Comments by "Kim O\x27Brien" (@kimobrien.) on "Stossel: 100 years of Communist Disaster" video.

  1. She has already rejected first the corrupt Chinese Communist (Revisionist) Party and now the US Republican Party and two party system itself by declaring herself to be a candidate of a third party.
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  2. Capitalism and Cronyism a marriage and match made in heaven.
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  3. The Russian revolution of October 1917 was the second workers revolution after the Paris commune. It came about in Russia after 3 years of world war. The Bolsheviks slogan was all power to the Soviets. In Russian Soviet means council. These councils were formed by Soldiers, Sailors, Workers, and Peasants. The Bolsheviks negotiated a separate peace with Germany without regards to previous Imperialist alliances. They weren't really sure they could hold out without help from a German revolution that never materialized. Trotsky as Ist Commissar of War with his armored train defeated white counterrevolutionaries and 14 invading armies.
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  4. I wonder if she would have felt the same way if she arrived after the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949 but before the 1964 civil rights act?
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  5. In 1944 Trachtenberg was a representative of Stalinism. Stalin and Roosevelt were buddy buddy at the time. The Stalinist CPUSA went so far as to declare the class struggle over and permanent victory of the Soviet Union at the end of WW2. Only a few years later with the Korean war and the execution of the Rosenberg's. About 100+ Stalinists would be doing 5 year stretches in the Federal Pen.
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  6. Liberalism is what brought you the computer? And all this time I thought it was technological advances that did?
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  7. Primitive communism is when there is just enough to go around. This was the case for tribal people who were hunters and gatherers before developing agriculture. (The planned raising of crops and animals for food.) This lead to an agricultural surplus, a division of labor and a hereditary class that had made decisions. Abundant communism is where the need for a state to defend socialist property property forms from counter revolution has disappeared. It can only be had after a world socialist revolution and further development in the poor nations. The state withers away because there is no longer a need to protect the ruling class, the working class, from itself. Until the final victory of world socialism its is necessary to protect socialist states from capitalist restoration. Mismanagement and corruption by a small bureaucratic layer lead to the demise of socialism in the USSR and China not any kind of superiority by capitalist production methods. Capitalism can not outrun its own internal contradictions. This is seen today in the results of the 2000 recession, 2008 recession, the election of Trump, Brexit, middle eastern wars, refugee crisis, talk of war with China and the tensions within the EU member states.
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  8. Now as to the free speech in Cuba if their was a decline in free speech it occurred when copying the Eastern bloc. Since the rectification period and the collapse of the Eastern Bloc free speech has certainly expanded. Mostly this seems to be generated around foreign journalist being expelled. The Cuban's are quite sensitive to foreign journalist coming in and writing lies or looking for things to justify a condemnation of the revolution which would then justify some kind of attack from the very hostile power ninety miles to the north. Cuba has had numerous terrorists attacks with origins connected to the United States and the disident movement which receive money from US sources has little if any internal support. For a long time the US government broadcast Radio and TV Marti specifically to Cuba and medium wave commercial broadcasts from Miami have always been available in Cuba. Free speech has not been all that safe in the US these days either. After 9/11 the Patriot Act was passed and more recently the Democrats proposed a constitutional amendment which in the name of fighting big money contributors would have gutted the first Amendment. President Trump has called for the firing of sports players for 'taking a knee' to protest police brutality and the first amendment does not apply on your employer's property unless you have a contract that says otherwise.
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  9. szililolabu I've read your statement a dozen times it just as pointlessly as the first time. You hate communism? Slow to understand? Understand what? That you hate communism?
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  10. There's only one problem for Strossel and others like him. How do you explain the two red scares in America? The first after the Russian revolution with deportation of suspected revolutionaries. The three 1934 general strikes being lead by different factions of the Communist Party two were lead by the faction that was saying Stalin wasn't getting it right. The second 1948 red scare where a hunt for communists was organized by Congress with use of subpoena power and contempt of Congress citation to send people to jail without a trial! Remember everyone could be a witting, unwitting, knowing or unknowing communist or communist supporter. If you didn't talk you must be guilty and if you did talk then you must be able to point your fingers at someone else otherwise you weren't being truthful. Big lists were drawn up to investigate and halt the spread of this menacing ideology. It reached a point where even protestant ministers were under investigation and the inventor of the atomic bomb Robert Oppenheimer had his security clearance revoked.
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  11. Capitalism with its national boundaries also creates national ruling classes the richest of these states export capital to the poorest creating oligarchies in them . The competition between the richest over who gets the markets in the poorest combined with the decline in the industrial rate of return results in creation of fictitious capital and creation of crisis like 2008 that affect the whole world. The squabbling can only lead to world war making socialism the only way out. Some in the US are demanding China buy more or face tariffs and war.
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  12. America is a two stooge party capitalist dictatorship. Stooges rotate in and out of office and nothing ever changes.
