The Communist Problem

[Par4]

Well when this magic utopia comes around and stays around for more than a decade we'll all have to apologize to all you little commies.

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King Par4!!

There is no spoon
-The Matrix
Let's kick it up a notch!!
-Emeril Lagasse
Fresh Soy makes Tofu so silky
-Ming Tsai

[Az]

yeah , par4 , bow ! commies are for a better world ! I know everybody is , but we allow ourselves to dream !


P.S. I guess now everybody knows I am a Komunist....

[Christantine The Great]

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"Adorare Christantine!!!"
Republican Decree #1
[This message has been edited by Christantine The Great (edited July 20, 2000).]

[Hasdrubal]

To all the commies:
First give us back those one hundred million people that you've murdered!
Then we'll start a serious discussion about the moral virtues of communism.

Heck, next thing you'll know, people will argue that Fascism is a good system, if only Hitler wouldn't have given it such a bad press...

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Hasdrubal's Home.
Ceterum censeo Romam esse delendam.

[CornMaster]

Hitler turned around a ruined country that was defeated in 1920 and opressed by the Treaty of Versailles, to a military power house in 1935. This is no fluke. The man was a genious. Phycotic but a genious.

He almost took over all of Europe. Because of a few mistakes were not speaking German today. I'm not praising Hitler for his anti-semitism but I'm saying he knew how to run a country.

Now about these 100 million people. They were killed under Stalinism not Communism or were casuties of wars or power strugles, BY THE LEADERS. It's the leaders of these countries that kill the people. It's too bad that crazy, power hungry people are the only people with enough courage to try a utopian system. And it's too bad that the fat cats of the world (USA) have to always destroy it.

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"I'm too out of shape for a long fight so I'll have to kill you fast"
"If the great Emperors of Rome, Egypt and Greece were alive today, do you think they would prefer Coke or Pepsi?"

[tonic]

quote: Originally posted by Hasdrubal on 07-20-2000 05:09 PM To all the commies: First give us back those one hundred million people that you've murdered! Then we'll start a serious discussion about the moral virtues of communism.

This is selective condemnation. All nations and types of governments commit atrocities dictated by the situation. Genocide has ben perpetrated by Americans, Aussies, Europeans all in the name of labels like freedom and democracy. Western capitalist countries support Third World dictatorships in suppressing and murdering dissidents and the oppressed for their own greedy economic interests.

It's important not to let one's bias and prejudice distort the overall big picture. Perhaps it's a sad indictment of human nature that in whatever form the governance takes, its darker side will pervert the idealistic course.
[This message has been edited by tonic (edited July 21, 2000).]

[Par4]

Everyone else pales in comparision to China and Russia.

3 million jews or 100 million peasant farmers? That's equal??

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King Par4!!

There is no spoon
-The Matrix
Let's kick it up a notch!!
-Emeril Lagasse
Fresh Soy makes Tofu so silky
-Ming Tsai

[Evil Capitalist]

Some points on the totalitarianism mentioned above:
1) Hitler's economic success in the period mentioned had a lot to do with Dr Hjalmar Schacht (I hope I spelt that right). He was sidelined in 1935 after complaining about the pace of rearmament. However the system allowed the growth to happen in the first place.
2) The former USSR is pretty much the worst place to live in Europe. The Russian life expectancy is descending to third world levels, and there budget is so small that despite being extremly miltaristic 85% of their fleet is rusting without oil.
3) Communist nations do have a habit of slaughtering their inhabitants- not just the USSR or China, but also Bangladesh and Cambodia. You can't say for fascism, due to lack of evidence.
4) The slaughters commited by Europeans in the 19th century were considered acceptable. To condemn that is like condemning someone for passive smoking when it isn't know if smoking is harmful. The ideas of social darwinism and the white man's burden let the Imperialists think they were doing right.

[Deathwalker]

As much as I would like to see real world goverments, it would mean hundread of types at different levels of disarray. One solution would be to have base types (by the way more of these types would be better) and them each one is effecte by its situation, sate off cities and happieness, this would also mean that will a goverment stays the same, it could change as it is effected.

