What would AIM do with the Cosmic Cube?

[thanekos]

Take over the world, sure, but how would they do it?

I mean, they make the damn things, but usually someone else boosts it first.



Now, they didn't make it this time, I should say to start.

Reed Richards did, in an earlier Ultimate Fantastic Four storyline, using the science of Ultimate Thanos as a part of the latter's long game...

...but that storyline was resolved, the Cube dumped back in time and Ultimate Thanos sent to a fate I vaguely remember.

And the UF4 disbanded in the wake of Ultimatum, with Reed currently living at his parents'.

However, he left his notes behind.

And AIM boosted them.

The result?



They got to make it after all.

And their plan is just straight up renovation. Fair enough.

...AIM: total nerds of one discipline or another, to a man.

Meant in the best possible sense, of course.

also, skull's kinda rocking anthony hopkins face here, isn't he?



AIM has objectivists.

It really takes all kinds, doesn't it?

Anyhow, Skull and his new buddies gun the oddly uniformed Commander Supreme down.

" My contact told me I would find something interesting if I came out of retirement. " he opines...



AHFFFF.... well, at least this was a pretty good story the first time around.

bonus: there's been a method to supervillain Zodiac's madness, as he explains to HAMMER agent Murph what he's been gunning for the whole time...



ah, so that's why he decapitated the entire Zodiac!

and he's in a pretty neat place, when it's all said and done:



dude?

your henchmen include a legacy member of the Circus of Crime, Nekra's illegitimate daughter, and Manslaughter flippin' Marsdale.

You've got brag, but you don't exactly have a hot pool of talent, there.

Now, Norman? Has brag and a nice group to draw from:

Comments

[colonel_green]

"Libertarian Marxism"?

[thokstar]

Wiki is your friend. (Basically, it seems to be a marxist state, but with communal economic decisions made below the state level.)

That wiki entry is pretty sparse

[lamashtar]

Eh, I get the Libertarianism (crabby loners with shotguns) about it, but not the Marxism. Especially since I thought Marxism was all about the economics and who controlled it.

Re: That wiki entry is pretty sparse

[lonewolf23k]

Libertarianism and Marxism are pretty much opposite concepts.

Re: That wiki entry is pretty sparse

[arilou_skiff]

No, not really. There is a reason that the as you move left of the standard commies you start running into syndies and anarchos.

Re: That wiki entry is pretty sparse

[geoffsebesta]

There is a reason why snappy physical analogies to political realities are often untenable.

There is no "gradient" to human thought. It's a quantum phenomenon IMO but it's definitely not a smooth two-dimensional ring.

That said, there's no reason why libertarian marxism couldn't work. If we wanted we could probably use that to describe certain aspects of America. Could we say that "libertarian marxism" describes the health care and HMO sector?

Re: That wiki entry is pretty sparse

[arilou_skiff]

No.

[Big Marxist Rant Here]

The basic idea of Marxism is this: Humans produce stuff. That's really what makes us different from animals, we produce "stuff", that we then trade/share with others. Production is the key.

Now, Marx has a theory of Value (which is quite different from our standard theory of value, which is where most of all the arguments and shootings come from) according to Marx, the value of a product is determined by the work you put into it. (this is important because it ties into his concept of exploitation)

Basically according to Marx, people make stuff. However, in all socities there have been certain people (a class) who for various reasons wants to make use of the surplus of "stuff" ("stuff" here is anything produced by humans, culture as well as material goods) that people produce. The form this takes has taken on various forms throughout history, but basically the idea is that some people (usually those in a coordinating position) end up taking more of the value of a product than the work they put in: A factory owner does *some* amount of work, certainly, but the value he gets out of the factory is way out of proportion to the amount of actual work he does. He is approporiating the value of the worker, the proletarian. (who should really be given a bigger slice of the pie, so to speak)

Now, Marx's theory of history (which, intellectually speaking is really friggin' important, yes, pure marxists can be counted on the left hand of a blind butcher, but the theory behind it is so important that most people have assimilated it into their idea of how history "works" by now) basically goes that history is a struggle between classes:

Well, what's a class, well, that depends on the mode of production. What the heck is a mode of production? Well... Basically it's the way things are done. Not in a technical sense really (although technology makes new modes of production possible) but in the sense of "this is how we organize stuff" according to Marx (this is of course a huge simplifaction) the Ancient World ran under a slavery system, the medievals used serfdom, etc. etc.

