MiSTed: Communism Will Make Life Better 6

[The Happy SP2]

Hey everyone, sorry it took so long. Last part will be coming as soon
as we can do it.

Bye . . .

> The group moves about, following the food supply.

TOM: Oh, like Dom Deluise.

> Decision making can
> take many forms, but group consensus and acknowledgment of age and
> experience are common themes in many of the societies studied.

CROW: The word is the law and the law is the word!

> Food production and distribution are done collectively, although there is
> often division of labor based on age or sex. Sometimes referred to as
> "primitive communism".

TOM: Sometimes referred to the Democratic Party.

CROW: or the average hotel room at a con.

> ideology - A set of beliefs dealing with basic issues such as how
> people should treat each other or how the world works; a philosophy.

MIKE: A way of life.

CROW: A load of baloney, like most of politics.

> imperialism - A political-economic system based on the domination of
> one nation or community of people by another so that the dominant
> group can exploit or take advantage of the oppressed group;

CROW: Like say, the Soviet Union and Red China, perhaps?!

> the system
> of an empire and its colonies or conquered lands. Ancient empires
> included Rome and Byzantium. In the era of capitalism, imperialism
> often means economic and political domination without formal colony
> status, such as the relationship of the US to much of Latin America;
> Japan to much of Pacific Asia; or Russia to the former Soviet
> Republics.

MIKE: Wow! He acknowleged something we've been saying all along.

TOM: He still forgot the whole China-Tibet-Nepal-Taiwan thing, though.

MIKE (as Jeremy Irons in "Reversal Of Fortune"): Well, at least it's a start.

> intellectuals - Class societies have generally separated "mental" from
> "manual" work, although obviously no physical labor is without a
> mental component.

MIKE: So would Roseanne fit into this category?

> The term intellectual refers to people who make
> their living performing mostly or entirely mental labor.

TOM: Obviously NOT the program directors at Comedy Central.

MIKE: Shhhhh!

CROW: Ahhh who cares?!

> Examples
> include architects, teachers and writers. Under capitalism, most of
> these people belong to one of two economic classes.

MIKE: I hated Economics classes.

> Some, who can only
> make a living working for wages (most teachers, for example) are
> working class.

TOM: The poor, exploited working class. You never know where they'll turn up.

> Others, can be self-employed (e.g., doctors) and are
> in a different class (called the petit bourgeoisie).

CROW: More like the medium bourgeoisie.

TOM: Or medium rare bourgeoisie.

> industrial growth rates - The percent increase in the industrial
> portion of an economy over a specified period of time. The industrial
> portion is that part of an economy which deals with manufacturing,
> mining, power generation,

MIKE: Oh, as in Prince and the New Power Generation!

>transportation and related fields, that is,
> the entire economy minus agriculture and services.

TOM: I have NO idea how I'm supposed to respond to this.

> industrialization - The process of building up the "means of
> production,"

MIKE: Wonder Bread, builds ecomonies twelve different ways.

> that is, the factories, mines, railroads, electricity
> production and so forth,

TOM: Everything you need for a great Monopoly game.

CROW: From Parker Brothers.

> all the capital assets needed to produce finished products.

TOM: Delivered fresh to your grocery store every day.

> labor discipline - Rules and regulations applied to workers in the
> workplace.

MIKE: No smoking around open flames.

CROW: Gentle pressure on the buttons.

TOM: No joyrides on the forklifts.

> This usually implies regulation by, or at least in the
> interests of, someone besides the workers themselves, i.e., bosses.

MIKE: i.e., OSHA.

> `land to the tiller' -

CROW: Land to the lubber!

MIKE: Land ho to the tiller!

TOM: Landing legs to Phyllis Diller!

> This slogan was used by the Bolsheviks

MIKE: Once.

> to describe their program of land reform in the Russian revolution.

CROW: "Kill the damn czar" stopped having that certain ring to it.

> Large

CROW: Tracts of land.

> estates were seized from the gentry and the land was distributed to
> the landless or land-poor peasants (farmers). These poor farmers had
> been working the land before the revolution but they had to turn over
> most of what they produced in rent or taxes prior to the land reform.

MIKE: Just we do with our paychecks. If it's good enough for us, Commie-Boy.

> left - When used as a political term, left refers to the more
> egalitarian, pro-communist or anti-capitalist position in a
> controversy. Related terms are leftist and left-wing.

CROW: A bird cannot fly with just one wing, gentleman.

TOM: Oh, very GOOD, Rod McKeun.

> market capitalism - See under capitalism.

MIKE: See "hundreds of uses for the word 'capitalism'".

> masses - The most numerous class or classes in a society, making up
> the bulk of the population.

