(Part 3) Best products from r/DebateaCommunist

Good lord, man.

There are histories of Russia from 1890-1980 all over the place and they broadly agree.

I'd recommend A People's Tragedy for a well-told history with solid historical foundations. One with more heft is Pipes' The Russian Revolution. Also, Court of the Red Tsar is a must-read on Stalin.

I read the whole volumes raw for the first time, then read them again with David Harvey's A Companion to Marx's Capital. Capital can be read easily by some people and harder by others, there's nothing really wrong with going on the internet/reading alternative guides if you can't understand the material.

he's a christian scholar who studied marxism in depth but ultimately rejected it in favor of MLK's legacy (gross paraphrasing on my part here).

but this book is very interesting for insight on this perspective:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Ethical-Dimensions-Marxist-Thought/dp/0853458189

One of Marx's points was that new social orders emerge out of the existing contradictions in old ones. I know many Marxists who do the kind of soft / reform work I described.

Being neither a rich man nor a politician, I don't have a lot of individual power. Neither does the rest of the working class. While campaigning for reforms that give the class more power, we can organise institutions like trade unions and tenant management cooperatives - organisations that give the class more power by connecting people in struggle.

If you look at the French and Russian revolutions it is very clear that any revolution would immediately face invasion by all the major capitalist powers. So any communist revolution would have to be carried out by continent-scale trade unions I think.

This was a possibility before WW1. You should read this book if you would like some vivid accounts of past revolutionary situations: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Live-Working-Die-Fighting-Global/dp/0436206153

I think that we have to be able to imagine a reform path, or we have nothing to fight for most of the time. "Smash the state!" is a nice slogan but it's not a campaign :)

> That’s true but I’d hope there is a stronger argument than “this might be different.”
>

The majority of people are suffering horribly from capitalism. Is that strong enough for you? I don't think you can handwave that as god's will when god is a myth.


>The internet is not that different than other forms of communication.

Wow. You are extremely unaware.


>I’m here and I’m a Christian

You can change. Many have. Read this book and learn the history on how your christianity has been perverted.


> your system depends on controlling people

No, that's christianity.

Explain to me how capitalism follows Christ. Not christianity. Christ.


>But if your best argument can only be understood by people who are not Christian

You can be christian, but you can't accept oppression because your hierarchy told you to.

Obviously you can. You just need enough determination and a state that to some extent becomes irrelevant. See for example La commune de Paris in 1871 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Commune).

PS: I haven't read the English article but don't buy the "marxist" thesis. Technically, the marxists were democrats (in American parlance). If this really interests you, read the Mémoires by Louise Michel who was one of the proponent (http://www.amazon.com/Red-Virgin-Memoirs-Louise-Michel/dp/0817300635/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1330895214&sr=1-1).

Occupy Wall Street was largely made up of upper-middle class 18-30 year olds, and OWS quickly alienated labor unions like SEIU and UniteHERE from its movement. To read a good analysis of OWS with different perspectives, check out The Occupy Handbook. OWS did serve a purpose in that it added class antagonism language to the vernacular of pop-politics, but it was a terrible example of community and/or worker organizing. OWS lacked any sort of structure or method that could lead to sustainable organizing, and because of that we saw no meaningful political change emerge from OWS.

>The main problem I believe, is that instead of the left actually organizing and doing something about the issue, like occupy wall street, all they do is just blame everything on the republicans (for a understandable reason).

OWS lacked organization and effectively did nothing. Labor organizing has historically been the main facet of left-organizing in the US, and since the mid-1970's, capital has organized a deliberate effort to create the decline of organized labor within the US. By doing so, there has been no strong opposing political force to prevent organized capital from enacting neo-liberal economic policies favoring capitalists and further alienating everyone else in that time. Organized capital has historically supported the GOP, and organized labor has historically supported the Democrats. So you can see why people may blame republicans. But, organized capital has organized so effectively that even democrats are organized by capital now, as organized labor does not have enough power to prop up the democrats as it once did.

I do think this tide is changing, though. OWS is, at the very least, a manifestation of the changing culture that recognizes and is agitated by class antagonism.

Left organizing in the US has grown slowly over the past four decades. A friend, coworker, and fellow labor organizer once told me that in the US, progressive organizing goes painfully slow...until it doesn't.

Here is a book on the subject by famous analytical Marxist G.A. Cohen

Here is the mobile version of your link

http://www.amazon.com/The-Little-Book-Suicide-Yourself/dp/0954856724

There's a lot of reasons why people choose the majors they do. Certainly science majors are more difficult than those in the humanities. So, speculatively that might be one reason... that's part of the reason that's stated in the media. I do know another reason is that science is devalued; nobody likes a "nerd" and so some people avoid science for this reason.

http://www.amazon.com/Nerds-They-Need-More-Them/dp/1585425907

Yes it really was. Basic consumtion barly grow. Hunderts of millions of people either starved (all because of the weath of course) and tousends of people where murdered.

