Calling all communists

[Dis]

I still can't seem to understand why Commies can't accept reality.

Capitalism. Many proven success stories.

Communism. None

What more do you need to know?

[Tripledoc]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
There is an alternative to socialism. We've seen it twice in the last century, barbarism in the form of two world wars and a great depression. Other countries have been less fortunate, and decend into barbarism much more often: Cambodia, Ruwanda, and so on. Capitalist society fails, and barbarism runs amok.

I've read Marx and understands were he comes from. A Jew whose father converted to Catholicism. I hold to the position that the later Marx was just a interested in morality as the younger. Perhaps more stoic. Lenin, because he was turned into a cynic due to the First World War, dicarded any pretense to morality. That he did because he understood what evil forces he was up against. hence he wanted to turn the capitalist imperialist agggresive wars into a world wide civil war. Liberalism is basicly immoral. Read Adam Smith and you will understand the satanic justification for it.

The alternative to Capitalism is not barbarity. Take Cuba or other catholic nations which have taken steps in that direction. I believe that Communism tempered with Catholicism is a feasible alternative to Protestant capitalism.

[JCG]

Originally posted by Tripledoc
Take Cuba or other catholic nations which have taken steps in that direction.

It should be noted, of course, that Castro was initially hostile towards religion (including but not limited to the Church)...until the "theology of liberation" came about. That made him relax things a bit on that front (since there's an agreement of silence and "cohabitation" in place).

And communists elsewhere are still generally hostile towards catholicism in many other places, especially those were such a "theology" no longer has any significant presence.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Tripledoc
I've read Marx and understands were he comes from. A Jew whose father converted to Catholicism.

Given that he worked for the Prussian state, it's far more likely Papa Marx converted to Lutheranism.

I hold to the position that the later Marx was just a interested in morality as the younger.

He may have been, but in his writings it is clear he has no use for those who only have a moral opposition to capitalism, even in the Communist Manifesto. No, Marx says capitalism will fall not because it's evil, but because the social forces capitalism has created will bring about its destruction.

Lenin, because he was turned into a cynic due to the First World War, dicarded any pretense to morality. That he did because he understood what evil forces he was up against. hence he wanted to turn the capitalist imperialist agggresive wars into a world wide civil war.

Lenin's morality was based on what is best for the proletariat, and in that he never wavered. It may be different from feudal and bourgeois morality, but it is a morality nonethless.

Liberalism is basicly immoral. Read Adam Smith and you will understand the satanic justification for it.

I have, and it seems you have not. Smith decried the actions of combinations of capitalists as well as lamanted that the workers got short shrift in the capitalist system. Smith wasn't so much laying out what he saw as a better way to run society as he was describing the society he saw evolving around him, and giving his own ideas as to what would make it work better. Some of these ideas were adopted, some have been utterly ignored.

The alternative to Capitalism is not barbarity. Take Cuba or other catholic nations which have taken steps in that direction.

Had you read what I wrote more carefully, you would understand that there are two alternatives to capitalism, socialism or barbarism. Having laid out one, I didn't think it necessary to repeat myself when I wrote the other alternative is barbarism. And barbarism we have seen all too frequently during the 20th Century, hopefully the bloodiest century humanity will ever see.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Dissident
Capitalism. Many proven success stories.

Only a few proven successes, and those came at the price of tens of millions of lives. Fifty million people were sacrificed to the altar of Mammon in WWII, and that saved capitalism. Let's just ignore that the majority of capitalist countries are not success stories.

Communism. None

It depends on your idea of success. Russia became the most powerful country in the world for a time, leading the world in several areas of science. Most countries which became socialist ended their endless cycle of famine and premature death, raised literacy levels, and ensured employment for all. And they did this with the deformed, perverted dicatorial socialism they got, not healthy democratic socialism.

[Dis]

what does ww2 have to do with capitalism?

capitalism existed before ww2, and would have existed even if the U.S. didn't enter the war. The U.S. was going nowhere.

And Russia, was never, ever the most powerful country in the world.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Dissident
what does ww2 have to do with capitalism?

Everything. Capitalism was failing around the globe in the Great Depression. Only where fascism came to power was it recovering, and there only briefly. WWII was launched to gain new markets and capital for German and Italian capitalism. France and Great Britain went to war to defend their capitalisms, since Poland, Czechoslovakia, etc. were all areas of massive investment for those countries, where they would soon be shut out. Japan launched it's war to build a Greater Co-Prosperity Sphere, to take colonies to ensure markets and resources for its capitalism.

capitalism existed before ww2,

Somethig has to exist in order to be saved.

and would have existed even if the U.S. didn't enter the war. The U.S. was going nowhere.

Exactly, the U.S. was spinning its heels, sinking ever more into depression until the Japanese were manuevered into attacking us. The subsequent war saved capitalism in the U.S.. War orderes restored profitablity and mobilization meant that unemployment dropped.

And Russia, was never, ever the most powerful country in the world.

In the late 1950s it was. It could hit the U.S. with ICBMs, and the U.S. couldn't hit back. That situation only lasted a few years.

[johncmcleod]

I am still looking for the answer to why communism in this country would be better than what we have now, and why or why not would it be worth the struggle to set it up.

[Tripledoc]

Chegitz guerera

The thing about Marx' father being a Protestant is true, I will grant you that, however your defence of Adam Smith is ridiculous.

