Say NO to commie chic
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Communism is a bit more than just an econmic system. It tries to define the entire way of life and future for everyone with little or no consent. Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness no longer belong to the individual, just to the state. It is totalitarianism and can never function in real life without a totalitarian government enforcing it.
I guess the czar loyalists and others who were killed during the installation of this new economic system were not actually killed by communists, just overzealous "self-styled communists".
I guess 6 million Jews were not killed by Nazism, just by overzealous "self-styled Nazis".
I guess the czar loyalists and others who were killed during the installation of this new economic system were not actually killed by communists, just overzealous "self-styled communists".
I guess 6 million Jews were not killed by Nazism, just by overzealous "self-styled Nazis".
Gordon Fink
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Stalin may have been a “communist,” but what he practiced was socialist dictatorship. In fact, we’ve given Stalin’s style of socialism its own special name.
If you study your Marx and its derivatives, you’ll see that communism has never been in effect (in its operational sense anyway).
~G. Fink
If you study your Marx and its derivatives, you’ll see that communism has never been in effect (in its operational sense anyway).
~G. Fink
Jay Kominek
Member
bureaucrash has a few pieces of anticommunist garb, in particular the "better dead than red" tshirt.
Che Bart
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If you study your Marx and its derivatives, you’ll see that communism has never been in effect (in its operational sense anyway).
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You hear this a lot from people who want to go on believing in communism despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. I'm not sure what it's worth, though. It's like you're saying "I have this fantasy version of jumping off a cliff, where you just bounce off the rocks at the bottom so you don't get hurt." I reply, "Lots of people have tried jumping off cliffs, and they always get hurt, so I'm not going to do it." You say "Well, those other people who jumped off of cliffs weren't properly implementing my fantasy of what jumping off a cliff should be like."
Wonderful. So people can fantasize about some ideal form of communism where everyone lives in harmony and abundance. Cute fantasy, doesn't work in real life. Same goes for perpetual motion machines, except that perpetual motion machines don't kill off ten million or so people every time some nut tries to create one.
If you study your Marx and its derivatives, you’ll see that communism has never been in effect (in its operational sense anyway).
--------------------------
You hear this a lot from people who want to go on believing in communism despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. I'm not sure what it's worth, though. It's like you're saying "I have this fantasy version of jumping off a cliff, where you just bounce off the rocks at the bottom so you don't get hurt." I reply, "Lots of people have tried jumping off cliffs, and they always get hurt, so I'm not going to do it." You say "Well, those other people who jumped off of cliffs weren't properly implementing my fantasy of what jumping off a cliff should be like."
Wonderful. So people can fantasize about some ideal form of communism where everyone lives in harmony and abundance. Cute fantasy, doesn't work in real life. Same goes for perpetual motion machines, except that perpetual motion machines don't kill off ten million or so people every time some nut tries to create one.
Antsi, I'm going to agree with Gordon Fink on theoretical grounds, but cancel that out on linguistic. It is true that none of the totalitarian dictatorships we've seen in the world have been 100% implementations of Marxist theory. However, in the world in which we live, the word Communism has come to mean something other than the 19th-Century textbook definition, just as Democrat, Liberal, Conservative, Fundamentalist, etc.
So to argue that Communism hasn't killed anyone is technically true but misleading, and to my mind (no offense, GF) pedantically irrelevant because you knew very well what is meant by the term as it is used today.
So to argue that Communism hasn't killed anyone is technically true but misleading, and to my mind (no offense, GF) pedantically irrelevant because you knew very well what is meant by the term as it is used today.
Gordon Fink
Member
If we don’t use the terms correctly, then how can we discuss these subjects with any intelligence?
~G. Fink
~G. Fink
Mongo the Mutterer
Member
Yep Gordon, it just has never worked, has it? 100 million dead and you want to keep trying?
Research Lazar Kaganovich... 10 million dead Ukranians. Yep, that Commie system really works, oh ... I forgot... that was Stalinism...
When I'm researching the evil the Communists have done, I really don't want to worry about semantics.
Kaylee
Member
Oh, the irony of capitalists selling off commie stuff is great fun.
As to the whole "it wasn't implemented right"
Feh. Neither was (is) our system. The difference between capitalism and communism is that free-market capitalism is a heck of a lot more error tolerent, and human beings are nothing if not flawed. Textbook perfect implementation of a political system is never going to happen. Systems have to be implemented by real people in the real world. We didn't get the perfect world of Henry or Jefferson either.. the difference is our system works despite that. We don't need to invent the New Man to make it work.
Capitalism is based on self-interest, yes.. but it harnesses self interest to provide a higher standard of living to the community. You want a lot of cash, figure out something that lots of people want more than their money.
