Communism v. Socialism v. Capitalism v. Feudalism

[myrmaad]

You do realize that "proletariat" is literally "the workers" the working class.

 

Hmm, let me get this straight: suddenly the working class and the middle class are not exactly the same? Since when. They've been the same for the last 60 years at the very least.

 

And by the way if they don't have a job, and thus don't work, then they aren't part of the proletariat, again which is literally "the workers".

[Surenas]

You do realize that "proletariat" is literally "the workers" the working class.

 

We're no longer living in the days of the Paris Commune 1871 and that's why the proletariat [literally 'those who have (nothing but) children'] of today is the 'class' (an ambiguous term btw ) of the workless and no longer that of the workers. A paradigm shift of an old terminology.

 

Have fun!

 

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[ginnyfizz]

Myrmaad, please don't patronize me. Despite being an unashamed Conservative and a fan of The Blessed Margaret Hilda Thatcher, I am reasonably well educated and well read. And did you forget that I know some Latin? Try looking up proletariat again. The use of it to describe the working class is a Commie conceit. The Latin term "proletarius" means a citizen of the lowest class. A member of such a class is therefore a proletarian. The ne'er do wells such as the one I described earlier are therefore truly, madly, proley. Surenas has also given an accurate analysis, tie "Those who have nothing but children".

[myrmaad]

I studied the proletariat in college, minor in sociology. Surenas you'll have to go back a bit further than that to find the etymological roots / original meaning of proletariat, as Ginny points out with her reference to studying latin, but in fact politically the meaning has changed, with the advent of modern philosophies. If we're going to discuss Marx, by name then lets discuss the philosophy authentically.

[Surenas]

I studied the proletariat in college, minor in sociology. Surenas you'll have to go back a bit further than that to find the etymological roots / original meaning of proletariat, as Ginny points out with her reference to studying latin, but in fact politically the meaning has changed, with the advent of modern philosophies. If we're going to discuss Marx, by name then lets discuss the philosophy authentically.

 

Karl Marx's classification scheme following Feuerbach et al. laying aside, the literal Latin meaning (!) of the root word is not to be questioned, neither by you nor by me nor by anyone else. However, I'm pleased to meet a homo sociologicus here. So, should you ever introduce the theories of Popper, Dahrendorf or the Frankfurt School around Horkheimer, Habermas and Adorno... drop me a line.

 

Have a good one! :thumbsup:

 

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[grannywils]

I want to be really careful here. Because first of all I think this thread has somewhat changed it's tenor, which is fine. And secondly I don't want what I have to say to be misinterpreted by anyone.

 

While I'm pretty sure that my politics are generally far more in line with Myrmaad's than with Ginnyfizz or with Aurielius; and I'm still not 100% sure about Surenas; I have to agree with those latter three on the current state (and definition) of the proletariat.

 

I am frequently defined as a "bleeding heart liberal". However I am a liberal with a brain and a conscious and a really good awareness of what goes on around me. There is most definitely a working class and a non-working class. There are those who take advantage of the system. And there are those who don't have a chance in hell (I meant no offense by my language) of ever getting a step up no matter how hard they work or how hard they try to take advantage of what is supposedly offered by this "Great Society". I have seen the great unwashed really close up, and I have been what is sometimes referred to as a "suit". I know how the corporate environment uses it's power to instill prejudice of all kinds in the workforce. I also know how many of the lower classes can "work" the system to their own advantage. The fact is we are talking about human nature.

 

Right now we have two ideologies sruggling for power. One is people based and one is material based. One worries about helping the common man and one worries about how big a piece of the pie can be grabbed for oneself. Since these views seem to be diametrically opposed, it ain't gonna work. So, here we have to determine who has the power. Well, in my opinion the power resides with those corporate entities we discussed earlier. They are not going to help anyone up by their bootstraps if it doesn't do their bottom line any good, are they?

 

So, proletariat or no proletariat, we are left having to depend on the people with the power (i.e. the money) often provided through the efforts of the workers (without the power).

 

I'll leave it at that for now.

[ginnyfizz]

. And there are those who don't have a chance in hell (I meant no offense by my language) of ever getting a step up no matter how hard they work or how hard they try to take advantage of what is supposedly offered by this "Great Society".

...

So, proletariat or no proletariat, we are left having to depend on the people with the power (i.e. the money) often provided through the efforts of the workers (without the power).

 

I'll leave it at that for now.

 

Oh please! Do you suppose that ALL the people with money inherited their wealth? I fight against this no hope attitude every day in the course of my work, and encouraging the "have nots" to believe that they never can "have" without the kind of forced redistribution of wealth advocated by Communism and Socialism is not only wrong, it's also cruel. And it just perpetuates the situation, as well as maintaining the powerbase for said Communists and Socialists. As it happens, both of my Grandfathers came from dirt poor backgrounds (one of them was descended from a family that had once been wealthy but had been crippled by fines for recusancy over the centuries.) And both of them dragged themselves up to being comfortably off by both their own formidable intelligence - Grandad Aaron was a brilliant linguist and trader and Grandad Ernest a scientific boffin who also had enough commercial know how to run his own company - and by the sweat of their own brows, Not by leeching off either the downtrodden masses, or with any help from them either. AND there weren't any business grants from the State then, either. Or student grants, or even advantageous rate student loans. It's easier now than it was for them. So let's not try and keep the proles down, eh?

