NationStates Jolt Archive

Alright, this thread is meant to answer my question as to what is so great about communism that so many choose to argue for such ideology.

My opinion is that communism is not only the greatest form of tyranny ever conceved in human history, but theoretically impossible. Some argue that they support communism, what they forget is that madmen who called themselves communists, killed over 20 million of their own people, during peacetime. Not included are the wars, WWI, WWII, and the Civil Wars of the Soviet Union. A society suspicious of freedom, and intelligence, why else did Stalin kill or exile Russia's elite, and enlightened? Others argue that they would never support totalitarianism, they only support communism in theory, the theory that everyone in a society is equal, and everything belonging to my neighbor belongs to me, and vice versa. Pretending that such a system could exist, we start at the lowest level... a farmer... who must raise his own crops. But I, his EQUAL, must also raise my own crops, thought technically his crops are my crops too, and my crops are his crops too. This system would be based on subsistance farming which would take cizilization back hundreds of years. Next we have the doctor. Though in theory either no one is a doctor or everyone is a doctor, so that everyone is EQUAL... or the District Attorney who must prosecute criminals... Does no one prosecute them or does everyone? What about the criminal... since we are all equal... either the criminal didn't commit the crime, or everyone did... Its absurd to imagine a system without a central government. NOTHING BUT UTTER ANARCHY. So either Marx, Engels, and Lenin dreamed of totalitarianism or of anarchy... or maybe they aren't all that some think they are. Communism is sick, I don't know how those people could have slept at night. There is nothing in between MURDER, DICTATORSHIP & GENOCIDE, and ANARCHY, LAWLESSNESS & CHAOS on the communist spectrum... if you believe in communism, which side are you on??

Communism is brilliant

everyone is equal, everyone together

youre thinking of Stalinism

Personally, I am a socialist.
There IS a difference! :p

well i don't oppose socialism... LIGHT socialism... not too strong... if it is too strong it might get confused with communism...

Communism is brilliant

everyone is equal, everyone together

youre thinking of Stalinism

Did you read my main arguement?? There is Stalinism and there is Anarchy... If you can think of something in between that, AND support it... I'd be glad to read it...

Nadkor is right. If you ever get the chance to read the communist manifesto by Karl Max, do so. He along with Friedrich Engles wrote the book in which they predict that the proletariates would eventually overthrow the bourgoisie, then set up a temporary dictatorship and finally create an egalitarian system where there were no social classes. Russian leaders did not follow Marxism but a different form of Communism.

Right what we all seem to forget is that IT IS IMPOSSIBLE... SO MR ENGELS and MARX WEREN'T VERY REALISTIC... IN FACT THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO SHOULD BE NOTHING BUT A DREAM, ONCE YOU TRY TO IMPLEMENT SUCH SYSTEM YOU'RE DOOMED TO FAIL... THEY KINDA SKIPPED OVER THAT PART. Some philosophers they were, didn't even understand basic human nature, greed, and desire for power. YOU SAY IT IS AN IDEAL IDEA, BUT IT DOESN'T CONSIDER EVERYTHING NECESSARY FOR A GOOD THEORY. Marx and Engels had too much time on their hands, but after they started putting down their ideas on paper they forgot the necessities mentioned above... what kind of theory doesnt take everything into account?

Did you read my main arguement?? There is Stalinism and there is Anarchy... If you can think of something in between that, AND support it... I'd be glad to read it...


Your main argument is majorely flawed however.

1) Anarchy, lawlessness and chaos is one extreme of capitalism, not communism.

2) Capitalism (even american capitalism) has killed, through actions or inactions, nearly as many, if not more then communism.

3) World War I and World War II were against fascism. . . The authorian version of capitalism. How does this say that communism is evil? Oh, and for the record. World War I or II, I can't remember which, is what Russia called it's civil war.

4) How is the idea that the person who grew the food gets a millionth of an executive who simply oversees the workers who gather the grown food a better system then everyone working for equal gain, through equal peril?

Anarchy and lawlessness is YES an EXTREME of Capitalism, but it is the result of COMMUNISM TOO, and you dont even have to say extreme in front of it... as for the civil wars... the power struggles between the imperialist and the bolsheviks that lasted years after the abdication of the Czar. How can you be a farmer, and a doctor, and a lawyer, and a factory worker? dont you see that its just cant be!!!

Right what we all seem to forget is that IT IS IMPOSSIBLE... SO MR ENGELS and MARX WEREN'T VERY REALISTIC... IN FACT THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO SHOULD BE NOTHING BUT A DREAM, ONCE YOU TRY TO IMPLEMENT SUCH SYSTEM YOU'RE DOOMED TO FAIL... THEY KINDA SKIPPED OVER THAT PART. Some philosophers they were, didn't even understand basic human nature, greed, and desire for power. YOU SAY IT IS AN IDEAL IDEA, BUT IT DOESN'T CONSIDER EVERYTHING NECESSARY FOR A GOOD THEORY. Marx and Engels had too much time on their hands, but after they started putting down their ideas on paper they forgot the necessities mentioned above... what kind of theory doesnt take everything into account?

What kind of theory was capitalism, where you let everyone run around free to do and sell what they want without any code or way to balance themselves and make themselves asserted in the world? What kind of a theory says the weak must die or follow the strong (who are usually the most deceiptful, in capitalism at least).

By the way, why does everyone argue that it's human nature to be greedy, lazy and lathargic? It's capitalist nature to be that - but no other. Human nature, as argued, changes from person to person, and the only reason people think "this" capitalist nature is inevidable human nature is due to the fact that they forget that all other forms of "human nature" exist.

You stated that Marx and Engels ignored the "basic human nature of greed and desire for power". While I tend to agree with you on the fact that humans are usually greedy, who said that Marx did? He might have seen humans as basically good creatures who wish to benefit the community rather than themselves due to the opression they suffered from the bourgeoisie.

Anarchy and lawlessness is YES an EXTREME of Capitalism, but it is the result of COMMUNISM TOO, and you dont even have to say extreme in front of it... as for the civil wars... the power struggles between the imperialist and the bolsheviks that lasted years after the abdication of the Czar. How can you be a farmer, and a doctor, and a lawyer, and a factory worker? dont you see that its just cant be!!!

1) Actually, that's the marxist extremety. Marxism was always utopianist in nature, and was an extreme to make people follow it. Sort of the idea of going to heaven in christianity, it doesn't really exist, but people think it does and thusly follow christianity.

2) The power struggles lasted because it changed from a monarchy to a centralised state. Can you tell me that there was no "ill blood" between british and americans right after your change? Or northern americans and southern americans after your battle? (and the latter one did not even change government types).

3) You're not asked to be a doctor, a farmer, and a factory worker. You're told to be as valuable as a doctor, farmer or factory worker and given pay to reflect it.

3) You're not asked to be a doctor, a farmer, and a factory worker. You're told to be as valuable as a doctor, farmer or factory worker and given pay to reflect it.

EXACTLY, So I get more pay as a doctor then does the farmer and the factory worker... then how are we equals...

And one more thing... if everything is so dandy?? who runs the government, dont tell me that no one does... cuz thats anarchy... and dont tell me taht the people do... cuz the closest thing you can get to that is a representative government like that of the US, or the UK... so in a communist society who makes the laws, who enforces them, are you just going to assume that everyone does whats right?? AND SOMEONE SAID THAT human nature relies on the individual... TRUE and thats why WHEN ONE PERSON STEPS OUT OF LINE, the WHOLE COMMUNIST SYSTEM OF UTOPIA AND EQUALITY WOULD COLLAPSE.

YES the revolutionary war was bloody BUT though a century and a half before the October Revolution, the US and UK were much more sympathetic towards on another, obeying certain wartime principals, no torture, no cruel punishment, at least NOT AUTHORIZED OR ORDERED BY THE GOVERNMENT.

IM NOT TALKING COMMUNISM AS AN ECONOMIC PRINCIPAL BUT AS A POLITICAL ONE!!

Your main argument is majorely flawed however.

1) Anarchy, lawlessness and chaos is one extreme of capitalism, not communism.

2) Capitalism (even american capitalism) has killed, through actions or inactions, nearly as many, if not more then communism.

3) World War I and World War II were against fascism. . . The authorian version of capitalism. How does this say that communism is evil? Oh, and for the record. World War I or II, I can't remember which, is what Russia called it's civil war.

4) How is the idea that the person who grew the food gets a millionth of an executive who simply oversees the workers who gather the grown food a better system then everyone working for equal gain, through equal peril?

for #3, not to mention that the USSR was an ally of America, England, etc.

I personally am a believer in socialism lite, where the government ensures that people who are down on their luck don't go without food, healthcare, shelter, etc. I am a Candadian, pretty much a New Democrat, and Tommy Douglas is my political hero, not Stalin, Lenin or Pol Pot

Your basic understanding of the fundamentals of communism is flawed which completely alters your perception of the topic.

You often say that communism theory does not taken into account of human nature and ask what kind of philosophers would not take into account all aspects of greed etc. Well not everyone actually believes in the machiavellian theory of people that they are naturally greedy and opportunistic. There is this other philosopher who apparently isnt very realistic, John Locke, you know the one who laid down the entire basic fabric for western democracy. He also had this idea that each person begins as a 'blank slate' and that whatever the society places on the person affects that person's thinking, such as yours. I'm not saying that this is 100% true but your basic premise is incomplete.

As said earlier you confuse stalinism and communism. You argue that you can not have communism because it is too close too anarchy and it would never work. Well, its never been done before socialist governments have been created before and they suffer from problems, but what governments don't, this game often describes it well.

Finally, communism is most definetly an economic theory first and a political theory 2nd. The entire theory is based on class struggle based on the inequality in economic structure.

Also for the future, adding all captial words is unnecessary, but i understand you are trying to emphaize your point.

EXACTLY, So I get more pay as a doctor then does the farmer and the factory worker... then how are we equals...

And one more thing... if everything is so dandy?? who runs the government, dont tell me that no one does... cuz thats anarchy... and dont tell me taht the people do... cuz the closest thing you can get to that is a representative government like that of the US, or the UK... so in a communist society who makes the laws, who enforces them, are you just going to assume that everyone does whats right?? AND SOMEONE SAID THAT human nature relies on the individual... TRUE and thats why WHEN ONE PERSON STEPS OUT OF LINE, the WHOLE COMMUNIST SYSTEM OF UTOPIA AND EQUALITY WOULD COLLAPSE.

Prissy, aren't you?

1) No, you don't get more pay as a doctor or a farmer or a factory worker.

2) Leaders are democratically elected. People always look to heros as figures of state, boards for guidance and the such. That doesn't mean they should get payed more, or will always become corrupt. Their part in society is to run it.

3) If someone steps out of line, they are dealt with. You're payed for your contribution, which is valued. If it is not, then you contribute nothing (no, I don't mean the un-employed, I mean the refuse-to-be-employed.)

Well Communism has a good Dental Plan, and the pay is pretty good.

also the vacation sites are pretty good.

WHAT SIDE OF COMMUNISM AM I ON? I AM ON THE SIDE THAT DOESN'T TYPE HALF OF THEIR POSTS IN CAPITAL LETTERS!

That's what bold or italics are for.

ok who cares about capitalizations, bold and italics? (rhetorical in case you can't figure it out...) lets keep the responses to the point eh? thanks

so, read Marx or Engles before talking about communism. It is not wise to comment something you don't know...

Your main argument is majorely flawed however.

1) Anarchy, lawlessness and chaos is one extreme of capitalism, not communism.

2) Capitalism (even american capitalism) has killed, through actions or inactions, nearly as many, if not more then communism.

3) World War I and World War II were against fascism. . . The authorian version of capitalism. How does this say that communism is evil? Oh, and for the record. World War I or II, I can't remember which, is what Russia called it's civil war.

4) How is the idea that the person who grew the food gets a millionth of an executive who simply oversees the workers who gather the grown food a better system then everyone working for equal gain, through equal peril?

heavy sigh..

ok first point: capitalism is an economic model, communism is both an economic and political model. Republican Democracy is the political model that the US uses, and is predicated on the rule of law and equality under the law of all. So lawlessness, chaos and anarchy are the extreme of neither system but the basic foundation from which ALL systems come from.

second point: I would love to see you back up this point with some proof.... the 1950 census of the Soviet Union showed that it was missing about 60 million people that it should have had based on its growth rate and population in 1910... and the World Wars only killed about 30 million according to recent Soviet records. Add millions more from China, North Korea, and Pol Pot and we have a guess of about 60 million (estimate of course). Hitler killed directly 10 million (not counting the tens of millions World War II killed as part of the war and not simply just murdered). Fascist Japan was pretty ugly too.

However, Fascism considered Democracy to be just as dangerous a rival as Communism, so you can hardly call the Democratic nations guilty of this.

World War I was started by Authoritarian Monarchies (Austria Hungary, Russia, and Germany) and the French and British did not attack first (the two democratic nations initially involved plus the Belgians).

So where are you getting the numbers to proof your point?


Point three: see above, with this as well... The Russians signed a peace treaty in 1917 which ended their involvement in World War I... the Civil War lasted until 1926 (in Siberia, but decided pretty much by 1921)


Point four: You are making the fundamental mistake of assuming that people will all automatically work together equally hard, all the time, routinely.... which has not been born out by human experience at any time.

Alright, this thread is meant to answer my question as to what is so great about communism that so many choose to argue for such ideology.
You are lying. Based on your posts, this thread is meant to be a chance for you to explain the reasons you judge communism (as you misunderstand it) a horrible idea, as well as a chance to rail against anyone who tries to explain "what is so great about communism." If you really wanted an answer to a question, you would pose a question rather than making one vicious attack after another.

The biased nature of your poll is especially revealing.

While I do not consider myself a communist, I do object to the uninformed and careless arguments hurled against what is, at the very least, an interesting and challenging theoretical standpoint.

Some argue that they support communism, what they forget is that madmen who called themselves communists, killed over 20 million of their own people, during peacetime.

