Can we stop arguing and support each other?

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Duke12VonFalkenburg said:
“The Church doesn’t present a program for the best economic system, but rather moral principles applicable to how we should organize our economic lives. Broadly speaking, because the Church affirms the right to private property and to profit-making businesses, it can be said to support some form of market economy (Centesimus Annus 34–35).
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And yet Catholic social teaching does two things: it shows us what is incompatible with Catholic moral teaching (of which it is a category); two, it shows us what is allowable. As is socialization of some means of production. And since the Church has repeatedly promoted state power (I can cite encyclicals and more to this effect), the libertarian minarchist state is inherently not compatible with the Church’s teaching.

I can also cite section after section of Quadragesimo Anno, perhaps the most comprehensive social encyclical to date, showing a completely moral system that is far from what the American right desires.
 
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Duke12VonFalkenburg said:
Yeah. I feel like it’s become a fad these days for professors and teachers to say that Marxism deserves a second chance.
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They’re just jealous they can’t be hippie radicals like the ones I knew when I was in university in the 70s. Especially with recreational pot now legal here, there’s not much left to make them feel like rebels.

The secretary of the biochemistry department and her prof husband were Marxists. Almost in a caricature way. Drove a big ol’ Plymouth Fury ex-cop car painted flat black, even the hubcaps. I guess it looked more proletarian that way, ah those were the days with the “make the rich pay” protests on campus…

My oldest son also went to my alma mater. When I went to his grad the whole place just seemed so… b o u r g e o i s since I was there 44 years ago… 🤣
 
I’m surprised anybody these days is interested in Marxism. The failure, misery, and tyranny of all societies that attempted to implement Karl Marx’s ideas should convince people that Marxism belongs in the garbage heap of history.
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On the contrary, Marxism has been proven in doctrine and communism only needs to be realised in practice.
 
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Marxism’s ultimate failing is that the world’s current superpowers are opposed to it, so any attempt at pursuing a Marxist economy results in a whole lot of your people being killed by or with the support of the US, UK, etc. I pray for the souls of the millions of victims of the Jarkarta method.
 
Regular_Atheist said:
On the contrary, Marxism has been proven in doctrine and communism only needs to be realised in practice.
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I’ve heard it said that the closest to perfect implementation of communism is a Benedictine monastery, from benevolent dictator down to sharing all goods and means of production.

Presumably applies to both flavours of Cistercians as well 😉
 
Balto1 said:
Marxism’s ultimate failing is that the world’s current superpowers are opposed to it, so any attempt at pursuing a Marxist economy results in a whole lot of your people being killed by or with the support of the US, UK, etc. I pray for the souls of the millions of victims of the Jarkarta method.
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Don’t forget to pray for the souls of the dead of India, whose numbers far exceeded the Great Leap Forward famine but because it was part of the capitalist system was never heavily publicised.
[Amartya Sen] observes that India and China had “similarities that were quite striking” when development planning began 50 years ago, including death rates. “But there is little doubt that as far as morbidity, mortality and longevity are concerned, China has a large and decisive lead over India” (in education and other social indicators as well). He estimates the excess of mortality in India over China to be close to 4 million a year: “India seems to manage to fill its cupboard with more skeletons every eight years than China put there in its years of shame,” 1958-1961 (Dreze and Sen).
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http://www.spectrezine.org/global/chomsky.html
 
StudentMI said:
Don’t forget to pray for the souls of the dead of India, whose numbers far exceeded the Great Leap Forward famine but because it was part of the capitalist system was never heavily publicised.
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A graph of life expectancy in India vs. China over the 20th century is striking.
 
I wouldn’t say that Marxism or even communism are economic or political systems. Marx developed a critique of capitalism, he didn’t devise a blueprint for the perfect economic or political system. The possibility for communism is latent within capitalist social relations themselves, and it would develop out of these social relations. There is nothing to “implement” or “try”, only something to sublate. Popular anti-communism doesn’t really engage with it on its own terrain, and because of this is neither able to argue against Marx or explain why things occurred as they did in all of the “socialist countries.”

Of course this is wildly off topic, but I couldn’t resist saying something at the mention of the failure of communism.
 
Regular_Atheist said:
The possibility for communism is latent within capitalist social relations themselves, and it would develop out of these social relations.
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I read a pamphlet by Kevin Carson recently entitled The Free Market as Full Communism. Was interesting.
 
Balto1 said:
Marxism’s ultimate failing is that the world’s current superpowers are opposed to it
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LMAO this is the exact same excuse Dictator Maduro of Venezuela says is to blame for The dystopian hellscape that is his country. 😆

What a joke.
 
Duke12VonFalkenburg said:
LMAO this is the exact same excuse Dictator Maduro of Venezuela says is to blame for The dystopian hellscape that is his country. 😆

What a joke.
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I do wonder why, if socialism is bound to fail, we don’t just let such a country try it and fail miserably. Instead we sanction and isolate and worse.
 
StudentMI said:
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Duke12VonFalkenburg:
LMAO this is the exact same excuse Dictator Maduro of Venezuela says is to blame for The dystopian hellscape that is his country. 😆
What a joke.
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I do wonder why, if socialism is bound to fail, we don’t just let such a country try it and fail miserably. Instead we sanction and isolate and worse.
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It’s faster. It’s more merciful to encourage someone to rip the band-aid off real fast. Than to let them just peel it off painfully and slowly.

Seriously though do you really think that Venezuela’s woes have nothing to to do with the political-economic philosophies of Maduro and Hugo Chavez?
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Duke12VonFalkenburg said:
It’s faster. It’s more merciful to encourage someone to rip the band-aid off real fast. Than to let them just peel it off painfully and slowly.

Seriously though do you really think that Venezuela’s woes have nothing to to do with the political-economic philosophies of Maduro and Hugo Chavez?
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It’s more merciful to sabotage and assassinate and use death squads and encourage genocide in some cases?
 
Yes true as well. Since the late 80s Christians that have stood for sanctity of human life and traditional values have been demonized and it’s only getting worse. I was in high school in 1973 and I remember few Protestant denominations said much at all when Roe V Wade was decided. The Catholic Church did have a pro life movement with a few Protestants. It has grown which is good.
 
StudentMI said:
It’s more merciful to sabotage and assassinate and use death squads and encourage genocide in some cases?
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(Straw Man) I didn’t say that. I was referring to the sanctions and isolation that you mentioned. Lol

You didn’t answer my question.
Duke12VonFalkenburg said:
Seriously though do you really think that Venezuela’s woes have nothing to to do with the political-economic philosophies of Maduro and Hugo Chavez?
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It’s a straw man to mention the ‘merciful’ actions we take?

I’ll answer your question when you address what I wrote about Catholic social teaching allowing for socialization of some means of production, implying the right of the state to tax and for the state to exist, and that the minarchist night watchman state is incompatible with Catholic social teaching, and I’m still willing to share portions of Quadragesimo Anno that would make the American right cry ‘socialism!’
 
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StudentMI said:
I do wonder why, if socialism is bound to fail, we don’t just let such a country try it and fail miserably.
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Which is pretty much what happened when Russia became the USSR, since we were otherwise occupied?

Perhaps the desire to spread communism by taking over neighboring nations has something to do with non-communist nations not wanting a communist neighbor…
 
Or how Christians and conservatives get portrayed in the media.

Up through the 80s, Christians and conservatives were portrayed as stuffy but basically decent.

When our first openly pro abortion president (Bill Clinton) was in power, more and more portrayals of Christians as mean and conservatives as fascists were seen in books, movies and TV

The point being, folks get tired of being attacked after a while.
 
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