Now, there's another term that needs to be defined: The Means of Production. These are the physical (and also organizational) things that are used to produce stuff. Hammers. Factories. Lumber mills. Tools, and also institutions (a university is a Means of Producing Science!) Now, each mode of production is inherently unstable because the means of production change and improve over time. Eventually the means of production will "outgrow" the mode of production (people will see that it becomes more rational to do things in a new way) the old ruling Class (those who exploited the old Mode of Production) are going to resist and those who think they can exploit the new Means of Production in a better fashion are going to stage a Revolution, becoming the new ruling class.

According to Marxist theory, that's what happened during the period of say... 1500-late 1800's. Various "feudal" regimes were swept away by the new ruling class (the bourgeoisie) in conflict such as the French Revolution and the English Civil War.

Now, the currrent system we live in, Capitalism, is exploitative: It's less so than other systems, but it's still fundamentally unfair. As the Means of Production develop eventually the contradictions of the system are going to cause another Revolution. This is really where Marx's political programme comes in.

Marx thought Capitalism was eventually going to coalesce into a few monopolies, and that these were going to have to oppress their workers more and more because of their heightened competition. (Basically each one would be driven to reduce costs as much as possible which would mean reducing wages, etc. etc.) eventually the workers are going to rise up and institute a new order.

Marx thought that with the Industrial Revolution the problem of scarcity had basically been solved: There was now enough for everyone, if people would just share it equitably. He believed that after the capitalist order had been overthrown there would be a period of working class rule ("The dictatorship of the proletariat", it should be noted that according to marxist thought *any* political system is an instrument of the ruling class, so our present system is "The dictatorship of the bourgeoisie") during this time the working class would socialize the means of production, since the means of production are no longer held by a separate class, the system of classes itself would vanish: And since the State is a manifestation of the ruling class, so would the state. Marx isn't really clear about what would happen then, but his idea seemed to be something along the lines of people trying out all sorts of jobs and eventually settling down on what they liked.

Now, there are all sorts of problems with Marx's theory, many of which have been discussed for the last 120 years or so. (It can be argued that the entire period of say, 1880-1990 is People Arguing About Marx) the most obvious one was voiced by a group of germans known as the Revisionists in the late 19th century:

Basically, Marx's predictions weren't coming true. Capitalism didn't produce the effects expected, it seemed, in part because the working class quickly organized itself. (into labour unions and similar structures) These guys basically said "Okay, so that won't happen. Maybe we don't need a revolution at all? We might be able to affect this transition peacefully." That's basically the genesis of the Social Democratic movement.

Others, like Lenin, argued that the reason was because Capitalism rather than "taking it out" on the industrialized world's workers it was extracting stuff from the Third World (well, this was long before that term was coined of course) but that eventually the chickens would come home to roost and a Revolution would still be neccessary.

Now, there were some people who disagreed with Marx already in his lifetime, a lot of them basically accepted Marx's schema of history but disagreed on the particulars of how it would work. They argued that there was no need for a middle-stage of proletarian dictatorship: All that had to be done was to smash the system. These were the anarchists. Famous for throwing bombs and having a whole lot of faith in the inherent goodness of mankind. Since most anarachists basically accepted Marx's historical analysis (but not his predictions) they are sometimes termed "libertarian marxists".

Syndicalists are basically anarchists but they believe that the basic unit of society is/should be the labour union. They advocate labour unions taking over the means of production and running them themselves.

Re: That wiki entry is pretty sparse

[porcupine_advocate]

*claps*

Nicely written :)

Re: That wiki entry is pretty sparse

[geoffsebesta]

Yep.

What I was trying to get at is the way that HMOs act as collectives but they are economically based. They are essentially consumer unions that have been set up by bourgeoise entities to protect consumers from unregulated capitalism -- they're actually Nixon creations. I would be very curious to see what Marx thinks of them.

It's interesting to me that you've studied the history of Marxism but you're still using a bi-polar spectrum metaphor for politics. According to your positional strategy libertarianism is what, extremely right-wing?