You said it yourself: "who called themselves communists." As you know, most serious political theorists (communists and non-communists alike) acknowledge that the Soviet Union took on a form that had more in common with capitalism than either socialism or communism. Also as you know, similar crimes have been committed by capitalist dictators around the world. But these facts are beside the point. The more important point is that to argue in this fashion would be similar to the Democratic and Republican parties conducting political debates by counting up how many convicted murderers are members of each party and accusing one another accordingly. Unless one party suggests murder as public policy (which the USSR may have done, but which is done by neither capitalists nor communists as a whole), such talk is irrelevant to the political and theoretical discussions at hand. That opponents of communism so frequently reach for this weak tactic is a discredit to the otherwise intelligent theoretical positions of capitalism.
Others argue that they would never support totalitarianism, they only support communism in theory, the theory that everyone in a society is equal, and everything belonging to my neighbor belongs to me, and vice versa.
I would appreciate your finding me a communist who thinks this, since I would be as amazed to see him as to view a unicorn. I have never encountered a communist who argues against a right to personal property.
Pretending that such a system could exist, we start at the lowest level... a farmer... who must raise his own crops. But I, his EQUAL, must also raise my own crops, thought technically his crops are my crops too, and my crops are his crops too.
Here you show further ignorance of communism. Most communists would suggest that there would not be "his" crops and "your" crops in the first place. There would only be fields that belong to everyone, and if you and he are to be engaged in farming you would farm together, cooperating to produce enough for all. (Meanwhile others produce other things to share with you.) This may not be a perfect or even a very good system (as I said, I am no communist)... but if you are going to criticize something, you will do better attacking something that actual communists believe rather than a fantasy you have invented.
This system would be based on subsistance farming which would take cizilization back hundreds of years.
Well, it is not exactly subsistence farming when farmers produce surplus to share. However, it may be true that certain forms of communism would "take civilizationg back" technologically. A few communists support this, but not many. Most think that communism is the historical successor to capitalism precisely because they imagine in it a very technologically advanced society.
Next we have the doctor. Though in theory either no one is a doctor or everyone is a doctor, so that everyone is EQUAL... or the District Attorney who must prosecute criminals... Does no one prosecute them or does everyone?
Are you intentionally twisting the meaning of the term "equal," or is this really what you think communists believe? If so, you are very wrong. Communists' conception of equality is not so different than the liberal definition with which you should be familiar -- after all, Marx essentially adopted it from the Enlightenment. He merely followed it through to its logical conclusion: if people are truly of equal moral worth, then it is impossible to justify a system in which some people become massively wealthy while others suffer and toil merely as a result of fortunate birth, social position, or power. "Equality," in the context of both liberalism and communism, does not mean "sameness."
Its absurd to imagine a system without a central government.
Certainly it is not! The American frontier(s) were essentially without government, and certainly without anything that could be called "central" government. But that is beside the point. Communists desire a "central" government (if on a small scale) responsible not only for preventing and dealing with basic criminal behavior, but also responsible for administering the economy and distributing the wealth.

EXACTLY, So I get more pay as a doctor then does the farmer and the factory worker... then how are we equals...

And one more thing... if everything is so dandy?? who runs the government, dont tell me that no one does... cuz thats anarchy... and dont tell me taht the people do... cuz the closest thing you can get to that is a representative government like that of the US, or the UK... so in a communist society who makes the laws, who enforces them, are you just going to assume that everyone does whats right?? AND SOMEONE SAID THAT human nature relies on the individual... TRUE and thats why WHEN ONE PERSON STEPS OUT OF LINE, the WHOLE COMMUNIST SYSTEM OF UTOPIA AND EQUALITY WOULD COLLAPSE.

Hmmm.lets see.

If I 'step out of line' by breaking a couple of laws in a capitalist country, then I am punished by laws. Communism doesn't have a problem with that per se, it just says that people properly aware of their duties won't need laws, because they wouldn't break them anyway - like all those law-abiding people in capitalist societies. Its curious that the vast majority of laws in such societies exist to secure private property, and so if I steal in order to supplement my income as a factory worker, I commit a crime, but if I make 800 people redundant, it's fair game.

How about the suggestion that freedom has to be more than having a legal right on paper when you can't afford to feed your family? Or the notion that democracy has to be about more than election the least bad rich autocrat to vote for his interests supposedly in your interests? Or the idea that no-one, not even CEOs and politicians, deserve to earn a million times what another human being scrapes a living on?

Whats so great about communism? Whats so great about the world you live in right now? A world where 11,000 people will die today because they don't have clean water* - I say that the world can be better than this, that the current set up is systematically unfair and robs millions of any life, liberty or happiness worth the name, and people setting up crude versions of the beliefs they don't like so that they can then pull them easily is just a little childish.

I don't know why I bothered with this though, as you clearly aren't interested, if your poll s any indication.



*Check the World Health Organisation website if you are paranoid enough. Are these people the 'victims of capitalism'? Or course not, which is why your statistics don't record the 'victims of communism'.

I am on the side of Communism that is none of the above.

World War I and World War II were against fascism. . . The authorian version of capitalism. How does this say that communism is evil? Oh, and for the record. World War I or II, I can't remember which, is what Russia called it's civil war.

World War II was called the 'Great Patroitic War', this in no way implies it was a civil war, the Soviets knew they were fighting the Nazis.

Communism? It's great if the country is able can feed it's people equally sufficiently. It sucks if it can't. :p

I'm against communism. I'm for Mixed Economy.

Fascism is capitalistic, now? Interesting take. Must be all those free market control offices and regulatory boards, and the price fixing. I suppose that one could call it extreme authoritarian capitalism, that does actually make more sense than calling it socialistic, owing to its use of currency and lack of community in goods. Fair enough.

Why always with this creaky old wage equalisation stuff? When did Proudhon become the definitive master of socialist theory? I must have been on the toilet when that happened.

Communism isn't great, it's just next.

You want to talk about lawlessness and anarchy?

Is it orderly or logical that this planet produces enough food to feed each and every last person in the world several times over, yet millions starve to death for lack of sustenance every year?

Is it orderly or logical that we have the medical technology to cure or treat many of the diseases that kill millions of people in the third world, yet people still die for want of treatment?

Is it orderly or logical that while the Western world develops technologically at a breakneck pace, the oppressed nations are still by and large mired in semi-feudal backwardness, subject to the petty tyrannies of extortionist landlords and moneylenders?

This is the anarchy of the market and the lopsidedness of development inherent in imperialism. And it's killed far more people than all your "evil communist dictators" combined, exaggerated as their supposed crimes may be.

Communism is brilliant

everyone is equal, everyone together

youre thinking of Stalinism

So it is your contention that Stalinism, not Communism, is responsible for the murder of citizens by their own government associated with the communist philosophy over the decades? A look at the people killed throughout the entire history of the USSR and in other countries refutes that contention.

People Killed by their Communist Government in the USSR (1917-1991)

Russian Civil War - 3,284,000
Period of Lenin's New Economic Policy 1923 (NEP) - 2,200,000
Collectivization, 1929 - 11,440,000
Great Terror, 1936 - 4,345,000
pre-WWII - 5,104,000
WWII - 13,053,000
post WWII until 1954 - 15,613,000
post Stalin, 1954-1991 - 6,872,000

Total # of people killed by their government in the USSR - 61,911,000

While it is true that Stalin is the greatest killer of the 20th century and possibly of all time, the Soviet Union killed its own people in massive numbers from its inception until its demise.

Other Communist governments who murdered their own people

Communist China - 38 million, plus another 27 million killed by Mao's agricultural policies
Communist Cambodia - 2.4 million
Communist Vietnam - 1.7 million
Communist North Korea - 1.66 million
Tito's Communist Yugoslavia - 1.17 million

According to Dr. R.J. Rummel, "Communism has been the greatest social engineering experiment we have ever seen. It failed utterly and in doing so it killed over 100,000,000 men, women, and children, not to mention the near 30,000,000 of its subjects that died in its often aggressive wars and the rebellions it provoked. But there is a larger lesson to be learned from this horrendous sacrifice to one ideology. That is that no one can be trusted with power. The more power the center has to impose the beliefs of an ideological or religious elite or impose the whims of a dictator, the more likely human lives are to be sacrificed."

Communism has had a chance to show its mettle in the 20th century. Whatever its supposed ideals and aspirations in every instance in which it has been put into practice it has proven to be a brutal, oppressive, anti-humanist regime.

Well they managed to kill 20 million Russians within 7 years therefore managing to be far more efficient than the Naizs were (only 6 million in 6 years).

Communism means well, right? They just haven't worked out all the kinks.

In the meantime approximately 110 million people have been killed by their own government under Communism in the 20th century (that makes Hitler and the Nazis, with their 21 million killed, look like pikers). To put it into perspective that is the equivalent of three of Europe's 14th century Black Plagues.

Communist Russia - 62 million
Communist China - 38 million, plus another 27 million killed by Mao's agricultural policies
Communist Cambodia - 2.4 million
Communist Vietnam - 1.7 million
Communist North Korea - 1.66 million
Tito's Communist Yugoslavia - 1.17 million

http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/

Communism is anti-liberal, anti-humanist, anti-democratic, anti-freedom. You pseudo-radicals walking around in your designer Che Guevara shirts and spouting crap about how Communism is really wonderful and it was only Stalin who screwed it up need to open a history book and educate yourselves.

Communism means well, right? They just haven't worked out all the kinks.

In the meantime approximately 110 million people have been killed by their own government under Communism in the 20th century.

Communist Russia - 62 million
Communist China - 38 million, plus another 27 million killed by Mao's agricultural policies
Communist Cambodia - 2.4 million
Communist Vietnam - 1.7 million
Communist North Korea - 1.66 million
Tito's Communist Yugoslavia - 1.17 million

http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/

Communism is anti-liberal, anti-humanist, anti-democratic, anti-freedom. You pseudo-radicals walking around in your designer Che Guevara shirts and spouting crap about how Communism is really wonderful and it is only Stalin who screwed it up need to open a history book and educate yourselves.
id love to count the number of people america has killed directly and indirectly through its actions and support of dictators, probably a nice number by itself



communism is not anti anything, itsj ust been adopted by ALREADY dictatorial governments and the usurping communist power became a dictator as wellits not communism causing dictatoriships in and of itself, pelase go find a single government that was a democratic or republic supporting communism? you respond: none communism doesnt support that: bull. name how many of the countries were democratic or republics before the communists took over, and communism as we know it started in russia anyway, they wernt exactly going to spread cheer and happiness. no one has started a communist program without the influence of communist russia, which was a mockery there of.

how many people has capitalism killed? how many dictatorships are capitalist


you need to open a god damn book and read, period. would communism work in the us? whos to say it wouldnt? we have controls in our government to stop the shit that makes everyone think communism is satan, how great would the us be without the many balances put in by the founders? it wouldve fell apart years ago.i rather the government be in control of corporations then the corporations in control of the government

id love to count the number of people america has killed directly and indirectly through its actions and support of dictators, probably a nice number by itself

how many people has capitalism killed? how many dictatorships are capitalist


Please do. Count them. Or do some research. Or read a book.

One does not have to support unbridled capitalism to understand that the very fundamentals of communism - absolute government control - lead to totalitarianism and murder. You yourself said it - there has never, not once, been a Democratic Communist government. Because Democracy and Communism are incompatible.

In the end, my uninformed, bibliophobic friend, it cannot be disputed that Communist governments kill their own people.

and once again, people miss the basic fact of the matter.

Going from a capitalist, or autocratic rule, straight to communism will never work. Marx didn't write it like that. He didn't say "REVOLT!" and impose an ultra-tyrannical regime? Otherwise he wouldn't have called it communism. He'd have called it an insane totalitarian gov't. No. There are roughly seven steps before a capitalist, or other society, can become communist. It must become a socialist country first. That is concrete. A socialist nation is the building blocks of a successful communist state. Tsarist Russia, or China under the bleeding Emperors is not. Why did they fail? I just answered.

Dictatorship is NOT a part of communism. It just isn't. It was a part of Tsarist Russia and china, though, and oh my, it carried through. They didn't prepare the ground, and so the states failed, much like any other. Try and establish a successful capitalist economy in an area that is not hospitable to human land, and you will end up with an oglicarchy. A few at the top with the power to control everyone else. Set it up where there is possibility for trade, and it will flourish. Different scenario, same pre-requisite. their location, whether it was geological or political, did not suit their government, and it leads to failure and absolute control.

As for the same wages, etc, even Lenin agreed that it was impossible to do that in such a short space of time. As I recall, the New Economic policy was beginning to work. Remember, things weren't peachy beforehand in Russia, and after such a major shift, things tend to get worse. The allowance of small businesses, etc, and more private property may have saved communist Russia if Lenin wasn't assasinated. The policies were reversed before they could work.... Next time you build something, a bed, for example, leave it half done and tell me how it works.

Ok... I kinda ranted on a bit, but hearing people just shout down communism in that way just gets on my nerves. I'm not a communist in practical terms, but I'd love for it to work. Who wouldn't?

Communism means well, right? They just haven't worked out all the kinks.

In the meantime approximately 110 million people have been killed by their own government under Communism in the 20th century (that makes Hitler and the Nazis, with their 21 million killed, look like pikers). To put it into perspective that is the equivalent of three of Europe's 14th century Black Plagues.

Communist Russia - 62 million
Communist China - 38 million, plus another 27 million killed by Mao's agricultural policies
Communist Cambodia - 2.4 million
Communist Vietnam - 1.7 million
Communist North Korea - 1.66 million
Tito's Communist Yugoslavia - 1.17 million

http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/

Communism is anti-liberal, anti-humanist, anti-democratic, anti-freedom. You pseudo-radicals walking around in your designer Che Guevara shirts and spouting crap about how Communism is really wonderful and it was only Stalin who screwed it up need to open a history book and educate yourselves.
you seem to be forgetting that none of the countries you have listed are/were truly communist. No country has actually been communist.

Dictatorship is NOT a part of communism.

Then provide an example of a Communist government that was not a dictatorship.

As for the same wages, etc, even Lenin agreed that it was impossible to do that in such a short space of time. As I recall, the New Economic policy was beginning to work...

So, switching to a modified form of capitalism was the key to making communism work? Interesting.

However, even under NEP the government of Russia killed 2.2 million people.

I'm not a communist in practical terms, but I'd love for it to work. Who wouldn't?

I'd love to live in the Star Trek universe but it ain't gonna happen. Neither will there ever be a communist government that does not eventually oppress its own people.

"Communism has been the greatest social engineering experiment we have ever seen. It failed utterly and in doing so it killed over 100,000,000 men, women, and children, not to mention the near 30,000,000 of its subjects that died in its often aggressive wars and the rebellions it provoked. But there is a larger lesson to be learned from this horrendous sacrifice to one ideology. That is that no one can be trusted with power. The more power the center has to impose the beliefs of an ideological or religious elite or impose the whims of a dictator, the more likely human lives are to be sacrificed."

