
Philosophy vs Dogma vs Talmudism/satanism.
 
What you will find is that all of them were far better people then modern people care to admit. My favorite was Buddha. What an incredible person and life. But watch them, I know you will enjoy the series and as an added bonus, the narrator starts to grow on you and before long, she becomes a goddess.
He was not a man - he was a simplified version of a man-god = that we should find the Buddha in ourselves = ''There have been many Buddhas''.
 
He was not a man - he was a simplified version of a man-god = that we should find the Buddha in ourselves = ''There have been many Buddhas''.
He was indeed a man and I believe that he never said he was anything but a man. Nevertheless, his story and lifelong attempt to be as good a person as possible without the intervention of supernatural beings is inspiring. Maybe its time to re-read Siddhartha.
 

Days

Commentator
The Baha'i say Jesus was the 10th incarnation of Vishnu. The New Testament says Jesus was the son of God.

same thing
So what the heck is happening there?

Scripture - from all religions - paints a picture of an anointing of the Godhead. So, Vishnu is resting upon humans, hence, we get a Buddha; a God-man.

well, hells bells, that happens way more often than is recognized, according to St Paul, every Christian has that anointing. Paul said we get a measure of it... my contention is that the "measure" is measuring to what degree it is manifested in our lives, not that it is possible to measure the anointing itself. You could measure the anointing oil in the old testament, but you can't contain God himself in a measure, God is immeasurable. Same holds for the shekina glory fading from the face of Moses after he left the tent of meeting... it wasn't God that was fading, it was the manifestation in Moses face. God hangs around, it is our thoughts that trail off into worldly matters.
 

Days

Commentator
He was indeed a man and I believe that he never said he was anything but a man. Nevertheless, his story and lifelong attempt to be as good a person as possible without the intervention of supernatural beings is inspiring. Maybe its time to re-read Siddhartha.
He was every bit a man, and she knows that... she is communicating a spiritual truth, as it were, she is philosophizing. capice? I've been posting with her for over 15 years, so I think I understand what she meant, but maybe I'm wrong....
 
He was indeed a man and I believe that he never said he was anything but a man. Nevertheless, his story and lifelong attempt to be as good a person as possible without the intervention of supernatural beings is inspiring. Maybe its time to re-read Siddhartha.
None of 'them' were men. They were man-gods and the ultimate goal was for us to find the man-god in ourselves. Sure for those outside the Temple the story was a literal one but once inside it became conceptual - philosophical tools.
 
He was every bit a man, and she knows that... she is communicating a spiritual truth, as it were, she is philosophizing. capice? I've been posting with her for over 15 years, so I think I understand what she meant, but maybe I'm wrong....
The point was that the series is really good and worth watching. I learned quite a bit from each episode. The interesting thing about the three ancients was that they all lived at about the same time and roughly came up with very similar thoughts and faced very similar opposition. The Marx episode is very interesting as well, the poor guy got co-opted by Lenin and Stalin, he was not the monster we all think he was.
 

Days

Commentator
The point was that the series is really good and worth watching. I learned quite a bit from each episode. The interesting thing about the three ancients was that they all lived at about the same time and roughly came up with very similar thoughts and faced very similar opposition. The Marx episode is very interesting as well, the poor guy got co-opted by Lenin and Stalin, he was not the monster we all think he was.
spot on.

I am going to give the series a look also, tks Woolley.

btw, I don't know if you are into acoustic guitar, classical guitar, flamenco guitar, but this girl is really good and she has a ton of original composition on her channel... Gabriella9797.

Tommy Emmanuel and Gabriella Quevedo
5,203,722 views
•Apr 1, 2015
 
Last edited:

Days

Commentator
spot on.

I am going to give the series a look also, tks Woolley.

btw, I don't know if you are into acoustic guitar, classical guitar, flamenco guitar, but this girl is really good and she has a ton of original composition on her channel... Gabriella9797.

Tommy Emmanuel and Gabriella Quevedo
5,203,722 views
•Apr 1, 2015
I should mention Gabriella has been sitting on her couch making her own arrangements of every thing ever written for the past 9 years. Musical genius.

