Question about ethics of Cold War policy.

[Ned]

CT, you are so "out there" that you are really funny.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Entrepenures? You only need them in a market silly

You need them in every economic system or else the society does not technologically advance as it should.

Yes, their independence from the USSR was a great idea, look, what it got them: After the demise of the USSR, you destroyed them completely.

This statement shows an amazing disregard for history and ethnic relations in 'Yugoslavia'.

[Comrade Tribune]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
This statement shows an amazing disregard for history and ethnic relations in 'Yugoslavia'.

It was outside interference (not *only* US, I admit) that played off the ethnicities against each other and destroyed the fabric of Tito´s creation.

(Which was pretty good: If there was *one* multi-ethnic state that was actually working, it was Yugoslavia.)

[DuncanK]

Originally posted by Ned


DuncanK, Can it be because communism pretends to be an universal religion that will take over the world by force? Communist dictators for a long time were simply extensions of the USSR and for that reason were involved in the Cold War. However, to the extent they showed independence from the USSR, we showed less hostility. Yugoslavia under Tito was a good example.

When you say that communism will take over by force, it's not that a communist country will take over the world. Communism takes over capitalism as the workers all over the world overthrow their own governments. Do you see the difference? Now what the soviets did in Eastern Europe was clearly wrong. Marx never justified forced communism like that. That was the result of evil actions.

[DuncanK]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

Entrepenures? You only need them in a market silly

You need them in every economic system or else the society does not technologically advance as it should.

Entreprenuers are individuals who take personal risks. If the community takes on the risks they can't be considered entreprenuers because they are not acting as individuals and the risk is not just theirs.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Shi Huangdi
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.

That's one of the Big Lies invented by the US during the Cold War. Lenin never said or wrote such a thing.

Japher, in many places, it was very easy to tell that people prefered local communists to American domination. They voted for it. In Vietnam, the elections were solidly infavor of reunification, even though it meant living under the rule of the more populous Communist north. The Southern government refused to abide by the elections and became a dictatorship.

In many countries, it wasn't so much a matter of wanting to be communists as simply wanting to have more control over the resources of their own country, which the US often equated as communist. So in country after country, moderate centralist or liberal governments were toppled. The only effective resistence then became rebellion, revolution. This has a tendency to radicalize people. So you go from liberal populists like Communist in a very short period.

The FARC, for example, was founded by members of the Liberal Party in Columbia back in the late 50s, but in the course of fighting they became Marxists. The same with the Sandanistas. Sometimes after coming to power, the US pushed them into the other side's camp, like with Castro or Ho Chi Min.



Consider the human toll that the Cold War brought. The US killed ten million people either directly through US military action or with their proxies, like the Contras, UNITA, RENAMO, and the actions of US backed dicators, like Marocs, Rhee, etc. That was from 1945 to 1990. On top of that, there was the death and misery caused by the horrible economic conditions under which most people in the Empire lived. The US opposed land redistribution programs, so poverty grew unchecked. US backed dictators were often greedy, and so put little into building schools or medical centers, whereas countries like Cuba and Sananista Nicaruaga made great strides in eliminating the diseases of poverty and high morality rates which normally arise from poverty.

And what about the cost to Americans? Some 95,000 American soliders died in two wars in Asia. 19,000 US soldiers died during the Reagan Admistration, the largest "peace-time" death toll in history (for a variety of resasons). As many as 17,000 Americans have died or will die from exposure to radioactivity from the open air bomb tests in the American SouthWest. Others we deliberately exposed to radiation near Hanford, WA. Mentally retarded people were dosed with radioactive materials so the effects could be stuedied. Careers and marriages were destroyed of people who were leftist or suspected leftists or simply protesting Civil Rights or for peace. Activists were murdered. Two generations lived in fear of nuclear anihilation. And what about the cost to the economy. We're still paying for the Korean and Vietnam Wars.

Next you have to ask yourself, would the Communist countries have been so paranoid if the West hadn't constanty been trying to destroy them. I'm not talking about just the inverventions in the Russian Revolution or WWII. Operation Stalin's Fingers was a CIA operation to make the Russians think that various Eastern European government figures were American agents. The US deliberately tried to recruit the most educated Easterns and get them to come to the West, creating a brain drain for an entire region that was trying to rebuild after getting the worst of WWII; people who the East had spent the most resources on trying to educate.