R.J. Rummel, world's leading expert on Democide - death by government

4) How is the idea that the person who grew the food gets a millionth of an executive who simply oversees the workers who gather the grown food a better system then everyone working for equal gain, through equal peril?

Yet another person who doesn't know anything about business and makes generalized assumptions like, "executives simply oversee the workers." I.E you have no idea what it takes to manage a business (or a government) and you find it easy to stereotype people whose jobs earn them more money than a migrant worker.

Equal gain? Yeah right. A doctor spends 8 years training and learning and getting his doctor skills and education. A dump truck driver walks in and asks for the job since he has a few hours each week. Both get the same wages, and you call that an equal gain? Again, no business sense, you completely dismiss the idea that different things are worth different amounts to different people. For example a doctor does not consider his skills just as important as those of a dump truck driver. Why not? Could it be that... a doctors skills are in higher demand and lower supply? *GASP*

you seem to be forgetting that none of the countries you have listed are/were truly communist. No country has actually been communist.

Then we are talking about a fairy tale.

Then we are talking about a fairy tale.
just because something hasnt happened yet doesnt mean its impossible

Then provide an example of a Communist government that was not a dictatorship.

I can't, because I am not aware of any that have followed Marxs plan correctly. There is one, I am sure, which I shall endeavour to find out about, I'll be back with more concrete info.


So, switching to a modified form of capitalism was the key to making communism work? Interesting.

For that time. Transferral to communism is a sloooow process. You move from capitalism, to a more socialist government, to a communist government. I'm talking DECADES here, not as soon as the ink is dry.

However, even under NEP the government of Russia killed 2.2 million people.

Now, by killed, do you mean, starved to death, or shot? Lenin wasn't too stable either, and don't support any of his other actions, but the NEP, as I said, was beginning to work from an economical standpoint. the famous soviet trials are political, usually, and is not what I was referring to. it's new Economic policy, remember.



I'd love to live in the Star Trek universe but it ain't gonna happen. Neither will there ever be a communist government that does not eventually oppress its own people.

snip/I]

R.J. Rummel, world's leading expert on Democide - death by government


As I said, I am aware of at least one, but don't have the info [i]at present. I will endeavour to obtain it. By your logic though, man will never land on mars, as we haven't done it yet. How can you so sweepingly say that?



(all responded to inside your quote. it's the bolded stuff, obviously.)

Communist China - 38 million, plus another 27 million killed by Mao's agricultural policies

lol @ agricultural policies.

Let me tell you a story (no idea how true, but it's told by my Granduncle).

Usually every year, the government gives one bag of rice = 1 bowl of rice per day per person, Which one bag would last for a month. THen there was one year, Mao suddenly declared a year of great prosperity and said that every person in China would have 2 bowls of rice EVERYDAY!

The next year, few million people died of starvation. Hah!

How about Marxism. That is true communism . The Russian communism was an interpretation of a communist system based on Lenin's ideals. Marxism is where society, domestically and economically, is ruled by the working class. AND is meant to be a direct democracy where the people work for the good of everyone. The soviet Union wasn't actually communist, it was totalitarian.
Having to choose between Anarchy and genocide were exteremes brought about by the spread of Leninist communism not the true Maxist communism.

How about Marxism. That is true communism . The Russian communism was an interpretation of a communist system based on Lenin's ideals. Marxism is where society, domestically and economically, is ruled by the working class. AND is meant to be a direct democracy where the people work for the good of everyone. The soviet Union wasn't actually communist, it was totalitarian.
Having to choose between Anarchy and genocide were exteremes brought about by the spread of Leninist communism not the true Maxist communism.

Communism is one of the most misunderstood ideas in the history of ideas. Communsism is not about dictators and corruption and all the other stuff that to date has been coupled with the idea, The USSR was not communist, it was Lenninist, the PRC is Maoist, currently, communism has never been achieved. in reality, communism is about equality, all work is for the common good and the benefits are shared equally. That's communism. in theory it sounds great which is why so many people fight and die for it but in practice... Human nature is just plain greedy, many workers in communist nations don't see why they should work harder if they don't get a reward for it, an attitude hat spelled doom for the USSR which started communist. with people not working as hard as they could, food production and other vital industries fell off, stalin came to power and poof, there goes USSR as a communist nation. the PRC is doing much better but it's massive overpopulation is too much of a burden and to stay alive it has slowly tranformed itself into a more capitalist system.

how many people has capitalism killed? how many dictatorships are capitalist


None. Free market capitalism relies on almost total economic freedom. Dictators almost always take charge of key industries and services, which makes them socialists.

I voted DICTATORSHIP, but I don't believe in MURDER or GENOCIDE.... well, except Nazi's of course.

Did you read my main arguement?? There is Stalinism and there is Anarchy... If you can think of something in between that, AND support it... I'd be glad to read it...
You like absolutes don't you...yeah, things are like that in preschool...ooh...white.....black.....

Right what we all seem to forget is that PURE CAPITALISM IS IMPOSSIBLE... SO MR ADAM SMITH WASN'T VERY REALISTIC... IN FACT THE WEALTH OF NATIONS SHOULD BE NOTHING BUT A DREAM, ONCE YOU TRY TO IMPLEMENT SUCH SYSTEM YOU'RE DOOMED TO FAIL... HE KINDA SKIPPED OVER THAT PART. Some philosopher he was, didn't even understand that basic human nature, greed, and desire for power don't work in the best interests of the whole...the INVISIBLE HAND IS STILL INVISIBLE! YOU SAY IT IS AN IDEAL IDEA, BUT IT DOESN'T CONSIDER EVERYTHING NECESSARY FOR A GOOD THEORY. Adam Smith had too much time on his hands, but after he started putting down his ideas on paper his forgot the necessities mentioned above... what kind of theory doesnt take everything into account?
Yeah, I edited your post, it's kind of funny.

By the way, why are you yelling?

YES the revolutionary war was bloody BUT though a century and a half before the October Revolution, the US and UK were much more sympathetic towards on another, obeying certain wartime principals, no torture, no cruel punishment, at least NOT AUTHORIZED OR ORDERED BY THE GOVERNMENT.

IM NOT TALKING COMMUNISM AS AN ECONOMIC PRINCIPAL BUT AS A POLITICAL ONE!!
Are you foaming at the mouth yet?

Please do. Count them. Or do some research. Or read a book.


In the end, my uninformed, bibliophobic friend, it cannot be disputed that Communist governments kill their own people.
Since we're resorting to ad hominem (and apparently foaming at the mouth), I wanted to say,

You are an ass.

Since we're resorting to ad hominem (and apparently foaming at the mouth), I wanted to say,

You are an ass.

???

???
Well hey, you're making assumptions about someone else (hates books, is uninformed) rather than logically dealing with an argument. You are attacking him as a person, rather than sticking to the issue. What's good for the goose is good for the gander....my comment naming you an ass serves no logical purpose, does not further any argument I may choose to make, and simply makes me look foolish and a little too invested in 'being right'. Kind of like you.

So why don't we stick to arguments, and not personal comments?

Now, to be reasonable.

You offered stats to back up your assertation that Communism is bad, and leads to murderous dictatorships. I assert that this in fact, NOT the case. Let me explain.

Communism is an ideology based in a certain philosophy. No philosophy has ever been realised in pure form. Not one of the governments you mentioned were Communistic, no matter what they called themselves....(Hey, the United Kingdom is not a pure monarchy, is it?) Communism means a withering away of government at the final stages before true communism can exist. Not the case anywhere. So.

These countries were not communist.

Are we talking about a fairy tale, as you earlier said? No, we are talking about an ideology. Very few ideologies are inherently bad...how they are enacted may can be. Democracy is also an ideal...one that is enacted in various, more or less effective ways. I don't blame democracy for the ills of the governments enacting it, nor should you blame an ideology for its flawed implementation.

R.J. Rummel, world's leading expert on Democide - death by government
Self-declared expert. I declare myself an expert on underwater basket-weaving! Ole!

What's so great about communism?

The great cigars and cheap toys..... That's all I got. :D

Clearly, what makes communisim so great is that, much like Michael Jackson's credibility, it has yet to be put to the test of action. This allows any proponent to claim, well it would work...If wishes were horses... you know the rest. If it was such a great economic system, we would be falling all over ourselves to make room for it.

Now the other thing that makes communism so great is that it is confused with so many other Isms. Marxism, Lenninism, Stalinism were all practiced by people that mistakenly called themselves communists. So, again, all a communist has to say, when one of these governments is criticized is, "Well, they were Stalinists", or "That wasn't communism".

That's what makes communism so easy to defend. Everything is theoretical. Nothing is practical. The details don't matter.

Please do. Count them. Or do some research. Or read a book.

One does not have to support unbridled capitalism to understand that the very fundamentals of communism - absolute government control - lead to totalitarianism and murder. You yourself said it - there has never, not once, been a Democratic Communist government. Because Democracy and Communism are incompatible.

In the end, my uninformed, bibliophobic friend, it cannot be disputed that Communist governments kill their own people.
absolute government control doesnt lead to anything in and of itself, ABUSE of absolute government control does

DEMOCRACY AND COMMUNISM ARE NOT FUCKING INCOMPATIBLE. that doesnt even make sense" communism says the government should control everything therefore democracy doesnt work

brilliant deduction sherlock

absolute government control doesnt lead to anything in and of itself, ABUSE of absolute government control does

DEMOCRACY AND COMMUNISM ARE NOT FUCKING INCOMPATIBLE. that doesnt even make sense" communism says the government should control everything therefore democracy doesnt work

brilliant deduction sherlock

Democracy involves voting.

People vote for what they want.

People want freedom.

People will vote for freedom.

People will vote against those who infringe on their freedom, economic or social.

People will vote out communist leaders.

That's why democracy is incompatible with communism. If communism was actually something that the majority wanted, all democracies would pretty quickly become communist. They don't.

Communism cannot be achieved at least not now. Human society is a paradox while we are social in sense we are simply a group of individuals with different ideals. We are not like bees or ants there is no firm social order nor can there be. Someone will want to be Queen or King. In ants or bees there is no individual they are a collective, we humans are not capable of this.

Governments are a blend of structure and chaos co-existing at the same time. Social needs are met and individual liberties must also be valued. This is where the problem comes in one persons liberty is anothers oppression. When humans attempt to resolve said dispute sometimes there is no compromise often times resulting in violence and could grow to war depending on how much power the groups of people or individuals possess.

Democracy involves voting.

People vote for what they want.

People want freedom.

People will vote for freedom.

People will vote against those who infringe on their freedom, economic or social.

People will vote out communist leaders.

That's why democracy is incompatible with communism. If communism was actually something that the majority wanted, all democracies would pretty quickly become communist. They don't.
because people are 99.9% uninformed dipshits, they are swayed by lies and propaganda and never think through anything anyway

because people are 99.9% uninformed dipshits, they are swayed by lies and propaganda and never think through anything anyway

There you have it: the basic tenet of communists, socialists and other authoritarian pro-government types. People can't think for themselves, therefore government should do all the thinking.

None. Free market capitalism relies on almost total economic freedom. Dictators almost always take charge of key industries and services, which makes them socialists.

What about Pinochet? Suharto? The PRI after the WTO/IMF "adjustments" of the mid-90's?

Ferdinand Marcos?
Francisco Franco?
Mobutu Sese Seko?

etc.

All societies are class dictatorships; the exist to preserve the power and interests of a particular class of people. Capitalism can take the framework of liberal democracy or openly terroristic dictatorship, depending on the needs of the capitalist class at the time.

because people are 99.9% uninformed dipshits, they are swayed by lies and propaganda and never think through anything anyway

Yes. But the idea of democracy is that people CHOOSE. Even the uninformed dipshits. That 99.9% may be dipshits in your eyes, but they are the majority, and they want to be free. They don't want to hand over their hard earned property to some elitist commie who tells them that they're "dipshits".

Yes. But the idea of democracy is that people CHOOSE. Even the uninformed dipshits. That 99.9% may be dipshits in your eyes, but they are the majority, and they want to be free. They don't want to hand over their hard earned property to some elitist commie who tells them that they're "dipshits".
oh yes, they rather hand over their rights and money to people who believe they are inherently better than the dipshits but dont say it out loud, yes i rather have all teh elitist capitalist bastards who only care about money to be controlling everything

oh yes, they rather hand over their rights and money to people who believe they are inherently better than the dipshits but dont say it out loud, yes i rather have all teh elitist capitalist bastards who only care about money to be controlling everything

Yeah, actually, I would rather VOLUNTARILY hand over my money to capitalists who can give me products in exchange, than hand it over to crackpot revolutionaries at gunpoint.

There you have it: the basic tenet of communists, socialists and other authoritarian pro-government types. People can't think for themselves, therefore government should do all the thinking.
not all, just most. people are too stupid as a whole (the yare too dumb to admit it) so teh government makes decisions, thats why this isnt a COMPLETE demcoracy, the framers didnt trust the people with every single choice and decision (and besides that it would be ludicrous in such a huge nation at the time to expect everyone to vote on everything) we elect people to make decisions for us, we dont make all tehse decisions, it would be impossible. so because we are a demcoracy and elect peopel to do our thinking we are completely different from an authoritarian government that doesn all the thinknig and communism is thus impossible. we elect people because we believe they are intelligent enoguh to do what is good and/or do what is best for hte people: WOW THE BASIC IDEA OF COMMUNISM.

Yeah, actually, I would rather VOLUNTARILY hand over my money to capitalists who can give me products in exchange, than hand it over to crackpot revolutionaries at gunpoint.
and to prove my point people are uninformed dipshits, i submit exhibit a

and to prove my point people are uninformed dipshits, i submit exhibit a

So the classic way to tell when someone's a dipshit is when they don't like being robbed by communist militant nutcases?

I guess you were right about 99.9% of the world being dipshits then. Oh, and good luck getting voted into power by me and all the other dipshits.

not all, just most. people are too stupid as a whole (the yare too dumb to admit it) so teh government makes decisions, thats why this isnt a COMPLETE demcoracy, the framers didnt trust the people with every single choice and decision (and besides that it would be ludicrous in such a huge nation at the time to expect everyone to vote on everything) we elect people to make decisions for us, we dont make all tehse decisions, it would be impossible. so because we are a demcoracy and elect peopel to do our thinking we are completely different from an authoritarian government that doesn all the thinknig and communism is thus impossible. we elect people because we believe they are intelligent enoguh to do what is good and/or do what is best for hte people: WOW THE BASIC IDEA OF COMMUNISM.

Boy, you spell funny for a self-proclaimed non-dipshit. All tehse[sic] people who can type in English sure are dipshits. The yare[sic] so damn stupid aren't they.