First of all he was clealy an anti-humanist. Note how he constantly compares Man with even the lowest forms of animals, in order to make his points clear. As if Man behaves in accordance to the logic of nature! Secondly he expouses a sick form of nationalism, as he repeatedly derides the French and their system of governance. In this he is even being a hypocrite since he stole almost all his ideas from Montesqeiu, a devout monarchist. Thirdly even though he was Scottish, he is absolutely fawning in his attitude towards the British Monarchy. Lastly his 'hidden hand' theory is preposterous and has been proven false time and time again. He is clearly fanatical when it comes to defending the robbery of the state's treasure by the merchant class.

The idea that Adam Smith's theories have any objective value, and as such will magically make the wealth of a nation larger if only his recomendations are imposed founders on the fact Vilfredo Pareto has shown; namely that you cannot make someone better off, without making someone comparably worse off. As such all economic doctrines are simply justications for legal robbery.

[Dis]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara

Originally posted by Dissident
what does ww2 have to do with capitalism?

Everything. Capitalism was failing around the globe in the Great Depression. Only where fascism came to power was it recovering, and there only briefly. WWII was launched to gain new markets and capital for German and Italian capitalism. France and Great Britain went to war to defend their capitalisms, since Poland, Czechoslovakia, etc. were all areas of massive investment for those countries, where they would soon be shut out. Japan launched it's war to build a Greater Co-Prosperity Sphere, to take colonies to ensure markets and resources for its capitalism.

capitalism existed before ww2,

Somethig has to exist in order to be saved.

and would have existed even if the U.S. didn't enter the war. The U.S. was going nowhere.

Exactly, the U.S. was spinning its heels, sinking ever more into depression until the Japanese were manuevered into attacking us. The subsequent war saved capitalism in the U.S.. War orderes restored profitablity and mobilization meant that unemployment dropped.

And Russia, was never, ever the most powerful country in the world.

In the late 1950s it was. It could hit the U.S. with ICBMs, and the U.S. couldn't hit back. That situation only lasted a few years.

The U.S. could always hit back. We had plenty of long range bombers. And shortly theirafter we had ballistic missile subs. And I'm sure we had ICBM's back then, but I'd have to check.

One other thing. The U.S. economy was recovering before ww2 started. It did not need the war to ensure capitalism survived in the U.S. It just had to modernize. We were still on the gold standard for the longest time. FDR took us off that I believe.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Actually, most of the practical examples showed that it worked. China had a famine every other year before the revolution, only one since then.

China had cronic instability, civil war and foreign invasion in the decades leading up to the communist victory in the civil war. It is unfair to compare a unified country which is not being invaded by foriegn powers to the China of 1920-1946. If the west had supplied the Nationalists to the degree that the Soviets supplied the Communists then would likely have seen the creation of a stable capitalist China that looks more like modern Taiwan, Japan, or South Korea then the PRC. There would have been no famine, no invasion of Tibet, or an invasion of Korea, or a communist revolution in Vietnam, no Pol Pot in Cambodia, no extermination of the Hmoung in Loas, and the Chinese people would have followed the same path towards development that Japan and Korea did.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Tripledoc
Chegitz guerera

The thing about Marx' father being a Protestant is true, I will grant you that, however your defence of Adam Smith is ridiculous.

Hardly. I've read Wealth of Nations. In some places it's like he's laying the groundwork for Karl Marx, which, in fact, he did, but not in the passages to which I am referring.

In the section "Wages of Labour."

"The workmen desire to get as much, the masters to give as little as possible. The former are inclined to combine in order to raise, the latter in order to lower the wages of labour.

"It is not, however, difficult to foresee which of the two parties must, upon all ordinary occassion, have the advantage in the dispute, and force the other into a compliance with their terms. The masters, being fewer in number, can combine much more easily; and the law, besides, authorizes, or at least does not prohibit their combinations, while it prohibits those of the workmen. We have no acts of parliament against combining to lower the price of work; but many against combining to raise it."

Hardly an anti-humanist.

Dissident, we didn't have working ICBMs until a few years after the Soviets. What do you think the whole space race was about? Getting to the Moon? It a was military race. If you can put a man on the Moon, you can put a bomb in Red Square. The Soviets had the first working ICBMs, and that scared the bejeezuz out of the the U.S. And I don't think boomers existed yet. It was only a few years anyway.

Oerdin, China was a mess even before the collapse of China into warlords after 1919. The West supplied the Nationalists far more than the Soviets supplied the Nationalists. In fact, it was Soviet political support of the Nationalists, and their trying to force the Communists back into a coalition with them (despite the massacres in 1927) that caused Mao to break with the USSR in the early 1930s. It wasn't until the end of WWII, that they made up again, when the Soviets declared war on the Japanese.

Nor do I think it's obvious how China would have turned out, nor do I think that nationalists would have recongized Tibetan independence, since it had only been a country since the collapse of the Chinese government.

Communist revolution would have happened in Vietnam regardless, and they still would have won. It just would have taken them longer to drive the US out of the North.

The Hmong got in trouble for fighting the government. If you attack the goverment, don't be surprised when it attacks back.

[Dom Pedro II]

I'm skeptical about whether China could have possibly looked like any of the democratic countries of Asia without giving them the same treatment Japan got (i.e. occupation and a handed-down Constitution). The Nationalists weren't much better than the Communists in both political idealogy and tactics. Not to mention the fact that China wasn't exactly starting out with a strong democratic tradition either.

[chequita guevara]

Look at the slaughter the nationalists carried out in Taiwan, 100,000 people when they took over the island, and it's been a ruthless government ever since, only now coming out of dictatorship (after first destroying the islands ecology).

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara

and would have existed even if the U.S. didn't enter the war. The U.S. was going nowhere.

Exactly, the U.S. was spinning its heels, sinking ever more into depression until the Japanese were manuevered into attacking us.

The sad thing is that you actually believe this perversion of history rather than seeing the US decision not to go to war in its proper context.