1. I was actually referring to this dumb thing
>Have you ever heard of the proverb 'power corrupts'? Well there is another one saying that absolute power corrupts absolutely.
There is no real way to prove that, or at least I've never seen anyone present evidence for it so in my opinion its really not worth engaging or parroting about.
2. So first I'd like to apologize for calling you a 'fucking moron' although tbf what you did say was rather moronic.
The point is while the government is divided, it really doesn't matter because the bourgeoisie still control everything. it doesn't matter if you vote in 'candidate a' or 'candidate b' because they will both be bourgeoisie and will protect reactionary institutions and reactionary philosophy. Trias Politica is a bourgeois phenomena created as the bourgeoisie became more and more tired of feudal rule. What I'm saying is, it's ultimately an outdated and flawed concept and we should resolutely and thoroughly expose these hypocrisies like 'political freedom', 'separation of powers', and 'democracy' for the frauds they are.
>Also the fact that every citizen can enlist or even make their own party, and every citizen is able to vote that said citizen in, means there is no dictatorship whatsoever
We can easily dispel this as false both historically and theoretically. The fact that anyone can make their own political party or join a party is just a facade. Political freedom and democracy is something that simply does not exist in class society.
I'd like to start my evidence historically because it's just easier. If there really is political freedom in our bourgeois democracy, then how do you explain [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12]
I know all these links are American examples of the usage of the State to secure and protect bourgeois rule, but it's just because it's convenient to use America as an example, plus I'm sure we're both Americans (I am American). But ultimately any society or country in history is the same because class and society have always been hand in hand -- basically when class exists in society, the upper class will always use authoritarian means to secure and protect their institutions and philosophy. A society that does not, does not last long, because if there's no way to prevent revolution, then revolution will occur. That is why we say all government is dictatorship. To be a capitalist or a socialist, respectively, is to be in support of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie or the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Here is a quote by Friedrich Engels which is relevant and dispels your bourgeois lies and fiction:
"Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists. Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if it had not made use of this authority of the armed people against the bourgeois? Should we not, on the contrary, reproach it for not having used it freely enough?" On Authority
Also it's funny how you say separation of powers means everyone is more free or whatever. "The bourgeoisie ... lets him have the appearance of acting from a free choice, of making a contract with free, unconstrained consent, as a responsible agent who has attained his majority. Fine freedom, where the proletarian has no other choice than that of either accepting the conditions which the bourgeoisie offers him, or of starving, of freezing to death, of sleeping naked among the beasts of the forests!" Another Engels quote.
3. (Note: sorry if the following doesn't flow all that seamlessly, I wrote most of it for a debate I had a long time ago, but it also applies here.)
We live in a class based society, and like any other class based society, there will always have to be a slave, serf, peon, proletariat, or otherwise lower class for the society to function. Society cannot function if everyone owns the means of production now can it? Therefore it doesn't really matter that 'there's a lot of class mobility' in our society. Even if it were true it ignores the reality that there will always have to be a lower class for the society to function.
In essence, the reason why not everyone is going to get to become a bourgeoisie or otherwise live a good life is because A) we don't live in pure meritocracy, so not everyone is going to be able to get success from hard work and B) our capitalist mode of production would not be able to function if everyone was one class.
The reactionary counter argument would be, I guess, 'well maybe if these lazy moochers worked hard enough they'd become the next President or the next CEO of Wal Mart!' but I reject this because to say that 30% - 35% (the amount of working class in America) of the population, millions of people mind you, are just lazy and this is the reason why they're not living upper class lives is absurd in my opinion. This also ignores the very real systems of exploitation and oppression and the many obstacles present in a class society to prevent class mobility. If you want, I can elaborate on some of these obstacles. But generally these obstacles include the problem of wage theft and surplus value, the fact that capitalism is shit at resource distribution as it places profit and property rights over human lives, and of course oppression from the State in the form of the police, military, NSA, CIA, FBI, and all the other organs which work to protect the bourgeoisie, bourgeois democracy, and bourgeois freedom, and keep the working class oppressed, crushed, and inarticulate. Not to mention again this does not address the fact that capitalism could not function if everyone was a bourgeoisie.