Communism in contrast is based in its heart on human envy. As with any system based on our darker natures, it fosters not growth but cannibilization of the community.
As to the whole "it wasn't implemented right"
Feh. Neither was (is) our system. The difference between capitalism and communism is that free-market capitalism is a heck of a lot more error tolerent, and human beings are nothing if not flawed. Textbook perfect implementation of a political system is never going to happen. Systems have to be implemented by real people in the real world. We didn't get the perfect world of Henry or Jefferson either.. the difference is our system works despite that. We don't need to invent the New Man to make it work.
Capitalism is based on self-interest, yes.. but it harnesses self interest to provide a higher standard of living to the community. You want a lot of cash, figure out something that lots of people want more than their money.
Communism in contrast is based in its heart on human envy. As with any system based on our darker natures, it fosters not growth but cannibilization of the community.
Gordon Fink
Member
I don’t think communism can work, but it remains an attractive idea for a certain set, not unlike its private-property counterpart. Therefore, discrediting the dangerous Marxist plans would-be communists fall back on to achieve communism also remains a good idea. However, you cannot discuss these topics intelligently or debate socialism effectively if you do not understand them.
To the would-be communist, your hateful condemnation of Stalinism comes off as fear and ignorance. The communist doesn’t want to implement murderous Stalinism, she wants to achieve the peace, freedom, and prosperity of communism. She can safely discount your argument, because you have demonstrated that you don’t know what you are talking about.
~G. Fink
To the would-be communist, your hateful condemnation of Stalinism comes off as fear and ignorance. The communist doesn’t want to implement murderous Stalinism, she wants to achieve the peace, freedom, and prosperity of communism. She can safely discount your argument, because you have demonstrated that you don’t know what you are talking about.
~G. Fink
gunsmith
member
my fave
American By Blood
Member
Which socialism are we talking about here when we say that it was "just a bad economic plan?" Fabian socialism? Libertarian socialism? Marxism? There are many different flavors of socialism, some pre-dating Marx's career as a writer.
Also, which brand of communist never killed anyone? Maoists? Bolsheviks? Mensheviks? Spartacists? Communism is a relatively broad ideological umbrella and it's a "no true Scotsman" fallacy to dismiss the Bolshies and their offspring as "self-styled communists" just because they killed people and (sort-of) attempted to circumvent/accelerate Marx's historical model.
Furthermore, it's sticky to imply that Marxism (assuming that's what you meant) was founded purely in misguided love while national socialism had its genesis solely in bigotry. The argument can be made that Marx (as a person of Jewish descent) was made to feel like an alien by German gentiles and that his radically anti-Western ideology grew out of that alienation. The same argument can also be applied to the attitudes many prominent reds of Jewish descent in the USSR, Poland, and other Eastern European nations publicly displayed about the indigenous cultures of the people they ruled over or agitated among. Keep in mind the early Soviet cultural programs that criminalized Russian traditions while teaching factory workers shtetl folktales and the fact that the pre-war Polish Communist Party was constantly dogged by its difficulty in keeping a critical mass of gentile members due to the amount of official business conducted in Yiddish.
Just as the Sturmabteilung had both "hate is our prayer and victory our reward" and "everything for Germany" as mottos, so too did many important Marxists have their own combinations of idealism and ethnic resentment/vendetta.
Also, which brand of communist never killed anyone? Maoists? Bolsheviks? Mensheviks? Spartacists? Communism is a relatively broad ideological umbrella and it's a "no true Scotsman" fallacy to dismiss the Bolshies and their offspring as "self-styled communists" just because they killed people and (sort-of) attempted to circumvent/accelerate Marx's historical model.
Furthermore, it's sticky to imply that Marxism (assuming that's what you meant) was founded purely in misguided love while national socialism had its genesis solely in bigotry. The argument can be made that Marx (as a person of Jewish descent) was made to feel like an alien by German gentiles and that his radically anti-Western ideology grew out of that alienation. The same argument can also be applied to the attitudes many prominent reds of Jewish descent in the USSR, Poland, and other Eastern European nations publicly displayed about the indigenous cultures of the people they ruled over or agitated among. Keep in mind the early Soviet cultural programs that criminalized Russian traditions while teaching factory workers shtetl folktales and the fact that the pre-war Polish Communist Party was constantly dogged by its difficulty in keeping a critical mass of gentile members due to the amount of official business conducted in Yiddish.
Just as the Sturmabteilung had both "hate is our prayer and victory our reward" and "everything for Germany" as mottos, so too did many important Marxists have their own combinations of idealism and ethnic resentment/vendetta.
In some cases, by applying the test of common, everyday usage as understood nowadays, rather than a narrow textbook definition from 200 years ago.
