Socialism will fail if sex is not used for group cohesion
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mcolome1 wrote:Tim Kilgallon wrote:Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:I don't think we need an "organization" and I think any organizations in a post socialist revolution society need to be considered with skepticism. How do we ensure the organization isn't extracting surplus value from the workers? Maybe that's the nature of organizations? If the "organization" you descibe did exist after the socialist revolution, then how would socialist leaders ensure the suruplus value extracted from any free assoication and exchange wasn't used by the organization in ways not of benefit to the people? Even if we had the power and authority to stop these organizations in a socialist world, We'd still need to monitor and endorse or veto almost every voluntary free exchange offer between people and that would take a lot of time for someone or some "organization".
You seem to understnad the principles of post cards fairly well, however it is fairly clear your struggling a little with the ideas of the Socialist Party (exchnge, surplus value, leaders, power, etc. not really compatible with Socialsim)
He does not get it, and he wants to give us advices about socialism., ignorance is the mother of the imprudence. We have explained to him thousands of times that socialism is going to be a society based on the common possession of the means of production, without leaders, without state, without the law of buying and selling, without surplus value,and free access, and he continues hammering the same things that he has mistakenly learned. How can you be a carpenter when you have not received the proper training, or the proper technical education ? The WSM is an university of socialism and we have spent 100 years trying to spread the correct conception of socialism, and in order to understand it, we must study it properly, therefore, we must open the doors and windows of our minds to understand the socialist case , it does not penetrate thru Osmosis
Actually, I wanted to say thanks to you for all your explanations. What I did was, I ended up writing a blueprint for what I'm calling a "universal values exchange prootocol". At first I just wanted to create an exchange system as a way to convert one form of cash value into time value as a way of doing the world some good. It seemed like a profitable idea and an idea that would be good for reducing innequality and solving a lot of society scale problems. At first I didn't care much about socialism or know anything about communism except long forgotten and discredited college philosophy classes. But I had a great idea for world good and an exchange system and a digital currency solution and and wanted to hear some critical worst case sociology cocerns for the implications of my revolutionary idea. I generally aim to serve the most marginalized and prejudicially victimized groups on principle and you seemed like a good candidate for some of my pro-bono inspirations from concept to development and an ideal showcase beneficiary of my revolutionary ideas. But you kept insisting socialist don't have money. So I made some revisions and illustrated my idea for an exchange protocol in a google doc and since you liked postcards and in person mailers I used them as examples and figured you'd love the idea. I changed my proposed exchange protocols and researched solutions to make it my exchange protocols function effectively as a a time trading system. BUT, then you said socialism doesn't have property. So I made a rule change in the protocols for exchange that you can't say anything legally in an exchange offer or receipt that indicates or refers to property. That actually worked out good because it lets me make my own laws and rules for the currency as long as they don''t run affoul of property laws then I don't have to worry about government regs either in my exchange system. and since all exchanges have to be free of property or ownership specification, it works out nicely for the currency. So you're socialist complaints paid off in a better design solution for my exchange system protocols. That took some major revisions to the protocol, but it also made it more generalized, which I liked for other protocol exchange projects I'm working on. BUT that wasn't enough for you. You said It would be without leaders and without a state. So once again I did some hard thinking about the protocols and built in an automatic reputation managment system and a penalty system enforcement of exchange norms. that was really hard to build into my exchange protocols without using money or property as a method of enforcement and to process labor and efforts to maintain the system. But after much thinking and reasoning I figured out how to get the exchange protocols to do that too. My example and protocol spec doc is getting pretty large now and over 130 pages of sample exchanges in the form of postcards with each postcard being one exchange.I'm not sure what you meant about no buying and selling and without surplus value and with free access. But I tried my best and took a guess at what you meant by htat and demonstrated how I think that can work in the postcard examples. Ok, so I've finally done that for you. I built a 70 postcard example of an exchange system based on your principles. It's an exchange system built out of information thoery and reason alone. It works in in world where there is no property. It works In a world without leaders. it scales to allow socialist to build world scale projects like a mission to mars or down to allow individuals to live in their own micro-economy