TOM: The great unwashed.

CROW: Who? Andrew Dice Clay?!

> In the US this would mean the working
> class. In China in 1949 this meant the peasants (probably over 80% of
> the people) and the urban working class (maybe 10%).

MIKE: Those that weren't exiled or executed.

> middle class - A loosely applied term with a variety of meanings. Used
> in a Marxist or communist analysis of classes it refers to the group,
> making up about 15-20% of the population which is neither capitalist
> nor worker.

TOM: No, they just hang around with nothing much to do.

MIKE (in Jimmy Stewart-voice): Yeah, except do most of the working and
living and dying in this town, Mr. Potter!

> These people may be managers who organize the exploitation
> of workers on behalf of some capitalist, or they may function
> independently, owning and operating their own means of production.

CROW: Or they just may be file clerks.

> Examples include a shop owner who works in the shop waiting on
> customers, a farmer who owns and works his own land, or a person who
> "owns" certain skills, like an architect. Used in the capitalist
> press, "middle class" is anybody in between an unemployeed homeless
> person and a multi-millionaire. In other words, in capitalist popular
> sociology, there is no such thing as a the working class and the
> scientific meaning of class

TOM: This is as scientific as phrenology, folks!

>is eliminated by calling everyone "middle
> class".

MIKE: That was a whole lotta nothing, guys.

CROW: This whole essay is a whole lotta nothing, Mike.

> nationalism - The political ideology which says the "nation" is the
> most important thing. This outlook says that class membership is
> unimportant (or doesn't exist), so that a person should be on the same
> side as you if they are your nationality, even though that person may
> be your boss and exploit you every day. According to nationalism,
> workers of different national or ethnic groups are natural enemies.

TOM: Yeah, the Communist system would NEVER put the State before the
individual.

> Nazi - The fascist political party which ruled Germany from 1933 to
> 1945. Nazi is short for the German name of the party (Nazional
> Sozialistiche Deutche Arbeiters Partei, NSDAP).

MIKE (as Kenneth Mars in "The Producers"): Churchill didn't even know how to
pronounce NAZI. He'd say NAW-SEE!

> The leader of the party was Adolf Hitler.

All (singing): That's when i fell for, the leader of the Party.

TOM: Vrrroom, vrrroom!

> The party's ideology was extreme nationalism,
> blaming all problems of the German masses on other ethnic and national
> groups, notably Jews and Slavs (Russians, Poles, etc.)

CROW: Unlike the Russians, who blamed all of their troubles on the Latvians,
Poles, Lithuanians and Estonians.

TOM: Oh, and lets not forget the enforcement of Russian as a common language.

> The Nazi army
> defeated French, British, Czech, Polish and other armies before they
> invaded the Soviet Union in World War II. They were turned back and
> eventually crushed by the Soviet Red Army,

MIKE: Only after inflicting about 20 million casualities and taking millions of
prisoners.

> which took Berlin, the Nazi capital, in May, 1945.

TOM: With no help from the U.S. or Britain, whatsoever.

> party or Party -

CROW: And, to the Party of the second Part.

Mike (as Chico Marx): Ah, dat'sa no good boss.

> A political grouping

TOM: Political groupie? Like Tipper Gore? Oh, wait, that's political *groping*!
Like Bob Packwood!

CROW and MIKE: SHUT UP!

>generally representing the
> interests of one class in society which organizes members of that
> class (and others if it can) to pursue goals which are in that class's
> interest.

TOM: And that's when I began to collect beer cans.

> When written with a capital "P" it refers to a particular
> party.

CROW: Party on, dudes!

TOM: Not AGAIN!

> When we write about a party leading class struggle on behalf of
> the working class today, we often write "the Party," meaning
> Progressive Labor Party.

MIKE: Yeah, whatever.

> peasant - A subsistence farmer, that is, a person who farms a small
> plot of land by hand or with draft animals and lives on the food he or
> she produces.

TOM: The truck farmer.

> Most peasant farmers must pay part of their crop to
> others, such as landlords, tax collectors, banks, etc. The term
> peasant implies a system of farming in which most of the land farmed
> is in small plots which are farmed by a family. This is different from
> most farming in the world today, which involves large tracts of land

CROW: You mean HUGE TRACTS of land!

> worked by farm laborers who own little or no land or farm implements
> of their own and who must therefore sell their labor to wealthy land
> owners to survive. That part of society made up of peasants is called
> the peasantry.

TOM (as Minnesota housewife): Ohh, just look at all of the festive peasantry.

CROW (in same mode): Oh, yes, the workers get so dolled up at this time of
year, with all of the bright grey and black colors and all.

