Socialism will deprive us of our hard-earned wealth and property: (

[Ichingcarpenter]

You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society.

[TexasProgresive]

1. My sentiments exactly

[daleanime]

2. Yeahup.....

[L. Coyote]

3. I'd like to see how a graph of nations charts wealth.

Last edited Thu Nov 26, 2015, 09:56 AM - Edit history (1)

Who is the 1% then?

In Focus: The World’s Billionaires

"For 2012 Forbes counted 1153 billionaires across the globe (this figure includes families, but excludes fortunes dispersed across large families where the average wealth per person is below a billion). The total wealth of the billionaires was US$3.7 trillion – as great as the annual gross domestic product of Germany. Top of this league table is the US with 424 billionaires (or billionaire families), followed by Russia (96) and China (95). "

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

4. Are you 'the nation'? I'm not.

Even if America is 'the 1%' on average, many Americans still are not. People who talk about how 'Americans are the world's 1%' are like RWers calling themselves super-rich because they live in the same state as Bill Gates.

What would make more sense is a chart of how many of the world's 1% "live" in each nation. I say "live" because the 1% are generally not tied down to any one country. They may be a given nationality by birth, but they've got the money to be mobile. They're transnational.

Besides, the cost of living varies wildly around the world. A US dollar's worth of food in the US might feed you a cheap meal. In a third world country, it might feed you just as well (or as poorly) for a week or more.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

5. Oh, and here.

To reach that status, you’d have to possess $770,000 in net worth, which includes everything from the equity in your home to the value of your investments.

From: Are You In The Top One Percent Of The World? http://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/050615/are-you-top-one-percent-world.asp#ixzz3sblpkUSS

So there ya go. Folks worth more than $770k are the top 1% in the world.

The vast majority of Americans don't make the cut.

ETA: According to a Boston Group research report, just over 7 million American households are worth more than 1 million. Given that households are usually more than one person, I think it's generous to suggest that in the ballpark of 5-7 million Americans are in the global 1%, out of the 325 million or so Americans.

[Doctor_J]

6. I actually have seen that posted without irony on du a couple times lately

[pangaia]

7. That paragraph is WAY, WAY to complicated to be understood

by those who need to understand it.

[SoapBox]

8. Capitalism.

One of the dirtiest ism's, in my book.

Even worse when it's Croonie Capitalism.

[fasttense]

9. Ahhh, socialism is NOT about abolishing ownership of property

That's Communism, you know like China.

Socialism is all about putting the means of production in the worker's hands. Letting the worker determine the distribution of the surplus or profits.

So, we can pay the capatalists for the means of production like they did when they freed the serfs in feudal Russia or we just take the property without compensation like we did when we freed the slaves.

[TBF]

10. Marx and Private Property

The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property. But modern bourgeois private property is the final and most complete expression of the system of producing and appropriating products, that is based on class antagonisms, on the exploitation of the many by the few.

In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.

We Communists have been reproached with the desire of abolishing the right of personally acquiring property as the fruit of a man’s own labour, which property is alleged to be the groundwork of all personal freedom, activity and independence.

Hard-won, self-acquired, self-earned property! Do you mean the property of petty artisan and of the small peasant, a form of property that preceded the bourgeois form? There is no need to abolish that; the development of industry has to a great extent already destroyed it, and is still destroying it daily.

Or do you mean the modern bourgeois private property?

But does wage-labour create any property for the labourer? Not a bit. It creates capital, i.e., that kind of property which exploits wage-labour, and which cannot increase except upon condition of begetting a new supply of wage-labour for fresh exploitation. Property, in its present form, is based on the antagonism of capital and wage labour. Let us examine both sides of this antagonism.

To be a capitalist, is to have not only a purely personal, but a social status in production. Capital is a collective product, and only by the united action of many members, nay, in the last resort, only by the united action of all members of society, can it be set in motion.

Much more here: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm

[Hydra]

11. I just laugh these days

Most people have no idea how our world works, but they are terrified that someone will take their stuff away (faster).