that runs by individuals who can exclude all non-socialist exchanges from their private economy, associates and affiliations and even control the transferability and usage of their exchanges with others whether capitalist or socialist. it's an exchange system that offers free access to anyone with way to communicate and a basic communications and exchange protocol that can meet your needs. And it can scale to global size. You guys ask for a lot in a scalable values exchange system, but luckily I love a good technical design challenge and this is my forte. I'm still not sure what you mean by without surplus value. Are you saying I have to modify my communications protocol blueprint yet again so that any exchange or sharing results in no surplus value? No one can benefit from sharing or exchanging time in any way seems like a stupid rule to make. Are you guys serious about this one too? I really don't want to change the exchange protocols yet again for this last request. Why would I want to change the communications protocol to prevent that? additional value as the result of an exchange seems a good thing that would encourage people to exchange time and ideas and compassion and other good things with added valuable compassion or added valuable beliefs. My exchange system protocols already encourage and support adding synergistic bennefits to the system maintenances efforts or to the individuals based on individual negotations about negotatians. And whatever you think I mean by "negotatians" I'm not talking capitalist negotiations or communist negotiations, I'm refering to "informormation negotiation". Please don't tell me "socialist don't need information or information negotiation and exchange systems" because that would just break my heart to read and show such sad desperate arrogance and ignorance at the same time. Maybe you should read the post card exchange examples and give me a nod of approval and encouragement before you start asking for more impossible things. I've done like 5 impossible things on this design project for you guys already, and yes it's advanced my goals too which is great, but since it's going to help you guys so much a little postive encouragement would be awesome right now. thanks and I appeciate if you take the time to read and consider https://goo.gl/8hfH91
Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:Please don't tell me "socialist don't need information or information negotiation and exchange systems" because that would just break my heart to read and show such sad desperate arrogance and ignorance at the same time. Maybe you should read the post card exchange examples and give me a nod of approval and encouragement before you start asking for more impossible things. I've done like 5 impossible things on this design project for you guys already, and yes it's advanced my goals too which is great, but since it's going to help you guys so much a little postive encouragement would be awesome right now. thanks and I appeciate if you take the time to read and consider https://goo.gl/8hfH91Steve. Why don't you ever grasp the fairly simple point that when socialists talk about exchange we are using the term in its economic sense to signify quid pro quo market exchanges. Obviously socialism will be a non exchange economy in that sense. Quid pro quo market exchanges imply private ownership of the means of producing wealth and this is incompatible with common ownership. End of story. We don't need long winded exegeses on "information exchange protocols" or other such pretentious twaddle. Nor do we need some complicated schema for exchanging "postcards" or whatever, Why can't you just converse like everyone else does without all this posturing. "ill spend 20 minutes reading your stufff if you spend 20 minutes reading my stuff" FFS You sure know how to get people's back up which is ironic considering you consider yourself to be a "UserExperienceResearchSpecialist"
I have not been following this thread much but what Steve seem to be proposing is some kind of fusion of the relatively modern Parecon system and Deleonism. I think I did ask whether you were is some way a Pareconist but can’t remember an answer. I do appreciate people wanting to avoid being categorised into certain schools of thought but they are more fully worked out so at least your differences between them would be interesting to hear. The Deleonist are especially interesting I think because they are almost as old as us, were American and used to be quite big, probably bigger than us. They now seem to be relatively recently extinct. We did in fact share a lot of ground with them and anti-Lenninist and anti reformist critique of capitalism. Now that they are gone; I can say they had an extremely well worked out system for what you seem to be proposing and were hard work. We had several long running debates with them on the old forum around 2005. You could argue that Kautsky dabbled with this in 1924? https://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1924/labour/ch03_j.htm I actually don’t think the capitalists are the problem and they are becoming less and less of a problem. its the system. Complaining about the consumption fund of the 0.1% is a distraction even if it is your face a lot. Actually theoretically the consumption fund of the capitalist class is probably falling as there are fewer and fewer of them and even they reach human limits on what they consume and how many shoes they can have to wear. For instance I am almost certain that they collectively personally consume far less than is expended on financial sector and for ‘circulation of capital’, advertising and the military and police budget etc.
