"The Soviet Union was pretty successful at first which scared many people in America, but after awhile there were shortages in some products while other goods were overproduced. Everything began to fall apart. Is there even any difference between how state-communist and an anarcho-syndicalist society would handle the allocation of resources? Isn't it essentially the same thing? An organization does research to figure out what we need to produce more of and what we don't need to produce as much? Because that's how the soviet union tried it and it failed. This is what I don't understand. Anybody who favors ur system doesn't seem to understand how complex production can be. It'd be extremely difficult to accurately do something like that."

That was the post u responded to. It says nothing about employment rates.

no, the Spanish Revolution:

"The Collective bought a modern threshing machine, modern ploughs and seed drills, a powerful tractor, a reaper-binder, a vine spraying machine, a ridge plough. The use of all these mechanical aids, to which must be added those supplied by the chemical industry, make it easy to understand why the productivity of the Collectivised land was 50 per cent higher than that of the individualist farmers, and that the latter ended by joining in the common effort."

http://libcom.org/book/export/html/1933

"There were many increases in productivity and efficiency. In several areas huge new projects were made possible by collectivisation. In Esplus there were four new piggeries producing hundreds of animals and the sheep herd increased from 600 to 2,000. In Mas de Las Mantas a huge collective bakery handled all the baking previously the exclusive task of women in the home. In Alcorisa there had been a 50% increase in cultivated land and centralisation of tailor's shops brought a 66% increase in production."

http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/spain/ws_collective.html

and this was in comparison to the economy in Spain that preceded it which seems to have been a mixed economy that was heavily privatized.

well, i didn't intend to post it to that. that was a mistake.

my new theme song



erikboyd60@hotmail.com

"True poetry can communicate before it is understood"

-T.S. Eliot

battle record:

7-0-0

The Paris Commune
The Free territory of Ukraine
Anarchists in the Russian Revolution ( the workers councils , the factory committees , the militia armies etc. )
The Israeli Kibbutz
Anarchist Catalonia , Anarchist Aragon ( almost all Republican Spain at that time ).
Anarchists in the Italian Factory Occupations which led to a 2 month workers takeover of all means of production until the loyalist came and crushed them by brute force .
The May-June Revolt in France, 1968.

Look, can we just start with the kibbutz?

as is the US today, albeit to a lesser degree, and we still have a capitalist mixed economy. as a matter of fact, i would contest that fascism is all about pseudo-capitalism or even all out capitalism (of course the government is the ultimate authority in traditional fascism).

lol why? do you have an article that says that kibbutzes were not productive? the kibbutzes were forced to change structure in 1948 when the UN, lead by Great Britain, began flexing it's power over the region now occupied by Israel and the Israeli leaders used the power allotted to them by GB and the US to force the kibbutzen to depend on their support, which eventually lead to an overall change in structure from libertarian socialist to a sort of state socialist model.

my new theme song



erikboyd60@hotmail.com

"True poetry can communicate before it is understood"

-T.S. Eliot

battle record:

7-0-0

"Children's Societies were one of the features of kibbutz life that most interested outsiders. In Kibbutz Artzi parents were explicitly forbidden to put their children to bed at night. As children got older, parents would sometimes go for days on end without seeing their offspring, except from chance encounters on the grounds of the kibbutz."

"researchers came to a conclusion that children growing up in these tightly knit communities tended to see the other children around them as ersatz siblings and preferred to seek mates outside the community when they reached maturity. Partly as a result of not finding a mate from within the kibbutz, youth often abandon kibbutz life as adults."

You're going against the grain of nature advocating societies like this.

And ofcourse, it didn't play out how u would like to imagine. Now that I think about it, it's funny you brought up Cuba, because just like how foreign aid keeps Cuba's economy alive, the kibbutz really depended on the Jewish National Fund:

" Kibbutzim in the early days tried to be self-sufficient in all agricultural goods, from eggs to dairy to fruits to meats.

Kibbutzniks were also not self-sufficient when it came to capital investment. At the founding of a kibbutz, when it would be opened on land owned by the Jewish National Fund; for expansion, most kibbutzim were dependent on subsidies from charity or the State of Israel."

While they were urged to no longer be a collectivist society, there were other reasons they switched:

"the need for government bailouts harmed the kibbutz image. During that period kibbutzim borrowed excessively with the expectation that inflation would virtually eliminate their debts. When the Israeli government implemented an austerity program that brought inflation down to 20 % per year kibbutzim were left with billions in debt that they could not repay. The ensuing bail-out by the government, banks, and profitable kibbutzim cost the kibbutz movement considerable respect."

"Kibbutz industrialization in the 1960s led to an increase in the kibbutz standard of living, but that increase in the standard of living meant an end to the self-sacrifice which regular Israelis had so admired."

They had to get subsidies in order to stay above water. The radical change in social life that was forced in the Kibbutz also ended up negatively impacting it.

"The communal life was naturally hard for some people. Every kibbutz saw new members quit after a few years. Kibbutzim also had their share of members who were not hard workers, or who abused common property"

http://encyclopedia.stateuniversity.com/pages/12863/kibbutz.html

But I'll also look into your other examples of libertarian socialism. Btw, we agree that Native Americans aren't a good example now, right?