To base one's opinion on a philosophy of government by recounting the acts of the corrupt leadership of countrys that inadiquately employ said philosophy is always going to lead you down the wrong path.

This is, sadly, the prevailing attitude in the US though. People take the reactionary POVs from people like their parents, pastors, Sean (fucking asswipe) Hannity, and others, and internalize them. Making any system that is "non-capitolist" totalitarian. I posted this somewhere else, but it bears repeating.

"[Americans] value linearity and firmness. Nuance and balance are not in their repertiore. In the puritan ideal a few basic formulas suffice to guide every descision in ever situation. Difficult problems must be solved simply... It's just easier for Americans to understand..."

Stefan Kornelius

To base one's opinion on a philosophy of government by recounting the acts of the corrupt leadership of countrys that inadiquately employ said philosophy is always going to lead you down the wrong path.

This is, sadly, the prevailing attitude in the US though. People take the reactionary POVs from people like their parents, pastors, Sean (fucking asswipe) Hannity, and others, and internalize them. Making any system that is "non-capitolist" totalitarian. I posted this somewhere else, but it bears repeating.

"[Americans] value linearity and firmness. Nuance and balance are not in their repertiore. In the puritan ideal a few basic formulas suffice to guide every descision in ever situation. Difficult problems must be solved simply... It's just easier for Americans to understand..."

Stefan Kornelius

I'm English. And I try to reach conclusions on communism by judging its merits and its cons, not what has happened in past communist nations (although it's hard to ignore the trail of wrecked countries which communism seems to have left). I strive for my views to be uninfluenced by the media, my friends or my relatives, but to be formed by impartial analysis as far as they can be.

and to prove my point people are uninformed dipshits, i submit exhibit a
You undermine your argument with constant spelling errors, lack of capitals, poor punctuation, and comments rooted in personal attacks instead of facts. I shake my head at you *shake, shake*.

You undermine your argument with constant spelling errors, lack of capitals, poor punctuation, and comments rooted in personal attacks instead of facts. I shake my head at you *shake, shake*.

Yeah, while I make my conclusions about the system itself and not those who support it, communism gets itself a bad name with the fact that a large portion of alleged communists seem to be angry 12 year olds with only a basic grasp of spelling and grammar.

So the classic way to tell when someone's a dipshit is when they don't like being robbed by communist militant nutcases?

I guess you were right about 99.9% of the world being dipshits then. Oh, and good luck getting voted into power by me and all the other dipshits.
no the common way to find an uninformed dipshit is to listne to them ran on and on uninformedly about somethnig which they believe to true which is only a fabrication based on assumption

Yeah, while I make my conclusions about the system itself and not those who support it, communism gets itself a bad name with the fact that a large portion of alleged communists seem to be angry 12 year olds with only a basic grasp of spelling and grammar.
Or raving lunatics like MKULTRA...where is he lately anyway?

Yeah, the frothing, typo-spouting lefties make the rest of us look bad:(.

I'm English. And I try to reach conclusions on communism by judging its merits and its cons, not what has happened in past communist nations (although it's hard to ignore the trail of wrecked countries which communism seems to have left). I strive for my views to be uninfluenced by the media, my friends or my relatives, but to be formed by impartial analysis as far as they can be.
you are full of shit, every statement you have made about communism is derived from conclusions you made up from observing the stalinist russia and all the other communist natiosn which guess what: were spawned from stalinist russia

you are full of shit, every statement you have made about communism is derived from conclusions you made up from observing the stalinist russia and all the other communist natiosn which guess what: were spawned from stalinist russia
You might want to calm down a bit...blood pressure and all...

no the common way to find an uninformed dipshit is to listne to them ran on and on uninformedly about somethnig which they believe to true which is only a fabrication based on assumption

But that makes you a dipshit! Listne[sic] to yourself!

On a serious note - you honestly believe that the desire for freedom is a fabrication based on assumption? If you want to back up my "fabrication" with evidence rather than conjecture, ask some random people whether they would prefer to live under a collectivist dictatorship or a capitalist democracy. Conduct a survey, go on.

Oh, but I forgot, everyone except you is a dipshit, right? Them and their petty love of basic human rights. Tsk tsk.

you are full of shit, every statement you have made about communism is derived from conclusions you made up from observing the stalinist russia and all the other communist natiosn which guess what: were spawned from stalinist russia

Wrong.

Even when I imagine a perfect communism and completely forget Stalin and his cronies, the idea of private property's outlawing still appauls me. I can dismiss communism without ever mentioning the USSR.

But that makes you a dipshit! Listne[sic] to yourself!

On a serious note - you honestly believe that the desire for freedom is a fabrication based on assumption? If you want to back up my "fabrication" with evidence rather than conjecture, ask some random people whether they would prefer to live under a collectivist dictatorship or a capitalist democracy. Conduct a survey, go on.

Oh, but I forgot, everyone except you is a dipshit, right? Them and their petty love of basic human rights. Tsk tsk.
oh look, more reasoning based on assumption

because stalin made up his own definition of cumminism and applied it communism is inherently bad, forget the fact that you claim to study and research things and dont make uninformed assumptions about things

Wrong.

Even when I imagine a perfect communism and completely forget Stalin and his cronies, the idea of private property's outlawing still appauls me. I can dismiss communism without ever mentioning the USSR.
oh please, your whole dismissal of communism has thus far been based on the USSR, maybe you should stop being such a BLATANT hypocrate and try to hide it a little?

The problem is everyone on these forums are idealists, and think, "hmmm, Communism only failed everytime its been attempted because an evil power hungry Dictator took over, that WONT happen with us though :p"

Its a fine idea but its also the biggest pile of bullshit I have ever heard.

oh please, your whole dismissal of communism has thus far been based on the USSR, maybe you should stop being such a BLATANT hypocrate and try to hide it a little?

Ok, I'm going to give you a comprehensive statement on why communism is bad, and I will refrain from any mention of any communist country that has ever existed.

The following is entirely hypothesis, I will not use any emperical evidence anywhere.

The central tenets of communism are the abolishion of private property in the interests of equality of wealth.

People under such a hypothetical system would become displeased with the removal of their property. They would fight against it, which would lead to violence. They would also lack motivation, since their wealth would remain static regardless of how hard they worked.

The lack of motivation would lead to low quality in the production of goods. In this hypothetical world, then, people would produce less food and shoddy products in other fields, like machinery or clothing.

The standard of living for everyone would go down. There would be turmoil as violence continued in protest at this imaginary state.

There. I didn't mention a single piece of history or evidence. It's all conjecture and logic. I'm not basing anything on the USSR. I'm basing my argument on the logical shortcomings of the philosophy of communism, whether applied or not.

theoretically it can be done without all this violence, there is no reason to take areas zoned for human occupation. of course the people in control of the companies will be mad but if the government handles the ownership of the corporations better there will ne reason for the common man to complain and there is no reason to get rid of local jobs for overseas jobs because everything isnt based on wealth, its based on need. the people work for the government: farm, etc. the people are giving everything they need free because they are products of their own labor, they live comfortable lives solely for just working.

and you make one assumption, the opposite one im making: you assume everyone is endeared by the current system already, my statement is of people who havnt been involved in any other system or arnt already made to believe communism is satan

theoretically it can be done without all this violence, there is no reason to take areas zoned for human occupation. of course the people in control of the companies will be mad but if the government handles the ownership of the corporations better there will ne reason for the common man to complain and there is no reason to get rid of local jobs for overseas jobs because everything isnt based on wealth, its based on need.

Property doesn't just mean land. Property is everything that people own, and in order to redistribute wealth, it would have to be taken from them. The "common man" isn't a wealthless nomadic peasant anymore, he's a guy with a car, a wardrobe, a stamp collection, whatever else he has. That's property, and to eliminate private property, that has to be taken and redistributed.

People might not get violent over their stamps, but when government tries to strip them of their car and clothes, it's not going to be so easy.

Involuntary redistribution of property is irremovably intertwined with violence and force.

Property doesn't just mean land. Property is everything that people own, and in order to redistribute wealth, it would have to be taken from them. The "common man" isn't a wealthless nomadic peasant anymore, he's a guy with a car, a wardrobe, a stamp collection, whatever else he has. That's property, and to eliminate private property, that has to be taken and redistributed.

People might not get violent over their stamps, but when government tries to strip them of their car and clothes, it's not going to be so easy.

Involuntary redistribution of property is irremovably intertwined with violence and force.
1) there is reason for the government to take wealth
2) the government is distributing the wealth, not redistributing it

1) there is reason for the government to take wealth
2) the government is distributing the wealth, not redistributing it

There is a distribution currently. If the government changes that distribution, by common definition they are redistributing.

"There is reason to" is not enough. We common men don't care about the "greater good" or any of that crap, we want wealth for us and our families.

There is a distribution currently. If the government changes that distribution, by common definition they are redistributing.

"There is reason to" is not enough. We common men don't care about the "greater good" or any of that crap, we want wealth for us and our families.
what does the government distribute? im not quite sure, well it pays people money that work for them, but thats not distribution as its required, and then there is welfare which wouldnt even be needed in a communist system as by the asinine definition of welfare everyone would be on it, but it wouldnt jsut be for deemed "poor people"


and why would you want enormous amounts of wealth when you could live in a house that is big enough for your use and maybe a couple extra rooms with everything you will ever need: food, water, furnishings etc etc. or would you rather live in a mansion that you wont even see half the rooms of and pay people to clean it and buy a summer home on the west coast you only see once a year because you want to be wealthy?

not all, just most. people are too stupid as a whole (the yare too dumb to admit it)

This doesn't apply to YOU, though, right? Just other people. People who disagree with you, for example.

so teh government makes decisions, thats why this isnt a COMPLETE demcoracy, the framers didnt trust the people with every single choice and decision (and besides that it would be ludicrous in such a huge nation at the time to expect everyone to vote on everything) we elect people to make decisions for us, we dont make all tehse decisions, it would be impossible.

What decision has the government made for me? The question is obviously not whether the government is entrusted with some decisions. It has to, because it already has the power. It's rather a degree of how many decisions are made, and how efficient it is for a government or any agency to make them. Or whether we want them to make those decisions (most of us don't) even if that government is 'everyone'.

so because we are a demcoracy and elect peopel to do our thinking

Does that mean Bush is doing your writing as well hence the dyslexia? I'm not hammering on you for being dyslexic if you are, really. Neither of you.

But it would explain things.

Truth is the only person I hire to do my thinking is me. It's much easier that way since my brain is in my own head. Ha ha ha!

No seriously. You are showing what is wrong. Your PREMISE is that government "Does our thinking" and makes an undefined, but probably massive amount of "decisions" for us, because we are all generally "too dumb." Fuck that. Intelligence has nothing to do with it, otherwise the people with the highest IQs would have the most political power. Thinking for the people has nothing to do with it either, except in a totalitarian state.

we are completely different from an authoritarian government that doesn all the thinknig and communism is thus impossible. we elect people because we believe they are intelligent enoguh to do what is good and/or do what is best for hte people: WOW THE BASIC IDEA OF COMMUNISM.

We elect whoever is the most popular (of those running for the office). On one hand you say there's a people too dumb to do their own thinking? And then you say these same people get to be the judges of intelligence for the people entrusted to think for them?

Sounds like communism to me.

In a democracy, people can and do have the ability to think for them and even *GASP* make their own decisions. We need the government to defend us from foreign aggression and to allow us to continue to live as we are accustomed to and want to. We need the government to stay out of our personal lives, because no one likes having sex when the police are watching. If we give government or any giant organization much power and let it influence our lives too much, WILL abuse it.

Communist governments weren't just "flawed implementations" of some perfect political thinking. They were flawed because the basic assumptions are inherently dangerous. People ARE greedy. People HOARD power and wealth, whether its legal to do so or not.

Until you change the world so that just never happens - and you frankly, can't, even if you raise the tax rate to 100% and have a super-powerful government whose job is, ironically, to prevent inequalities of power - communism is nothing more than wishing people were different, and surrendering personal rights to the will of the state. Trusting that the state wouldn't mis-treat you... couldn't... wouldn't...

:sniper:
*insert lamb being slaughtered sound here*

what does the government distribute? im not quite sure, well it pays people money that work for them, but thats not distribution as its required, and then there is welfare which wouldnt even be needed in a communist system as by the asinine definition of welfare everyone would be on it, but it wouldnt jsut be for deemed "poor people"


and why would you want enormous amounts of wealth when you could live in a house that is big enough for your use and maybe a couple extra rooms with everything you will ever need: food, water, furnishings etc etc. or would you rather live in a mansion that you wont even see half the rooms of and pay people to clean it and buy a summer home on the west coast you only see once a year because you want to be wealthy?

The lack of motivation argument which I presented in my "not allowed to say USSR" offering says that in a communist system the standard of living will fall. You won't get a house that is big enough, or food, water or furnishings, because the people who build and create those things have no reason to do a good job. Their products will be sloppy and insufficient.

As for "what do they distribute", in a communist system they distribute everything. They have to - if anyone else did, that person would be a private owner and a capitalist, and it would not be a communist system.

Unforutnately, communism in its purest form, while a utopia, is quite simply, boring as hell. I guess I've just been totally brainwashed by the capitalist society I live in, because even though I live in Canada and am a minor Socialist (aren't we all up here in the Great White North?), I still agree with the pursuit of money. I mean, money may not be able to buy happiness, but it can sure as hell buy everything else.

However, one thing for communism: it produces the COOLEST armies ever. I mean, come on, how can you beat the Russian army at the end of WWII? Absolutely Gi-normous, with the most efficient and "bang-for-your-buck" tanks in the T-34 and later T-72, combining extreme bravery with extreme lack of tactics other than "stand up, rush, and give em' hell!". Gotta love it....

The lack of motivation argument which I presented in my "not allowed to say USSR" offering says that in a communist system the standard of living will fall. You won't get a house that is big enough, or food, water or furnishings, because the people who build and create those things have no reason to do a good job. Their products will be sloppy and insufficient.