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I have walked since the dawn of time and were ever I walk, death is sure to follow

[Theben]

While I'd really love to get into yet another capitalism vs. communism, this is an on-topic forum people. Stick to the topic.

[Az]

6 millions Par . 6 millions .


anywaY I agree with cornmaster :



And I say the reason they didn't have these is because every Democratic, Captialist nation was preforming acts against the Soviet Union, like spying and sabatoge, which forced the Soviets to take a defensive position to the world. Almost every nation was trying to kill Communism therefore the Communists had to build up arms against the world to avoid not being crushed. This in turn caused most of their production to be military based taking away from the consumer goods production. What I'm saying is that the Russians had little freedoms because they were in constant threat of being invaded and destroyed. And eventually were


Dalgetti

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Prepare to Land !

[S. Kroeze]

quote: And I say the reason they didn't have these is because every Democratic, Captialist nation was preforming acts against the Soviet Union, like spying and sabatoge, which forced the Soviets to take a defensive position to the world. Almost every nation was trying to kill Communism therefore the Communists had to build up arms against the world to avoid not being crushed. This in turn caused most of their production to be military based taking away from the consumer goods production. What I'm saying is that the Russians had little freedoms because they were in constant threat of being invaded and destroyed. And eventually were

It will probably be a waste of time, but when people are writing down such disconcerting distortions of historical truth, such utter nonsense, I feel obliged to react. My advice is to read at least one good study before ventilating some opinion, whatever the subject!

'Since Russia lay on its periphery, half in Asia, and was overwhelmingly agrarian, Europe never considered her internal developments relevant to its own concerns. The turmoil of 1917 was generally interpreted to mark Russia's belated entry into the modern age rather than a threat to the established order.

This indifference was enhanced by the fact that the Russian Revolution, having occurred in the midst of the greatest, most destructive war in history, struck contemporaries as an episode in that war rather than as an event in its own right. Such excitement as the Russian Revolution generated in the West had to do almost exclusively with its potential effect on military operations. The Allies and the Central Powers both welcomed the February Revolution, although for different reasons: the former hoped that the removal of an unpopular tsar would make it possible to reinvigorate Russia's war effort, while the latter hoped it would take Russia out of the war. The October coup was, of course, jubilantly welcomed in Germany. Among the Allies it had a mixed reception, but it certainly caused no alarm. Lenin and his party were unknown quantities whose utopian plans and declarations no one took seriously. The tendency, especially after Brest-Litovsk, was to view Bolshevism as a creation of Germany which would vanish from the scene with the termination of hostilities. All European cabinets without exception vastly underestimated both the viability of the Bolshevik regime and the threat it posed to the European order.

For these reasons, neither in the closing years of World War I nor following the Armistice, were attempts made to rid Russia of the Bolsheviks. Until November 1918 the great powers were too busy fighting each other to worry about developments in remote Russia. Here and there, voices were raised that Bolshevism represented a mortal threat to Western civilization: these were especially loud in the German army, which had the most direct experience with Bolshevik propaganda and agitation. But even the Germans in the end subordinated concern with the possible long-term threat to considerations of immediate interest. Lenin was absolutely convinced that after making peace the belligerents would join forces and launch an international crusade against his regime. His fears proved groundless. Only the British intervened actively on the side of the anti-Bolshevik forces, and they did so in a halfhearted manner, largely at the initiative of one man, Winston Churchill. The effort was never seriously pursued, because the forces of accommodation in the West were stronger than those calling for intervention, and by the early 1920s the European powers made their peace with Communist Russia.

But even if the West was not much interested in Bolshevism, the Bolsheviks had a vital interest in the West. The Russian Revolution would not remain confined to the country of origin: from the instant the Bolsheviks seized power, it acquired an international dimension. Its geopolitical position alone ensured that Russia could not isolate herself from the World War. Much of Russia was under German occupation. Soon the British, French, Japanese, and Americans landed token contingents on Russian soil in a vain attempt to reactivate the Eastern Front. More important still was the conviction of the Bolsheviks that their revolution should not and could not be confined to Russia, that unless it spread to the industrial countries of the West it was doomed. On the very first day of their rule in Petrograd, the Bolsheviks issued their Peace Decree, which exhorted workers abroad to rise and help the Soviet Government "bring to a successful resolution... the task of liberating the laboring and exploited masses from all slavery and all exploitation."

