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I see you've gone and backed away from the rhetoric of Revolution, too
No, I just don't expect revolution to happen next week. Who knows what change ten years can bring, though? The inherent contradictions of capaitalism make our job easier by the day, and bring revolution closer at every step.
If you go back and read carefully, you'll see that I didn't offer you my opinion of the proletariat, apart from praise for a drunkard
Point taken.
With that said, I think that while you're on your third-world field trip (to, for instance, Los Angeles), you're likely to encounter many people who can't read (or don't care to) and want your shoes or your extra sandwich (or your credit cards) in between your discussions of international monetary policy.
Here you put words into my mouth - you know nothing of my attitudes or behaviour towards such people. You also assume I am not one of these people myself - putting me in some rich, travelling bracket, which I could only dream for :P
But that is mostly irrelevant. Yes, such people have to be taken care of in a communist society, and they are easily the biggest losers under a caitalist system. It is people such as those who, if anything, motivate the entire revolutionary communist movement. I myself have been homeless in the past, it sure isn't fun, but my present slightly better off situation does not render me some sort of hypocrite, as you seem to be implying. Those people are very symbolic of the human costs of capitalism.
When you say that Communism can only work in a technologically advanced nation, you are effectively saying that Communism can only work in a nation that has prospered at the expense of the peoples of other nations.
That is correct. It is these past and present wrongs which must be righted. And you have forgotten my other caveat - communism should occur on a global scale. Such concepts as 'nations' are really irrelevant. And the past injustices merely motivate us to do better. Are you saying communism should only seek to prosper in nations that have never ever profited from another? No such nation exists.
Capitalism has been expanding since the day it was described to the rather ugly system we see today, whereas communism has been attempted and failed on almost every scale imaginable. The people have been ready for it. The people have organized and revolted to achieve it. And it has collapsed more often than not.
Lets see. It was attempted in Russia in 1917. It did rather well at first, but being blasted by all the foreign powers and the armies of foreign occupation, and the fact that it started in a backward nation on the edge of Europe ruined by the First World War, really doomed it from the start. No government system could have survived such a state without becoming deformed by a figure such as Stalin.
Other than that, I can't think of anywhere where communism has been attempted. The Soviet machine and insurgency methods, and a gaggle of dictators happily using the name 'communism' for legitimacy, have ensured that it has never been tried anywhere else. Unless you are going to start callin Cuba, China et all Communist? But that would be wrong.
As to your "large timescale," I think I've had enough of your obsession with waiting. This is the epitome of Victimist, passive-agressive thinking, no different from the Puritan insistence on suffering through life, awaiting Heaven.
I never said I am waiting or doing nothing. It is perfectly possible to raise class consciousness of Communism and prepare the road to successful revolution, even when one does not think that revolution is going to happen next week. What's with your obsession with instantaneous revolution? Surely you must realise this is not likely, and would be futile. The few thousand we could muster in each city and town would just be thrown in jail :-)
As long as your theory offers you nothing that you can do now to achieve its goals, insists that others achieve those goals for you, and gives you license to complain about the absence of those goals, then you are doomed to an unhappy life.
But it does offer things I can do now to acheive its goals. You are wrong. We don;t just sit around passively watching the news, you know?
I don't question Communism's good intentions, but it ignores human nature, and crushes the souls of people who long for it's particular implementation of Heaven.
Why do you say it ignores human nature? How do 'natural' people live? Alone, or in communities? With private property and ownership, or with communal ownership? You tell me :-)
Listen to me. I will show you How to Smash Capitalist Oppression Without Leaving Your Bar-Stool.
Nice quip, but I'd rather go out and do the work.
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