It is therefore my belief that this 'bootstraps argument' ('if only you'd pull yourself up by your own bootstraps you could have success') is one that is quite flawed because it is not true to the reality of our society, and instead is more representative of an idealist meritocratic society as seen through the lenses of privileged people who don't have to work as hard as disenfranchised or poor people in order to achieve the same success. In essence, I'm sure it's easy for a privileged person to say, 'why not just pull yourself up by your own bootstraps you lazy moocher, if only you worked hard enough you could be the President' But this viewpoint is simply a bullshit idealist one, again, not true to our society, only parroted by people benefiting from the capitalist mode of production.
Ultimately our society is not one based on meritocracy. More often than not, success is based on luck and privilege rather than genuine hard work. You have to be lucky enough to be born with good genetics to a good family with good wealth in a good environment with good opportunities, good education, good people, good government, good infrastructure, and so on. And if you're not, well have fun struggling your entire life. I'm fairly confident that a child slave in Africa mining for the materials used to create iPhones works far more harder than his boss. I'm also confident that a sweatshop worker creating clothing for Nike works far more harder than his boss. Yet as we see, the amount of work one puts in is quite disproportionate to the amount of success one achieves.
To clarify, I do not believe that you cannot become successful through hard work. There are many examples of rags-to-rich stories wherein people are able to ascend to the next class based on their own hard work. However, I think that, especially for people who aren't meant to be, there are quite many obstacles inherent in capitalist societies that keep lower class people from transitioning to higher classes and thus better lives. I don't see how this reactionary argument you're positing to me solves this issue. If anything it just completely ignores the fact that not everyone is going to get to live good lives through hard work. Furthermore, in order to become successful in capitalist society (ie, in order to become a bourgeoisie) there is a certain point where you have to begin exploiting others. Let's say someone starts a business with the hope that it one day becomes a powerful company, the essence of the American Dream. Well as the company expands and grows, the founder will eventually begin hiring more workers, and acquiring more means of production. The capitalist will acquire the surplus value the workers generate to create profit. Of course, this is theft and exploitation. But the capitalist cannot ignore this or try to side step it, otherwise he will not generate profit and will not be able to become bourgeoisie. Therefore, in order to become higher class, you HAVE to exploit others.
This is why I say 1) There isn't a lot of class mobility in our society and 2) It doesn't matter if we did have it in the first place.
4. Class consciousness is when workers realize that capitalism doesn't benefit their class interests and instead their real interests lie in banding together in the pursuit of socialism and communism.
Imagine you own a hungry dog. The hungry dog wants meat but its owner, you, doesn't want to give it meat. Every day, the dog continues to this realization that you will not give it meat and therefore it should revolt against you, the master, and forcefully get the subsistence it requires. The dog begins collaborating with another dog from across the street, and this other dog is much more intellectual and studied and begins strengthening and consolidating the dog's revolutionary fervor with a solid theoretical backing. You the owner realize the dog is beginning to foment mutinous thoughts so you begin to feed it doggie treats and biscuits in order to quell its revolutionary activities and thoughts.The dog is satisfied for the mean time and forgets its oppression and exploitation. Meanwhile the biscuits don't actually solve the dog's core problem -- which is it is hungry for something that will actually subsist it. That is essentially social democracy.
Social democracy does not solve the main contradictions of capitalism. Social democracy does not solve the problem of market distribution, it does not solve wage slavery and wage theft, it does not solve the problems of surplus value. It does not solve imperialism, exploitation, and oppression. It just offers nice little treats and biscuits that are ultimately facades. Therefore communists and rational people thoroughly and resolutely reject it.
Now imagine a different scenario. You own a hungry dog, and the dog is growing more and more revolutionary. But this time you decide upon a different solution -- you consolidate and strengthen your power and mastery over the dog, you abuse and beat the dog, and keep it one corner of the room, and tape its mouth and eyes and ears shut, and starve it even more. That is basically fascism.
In both cases, fascism and social democracy are used to quell the revolutionary spirit. That is the relationship between the two -- when the capitalists realize that a revolutionary movement is fomenting they realize they must do something about it and both social democracy and fascism are two ways by which Porky can accomplish this.
