Anarchism vs communism

[Revoltingest]

Finally!
This thread is moved from Commie Only to a forum I can post in.

(@Revoltingest calls himself a Libertarian but he is also an anarchist, he is as far right as the spectrum goes while I am on the other side but we both care for (personal) liberty.)

I am not an anarchist in the strict sense, ie, no government.
I'm a minarchist, which is about minimal government, ie, enuf to ensure
survival of the country & civil liberties. Libertarians aren't necessarily
anarchists, particularly the Libertarians with a capitalized "L", which
indicates Libertarian Party affiliation. In Ameristan, we support the
constitutional republic structure.

A.k.a. Antifa. We share the authoritarian right (fascists) as an enemy. The commies don't like them because they are on the right, we don't like them because they are authoritarian. But there is no common goal or at least no agreed upon way to reach it. Communists are inherently authoritarian (dictatorship of the working class), Anarchists are libertarian.

Anarchists seem to be of different types. Those I've seen identify as such
are typically not of the live & let live variety. It appears that they want to
impose restrictions upon others (typically businesses) more so than do liberals.

 

[Kenny]

Sorry but that is one terrible article and the example is absolutely rubbish if you ask me.

Lets see what some of the rich people themselves say:

It's not often you see someone stand up and say, "Tax me more!"

Yet that's just what famed investor Warren Buffett has done in an op-ed in the New York Times headlined, "Stop Coddling the Super-Rich." Buffett says that very wealthy people like himself pay lower tax rates than the middle class, thanks to special tax categories for investment income.

"While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks," he writes.

As an example, Buffett said he paid an effective tax rate of 17.4 percent, while people who worked in his office made much less but paid higher effective tax rates of between 33 percent and 41 percent, averaging 36 percent.

PolitiFact - Warren Buffett says the super-rich pay lower tax rates than others

From another article:
Billionaires paid 23% of their income in federal, state, and local taxes in 2018, according to an analysis of tax data by the University of California at Berkeley's Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman for their upcoming book "The Triumph of Injustice." The average American, meanwhile, paid 28%.

"The US tax system is a giant flat tax — except at the top, where it's regressive," Saez and Zucman wrote in "The Triumph of Injustice." "As a group, and although their individual situations are not all the same, the Trumps, the Zuckerbergs, and the Buffetts of this world pay lower taxes than the teachers and secretaries."

The wealth gap in America is widening, and even billionaires agree that the system that created their wealth is unsustainable

The top 1% of Americans own 40% of the country's wealth, Zucman wrote in a paper circulated by the National Bureau of Economic Research in February.

Several billionaires, including JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio, have said the current levels of inequality are unsustainable, Business Insider previously reported.

Income inequality is at the highest level ever recorded, the US Census Bureau said in September. Real median household income grew 0.8%, to $61,937, in 2018, the smallest increase in three years, according to the Census Bureau. The majority of the US economy's growth over the past decade has gone to the wealthy and the owners of financial instruments, Timothy Smeeding, a professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison who studies poverty and economic mobility, previously told Business Insider.

American billionaires paid less in taxes in 2018 than the working class, analysis shows — and it's another sign that one of the biggest problems in the US is only getting worse

Giving an absolutely rubbish story about 10 people going to dinner and having to split the bill is not really useful, when it doesn't even seem to reflect what some of the richest people in the world themselves say, when it comes to how taxes work. If that article you linked was true, why would Warren Buffett go out and say the things he did, he could simply have said nothing or just denied it, if it weren't true, but he didn't?

I decided to check into this a little deeper since, if the top is paying more that 1/2 of all taxes, it seemed a little odd.

Additionally, by experience and through my statistics class, I realize that reports are so subjective that you can make something say anything.

Quoting professors is a dime a dozen and since most professors are left leaning, highly probably that it is tainted.

Are US Billionaires Really Paying A Lower Tax Rate Than Working People? Probably Not.

If your answer to this site is "It's conservative and therefore wrong" - it becomes a fallacy as I am looking at content.