Damn! Even more dirt is dug up! It's not that free of a society after all.

"Although major decisions about the future of the kibbutz were made by consensus or by voting, day-to-day decisions about where people would work were made by elected leaders. Typically, kibbutzniks and masakaries would learn their assignments by consulting the duty sheet at the dining hall."

"Finally, kibbutzim, as small, isolated communities, tended to be places of gossip, exacerbated by lack of privacy and the regimented work and leisure schedules."

"Kibbutz memoirs from the Pioneer era report that kibbutz meetings varied from heated arguments to free-flowing philosophical discussions, whereas memoirs and accounts from kibbutz observers from the 1950s and 1960s report that kibbutz meetings were businesslike but poorly attended."

"Kibbutzim attempted to rotate people into different jobs. One week a person might work in planting, the next with livestock, the week after in the kibbutz factory and the following week in the laundry. Even managers would have to work in menial jobs.[16] Through rotation, people took part in every kind of work, but it interfered with any process of specialization."

I know you guys love psychology:

"Three researchers who wrote about psychological life on kibbutzim were Melford E. Spiro (1958) , Bruno Bettelheim (1969) and Michael Baizerman (1963). All concluded that a kibbutz upbringing led to individuals' having greater difficulty in making strong emotional commitments thereafter, such as falling in love or forming a lasting friendship. On the other hand, they appear to find it easier to have a large number of less-involved friendships, and a more active social life."

"Bettelheim suggested that the lack of private property was the cause of the lack of emotions in kibbutzniks. He wrote, "nowhere more than in the kibbutz did I realize the degree to which private property, in the deep layers of the mind, relates to private emotions. If one is absent, the other tends to be absent as well". (See primitivism and primitive communism for a general discussion of these concepts)."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibbutz

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_relation

Social life in specialized terms called social relation is the basis concept that makes you fit to make more friends more girlfriends etc . That's why we use the terms "he's not SOCIABLE" or " that nerd has no GF well of course he has no social life " .

Not really . Spain came from a Constitutional monarchy as a Constitutional monarchy it was CAPITALIST to every degree all means of production were privately owned .

Ms Ozeri says: “People wanted more control over their own lives and economics. They wanted to make their own decisions, and have their own car and their own telephone. It is very difficult to live this strong communal life. It is very tiring.”

Just as these social trends were gathering pace, the kibbutz movement was dealt a knock-out blow from a different direction. Keen to diversify away from farming, more and more kibbutzim had started dabbling in industry, setting up businesses that – often burdened by a lack of management expertise and capital – made hefty losses.

The result was a debt-crisis, a government bail-out in 1985 – and a wholesale re-examination of the kibbutz economic philosophy.

“Israeli society had always looked to the kibbutzniks as an elite group. But now they were regarded as a mere interest group that depended on money from the state,” says Mr Getz.

The answer to this dilemma – and to the communities’ financial woes – came in the form of privatisation – a process that started slowly in the 1990s and has gathered pace ever since.

Nachshon, for example, finally decided to abandon collectivism in 2006. In a so-called “privatised kibbutz”, members are free to keep their salaries, but in return they have to pay for all the goods and services that the kibbutz used to provide for free."

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/01e0cdcc-09fd-11df-8b23-00144feabdc0.html

I was the source of that monkey's desire for chocolate cake. It is because of me that he desires it. I am at fault for the monkey's desire. The monkey simply responded to what I did. I was the prime mover in the situation.

But even worse, I add addictive ingredients into the cake once I realize the monkey likes it. Now he does chores for me to get the cake. Now he wants cake all the time. That's all he wants to eat. He is growing unhealthy and exhausted, while I sit back, make cake, and chill.

Okay, the monkey desires sugar due to it's evolved metabolism. But it does not desire cake until someone made it. There is a difference, and the difference is my point. Industries create things to spark desires that lay rooted in human biology. Then they figure out how to addict them to ensure business. It is far too unethical. It's hilarious, how long will you deny this?

It's like painting a wall red and provoking a bull to run into it. The bull instinctively charges at red, and people have the bull do it because it sells, but at the bulls full demise.

In history, being fat used to be admired, because it meant that you were wealthy and affluent.

There is no genes that directly control conception of beauty. And even if there are, they can easily be overridden by the multiplicity of other genes in combination.

Comfortable chairs? No one will be spending more time sitting and being lazy, they'll be too busy riding escalators and elevators. Well maybe they'll be riding them in comfortable chairs.

Are there big campaigns to get people to buy comfortable chairs? Can you find a comfortable chair shop on every other corner on a main street? Is there anything that directly addicts people to comfortable chairs? What benefit is there for a business if they get people addicted to comfortable chairs? Is there research saying that comfortable chairs are harming people's health? Sure there is, when there is a video game to keep them sitting, or a football game, or a TV show, or a bag of potato chips. Most people don't sit just to sit without any reason. Your examples don't hold up.