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  13. I don't vote for the two stooge parties so I am not the cause of price fixing. Keeping up the price of milk for the mostly family farmer dairy farmer is a good thing because it guarantees that milk will be there. Keeping up the price of milk in the supermarket is price fixing for profit only. What is Trump really independent of? His elite education at U Penn? Or how about Congress? Is he independent of them? He can issue presidential orders and directives but for most of the rest of his ideas or plans he is required to get legislation passed by Congress. Republicans in the Congress don't pass anything because they are caught between campaign donors and voters just like their Democratic opponents. Most of our lives are spent at work where we have no say in much of anything. Isn't that the definition of dictatorship? If you don't like something your choose is to follow that order or quit. Don't contradict your boss or risk being fired. He can yell at you but if yell back out the door you go. Now every two years you get to vote for someone who will do little to nothing to change anything in your daily life. Is that democracy?
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  14. "Democracy is the fairest way people have found to take shit from each other. Everyone gets an equal say in what gets taken from who!" Is that true in the United States? Wages adjusted for inflation have been stagnate for the last 25 years and the minimum wage when adjusted for inflation has declined. The cries for a increase in the minimum wage are meet with scorn and fake concern for the mismanaging cockroach capitalist who will discharge his employees. The private pensions based in unionized industry have disappeared with the unions as well as the private company paid insurance plans and other perks. Productivity is up and so the value of stocks has skyrocketed and big companies were bailed out of problems caused by their own greed and now you have the nerve to say something as repugnant as that? Golden parachutes go to mismangers while workers are thrown on the streets. By your definition of democracy that can't be what we have it can only be dictatorship because obviously the riches are rising for the richest of the ruling class.
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  15. If that's you answer Johnson I rest my case. The boy who cried zombie That's right socialism raises the working class up to be the ruling class. It gets rid of the problems of the continuous need for cheaper labor and a decline in return on industrial investment that leads to the rise of fictitious capital and financial collapse. War and the battle between different Imperialist nation states for colonies, cheap labor and natural resources also becomes unnecessary. When the next socialist revolution breaks out the revolutionaries will not be stuck with the cobwebs of Stalinism and be much clearer on the question of a privileged bureaucracy. The Stalinist have lost their battle with Trotsky. Since they no longer control one third of the earth they can't act as sellouts with their Socialism in one country theory. Which meant that everybody was supposed give up every struggle as a defense of the Soviet Union's bureaucracy and detente with Imperialism was the most important struggle everywhere. The Chinese Stalinist learned early on that the could do detente without a following of officially recognized parties and that's why the Maoist movement has always been small despite the revolution in China and the Sino Soviet split.
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  16. The original intent was correct but the founders could not conceive of an industrial society. They were also dreamers which is the same thing you cause me of. The English Republic had failed so why didn't the framers just set up another kingdom? Marxism doesn't rely on utopian ideas to bring about a revolution. Instead Marx saw a class struggle originating out of capitalism itself as the motive force for a new society. It's not about building a massive bureaucracy like capitalist America which requires them in an effort by the capitalist to control their own greed. They don't trust the workers which is why the don't allow our unions to do the regulation with scientific advice. It's not about building massive prisons for the mentally ill and those who have become demoralized by a system that can not use all the labor available and instead must imprison it so it can be exploited for sub minimum wages. This is a system that becomes more irrational and makes less sense each day it is allowed to continue.
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  17. There you have it embedding in the Constitution itself the right to revolution amendments. No matter how much things get messed up in Congress and the rest of government you have the right to argue about it, protest it and if necessary change it by force of arms as a last resort. If you compare our Bill of Rights to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms you will see that ours written over 200 years ago is much more radical while there's written in the 2nd half of the 20th century contains a limitations clause. In fact the ultimate power in Canada still belongs to the English Monarchy in the form of the Governor General of Canada who is appointed and serves at the pleasure of the English Monarchy not the elected parliament or Governor general's life appointmented members of the Canadian Senate who must be property owners and do exercise their veto power.
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  18. Once a revolutionary government comes to power we will institute a currency change which will make your horded money worthless.
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  19. The decline in health care is the natural result of capitalism and the bosses greed. Lots of workers belonged to unions and union contracts had healthcare included. Many non union bosses had healthcare included as a way to both keep out the unions and make themselves competitive with union jobs. Starting in the late 1970's the bosses have been on takeback anti union drives. Healthcare was a fixed cost they wanted to reduce and eliminate. They have done this in a number of ways. First by breaking unions and declaring bankruptcy so they can then reopen nonunion elsewhere. This is why so little coal comes from union mines today. In other areas they now hire through temp labor agencies without benefits which can be shut down should any on the job union talk be heard. They have added waiting periods along with increased rules so that they can dangle benefits in front of your face for a year latter in which time they will fire you for some reason or other.
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  20. According to the World Bank as of 2015 the average life expectancy in Cuba is slightly higher than the US and the infant mortality rate is lower than the US. What this proves is that Cuban Communism works and American capitalism doesn't. If you have money and go to the Doctor they will fall all over you in treatment. If you're from the working class and go to the clinic they say you're at the wrong clinic go elsewhere. Then you call and get an answering machine saying they will call back which they never do. You're just a nobody that they don't really have any time for or somebody to fill the schedule time that is open.