Steve wrote:Please don't tell me "socialist don't need information or information negotiation and exchange systems" because that would just break my heart to read and show such sad desperate arrogance and ignorance at the same time. Maybe you should read the post card exchange examples and give me a nod of approval and encouragement before you start asking for more impossible things. I've done like 5 impossible things on this design project for you guys already, and yes it's advanced my goals too which is great, but since it's going to help you guys so much a little postive encouragement would be awesome right now. thanks and I appeciate if you take the time to read and consider https://goo.gl/8hfH91 [/quote]_____________________________________________________________________________________________________Well, you are going to have a heart attack ( Myocardial Infarction ) because socialists ( I am not talking about left wingers, or leaders ) will not need an exchange system on a society based on free access, and common possession of the means of production. It is something very logical, we do not need a PHD in Economics to understand that.There is a good forum of the Anarcho capitalists and supporter of Von Mises, or the Chicago Boys which might applaud your ideas, your survey and postcards, they did a terrific job in Chile, it was so wonderful that some workers want to hang them by the balls, or face down like Benito Mussolini.All your conception spin around business management, and in a socialist society we are not going to need business managers, or school of business management, all those ideas are going to be placed in the Museum of Antiquity
mcolome1 wrote:Steve wrote: wrote:Steve wrote:Please don't tell me "socialist don't need information or information negotiation and exchange systems" because that would just break my heart to read and show such sad desperate arrogance and ignorance at the same time. Maybe you should read the post card exchange examples and give me a nod of approval and encouragement before you start asking for more impossible things. I've done like 5 impossible things on this design project for you guys already, and yes it's advanced my goals too which is great, but since it's going to help you guys so much a little postive encouragement would be awesome right now. thanks and I appeciate if you take the time to read and consider https://goo.gl/8hfH91_____________________________________________________________________________________________________Well, you are going to have a heart attack ( Myocardial Infarction ) because socialists ( I am not talking about left wingers, or leaders ) will not need an exchange system on a society based on free access, and common possession of the means of production. It is something very logical, we do not need a PHD in Economics to understand that.There is a good forum of the Anarcho capitalists and supporter of Von Mises, or the Chicago Boys which might applaud your ideas, your survey and postcards, they did a terrific job in Chile, it was so wonderful that some workers want to hang them by the balls, or face down like Benito Mussolini.All your conception spin around business management, and in a socialist society we are not going to need business managers, or school of business management, all those ideas are going to be placed in the Museum of Antiquity
@mcolme1,You're kiling me. I feel my heat fluttering right now. :-(Ok, here's what I got for you. My exchange system protocols will still work without business managment, or business managers or schools of business. In a society without those things too, this will let you pool your resources to build a road or decide who gets to decide where the road is made. Or it will help you exchange information about whether you need a road. It will make voting as we know it today irrelevant. p.s. I'll spare you the link this time but it supports my argument with a reference model example of 70 exchanges each written as one postcard. Some are exchanges of friendship, others show exchanges of compassion or informatino or laws and information about group decisions as polled and surveyed. This is not the exchange system Karl Marx was limited to consideration of. This is a completely new evolved form of an exchange system that can bring Karl Marx vision to life at the stroke of a pen for you today in a small amount for a little bit of your time or for every minute of the rest of your life. I totally realize this sounds too good to be true and sounds like I'm blowing smoke, and I totally understand your skepticism. So one more thing. about you not having an exchange system. What do you mean by that. how do you build something complex like a road without exchanging information or time or resources? or if it's just the word, then do you call it a sharing of information and time and resources? Should I have said a "gift" do socialist give things to people? When I use the word exchange, I'm using it to mean gifts as a special type of exchange. I really just mean any abstract movement of anything as an "exchange" like river water mixing with ocean water is an "exchange" of material. How would a socialist say "I exchanged my time for her affections"? because my idea of exchange includes all of those uses. ps. Should I infer from your museum comment that you read at least that far into my google document to get to the part where I describe the postcards as found in a museum in the future as the last examples of capitalism before the democratization of the economy started the individualized economics revolution?
mcolome1 wrote:_____________________________________________________________________________________________________Well, you are going to have a heart attack ( Myocardial Infarction ) because socialists ( I am not talking about left wingers, or leaders ) will not need an exchange system on a society based on free access, and common possession of the means of production. It is something very logical, we do not need a PHD in Economics to understand that.He can leave his heart in San Francisco. :-)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryF9p-nqsWwOur heart is in the free access, commonly owned, world to win without exchange.
Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:mcolome1 wrote:Steve wrote:Please don't tell me "socialist don't need information or information negotiation and exchange systems" because that would just break my heart to read and show such sad desperate arrogance and ignorance at the same time. Maybe you should read the post card exchange examples and give me a nod of approval and encouragement before you start asking for more impossible things. I've done like 5 impossible things on this design project for you guys already, and yes it's advanced my goals too which is great, but since it's going to help you guys so much a little postive encouragement would be awesome right now. thanks and I appeciate if you take the time to read and consider https://goo.gl/8hfH91_____________________________________________________________________________________________________Well, you are going to have a heart attack ( Myocardial Infarction ) because socialists ( I am not talking about left wingers, or leaders ) will not need an exchange system on a society based on free access, and common possession of the means of production. It is something very logical, we do not need a PHD in Economics to understand that.There is a good forum of the Anarcho capitalists and supporter of Von Mises, or the Chicago Boys which might applaud your ideas, your survey and postcards, they did a terrific job in Chile, it was so wonderful that some workers want to hang them by the balls, or face down like Benito Mussolini.All your conception spin around business management, and in a socialist society we are not going to need business managers, or school of business management, all those ideas are going to be placed in the Museum of Antiquity
You're kiling me. I feel my heat fluttering right now. :-(Ok, here's what I got for you. My exchange system protocols will still work without business managment, or business managers or schools of business. In a society without those things too, this will let you pool your resources to build a road or decide who gets to decide where the road is made. Or it will help you exchange information about whether you need a road. It will make voting as we know it today irrelevant. p.s. I'll spare you the link this time but it supports my argument with a reference model example of 70 exchanges each written as one postcard. [/quote]_________________________________________________________________________________________MColome1 wrote Another one that is going to be added to the reading list is William Morris, an Artist, Poet, Crafter and Designer, and Socialist. http://www.artyfactory.com/art_appreciation/graphic_designers/william_morris.html
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Dave B wrote:I have not been following this thread much but what Steve seem to be proposing is some kind of fusion of the relatively modern Parecon system and Deleonism. I think I did ask whether you were is some way a Pareconist but can’t remember an answer. I do appreciate people wanting to avoid being categorised into certain schools of thought but they are more fully worked out so at least your differences between them would be interesting to hear. The Deleonist are especially interesting I think because they are almost as old as us, were American and used to be quite big, probably bigger than us. They now seem to be relatively recently extinct. We did in fact share a lot of ground with them and anti-Lenninist and anti reformist critique of capitalism. Now that they are gone; I can say they had an extremely well worked out system for what you seem to be proposing and were hard work. We had several long running debates with them on the old forum around 2005. You could argue that Kautsky dabbled with this in 1924? https://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1924/labour/ch03_j.htm I actually don’t think the capitalists are the problem and they are becoming less and less of a problem. its the system. Complaining about the consumption fund of the 0.1% is a distraction even if it is your face a lot. Actually theoretically the consumption fund of the capitalist class is probably falling as there are fewer and fewer of them and even they reach human limits on what they consume and how many shoes they can have to wear. For instance I am almost certain that they collectively personally consume far less than is expended on financial sector and for ‘circulation of capital’, advertising and the military and police budget etc.@DaveB,thank you for the well thought out considered reply. That has value to me. and I've neglected your valuable words and was thinking about parecon. I found a website called parecon which is a sort of place where I can promote further work on my Universal Values Exchange system protocols design project. BUT, i don't know what that means historically or even the wikipedia definitions for the ideas you are referencing. After google and wikipedia, it looks like my concept meets some of the definition of parecon, but it's not paracon just like it's not socialism. Parecon seems close. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_economics . Parecon seems to be a lot more planned and managed than what I have in my protocols. It’s more like I’m building an exchange system that would work for a parecon economy with certain presets or stock exchange terms and conditions. But I’m my universal values exchange system protocols should work for a lot of other non-parecon economic systems too. The De_leonism, movement is old and historical. . . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Leonism . I don’t think there’s much here for me. De_leonism could use my exchange system and it would work in all phases before, during, and after their political revolution. The exchange system I’m building includes the laws and government and stuff like that as properties of each individual exchange. So if you wanted to you could specify in the exchange conditions “this exchange is not valid if any part of it is in violation of De_leonism principles” and then it would work for you but only for exchanges that met that condition. The digital coin uses crowd sourced polling for dispute resolution paid for by surplus value created in exchanges that get converted to time value for answering polls about whether some particular exchange is really De_leonism or not. But the dispute resolution mechanism only gets invoked if either the buyer or seller request is in the exchange satisfaction portion of each exchange receipt. This all happens automatically without a government or laws and with or without common shared property or private property wouldn’t make much difference unless you mentioned that in the exchange conditions. For legal reasons to avoid conflicts with capitalism the exchange system digital currency and exchange can’t be written with reference to any provable exchange of capital or property or value as defined by capitalism. So if De_Leonism adherants wanted to exchange things in a way that capitalism couldn’t regulate or make rules about because the exchanges don’t mention capital or property or money then, this is the exchange system to let them do that. The Labour Revolution article you link to, https://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1924/labour/ch03_j.htm , is interesting. . . It’s a long read. It will take me a while, but looks worth my time. So far my exchange system design protocols seem to function in societies and economies mentioned in the link. This would work fine for exchanging value in any of those economies. Simply write in the exchange conditions section “this exchange offer is not valid or enforceable unless it meets the requirements of (link to your article and specify a page). Any dispute resolutions and enforcement would be accomplished with survey polls first from the primary exchange partners mentioned in the exchange agreement and then if appeals or other arguments occure by a series of escalating challenges. The whole process for dispute resolutions could be specefied individually for each exchange agreement or more commonly would use a standard preset, but it could be a survey about the exchange rules for the individual transaction or a survey about rules for the individual person or a survey about rules for the system. All disputes are handled the same way. the link you gave me had this interesting quote
Quote:The monetary system is a machine which is indispensable for the functioning of a society with a widely ramified division of labour.It is quite conceivable that a more perfect form of this mechanism may eventually be invented, which would replace its present form. On the other hand, it would be a relapse into barbarism to destroy this machine, in order to resort to the primitive expedients of natural economy. This method of combating capitalism recalls the simple workers of the first decades of the last century who thought they would make an end of capitalist exploitation if they smashed the machines which they found to hand.It is not our desire to destroy the machines, but to render them serviceable to society, so that they may be shaped into a means for the emancipation of labour.So, ok good. this guy is talking about what I've done. I've created a more perfect form of money wich will replace money. you don't have to destroy the concept of exchange. I've created the means for you to shape exchange agreements to render service to society so that the peopel may be shaped into a means for the emancipation of labor. Why do some people here have such a hard time understanding this is what I'm doing? I think they have some capitalist norms and behaviors and judgements that they got from capitalism they need ot abandon and re-think. I'm not a politician or a political economic scholar or particularly interested in Marx or Communism. I'd say my interest level in these topics is in the top 5% percent most interested of the population, but that's not close to the level of knowledge of people I'm talking with here on those topics. I'm not focused on learning these things either and that's not why I'm here. I'm here because I am an incredibly brilliant user experience design researcher working on a project for an universal values exchange system and your community has a wealth of great ideas relevant to how the perfect exchange system for your perfect socialist world would have to work and what it's exchange protocols and social norms would be like. I'm prototyping a universal exchange system for non-profit business development and I wanted it to work well in a capitalist society or a socialist society or a gifting economy or a communist society, etc. I want an exchange system that can continue functioning smoothly if you're socialist revolution happens overnight so production is not disrupted by your revolution or any revolution in socio-political economic world events. I am working on proof of concept and testing it now and using you're feedback and answers to my dumb questions to test if my exchange system would still function under the conditions of no property or communal owned property. or no leaders, and no government, etc.What I've created with your help and demanding requirements has been fantastic and initial indicators are that it can democratize not only an economic system but also a government and even laws within a public accessible open source digital blockchain currency infrastructure, or a postcard communication network, or a checkbook communication network, or a credit card communication system, or a pen and paper. It is truly universal and yes it can exchange cash for i-phone, or personal time for i-phone, but it can do a lot more. It can exchange compassion for time or information for an i-phone or ecosystem health can be purchased with upvotes and popularity. My exchange protocols allow any