(Pink Floyd) Another Brick In The Wall - Gabriella Quevedo
15,380,338 views
•Jul 21, 2017
 

EatTheRich

President
All three men left us models of distribution. Jesus was more about spiritual transformation, but he still spoke enough about society and attitudes to constitute a model of distribution. Marx worked a top down model and he sought to balance the wealth as well as distribution.
Marx quoted from (or paraphrased) Paul. “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs” and “He who will not work, neither shall he eat.” I don’t know about Jesus. But Marx’s model was very much a “bottom-up” version, although the dictatorship of the proletariat that ensued required extensive centralization in, for example, the USSR, to be effective in backward countries during socialism’s infancy.

Plato worked with the institutions that were already in place... democracy. This was not a democracy of all the people, it was a democracy of the ruling class. Plato sought to balance the earnings between the ruling class and the laboring class. A Platonic corporation would limit the CEO earnings to 6x the average wage of those laboring for the same corporation. Imagine the different world that would set up.
It’s hard to know what Plato thought because he speaks through characters who disagree with each other. And his mentor and role model Socrates is known for speaking ironically. But as I read him he was advocating for a philosophers’ junta to relieve Athens’s democracy of its duties. And for communal meals as part of a general transformation into a society regulated at every turn by these self-appointed rulers. Sort of like the reactionary caricature of communism, or like reality under the Khmer Rouge or the Shining Path. Regardless, his vision was entirely utopian.

Marx wanted to eliminate the ruling class altogether. His corporations would have no CEO or would pay the CEO the same as the laborers. I'm not sure how anyone would become a CEO in that type of model. Everyone who has tried to achieve the Marx model in the real world can not overcome the leaderless factor in his model. Consequently, so-called communist nations end up being the most imbalanced models of distribution and wealth on the planet. Right now, the nation with the most billionaires is China, and they are all members of the Communist Party and ruling class in China.
The main reason for that in China is the tremendous increase in productive forces set free by socialism. Since the economic advances under socialism in China got way out ahead of the political advances (which were under constant attack from Mao and company the whole time), a privileged caste reaped the lion’s share of the gain (a gain China pursued, it must be said, at the expense of the peasantry).

The leadership problem you mention was addressed by communists by developing everyone into leaders. How that takes place in practice depends on the vanguard, but also on the economy and on political factors outside the vanguard’s control. Socialist countries in practice have varied from mandating equal pay for workers and CEOs (the USSR under “war communism”) to allowing very limited pay differences (Cuba, Albania, and N. Korea, where these policies have led to the “brain drain” and consequent mismanagement; N. Korea also has a state-instituted hereditary caste system that provides for pay differentials to a bigger extent) to somewhere in the middle to allowing very extensive pay differentials (Yugoslavia, Vietnam, and above all China, and in every case those pay differentials strengthened the Stalinist dictatorship and encouraged efforts to restore capitalism). Some socialist countries and countries with communist governments (the USSR under Lenin, Cuba, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, China with respect to the peasantry, Grenada, Nicaragua) have to one extent or another given workers control over management decisions, either by putting managerial decisions in their hands, by having them elect managers, or by giving unions power to veto management decisions. Others (the USSR for much of its history, N. Korea, Romania, Albania, E. Germany, Czechoslovakia) decidedly have not.
Jesus is supposed to return and set up a kingdom where the ruling class is composed of the saints raised from the dead, so they have no need for wealth. Jesus model achieves the objectives of the Marx model and he gets there by exterminating the prevailing ruling class; which, would include those billionaires ruling over China as well as the billionaires ruling over America. Any billionaire who says he is a communist or a Christian is pulling your leg, billionaires are capitalists, cunning, and ruthless, and have no desire to be balanced with those laboring for them.
Obviously utopian. No one rides from the dead. Did Jesus himself not say, “It is appointed to man once to die, and then the judgment”? And the billionaires aren’t gonna have a change of conscience. They’ll continue to soothe themselves by tithing to charity. Because that’s what Christianity is all about in reality.

