Gee. It seemed to me that every time I posed some unpleasant point or fact to you, there followed a response that either was evasive or involved some Marxist non-sequitor. My own misconception, I suppose.: Jeez, all you supremacists SICKEN ME.
DC: You don't make my lunch any more tasty either, fella. And since when did keeping my own earnings make me a 'supremacist'?
: Doc:
: ..."defending a 'Reaganesque foreign policy'"... Most certainly.
: Which brings us to:
: Stoller:
: Doc's sudden conversion to peacenik rhetoric is most disingenuous.
: DC:
: I haven't any idea where this is coming from...In any case, I'm certainly not "pro-war". Are you?
: You're 'certainly not' pro-war---yet you support a 'Reaganesque' foreign policy.
: WHICH is it? (DC: I am not pro-war, but I am anti-'Marxist revolutionary', who - by your own admission - are 'pro-war'. Thus, if we're to have any peace, we'll have to "deal" with the Marxists. And, from what I've observed, on a continuing basis. Other than that, I can remain at home, safely ensconced in a "war-free" society.)
: And: do I defend war?
: You bet.
DC: See?
: I UNCONDITIONALLY defend the right of the working class to rid themselves of vile aristocrats like YOU!
DC: Especially when we're called 'kulaks'. And even more especially when we have something nice to steal ... erm, I mean "expropriate".
: Stoller:
: ... asserting that the Nazi Regime was actually "popular with average German workers"
DC: Let's do a bit of reductio ad absurdum here. As in, "If there were no 'enthusiastic workers', then where did all those fanatical Nazis come from?
Two other misnomers from the Holocaust - Hitler didn't 'kill Jews'. He told Germans to kill them, and they complied without much fuss. Also, what's commonly forgotten about the Jews is that many of them were Germans too - some of which had actually voted for Hitler! If you can guess why, you might be on track to understanding what was going on in the sort of Germany that allowed communists and Nazis to get so popular in the first place. (Try reading Before the Deluge, by Otto Friedrich.)
: DC:
: [W]ho, and this is why the Marxists came up with the term 'lumpen proletariat'...
: Stoller:
: [W]hy then the ubiquitous goon squads?
: DC:
: Answer: Because that is what the workers would become, once organized in large groups...
: No. They ALREADY were 'the lumpenproletariat.'
DC: But the Cheka were loyal agents of the party. Go figure.
Your factual discrepancies are catching up with you, big guy.
: The point is that without the Storm Troopers, they MOST LIKELY would have struggled against fascist capital in trade unions (or political organizations).
DC: What was being decided in the streets of Weimar Germany is which faction of socialists were going to be allowed to rob the lucrative capitalists. Germans, being more patriotic, and rightly seeing the German communists as being backed by Moscow, opted for a more domestic form of thievery. To their inevitable sorrow, but that is of course another story.
: Stoller:
: Who exactly started World War 1, Doc? Was it the Bolsheviks---or was it the capitalists?
: DC: The monarchists.
: Like the monarchists of the 20th century operated independently of capital? (DC: As in using money? Yes. As in being motivated by business interests - certainly, to some extent. As in being ruled by businessmen?)
: That's absurd. (DC: Exactly. What the monarchs of the 19th century were deciding on is who specifically would be allowed to cull their respective regional capitalist 'herd' - thus the fight over land, which was used to arbitrate who would get to rob those who conducted business on it. The secularization and modernization of this feudal 'relationship' we call socialism.)
: __________
:
: DC:
: Incidentally, the tourist and gambling industries depend on the $100 candy bar rule.
: Stoller:
: Now, anyone with half a brain will admit that the LTV does NOT fully apply in the case of monopoly.
: DC:
: Actually, one would expect you to claim that any discrepancies in monopoly pricing were due to the exploitative nature of such an arrangement.
: I'm not talking about the relationship between capitalist and consumer here, Doc---I'm talking about the relationship between capitalist and laborer.
DC: He forgets his own rhetoric, me preciouss. As in, the candy bar must be made, and thus, the labor used to make it resides in its sugary goodness. Monopolies being a means of 'exploitation', doncha know. Any profits made would rightly belong to the workers and all that sort of thing, etc.
As for Capital, I've found that reading it leads to more errors that passing on this 'work'. Luckily, I've dismissed this erudite series of tomes - after doing my own taste test, of course.
: DC:
: Being able to buy a $100 candy bar (and the increases in pay and worker output that these sorts of consumer demands generate) is the key to the unmitigated success of capitalism.
: Stoller:
: Like, the waiters and hat check girls at EXCLUSIVE country clubs really rake in the dough...
: DC:
: That, of course, depends on the economy. In the Victorian era, they often did get quite a bit more than they were "worth", mainly through the unspoken understanding of what might happen to one's food or one's hat if they didn't. But that's besides the point.
: No, EVERYTHING you just said is BESIDES THE POINT.
: If you can cite something other than everest to prove your assertion that waiters and hat-check girls in Victorian England were raking in the dough, I'd love to see it.
DC: You'll not likely have become a tycoon over your earnings. You might make it to becoming a butler, however. In any case, such work was far more preferable to those jobs to be had in a factory. It was prestigous at the time, and could support a decent living by the standards of the day.
If you DID want to become rich in the Victorian era, you needed to invent something. Ask Mr. Edison.
"Doc" Cruel