individual to create and manage complex exchange agreements according individual rules they choose on their own. If you want to live in a socialist economy today and get a warning alarm if any of your exchanges of time or friendship are made by someone who is registered as a capitalist, then this system would allow you the tools to build those rules into your personal exchange transaction and make them stick. I'm really proud of what I've created and think it advances your cause extemely well. Why am I always making offers of trade? because I'm trying to demonstrate for you how you could use this as socialist to advance your cause without needing property or a government or money, etc. None of my offers here have ever offered property in any exchange. whether the world is socialist and what that means to you vs what that means to me will not affect the exchange offers I made to others on this website. You can have a worldwide revolution in one day tomorrow and all cash promises and exchanges will no longer work, but my exchange promises will keep working just fine. I want to show you how to use the exchange system protocols I've created can work for you and get more feedback on how they could be even better for you. You SPGB people are the toughest most demanding user for my needs based design approach solution, so trying to satisfy you guys is like shooting for the moon in a design project specification paradigm. Even if you don't make it to the moon, you learn a lot trying, that helps out elsewhere. So that's kind of where I'm coming from if it helps. ps. here's the link to the infamous postcard document again. https://goo.gl/8hfH91 . It keeps changing and evolving and now takes the form of a science fiction story from the future about the socio-political economic revolution caused by the exchange system I'm creating. It used to have your guys name in it as an example, but since you guys complained I replaced you with fictional comunist from san francisco to explain things without offending you. I’m describing a future prediction in the postcard documents using a practice of historical artifacts, where the historical artifacts are exchange offers and receipts. Which I think is something someone said marx or socialism was interested. Something about the material artifacts of capitalism?
Dave B wrote:The problem with the title of the thread is that the only successful ‘communist community’ ;that lasted a hundred years or so. [successful communist community being one that practiced a free access moneyless system within it of voluntary labour etc.] was one that prohibited sex , and was ‘christian’ ie the Shakers. http://marxists.anu.edu.au/archive/marx/works/1844/10/15.htm the communist part of it however is pretty much left out of the otherwise glowing Wikipedia entry. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakers Engels said it was communism in 1844 anyway in a preamble to his pamphlet in a letter to Karl. It is quite clear also that many of the early Christians were communists in the sense that they believed in having things in common As in Didache circa 100AD , epistle of Barnabas 130, anti Christian tract passing of Peregrinus 170 , Celsus again anti Christian and ad 170, Justyn the Martyr circa 130. etc. Ignoring the well trawled acts stuff. And there is also the other stuff, like below again from 2nd century. For man God made all things to be common property. He brought the female to be with the male in common and in the same way united all the animals. He thus showed rightousness to be a universal sharing along with equality. But those who have been born in this way have denied the sharing which is the corollary of their origin and say Let him who has taken one woman keep her, whereas all can share her, just as the other animals show us. With view to the permanence of the race, he has implanted in males a strong and ardent desire which neither law nor custom nor any other restraint is able to destroy. For it is God´s decree……Consequently one must understand the saying You shall not desire as if the lawgiver was making a jest, to which he added the even more comic words Your neighbors goods. For he himself gave the desire to sustain the race orders that it is to be supposed, though he removes it from no other animals. And by the words Your neighbors wife he says something even more ludicrous, since he forces what should be common property to be treated as private posession. http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/epiphanes.html Sexist orientated admittedly but plenty to sink your teeth over that kind of thing????? This stuff however seems to be preserved by early Christians critiquing some kind free love notion of Christian communism; looks like flower power kind of stuff? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CarpocratesThanks Dave, I didnt knew early Christianity had such thoughts going.But the thing is Rome became the center of power for Christianity not because the masses wanted it but because a bishop close to the Roman elites convinced them to become Christian and turn their part of the Roman empire into a Christian empire.That the first Pope of the Roman Catholic Church was chosen not because he was popular with the masses but because he was popular with the elites. The elites chose the Pope not the masses.Maybe at the start when the landlords werent too much into Christianity thoughts of having things in common could survive but I doubt after it became an instrument of the masters to enforce their will it was anything other than 'keeping ones property to oneself' and everyone submit to the condition as it is Gods will.I really dont see how the church can bring about socialism controlled as it is by some of the biggest property owners of the land. I just dont see them parting with their possessions on their own and thus promoting ideas that will result in such a thing happening.