Awful used to mean awe-inspiring, not terrible. Should we pedantically insist that the current usage is wrong? I'm as anal as the next guy -- I insist that there is no such word as "orientate," and have been known to go into convulsions upon hearing "liaise" used as a verb -- but come on. You know what is meant when someone uses the words Communism or Socialism in this context, just like you do when someone says they are a Democrat or a Conservative, and whether current usage matches what you will find in your OED or your Skeats is not only irrelevant, it is a red herring, IMO.
DRZinn
Member
+1
Words are defined by common usage. What a word meant long ago is irrelevant.
Words are defined by common usage. What a word meant long ago is irrelevant.
Chris Rhines
Member
Like, for example, "regulated?"
- Chris
deus_sol_invictus
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Communism's effects..
Last fall, I took a poli science course on Eastern Europe. We had some guest speakers, mostly in their late twenties to early thirties, who were grad students. They all grew up in Warsaw Pact nations, but the one whose story stuck deepest was a woman from Slovakia.
Her grandfather had been conscripted into the Slovak Army and he'd fought all of WW2 on the Eastern Front under Slovak and later German command. Well, after the war, he repatriated to the new Czechoslovakia and resumed his former trade as a butcher/deli owner by opening a small shop in his village. When the Communists took power in 1948, they nationalized his shop in name and confiscated most of the profits he earned. Well, eventually the Czechoslovak government saw the benefits of allowing some free enterprise and they allowed him to keep more wealth. However, in the 1980's there was a backlash as hardliners saw the entire system collapsing around them. The government came and gave notice that the man's shop and home were to be "appropriated" to build new apartments. A few days later, he sadly told his wife that he was going to miss his small flower and vegetable garden in back and he sat down in the kitchen and died. She told the story while crying and explaining the small horrors and privations that this system created. That's why I hate to hear anyone soft-pedal Marxism/Leninism/Maoism.
Last fall, I took a poli science course on Eastern Europe. We had some guest speakers, mostly in their late twenties to early thirties, who were grad students. They all grew up in Warsaw Pact nations, but the one whose story stuck deepest was a woman from Slovakia.
Her grandfather had been conscripted into the Slovak Army and he'd fought all of WW2 on the Eastern Front under Slovak and later German command. Well, after the war, he repatriated to the new Czechoslovakia and resumed his former trade as a butcher/deli owner by opening a small shop in his village. When the Communists took power in 1948, they nationalized his shop in name and confiscated most of the profits he earned. Well, eventually the Czechoslovak government saw the benefits of allowing some free enterprise and they allowed him to keep more wealth. However, in the 1980's there was a backlash as hardliners saw the entire system collapsing around them. The government came and gave notice that the man's shop and home were to be "appropriated" to build new apartments. A few days later, he sadly told his wife that he was going to miss his small flower and vegetable garden in back and he sat down in the kitchen and died. She told the story while crying and explaining the small horrors and privations that this system created. That's why I hate to hear anyone soft-pedal Marxism/Leninism/Maoism.
Ironic in the extreme. Or, perhaps, not. Consider: what could possibly say "your economic/political system sucks" more than the other side using its icons as a way to sell knick-nacks to frivolous people with too much disposable income? There's nothing like having your ideology reduced to a Snow-Globe to put your cause into perspective.
I do agree that it is amusing that wearing pro-Nazi gear will get you shunned while pro-communist gear is chic, though. What I find even more amusing is that the people wearing the Che and Lenin clothes would probably be among the first people up against the wall should the dearly-wished revolution ever descend upon them.
Mike
That, or it requires people to self-select themselves into a commune/kibbutz/whatever. Oddly enough, lots of people self-deselect themselves from these same groups. In a free nation, this is a non-issue; the commune continues to be comprised of true believers, and as such continues to function, and the people who opt out go on to (in theory) get jobs (!) and enjoy life (running dog capitalists!). However, when your entire nation is the commune, leaving the Worker's Paradise is a bit more dicey than just getting the Post Office to forward your mail. You're often left to, say, hop in a boat, climb a wall, dig a tunnel, or face a firing squad.
Mike
Mike
Gordon Fink
Member
Kentak said:
And that is Marxism in a nutshell. Socialism, of course, is the force Marx would have us apply to bring about communism, leaving us with a cure worse than the “disease” (bourgeois capitalism).
For the budding linguists who would have us use the terms communism and socialism interchangably, how shall we discuss these political and economic subjects? Must I always say “community-property anarchy” or “centralized planning of state-owned industries”?
~G. Fink
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Justin
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Anybody remember the Lotus Notes commercial that Denis Leary did a few years back?
Click for small Quicktime video.
Video shamelessly linked from here:
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Click for small Quicktime video.
Video shamelessly linked from here:
http://it.stlawu.edu/~global/pagescapital/deathofmarx2.html
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