Communism

  • Thread starter Thread starter 00Sherman
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
0

00Sherman

Guest
The idea that man could live in harmony, working together in existence seems beautiful to me. I dont remember Jesus ever charging anyone for his care or service in the name of ‘free enterprise’ and profit motive.

I think the economic ideology is good, I do not wish to be the debt slave of men who have no more a right to happiness then me. A people who are satisfied with less are more human then those who fill there hearts with all the goods and services they can.
 
A problem with that is you are still giving to much power to someone higher up.

i do agree with you though. Have you ever tried just putting 10 ones in your wallet (or purse) and then go out? You will notice how much more conservative you are when you see only 10 ones
 
00Sherman said:
The idea that man could live in harmony, working together in existence seems beautiful to me. I dont remember Jesus ever charging anyone for his care or service in the name of ‘free enterprise’ and profit motive.
.
Click to expand...
For most of his life, Jesus worked as a carpenter, house builder and maybe as a stone mason.

Do you suppose Jesus worked for free?
 
00Sherman said:
The idea that man could live in harmony, working together in existence seems beautiful to me. I dont remember Jesus ever charging anyone for his care or service in the name of ‘free enterprise’ and profit motive.

I think the economic ideology is good, I do not wish to be the debt slave of men who have no more a right to happiness then me. A people who are satisfied with less are more human then those who fill there hearts with all the goods and services they can.
Click to expand...
The problem with Communism, is that it assumes that material property is the source of all evil. If a central government could get all properties and lend them to people, with no one able to accumulate more property than any other (because only the state can own property), and thus removing greed, envy, etc., then all would be happy.

Hmm…kinda bogey to me…Because material things are not the source of all evil, but the human heart, which can love properties, or ANYTHING, too much.
 
Some truths are relative to time.

To speak of communion today is not the same as speaking of communism 100 years ago.

One hundred years ago, or more, the Squitti’s were barons in Italy, part of the rulilng classes, the Nobility. There were two brothers and one brother became a communist. By todays standards one might see that as unimagineable, however back 100 years ago (and even today) the disparity between some people was overwhelming.

Communism, and reminds me of the two brothers of Cain and Able. Able was blessed by God with overwhelming ‘product’…however Cain became jealous of this, and killed him, rather than appreciate that at least his brother would be blessed enough to be able to share with him.

Communism, and its similarity to communion, contains within this ideology the belief of community, less than Capitalism, that it more selfish a perspective. The only problem is that one extreme or the other is a problem, as is it with any good thing, it can become bad.

Without getting into a great deal of details the analogy of life can be compared to an eagle who to fly uses both ‘right’ and ‘left’ wings working together to fly.
 
Monte_RCMS said:
For most of his life, Jesus worked as a carpenter, house builder and maybe as a stone mason.

Do you suppose Jesus worked for free?
Click to expand...
Christianity is like capitalism, where Christ turns five loaves and two fish, (production) to feed the crowds (communism) ?

Difference is that Christ, born in a stable, the king of paradox, died to himself and his people, as the leader of an ideology…much the same as Mother Teresa.

Problem is we put too much importance of words, and not on actions…there has to a ‘logical bridge’ between what we say and what we do…failing this we play the devil and half-truths…?

Key actions are benevolence, foregiveness, caring, sharing, and maybe even ‘dictating’ the truth…?

Modern culture puts too much value on artistic superstars, who give to themselves, and not concrete superstars who give to others ?
 
The only place where communism truly works and works well is in a monastery. The world will never become a monastery. 👍😃
 
caesarjbsquitti said:
Christianity is like capitalism, where Christ turns five loaves and two fish, (production) to feed the crowds (communism) ?

Difference is that Christ, born in a stable, the king of paradox, died to himself and his people, as the leader of an ideology…much the same as Mother Teresa.

Problem is we put too much importance of words, and not on actions…there has to a ‘logical bridge’ between what we say and what we do…failing this we play the devil and half-truths…?

Key actions are benevolence, foregiveness, caring, sharing, and maybe even ‘dictating’ the truth…?

Modern culture puts too much value on artistic superstars, who give to themselves, and not concrete superstars who give to others ?
Click to expand...
With Full Apologies to Jesus for any irreverence, but the Apostles and Disciples were very worried BECAUSE they didn’t have enough money to buy food for all those people.