As for "what do they distribute", in a communist system they distribute everything. They have to - if anyone else did, that person would be a private owner and a capitalist, and it would not be a communist system.
they do have a reason, if they dont do their job or they purposefully do it wrong they dont get to keep their sustained quality of life. if people do their job, teh government makes sure they have a good quality of life by providing for them what is created by the people working, people farm to feed everyone, people in construction in the area build the houses, etc etc, and for doing so they are providied for by the people around them with seperate jobs maknig their stuff like this: person makes food -> electric company worker eats food -> electric company worker continues providing electricity for farmer -> farm keeps producing -> so on and on. of course its not 1 to 1 but thats the idea. if some one decides to stop working, thats one less person the other people have to work to provide for, communism for the lazy doesnt work, there is no welfare. i thought you would be logical about it, you kept claiming logic, apply it

they do have a reason, if they dont do their job or they purposefully do it wrong they dont get to keep their sustained quality of life. if people do their job, teh government makes sure they have a good quality of life by providing for them what is created by the people working, people farm to feed everyone, people in construction in the area build the houses, etc etc, and for doing so they are providied for by the people around them with seperate jobs maknig their stuff like this: person makes food -> electric company worker eats food -> electric company worker continues providing electricity for farmer -> farm keeps producing -> so on and on. of course its not 1 to 1 but thats the idea. if some one decides to stop working, thats one less person the other people have to work to provide for, communism for the lazy doesnt work, there is no welfare. i thought you would be logical about it, you kept claiming logic, apply it

The people who don't do enough work don't recieve the goodies? Whatever happened to "to each according to his needs"?

The people who don't do enough work don't recieve the goodies? Whatever happened to "to each according to his needs"?
this is communism, not a pity party. if the people REFUSE to do their share, they dont get provided for. if a person cant do their work, thats another thing that can be worked out on an ad hoc basis

this is communism, not a pity party. if the people REFUSE to do their share, they dont get provided for. if a person cant do their work, thats another thing that can be worked out on an ad hoc basis

So Karl Marx wrote "the pity party manifesto"?

Marx indicated that the basis of communism was "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs".

That means everybody works as much as they feel they can, and everybody gets what they need.

What about the crippled or unfit to work? Do they die in what you claim is a communist system? At least capitalism leaves room for private charity to the disadvantaged.

I think you guys are comging at this from the wrong angle. Cripples and invalids don't starve in a communist society. No one does.

Communism is based on the fact that INDUSTRIAL SOCIETIES CAN PRODUCE MORE THAN THEY NEVER NEED.

Looking at communism from a Western view, especially American, all anyone can ever think about is how many shortages there would be, less choices, blah blah blah

In a truly communist society, people think differently than you and I. Material goods are totally utilitarian. There is no showing off of wealth, of status, of buying the biggest, shiniest, most expenisive (Fill in blank here) to keep up with the Jones'. This is Marx's NEW MAN.

Marx, or any communist, will never ever say that communism will/won't work. It's not just a system you throw into place to distribute goods; that's the material part, yes, but for communism to truly succeed, the individuals in that society would have to be willing to accept a classless society, one which produced enough for everyone to have their fill, but not 3 times what they can eat, not 12 pairs of shoes for every person, etc. All of the capitalists in here will scream that that's human nature. It's not. Neither is sharing everything evenly.

In a communist society there is no state. None. No government at all, at least in the form that we recognize it now (centralized authority). Power resides in everyone and no one. There's no state to take over and rule with an iron fist.

It's the same with the economic side of it. There aren't any stores, people don't have any money in communism. If you're hungry, you go to where there's food. Then you eat. If you need pants, you go get a pair. But not 3 pairs of 3 different colors. Or maybe there are so many pants (which is more likely the case) that you can have some in 6 different colors.

You can't look at communism from the same perspective as capitalism. The two systems have people basing their entire lives on different values and principle systems, BOTH OF WHICH HAVE MERIT.

So Karl Marx wrote "the pity party manifesto"?

Marx indicated that the basis of communism was "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs".

That means everybody works as much as they feel they can, and everybody gets what they need.

What about the crippled or unfit to work? Do they die in what you claim is a communist system? At least capitalism leaves room for private charity to the disadvantaged.
well if they dont do their work they dont have any needs - they are choosing not to work, those that CANT work are NOT those that REFUSE to work

AND the no work = no sustained life style is a protective measure to counter the whiny "but if people arnt paid to work, they wont work! oh no! haha i debunkered communism lololol!" yeah well if they dont fucknig work they wont be provided for, with anything

well if they dont do their work they dont have any needs - they are choosing not to work, those that CANT work are NOT those that REFUSE to work

AND the no work = no sustained life style is a protective measure to counter the whiny "but if people arnt paid to work, they wont work! oh no! haha i debunkered communism lololol!" yeah well if they dont fucknig work they wont be provided for, with anything

Ok, so people have the motivation to "fucknig[sic] work" in a communist society. But they don't have any motivation to produce quality service. They will meet goverment quotas which are quantitive, but since they aren't competing with other providers, as with capitalism, they won't need to have any kind of high standard. They'll produce a thousand tractors, but the tractors will be missing parts and fall to pieces.

When that happens in a capitalist society, the people who produce faulty tractors go out of business, since nobody buys their products. But if there's a state monopoly on the production of tractors, it doesn't matter if they produce shoddy goods. They can't go out of work - they're state run.

Ok, so people have the motivation to "fucknig[sic] work" in a communist society. But they don't have any motivation to produce quality service. They will meet goverment quotas which are quantitive, but since they aren't competing with other providers, as with capitalism, they won't need to have any kind of high standard. They'll produce a thousand tractors, but the tractors will be missing parts and fall to pieces.

When that happens in a capitalist society, the people who produce faulty tractors go out of business, since nobody buys their products. But if there's a state monopoly on the production of tractors, it doesn't matter if they produce shoddy goods. They can't go out of work - they're state run.
hello, if they produce shoddy tractors you FIX THEM. its state run, therefore the state will have them fixed, its not like corporations in charge that dont give a fuck, and since you CAN have a democratic communist system the people dont want to use shoddy tractors, they will complain and shit gets done. and your assumption is asinine anyway, everything is standardised, its not like we are building shit by hand. its all in a shop.

you make unfounded and baseless assumptions to try and defend your hate of communism. LOGIC, try LOGIC.

hello, if they produce shoddy tractors you FIX THEM. its state run, therefore the state will have them fixed, its not like corporations in charge that dont give a fuck, and since you CAN have a democratic communist system the people dont want to use shoddy tractors, they will complain and shit gets done. and your assumption is asinine anyway, everything is standardised, its not like we are building shit by hand. its all in a shop.

you make unfounded and baseless assumptions to try and defend your hate of communism. LOGIC, try LOGIC.

Check out Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. Corporations have to give a fuck, otherwise they go out of business. The invisible hand of the market.

And as for "you CAN have a democratic communist government" I thought we already spoke at length on this. If you're going to strip everybody of their property, they're going to fight you, and if they're given a democratic system, they'll vote for an NEP-like measure, allowing private ownership and trade. They'll also vote you out of power completely, especially if you carry on telling them what dipshits they are.

Check out Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. Corporations have to give a fuck, otherwise they go out of business. The invisible hand of the market.

And as for "you CAN have a democratic communist government" I thought we already spoke at length on this. If you're going to strip everybody of their property, they're going to fight you, and if they're given a democratic system, they'll vote for an NEP-like measure, allowing private ownership and trade. They'll also vote you out of power completely, especially if you carry on telling them what dipshits they are.
LMFAO, we have been talknig about smtih in glboal studies, he was an idealist fool whose ideas only wouldve worked hundreds of years ago. he says let corporations loose with no controls and everything will balance out, you know what REALLY happens? one company dominates and buys the others out then does damn well what it pleases howq it pleases and no one can tell it to do better cuz it has no competition or reason to do so, or did you forget why we have all those anti-monopoly laws?

the central tenets of communism are the abolishion of private property in the interests of equality of wealth.

People under such a hypothetical system would become displeased with the removal of their property. They would fight against it, which would lead to violence. They would also lack motivation, since their wealth would remain static regardless of how hard they worked.

Who would "fight against it"? The capitalists? So what. We don't expect them to go quietly. Was the transition from feudalism to capitalism ever 'peaceful' overall - or did it lead to massive social upheaval? Has there EVER been a transition from one radically different mode of production to another without this kind of turmoil, besides perhaps that from primitive comunalism to established, urban monarchies?

I think you also fail to take into account WHOSE property and what kind will be appropriated. Personal items such as clothing, appliances, personal cars or individual/family owned homes? Nope. Nothing to do with communism. Borugoisse property is what we hope to expropriate; industry, agriculture, etc. And again, we don't expect the capitalists to give it up - that's why any revolutionary movement has to have a revolutionary army, capable of defending the interests of the new proletarian state. To paraphrase Mao.. revolution ain't a dinner party.

The lack of motivation would lead to low quality in the production of goods. In this hypothetical world, then, people would produce less food and shoddy products in other fields, like machinery or clothing.

Who says there will be no incentives to work harder and better under communism? Innovation, increased production, working voluntary overtime, shit like that WILL be rewarded in a socialist society. If you slack off, you'll eventually be asked to find another job. If you're involved in a factory's managerial team and you're doing a shit job, producing inferior goods, someone will be found who knows what they're doing. Under socialism, certain aspects of capitalist production will remain; but production will be managed in such a way as to make these aspects less and less applicable, such as involving workers in technical and managerial aspects of production and raising the living standards of people from the bottom up (as opposed to what you think Marxism is apparently, which is to equalize wealth by making everybody equally poor).

The standard of living for everyone would go down. There would be turmoil as violence continued in protest at this imaginary state.

In fact, since the fruits of production are distributed in a more logical way, by need instead of by market demand, I'd expect standards of living would go UP - as they did in China under Mao and the USSR once it had recovered from the civil war (Stalin's many great political and ideological errors notwithstanding).

There. I didn't mention a single piece of history or evidence. It's all conjecture and logic. I'm not basing anything on the USSR. I'm basing my argument on the logical shortcomings of the philosophy of communism, whether applied or not.

I'm confused - why DON'T people want to talk about history? How can anyone talk about communism without examining and applying the lessons of the communist project till the present day? Marxists are materialists. We have to take into account the objective conditions of any given situation, as well as the historical experiance of the proletarian state. We ignore the mistakes and successes of others at our own peril.

I read through the first page of this thread, and have only one thing to say:

A marxist believes Karl Marx, a captilalist understands Karl Marx. :rolleyes:

Life is what you make of it. Move on.

I didn't read the rest of your post but this part caught my eye.

Who would "fight against it"? The capitalists? So what.

In the soviet union when the gov. seized property people responded by burning their things and destroying them and rioting. It did a lot to undercut the support of the system.

Who says there will be no incentives to work harder and better under communism? Innovation, increased production, working voluntary overtime, shit like that WILL be rewarded in a socialist society. If you slack off, you'll eventually be asked to find another job. If you're involved in a factory's managerial team and you're doing a shit job, producing inferior goods, someone will be found who knows what they're doing.
What about rewarding based on need? If there is a worker (or manager) who has nothing to offer, you'll have them fired and on the street? And one of the most critical problems with socialism is that it holds that labor, instead of knowledge, is the source of wealth, which is incorrect. You would encourage and reward less valuable jobs which aren't the source of wealth (or of significant wealth) and that could make wealth diminish, or at least not be produced at the pace it was previously.

Under socialism, certain aspects of capitalist production will remain; but production will be managed in such a way as to make these aspects less and less applicable, such as involving workers in technical and managerial aspects of production and raising the living standards of people from the bottom up (as opposed to what you think Marxism is apparently, which is to equalize wealth by making everybody equally poor).

There's a good argument for the "making everyone equally poor" scenario. The wealth of the capitalists is sacrificed to the working class, destroying the wealthy class, is it not? In U.S.S.R. there was a class genocide against the wealthy (kulaks) with the idea being that they were exploiting everyone else and making them poor. They ended up crushing the backbone of their country.

Argue as you will about how the U.S.S.R. isn't a fair representation of Marxism, but there are still things that the U.S.S.R. did which serve as relevant examples, and the liquidation of the Kulaks is one of them.

And would you suggest that giving workers technical skills would justify a raise in their pay? At least in comparison with the workers without technical skills?

What's so great about Communism?

well, if you are not confident in your own ability to provide for yourself, then Communism is great for you. if you think that all your failures are somebody else's fault, Communism is great for you. if you believe that you are entitled to food, clothing, shelter, and all the rudamentary comforts of life, Communism is great for you. if you think that a rich person is oppressing you simply by having more money than you have, Communism is great for you. if you are comfortable forcing other people to work for you against their wishes, Communism is great for you.

basically, Communism is great for most 10 year olds, because they don't know any better and can't really be expected to act much better. why there are any humans who survive to adulthood while retaining that kind of immaturity is beyond me.

In fact, since the fruits of production are distributed in a more logical way, by need instead of by market demand, I'd expect standards of living would go UP - as they did in China under Mao and the USSR once it had recovered from the civil war (Stalin's many great political and ideological errors notwithstanding).

I have a hard time beleiving the standard of living in either country went up overall. Many of China's 5 year plans were disasterous, and millions of them are undernourished and without power today.

You still haven't made a convincing argument that standard of living would go up instead of down. It's emphasizing the acheivements of getting by over the acheivements that can affect the country in very important ways.

Profit is not incompatible with the public good.

Personally, I think the idea is nice- but people are greedy and it will never really work the way it's "supposed" to.

Take people living in small communes, where everyone chips in- everyone does a bit of everything, and everyone gets what they need. I've known people who have lived in communes and they LOVED it.

Small scale it can work just fine... however, it would never work on the large scale.

Like others said, I think light socialism is a good thing, that there should be some programs in countries that would be consider socialist- but like with communism, I don't think a country could run well for a length of time being purely socialist.

To many people want power and money- and would corrupt the system to get what they want.

there seem to be many misconceptions in this argument, on both sides.
overall, i think it's a bit harsh on communism.
in it's original practise, yes it was wrong. very wrong. up to 100 million people worldwide may have lost their lives in communist countries, and that's not happy days.

however, who says democracy is right?
the 'great paragon of freedom and virtue' (US) was ruled by a leader who had a MINORITY of votes, who killed around 100,000 innocent Iraqi civilians and made the standard of living worse for an entire country, (only after increasing world opium production by the factor of 3-5 by invading afghanistan. nice going.

so minority rule, in russia and the US has done no-one any good.
but now they're learning from it. China is now opening up to the world, with it's socialist market economy, acceptance of independent rule for Hong Kong and progressive economic reforms. no, it aint perfect by a long shot, but i'd still rather live there than in the US. seriously.

describing something as under a system of anarchy is not a bad thing - the technical meaning is that there are no constraints on the individual, and no tools of state exist. ideally, everyone should be hunky-dorey. maybe it isn't, but then again an anarchic system isn't being described above.

so here's the craic - communism isn't all that bad - i admire much of marx & engels' work - the problem lies in its ambiguity on many issues, so people interpret it in a very incorrect and bloody fashion. the problems lie with individuals, such as stalin, lenin, castro and mao (much as i admire the latter).