> People's Commune -

MIKE: I'm Doug Lewyllen. Next up on "The People's Commune", two residents sue
each other over extensive toilet monopoly, and a high party official is
reprimanded for ordering the summary executions of ten men, who later turned out
to be totally innocent of the crimes they were accused of.

> The name of the large cooperative farms organized
> out of smaller coops in rural China in the late 1950s.

TOM: Were named after Sandra Dee.

> A typical
> commune was made up of several villages (tens of thousands of people)

CROW: They same amount that watched the final episode of "Martin".

TOM: What up?!

> who farmed on a large scale using a system of work points to assign a
> share of the crop to each family. Communes also ran small industries
> (e.g., brick kilns, cement factories, electric generating plants),

MIKE: Gallows-building, grave digging, blood-cleaning, etc.

> organized education, housing, health care, etc.

TOM: Was nowhere to be found.

> petit bougeoisie - The class of people who own a small amount of
> capital and make their living working that capital themselves. E.g.,

CROW: Marshall.

> owner of a print shop who owns the equipment and runs the machines
> personally. As a class the petit bourgeoisie fall between the
> capitalists (also known as bourgeoisie) who own capital but hire
> others to work it for their profit, and the working class, who own no
> capital and must sell their labor to capitalists in order to survive.

TOM (singing): If Man is still alive.

> Petrograd -

CROW (as Brit): I say, Tom old bean. it appears as if we are out of Petrograd.

> The 1914-1924 name for a city in northwestern Russia, also
> known by its English name, St. Petersburg.

MIKE: Where the boys are!

> It was the capital of the
> Russian empire from 1712-1917. It was the center of the Bolshevik
> revolution in 1917 and was renamed Leningrad after the Bolshevik
> party's leader from 1924 until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in
> 1991.

MIKE: Now it's simply called Diane.

TOM: HUH?!

> PLP - Progressive Labor Party,

CROW: Or, the Personalized Love Pump-

MIKE and TOM: CROW!!

> the revolutionary party organized in
> New York in 1965 by communists,

MIKE: people with no lives, obviously.

TOM: or bitter leftists who couldn't get jobs and were jealous of those who
could.

> many of whom had constituted the left
> within the old Communist Party of the United States of America, CPUSA.
> After the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and its US affiliate,
> the CPUSA, abandoned the cause of revolution, PLP was formed to pick
> up the fight for workers' power.

All (singing): You gotta fight, for the right, to pick the workers' noses!

> pre-history - See recorded history

MIKE: You know, I'm tired of this prefix, "pre"!

CROW: Me, too!

> primitive communism - The name sometimes used to describe simple
> hunter gatherer societies in which the economic life of the group
> (collecting and hunting food) was done in a collective fashion.

MIKE: Such as Christmas shopping.

> reactionary - One who favors returning to older political or social
> forms; an extreme conservative.

TOM: Newt Gingrich?

MIKE: Ronald Reagan?

CROW: jess nevins?

MIKE and TOM: H-huh?!

> The term implies return to a more exploitative, hierarchical system.

TOM: The good old days.

MIKE: Whatever the hell that means.

> recorded history - Human history since the development of written
> language (the past 5,000 years or so). Most of human history
> (sometimes called "pre-history" or "prehistoric times") was not
> recorded, since it occurred between the time human beings evolved as a
> species (around 250,000 years ago) and when writing was first
> developed, about 3,000 BC.

ALL (singing): It's about time, it's about space......

> Red Army - A communist army, under the leadership of a communist
> party. The Soviet Red Army is given credit for destroying at least
> 80% of Hitler's Nazi army, even by capitalist historians.

MIKE: Historians like Kitty Kelly, Pauli Shore, Paul Reubens and Snoop Doggy
Dog.

> The other
> major communist army was the Chinese People's Army (or Red Army) which
> drove the Japanese fascists out of China

TOM: Wait a minute! "Drove the Japanese" out?! As I recall, they only won ONE
battle against the Japanese, and that was very, very late in the war. Before
that the Chinese were getting their butts kicked from province to province since
1931.

> and defeated the Chinese Nationalist Army in the mid- to late-1940s.

MIKE: Only because the Nationalist Army lost favor with the populace because
it sat out against the Japanese.

> revolutionary party - A political party which advocates violent
> overthrow of the government to place a different class in power.

CROW: A bitchin' bash with at least TWO keggers.

> revolution - The complete, generally violent, overthrow of a
> government.

TOM: Or, the amount of times a long-playing record goes around in one minute.

> right - When this word is used to mean one side in a political
> struggle or controversy, it indicates the more conservative,
> hierarchical, exploitative, anti-communist or pro-capitalist position.

MIKE: or, the usually correct, most sensible position.