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  21. "In fact, every other country in the world that has no communism, has better health care than Cuba and they are all democratic free market economies. So there you go, you are proven wrong. " Look anybody can repeat propaganda mantras so where are you figures and statistics? That's not what the world bank says when using life expectancy and infant mortality of course they're not real capitalists and of course their are no real capitalists in America. Bill Gates is just a self employed guy worth billions. Actually Cuban communism has everything to do with healthcare since they have the Latin American School of Medicine. They train foreign Doctors worldwide all on Cuba's dime. The US health care system relies on the immigration of foreign Doctors. Keep beating the same old drum for Clinton, Trump, Reagan and Bush. The Soviet Union has been gone for over twenty five years now so how is capitalism doing their now? Improving life for Putin no doubt. While everybody is fighting against even worse corruption. People have been yelling about how free markets are solving all problems and when they don't then obviously there are no free markets or the whole thing is just more capitalist bullshit utopia talk.
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  22. Right keep telling everybody there is no capitalism here or anywhere. Sooner later you should be able to convince somebody else. I guess you've never worked anywhere otherwise you'd know most place require you to get permission to piss. You backed down from your original propaganda mantra concerning Cuban Healthcare why should anybody believe anything else you say? They have already come up with new and innovative treatments for Lung Cancer and Diabetes. Keep repeating that 50 year old mantra that Cuba is going to fail next week. Why should I leave? You realize without people like me you wouldn't be able to turn on a light bulb or connect to the internet.
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  23. Your essential problem is you think the human history is bloodless and that capitalisms return to Russia and China without war and destruction was a victory and not a defeat. If real war had broken out you would have been able to reset the capital accumulation clock like after WW2. Nor can you escape the built in contradictions of capitalism which caused the 2008 crisis of greed. The ideological sellouts in Moscow and Peking have lost almost all influence in the workers movement. Meaning you can't turn to them and offer detente in return for imposing counterrevolutionary defeat. You see idea's have a life of their own and the barriers once in place around China, Russia and Eastern Europe are lower than ever before. Now the revolutionary ideas forced out of the Soviet Union by Stalin himself were kept alive within the United States are now free to recirculate back into the old Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and China.
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  24. In the US 8 out of 10 small businesses fail within 18 months. Most professions or trades require licences. Licenses usually require some kind of additional apprenticeship in addition to education. Still think everybody can be whatever they fucking want to be?
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  25. Stossel fails to tell the whole truth concerning the hanging order. It was a response to the rich hording grain during the civil war that would have cost many more lives in the cities should the grain shortage result in starvation in the cities. There was a debate in the area concerned over should grain only be sought through revolutionary propaganda or should force be used. While Lenin clearly favored force 'hanging' in his first order. His second order a few days later appears to be a less forceful demand that action be taken which implies the first order wasn't carried out.
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  26. The capitalists are not going to hand over basic industry to their employees without a socialist revolution. Such a thought lies only in the minds of idiots. Every capitalist loves government contracts because they are guaranteed a profit on cost plus basis with virtually no risk involved. If they bid wrong they merely declare or threaten to declare bankruptcy and government will bail them out. We have also seen when they have a too big to fail Bank or Industrial company they bail out first ask questions latter. The apologists for capitalism always have a theory that is devoid of reality. Gee wouldn't it be nice if capitalism was able to continue development without Imperialist war which is nothing more than cold blooded murder. How wonderful a world we created by murdering people halfway around the world to save power for the national collaborators of the Japanese Imperialist war criminals.
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  27. Space X is just another waste of capital by the capitalists. It show their complete indifference to the rest of humanity. That money could go into clean drinking water in the third world but instead it's being wasted because a few ultra rich would like to be space explorers.
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  28. We don't need 'greedy capitalists' to begin with CEO's are way overpaid. Stocks, bonds, commercial paper and mortgage contrast are just ways for the do nothing capitalist to suck value out of the economy. DMV is just another case of two stooge democracy bureaucracy. At a big company they treat you the same way as at a big DMV. There is no need for the greedy capitalist with economic planning. What did Bill Gates do other than start with a million dollar trust fund, business connections, the ability to hire, legal manipulation, business manipulation and market manipulation.
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  29. Internet and GPS was conceived of and built first by ARPA Advanced Research Projects Administration. US Military funded. In fact almost all basic science and engineering research is paid for by government funds because the capitalist lack the vision to see past the next quarter. Even the capitalist constantly discuss the problem but have never been able to find a solution other than having their government do the funding.
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  30. How about we give the military and police red buckets and let them raise all funds voluntarily outside of shopping malls?
