Question about ethics of Cold War policy.

[DuncanK]

hehe. I should have said that the war against communism is not over. The Cold War was a conflict between the US and the USSR. That's definitely over.

[Sava]

Shi, you don't even know what real communism is

[Lancer]

Real communism isn't the utopian workers paradise, real communism is a bullet in the back.

[Capt Dizle]

The anti-American crowd foaming at the mouth again.

[David Floyd]

Look, regardless of what arguments you want to make about how evil communism is, the wars against communism (and Nazism) were immoral in that they involved a draft.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by jimmytrick
The anti-American crowd foaming at the mouth again.

90% of the posts so far are by Americans. The others are my halfhearted trolls against Lancer...

[Shi Huangdi]

Originally posted by Sava
Shi, you don't even know what real communism is

Man, how long will these leftist go on with their bull**** "that isn't real communism"?

Ok, if you want to get technical, the red states we were opposing during the cold war were not communist, they were socialist. I used the word communist because typically the words communist and socialist are used interchangably. Marx provided his ideas on what he wanted to happen: after the burgeois would be overthrown, a transitory period of socialism would commence in which the government would be run as a dictatorship of the proletariot. (not nessecarily with a dictatorial political system though, in fact the communist states claimed to be democratic under the theory of democratic centralism). Still though Marx didn't provide a detailed explanation of how everything would be, he provided theory and it was up to the likes of Lenin who actually held power to figure out how to apply it. As it turned out, interpretations of Marx's theory varied from leader to leader, but I still would think countries such as the Soviet Union and Cuba would have to be considered socialist. Modern China and Vietnam might be cases however in which the socialist nature of the state is alot more questionable.

And by the way, people who are saying we could have peacefully coexisted with the Socialists are being naive. Marx called for an international revolution and the bringing of eventual communism to all countries. It is in the very nature of socialism to spread itself and overcome all the people of the world. IIRC Lenin once talked about that once they got Latin America to fall under the red banner, that they should be able to get the US to go communist as well. Given the expansionist nature inherent within socialist theory, it was of course a nessecary measure for our own self protection to try to weaken communism and not let it spread.

[Sandman]

Marxists don't have the sole control of the term 'socialist', you know. Many of America's Cold War allies were socialist.

[The Vagabond]

The Cold War was moral on both sides. Perhaps it was the most moral international conflict in human history. For the first time in history, it was not so much about building an empire or enslaving other peoples as it was about the way of life and ideology. In other words, on the strategic level it was a moral and noble conflict, but on the tactical level both sides committed a lot of evil and immoral acts.

[DuncanK]

Originally posted by jimmytrick
The anti-American crowd foaming at the mouth again.

I'm just as American as you Joseph McCarthy. I'm just foaming at the mouth about different things than you

[Odin]

Originally posted by David Floyd
Look, regardless of what arguments you want to make about how evil communism is, the wars against communism (and Nazism) were immoral in that they involved a draft.

I dont beleive it, we actually agree on something!

The Cold war started because Stalin was paranoid about invasion; rightfuly so I might add, think Stalingrad, although what he did was wrong and gave communism the bad image it has today, one of a police state. That set off the ire of Western Europe, who called on the US for help. Stalin's polocy towards Berlin didn't help either. Kruschev tried to reconcile his predicessor's mistakes, but the capitalist propaganda had already brainwashed the American public. The Cold War was a result of the paranoia on both sides, not to mention differences in ideology, and pressure from the capitalists to stop communist revolutions.

[DuncanK]

Shi,

Marx did say that a nation will go through a developement stage under capitalism before the communist revolution, which no nation has done yet. So technically the USSR and such were not communist nations the way that Marx was talking about communist nations.

[Sava]

Actually, I'm not even a leftist. I just support various leftist policies that would do good in a civilized industrial society like the US. There are also various "rightist" policies that I support. And my political views have little to do with the fact that Communism has never truly existed. Please Shi, don't let my views or historical fact get in the way of another one of your anti-leftist rants.

[Shi Huangdi]

"Marxists don't have the sole control of the term 'socialist', you know. Many of America's Cold War allies were socialist."

Do the workers control the means of production in Western Europe? Are the welfare states in Europe part of a transitory program to bring the nation and the world to communism? If not, you aren't socialist.

"Marx did say that a nation will go through a developement stage under capitalism before the communist revolution, which no nation has done yet. So technically the USSR and such were not communist nations the way that Marx was talking about communist nations."

As I pointed out, no they weren't communist. They were socialist.

First off, Russia did undergo limited capitalist development in the late Tsarist period. Marx made a prediction that capitalism would develop before the socialist revolution. That was simply that- a prediction- which was shown to be that wrong that states could not enter a transitory period to communism without becoming fully industrialized.

[Sava]

Marx was smart enough to realize that capitalism is simply feudalism with the illusion of freedom and political power for the people.