TOM: Oh, I don't know about THAT.

> See also reactionary. Related terms are right-wing, rightist.

CROW: See also, John Wayne in "The Shootist".

TOM: And my earlier, dumb comment.

> Russia - A large country spanning eastern Europe and all of nothern
> Asia with a population roughly equal to the United States.

MIKE: But they're colder and wear bad-looking clothing.

> From the
> 1700s until 1917 it was an empire ruled by a king (called the Czar).

CROW: And up until 1945, it was a really easy country to beat in a war.

> In 1917, after the Bolshevik revolution in 1917, the Russian empire
> was converted into the first socialist country, the Union of Soviet
> Socialist Republics or USSR (see Soviet Union). The largest of the 15
> constituent republics of the USSR, with three quarters of the land and
> over half the population, was the Russian Republic. After the
> transition from state capitalism to market capitalism in the USSR in
> the late 1980s followed by the official dissolution of the Soviet
> Union in 1991,

MIKE: Though not according to the John Birch Society.

>the Russian Republic renamed itself Russia again.

MIKE: Instead of the more popular, "Diane".

TOM: What is it with you and this "Diane" stuff?!

MIKE: I don't know, I guess I just liike the name, that's all.

> Russian revolution - Another name for the Bolskevik revolution of
> 1917, in which the working class took power in Russia and set up a
> socialist society.

CROW: Another name for "millions dead and a country ravaged".

> Shanghai - Large port city on the eastern coast of China. It has been
> a leading industrial and trade center for over a century. Many of the
> most radical changes seen in any Chinese city during the Cultural
> Revolution occurred in Shanghai.

TOM: Bombed back to the Bronze Age by the Japanese in World War Two.

> socialism - A political-economic system in which the working class

MIKE (as Monty Python peasant woman): Oh, there you go bring class into it,
again!

CROW (as M.P. peasant man): But that's waht it's all about. If only people
would......

> holds political power through its party and all are guaranteed jobs.

TOM: Certainly not members of Solidarity, for example.

> The pay for different jobs varies, based on how socially useful that
> particular work is. This was the system established after the
> revolutions in Russia (1917) and China (1949).

TOM: Green Bay (1976-68), Miami (1973-74), Pittsburgh (1975-76, 79-80),
San Francisco (1989-90) and Dallas (1992-93).

> soviet - The Russian word for

CROW: Pain, death, misery, despair, loss......

MIKE (as DeNiro): Ah'll show you th' meaning of "loss".

> the workers' councils established in
> every factory and army unit in Russia leading up the Bolshevik
> revolution in 1917. Representatives

TOM: Avon representitives.

> of the soviets met in congresses.

MIKE: Ruled by Newt Gingrich.

> The socialist government set up in Russia was based on these soviets,
> with the highest policy-making organ being the Supreme Soviet, a body
> of several hundred representatives of geographic areas. The word
> "soviet" is also used as an adjective to describe anything related to
> the USSR (Soviet Union).

CROW: See my above definition.

> Soviet Union - The commonly used name for the country created by the
> Bolshevik revolution in 1917, properly, the Union of Soviet
> Socialist Republics, or USSR. The country was formally dissolved into
> component republics in 1991. The political-economic system of the USSR
> was socialist from 1917 until the mid-1950s; from then until its
> dissolution in 1991, a system of state capitalism prevailed until the
> 1980s when forms of market capitalism began to be introduced. (See
> also Russia.)

MIKE: See also "Dismal failure".

> Stalingrad - The name given to an industrial city on the Volga river
> in south central Russia during the 1930s and 40s (now Volgagrad). The
> Battle of Stalingrad in World War II was one of the turning points of
> the war.

TOM: Oh please. Can't we have even MORE history? Please!

> The Nazi army fought their way into the city but could never
> take more than half of Stalingrad.

MIKE: They didn't want the OTHER half.

CROW: Can *you* blame them?!

> The Nazis's final offensive was
> stopped in mid-October, 1942, and a counter-offensive by the Red Army
> the next month resulted in the capture and killing of over half a
> million Nazi soldiers and a dozen of their generals. The Nazis were in
> retreat from the Red Army for the next two and a half years, right up
> until the capture of the German capital, Berlin.

MIKE: Who then released "No More Words" and "Take My Breath Away".

> state capitalism - See capitalism.

CROW: See "Endless definitions of 'capitalism'".

> state monopoly capitalism - See capitalism

TOM (Carl Sagan voice): Bill-yuns and bill-yuns of capitalisms.
They cancel a message--ten more messages spring up.
They send a court order--ten more home pages dedicated to their trickery spring
up.
They raid a critic's house--ten more critics spring up.
read alt.religion.scientology to find out the truth.