Gone are the days when Christianity was the cry for liberation of the proletarian or the slave (although I don’t intend to dishonor the faith of persecuted or impoverished Christians ... I say only that the hope you seek is the work of a nonsectarian international movement). But in that time, as in ours, Christianity was also the plea of the rich man wanting indulgence for his wealth or cruelty, and a ploy by which he might lure believers into his snare with the help of pope, emperor, Madison Avenue, or what have you.

Social constructs are all about the money. Native Americans have the correct perspective on this short life; we come from the land, we return to the land, the land owns us, no one owns the land. Men are free, no man can own another man. But governments seek to restrict freedom, in order to maintain a cohesive society. Everyone wants a safe and happy existence but man is not safe or happy when distribution models allow for the 1% at the top to own everything and make slaves of the labor force.
Fuckin’ A right! I would add, the state is a tool by which any ruling class maintains its rule, and it can only exist as something alien to society in general so long as class society exists, that is, so long as private property exists. Meanwhile, you can’t fight power backed by violence with hymns alone.

When change only comes through force ... revolution and war ... the problem is leadership. The kind of people that foment revolution are not the kind of people who care about fair distribution models. So the leaders of revolts are more apt to set up the same problem they revolted against - only this time with them in power - than they ever come close to fixing the social ills they fought against. Meet the new boss - worse than the old boss.
The leadership problem you mention was addressed by communists by developing everyone into leaders. How that takes place in practice depends on the vanguard, but also on the economy and on political factors outside the vanguard’s control. Socialist countries in practice have varied from mandating equal pay for workers and CEOs (the USSR under “war communism”) to allowing very limited pay differences (Cuba, Albania, and N. Korea, where these policies have led to the “brain drain” and consequent mismanagement; N. Korea also has a state-instituted hereditary caste system that provides for pay differentials to a bigger extent) to somewhere in the middle to allowing very extensive pay differentials (Yugoslavia, Vietnam, and above all China, and in every case those pay differentials strengthened the Stalinist dictatorship and encouraged efforts to restore capitalism). Some socialist countries and countries with communist governments (the USSR under Lenin, Cuba, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, China with respect to the peasantry, Grenada, Nicaragua) have to one extent or another given workers control over management decisions, either by putting managerial decisions in their hands, by having them elect managers, or by giving unions power to veto management decisions. Others (the USSR for much of its history, N. Korea, Romania, Albania, E. Germany, Czechoslovakia) decidedly have not.

Many revolutionaries have evidently cared deeply about economic justice. I will name only a few: Spartacus, Jesus, John Ball, John Wilkes, Toussaint L’Ouverture, Gabriel Prosser, Jacques Roux, Denmark Vesey, Nat Turner, Karl Marx, John Brown, Louise Michel, Mother Jones, Eugene Debs, Rosa Luxemburg, V.I. Lenin, Leon Trotsky, James P. Cannon, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Malcolm X, Thomas Sankara.

We teach our best and brightest to become monsters ... go for the money. And the ones that "succeed" are the ones that take the most from the pie for themselves. Capitalism keeps tilting toward tyranny; the imbalance of wealth only becomes more and more tilted in favor of the tyrants until the inevitable revolution. And the revolution yields the same problem all over again. Civilization - in the past 6000 years - has not figured out a workable model of distribution, let alone how to get there.
We are transitioning to a society organizing distribution “to each according to his wealth” to one organized “to each according to his contribution” which must in turn give way to one organized “to each according to his needs.” But the much more fundamental question is not the organization of distribution, but the organization of production. Because it is on that that all distribution depends.


Christians keep thinking that Christ will return and fix it all. But the scriptures say that we are the anointing, we are the appearing, we are the presence, the parousia of Christ, that Christ is returning in us. Maybe it is time we started thinking about the problem as if we were capable of solving it?
Amen.
 

EatTheRich

President
What you will find is that all of them were far better people then modern people care to admit. My favorite was Buddha. What an incredible person and life. But watch them, I know you will enjoy the series and as an added bonus, the narrator starts to grow on you and before long, she becomes a goddess.
I haven’t watched the show yet, but I will say I don’t have much use for Confucius. Dude is a hardcore conservative, no two ways about it.
 

