Psy-Fi

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OccultHawk

I’m not going to lie. Trump’s presidency has been a big boring anti-climax. I honestly thought something tremendous or even earth shattering was going to happen.

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Behold the Writing of THE LEGEND:

https://www.musicbanter.com/members-...p-lighter.html

DwnWthVwls

For anyone interested:

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Lucem Ferre

What exactly is Marxism?

I know that it's an ideology based on the relationship of economic structures and social evolution that highly criticizes capitalism for creating social hierarchies based on class.

But is there a better description I can be given or is this just too complicated of an ideology?

And why exactly is Marxism becoming a dirty word being fear mongered by the right? Is it because our society is starting to turn against the symptoms of capitalism's flaws and most politicians on the right directly benefit from that system or am I missing something?

Are the people on the left really as Marxist as people on the right try to scare us into thinking they are or are they just leaning on socialist ideas?

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MicShazam

First off, whenever a right winger says "Marxist", what they really mean is "stupid doo doo head that I don't like"

DwnWthVwls

Second off, they probably don't know what the word actually means.

I only know the basics, sorry homie.

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Anteater

Right-wingers don't like Marxism because they believe that attempts to implement it have killed more people than Capitalism, and also that it tends to fail at scale historically. So in that sense their fears are justified: income inequality as a consequence is better than nobody having anything at all. Doesn't mean such a system would never work, but that's the gist of it.

Secondly, all politicians (especially here in the West) benefit from capitalism. Bernie Sanders owns multiple homes and has a net worth way higher than the average person. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's father was a highly successful architect and she benefited greatly when she settled his estate after his death, plus she owned a publishing company for a few years before she ran for office. That's why their positions don't tend to gel well with the majority of independents who want the federal government to have less power in shaping people's lives rather than more.

As flawed as Capitalism can be, it has produced more success stories than not. There are plenty of untold stories out there of people who went to six-figure incomes or millionaires despite in a lot of cases coming from average or even low-income origins....a situation that would be impossible in any other economic system. And even if all you ever aspired to be was middle class, that's pretty feasible too: https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/t...-middle-class/

If someone wants to prove the benefits of a purely Marxist system, they need to go build a country above the pygmy village level and prove it works with populations that are comparable to the U.S.'s biggest cities.

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The Batlord

I mean you can always Wiki it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism

And Marxism has been a dirty word since it was conceived. At least two Supreme Court cases that set precedents for restricting free speech during WW1 involved socialists.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenc..._jurisprudence

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abrams_v._United_States

And then there's McCarthyism and the Red Scares after both World Wars. It's not that socialism is hated more now than before, it's that political polarization is reaching ever further heights and the insults must match.

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Lucem Ferre

That I knew, which is why I wonder why people are afraid of 'implementing Marxism'. From what I understand there is no direct or agreed upon idea on how to implement it. Who in history has ever tried to 'implement Marxism'? I know that socialism and communism have failed but were any socialists or commies who put that structure forward ever Marxists?


On an individual level, I disagree. I think the number of victims of Capitalism completely out weigh the success stories. It's just that people have this idea that one day they just might be rich so they just see themselves as success stories that just haven't reached success yet. Statistically speaking, success stories are all too rare. On a government level, I personally don't know a Capitalist system that has failed (I'm not really educated very well on those things) and I do know that Capitalism is what has made our country so powerful and an economic powerhouse. Yet, it also seems to be the biggest reason for our flaws and the highest potential cause for our downfall. It's what keeps greed flowing and has made a criminally large wealth gap. I don't think Capitalism as it is right now is sustainable. Challenging that is what often times gets people labeled as Marxists or Commies. I don't know if I'd qualify as a Marxist because my idea of how to evolve is to form a system of government that's more of a Frankenstein's monster that takes what works from multiple systems and sticks them together rather than moving to pure socialism or something like that. I'm not sure how, I'm not the person with enough knowledge to really flesh out that idea.

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MicShazam

I don't pretend to know what would work better, but it seems clear that capitalism is evil. Most of the wealth of the world is stashed away in the pockets of a small elite. The name of the game for capitalism is exploitation of the weak. A great system? I don't know about that.