Modern libertarianism, I should make that clear. I'm not at all sure that libertarian marxism, in the modern sense of either word, applying that well to the anarchists of the Haymarket Square riots. Although I like the allusion, that's not what I referred to. I was referring to a modern individual who like Marx and Ron Paul, and people like that certainly exist. I think it's short-sighted, myself, although I have some sympathies. They seem to be all for collectivism except when they are violently against it.

How "production" and "scarcity" apply to health care sounds intriguing to me. I wonder how a Marxist would make that work.

Perhaps I'm over-conflating Marxism and collectivism, that may be where I lost you. I associate Marx with collection and organization and do not trouble myself overmuch with his long-range predictions, which as you pointed out, were more or less wrong.

"Now, there were some people who disagreed with Marx already in his lifetime...."

Oh. Really. :)

It was at this point that I realized you were writing to a general audience and not to me.

Re: That wiki entry is pretty sparse

[arilou_skiff]

That's a pretty grave error. Marx was a socialist, yes. But there are MANY other socialist traditions throughout history. When talking about "marxism" specifically it's almost always implied that you're talking about his historical theory (and to some degree his predictions and ideology)

Marx I suspect would not be overly concerned about healthcare: What he was most concerned about were the means of production, the thing he explicitly names in the Communist Manifesto is of course, banks. The concept of universal government-provided healthcare was largely something invented by people trying to *stave off* the Marxists. ("Look, there's no need for a Revolution, capitalism can be made to work for you too.") Either from a conservative (Germany) or Social Democratic (Sweden, Britain) POV.

Re: That wiki entry is pretty sparse

[geoffsebesta]

fair enough, Marxism is far from my area of specialty. I'll try not to do it again.

All the same, how would you apply "production" and "scarcity" to health care?

[geoffsebesta]

With Islam, that's a conservative rage trifecta.

[mullon]

I know I'm the only one who likes Ult!Red Skull, but even I cannot defend how he looks. It's like Anthony Hopkins dipped his head in paint.

LOL, I like him too

[jazzypom]

I like the fact that there's no angst to him, no tortured aspects of, "Bawww, my father was Captain America and since I can't live up to a memory, I must rebel. Baww." I mean, normally I'm a sucker for that sort of narrative tension, but that way tends to lead to Chris Claremont overwraught angst if one isn't careful. I like the fact that Red Skull is just is. I also like the fact that you get that Ultimate Steve loves the body he's in, despite all the drama swirling around him to get it.

I'm just loving Ultimate Avengers so far. BOO to Loeb getting Ultimates again. BOO.

[baihu]

I expect a uniformed military man to be the last person to forget to bring his own guns anywhere near a WMD and a psycho with world domination aspirations (actually I'm dunno much abt Ult!Skull, tho I have a feeling he's a guy u should always keep a couple of guns around. Simply cos he looks like he would eat your face).

I dunno enough of the Ult universe anymore to comment on the 2nd set scans, cept, is he killing ppl with a giant radioactive microchip?

[strannik01]

The second set is from the mainline Marvel Universe.

[baihu]

Ah, but I kept up with that even less

Ah well, I'll leave well enough alone XD

[grimmbear]

OMG! That was Red Ronin!
Oh I miss my giant (non-transformer) robots

[icon_uk]

I don't particularly care why Zodiac killed the previous Zodiac members, in fact "No loose ends" makes sense. It's the fact that he was ABLE to kill so many powerful, influential people, some with fair to middling impressive powers and resources and no moral restraint, and that he did so offscreen in order to make him appear like a threat, instead of actualyl being threatening. It was a cheap and tacky cop out way, just like Prometheus casual slaughter of characters in "Gay for Justice" which utterly failed to make him interesting.

[neuhallidae]

Motto. At least if he'd offed them on-panel, you could blame Worf effect, but here, it's just blatant bridge-dropping (and not in the Green Goblin way) because the writer/artist/et al were too lazy to properly introduce the character.

[thehood]

Yeah, but the previous Zodiac sucked anyway.

[jlroberson]

This has just become...so redundant. The original ULTIMATES 1 & 2 weren't.