The Bolshevik Government could not promote revolution and civil war outside its borders in disregard of international law and appeal to the same international law to keep foreign powers from intervening in its own affairs. In fact, however, for reasons stated, the great powers did not avail themselves of this right: no Western government, either during World War I or after it, appealed to the people of Russia to overthrow its Communist regime. Such limited intervention as occurred in the first year of Bolshevism was motivated exclusively by the desire to have Russia serve their particular military interests.'
(source: R.Pipes:'The Russian Revolution',1990)

'The open hostility of Russia's Communist regime to "capitalism", and especially its denial of the right of private property, should have turned the Western business community into an uncompromising foe of Lenin's government. In fact, many of the pot-bellied, top-hatted capitalists of Soviet propaganda posters turned out to be remarkably friendly and cooperative. Western capitalists lost no sleep over the fate of their Russian brethren: they were quite prepared to make deals with the Soviet regime, leasing of buying at bargain prices the sequestered properties of Russian owners. No group promoted collaboration with Soviet Russia more assiduously and more effectively than the European and American business communities. The Bolsheviks exploited their eagerness to do business by having them pressure Western governments for diplomatic recognition and economic assistance. When the first Soviet commercial missions arrived in Europe in the summer of 1920 in quest of credits and technology, they were shunned by organized labor, but welcomed by big business. Hugo Stinnes, the head of the Union of German Industrialists and an early backer of Hitler, while hosting the Soviet delegation, declared that he was "favorably disposed toward Russia and her experiments." In France, the delegation was advised by a right-wing deputy not to rely on Communists and left-socialists: "Tell Lenin that the best way to win France over to doing business with Russia is through the businessmen of France. They are our only realists."

Businessmen eager to exploit Russia's natural resources and sell to her manufactured goods justified trading with a regime that had volated, at home and abroad, all accepted norms of civilized behavior, with the following arguments: First, any country was entitled to the government of its choice. Hence, it would be not only be unrealistic but undemocratic to ostracize Soviet Russia. As Bernard Baruch said in 1920: " The Russian people have a right, it seems to me, to set up any form of government they wish." The unspoken premise behind this argument was that the Russian people had chosen the Communist government. Second, trade civilizes, because it teaches common sense and discredits abstract doctrines. This argument was frequently resorted to by Lloyd George, who in February 1920 called for the reopening of commercial relations with Soviet Russia: "We have failed to restore Russia to sanity by force. I believe we can do it and save her by trade. Commerce has a sobering effect in its operations. The simple sums in addition and subtraction which it inculcates soon dispose of wild theories." Henry Ford, who managed to reconcile rabid anti-Communism and anti-Semitism with highly profitable commercial arrangements with the Soviet Union, also believed in the moral force of reality: "facts will control" ideas, he asserted, unwittingly paraphrasing Marx's dictum that being determines consciousness. The more Communists industrialized, he argued, the more decently they would behave because "rightness in mechanics [and]rightness in morals are basically the same thing."

As it turned out, commercial arrangements paved the way for diplomatic recognition, which Western governments were reluctant to grant Soviet Russia because of her renunciation of debts and her subversive activities. Moscow had all along assumed, correctly as it turned out, that the way to diplomatic recognition lay through trade agreements, a premise Lloyd George confirmed when he told the House of Commons in March 1921 that the recent Anglo-Soviet trade accords were tantamount to de facto recognition of the Soviet state.