You still haven't made a convincing argument that standard of living would go up instead of down. It's emphasizing the acheivements of getting by over the acheivements that can affect the country in very important ways.

Profit is not incompatible with the public good.

Under Mao, the standard of living in China went down overall. But since then, China has seen what is probably the biggest surge in living standards in the world, due to Deng and Hu Jintao's economic reforms. And we're talking about the majority of people here - government programs (often joint-operations with NGOs) have reached deep into the countryside with public works and food-for-work programs, enabling the people living there to help themselves.

profit is incompatible with the public good - it concentrates wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer individuals. income disparity in the US and the UK has been constantly rising since the 1970s - indeed the US has the highest level of income disparity in the Western (and probably entire) world. not good stuff.

What's so great about Communism?

well, if you are not confident in your own ability to provide for yourself, then Communism is great for you. if you think that all your failures are somebody else's fault, Communism is great for you. if you believe that you are entitled to food, clothing, shelter, and all the rudamentary comforts of life, Communism is great for you. if you think that a rich person is oppressing you simply by having more money than you have, Communism is great for you. if you are comfortable forcing other people to work for you against their wishes, Communism is great for you.

basically, Communism is great for most 10 year olds, because they don't know any better and can't really be expected to act much better. why there are any humans who survive to adulthood while retaining that kind of immaturity is beyond me.

I disagree very strong. I was under the impression that life was considered a human right in the US (or rather the American empire). While I really don't believe in rights as they are a construct of Enlightenment liberal political thinkers who didn't have much in common with me politically, I do agree that human life has value, in fact it is probably the only thing that does have value (unless other organisms also turn out to be sentient).

The ability to feel emotions and make choices means that you have worth. I do not believe we are collections of molecules operating according to determistic laws of physics. I believe we are more than that. We are able to think and feel and choose. When you smash a rock, it doesn't cry out in pain. When you shoot a person, they do. Rocks cannot create concepts of value. Only we can.

Despite this fact, which I would think would be self-evident, billions insist that life and happiness are not valuable and that when someone starves or suffers in a sweatshop, we should turn the other way and continue to allow such suffering. In short, I am a communist because I believe that everyone has worth and potential and that no one should suffer for a reason as stupid as money.

What's so great about Communism?

well, if you are not confident in your own ability to provide for yourself, then Communism is great for you. if you think that all your failures are somebody else's fault, Communism is great for you. if you believe that you are entitled to food, clothing, shelter, and all the rudamentary comforts of life, Communism is great for you. if you think that a rich person is oppressing you simply by having more money than you have, Communism is great for you. if you are comfortable forcing other people to work for you against their wishes, Communism is great for you.

basically, Communism is great for most 10 year olds, because they don't know any better and can't really be expected to act much better. why there are any humans who survive to adulthood while retaining that kind of immaturity is beyond me.


I disagree with basically all of that, but I'm tired and if I tried to debate I'd be pitifully poor. There is one point though that I want to raise:

"if you believe that you are entitled to food, clothing, shelter, and all the rudamentary comforts of life, Communism is great for you"

Why is this a poor thing? If I expand on this, do you also not believe that we are entitled to education (read your own books, educate yourself) and justice (defend yourself and your property, stop whining to the police)

Surely, after more than 2000 years of progress, people should be allowed to expect food, clothing and shelter?

You'll possibly think that I expanded your point into an extreme here, but the right to education and justice, to me, is identical, in fact, secondary, to the right to food, clothing and shelter.

profit is incompatible with the public good - it concentrates wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer individuals. income disparity in the US and the UK has been constantly rising since the 1970s - indeed the US has the highest level of income disparity in the Western (and probably entire) world. not good stuff.

Profit is compatible with public good. You can't produce an utterly useless widget and make a profit (unless people want it, but then, you've served the public interest.) You will get better demand and better profit by making something that is USEFULL to the public, and especially so if you can outdo your competitors. Unless corrupted in some way or another (which socialism is equally if not more vulnerable to than capitalism) unless corrupted, a business that offers the best in public goods will receive the most profit, which it has a right to.

Wealth isn't static. More wealth can be made out of what was less wealth, and profit can exist without exploitation. Lack of equality is an important thing which (in an honest country) would keep incentive in place for people to produce and produce well, else they fall into a lower class (or worse). The lower classes don't necissarily have a right to what the higher classes produce if the higher classes produced it legitimatley (which can happen).

The U.S. should NOT be considered an entirely accurate example of capitalism. We have horribly corrupt leaders who have set things up for themselves nicely. I also don't entirely beleive the U.S.S.R. represents communism, but they were just as corrupt.

I have a hard time beleiving the standard of living in either country went up overall because of the standard of living. Many of China's 5 year plans were disasterous, and millions of them are undernourished and without power today.

You still haven't made a convincing argument that standard of living would go up instead of down. It's emphasizing the acheivements of getting by over the acheivements that can affect the country in very important ways.

Profit is not incompatible with the public good.

Unfortunatley, it is. If it wasn't, we wouldn't be calling for a change in the system, now would we? Profit for the capitalist is an end unto itself; not the welfare of the people. It's simply the nature of the marketplace; it doesn't matter if the capitalist individually is a good person or not, if he wants to stay in business he HAS to cut costs and he has to go along with the illogical demands of the market, which depends on what people can pay for, not what they need. Even though the US can produce enough food, on its own, to feed every person in the third world a healthy diet - in grain products alone, mind you - the capitalist will not do this because, if he did, he would go under almost instantly.

Need based production, on the other hand, can do this because it's not hung up or dependant on the accumulation of profit.

I don't have to make a 'convincing argument' that standards of living improved in China and the USSR; they did, especially in China, where economic growth from 1949-1958 averaged %8; where life expectancy jumped; where opium addiction and child mortality rates fell. The statistics are there to prove it, and if you don't 'take my word for it' I will endeavor to find the relevant information. It should also be noted I don't support the current Chinese regime; once Deng Xiaoping assumed power after Mao's deaths, market reforms and profit-based methods of production became the norm. The social programs and elements of worker control and participation in the economy were essentially dismantled. In other words.. capitalism was restored in what amounted to a coup.

As for the Great Leap Forward, there were a number of external factors leading to its overall errors. For one, you had the Soviets withdrawing all industrial and agricultural aid as a result of the Sino-Soviet split while the Chinese were in the middle of the process, and for another, from 61-63 you had a tremendous series of natural disasters which drastically affected production. Of course, the fact that agricultural productivity had been partially diverted towards making the rural communities self-sufficient in steel production, but Communist cadre aren't fortune tellers, ya know? Honestly, I suspect if Chiang-Kai Shek and his gang had assumed power and production was still in its previous semi-feudal underdeveloped mode, food scarcity would have gotten worse - not better.

There's a good argument for the "making everyone equally poor" scenario. The wealth of the capitalists is sacrificed to the working class, destroying the wealthy class, is it not?

Well, yeah. Getting rid of the exploiting classes is the point, isn't it? But even though wealth and production is diverted from a few, private hands and into society as a whole, has wealth and the standard of living gone down for the majority of people - or up?

In U.S.S.R. there was a class genocide against the wealthy (kulaks) with the idea being that they were exploiting everyone else and making them poor. They ended up crushing the backbone of their country.

There were mistakes made in the collectivization process in the USSR, and one of them was the amount of force applied. Collectivization was sudden, forced, and did not allow any room for the conscious initiative of the masses. But it was NOT a mistake to eliminate the exploiting classes, despite the mistakes made in the way in which it was done.

Argue as you will about how the U.S.S.R. isn't a fair representation of Marxism, but there are still things that the U.S.S.R. did which serve as relevant examples, and the liquidation of the Kulaks is one of them.

Well, I don't argue that. I argue that it was a FLAWED implementation of Marxism, even if its line was, overall, socialist and revolutionary. I'm saying we should look at the past and learn from the mistakes of the communist movement, not ignore or gloss them over.

And would you suggest that giving workers technical skills would justify a raise in their pay? At least in comparison with the workers without technical skills?

Sure, why not? You can't just equalize everybody's wages all at once. That would be, as you correctly point out, disastrous. The move towards a wageless classless society can be begun under socialism - that's the point of the process, anyway - but stateless, totally classless communism may take many, many decades to implement and cannot be fully completed until capitalism falls in the whole or the vast majority of the world. Check the Nazis and Commies.... thread towards the end for my thoughts on the process of involving workers in management and technical aspects of production, and for diminishing contradictions between mental and manual laborers

Still a 50/50 split between the bottom one and the top two. Wow.

Unfortunatley, it is. If it wasn't, we wouldn't be calling for a change in the system, now would we?
It's possible that you're misplacing the blame on capitalism when it's really the structure and corruption of our government.

Unfortunatley, it is. If it wasn't, we wouldn't be calling for a change in the system, now would we? Profit for the capitalist is an end unto itself; not the welfare of the people.
They are not mutually exclusive. Profit for the capitalist does not necissarily mean that people's welfare is sacrificed. This was also in my other post. More value can be made out of what was less.

Even though the US can produce enough food, on its own, to feed every person in the third world a healthy diet - in grain products alone, mind you - the capitalist will not do this because, if he did, he would go under almost instantly.
And if he went under who would feed anyone at all? Markets relfect need and consumer interest. It's not a coincidence that private organizations produce food, products and other things we need. It is done because it is profitable.

This also throws into question individual freedom. Suppose someone only wanted to have a U.S. based company and it was a personal passion? Do they have a right to his time against his will? Does the government have more of a right to your life and your labor than you do?


Need based production, on the other hand, can do this because it's not hung up or dependant on the accumulation of profit.
For the sake of maintaining it's existence it would be.

I don't have to make a 'convincing argument' that standards of living improved in China and the USSR; they did, especially in China, where economic growth from 1949-1958 averaged %8; where life expectancy jumped; where opium addiction and child mortality rates fell. The statistics are there to prove it, and if you don't 'take my word for it' I will endeavor to find the relevant information.
For China's population, it should be the leading economic force in the world in an ideal situation. Improvements in China relative to the dire situations which precedeed it should not be confused with 'success' or an overall well-being of the people. Over 1 billion people there are malnourished and millions are without power, government corruption is rampant (transparancy internation gives them a 3.4 out of 10 for a corruption rating) as well as horrible pollution problems (their ecological footprint as rated in LPR 2004 is by far worse than any other in the world.)

The social programs and elements of worker control and participation in the economy were essentially dismantled. In other words.. capitalism was restored in what amounted to a coup.
Again it does not take capitalism to make corruption possible.

I had more but it was copied to the clipboard and I lost it.. but this should suffice for now.

They are not mutually exclusive. Profit for the capitalist does not necissarily mean that people's welfare is sacrificed. This was also in my other post. More value can be made out of what was less.
yes, they are mutually exclusive, if they wernt, it wouldnt be capitalism. capitalism is benefit at all costs, why the hell do you think that we have all these anti-monopoly and other business control laws?


capitalism doesnt care about the little guy thats how capitalism works.

Well, yeah. Getting rid of the exploiting classes is the point, isn't it? But even though wealth and production is diverted from a few, private hands and into society as a whole, has wealth and the standard of living gone down for the majority of people - or up?
I disagree with your labeling of them as exploiting classes, which hasn't yet been established. Wealth and production were diverted from those who had legitimatley produced to those whose only claim for it was that they needed it. Wealth can be produced independently of the poorer classes, everything is not at the expense of them. A person having more wealth than another might just be a testament to their ability, not necessarily how much they exploited people (not always true in the U.S. but that is hardly an argument for the downfall of capitalism.) If you say that you would reward people based on their contribution or skill (something to that effect) then is it not possible for the upper class to be a legitimate one which is contributing the most to society?

If people are guaranteed MATERIAL items by right, then it is necessary that people will have to be there produce them, regardless of whether or not they want to.

Even if the majority of people's standard of living goes up, it's not right that it should have. I still haven't heard a good answer to where the motivation to produce comes from when your living is guaranteed regardless of performance. In a free market economy you produce in order to secure your wealth.

There were mistakes made in the collectivization process in the USSR, and one of them was the amount of force applied. Collectivization was sudden, forced, and did not allow any room for the conscious initiative of the masses. But it was NOT a mistake to eliminate the exploiting classes, despite the mistakes made in the way in which it was done.
But they DID eliminate the class, so the plan should have worked, right? My point there wasn't the genocide or force, but the fact that they destroyed their own ECONOMIC backbone by going after the Kulaks. Some of them were guilty of no more than having a horse. Exploiting? All they were was more wealthy than the people next to them. That in itself is not exploiting.

Well, I don't argue that. I argue that it was a FLAWED implementation of Marxism, even if its line was, overall, socialist and revolutionary. I'm saying we should look at the past and learn from the mistakes of the communist movement, not ignore or gloss them over.

I agree that we can use history to learn from communism, but not necissarily that we should use it to find a new and better way to implement it.


Sure, why not? You can't just equalize everybody's wages all at once. That would be, as you correctly point out, disastrous. The move towards a wageless classless society can be begun under socialism - that's the point of the process, anyway - but stateless, totally classless communism may take many, many decades to implement and cannot be fully completed until capitalism falls in the whole or the vast majority of the world. Check the Nazis and Commies.
Oh, no, I agree. I was using it to point out a principle which seems to go ignored by communism- that it is right to pay better producers more. And still, are you saying that it is right to throw someone out on the street even if they NEED a job? (Supposing that a job in some form is still necessary for them to earn their living essentials). If so, that wouldn't be consistent with communism.

What's so great about Communism?

well, if you are not confident in your own ability to provide for yourself, then Communism is great for you. if you think that all your failures are somebody else's fault, Communism is great for you. if you believe that you are entitled to food, clothing, shelter, and all the rudamentary comforts of life, Communism is great for you. if you think that a rich person is oppressing you simply by having more money than you have, Communism is great for you. if you are comfortable forcing other people to work for you against their wishes, Communism is great for you.

basically, Communism is great for most 10 year olds, because they don't know any better and can't really be expected to act much better. why there are any humans who survive to adulthood while retaining that kind of immaturity is beyond me.

I aboslutely agree!!

Profit is not incompatible with the public good.

Could not have said it better!!