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  31. "...The capitalists don't use government funding as the solution..." The provide the campaign funds that get Congress elected. They pay the piper they choose the tune. In 1958 they passed the National Defense Education Act. A whole generation of us got to go to college that would have been unavailable otherwise because of the fear of the 'red menace'. The general way capitalism works is to have what can't be done profitable be the task of government. Then they attack the government for doing things that are unprofitable as socialistic. How about we close the Post Office and let UPS and FedEx do all the letter carrying? Why not have private sidewalks and streets with toll barriers starting with Wall Street. You realize Congress is talking about putting up Toll Gantries across the Interstate system to fund infrastructure. Like the say on the Mass Pike "No Transponder. No Problem. Pay by Mail."
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  32. The US government limited communication networks for the advantages they provided to AT&T. They provided a mound of data to back up their rate charges to the FCC and the FCC rubber stamped them. The original internet and long distance internet communications (digital techniques) took advantage of old and noisy analogue lines as a way to get more out of an investment that wasn't worth much anymore. In fact I remember reading one day that the internet business had become so big that they were now building new lines instead of just using old ones. AT&T refused to allow anything that didn't belong to them to be attached to their local lines. So you had to use hand set cradles for acoustic coupling to their network or buy a direct connection from them. Their local switching equipment could tell how many ringers were attached so if you were using more ring current than what your bill of rented devices used Ma Bell knew you were cheating them. Once radio shack began selling ITT brand phones those days of the AT&T monopoly over everything possible came to an end.
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  33. You're just not old enough to remember the AT&T monopoly. Every out of state call in the US went over AT&T long lines. AT&T was the majority stockholder in every operating company across the country except for SNET (Connecticut) and Cincinnati Bell. Only rural area's that AT&T didn't want and a few other places were served locally by non AT&T companies.
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  34. Was it just a coincidence that the Soviet Union built the first artificial satellite and beat the US when they put Yuri Gagarin in space? Unlike the US they suffered a lot of destruction from WW2. Twenty Million Dead Yet they put a satellite in orbit scaring the shit out of America. Congress then passed the National Defense Education Act. Government paid education and research like never seen before.
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  35. I guess you never heard of Leon Trotsky. You certainly know nothing about either the Russian or Cuban revolution. Keep up your bourgeois insults is always shows how smart you are.
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  36. We are Trotsky's heirs. In 1928 they said we had 3 Generals without an Army. In 1934 we lead the Minneapolis Teamsters General Strike. Nothing goes on in the class struggle in the United States that we don't become involved in. Fidel Castro had a subscription to our paper The Militant. We publish books in eleven languages and more than twenty subjects. By Pathfinderpress. The Communist Party USA well they still have a website and a lack of Generals.
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  37. I think I've wasted enough time with you. Bye Bye.
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  38. The basic reason capitalism will eventually fail is because the size of the world is finite. Once new markets, resources and cheap labor are no longer available on the planet the national capitalist ruling classes will begin fighting amongst themselves for markets and raw materials. Without successful socialist revolutions in the nuclear weapon holding states we are doomed to nuclear war and the end of our race caused by capitalist greed.
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  39. Ok you just said two exactly opposite things first that micro capitalism will take over and then you talk about extra terrestrial investment. So you talking about going where? Some place beyond the moon or the moon? By micro capitalists your talking about what? Basket weavers? Micro business going to the Moon? You got to be kidding? The natural way capitalism works leads to combination and monopoly not micro business. You can't just switch over either. Mao tried making steel in villages and he didn't have to worry about competition. It didn't work out economically either. Steel is made in large mills because of what's called an economy of scale. The same goes for automobile production and assembly. Do you think you can buy all the parts to an automobile and make it at home cheaper than buying one at a car dealership? and even if you could do you than think you could sell it at a competitive price?
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  40. The most expensive war in terms of war dead in American history was the civil war. The dominance of the Northern and later American Industrialists was made possible by that war. Now Lincoln didn't have to wage that war. He could have acceded to succession and moved the Capital to Philadelphia or New York and allowed the end of the United States. The South could have kept slavery and grabbed up some of the West. Then California could have added the Oregon Territory and made itself an Independent nation. Al so that blood shed, something always found to be so horrible and completely unnesssay by the middle class, could be averted. So was the war worth it? If it was than arguing that blood shed in a communist revolution is wrong implies hypocrisy. England went through a revolution and became a republic. Then England went through monarchical restoration. Anyone think we should become a Dominion like Canada and make the English Monarch the ultimate authority?
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  41. US government is elected by big money that makes it a capitalist government. Its purpose is to defend capitalist property rights. Who's going to buy a war? Ring Ring "Hi, This is General Powell." "This is Rex Tillerson over at Exxon." General Powell "Ok, what can I do for you?" Rex Tillerson "Saddam Hussein won't give me a good price on oil can you do an Iraqi war for me?" General Powell "Just a minute. That will be 10,000,000,000 dollars." Tellerson, "Do you take Mastercard?"
