Why I think a communist revolution is a pipe dream in United States.

[chequita guevara]

I don't spend all my time here, you know.

[Kuciwalker]

Ok.

[MattH]

I think the forum is sending us a message:

[Bereta_Eder]

Spontaneous AI creation and it's a leftie too.

[aneeshm]

Originally posted by Velociryx
Have there been? Wars fought purely for economic reasons? I'm sure there have, but none spring to my mind immediately.

-=Vel=-

Iraq , anyone ?

Or maybe America isn't capitalist ?

[aneeshm]

It seems that everyone here forgot Cuba . A tiny antion nest to the biggest capitalist superpower , with both middle fingers raised , shouting "bring 'em on" at every opportunity , surviving with one leader as long as it did seems successful enough to me .

[Velociryx]

Yep...on the surface of it, Cuba *would* seem to fit the bill for a success.....

....until you start digging into the GDP, per capita income, etc (which has been done on a thread in Poly's OT before).

What you find is that smaller, capitalistic nations with less population and fewer resources beat the SNOT out of Cuba in every measure but health care (as measured by infant mortality rate).

In looking at Soviet Russia's phenominal growth period (and nod to Che, it WAS a strong period of growth), we see that Communist states CAN grow like gangbusters, sure, if they don't mind sacrificing a few tens of millions of their population to the effort (since per capita income numbers are based on the population of a nation, OF COURSE per capita income tends to rise when you lose 20 million or so of your comrades....big surprise, eh?).

-=Vel=-

[aneeshm]

Here , I'm not measuring Cuba's economic growth as a criterion for success . I think it's mere survival is a success in itself . And I don't remember Castro sacrificing millions of people .

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by aneeshm
It seems that everyone here forgot Cuba .

With good reason, commies mostly like to say dictatorships aren't examples of "true" communism. It saves them from dealing with thorny issues like the USSR or Mao's China.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
With good reason, commies mostly like to say dictatorships aren't examples of "true" communism. It saves them from dealing with thorny issues like the USSR or Mao's China.

We have to deal with them anyway. I think a lot of non-Stalinists do cast a "pox on both houses" and throw the socialist baby out with the Stalinist bathwater. If I weren't intellectually lazy, I'd do the research required to really understand the USSR, China, and the capitalist economy and be something of a commie Roland/Adam Smith.

Okay, that's not really fair to me. I at least don't simply dismiss the USSR and China out of hand and do accept their claims to try to be building socialism. I look at them as some kind of transitional economies, about as close to communism as mercantilism is to post-modern capitalism. I also think there were valuable aspects to these attempts that need to be rescued from the Stalinist horrors, unlike many who simply dismiss them out of hand.

Vel, Cuba lost out to Puerto Rico on GDP, number of televisions per household, and things lke that. Cuba, however, wins on employment, health care, and education. It's kinda like comparing Canadian taxes to American taxes. Sure, we pay less taxes, but we get so much less for it.

[Kuciwalker]

You never answered my question che...

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by skywalker
You never answered my question che...

I don't know.

[Kuciwalker]

So you don't know which would happen. Let's look at the possibilities then:

First, the government could break up the strike and bring in other workers who are willing to work for that pay (sound familier?), or they could kill/arrest some of the strikers until the rest go back to work. That type of response would be in direct violation of what you communists stand for, so let's look at the second option.

The second option is simple - give in to the demands of the strikers (or negotiate a compromise). Now, what if people get the idea, and other professionals also strike for more money? You keep doing this, increasing their pay until they think they are being paid fairly. Also, people think that certain commodities cost too much (because they have to cost a certain amount to get enough money to pay those that make them). These are relatively cheap commodities made by relatively unskilled laborers. They boycot those products. You then have to decrease prices until people are willing to pay. You then have less money to pay the unskilled workers with. You could take the money from the salaries of more skilled workers, but they would strike, because they wouldn't think they were being paid the fair value of their labor. You end up with a fundamentally capitalist system. You know why this is? Because the world is a fundamentally capitalist system; that's how it works.

[chequita guevara]

I rather think that's unlikely.

[Kuciwalker]

What part of that do you think is unlikely? That people wouldn't be completely happy with the communist workers paradise?