Does Communism support free speech?

submitted by LarrySwinger2 from scontent-ams4-1.xx.fbcdn.net

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[–]joogabah 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Capitalism is based on a tiny class of owners exploiting the labor of the masses. It permitted literal chattel slavery for centuries. The workplace is authoritarian. Nobody gets hurt by capitalism? What capitalism? It isn't all just first world service sector "labor aristocracy" jobs out there. Remember the chimney sweeps and child labor in Britain during the Industrial Revolution? Look, if capitalism were not oppressive, communism would not exist. Communism is a reaction to the brutality of capitalism. If capitalists don't want communism, treat workers well. If a revolution happens and a communist dictatorship results, the blame lies with the prior sociopathic ruling class abusing people with overwork and low wages and gross inequality. All wealth is reducible to human labor power. All wealth is produced by workers. Capitalist rentiers earn passive income (profit, interest and rent) by virtue of a legal title and no work at all! They can pay managers to oversee their enterprises, and most just own stocks in businesses they don't even have to think about. They are the real welfare queens.

[–]ctvzbuxr 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

The children who worked during the industrial revolution would have died prior to the industrial revolution, before capitalism raised living standards to a point where most children didn't die as infants, and provided the opportunity to earn their living. Nobody wants children to work in coal mines, but it is preferable to them dying. Their poor living conditions were a condition of nature, counteracted by capitalism. As soon as living standards raised to a point where child labour was rendered obsolete by the market and had fallen largely out of practice, the british govenment prohibited it and claimed that it saved the poor children from the "evil capitalists".
If you think that business owners don't have to work, you are clearly ignorant of how busines works. If it was easy, everyone would do it. 99% of people in business work crazy hours, and the other 1% had such a great idea that they produced enough value in one go that they don't have to work anymore (most of them still do). Not to mention the risk that entrepeneurs take, and all the regulations and taxes they have to deal with already.

[–]joogabah 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Marxists are not opponents of capitalism. They are awed by it. But they see it as a transitional state, one that at a certain point becomes overwhelmed by its own contradictions. To be blind to the trajectory of capitalism is just as erroneous as to be blind to its accomplishments. Marx compared it to a tie on a sapling that helps its growth early on but distorts it if left for too long. Capitalism is not evil. It is antiquated. The evidence is that private property, divided into competing national states, threatens to end all life on the planet, via nuclear war, climate change and overpopulation. Exponential growth has limits. Capitalist thinking tends to ignore "dialectics" or the idea that change is fundamental to our reality. Everything is born, grows and then dies. Quantitative changes eventually turn into qualitative changes that can negate the earlier condition. The same is true of capitalist markets and private property. They are human innovations, appropriate to their time, not eternal unchanging truths.

[–]ctvzbuxr 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

What an interesting perspective, to view people's property rights as a transitional state.
"Yes, you own that thing you workd hard for, but only as long as we deem it appropriate, and once we decide to have our revolution we will take it from you at a whim, in order to alleviate you from such an antiquated burden."
The truth is, people could already live in socialism right now if they wanted to. Socialists all around the world could put their money in a big pool, govern it as they see fit, and no capitalist in the world would do anything to prevent it. The truth is, capitalists have no problem with socialism either, as long as it's voluntary. But the truth is, voluntary socialism is just another form of capitalism. Capitalism is simply what you get when you let people choose how they govern what is rightfully theirs.