Days

Commentator
Marx quoted from (or paraphrased) Paul. “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs” and “He who will not work, neither shall he eat.” I don’t know about Jesus. But Marx’s model was very much a “bottom-up” version, although the dictatorship of the proletariat that ensued required extensive centralization in, for example, the USSR, to be effective in backward countries during socialism’s infancy.



It’s hard to know what Plato thought because he speaks through characters who disagree with each other. And his mentor and role model Socrates is known for speaking ironically. But as I read him he was advocating for a philosophers’ junta to relieve Athens’s democracy of its duties. And for communal meals as part of a general transformation into a society regulated at every turn by these self-appointed rulers. Sort of like the reactionary caricature of communism, or like reality under the Khmer Rouge or the Shining Path. Regardless, his vision was entirely utopian.



The main reason for that in China is the tremendous increase in productive forces set free by socialism. Since the economic advances under socialism in China got way out ahead of the political advances (which were under constant attack from Mao and company the whole time), a privileged caste reaped the lion’s share of the gain (a gain China pursued, it must be said, at the expense of the peasantry).

The leadership problem you mention was addressed by communists by developing everyone into leaders. How that takes place in practice depends on the vanguard, but also on the economy and on political factors outside the vanguard’s control. Socialist countries in practice have varied from mandating equal pay for workers and CEOs (the USSR under “war communism”) to allowing very limited pay differences (Cuba, Albania, and N. Korea, where these policies have led to the “brain drain” and consequent mismanagement; N. Korea also has a state-instituted hereditary caste system that provides for pay differentials to a bigger extent) to somewhere in the middle to allowing very extensive pay differentials (Yugoslavia, Vietnam, and above all China, and in every case those pay differentials strengthened the Stalinist dictatorship and encouraged efforts to restore capitalism). Some socialist countries and countries with communist governments (the USSR under Lenin, Cuba, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, China with respect to the peasantry, Grenada, Nicaragua) have to one extent or another given workers control over management decisions, either by putting managerial decisions in their hands, by having them elect managers, or by giving unions power to veto management decisions. Others (the USSR for much of its history, N. Korea, Romania, Albania, E. Germany, Czechoslovakia) decidedly have not.

Obviously utopian. No one rides from the dead. Did Jesus himself not say, “It is appointed to man once to die, and then the judgment”? And the billionaires aren’t gonna have a change of conscience. They’ll continue to soothe themselves by tithing to charity. Because that’s what Christianity is all about in reality.

Gone are the days when Christianity was the cry for liberation of the proletarian or the slave (although I don’t intend to dishonor the faith of persecuted or impoverished Christians ... I say only that the hope you seek is the work of a nonsectarian international movement). But in that time, as in ours, Christianity was also the plea of the rich man wanting indulgence for his wealth or cruelty, and a ploy by which he might lure believers into his snare with the help of pope, emperor, Madison Avenue, or what have you.


Fuckin’ A right! I would add, the state is a tool by which any ruling class maintains its rule, and it can only exist as something alien to society in general so long as class society exists, that is, so long as private property exists. Meanwhile, you can’t fight power backed by violence with hymns alone.



The leadership problem you mention was addressed by communists by developing everyone into leaders. How that takes place in practice depends on the vanguard, but also on the economy and on political factors outside the vanguard’s control. Socialist countries in practice have varied from mandating equal pay for workers and CEOs (the USSR under “war communism”) to allowing very limited pay differences (Cuba, Albania, and N. Korea, where these policies have led to the “brain drain” and consequent mismanagement; N. Korea also has a state-instituted hereditary caste system that provides for pay differentials to a bigger extent) to somewhere in the middle to allowing very extensive pay differentials (Yugoslavia, Vietnam, and above all China, and in every case those pay differentials strengthened the Stalinist dictatorship and encouraged efforts to restore capitalism). Some socialist countries and countries with communist governments (the USSR under Lenin, Cuba, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, China with respect to the peasantry, Grenada, Nicaragua) have to one extent or another given workers control over management decisions, either by putting managerial decisions in their hands, by having them elect managers, or by giving unions power to veto management decisions. Others (the USSR for much of its history, N. Korea, Romania, Albania, E. Germany, Czechoslovakia) decidedly have not.