5. >I guess we don't have it so bad right now after all.
Sure but exploitation, oppression, imperialism, and the rest of the contradictions of capitalism which Marxism exposes to us still exist and have not been solved yet. And the only way to solve them is embracing revolution and socialism.
8. My bad i thought you meant humanity is inherently evil or something stupid and unscientific like that, rather than just being imperfect in general.
9. The State and Revolution is a must read for you.
Here is a Lenin quote which I think would tie this up nicely:
Down with this contemptible fraud! There cannot be, nor is there nor will there ever be "equality" between the oppressed and the oppressors, between the exploited and the exploiters. There cannot be, nor is there nor will there ever be real "freedom" as long as there is no freedom for women from the privileges which the law grants to men, as long as there is no freedom for the workers from the yoke of capital, and no freedom for the toiling peasants from the yoke of the capitalists, landlords and merchants.
Let the liars and hypocrites, the dull-witted and blind, the bourgeois and their supporters hoodwink the people with talk about freedom in general, about equality in general, about democracy in general.
We say to the workers and peasants: Tear the masks from the faces of these liars, open the eyes of these blind ones. Ask them:
“Equality between what sex and what other sex?
“Between what nation and what other nation?
“Between what class and what other class?
“Freedom from what yoke, or from the yoke of what class? Freedom for what class?”
Whoever speaks of politics, of democracy, of liberty, of equality, of socialism, and does not at the same time ask these questions, does not put them in the foreground, does not fight against concealing, hushing up and glossing over these questions, is one of the worst enemies of the toilers, is a wolf in sheep's clothing, is a bitter opponent of the workers and peasants, is a servant of the landlords, tsars, capitalists.
In the course of two years Soviet power in one of the most backward countries of Europe did more to emancipate women and to make their status equal to that of the "strong" sex than all the advanced, enlightened, "democratic" republics of the world did in the course of 130 years.
Enlightenment, culture, civilisation, liberty--in all capitalist, bourgeois republics of the world all these fine words are combined with extremely infamous, disgustingly filthy and brutally coarse laws in which woman is treated as an inferior being, laws dealing with marriage rights and divorce, with the inferior status of a child born out of wedlock as compared with that of a "legitimate" child, laws granting privileges to men, laws that are humiliating and insulting to women.
The yoke of capital, the tyranny of "sacred private property", the despotism of philistine stupidity, the greed of petty proprietors --these are the things that prevented the most democratic bourgeois republics from infringing upon those filthy and infamous laws.
The Soviet Republic, the republic of workers and peasants, promptly wiped out these laws and left not a stone in the structure of bourgeois fraud and bourgeois hypocrisy.
Down with this fraud! Down with the liars who are talking of freedom and equality for all, while there is an oppressed sex, while there are oppressor classes, while there is private ownership of capital, of shares, while there are the well-fed with their surplus of bread who keep the hungry in bondage. Not freedom for all, not equality for all, but a fight against the oppressors and exploiters, the abolition of every possibilityof oppression and exploitation-that is our slogan!
Freedom and equality for the oppressed sex!
Freedom and equality for the workers, for the toiling peasants!
A fight against the oppressors, a fight against the capitalists, a fight against the profiteering kulaks!
That is our fighting slogan, that is our proletarian truth, the truth of the struggle against capital, the truth which we flung in the face of the world of capital with its honeyed, hypocritical, pompous phrases about freedom and equality in general, about freedom and equality for all.
And for the very reason that we have torn down the mask of this hypocrisy, that we are introducing with revolutionary energy freedom and equality for the oppressed and for the toilers, against the oppressors, against the capitalists, against the kulaks--for this very reason the Soviet government has become so dear to the hearts of workers of the whole world.
It is for this very reason that, on the second anniversary of the Soviet power, the: sympathies of the masses of the workers, the sympathies of the oppressed and exploited in every country of the world, are with us.
It is for this very reason that, on this second anniversary of the Soviet power, despite hunger and cold, despite all our tribulations, which have been caused by the imperialists' invasion of the Russian Soviet Republic, we are full of firm faith in the justice of our cause, of firm Faith in the inevitable victory of Soviet power all over the world.
(Soviet Power and the Status of Women)