I could respond but, why bother when certain people don't even read. I'll take my non-response so far as a sign that I have conclusively defeated the arguments addressed in my last post and happily retire from this thread, where I see we have people paraphrasing Mao in their pro-communist arguments and expecting us to take them seriously.

yes, they are mutually exclusive, if they wernt, it wouldnt be capitalism. capitalism is benefit at all costs, why the hell do you think that we have all these anti-monopoly and other business control laws?


capitalism doesnt care about the little guy thats how capitalism works.

The way you are justifying your points suggests you haven't read much into the subject.

That part about anti-monopoly laws.. if that is enough evidence than I should just arbitrarily find a governmnet endorsement of free markets and use that to say that everything about communism is debunked.

As far as profit and welfare being mutually exclusive, that is really nonsense. You can make MORE value out of less value, to make a product that IMPROVES the welfare of the people, without sacrificing any of their welfare to increase the product's value. Profit up, benefit to the people up. Hell I even said this before. People won't pay for things unless they need them or want them, and so the most profitable business will be the one that best responds to that.

The communist idea is that profit can only be made by sacrificing some part of the people's welfare (the workers being underpaid or people overcharged). That is A way to make profit, but it isn't the only way and it is not an accurate view of how profit in general is made.

Communism holds that the value of a product is exactly equal to the value of the labor, and materials used to make that product. So at best, an honest company (according to communism) would break even. However, the value of knowledge is left out. A peice of information is different in that it does not exist in finite quantity, it can have value and be produced an infinite amount of times, and the value added by the knowledge can make the product more valuable than the total cost of producing it.

And so the product can be produced cheaply enough (relative to the value it offers) to BENEFIT the consumer who purchases it, and at the same time (or "mutually") BENEFIT the producer who can charge a bit extra on that excess value for a profit.

If that's not enough, I'll get an old post I put up here a while ago...

Profit is MADE by making more value out of what was formerly less valuable, which takes labour and knowledge. Because of the knowledge powering the labor THE VALUE OF THE LABOR IS NOT NECISSARILY EXACTLY THE SAME AS THE VALUE OF THE PRODUCT. Some labor is worth more than other forms because of the combination of skill and knowledge involved.

Say I had a collection of metals. A certain form of knowledge and information can be utilized to turn those metals into a laptop computer. The total value of that computer can be more than the value of the metals and labor put into them, because of the value of the knowledge put into it.

That same amount of labor could be used to take a sledgehammer and smash the metals around into a senseless mess, making it worth nothing more than it was before. Or you could take the metals and make a toaster, or a pan, or several other things with the same amount of labor, all of which, despite the equal amount of labor, can vary greatly in price.

Profits in general are the product of free knowledge which can be put into goods to make them worth more than the cost of producing them. Not, in general, from exploitation of labor.

BringingUpMyPost.

The Communist ideology has nothing to do with the totalitarianism and genocide. Communism aims to create a democratic classless society free from all exploitation which is run in the interests of all of humanity.

"Democracy is the road to socialism." (Karl Marx)

"While the State exists there can be no freedom; when there is freedom there will be no State" (VI Lenin)

"Under socialism all will govern in turn and will soon become accustomed to no one governing." (VI Lenin)

"Democracy is indispensable to socialism." (VI Lenin)

"Authority poisons everybody who takes authority on himself." (VI Lenin)

I disagree with your labeling of them as exploiting classes, which hasn't yet been established. Wealth and production were diverted from those who had legitimatley produced to those whose only claim for it was that they needed it. Wealth can be produced independently of the poorer classes, everything is not at the expense of them. A person having more wealth than another might just be a testament to their ability, not necessarily how much they exploited people (not always true in the U.S. but that is hardly an argument for the downfall of capitalism.) If you say that you would reward people based on their contribution or skill (something to that effect) then is it not possible for the upper class to be a legitimate one which is contributing the most to society?

Not really. What do they contribute to society? The labor of others is the source of their wealth. They are a historical anachronism; we simply don't need them anymore. What do the upper class contribute to the society? More than the factory worker or the toiler in the fields who ACTUALLY PRODUCES the wealth that these people accumulate?

The "main enemy" of the revolutionary proletariat is not simply rich people, or upper middle class forces; it is people who accumulate their wealth off of other people's labor.

Even if the majority of people's standard of living goes up, it's not right that it should have. I still haven't heard a good answer to where the motivation to produce comes from when your living is guaranteed regardless of performance. In a free market economy you produce in order to secure your wealth.

Socialism involves, at its core, the transformation of culture, of ideas, of people's attitudes towards the necessity and purpose of work. Without these developments in the realm of ideology it is impossible to move towards classless society; but, under socialism, you would still be operating under a reward system of a sort. If you work harder, like I said, you get paid more and recieve more incentives. But, under socialism, people will still WANT to work, not because they're forced but because the nature of the work is different. You're working better hours, recieving decent pay, and learning new things in the process of working every day. Why wouldn't you?

But they DID eliminate the class, so the plan should have worked, right? My point there wasn't the genocide or force, but the fact that they destroyed their own ECONOMIC backbone by going after the Kulaks. Some of them were guilty of no more than having a horse. Exploiting? All they were was more wealthy than the people next to them. That in itself is not exploiting.

Well, then an error was made in the identification of who is the friend and who is the enemy of the people and the revolutionary movement. Someone is not a member of an exploiting class just because they have more (a horse was the example you used) but when they employ large amounts of waged labor - in other words, the landlord and employing classes, not just the more well off factions of the peasantry.


Oh, no, I agree. I was using it to point out a principle which seems to go ignored by communism- that it is right to pay better producers more. And still, are you saying that it is right to throw someone out on the street even if they NEED a job? (Supposing that a job in some form is still necessary for them to earn their living essentials). If so, that wouldn't be consistent with communism.

No, not really. It would make sense not to give people the benefits of society's collective production if they outright refuse to work. But not if they are legitimately jobless. And what if they can't do the job the're assigned to? Well, they can be trained or retrained, or you could find something they're actually good at. A planned economy should, if run logically, be able to sustain something close to %100 employment.

Regarding China - yes, it sucks to be them right now, but did you read the portion where I asserted the post-76 regime was not communist at all and that most of Mao's economic policies had been totally discarded?

I apologize if anything in this post doesn't make sense or doesn't address what you wanted me to.. it's rather late here and I'm bushed, so lemme know.

The way you are justifying your points suggests you haven't read much into the subject.

That part about anti-monopoly laws.. if that is enough evidence than I should just arbitrarily find a governmnet endorsement of free markets and use that to say that everything about communism is debunked.

As far as profit and welfare being mutually exclusive, that is really nonsense. You can make MORE value out of less value, to make a product that IMPROVES the welfare of the people, without sacrificing any of their welfare to increase the product's value. Profit up, benefit to the people up. Hell I even said this before. People won't pay for things unless they need them or want them, and so the most profitable business will be the one that best responds to that.

The communist idea is that profit can only be made by sacrificing some part of the people's welfare (the workers being underpaid or people overcharged). That is A way to make profit, but it isn't the only way and it is not an accurate view of how profit in general is made.

Communism holds that the value of a product is exactly equal to the value of the labor, and materials used to make that product. So at best, an honest company (according to communism) would break even. However, the value of knowledge is left out. A peice of information is different in that it does not exist in finite quantity, it can have value and be produced an infinite amount of times, and the value added by the knowledge can make the product more valuable than the total cost of producing it.

And so the product can be produced cheaply enough (relative to the value it offers) to BENEFIT the consumer who purchases it, and at the same time (or "mutually") BENEFIT the producer who can charge a bit extra on that excess value for a profit.

If that's not enough, I'll get an old post I put up here a while ago...


BINGO. You can't get much more right than this.

Communism is freedom.

Well, if you talk about the communism capitalism develops into, aka Marxism. Just a few hundred years away.

Wouldn't it be nice to have no state anymore and organize things by yourself and with your neighbor and likeminded people?

OK, some people can't live without a state since they miss the laws and need someone to tell them what to do.


What is commonly known as "communism" is another form of benevolent dictatorship, where a few tried to introduce freedom without asking the people whether they want it. It just doesn't work that way.

And, of course, some people hear "public property" and are afraid they cant make a buck anymore selling fresh air to traffic police, because they are choking on SUVs (they are selling too).

What do the upper class contribute to the society? More than the factory worker or the toiler in the fields who ACTUALLY PRODUCES the wealth that these people accumulate?

That's a really misguided assumption, that just by being the upper class they somehow fit your classic communist stereotype that they got there by exploiting and corruption. Assuming they legitimately earned their wealth (which happens) they contributed a LOT to their society- and their wealth reflects it.

As for the worker boss relationship and "boss exploiting worker, worker producing wealth" I first have to deal with labor as a source of value. Labor is a PART of the source of value for a product and the part it plays depends on the product. But as a general rule, knowledge is the most important source of value (labor alone is replaceable and insignificant), and one of my earlier posts gets into that.

About bosses, I agree that there certainly are many who don't deserve the job they received and do too little to justify their pay. At the same time, the system we have in business is justified. If there is an exceptionally skilled worker, he might be more valuable watching over many other workers and having them work as he would, than he would be just working by himself. A more skilled person would be better off in a position of authority so that they could imprint their talent on other workers.

Another point we'll have to get into eventually: the worker is feeding off of the wealth produced by the ingenius developments of someone who found a way to benefit society (again, profit working to beneft society). Psylos would probably get all over me for this, but I again would like to use Thomas Edison as an example. He became very wealthy and surely needed to employ many workers to produce his inventions. No profit can exist without exploitation, right? Well Edison became very very rich, which would suggest he had done a lot of exploiting, but how? By making available jobs to the workers that they would not have otherwise had? By providing them with the information HE discovered, as to how they could produce light bulbs?

Here is a good way to look at the source of value.
If you no longer have one worker, how easily can he be replaced?
If you no longer have Thomas Edison, how easily can he be replaced?

The "main enemy" of the revolutionary proletariat is not simply rich people, or upper middle class forces; it is people who accumulate their wealth off of other people's labor.
Which would neccessitate (sp?) the existance of a large system of exploiting labor which is apparently worth a lot more than those providing them the jobs and information which make them usefull and capable of earning their pay in the first place.

So it's about giving pay to the people who ACTUALLY are the source of value. Agreed so far. But the source of value? Not the workers. The upper class can't be a "main enemy" untill it is established that they are doing something wrong. (Not talking about the corrupt criminals with political connections, but the legit people who actually represent what capitalism is supposed to be. They exist.)


Socialism involves, at its core, the transformation of culture, of ideas, of people's attitudes towards the necessity and purpose of work. Without these developments in the realm of ideology it is impossible to move towards classless society; but, under socialism, you would still be operating under a reward system of a sort. If you work harder, like I said, you get paid more and recieve more incentives. But, under socialism, people will still WANT to work, not because they're forced but because the nature of the work is different. You're working better hours, recieving decent pay, and learning new things in the process of working every day. Why wouldn't you?
That's pretty far fetched and if THAT is necessesary for socialism to work, that is easily one of it's most damning aspects. There were blacksmiths in U.S.S.R. that worked for decades and received nothing for their work save the food and materials to subsist upon. Even though some of them worked for 20-30+ years, they still were in the same position they started in. Even if you could convince them to enjoy the time they spent doing it, would it be right to?

It's not really something you can control. You don't just change people's ideas of things with a 'cultural movement'. That's smoke and mirrors nonsense. They know what their work is, and how they judge their work is up to them. People with certain jobs like their work, and people with other jobs do not. People know what is enjoyable and is not enjoyable, and so long as they have common sense they will know if their work is enjoyable or isn't enjoyable. You'd have to dissolve some element of common sense to get them to think other wise.

I could just as easily say "well in capitalism we'll have a cultural movement to make the bosses never be corrupt" or I could say "We'll have a cultural movement to let the proletariat be OK with getting exploited."

If your benefits are disconnected from your needs there is no rationalization for working. Decent pay and better hours is completley subjective and dependant upon the socialist economy being successfull, which still has not been demonstrated. More likley, since you are valuing labor and not thought, wages would likely go down and economic progress slow significantly.

That's enough for now.

Worst poll ever.

You're asking people to give their views on communism then giving 3 choices of your own negative views of communism.

Then you go on to talk about Soviet communism as if that is Communism, and then you compound this by talking absolute rubbish about Communism. Maybe you should go back and find what Communism is before starting a poll to reinforce your incorrect ideas about it.

While i generally agree with your assesment of communism, you seem to have failed to see that a strongly religious capitalist group of governments in this world have done little better if not worse, fanatasism is the root cause of all your pain, but alas we are all only human, power and greed rule us all, not unlike the locust.
Perhaps if we are clever enough we can play one side against the other, being mindful to keep a close eye on ourselves :headbang:

Communism and its spectacular failure is a historical example of the dangers of the single most dangerous facet of the collective human psychie: the search for an ideal world.

Communism is freedom.

Well, if you talk about the communism capitalism develops into, aka Marxism. Just a few hundred years away.

Wouldn't it be nice to have no state anymore and organize things by yourself and with your neighbor and likeminded people?

OK, some people can't live without a state since they miss the laws and need someone to tell them what to do.

The thing is, people DON'T need the state as that's the reason many people do bad tings. Young people always want to rebel against the state and any symbol of authority, this then either leads to their confinement of themselves into state doctrine or to become more and more extreme in the limits they wish to push against the state.

If there was no state (as in most tribes in remote areas of Africa where they have what is true anarchism - not the violent, oppressive world that conservatives have portrayed anarchism to be but a healthy, safe, peaceful community which works together to solve problems) then there'd be no problems as buisness and communities would be able to work together without interference from people who think they know what's best but, more often that not, don't.

True democracy does not involve elections. True democracy is each person being allowed to do what they wish.

Of course, some people will go against a society's moral guidelines but if a society works together: 1) this is less likely to happen 2) they can judge as a collective and as individuals what is most effective to punish and rehabilitate the offender. If people are given responsibilities and don't rely on the state, they will behave better.

The only problem with anarchism is, to install it, because of the hundreds of years the state has had a role in corrupting society, it will have to be done in stages by "rolling-back" the state slowly because otherwise the conservative view of anarchism will come into view...

But all in all, anarchism is more :fluffle: than :mp5:

Self-declared expert. I declare myself an expert on underwater basket-weaving! Ole!

When you have written two dozen books, over 100 articles, earned a PhD, teach at a major university and have been a finalist for the Nobel Prize, as Dr. Rummel has, then, yes, you can be declared an expert in underwater basket weaving.