Subhaditya wrote:Dave B wrote:The problem with the title of the thread is that the only successful ‘communist community’ ;that lasted a hundred years or so. [successful communist community being one that practiced a free access moneyless system within it of voluntary labour etc.] was one that prohibited sex , and was ‘christian’ ie the Shakers. http://marxists.anu.edu.au/archive/marx/works/1844/10/15.htm the communist part of it however is pretty much left out of the otherwise glowing Wikipedia entry. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakers Engels said it was communism in 1844 anyway in a preamble to his pamphlet in a letter to Karl. It is quite clear also that many of the early Christians were communists in the sense that they believed in having things in common As in Didache circa 100AD , epistle of Barnabas 130, anti Christian tract passing of Peregrinus 170 , Celsus again anti Christian and ad 170, Justyn the Martyr circa 130. etc. Ignoring the well trawled acts stuff. And there is also the other stuff, like below again from 2nd century. For man God made all things to be common property. He brought the female to be with the male in common and in the same way united all the animals. He thus showed rightousness to be a universal sharing along with equality. But those who have been born in this way have denied the sharing which is the corollary of their origin and say Let him who has taken one woman keep her, whereas all can share her, just as the other animals show us. With view to the permanence of the race, he has implanted in males a strong and ardent desire which neither law nor custom nor any other restraint is able to destroy. For it is God´s decree……Consequently one must understand the saying You shall not desire as if the lawgiver was making a jest, to which he added the even more comic words Your neighbors goods. For he himself gave the desire to sustain the race orders that it is to be supposed, though he removes it from no other animals. And by the words Your neighbors wife he says something even more ludicrous, since he forces what should be common property to be treated as private posession. http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/epiphanes.html Sexist orientated admittedly but plenty to sink your teeth over that kind of thing????? This stuff however seems to be preserved by early Christians critiquing some kind free love notion of Christian communism; looks like flower power kind of stuff? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CarpocratesThanks Dave, I didnt knew early Christianity had such thoughts going.But the thing is Rome became the center of power for Christianity not because the masses wanted it but because a bishop close to the Roman elites convinced them to become Christian and turn their part of the Roman empire into a Christian empire.That the first Pope of the Roman Catholic Church was chosen not because he was popular with the masses but because he was popular with the elites. The elites chose the Pope not the masses.Maybe at the start when the landlords werent too much into Christianity thoughts of having things in common could survive but I doubt after it became an instrument of the masters to enforce their will it was anything other than 'keeping ones property to oneself' and everyone submit to the condition as it is Gods will.I really dont see how the church can bring about socialism controlled as it is by some of the biggest property owners of the land. I just dont see them parting with their possessions on their own and thus promoting ideas that will result in such a thing happening.
What Dave wrote is correct, the word communism came from common, and the Early Christians posseed everything in common, and everything had to be shared within the communityEngels wrote about the history of Early Christianity as a working class movement ( Here we can see that threre was certain division of works between Marx and Engels, each one has their own specialty ) . The expression: Socialism came thru Robert Owen, and he was a religious personEarly Christianity ceased to exist with the emerge of Catholicism. it should be called Paulism, He was a member of the Herodian family , he was not killed due to his religious beliefKarl Kaustky has written about that transformation from the religion of the poor to the religion of the Roman elites. It was more than the imposition of one Emperor known as Constantine, it was a historical-economical process https://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1908/christ/
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