up until world war II, perhaps later, people used to cross over from Mexico to the US with no real issue and live wherever, this whole illegal issue is a very recent construct

Mexico had a massive baby boom in the post-war period, tripling the population in something like 30 years. There was an increased rate of people coming to the US for work due to the stagnation of the Mexican economy in the late 1970s/early 1980s.

"Will you answer mine? Am I, a team lead essentially, working class or ruling class? " and
''You're the equivalent of a foreman, which is classified as petit bourgeois.''

And I thought, in my naivety, that America was a classless society. It seems like the proposition that America is indeed divided by class is one of the few points of agreement between you!

Classes of course exist but class consciousness is very weak here. A large number of reasons for why - vast expanses of land, so no fewer land oligarchs like in Europe; early elimination of tax restrictions on the vote - so little impetus for working class solidarity; and no system of hereditary titles; the mythology/indoctrination of the 'American dream'; and the association of class mobilization with communism during the Cold War.

If I may interject here and frustrate everyone by taking the middle ground...you're all constantly accuse each other of not responding to each others points and making straw men. This sounds to me as though there's been a breakdown in communications somewhere along the line. To be perfectly honest Putin, I don't think Draug and Ivo are actually getting what you mean, it's an honest misapprehension, not a deliberate straw man. Draugnar, I find, generally tends to argue in good faith. I'm not saying he's necessarily correct, or even polite for that matter (sorry Draug) but he never goes in with the express intent of twisting people's words or misrepresenting facts. And this is probably coming off as ridiculously patronizing. Sorry about that too. I don't mean it that way.
For what it's worth, communism makes more sense than people realize, but westerners in general have been socialized to dismiss it out of hand. That being said, for my part I have a lot of trouble believing in a system of social organization until I actually see it work. Doesn't mean I actively disbelieve in communism, I'm just not committed to the ideal, never having seen it actually applied. Your arguments actually do make sense to me. I'm not saying you haven't made persuasive and logical arguments, it's just, it needs to actually happen or it's all just talk. Really applying theories to human systems has a way of screwing things up in ways that can't possibly be imagined.

And I realize that your reply to that will rely heavily on the idea that socializing people to believe in the system will make it work. (Obviously your point is more nuanced and detailed than that, and I do know what you really mean. I'm just using a short hand phrase so that I can complete this post sometime before the heat death of the universe.) And I have a critique of Marxism that comes from this same issue. Socialization. I find that Marxist approaches to social theory focus on economic oppression to the exclusion and detriment of other forms of inequality, and oppression. I understand how the Marxist framework allows for other forms of oppression to be swept away with the capitalist chaff, but I'm not convinced that's sufficient. People are socialized to be prejudiced. And that's a problem that I don't necessarily think will be fixed along with the abolition of social class.

Which is a point that provides a segue into a reply to Thucydides' OP, what this thread is actually supposed to be about. I think the only, really effective way to have some system fighting capitalism is to stop socializing people in such a way that they do accept it without question and discard other options out of hand. And yet, the fact that that happens is exactly what people are referring to when they speak of capitalist hegemony. I suppose my approach to the problem is one that is somewhat inspired by Foucault (though I hesitate to go all out and call it Foucauldian, because it is based on a rather shallow, superficial approach to his ideas, and because I'm not actually talking about sexuality or mental heath, and I don't know that I can honestly represent Foucault's ideas in such a different context). Anyway, the idea is that social norms will always be oppressive in some way. People will be conditioned to think in ways that limit their options, and that fighting against that, often means becoming aware of that dimension of oppression (at least as a first step, I'm not sure where you go from there). The thing is, organizations and people exist who do just that with capitalism. But we are used to dismissing them as crazy, terrorist or just wide eyed idealists. And I think as a first step, that's what needs to stop. The question is, can it?

And to preempt the communist reply and to show Putin that I actually did do my homework when I was an undergrad...he will say in effect that I am putting the cart before the horse. When capitalism is abolished the superstructure that is built on it, will change to reflect the new economic structure beneath. And then our debate becomes something of a chicken-egg debate.