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  42. ReeseL4D You assume that socialism means a state operated enterprise. What is most important is what property forms does the state defend. A state consists mainly of a police force and military. If it defends a stock market and a private industry it is a capitalist state. If it defends national economic planning without private ownership of industry then it is a workers state. The transition of one to the other is called a revolution. The old capitalist state can't just be reused because the old professional police force has most likely committed crimes to keep the capitalists in power and the officer coups can usually be expected to be unreliable for the same reason. That's why a new state must be built because the revolution can't easily just take over the old apparatus.
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  43. I gave you a Marxist definition of a state not an English dictionary definition. You're talking about how the state is managed. A capitalist state can be managed by bourgeois democracy like the US which is a republic or a limited monarchy like the UK or Canada, an absolute monarchy like Saudi Arabia, or a dictatorship like Franco or Hitler. A workers state can be democratic like the early Soviet Union or Cuba or it can be be corrupt and lose democracy like the latter Soviet Union or China. A corrupt workers state is unstable it must either undergo a political revolution or return to capitalism. This was essentially Trotsky's explanation of what went on in the Soviet Union. In the US both parties are capitalist parties because they both defend capitalism and their candidates for office are overwhelming lawyers, other members of the middle class and members of the ruling capitalist class. The candidates and two parties rely on campaign donations from the wealthy for most offices. He who pays the piper plays the tune.
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  44. The US has a system which encourages a two party electoral system since offices are winner take all. Workers never set up the two parties as historically the Republicans were founded by the wealthy Northern Industrialist just before the civil war and the Democrats were originally a southern party founded by Jefferson which became a capitalist party after the civil war. Normally elections are such that control oscillates back and forth between the two parties. The last election was different more people entered the process and the Republicans selected Trump despite the officials objections and Sanders was handed a defeat through undemocratic rules and wrangling in the Democratic party. Clinton was defeated despite her raising 4 times what Trump had. This resulted in immediate anger in the ruling class because they same workers who had chosen Obama now choose Trump because of his appeals to them. A large section of the ruling class is unhappy having an untested politician in the white house and has been behind an anybody but Trump movement. This is what happens when a candidate who is a member of the ruling class that they don't like gets elected can you imagine what would happen if the Socialist Workers Party candidate gets elected?
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  45. Reesel4D If you believe what is most important is the state and not the political economics of a society than that is a non Marxist view. The state is determined by the needs of the ruling class (capitalist, feudal, slavocracy or workers) not the other way around. If you want to convict me of being a Marxist well then I plead guilty. The first part of a socialist revolution is when the workers gain political power. The next part is to nationalize and abolish private ownership of Industrial property. In the Cuban revolution no one was told they couldn't continue as an administrator. What they were told is they could no longer use their position to exploit others. The Cuban revolution also broke up the old plantations and made land available to all who wanted to work it. So far every socialist revolution after the workers gain political power has then faced counterrevolutionary violence from both internal and external enemies. If the workers and small farmers through their revolutionary party and governmental organization are to retain and hold power they have had to destroy the old state power, establish a new state power and create a revolutionary armed forces to defend the revolutionary power from external invasion. Will all socialist revolutions go on to become bureaucratic nightmares and then go back to capitalism because the rich run the world? The Cuban's have already answered that question and like Fidel said there will be a revolution in the United States before there will be a counter revolution in Cuba.
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  46. The United States has had two revolutions. The first overthrew British colonial rule and established a national federal republican state. The second constitution of 1789 with its first ten amendments (Bill of Rights) also left intact slavery within individual states and the Bill of Rights was deemed binding upon the Federal government only before the civil war. The second revolution (the civil war 1861-1865) abolished slavery and added the civil war amendments that made slavery illegal (except as punishment for a crime), guaranteed voting rights for the former slaves, established due process of law for all under US jurisdiction, and made anyone born here and under US jurisdiction automatically citizens. Now all those rights look very good on paper but someone has always had to fight to keep those rights intact against a government that would like to ride roughshod over them. The alien and sedition act, the criminal syndicalism laws, the palmer raids, the smith (gag) act, the communist control act, the conitel programs, the attorney generals list and more are examples of government thought control laws and suppression of free speech and association. Now the battle between Stalin and Trotsky may have seemed irrelevant in the last years of the Eastern Bloc and China but the American Trotskyists have been much more relevant in the United States. Our political continuity goes back to before WW1 and the founding of the 2nd International. We have never had to go underground due to death squads, stalinism or fascism like the colonial world and Europe. While the Stalinist dominated the radicalization of the 1930's we pulled off the Minneapolis General Strike of 1934 which opened the road to creating the Teamster's Union the largest union in the United States today. Starting with the Cuban revolution and the Fair Play for Cuba Committee the Stalinists have never been able to keep us (Socialist Workers Party) out of any significant struggle in the United States. The days when they could raise and pass motions to eject the counter revolutionary Trotskyists and expel their members for talking to us are long gone. Today our movement publishes books on a wide range of subjects and a weekly newspaper. While the CPUSA is limited to a web page and recruitment based on nostalgia history rewritten to make themselves look good.