The attitude of American labor could not have been more different. Samuel Gompers, the President of the American Federation of Labor(AFL), called the Bolsheviks "pirates". His successor, William Green, adopted a similar stance. American trade unions time and again turned down with large majorities pro-Communist resolutions sponsored by a small radical wing. The only organized labor groups to adopt a conciliatory attitude toward Soviet Russia were the Amalgamated Clothing Workers and the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, both organized by immigrants from Russia who harbored romantic illusions about the Communist experiment.'
(source: R.Pipes:'Russia under the Bolshevik Regime',1994)

As you should know Russia went through a catastrophic famine in 1921, a result of drought and three years agricultural mismanagement. Since it helped the regime to suppress a dangerous peasant revolt using guerilla tactics, the disaster came at a rather convenient moment.

'It is instructive to compare the attitude of the Bolshevik regime to the famine with that of the tarist government when confronted with a similar tragedy thirty years earlier, when some 12.5 million peasants were afflicted with hunger. Contrary to propaganda spread at the time records show that the tarist authorities moved quickly and effectively.

The Kremlin watched the spread of the famine as if struck with paralysis. Although reports from the countryside had alerted it to impending disaster, and after it had occurred, to its dimensions, it did nothing because it could not ackowledge a national calamity that it could not attribute to "kulaks", "White Guardists", or "imperialists". Secondly, it had no obvious remedies: "The Soviet Government was confronted with a problem which, for the first time, it was unable to solve with resort to force." In May and June 1921, Lenin ordered purchases of food abroad, but that was to feed the cities, his principal concern, not the peasantry. The famine troubled him only insofar as it threatened potentially adverse political consequences: in June 1921, for instance, he spoke of a "dangerous situation" developing as a result of hunger. And he used it as a pretext for launching an offensive against the Orthodox Church. In July 1921 Dzerzhinskii warned the Cheka of the threat of counterrevolution in areas affected by the famine and ordered harsh preventive measures. The press was forbidden to make any allusions to the crop failure, and even in early July continued to report that all was well in the countryside. In none of Lenin's writings or speeches of that period can one find one word of sympathy for the millions of his subjects who were perishing from hunger.

Once the Americans and other foreign organizations assumed the principal responsibility for feeding starving Soviet citizens, Moscow diverted its resources to other purposes. On August 25 -three days after signing an agreement with Hoover- Litvinov informed Moscow that he had sold to an English party jewels worth 20 million gold rubles and that the buyer was prepared to purchase additional jewels for the value of 20 million pounds (100 million dollars) - a sum exceeding the combined U.S. and European donations to starving Russians. In early October 1921, Trotsky instructed the Soviet agent in Germany, Victor Kopp, in strictest secrecy, to place orders for rifles and machine guns worth 10 million gold rubles (5 million dollars). These facts were not known at the time. What became known and caused great consternation in American relief circles was evidence that at the very time the Soviet government was relying on Western charity to feed its people, is was offering foodstuffs for sale abroad. In the fall of 1922 Moscow made it known that it had millions of tons of cereals available for export- this at a time when its own estimates indicated that during the coming winter 8 million Soviet citizens would stil require food assistance, only half of which could be met with native resources. When questioned, the Soviet authorities explained that they needed money to purchase industrial and agricultural equipment. The action outraged American relief officials: the Soviet government was "endeavoring to sell part of its food supply in foreign markets, while asking the world to contribute food to replace what had been exported." Hoover protested against "the inhumanity of a government policy of exporting food from starving people in order that through such exports it may secure machinery and raw materials for the economic improvement of the survivors." But with the worst of the famine over, Moscow could defy foreign opinion. Reports of its grain exports made it impossible to raise additional funds for Russian relief and in June 1923 ARA suspended operations in Soviet Russia.