''Classes of course exist but class consciousness is very weak here.''

In Europe the term class embraces more than income. I think that here one can be upper class and poor and lower class and rich, for example. The solution was/is obvious, once the lower class wealthy families acquire enough money then get your kids to marry them.

Incidentally have you ever heard of the British Grammar schools? There was a time, in my youth, when they threatened to disturb the whole social/class edifice. The establishment's solution was simple - abolish them and leave the field open and unhindered for their own offspring. The country has been going down hill ever since.

@Full - AZ law is about dealing with illegals, not about defining legal nd illegal. The construction of a law that profiles for finding offenders is not necessarily racist if the majority by a large margin in that region is of that race. Bit the fact is, the law in question puts discretion of suspicion I'm the officers hands and does not mention a specific race or appearance. But the issue of immigrating legally is race neutral in the federal law. That is what I refer to.

"In Europe the term class embraces more than income. I think that here one can be upper class and poor and lower class and rich, for example"

I don't see why the term class would be any different anywhere. Class has nothing at all to do with income. Class has everything to do with relations to the means of production.

" I think that here one can be upper class and poor and lower class and rich, for example."

I would like to know how you're defining upper vs lower class, out of curiosity.

"Incidentally have you ever heard of the British Grammar schools?"

Yes, haven't they found that less than 1% of existing grammar school students are on free lunch?

"I don't see why the term class would be any different anywhere. Class has nothing at all to do with income. Class has everything to do with relations to the means of production."

Because class and class consciousness develops historically in the context of time and place, so it makes perfect sense why it would be different

" Bit the fact is, the law in question puts discretion of suspicion I'm the officers hands and does not mention a specific race or appearance."

Somebody tell me how you get a "suspicion" that someone is here illegally that doesn't rely on appearance or language or something of that sort.

@ Mafia

Sorry if I lost patience, but since Ivo has never debated in good faith about this issue, I figured he was just repeating himself to annoy me. Communism isn't about crude equalization of everything. I thought this point was painfully clear. The fact that I kept getting comments/questions basically saying that it does is very irritating. Also the fact that people harp on the second stage of communism, claiming it is "unnatural" and "impractical", ignoring the fact that Lenin said there are no guarantees the second stage will occur and ignoring the fact that he said it would be a protracted process requiring long-term socialization through the dictatorship of the proletariat. Last, how can you argue something is "impractical" if countries around the world have implemented the dictatorship of the proletariat and initiated this transition? That seems like an absurdly unfair standard - that communism can't work because capitalism hasn't yet been totally defeated.

All of these arguments have been repeated in some form or another dozens of times, and at this point I can't accept that they're good faith arguments anymore. People have demanded that critics of their point of view at least take the time to bother to understand their point of view, I feel like that has not been done with Marxism.

" I find that Marxist approaches to social theory focus on economic oppression to the exclusion and detriment of other forms of inequality, and oppression. I understand how the Marxist framework allows for other forms of oppression to be swept away with the capitalist chaff, but I'm not convinced that's sufficient. People are socialized to be prejudiced. And that's a problem that I don't necessarily think will be fixed along with the abolition of social class."

I agree with your basic point, that not all forms of oppression will be swept away once capitalism is overthrown. But I disagree that Marxists have ignored other forms of oppression, although certain variants have (Trotskyites for example). Stalin is attacked here a lot, but his work on the national question has been cited in many an academic paper. It's an important contribution to the very issue you're talking about, dealing with other forms of oppression besides the issue of class. The CPUSA, prior to Browder taking control of it, advanced the idea of self-determination for the African-American people in the South, based on Stalin's formulation of what a 'nation' was. According to this understanding, the issue of black oppression would not be solved unless land was redistributed to the African American people in the South, and they were allowed to develop the means of production for their own independent development. This meant that under a 'socialist' America, a black national bourgeoisie would be allowed to develop. Trotskyites and revisionists completely ignore the issue of national question, and as you rightly point out, subsume everything to the issue of class.