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  47. If anyone has revised Marxism Leninism it was Stalin. Trotsky with his permanent revolution and Lenin with his April theis said that the capitalist class no longer had a component that was revolutionary. This is important. After the defeat the working class suffered in Germany having received the advice to battle the Social Democratic workers as social fascists that resulted with the Fascist taking power in 1934. Stalin's next advice was to form blocs with the patriotic bourgeois forces to prevent the rise of fascism. This was called Popular Frontism. It served up the workers in France and Spain to fascism and the same happened in Indonesia and Chile in 9/11/1973. Georgi Dimitrov was the author of the popular front. It makes the requirement to keep 'patriotic bourgeois' forces within the front a political necessity so it then serves up the revolutionary workers to a frightened bourgeois that turns to fascism for its class survival. The first Chinese revolution was also a victim of this strategy and the only reason the second one was successful was General Chiang Kai-shek refusal to join despite American advice otherwise.
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  48. We have free speech in the United States because the labor and communist movement has fought for and defined it.
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  49. I wonder how well she would have thrived under the Chinese exclusion act?
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  50. The Minneapolis Teamsters kicked some butt called the Citizens Alliance in 1934.
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  51. Real communism works in Cuba.
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  52. Because your experience is with corporate dictators called yes men and you just assume that a revolution is built out of socialist dictators like your yes men.
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  53. We have a small party the Socialist Workers Party in the United States. Themilitant.com and Pathfinderpress.com We've gotten into a few fights like the 1934 Minneapolis Teamster's General Strike, The Case of the Legless Veteran, Fair Play for Cuba, National Peace Action Coalition, Political Rights Defense Fund. Since 1948 we've ran a candidate for President in every election.
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  54. What did American soldiers use to light peasant homes in Vietnam? Answer: Zippo lighters.
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  55. "..Trading outside the boundaries of socialism..." What you really mean is hoarding or capturing a market and then raising prices for yourself like Pharma Bro did.
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  56. The natural workings of capitalism work to end competition for the sale of commodities. Law's themselves are passed to end competition or control competition. You can purchase a tax break or other help by the use of campaign contributions. That's the natural way capitalism works by changing all human relationships into commodity relationships. Legal or illegal everything available is for sale.
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  57. All's you have to do is stop all regulation of the automobile and healthcare insurance companies to see the rise of a huge number of frauds. Everyone will be selling policies and going bankrupt next week. Why not get rid of all government road building contracts to see how long it takes before we become the United States of Potholes. Free market? No such thing never was never will be. Government regulation is brought in to control greed by the rich and those wishing to become rich. Without government regulation coming in capitalists would have to deal with 'greedy workers' who are the real majority.
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  58. Neighboring property owners taking care of roads? That's fine for dirt roads and horse traffic. Maybe you should consider living in an underdeveloped country and buying yams and rice at the market. Without those tractor trailers rolling across the Interstates you would be waiting for the arrival of railroad traffic being switch through multiple yards and carried on wagons drawn by horses to the mercantile in Walnut grove. Who will pay for Interstates? Most of the toll roads preceding the Interstates were paid for with bonds guaranteed by state governments. Obviously Congress decided that more roads were needed and building more toll roads was not the answer. Plus their are two types of toll roads. Those with closed ticket systems. These are fully maintained by the road owners. Those with toll barriers are only toll roads between the nearest entrance and exits. The rest of those roads are considered federal Interstates and eligible for federal funds. Texas built a toll road that went bankrupt. It was put up for sale on the courthouse steps without any suitable buyers John Hancock Insurance bought its investment back. Now consider a system of multiply toll roads and owners across the country going boom and bust.
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  59. Without any regulation of Insurance anyone can become an insurance company. Set up your company write you contracts and then after a bit of time of selling enough contracts and paying out some claims announce bankruptcy. Oh and don't forget to pay yourself handsomely for writing those contracts until it's time to declare bankruptcy. You are some starry eyed individual who has never had a problem of trying to cash his check only to find out it bounces like a rubber ball or been told sorry payday has been changed to Monday.
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  60. Reesel4D "Due to the limitations of physics, there is really nothing that can be done if it turns out that a company doesn't have the assets to satisfy agreements. They call that "bankrupt"." Unless you are AIG then you can go to Washington and get yourself bailed out. Physics covers everything to begin with so how about leaving that out. You and I both know the state insurance regulators aren't going to allow an undercapitalized firm into the insurance market. In fact the risk in flood insurance is such that capitalist abandoned the market in favor of the government taking on the claims and capital reserves while the insurance companies do the management and risk assessment only. So in essence flood insurance is single payer already something that 'wouldn't work' in health insurance.
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  61. "I can have an expensive drug habit and lose millions every day to casinos, but as long as I own a giant gold mine, then my lifestyle is economically sustainable.' actually you sound like Howard Hughes. Actually building highways and airports with public money has always a complaint by the railroads. Then again the government issued charter for the Union Pacific Railroad with its land deal was quite lucrative. Also Georgia complained about government subsidies for lighthouses and other money for the subsiding of commerce for Northern Industrial and commercial interests as a secondary reason for succession from the Union. So I guess you would find good company in the slavocracy for you dream world of libertarianism. It's just to bad that you, Alan Greenspan and Ayn Rand weren't living back in during 1860's because than you could have made sure everything that was done by capitalism was done without massive corruption. Ah wouldn't be nice to be smelling that fresh horse manure on that private street in Manhattan called Wall Street because public road building was immoral.