The casualties of the 1921 famine are difficult to ascertain because no one kept track of the victims. The greatest losses occurred in the provinces of Samara and Cheliabinsk and in the German and Bashkir Autonomous Republics, the combined population of which declined by 20.6 percent. In terms of social status, the worst sufferers were the rural poor, especially those lacking a cow, possesion of which saved many a family from death. In terms of age, the heaviest losers were the children, many of them abandoned by their starving parents. In 1922, over 1.5 million peasant children were on the loose, begging and stealing; mortality in the asylums for the besprizornye attained 50 percent. The Soviet Central Statistical Bureau estimated the population deficit between 1920 and 1922 at 5.1 million. The famine in Russia was the greatest human disaster in European history until then, other than those caused by war, since the Black Death. The losses would have been much greater still had it not been for Hoover's philanthropic activities, estimated to have rescued at least 9 million lives.'
(source: R.Pipes:'Russia under the Bolshevik Regime',1994)

[S. Kroeze]

quote: Originally posted by CornMaster on 07-20-2000 09:33 PM Hitler turned around a ruined country that was defeated in 1920 and opressed by the Treaty of Versailles, to a military power house in 1935.

Again distortion of truth!
Germany had lost the war and about 2.4 million soldiers. It was forced to sign a humiliating peace (though nothing compared with the harshness of Brest-Litowsk) and to pay reparations, which in the end it did never pay. The Germans had played the same trick on the French in 1871; the French did pay! And they lost some valuable territory: the Alsace and part of Silesia and Prussia. In 1922/23 the German economy passed through a crisis and unbelievable inflation.

But during World War I there was not one major battle on German soil. All its cities and its economic heartland in Saxony and the Ruhr came undamaged out of the war. There was no famine, only massive unemployment. In 1914 Germany was already the second economy of Europe. In comparison with Russia both before and after the Revolution Germany was almost the Garden of Eden. Its most unpleasant characteristic was its undemocratic, militaristic state of mind.

In 1945 Germany was really ruined: no stone was left standing! One shouldn't begin a war one cannot win...

[CornMaster]

Ok. I read through about half of the post by S. Kroeze about Communism. And realized that most of it, if not all of it was taken from a book. Then I looked at the bottom and realized it was. If I wanted to read a book about the evils of Communism I could find hundreds at my library. It's cowardice to take up the popular point just to be right.

If you truly believe that Communism is evil, I guess there is no way to change your mind. Unfortunatly all the tests of this great system have failed based on human nature. The human nature of the rich to be greedy and to tread on anything that might equal them to normal men. Rich men with the power to keep 80% of the worlds population poor. That's the human nature that has doom Communism. Greedy people thinking only of themselves and caring nothing about the others around them. Stopping at nothing to maintain their power and their riches. It just annoys me to hear people that defend these types.

Have you ever read the Communist Manifesto?

And on to Hitler. Germany did try to pay the moneys that they owed but how could they when they were conquered? They had no money, lost a lot of workers, and most of their production was wasted. Oddly enough only the Americans would loan money to the Germany to pay off it's debts. And this was only after the Americans had to get the repayment plan restructured because it was too harsh.

Germany went through Hyper-inflation which destroyed their economy in the early 1920's, only had a military of 100,000 troops, massive unemployment, and massive unrest, to a country (about 10 years later) with virtually zero unemployment, massive production (more so than most/if not all nations of the world), excellent economy and infrastructure, and the military power and might to conquer all of Europe and if not for bumbling allies (Italy and a lesser extent Japan) could/would have conquered the whole world. As I said before this was no fluke. The man was a genius. Again I'm not praising his anti-semitism, or his master race theories or his methods of extermination, I'm just complementing him on his 15 year pre-war turn around.

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"I'm too out of shape for a long fight so I'll have to kill you fast"
"If the great Emperors of Rome, Egypt and Greece were alive today, do you think they would prefer Coke or Pepsi?"

[Evil Capitalist]

quote: Originally posted by CornMaster on 07-22-2000 02:12 AM Rich men with the power to keep 80% of the worlds population poor. That's the human nature that has doom Communism. Greedy people thinking only of themselves and caring nothing about the others around them.

Give me a good reason anyone but a government with machievellian streak would want to keep people poor.
Rich people get their money from business
Businesses gain increased overall profits from an increased market.
An increased market is achieved by letting people have more money.
Therefor the very rich have an interest in letting people become rich.

BTW S Kroeze: Silesia was gained in a seperate war with Austria Hungary in 1866