[Surenas]

Marginal note

Well, grannywils et al., I'm hardly an ideologist or missionary with a universal message, not even an active homo politicus, more likely an observing profiler (that's why I love RPGs) with a certain repertoire of own roles and an understanding of the role of others. Moreover, after more than a decade online I really don't expect a consensus on the internet where from the very beginning on almost everybody is already convienced by the own perceptions and preconceptions (if it's no 'help me' or how-to thread). Sad but true. And that's why I easily back out of circular discussions.

At the moment I'm somewhat unsure what the actual intention of the thread might be or will be within a short time.

I'll thus restrict myself on reading what you have to say, at least for a while. Keep it up.

 

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[myrmaad]

the literal Latin meaning (!) of the root word is not to be questioned, neither by you nor by me nor by anyone else.

ok, but I've also studied linguistics, etymology may be written in stone, but substantive meaning is not.

 

Think of the Flintstones lyrics: "we'll have a gay old time". What did that mean? What would it connote now?

 

Marx championed the working class, believing that they were entitled to the profits of their toil, rather than allowing it to be squandered by people who didn't have a stake in their labor. Consider the Molly Maguires in that context and you'll understand my stance well.

 

Edit:

 

I'm in the middle of something quite irritating, and have only just seen Ginny's post above..

And Ginnyfizz, I think you're a lovely person, that's just a fact and not a patronization; but you and I will never be able to agree on this subject because in my view the stance you project your thesis from is not something I can agree with, it's, to me, as if telling me the grass outside my door is bright pink. I have grandparents who were quite wealthy, and other grandparents who were dirt poor, but I don't think that's even relevant.

 

I think it's clear, that at least in the US, the redistribution of wealth has been flowing from the middle/working to elite at the top. That's what I worry about, not those scrapping over the few crumbs at the very bottom, which is like petty change.

[grannywils]

. And there are those who don't have a chance in hell (I meant no offense by my language) of ever getting a step up no matter how hard they work or how hard they try to take advantage of what is supposedly offered by this "Great Society".

...

So, proletariat or no proletariat, we are left having to depend on the people with the power (i.e. the money) often provided through the efforts of the workers (without the power).

 

I'll leave it at that for now.

 

Oh please! Do you suppose that ALL the people with money inherited their wealth? I fight against this no hope attitude every day in the course of my work, and encouraging the "have nots" to believe that they never can "have" without the kind of forced redistribution of wealth advocated by Communism and Socialism is not only wrong, it's also cruel. And it just perpetuates the situation, as well as maintaining the powerbase for said Communists and Socialists. As it happens, both of my Grandfathers came from dirt poor backgrounds (one of them was descended from a family that had once been wealthy but had been crippled by fines for recusancy over the centuries.) And both of them dragged themselves up to being comfortably off by both their own formidable intelligence - Grandad Aaron was a brilliant linguist and trader and Grandad Ernest a scientific boffin who also had enough commercial know how to run his own company - and by the sweat of their own brows, Not by leeching off either the downtrodden masses, or with any help from them either. AND there weren't any business grants from the State then, either. Or student grants, or even advantageous rate student loans. It's easier now than it was for them. So let's not try and keep the proles down, eh?

 

It is interesting that you found it necessary to pull out only part of what I said in my post. It seems to be the part that supports a postion that works for you, and thats fine in it's own right. If you will go back and read my whole post you will note that I mentioned that I am not blind to the fact that there are those who take advantage of what is "given to them", although I did not phrase it in so many words. What I did say was that,

I am a liberal with a brain and a conscious and a really good awareness of what goes on around me. I too come from a very humble background. I managed to raise myself up to a fairly decent standard of living, and am now farily poor again. The reasons for that are unimportant in this thread. I have never had a need to use any of the social services that are available, although right now I am pretty close. However, my knowledge that there are so many people in worse shape keeps me from considering that at the moment. I did the same thing that your grandparents did; so big deal. I'm smart, reasonably ok to look at, white and articulate. Don't try to tell me that we all start out with the same benefits; because you are just fooling yourself. Yes, I work hard and have an excellent work ethic, and it has not been "figuratively" beaten out of me. If you don't think that the welfare system was deliberately created to keep poor people poor, you need to think again. Again, human nature. Yes, many people refuse to be taken in by it (and those people succeed and are held up as examples), but more sink to the lowest common denominator. Human nature. Many people choose prejudice rather than look at their own hatred and fear. Human nature. If you don't think drugs were originally being distributed in the poorer communities practically for free, you are just drinking the Kool Aid. Yes, there is a whole community of people now who just don't want to work, and it pisses me off just as much as it does you. But I gotta tell you the work ethic of a lot of the younger people today who do work pretty much sucks too. When I went to work I put in a full day's work and more. I was paid to work, and that's what I did. It seems like a lot of young people today, spend more time working out their benefit package, chatting on line, text messaging, figuring out when they get breaks, and not listening to their training than they do work. But hey, maybe that's just me. I don't think of work as being a welfare system where you just show up and then someone gives you a check; but it seems to me that for some that's what it is becoming.

 

And I never said anything about where people's wealth came from. If individuals earn their wealth, why shouldn't they be entitled to it. This subject never came up in my post.