Many revolutionaries have evidently cared deeply about economic justice. I will name only a few: Spartacus, Jesus, John Ball, John Wilkes, Toussaint L’Ouverture, Gabriel Prosser, Jacques Roux, Denmark Vesey, Nat Turner, Karl Marx, John Brown, Louise Michel, Mother Jones, Eugene Debs, Rosa Luxemburg, V.I. Lenin, Leon Trotsky, James P. Cannon, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Malcolm X, Thomas Sankara.



We are transitioning to a society organizing distribution “to each according to his wealth” to one organized “to each according to his contribution” which must in turn give way to one organized “to each according to his needs.” But the much more fundamental question is not the organization of distribution, but the organization of production. Because it is on that that all distribution depends.




Amen.
Thanks for this, ETR, best post I've ever seen.

I really like the Marx model, anyone who stops to read it, immediately knows it is way better than capitalism, except, of course, the top 1%, but what gets distorted - on purpose - is the very nature of Marx writings. In this top post, I zoomed in on the heart of the writings without bothering to explain what they said or do analysis on that. Unless my reader is familiar with Plato, Jesus, and Marx, he's not going to understand this top post. And that goes for all my writing on scripture and also on economics. But you didn't stumble at ignorance, you know the works, that's why i love posting with you, I don't always agree with you, I make it a point to debate as much as possible, because in the debate is the enlightenment... in this forum.

Joe Biden moment there, just drifted off. Well, hells bells, let's toss in this presentation for the rest of the forum that thinks they know what Marx wrote without having read him (I haven't read him, I just listen better than everyone else; which is to say, I don't read, I watch YouTube videos)

Richard D. Wolff Lecture on Worker Coops: Theory and Practice of 21st Century Socialism
152,608 views
•Apr 25, 2016


So, where Marx was a genius was in the organization of production; when we say we want socialism, what we want from that is Marx' organization of production. That's the goal. The Achilles heel (Achilles had powerful heels right up until an arrow went through one of them) is Marx' organization of distribution, specifically in the manner of leadership; the model doesn't inspire leadership to give a damn about their work. This is far and away the biggest criticism of Marx, he was following the ideas of jesus and the New Testament church and expecting leadership to do what is righteous, instead of inspiring them to do what is righteous (through distribution).

Making everyone a leader is the same as having no leader. That's why dictatorships filled those vacuums.

Ask me, the worker Co-ops need to be tweaked to inspire leadership. If someone would work that out, we might have something that actually organizes a fair distribution. Until society can create a good working model for Marx, I'm afraid the world is stuck in this endless capitalistic cycle of gross in-balance and revolution, neither of which does much for the worker.
 

EatTheRich

President
Thanks for this, ETR, best post I've ever seen.

I really like the Marx model, anyone who stops to read it, immediately knows it is way better than capitalism, except, of course, the top 1%, but what gets distorted - on purpose - is the very nature of Marx writings. In this top post, I zoomed in on the heart of the writings without bothering to explain what they said or do analysis on that. Unless my reader is familiar with Plato, Jesus, and Marx, he's not going to understand this top post. And that goes for all my writing on scripture and also on economics. But you didn't stumble at ignorance, you know the works, that's why i love posting with you, I don't always agree with you, I make it a point to debate as much as possible, because in the debate is the enlightenment... in this forum.

Joe Biden moment there, just drifted off. Well, hells bells, let's toss in this presentation for the rest of the forum that thinks they know what Marx wrote without having read him (I haven't read him, I just listen better than everyone else; which is to say, I don't read, I watch YouTube videos)

Richard D. Wolff Lecture on Worker Coops: Theory and Practice of 21st Century Socialism
152,608 views
•Apr 25, 2016


So, where Marx was a genius was in the organization of production; when we say we want socialism, what we want from that is Marx' organization of production. That's the goal. The Achilles heel (Achilles had powerful heels right up until an arrow went through one of them) is Marx' organization of distribution, specifically in the manner of leadership; the model doesn't inspire leadership to give a damn about their work. This is far and away the biggest criticism of Marx, he was following the ideas of jesus and the New Testament church and expecting leadership to do what is righteous, instead of inspiring them to do what is righteous (through distribution).