"“America's richest 400 families now pay a lower tax rate than the middle class” CBS News, Oct 9, 2019

But are the Berkeley profs right or is this just hype? The answer is by no means straightforward. It depends on what you are measuring and how you are doing it. And the choices Saez and Zucman have made were necessarily arbitrary and more than a little controversial."

So a very simple example would be the following:

"Thus, a worker with two children who received a refundable portion of their CTC of $2,800 (the maximum allowed) would look like they paid zero federal income tax when they really paid a negative tax."

So what data you use makes a big difference.

I disagree with your assessment.

 

[Tambourine]

Covetousness is a horrible thing.

Please tell me what's horrible about stating the plain truth.

Isn't it something that I live good somewhere between the lowest and the second lowest (since no figures are given) with extra to spare without being upset that the highest pay 51%+ of all the taxes?

Sorry, but could you please rephrase that sentence? I can't make sense of it.

I'm happy, put away extra for the later of my later years, good family and a good life.

Are you happy? Or are you too busy comparing yourself to other people?

If you were content with the way things are, then you wouldn't see a need to attack and insult others.

 

[Tambourine]

That is by design. It's called "Diktatur des Proletariats". It's meant to last until a class free society is accomplished (so, basically, forever).

Can you cite a source for that?
Literally every piece of Marxist literature I have read on the subject suggests that the Dictatorship of the Proletariat is a temporary and transitory state of affairs, and Marx always believed a classless society to be possible and attainable in principle.

 

[Heyo]

Can you cite a source for that?
Literally every piece of Marxist literature I have read on the subject suggests that the Dictatorship of the Proletariat is a temporary and transitory state of affairs, and Marx always believed a classless society to be possible and attainable in principle.

So we agree in most points. The revolution, the Dictatorship of the Proletariat by democratic centralism, and the idea that it should be transitionally. Only that the SU didn't leave the "transitional" state for 70 years.
Dictatorship of the proletariat - Wikipedia

 

[Kenny]

Please tell me what's horrible about stating the plain truth.


Sorry, but could you please rephrase that sentence? I can't make sense of it.

Let me rephrase....contentment has a great recompense.

More taxes has been the mantra for decades.... results - more debt.

Could it be that it isn't "more money" that is the problem but less spending?

 

[Tambourine]

Let me rephrase....contentment has a great recompense.

If you are content with the status quo, then why do you attack people who are not?

More taxes has been the mantra for decades.... results - more debt.

Could it be that it isn't "more money" that is the problem but less spending?

Where do you live? Most countries in the Western hemisphere, including the US, have avoided introducing new taxes for decades at this point.

But sure, it's always possible to cut spending somewhere. For example, we could defund the police.

 

[Kenny]

If you are content with the status quo, then why do you attack people who are not?
Where do you live? Most countries in the Western hemisphere, including the US, have avoided introducing new taxes for decades at this point.

But sure, it's always possible to cut spending somewhere. For example, we could defund the police.

LOL.. so you don't make me jump out of the frying pan and into the fire.
Apparently you haven't looked at the spending - and the police spending won't take care of it.
The interest on our debt is now 378,000,000,000 dollars a year.
What can we do if we didn't spend more than what we make? Or are you the type of person that until you can't breathe it is then you make the hard decision

 

[Tambourine]

LOL.. so you don't make me jump out of the frying pan and into the fire.
Apparently you haven't looked at the spending - and the police spending won't take care of it.
The interest on our debt is now 378,000,000,000 dollars a year.

You want to cut spending. Defunding the police is one way to do so.

What can we do if we didn't spend more than what we make? Or are you the type of person that until you can't breathe it is then you make the hard decision

Sorry, I can't parse those last two sentences. Would you mind rephrasing your point here?

 

[Kenny]

You want to cut spending. Defunding the police is one way to do so.


Sorry, I can't parse those last two sentences. Would you mind rephrasing your point here?

Defunding the police will create an exorbitant amount of destruction by criminals - more than defunding the police.

I have dealt with many people of different income groups - some with 6 figures. All have the same problem. They kept spending and spending and trying to get more money to turn around and still spend more that what they get.

The result is that they reach a point where no one would lend them any more money and they still couldn't buy a pair of shoes.

More money is never the answer if you continue to spend more than what you get.

