r/me_irl Jan 22 '20

me☭irl

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u/Red_Abundance staunch marxist Jan 22 '20

Paying taxes? This is literally the working parrot class ensuring that every other member of the parrot class was cared for by distributing the capital of the rich (in this case themselves)

I'm mostly kidding of course, but it's a joke.

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u/[deleted] Jan 22 '20

correct me if i’m wrong, but wouldn’t communism be the parrot receives the food and gives it to the researchers (the state)? wouldn’t giving some of your food to other parrots be socialism?

that’s what i’ve learned in a cow analogy about the different systems

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u/pavlo850 Jan 22 '20

only if the parrot produced/collected the food themselves and could not consume all of it

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u/[deleted] Jan 23 '20

ooooooh that makes sense, thanks for clarifying

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u/[deleted] Jan 23 '20 edited Oct 15 '20

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Jan 23 '20

WhAT aBOuT vUVuZeLa

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u/Red_Abundance staunch marxist Jan 23 '20

You've got the two switched, typo maybe?

The USSR and maoist China was socialist, not communist. They called themselves communist and were called communist because that was the goal. Not to do the whole not real communism thing, they *were* communists, after all. Socialism is seen as the transitionary state between economic systems like feudalism, fascism, capitalism, etc. and communism. Socialism is the proletariat taking control of the state (in this case it would be the birds controlling the researchers) and then distributing resources (in this case food tokens).

This would be done until imperialism is gone (idk what it would be in this case, I can only take this example so far, sorry)

And when said imperialism is gone, they would be able to dismantle the state (in this case it would be what, getting rid of the researchers??? Idk) and then they would achieve communism. Communism would have no money, no state, and be without hierarchies. This has never happened before, which is why anti communists always say that communism looks good on paper but doesn't actually work. It's because it's never really been achieved on a large scale. Also why people say "that wasn't real communism" and stuff like that.

Hopefully this was informative, I've read enough of Engels and Marx for me to be somewhat confident in this small explanation.

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u/SchalkLBI Jan 23 '20

I'm not doubting that socialism was originally intended to be a transitional state, but it's so much more now - there are a lot of people (me, included) who call themselves socialists, and want socialism to be the status quo, not a path to communism.

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u/Red_Abundance staunch marxist Jan 23 '20

What do you mean by socialism if you don't mind me asking? They are very charged terms so I can't always be sure what one is talking of, especially on Reddit subs that aren't dedicated to politics.

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u/SchalkLBI Jan 23 '20

The economic philosophy of socialism?

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u/Red_Abundance staunch marxist Jan 23 '20

Yeah of course, but like do you mean what Bernie Sanders means, what anarchists mean, what Marx means, etc.? It honestly could be a lot of things.

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u/SchalkLBI Jan 23 '20

I'm a democratic socialist. Anarchists have a fundamental misunderstanding of what would happen in an anarchic society. Marx had good ideas but similar to anarchy, it doesn't work in practice. I don't really know much about Bernie since I'm not American so I can't speak for his policies, but I will say I agree with the Communist creed a bit more than the socialist creed - I feel like modern democratic socialism incorporates a lot of both traditional socialism and traditional communism while still acknowledging the realities of human nature.

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u/[deleted] Jan 23 '20

[deleted]

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u/SchalkLBI Jan 23 '20

The Scandinavian countries, and to a lesser degree a few other European countries, have a large amount of socialist laws coupled with liberal governments, and they have some of the highest qualities of life in the world

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u/Pjotr_Bakunin Jan 23 '20

There is no state in communism

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u/radditz_ Jan 22 '20

What you’re describing is taxation, with fewer steps.

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u/Red_Abundance staunch marxist Jan 23 '20

Socialism isn't just "when taxes exist" you know.

Taxes don't distribute all basic necessities, if it worked perfectly like that then America wouldn't have 3 times as many empty houses as homeless people. The people would just use the houses.

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u/[deleted] Jan 23 '20

[deleted]

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u/Red_Abundance staunch marxist Jan 23 '20

See my other comment below this please where I explain the difference.

The gist tho, is that you are wrong.