None of my comrades have any illusion that once socialism dawns in America, racism will be extinguished overnight. You are correct in suggesting that long-term socialization and education will be required before that day comes. As Mao said - "Everything reactionary is the same; if you don't hit it, it won't fall. It is like sweeping the floor; where the broom does not reach, the dust never vanishes of itself."

And Lenin himself said "The dictatorship of the proletariat is a stubborn struggle-bloody and bloodless, violent and peaceful, military and economic, educational and administrative-against the forces and traditions of the old society" (Vol. XXV pp. 173 and 190).

The fact that Mao launched a Cultural Revolution should provide ample proof that quite a lot of Marxists took the whole idea of lingering reactionary prejudices/ideas very seriously.

...and killed millions in doing so

its creepy that we talk to somebody that would not bat an eye at mass murder if given the opportunity.

Why stop at millions, why not go for hundreds of millions.

And yet magically, China's death rate declined throughout the Cultural Revolution period, and its population increased substantially. Note the contrast with the Deng period, in which the death rate actually increased from the time he came to power to the time he died. Weird.

http://www.chinatoday.com/data/china.population.htm

"its creepy that we talk to somebody that would not bat an eye at mass murder if given the opportunity."

Because nuking civilians and incinerating cities in an atomic inferno in order to tell everybody you're the new big guy on the block isn't, you know, mass murder.

And I forget where you are in the latest *should we continue to carpet bomb Libya and assassinate Gaddafi's children and grandchildren* poll. Your lips say no but your eyes say yes.

stop thinking about my lips and eyes, and yet again I was never for U.S. military action in Libya, an i would be glad to link the thread to prove it.

Chinatoday.com, funny

and no matter what my views are, or how you continually twist them, the truth of the matter is if you were put in charge of the united states millions would die, and you would justify it.

hell, thats too passive, you would order the deaths of millions and then you would get others to justify it, right or wrong?

by the way, Im really just curious, in your view, is there anyway that transforming a U.S. capitalist society, from the point of communist takeover until socialism is implemented, that there will be no mass killings by the state.

"and yet again I was never for U.S. military action in Libya, an i would be glad to link the thread to prove it. "

Like I said, you claim you oppose it but provide grist to the mill of the warmongers and assassins.

Chinatoday.com, funny

Yeah too funny, actual census records. It's no black book of communism, or Robert Conquest forgery, but actual recorded data. Completely unreliable I know. We must insist on using Ukrainian fascist pamphlets for all records of births and deaths. Nothing else will do.

"hell, thats too passive, you would order the deaths of millions and then you would get others to justify it, right or wrong?"

Nope, sorry, you're confusing me with your buddies in the US government who backed the slaughter of 500,000 Indonesia communists and napalmed millions of North Koreans. I do enjoy how you manage to make these kinds of statements right after whining about me supposedly "falsely" attributing a position on the Libyan won you do not take. Yet another magical act of cognitive dissonance from our pal Santa.

"by the way, Im really just curious, in your view, is there anyway that transforming a U.S. capitalist society, from the point of communist takeover until socialism is implemented, that there will be no mass killings by the state."

You're supposedly a historian right? You do know that the Bolshevik Revolution itself was largely bloodless, right? Winter Palace was seized without a shot being fired. The violence came later, when your anti-semitic friends the Whites launched a counterrevolutionary civil war against Bolshevik authorities, with the enthusiastic help of more than a dozen foreign powers.

By the way I'm really curious, did you become this raging humanist before or after you saw photos of crisped Japanese children in Nagasaki?

Nepalese communists recently overthrew the monarchy there. Where are the death camps? C'mon where are they? Why did Castro make sure that Batista-ite prisoners were treated as humanely as possible? Where were all the political prisoners after the Wall fell? Shouldn't have there been gulags full of oppressed pro-capitalist dissidents?

No forget all that, you're just going to continue calling me a mass murderer in waiting anyway.