The US problem isn't "more taxes" - it is spend less money. But no one wants to make the hard decision. And that will continue until things are so bad you have no choice - but you pay in spades for not making the decision sooner.

You can cut back now and suffer a little... or cut back later and suffer a lot.

 

[Tambourine]

The US problem isn't "more taxes" - it is spend less money.

And yet, you are argueing against spending cuts in that exact same post.

 

[Kenny]

And yet, you are argueing against spending cuts in that exact same post.

????

As I said, defunding the police creates more destruction and less businesses. Hardly arguing against spending cuts.

Now... if the retirement funds of police is too high... that is a different story. Cut there.

 

[Tambourine]

????

As I said, defunding the police creates more destruction and less businesses. Hardly arguing against spending cuts.

You are literally argueing against my idea to cut spending for police.

 

[Kenny]

You are literally argueing against my idea to cut spending for police.

then you aren't reading what I just said.

 

[Tambourine]

then you aren't reading what I just said.

Would you be in favor of spending cuts to the police, yes or no?

 

[Kenny]

Would you be in favor of spending cuts to the police, yes or no?

YES...

here...

Cop Out | Manhattan Institute

the costs of pensions plans

 

[Heyo]

For example, we could defund the police.

The police, peanuts.
The world police, those are numbers. The US spends more money on the military than the next 10 countries combined (and doesn't even check where the money goes).
Defund the military!

 

[Tambourine]

The police, peanuts.
The world police, those are numbers. The US spends more money on the military than the next 10 countries combined (and doesn't even check where the money goes).
Defund the military!

Honestly, the single best way to cut spending and taxes, is to abolish the state and establish a voluntary federation of Anarchist communes.

 

[Friend of Mara]

And are either really achievable?

So I’m not really great at politics. A lot of the theory flies over my head. I’d rather waffle on about Sartre or Oscar Wilde than Marx or Heigel (sp?)
But I’m trying to do better. Find a home for my confused self.
I’m not really a fan of capitalism. Anarchism and communism appeals to my desires for a world without hierarchies. But I’ve always dismissed their goals as too unreachable due to human nature being inherently selfish and greedy. But I’ve seen people pull together to support charities, feed the homeless, build schools, ethically source whatever etc. So clearly I’m just being a cynical doomer.

So am I just buying into the capitalist notion that we are just selfish greedy materialistic ********?
Leftists often say the same about humanity, but I guess they’re trying to use that as an impetus to change for the better.

Can we possibly find a way to make these systems work?
And what’s the difference? I often encounter “anarchocomunists” so there’s clearly some solidarity to be found apparently.

Technically anything is possible. Capitalism as we know it hasn't been around for all that long. Several states today don't function under capitalism. It has to do with "what is best" and ultimately that is a difficult question to answer.

So the biggest problem with every single economic system is making sure whatever rulers exist aren't corrupt. A monarchy or dictatorship could actually be SUPER ****ING GREAT if the person in power is legitimately doing a good job for the people. But the people who attain such status never have the personal character to follow through with any lofty goals. Not to play the no true Scottsman card but neither the USSR or China have much in common with the envisioned Marxist ideology.

 

[SomeRandom]

Technically anything is possible. Capitalism as we know it hasn't been around for all that long. Several states today don't function under capitalism. It has to do with "what is best" and ultimately that is a difficult question to answer.

So the biggest problem with every single economic system is making sure whatever rulers exist aren't corrupt. A monarchy or dictatorship could actually be SUPER ****ING GREAT if the person in power is legitimately doing a good job for the people. But the people who attain such status never have the personal character to follow through with any lofty goals. Not to play the no true Scottsman card but neither the USSR or China have much in common with the envisioned Marxist ideology.

Yes, USSR and China became the very thing Marx swore to destroy. It’s a very common sore spot among my lefty friends. I remember it being mentioned even in my economics class.
How did Capitalism become the model then? That was a sort of consequence (eventually) from the secular state becoming more independent, right? Moving away from monarchies and establishing liberal “freedoms.” Same hierarchies different name, oddly.
Ahh this is beyond my fuzzy comprehension.