Nicker on 10/11/2020 at 13:59
Quote:
Notice that none of these are left-wing achievements and cannot be appropriated as such.
So you are saying that a movement, dedicated to putting humanity over profit, had no significant liberal component? Seriously?
Can you say "no true Liberal" logical fallacy?
The battle against slavery was a moral one, against capitalism, which had established and profited from the trade in humans for centuries. In fact, with abolition there came the largest compensation package ever paid to private citizens, all of it going to slave owners and none of it to former slaves. Many of those former slave owners used this huge infusion of cash to buy factories, where wage slaves, many of them children, could toil to the death for little more than a cold floor to sleep on and enough food to get them through another day in hell.
And for the last fucking time, the Soviets were State Capitalists and oligarchs, not socialists or even communists. What's the difference? In the CCCP, the state ran business. In the West, business runs the government. Either way it's a cluster fuck of greed.
nemyax on 10/11/2020 at 14:23
Quote Posted by Nameless Voice
It was capitalist Western society that introduced wide-scale slavery in the first place.
How do you mean introduced? They didn't just round up random unfortunate people overseas. They were sold to them at bustling slave markets that had been there for centuries.
Quote Posted by Nicker
Can you say "no true Liberal" logical fallacy?
...
And for the last fucking time, the Soviets were State Capitalists and oligarchs, not socialists or even communists.
Nope, but I can say "no true socialist" fallacy. States start running businesses (into the ground mainly) when private property rights are eroded away. Hitler also did that to the German industry, and Russia never really enjoyed private property.
Briareos H on 10/11/2020 at 14:25
What won against slavery is a humanist ideal that exists in most civilisations of people with at least half a brain, but that is under perpetual assault from obscurantists of any socio-political identity. Frankly, I see much more of that humanism driving the left à l'Américaine than the alternative.
Nameless Voice on 10/11/2020 at 15:16
Slavery had been there for centuries, it's true. But it was always to a smaller scale - the Americas really scaled up slavery to the next level.
Also, you completely ignored the fact that the USA is the only country in the world with slavery still officially enshrined in its constitution, and used purely for capitalist means - a thing I always feel I need to bring up since no one there ever even seems to know this.
They claim to love their constitution, but no one seems to have actually read it.
Renzatic on 10/11/2020 at 15:32
It's not so much that slavery is enshrined in the Constitution so much as the concessions for it are still lingering about.
demagogue on 10/11/2020 at 15:39
Case in point: the electoral college that elected Trump with 3 million fewer votes in the first place.
heywood on 10/11/2020 at 19:18
Quote Posted by Nameless Voice
Slavery had been there for centuries, it's true. But it was always to a smaller scale - the Americas really scaled up slavery to the next level.
Also, you completely ignored the fact that the USA is the only country in the world with slavery still officially enshrined in its constitution, and used purely for capitalist means - a thing I always feel I need to bring up since no one there ever even seems to know this.
They claim to love their constitution, but no one seems to have actually
read it.
Huh? I guess you never read the 13th Amendment.
Edit: Something else I was meaning to reply to you about but forgot:
Quote Posted by Nameless Voice
The other thing, which I'm sure I've said before, is that the whole concept of a president with that kind of power is bizarre.
In most other countries, the leader is a prime minister, chosen by the parliament, rather than directly elected by the people. As such, the parliament can just vote to remove him/her again and replace them with someone else, if they prove unfit for the role.
You have it backwards. In a Parliamentary system, the Prime Minister is more powerful than the US President. The Prime Minister is both the chief executive and the leader of the majority party in the lower house. And usually, the lower house is the dominant chamber. In the US system, the two legislative branches are roughly equal in power and separate from the chief executive. In the Parliamentary system, the governing party or coalition in the lower house has nearly complete control of government under one leader. In the US system, you've got to get the House, Senate, and President to agree, and control is usually divided between the parties. That's why we can't get anything done!
I concede your point about the majority party being able to replace the Prime Minister at will. However, that can be abused. I saw that when I lived in Australia. Gillard pulled off a coup against Rudd. Later Rudd returned the favor to Gillard. Turnbull did it to Abbott. Then Dutton did it to Turnbull which led to Morrison. That's four times in 8 years. It was mostly opportunistic back stabbing and not really in the public interest. Maybe if the majority party is going to change leadership, it should result in dissolution and a new election.
And one more thing:
Quote:
It was capitalist Western society that introduced wide-scale slavery in the first place.
Wide-scale slavery pre-dated capitalism. Even wide-scale slavery in the Americas pre-dated capitalism. Slavery here was a product of agrarianism (plantation culture) which created the market for slaves and mercantilism which supplied it. And the first states to transition to capitalism were the first states to abolish slavery. Capitalism and slavery are fundamentally incompatible, as long as we're talking about slavery in the traditional sense. In a capitalist system, you can have "wage slavery" though that's not nearly equivalent.
Nameless Voice on 10/11/2020 at 19:57
That's what I'm referring to.
It explicitly has provisions to allow slavery of anyone who has been convicted of a crime.
A reason why a huge amount of the manufacturing in the USA is made by prison slave labour, and another reason why such a large percentage of the USA's population (and especially the black population) is in jail.
Jason Moyer on 10/11/2020 at 20:24
The idea that capitalism drives progress is hilarious. And more hilarious is making that argument using a medium that wouldn't exist yet if it hadn't been developed and maintained with public funding.