You're supposedly a historian right? You do know that the Bolshevik Revolution itself "was largely bloodless, right? Winter Palace was seized without a shot being fired. The violence came later, when your anti-semitic friends the Whites launched a counterrevolutionary civil war against Bolshevik authorities, with the enthusiastic help of more than a dozen foreign powers."

Im talking about the post war purges, the deaths in state Gulags, and Maos killing of over 40 million in the great leap forward and the Cultural revolution.

I want to know if a Communist revolution is possible without the purges, without mass murders of populations of dissidents.

Or, if hypothetically, if you and a group of like-minded people took control of the state, could you transform the US into a socialist utopia without killing millions? Really a simple question. If you think you could do it, what besides the power of violence would you use to do so?

and dont make this about the death count, Ill concede whatever number you like about deaths in China under Mao, the question remains, could you (or anyone) transform the U.S. from Capitalist to socialist without killing millions.

I'm glad to hear that Marxists have considered that point Putin, I was not aware of that. Granted most of my reading on socialism was essentially just Marx and Engels. I majored in Anthropology and Sociology, and so I ended up with a few history/theory courses that would address Marx directly, and then a bunch of classes about much more recent work in those fields, which have largely moved away from Marx since then, without really going into more recent developments in Marxist thought. Something of a gap it would seem. Sociology in particular has actually taken up a rather conservative bent as a result of the work of Emile Durkheim and Max Weber.

Where are the millions being killed in Nepal and Cuba, Santa? Your question is asinine. You invent atrocities and manufacture numbers out of thin air, then taunt me with your "could you possibly implement your social system without millions dying", right after I point to numerous cases of rather bloodless communist revolutions.

And of course, any amount of violence in a revolutionary situation is equated, in your ridiculous brain, to MILLIONS being killed. There is no alternative. It's either pacifist takeover, or millions dying everywhere.

Of course, the real question should be, can Santa's beloved system of capitalism be implemented without mass starvation, disease, human trafficking, genocide of indigenous peoples, drug addiction/drug violence, sex slavery, war, colonialism, chattel, slavery, segregation, and catastrophic environmental destruction. The answer is obviously no. And it's also obvious that Santa is in favor of all of those things. Right? Right.

Im not even talking about the takeover, which should be clear, Im talking about the dictatorship of the proletariat, from what I understand Nepal and Cuba havnt left the transitory state of communism yet, and I'm talking about a specific place, the Unites States.

"can Santa's beloved system of capitalism be implemented without mass starvation, disease, human trafficking, genocide of indigenous peoples, drug addiction/drug violence, sex slavery, war, colonialism, chattel, slavery, segregation, and catastrophic environmental destruction."

Can Communism be implemented without these?

Actually yes. At the very least human trafficking, sex slavery, colonialism, chattel, slavery and segregation are all antithetical to the very basic concept behind communism. I don't see any particular reason why it should lead to any of the others either.

@ Mafia,

In my experience, today's "(neo-) Marxists" and critical theorists in academia have almost gone so far in the other direction in their attempt to overcorrect for the focus on class, embracing the ideas of people like Gramsci and the Frankfurt school, etc, and have completely taken the class bite out of everything. Everything now is about identity, ideas, and culture, while class has completely fallen by the wayside.

Cuba has absolutely implemented the dictatorship of the proletariat - and yet no death camps. I'm shocked that people like you haven't run around making up shit like "Castro has killed millions upon millions", but you can't even do it. Where were/are the death camps in Vietnam? Of course, the millions who did die in Vietnam were the victims of American aggression and imperialism, but you never dare mention those little details.
Socialist governments swept to power throughout eastern Europe. No death camps in Czechoslovakia, Romania, East Germany, Bulgaria, Hungary, Albania, or Yugoslavia. No death camps in socialist Mongolia. No death camps in Mozambique. No death camps in People's Yemen.

I'm sure you'll manage to make stuff up about all those places, while ignoring horrific western atrocities around the globe, and insisting that western atrocities aren't endemic to the social system you support.