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  62. It is definitely problematic to have a nationalized oil industry providing social benefits while letting other oligarchy owners of capitalist firms continue operations and even more so with a mass movement that wants socialism. We've already seen one failed coup attempt and a decline in world oil prices is also creating problems. If the masses go back quietly to their shanty towns the oligarchy may let them live if not than a collision course lies ahead one class will win and the other will lose.
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  63. You use the straw man argument of libertarianism when argue that the state is independent of class. This is the quote, 'statist' theory. It is little more than an argument that free market (an obvious misnomer) good and state operations bad. However without a state the owners of capital could not enforce their labor market and ownership relations on the proletariat. When you rail against statism you forget that your state acts to both enforce those relations and maintain the 'free market' system. A's George W Bush said, "I've abandoned free market principles to save the free market system." The state must consciously intervene in big and small ways to prevent your greedy capitalist system from getting out of control and devouring itself. You propose no way to get to your fairytale world except by utopian idealism and moral imperative. Even then most of you realize it's a utopian dream because obviously the class interests of the majority are not served by either your state or free market principles. You will then go and say well Atlas Shrugged and so will I but let's not let the communists take over because then I would be losing not just my principles but my shirt, my wealth and my power.
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  64. If a libertarian argues they're no classes than obviously the state is independent of them. But he has no problem with classifying anything done by the state other than enforcing his own set of rules as statist and therefore morally wrong. After listening to this kind of stuff one might wonder if in according to the libertarian mind man should end social labor and live better as a the male orangutans do by individually seeking the fruit produced in the jungle instead of laboring together.
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  65. Their is nothing preventing the election of a communist party to power in the United States. As for a change in property relationships only the fifth amendment constrains the government from taking private property and passage of a constitutional amendment could solve that problem. So the only real constraint lies in the capitalist canceling or refusing to accept the election results. Something many were thinking about after the election of Donald Trump and when the eleven states of the slavocracy left provoking the civil war.
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  66. The real communists propose a change from government bureaucracy control to trade union control with scientific advisors. This is a type of direct democracy where issues of safety, the environment and other social needs are solved at the local level instead before numerous court and legal tribunals played out by lawyers were the needs of capital come first.
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  67. I suppose those murder video's on cellphones were just imagined oppression. Batista being anointed dictator of Cuba by the American Ambassador and murdering 20,000 was just a feeling. Once Batista was overthrown everyone should have looked to Kennedy I suppose. Because he was the new and great two stooge party President. Outside of actually pushing the nuclear button which some of the US generals wanted to do. Every way possible and every imaginable measure was taken to defeat the Cuban Revolution. Sorry you lost capitalist loser. The Cuban's have dignity today because the didn't back down. As one Cuban General said we started with throwing rocks at the police. It is better to stand as a man and let the cops murder you than to "get on the ground" like a dog.
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  68. After every socialist revolution every measure possible is taken by the capitalist countries to defeat the revolution because as Churchill said, "Bolshevism must be strangled in its cradle."
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  69.  @szililolabu  I'm not impressed by so called even handed intellectuals who condemn both sides. I'm sure you've got you sights on an up and coming bourgeois professorship.
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  70.  @xboxstudent  Look I knew as far back as the 1970's that the Stalinist's were deserters. So the breakup of the Soviet Union was not that big of a surprise. The biggest change is now no one gives the Stalinist theories as much weight and the former countries of the eastern block China and Vietnam are open to real socialist and communist ideas.
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  71.  @xboxstudent  No only a big crisis of capitalism is needed. Capitalism was already winning the battle with feudalism in Marx's time. The first big crisis, the British banking crisis, was followed by WW1 with the Russian Revolution. The second was caused by the US stock market crash and great depression resulting in WW2. This war was fought out between the Soviet Union and Germany in Europe and between the US and Japan in Asia. After that crisis it was so deep that even the Stalinist partisans in China, Vietnam, Yugoslavia and Korea were able to lead revolutions and come to power. The next victory was in Cuba where the first revolution since the October revolution of 1917 was lead by a leadership that didn't originate form a Stalinist Party. The crisis of 2008 is the biggest crisis in living memory will it lead to a world socialist revolution? It certainly has opened many previously closed doors in the centers of world capitalism.
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  72.  @xboxstudent  How many defeats did the Stalinist's lead? Germany in 1934, France and Spain both before WW2 and after the war Stalin kept his word with Democratic English and American Imperialism refusing aid to Greece and Yugoslavia. He and Mao forced Ho Chi Minh to accept the division of Vietnam at the first Paris peace accords. It was Stalin who agreed to the division of Korea at the 38th parallel. What right did he have to agreeing to something that was his to begin with? Our Party called for the unconditional withdrawal of US troops from both Vietnam and Korea. Did your friends the French Stalinist bastards do the same?