From reading the posts of the apologists for communism I have come to two conclusions:

1) Those in favor of communism support it only as a vague abstraction and wish to make it perfectly clear that there has never been (and may never be) a communist government. Apparently, for these people, communism exists only in libraries, not in actuality.

2) Communist supporters have no interest in discussing the track record of communism in practice. Not the infringement of human rights and civil liberties, and especially not the 110 million people killed in the 20th century by their own communist governments.

Politics is not an abstract field of study. It is the art and science of governing people. It is the most practical of fields. How an ideology works on paper means nothing if those ideas cannot be translated into actual policies that affect (hopefully for the better) actual people.

Communism started as an abstract ideology created by Frederick Engels and Karl Marx, drawing upon the ideas of David Ricardo and G.W.F. Hegel, as well as socialist writers of the 18th and 19th centuries, going back even to Thomas More’s Utopia. However, since Marx and Engels other writers, philosophers, and politicians have contributed to communist theory and practice, including Lenin, Bukharin, Trotsky, Stalin, Mao, Zhou Enlai, Li Dazhou, Josef Tito, Fidel Castro, and many others. No single theory or practice of communism has ever existed, but certainly various interpretations of communism have. And those interpretations of communism have been put into practice.

It is that record of communism in practice by which the system must be judged, not some abstract possibility of what communism should be.

The actual record of communism in practice is an unblemished record of murder, repression, and totalitarianism. In the art and science of politics the ideology of communism, in its many forms, has been consistent in establishing a system of government that is ultimately more oppressive than any other form of government every created.

To ignore that record in debating the merits of communism smacks of intellectual dishonesty.

LMFAO, we have been talknig about smtih in glboal studies, he was an idealist fool whose ideas only wouldve worked hundreds of years ago. he says let corporations loose with no controls and everything will balance out, you know what REALLY happens? one company dominates and buys the others out then does damn well what it pleases howq it pleases and no one can tell it to do better cuz it has no competition or reason to do so, or did you forget why we have all those anti-monopoly laws?

Oh, and Marx and Engels sure weren't idealist fools.

What actually happens when a corporation seizes the position of market leader is that if it starts to provide insufficient service either quantitively, qualitively or at an unacceptable price, a company which provides better service will seize the customer base and become market leader.

Even if a company holds the entire market, as soon as their provision of service becomes insufficient, entering the market will become lucrative for potential competitors, and they will do just that, eventually drawing a higher number of customers if their service is superior to that of the market leader.

The nature of trade and business is such that Smith's "invisible hand" principle is applicable in virtually any society or any time period.

I suggest you drop "glboal studies" and start an economics course instead. Or maybe a foundation level English language course would help you more.

It is that record of communism in practice by which the system must be judged, not some abstract possibility of what communism should be.

The actual record of communism in practice is an unblemished record of murder, repression, and totalitarianism. In the art and science of politics the ideology of communism, in its many forms, has been consistent in establishing a system of government that is ultimately more oppressive than any other form of government every created.

To ignore that record in debating the merits of communism smacks of intellectual dishonesty.

This is true. Emperically, every single attempt at a communist state has failed on essentially all levels.

However, even if forced to debate it with hypothesis and theory, it can be shown to be bunk even without a scrap of evidence.

It ticks me off as well when people on this forum cry "But Lenin, Stalin, Castro, Guevara, Mao, etc etc weren't communists!". You're right, dismissing all failures as "not the real thing" is a ridiculous device.

LMFAO, we have been talknig about smtih in glboal studies, he was an idealist fool whose ideas only wouldve worked hundreds of years ago. he says let corporations loose with no controls and everything will balance out, you know what REALLY happens? one company dominates and buys the others out then does damn well what it pleases howq it pleases and no one can tell it to do better cuz it has no competition or reason to do so, or did you forget why we have all those anti-monopoly laws?

OK, genius... you realize that Karl Marx himself used Smith's Wealth of Nations for reference in the Communist Manifesto, right? You don't even know what you are talking about. Idealist? Unlike Marx, Adam Smith wasn't dealing in abstract and unfounded theory, but was going directly off of information about past and present (for him) European markets, as well as Roman ones even.

He talked about source of prices which go up and down depending upon the cost of labor, stock, and rent (which is VERY valid today) and also about the value and purpose of money, benefits of division of labor, etc. all of which is completley relevant today.

Some other points.

What do the upper class contribute to the society? More than the factory worker or the toiler in the fields who ACTUALLY PRODUCES the wealth that these people accumulate?
Here you are implying that the upper class doesn't actually produce wealth.

The "main enemy" of the revolutionary proletariat is not simply rich people, or upper middle class forces; it is people who accumulate their wealth off of other people's labor.
And here you are saying that at least some of the upper class produces wealth.

If some do produce wealth, isn't it ok that they are wealthy and in the upper class? And wouldn't it be right for a system to place people in the upper class if they were true producers of wealth?

It would make sense not to give people the benefits of society's collective production if they outright refuse to work. But not if they are legitimately jobless.

So at the point were they are legitimatley jobless they still are entitled to thier subsistence. A person not contributing is still being rewarded by the government.

Kanendru just got fucking owned.

But what exactly is wrong with communism? Not much.

Now, let's take the example of China. I believe that the Communists actually took a very backward country, and made it into a much more modernized country. Much better then what they would have been under that corrupt nationalist system. True, many people did die during the half century that China's communist leaders took to make China into a more modernized society. However, the 110 million people that did die in all of those communist nations lowered the population of the earth a little at least....

If some do produce wealth, isn't it ok that they are wealthy and in the upper class? And wouldn't it be right for a system to place people in the upper class if they were true producers of wealth?
however it isnt always the case, the ones "producing wealth" arnt always the wealthy. i thought it was the people working that "produced wealth" the people at the top just sit around micromanaging and getting a unproportionally large salary

Here you are implying that the upper class doesn't actually produce wealth.

Well, they don't. The labor of their employees does, and because capitalism is structured the way it is that wealth is unevenly and unjustly distributed to a ridiculous degree.

And here you are saying that at least some of the upper class produces wealth.

No, I'm saying that some people who have an unusually large amount of money are not CAPITALISTS, based on their relationship to the means of production, and are thus not the "main enemy". Take a highly experianced brain surgeon, or an actor or something. They don't gain their money through other people's labor, through ownership of the means of production, so they shouldn't be the target of a revolutionary movement. Although in socialist society, you'd want to try to cut down massive income gaps like that. I'm drawing a distinction between the bourgouisse and petit-bourgouisse or upper middle class forces.


So at the point were they are legitimatley jobless they still are entitled to thier subsistence. A person not contributing is still being rewarded by the government.

Once again, a socialist, planned economy should be able to find a job for that person. Are you saying you aren't in favor of unemployment benefits, which are implemented in most of the advanced capitalist countries including the US (inadequate as they are).

Communisim Is Devil Warship!!!

however it isnt always the case, the ones "producing wealth" arnt always the wealthy. i thought it was the people working that "produced wealth" the people at the top just sit around micromanaging and getting a unproportionally large salary
Dude, I made at least two large posts discussing who "produces the wealth". And myself as well as others have said that there is more to being 'at the top' than sitting around and getting an undue salary. You can find them on your own.

Well, they don't.
OK. I was making sure that that is what you said.

I'm saying that some peopleSome people...

who have an unusually large amount of money...who are in an above average (which can include 'upper') class...

are not CAPITALISTS. ...don't 'exploit' people (by your definition at least.)

So we have: Some people... who could be in the upper class... don't exploit people. You ARE saying that, but you are just trying to make a special point that those people don't live off the labor of others.

Which gets to a point you guys have been overlooking constantly, which is the source of wealth. I have put up some good reasons as to why it ISN'T labor. You haven't responded to those (on pg 9) but you are continuing to say that labor is the source of value.

I'm drawing a distinction between the bourgouisse and petit-bourgouisse or upper middle class forces. I don't see why "capitalists" (as you call them) would have to by necessity make more than a doctor or an actor. Surely there is at least one "capitalist" that makes less money than at least one doctor. I think doctors and the like can just as easily be in the upper class, so I think we agree on that point. Just the same however, there can be so-called "capitalists" in the upper class who ALSO aren't exploiting anyone, which my post on pg 9 also goes into.

Although in socialist society, you'd want to try to cut down massive income gaps like that. An income does not just exist waiting to be handed out. It has to be PRODUCED. If a person is making a lot of money, they aren't preventing the money from going to other people. Gaps in income don't mean that one person is taking from another. Wealth isn't static.

Once again, a socialist, planned economy should be able to find a job for that person. You have to demonstrate this. Jobs can't just be planned and created. Lack of profit (which threatens the industry and welfare of the people) could make less jobs avialable, with the same amount of people seeking jobs. What then? You 'plan' one even though there is no way to profitably create more jobs? That would only damage the industry and the business that chose to employ him, and the job he took would not actually offer any contribution.

Suppose a drought hits, and a farms all accross the country have a crop shortage, and they only need a fraction of the people they normally would to harvest. So men lose their jobs. You can give them jobs?

All I'm saying is it is humany possible that people will go without jobs. When that happens, they will receive subsistence anyway.

Are you saying you aren't in favor of unemployment benefits, which are implemented in most of the advanced capitalist countries including the US (inadequate as they are).
Nope. I'm saying that you are motivating them to not acheive. The U.S. benefits are limited. How would they be in communism? You are stripping the pay of the TRUE sources of wealth (people who start successful companies, or invent something and then make profit on it's patent) and giving it to the less skilled less valuable people in the society. Even if this magical 100% employment land existed, you are motivating the workers to do what is LEAST valuable, by making simple and unimportant work pay about the same as work which is much more important and benefits many more people.

i seem to remember fdr creating jobs during the new deal crap

i seem to remember fdr creating jobs during the new deal crap

That is the best post you are able to come up as a defense of communism?

Don't you think that the poll is flamebait?

Pretending that such a system could exist, we start at the lowest level... a farmer... who must raise his own crops. But I, his EQUAL, must also raise my own crops,
No. Division of labour: the farmer produces more crops than s/he needs (about 30 times as much actually). These crops are owned by the collective.

thought technically his crops are my crops too, and my crops are his crops too. This system would be based on subsistance farming which would take cizilization back hundreds of years. Next we have the doctor. Though in theory either no one is a doctor or everyone is a doctor, so that everyone is EQUAL...
WTF are you talking about? You have completed misunderstood the idea of communism. COMPLETELY. Labour is still divided, only people do equal amounts for it and get equal rewards.

or the District Attorney who must prosecute criminals... Does no one prosecute them or does everyone? What about the criminal... since we are all equal... either the criminal didn't commit the crime, or everyone did...
Not only have you misunderstood communism, you've misunderstood the word "equality".

Its absurd to imagine a system without a central government. NOTHING BUT UTTER ANARCHY.
Well, anarchism is a political system without central government.

So either Marx, Engels, and Lenin dreamed of totalitarianism or of anarchy... or maybe they aren't all that some think they are.
No, they just analysed the situation more intelligently than you.

Communism is sick, I don't know how those people could have slept at night.
Who are "those people"? Marx, Engels and Lenin?

There is nothing in between MURDER, DICTATORSHIP & GENOCIDE, and ANARCHY, LAWLESSNESS & CHAOS on the communist spectrum... if you believe in communism, which side are you on??
Once again, you've misunderstood. Are you suggesting that there will be no laws in a communist society? Or that they cannot be democratic?

people are too willing to take BS from their government before uprising against it...

Once again, you've misunderstood. Are you suggesting that there will be no laws in a communist society? Or that they cannot be democratic?

NO, just that in such society laws cannot be enforced. Why? Because everyone is equal, everyone worries only about themselves, and it will be no one's responsibility to do so. Hey, it would be great if we could be equal but that would imply that either no one look over crimes, or everyone look over crimes which is impossible... so again, people simply wouldn't be equal if laws were to be respected therefore you would not consider it communism in its purest form would you?

Just so you don't think I just went and "gave up", I'm letting y'all know I'm probably putting off furhter participation in this thread in favor of getting up on some of the actual NationStates RP threads I'm involved in. But I will point you in the direction of a few sources that go into the differences between a planned and a market economy, and concerning who creates wealth:

http://www.rwor.org/a/v22/1052-059/1057/secret.htm

http://www.rwor.org/a/v24/1161-1170/1166/lotta1.htm

Peace, I'm outta here.

Just so you don't think I just went and "gave up", I'm letting y'all know I'm probably putting off furhter participation in this thread in favor of getting up on some of the actual NationStates RP threads I'm involved in. But I will point you in the direction of a few sources that go into the differences between a planned and a market economy, and concerning who creates wealth:

http://www.rwor.org/a/v22/1052-059/1057/secret.htm

http://www.rwor.org/a/v24/1161-1170/1166/lotta1.htm

Peace, I'm outta here.

K. Well it was fun. That first link gets to a point I am really interested in, and I will start a new thread on it which I am sure some socialists will find interesting.

NO, just that in such society laws cannot be enforced. Why? Because everyone is equal, everyone worries only about themselves, and it will be no one's responsibility to do so. Hey, it would be great if we could be equal but that would imply that either no one look over crimes, or everyone look over crimes which is impossible... so again, people simply wouldn't be equal if laws were to be respected therefore you would not consider it communism in its purest form would you?
your point being what exactly?

your point being what exactly?

His point is that it's impossible for everyone to be completely equal in society. Some kind of "overseer" will inevitably rise. If one didn't, nobody would enforce the law, and society would instantly degenerate into anarchy. And I don't mean soft, utopian anarchy with no leaders, I mean anarchy: rape, pillage and burn style.

If society is to function peacefully, there must be basic laws which protect the lives of its people. These will have to be enforced by some individual or governmental collective, and they will have more power than run-of-the-mill citizens. Thus, no society can ever be truly equal or classless.

His point is that it's impossible for everyone to be completely equal in society. Some kind of "overseer" will inevitably rise. If one didn't, nobody would enforce the law, and society would instantly degenerate into anarchy. And I don't mean soft, utopian anarchy with no leaders, I mean anarchy: rape, pillage and burn style.

If society is to function peacefully, there must be basic laws which protect the lives of its people. These will have to be enforced by some individual or governmental collective, and they will have more power than run-of-the-mill citizens. Thus, no society can ever be truly equal or classless.

thankah you! jeez some people just dont get it.

anyway Hessen Nassau is proud to announce our full support for any UN proposal that is pro environment, pro abortion, pro gay union, pro foreign aid, pro gun control, and anti military. If any of you know such a proposal please contact me directly, inform me of such proposal, and i will check it out.