Hm, that is so good I think I'll give the sixteen miles thing a chance! It seems interesting!

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94% of DA's fanbase like yaoi. Put this in your signature if you're one of the 6% who think it's scary beyond all reason.

why a soviet hat?

Oh, well, because I'm a communist. It isn't necessarily a communist hat, as it's just a red hat, the socialist color, with the labor symbol on it, so really any proletarian is entitled to wearing one.

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94% of DA's fanbase like yaoi. Put this in your signature if you're one of the 6% who think it's scary beyond all reason.

>_> are you serious? you must be kidding.
well, I used to be a communist myself, at least on paper for a whole month or so

Nope, I'm not kidding. I'm working towards a socialist revolution, so by all accounts I am a communist. I'm engaged in a political party with a socialist agenda that's full of old school commies, as well as a bunch of more moderate reformists.

What do you mea used to be? You saw the necessity of a classless society, but then the moment of clarity went away?

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94% of DA's fanbase like yaoi. Put this in your signature if you're one of the 6% who think it's scary beyond all reason.

Mean*
Necessity for*
Sorry about those, I get excited when I get to talk about politics, and my keyboard isn't the best, so that tends to happen a lot...

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94% of DA's fanbase like yaoi. Put this in your signature if you're one of the 6% who think it's scary beyond all reason.

*sigh* I've been inducted into the [link] a short time before USSR came to its unsightly end. So let me offer you some observations - I've seen all this from inside. Forgive me for using overly simple language, but I never actually discussed any of this before.

First, I beg you to differ between socialism and communism. Socialism as far as I know is generally used to describe people-centric societies. It's a very good thing. Some states in europe (like Sweden) are frequently described as de-facto socialist, and as far as I know, Norway has quite people-centric culture, too.

However, communism - at least, classical forms of communism we've seen here and there, is an entirely different thing. First off, it is known to operate under very questionable economic assumptions dervied from marxistic teachings. I know wild capitalism can be bad, but communistic undertakings are inevitably subject to what is known as 'Tragedy of commons' (wiki has it).

The effect of the Tragedy of Commons is that economically communism almost absolutely results in a situation where resources are wasted uncontorllably, because of legal (фтв moral!) taboo on private property. collective farming enterprises don't work, because nobody gets the profit. Industrial enterprises come to ruin, because nobody is interested - even their directors. And, believe me (I'm an engineer working in a government corporation that makes missile control systems), serious technology development is impossible with such situation.

In everyday life, nothing good comes of the moral systems where a human cannot own anything. It produces worst kind of humans who just don't want to do anything. It won't ay anyway. And that's not only a materialistic concern: dorm-style houses are known as the most exquisite form of hell-on-earth here. People want to own their things, their land, to taste fruits of their labor. They don't want to raise collective cows or reap collective oats. If that's the case, they'd just sit and drink all the time. And that's exactly what we had.

Oh, I wrote such a long speech... anyway, I just want to know: who you want to start revolution against?

On the classles society: I don't like the term 'class'. It supposes they exist. I prefer the more encompassing term 'strata'.

Well, regardess society which has no stratification: I believe it to be impossible. We witnessed how a bureraucratic class in USSR has been born: supposedly civil servants, all party members and governors and stuff eventually became some kind of implicit and unspoken elite, like feudal lords or something. The underground 'merchant' strata has eventually appeared: as economy was highly unmotivated and inefficient, people in charge of distribution networks have become a literally privileged class. You didn't buy things in USSR, you could only gain rare items from people like that. We were back to a primitive barter by a network of trust. (But then, why work for state if I can't buy anything? so nobody at workplaces was doing any work. and I'm being literal, mind you, not metaphorical).

I believe there should be an explicit and regulate strata in society for economic elite and cultural elite. Because they would always appear anyway, but in unpredictably ugly forms if we try to suppres that trend.

well, to sum all up: I think ideal balance is reached when governement does its best to work for the people. And then, people will solve the rest themselves by neans of culture

And we don't even need to have some ideology for that. Just knowing that helping people to live is a good thing is quite enough (lol I sound so christian for an agnostic).