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  73. Even today our party says US Troops out of Korea and Guantanamo Bay Cuba.
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  74.  @xboxstudent  When we have the majority we will take power just as the Bolsheviks did. Stalin played a minor role in the October revolution which can be confirmed by John Reeds, "Ten Days that Shook the World." You confirm that the French bastards bent to the will of the French Imperailist just as Stalin himself and all of his followers did. Why not just admit that you and them are just to afraid of capitalist justice to open your mouths? Sure Stalin was not the only one to blame all those little Stalin's in the west who said nothing and wrote nothing. One of Stalin's closest associate Nikita Khrushchev only discovered the crimes of Stalin after the paranoid gangster was dead. Only the Stalinist used violence to get their way in Spain. The murdered the revolution there just as the had done to the old Bolsheviks in the Moscow Trials. There whole idea of leadership is if they can't be the leaders than the will take any action necessary to destroy that movement. What they have in common with the Imperialist is they lack even the slightest revolutionary morality.
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  75. The American Imperialist's executed two communist for being communists. Ethel and Julius Rosenberg all the time knowing that the charges of stealing the atom bomb secrets were completely false.
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  76. Why on earth would the head of American Imperialism (Truman) want an alliance with Ho Chi Minh over the French Imperailists? That's the type of thinking that one could expect from Stalin in Moscow. Sure Stalin was always going to help revolutions AFTER they were lost you just need to follow his orders. You needed to get on his antifascists bandwagon where they tie the workers hands and feet to the 'progressive' capitalists. All the capitalist benefit from unemployment and strike breaking. That's why the progressives have no problem with getting in bed with the fascists.
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  77.  @xboxstudent  Why don't you just move into a castle built for Kings in Fairfield County, CT. You can drop all your pretend knowledge of Marxism based in Stalinist theory of 'socialism in one country' and move in next to liberals. They have the 'real theory' of American Imperialist wars they are all a mistake unless 'we' win. Go ahead you'll love living next to the defeated cold warriors. All of Stalinist theory was based on Socialism in one country. So naturally it became a problem when more countries like China, Vietnam and Yugoslavia went socialist without Stalin's permission. The world revolution would weaken Stalin's and his heirs like Khrushchev's position in the worlds labor movement. Today's Stalinist is just another weak kneed Social Democrat.
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  78. Ayn Rand received her university education and advanced study despite being a self described bourgois student in Lenin's time leaving at the time of his death legally for a country which had been at war with the Soviet Republic and had no diplomatic relations. How does a government preform a self check? It was the struggle of black working people against segregation, the anti colonial revolution and the Cuban revolution that reversed the second Red scare.
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  79. In the rich countries no one except a few intellectuals and self taught workers are interested in socialism until capitalism develops problems. The collapse of 2008 has revived the interest in socialism and politics in general among the masses of people in the United States.
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  80. That's the best you can do is hit us with a few quotes you can't even trace back to the original person who said them? How about, "What's the matter are you afraid of a few Chinese Laundrymen?" General MacArthur during the Korean War. How about Richard Nixon coming on TV and saying "..I'm not a crook..." Fiat currency? Nixon closed the window for foreign gold exchange because France wanted gold for dollars. They've had 40 years to go back to the gold standard. It's the natural greed of the capitalists and the way their system works that guarantees financial collapse not any one particular policy. Capitalism without cronyism? Impossible because that's always been the way capitalism has always worked going back to the Union Pacific railroad charter. Clinton took away welfare AFDC and created TANF in the first attack on the Social Security Act of 1935. The guarantee of public housing is gone replaced with a complicated system that makes sense only to those with investment money. You broke our unions so instead of 30% of workers belonging to unions it's now about 6%. The promise of private pensions to the more skilled and unionized workers is in the trash. Wages have been stagnate while productivity and profits have sorred. You let us borrow with easy money saying we didn't need higher wages just good credit before 2008 now we are lucky to get a loan for anything. We paid for Social Security and medicare for our old age and the disabled and you want that back also. If anyone got a free lunch its was from the 'No Bankers Left Behind' policy of Obama.
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  81. Capitalist government is dangerous. It becomes larger and larger in its attempts to regulate greed and keep the ruling class in power. You can see how upset they were when the Clinton lost despite her raising 4 times the money Trump did. You saw how quickly they had themselves bailed out in 2008 despite their usual propaganda about how bankruptcy is good because it eliminates bad and inefficient businesses.
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  82. Actually I would say this. Those countries and groups of countries suffering the most severe crisis' coupled with a massive movement along with a competent and selfless leadership will go over to socialist revolution first. Capitalism by its very nature is 'unfair'. Unfairness in itself provides no means for change. Unfairness provokes class struggle but without a socialist leadership for that struggle that struggle will die down until the next crisis develops or a huge sections of the world are destroyed in world war allowing for another instance of primitive capital accumulation.
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