Many of the people not murdered were forced to work, as in work that much or you get shoot in the head.

All the talk about growth of the USSR is kind of missing the point. Talking money from one place and investing it somewhere will get you whatever your want but that is not really growth. Dont belive people who site something like GDP numbers, you cant measure GDP in the USSR in any reasonable way. They tried doing it by look what goes into the system and then compare it to other countrys. If you produce 50'000 tons of steel but it does not go where it should you dont really dont get the same thing as if the US (for example) prudeces 50'000 tons of steel.

Also most of the fun stuff they had, including books, TV, radio and such where all basiclly stolen or pirated.

The USSR was a disaster in economic and social freedom.

• http://whynationsfail.com/blog/2012/8/9/was-central-planning-really-inefficient.html
  
• http://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Origins-Prosperity/dp/0307719219/
  
• http://www.amazon.com/The-Political-Economy-Soviet-Socialism/dp/0792391004
  
• Some of the essays in this: Calculation and Coordination: Essays on Socialism and Transitional Political Economy
  

I would read Gramsci. Gramsci recommends a very slow revolution which is centered on a changing of ideological hegemonies whithin society. So, if Capitalism is a hegemonic ideology, you must use propaganda, protest, strike, education, etc. to at least undermine capitalism to a significant point or to the point where socialism/communism replace capitalism as ideologically hegemonic. Gramsci realized that you need the majority of the population on your side, likely a vast majority, for the radical change of society to be able to taken place democratically.

You can get some of his best work here: http://www.amazon.com/Selections-Prison-Notebooks-Antonio-Gramsci/dp/071780397X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1334741766&sr=8-1 or maybe a local or university library nearby will have it(but I doubt it).

No. It's actually a little pro-Stalin. It goes through the party makeup and failures that happened. It's essentially a communists point of view of why it happened.
http://www.amazon.com/Socialism-Betrayed-Behind-Collapse-Soviet/dp/071780738X

Communist societies do not deal with crime because there are no communist societies. You made up a scenario about a crime than was never committed in a society that never existed. This is why you are getting opinions instead of answers (I am not claiming that your question is not good, I am just explaining why you are getting the answers you get.)

I will try to answer as broadly as possible.

>I think the people who advocate for communism focus too much on the economic principles and dont question this idea of a stateless society.

That is because not having a state has not much to do with how we deal with crime. I will explain in a bit...

>...how do we try the said rapist...

With whatever trial society has decided upon. Trials (and laws) do not need a state to exist. The Xeer system is an example of that.

>...what would be the repercussions...

Whatever repercussions society has decided upon. Either set by law or decided by popular opinion/jury/juror.

>...who would decide statute of limitations...

Society. Either by law, popular opinion etc. You get the gist. I am going to skip a few...

>...who gets to decide who can or cant be a judge.

Society. Is there any reason to believe that a society can not decide on those things, voluntarily and democratically without a state? The difference would be that judges can not hold political power in a stateless society like they do now.

>What about conflicts of interest. what about sentencing guidelines, what about bail?

What about them? Conflicts of interest exist today. Sentencing guidelines and bail will be decided by society.

>Is he held until trial or not held until convicted, what about speed of trial.

Society decides about those things.

>I dont think this society that you guys envision without a state can actually work and deal with all these intricacies.

Why not? You have provided zero arguments about that. I should remind you that this sub is called DebateACommunist and not AskACommunist. It is not a debate if you do not present any arguments.

Edit: For a more in-depth analysis I recommend this book: http://www.amazon.de/Anarchy-Legal-Order-Politics-Stateless/dp/1107032288

>No one can have perfect information, even if they did I that would be a violation of that persons liberty as a person owns themselves and their ideas and if someone steals their ideas they are just a petty thief.

I'm a thief of ideas if I'm allowed to know if my shirt was produced inhumane conditions? Transparency is a bad thing?

>It is your individual responsibility to do your own research so you can make an informed purchase, would you want someone voting randomly in elections?

This is impossible, precisely for the reasons you said above - transparency is not good for companies, and it's not possible for me to know. It's comparable to knowing the ingredients of a typical processed food. Do you know how a single Twinkie comes to be? The idea that you can understand the process behind each part of a complex good without extensive research is ridiculous.

>Markets are the only democracies that work

Capitalism reduces our human species-relations to mere money. Direct communication and democracy in all aspects of life is far more effective then the diluted democracy is have in the state or economy now.