So Jesus HAD to perform a miracle to produce the food for the crowd of many many thousands.

And in a sense it was like capitalism, because under capitalism, there is a huge groundswell of voluntary assistance to less fortunate neighbors.

And Jesus even defined the concept of neighborliness using as his example the parable of the Good Samaritan who used his own money to help the man waylaid and beaten by thugs.

Whereas, in Communism, the Communists will go to neighbor towns and seize whatever food they want without payment. Kind of what the Communists did in the Ukraine where in the 1930’s they starved to death around 10 million Ukrainian farmers.

So far, the Communists have murdered around 100 million innocent adults and many times that number of innocent babies through their policy of abortion.
 
Monte_RCMS said:
With Full Apologies to Jesus for any irreverence, but the Apostles and Disciples were very worried BECAUSE they didn’t have enough money to buy food for all those people.

So Jesus HAD to perform a miracle to produce the food for the crowd of many many thousands.

And in a sense it was like capitalism, because under capitalism, there is a huge groundswell of voluntary assistance to less fortunate neighbors.

And Jesus even defined the concept of neighborliness using as his example the parable of the Good Samaritan who used his own money to help the man waylaid and beaten by thugs.

Whereas, in Communism, the Communists will go to neighbor towns and seize whatever food they want without payment. Kind of what the Communists did in the Ukraine where in the 1930’s they starved to death around 10 million Ukrainian farmers.

So far, the Communists have murdered around 100 million innocent adults and many times that number of innocent babies through their policy of abortion.
Click to expand...
I might suggest any ‘ideology’ will work, as long as you have benevolent people who are unselfish, unmanipulative and generous, and morally upstanding…

Problem is anything can be corrupted…so it is and should not be about defending one particular ideology or another, merely the benevolence of it…

You can have a democracy, and it can be corrupted, you can have a monarchy and it can be corrupted, and you can have a communist society and it can be corrupted…

You can have a religion and there are those who will corrupt it…look at the some homosexuals and some heterosexuals attacking the Church…and some lesbians attacking women’s centers…and some hetoersexuals attacking the world…key word…SOME
 
00Sherman said:
The idea that man could live in harmony, working together in existence seems beautiful to me. I dont remember Jesus ever charging anyone for his care or service in the name of ‘free enterprise’ and profit motive.

I think the economic ideology is good, I do not wish to be the debt slave of men who have no more a right to happiness then me. A people who are satisfied with less are more human then those who fill there hearts with all the goods and services they can.
Click to expand...
Fear not! There is room in the Catholic Church for those who wish to share their goods with others. In fact this is exactly how the early church functioned: “The community of believers was of one heart and mind, and no one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they had everything in common. With great power the apostles bore witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great favor was accorded them all. There was no needy person among them, for those who owned property or houses would sell them, bring the proceeds of the sale, and put them at the feet of the apostles, and they were distributed to each according to need.” (Acts 4:32-35)

Even today, many Roman Catholics live by these principles. Consider the Franciscans, Missionaries of Charity, or Missionaries of the Poor.

The problem with modern communism is that it is naive. Communal living presupposes love, and “love is of God…Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love.” (1 Jn 4: 7b,8). You must build on the foundation of Christ.

Hope this helps.

-Ryan Vilbig
ryan.vilbig@gmail.com
 
Since this is Philosophy, I should say that the real issue is not about sharing or about how property is divided up. Especially since Communists never actually do it the way they say they believe in doing it.

The real issues are about moral authority and moral agency. Kant rejected all talk of God as the supreme moral authority and every all talk about the transcendent. Skeptically, he said we can’t know or agree about those things so let’s just rule them out of the discussion. Then he said that man had to be morally “autonomous”… an auto-nomos is a self-law in Greek. In other words, instead of God being the author of morality, for Kant man is the author. That’s a huge difference.

