: In regards to-Just think a society without classes a society were equality is the norm.: Have you ever stopped to think that people don't want to live in a society without classes?
SDF: 1) Do you think that people choose to be part of the destitute underclasses? Read a text that describes how people in the US really live in the underclass societies of today, William Finnegan's COLD NEW WORLD for instance, and tell me how the people of these societies actually choose their surroundings...
2) Do you really think the working classes of America today choose to work at jobs they don't like (and any opinion poll will tell you that Americans don't like their jobs), just so the owning classes can profit off of working-class labor?
: Isn't it obvious that they don't?
SDF: What's obvious is that the people of America, or of the world for that matter, have not been allowed to choose a classless society. Poor children, for instance, did not choose to be born into poor families, nor did they choose to be raised by poor families, to go to lower-class schools, or to be required to choose between some minimum-wage job or continued attendance of some vocational program at the local community college.
: Can that not be respected/accepted by the likes of you? Or do you honestly believe that your way is the best way?
SDF: Greenway can believe that a classless society would be better, because such a society doesn't exist today. Dreaming is allowed.
: If you would think so, how arrogant. To push forward with such a system without the consent of the people of the state/country- would be tyranny.
SDF: Greenway nowhere implied in his above post that the people would necessarily be deprived of choice under communism -- indeed, to permit the public to choose the society they live in, one must first propose alternatives to the status quo.
: People desire to have the freedom to choose their 'station' in life meaning to be given the opportunity to. This is equality,given equal chance to the peoples to make of their life as they will.
SDF: People in today's American society have neither equal choice nor equal opportunity. "The state, in its majestic equality, grants to rich and poor alike the right to sleep under bridges and beg for food..." -Anatole France
: This equality doesn't discriminate against any class of people thus does not hinder the individual. This is what we call a 'free' society. You would choose to live in a different one?
SDF: As Red Deathy and others have repeatedly argued, following Marx, communist society would be a great advance for freedom, since one's capabilities would no longer be restricted by one's forced exclusion from the society of property-holders, nor by one's required defense of the property one holds. That is, if such a thing could actually be put on Earth...
: As long as we desire to make of our life as we will(blame our human nature for not wanting anything less), as long as we enjoy freedom, as long as we choose to maintain our individuality and are willing to defend it...a socialistic society just wont do.
SDF: Capitalist society imposes the same form on all individuals; working class consumerism. I could quote Horkheimer and Adorno's essay on the culture industry in defense of this thesis, but I'll just cite it for you to read.
: A question to your question-Isn't Communism great? Well, if it is than why has it failed?
SDF: What momentarily succeeded was a statist society (contra Marx's promises of the "withering away of the state") that promised "communism" to the common people while delivering material advantages to its rulers. Such a society, like today's corporate ruled America, can properly be called "oligarchy".
: One size doesn't fit all, now does it?
SDF: As Chomsky has repeatedly argued, we now have a society that grants socialism to the rich, and "laissez-faire" to the poor. Which of these societies do YOU want to be part of?