Making everyone a leader is the same as having no leader. That's why dictatorships filled those vacuums.

Ask me, the worker Co-ops need to be tweaked to inspire leadership. If someone would work that out, we might have something that actually organizes a fair distribution. Until society can create a good working model for Marx, I'm afraid the world is stuck in this endless capitalistic cycle of gross in-balance and revolution, neither of which does much for the worker.
Thanks for the kind words and constructive criticism. Sorry about the duplicated paragraph where I copied and pasted. I truly believe that with an adequate increase in productive forces we as a species will progress past the need for specialized leadership in the political/managerial field. I highly recommend reading Marx. Once you get used to his style his writing is very accessible. If you are at all interested in history his 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte is considered a classic of historical materialist analysis and is very apropos today. It requires an extensive knowledge of 19th-century French history to be comprehensible, but any good edition (such as the one available for free online at Marxists.net) will have footnotes explaining the most important parts.

A good example of cooperative production and fair (internal) distribution being organized successfully and sustained over a period of decades is Israel's kibbutzim. Although their existence under present-day circumstances depends on their role as colonist-settlers promoting the interests of capitalist Israel at the expense of the Palestinian people, that is irrelevant to the question of whether in principle such a group could develop successfully. Faith, both religious and secular-humanist, family, and community play an important role in harmonizing the interests of the kibbutz members, as does voluntary labor. If Marxists want to build workers' cooperatives that are similarly successful … and their efforts, perhaps most successful in Yugoslavia, have fallen short … they will have to find similar focal points to replace money as the nexus of human connection.
 

Days

Commentator
Thanks for the kind words and constructive criticism. Sorry about the duplicated paragraph where I copied and pasted. I truly believe that with an adequate increase in productive forces we as a species will progress past the need for specialized leadership in the political/managerial field. I highly recommend reading Marx. Once you get used to his style his writing is very accessible. If you are at all interested in history his 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte is considered a classic of historical materialist analysis and is very apropos today. It requires an extensive knowledge of 19th-century French history to be comprehensible, but any good edition (such as the one available for free online at Marxists.net) will have footnotes explaining the most important parts.

A good example of cooperative production and fair (internal) distribution being organized successfully and sustained over a period of decades is Israel's kibbutzim. Although their existence under present-day circumstances depends on their role as colonist-settlers promoting the interests of capitalist Israel at the expense of the Palestinian people, that is irrelevant to the question of whether in principle such a group could develop successfully. Faith, both religious and secular-humanist, family, and community play an important role in harmonizing the interests of the kibbutz members, as does voluntary labor. If Marxists want to build workers' cooperatives that are similarly successful … and their efforts, perhaps most successful in Yugoslavia, have fallen short … they will have to find similar focal points to replace money as the nexus of human connection.
you know we had a lot of co-ops and communes pop up in the 1970s, and for instance when I moved to Austin, Tx in 1978, I remember the vibrancy of life that it produced for people working in those co-ops. And this was before I found Jesus, so it was physically visible - even to the spiritually blind such as myself.

After years of sales and living through all kinds of capitalistic relationships (my dad and brothers built six corporations over four decades, the business started with me working for my dad out of our family room and garage and grew to the largest manufacturer in North America in our industry and global distribution; 5 continents) and years of personal meditation over how to better build the constructs of business, I've come to the conclusion that ultimately, the goal is to achieve that vibrancy of life I saw in Austin co-ops 40 years ago. And it doesn't simply happen as a consequence of fair distribution; it doesn't happen without that, but there has to be fair treatment from management and a zeal for the collective drive; nobody needs a mission statement, but everybody should be on a mission of some sort.

I still maintain that the co-op model needs further tweaking, but the Sanders movement has the right idea for implementation; make it the law in our current systems of government. Outlaw other forms of incorporation. Bloodless coupe that actually achieves the results we are after. We don't need Bernie to do that, we need the vision and the zeal to collectively make it happen.
 
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