CIA agents blew up railways, bridges, power lines, put sugar in gas tanks, threw wrenches into factory machinery, burned crops, burned buildings. We conducted a war of terrorism against the Communist countries the likes of which the West still can't comprehend. In Cuba, we introduced a disease that killed off half a million hogs. We just recently sprayed a pest into the country that had never been found in Cuba before, thripsis scale (it appeared just after a high flying American plane sprayed something as it flew over Cuba).

Is it any wonder they had a prison society when they are under constant seige?

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Shi Huangdi
Well it was Marx who invented the term,

Actually, it was invented before Marx. So was the term Communism (the word Anarchism, btw, was invented by a poet, Shelly). Marx distinguishd his socialism from other forms of socialism by calling it "scientific socialism." Marxist socialism is based upon the concepts of scientific theory, rather than utopian socialism, which is based upon morality.

For time, contrary to Sandman's assertion, Marxism was the only socialism in town (except in Britain, where they had Fabian socialism). Nearly every single socialist movement and party existing in the world today traces its decent from Marx, even if they long ago broke with him.

Black Dragon is correct. Western Europe was never socialist except in that Socialist Parties sometimes ran the capitalists state. Socialism isn't welfare capitalism. It is workers' control of the means of production. Welfare capitalism is capitalism. The states of the East were/are socialist, deformed/degenerated socialism, but socialism nonetheless.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by MrFun
Why is communism in of itself perceived as being evil by so many people? I disagree with communism, but I fail to see it as something evil.

Communism has always been seen as evil, from the first time it raised its fist in the French Revolution to today. Communism is evil because it threatens existing the existing elite power structure and also because it tends to be anti-religious (not surprising given that relgion always seems to support the elite).

Either communism is evil because it is the untrammeled rule of the mob (the excuse in the days before universal suffrage) or because it is a horrible dictatorship, which is the cry in the days since the Russian Civil War.

We are a threat (sometimes great sometimes insignificant to the people who benefit off they way things are now. They have a material interest in things staying that way. That like things that way. Anyone who wants to change things is either a fool or evil.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Ned
Our allies became the "corrupt" Thieu regime.

Like it wasn't corrupt? Where do you think the Viet Cong got most of their weapons and ammo from?!? They bought it from people in the South Vietnamese goverment who took the money and moved to the US. The only reason that government lasted at all after 1962 was because the US was propping it up with American bodies.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by JohnT
IMHO, that it most definitely not fine. Western Commies had no problem identifying (sp?) these countries as Communist for up to 70 years, even holding them up as Shining Examples of The True Communist Spirit.

Yeah, well those commies had the financial backing of the states they were upholding.

And all along, the followers of one of the leaders of the Russian Revolution were pointing out what had gone wrong. We call ourselves Trotskyists. You can flame the Communists all you want, but now days, us Trots are the main game in town (although Maoism seems to have recovered from its collapse in the 1970s and 80s).

[Lancer]

That's interesting Che. It brings to mind something I saw on the Discovery channel the other day. Apparently there are still some dinosaurs around! Yup, they are lizards and alligators and such.

A few commies left eh? Well, that's nice, kind of retro.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Lancer
That's interesting Che. It brings to mind something I saw on the Discovery channel the other day. Apparently there are still some dinosaurs around! Yup, they are lizards and alligators and such.

A few commies left eh? Well, that's nice, kind of retro.

SNAP!

[Odin]

Originally posted by Lancer
A few commies left eh? Well, that's nice, kind of retro.

Acttually, I just turned Commie this year.

In communism there still would be incentives to invent. I don't belive there should be equal pay, pay should be based on how hard you work. Inventors could get lifetime "royalties" for their inventions. In communism, not everyone is payed equally, it just that peolpe are treated equally, and there are no "super-rich people to control industry, it would be ran by worker cooperatives ("Co-Ops").

[JohnT]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara


Yeah, well those commies had the financial backing of the states they were upholding.

And all along, the followers of one of the leaders of the Russian Revolution were pointing out what had gone wrong. We call ourselves Trotskyists. You can flame the Communists all you want, but now days, us Trots are the main game in town (although Maoism seems to have recovered from its collapse in the 1970s and 80s).

Not knowing what you said, you said it.

Thanks for (again) proving my point!

[DuncanK]

Originally posted by Odin
Inventors could get lifetime "royalties" for their inventions.

I don't think this could be worked out within Marxism. It would plainly be exploitation of labor.

Inventions aren't as important anymore anyway. We have enough inventions now for all the world to live comfortably. Science would increase at about the same rate as it does now, provided spending on R&D was the same.