Western meddling in Russia 1918 intervention

@no1marauder



People willingly work hard for little or no financial return all the time; they are called "volunteers".

Hardly "all the time." Only some people and only occasionally. Show me an entire economy run only by volunteers all the time, and I'll show you Eden.


And capitalism forces you to work as much as any State "socialist" scheme does though it does so by threat of death by starvation rather than State force (usually).

Nonsense. By that logic, even aborigines in the Outback are forced to dig roots or starve. If you don't like it, you are free to go. No need for an exit visa (as in the USSR, China, N. Korea) or a male guardian's permission (Iran, Saudi Arabia). Furthermore, you are free to choose your profession or become self-employed in a capitalist system. This is not so in planned economies such as the USSR or the GDR -- the state decides how many doctors and car mechanics there should be; anyone who bucked the system was systematically discriminated against in the USSR and the GDR, or they landed in gulags.

@shavixmir said
What makes you think it’s little return?
It’s a collective return, but it’s not little.

@moonbus said
This is the shoal on which Marxism is wrecked. It fundamentally misapprehends human motivation. Of course some people can be induced to work for the collective good some of the time, even when they do not see any direct and immediate personal benefit. They grumble, but they do it, some of the time. But you cannot get most of the people to do that most of time and run a whole ...[text shortened]... ' educations through taxes -- what benefit does HE get out of that? None, as far as he is concerned.

@no1marauder said
Humans existed in small, cooperative groups for the vast majority of their time on Earth. Claiming "human nature" is so inherently selfish as to render collectivist systems impossible is propaganda you and I have been spoon fed since birth, but it's still BS.

@no1marauder said
Humans existed in small, cooperative groups for the vast majority of their time on Earth. Claiming "human nature" is so inherently selfish as to render collectivist systems impossible is propaganda you and I have been spoon fed since birth, but it's still BS.

@jj-adams said
Who do you think was the Big Boss calling the shots in these "small cooperative groups"?
It was the biggest strongest meanest most bad ass leader of the group, Big Mighty Og, who kept all the women for himself and all the best food and everything else that was brought into camp.
They lived in fear of their leader, so yeah, I guess you are right, it was just like communism under Stalin or Pol Pot or Mao or whatever else you want to compare communism to.

@moonbus said
I agree that people should read what Marx actually wrote before criticizing Marxism. “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” Which means that what you get bears no relationship to how hard or how well you work. “The state will wither away,” Clever in theory, but show me one example of a Marxist state which actually withered away, to be replaced by ...[text shortened]... in gulags. Stupidly naive in theory, economically unworkable and politically oppressive in practice.

@moonbus said
This is the shoal on which Marxism is wrecked. It fundamentally misapprehends human motivation. Of course some people can be induced to work for the collective good some of the time, even when they do not see any direct and immediate personal benefit. They grumble, but they do it, some of the time. But you cannot get most of the people to do that most of time and run a whole ...[text shortened]... ' educations through taxes -- what benefit does HE get out of that? None, as far as he is concerned.