Kantian man being a law unto himself, Kant thought we would agree on the basis of our shared nature of reason and be able to come up with universally-applicable laws. But that never materialized (actually Kant doomed his own project by throwing out a bunch of stuff he simply didn’t understand). Instead, Hegel comes along and speaks in terms of historical evolution, the Spirit of history coming to full fruition as it evolves the highest men living in the highest society. As a Prussian, Hegel was both an idealist and something of a warmonger. So this very ideal, almost mystical talk, is couched in terms of warfare: that’s the motor that drives historical evolution. So the Hegelian sees the conquering state as the highest state. You think that Prussian aristocracy is the highest form of government until Napoleon comes along and blows it to smithereens, then you think the highest form is the French Republic, etc.

The thing is, for Hegel all these interactions are to be understood as contradictory elements banging into each other; the two contradictory elements are understood under a larger category that unfolds in their contradiction. The individual man in this scheme is not the one who is morally autonomous… he is merely one of the contradictory elements. The thing that stands over all the men with their contradictions is the state. So the Kantian morally autonmous subject is no longer the individual, but the state.

Feuerbach the materialist comes along and strips all the idealist spirit talk out of Hegel and finds that it still hangs together. So now we have a materialist Hegelianism. Then Marx comes along and replaces the state with the social class: history is not really a battle of mere states, but of the class interests that animate those states. And reasoning is merely a product of the society in which man lives and works, so our thoughts are actually conditioned by material relations of production. See how thoroughly materialist that is? Our thoughts and ideas don’t come from a realm of reasoning, but are merely caused in us by blind material forces.

So now the state is not the morally autonomous force really, but the social class that controls the state. For Marx the most progressive class is the industrial proletariat. So they are supposed to use the state to kill off everybody else or destroy all their class interests and also the possibility of un-proletarian thought.

None of this really has that much to do with who gets what property. That’s all just puffery in the sales pitch. What is really at stake is whether people should even be allowed to believe in God, or whether it is acceptable to acknowledge that there is such a thing as morality. If you believe in God or you think there is such a thing as good or evil (objective morality) then you are a bitter enemy of Communism.

Communism in the West has a cultural aspect drawing on Gramsci, Lukacs, and Marcuse. The idea is that there have been few Western revolutions because of the thoroughly Christian nature of the culture. So Christianity has to be torn down in the West to make it ready for the Socialist project.
 
So far people are arguing against Communism as it has been so far implemented. However, in all actuality, none of these are the sole form. Communism doesn’t require a dictatorship or authoritative rule, and in fact, is probably as far from that.

I believe Communism could best be implemented within the political frame of a city-state, a relatively small, autonomously ruled collective of people. The main reason Catholicism has opposed Communism in on the grounds of its evident shapes. However, small neighborhood groups of individuals often function by Communist guidelines, and there’s no reason why it couldn’t work on a larger scale.

As for material goods being restricted and the link to sin…Communism was more about giving people what they needed, and them giving what they can. This is much like the weekly donation at church. Material goods don’t make one evil, but an overabundance can lead into decadence.
 
00Sherman said:
The idea that man could live in harmony, working together in existence seems beautiful to me. I dont remember Jesus ever charging anyone for his care or service in the name of ‘free enterprise’ and profit motive.

I think the economic ideology is good, I do not wish to be the debt slave of men who have no more a right to happiness then me. A people who are satisfied with less are more human then those who fill there hearts with all the goods and services they can.
Click to expand...
I remember my old Protestant pastor, a conservative if there ever was one, and who was normally scathing about the way Communists treated people and particularly Christians (he had nothing but contempt for Stalin), commenting to me in his office that he thought Marxist economics was God’s idea.

He quoted, “From every man according to ability; to every man according to need”. He then went on to remark “It’s got an almost Biblical ring about it.”

However he felt the devil saw it coming and got hold of it first. The rest is history. He then said, “You’d never get the church to support it now.”

This impinges on a comment on another thread that “God’s will is always done overall.” Personally I don’t think it is. And as far as I’m concerned, this was one example where God wanted to give everybody a fair go, but the devil, using his own human agents, got in first. He wrecked it. And this wouldn’t be the first time either, on either an ideological or personal basis.

What we’ve got now of course is an ever increasing divide between rich and poor, both in terms of personal and national wealth. And the rich will continue to justify it. We’re in for two major battles as far as I can see - Islam and the West, and the rich versus the poor.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top