Is Communism Synonymous With Atheism?

[Weak Kitten]

ATHEISTS = PAGANS = BARBARIANS = COMMUNISTS

Wait...um....I don't get it.

People who believe in no Gods = People who believe in many Gods = People who have no organization = People who have a specific form of organization

Or simply put;

No Gods = Many Gods = No Organization = Specific Form of Organization

Um...did the meaning of "=" change when I wasn't looking?

 

[TubbaBlubba]

Hm, I wonder what the Swedish Communist Party's magazine The Proletarian says about that...

 

[Nonpareil]

Well, to make a long story short...

Too late.

 

[Foster Zygote]

The magazine "Soviet Life" used to say you had to be an atheist to be a communist but I believe the magazine may be out of print. Correct me if I'm wrong.

No true communist eats his babies with sugar.

 

[westprog]

The magazine "Soviet Life" used to say you had to be an atheist to be a communist but I believe the magazine may be out of print. Correct me if I'm wrong.

"Communist" has come to mean Marxist/Leninist, and as far as that meaning goes, I think it's pretty accurate. You clearly don't mean someone who lives in a commune, then since many examples of communal life involve religious orders.

I wouldn't even add the quibble, but this discussion will probably otherwise just collapse into nomenclature.

 

[Dave Rogers]

The magazine "Soviet Life" used to say you had to be an atheist to be a communist but I believe the magazine may be out of print. Correct me if I'm wrong.

As long as it didn't say you had to be a communist to be an atheist, it doesn't have any bearing on the question of whether they're synonyms. Subsets are not identities.

Dave

 

[epix]

Hey, I know what. Let's play stupid, meaningless thesaurus games.

Christian, for example, has, among its synonyms, upright, square, straight, and upstanding.
Square has, among its synonyms, impersonal.
Impersonal takes us to inhuman.
Inhuman to devilish.
And, finally, devilish to evil.

CHRISTIAN = SQUARE = IMPERSONAL = INHUMAN = DEVILISH = EVIL

and the proof that CHRISTIAN = EVIL is complete. Only the religious dogma of... well, I think you can fill in the rest.

Dave

That's not a "stupid thesaurus game." Or did you suddenly forget about your illuminating argument that you used to negate my own "uneducated" definition of synonyms through Appeal to Authority?

Originally Posted by Dave Rogers
Except that synonyms are not "words with a similar meaning".

Synonym

n.
A word having the same or nearly the same meaning as another word or other words in a language.
A word or an expression that serves as a figurative or symbolic substitute for another.

I see that you have a hard time to digest what you cooked up, as the atheists/communists did for real when the Soviet Union went down the pipes on Christmas 1991. No worky.

So you are saying that the first two segments of the chain of synonyms that equals Christianity to evil are CHRISTIAN = SQUARE. (Lol.)

You probably consulted the synonym thesaurus written by Richard Dawkins, coz the largest assembly of synonyms to "Christian" doesn't list "square," and that's because insanity doesn't reach everywhere.
http://freethesaurus.net/s.php?q=Christian

Main Entry: Christian

Synonyms: Christianlike, Christianly, Christlike, Christly, God-fearing man, Nazarene, Nazarite, accepted, accepter, adoring, affectionate, approved, authentic, authoritative, becoming, befitting, believer, believing, benign, benignant, blameless, brotherly, burgher, canonical, catechumen, churchgoer, churchite, churchman, civilized, clean, communicant, compassionate, conventional, convert, correct, creditable, cultish, cultist, cultistic, customary, daily communicant, decent, devoted, devotee, devotionalist, devout, disciple, done, dutiful, erect, estimable, ethical, evangelical, exemplary citizen, fair, faithful, fanatic, firm, follower, fraternal, full of integrity, good, good Christian, good citizen, good neighbor, gracious, high-minded, high-principled, highly respectable, honest, honorable, human, humane, immaculate, inviolate, irreproachable, just, kind, kindhearted, kindly-disposed, kindly, law-abiding, law-loving, law-revering, literal, loving, manly, moral, neophyte, nice, noble, of the faith, orthodox, orthodoxical, pietist, pietistic, pillar of society, pious, prayerful, principled, proper, proselyte, pure, received, receiver, religionist, religious, reputable, respectable, respectable citizen, reverent, reverential, right-minded, right, righteous, saint, scriptural, seemly, softhearted, solemn, sound, spotless, stainless, standard, sterling, sympathetic, sympathizing, tender, tenderhearted, textual, theist, theistic, traditional, traditionalistic, true-blue, true-dealing, true-devoted, true-disposing, true-souled, true-spirited, true, true Christian, truehearted, truster, unblemished, uncorrupt, uncorrupted, undefiled, unimpeachable, unspotted, unstained, unsullied, untarnished, upright, uprighteous, upstanding, venerational, venerative, virtuous, votary, warm, warmhearted, worshipful, worthy, yeomanly, zealot.

Just keep believing and have unshakable faith in CHRISTIAN = SQUARE. Be a good atheist. And if someone laughs at you, send his butt to Siberia.

 

[Sledge]

So epix, who exactly do you think was won over to Christianity with that insane little rant?

 

[fls]

It shouldn't be an intrinsic property of Marxism either, but in practice it seems to be inevitably associated with it.

Yeah, a reasonable question would be whether Communism (Marxism/Leninism/Maoism) is synonymous with Totalitarianism, and which ideas are necessarily strangled by it.

Linda

 

[Dave Rogers]

You probably consulted the synonym thesaurus written by Richard Dawkins, coz the largest assembly of synonyms to "Christian" doesn't list "square," and that's because insanity doesn't reach everywhere.

So you can't even follow links when they're put in front of you. I'll try to remember that in future. As I said, this is from http://thesaurus.com.

Main Entry: ethical Part of Speech: adjective Definition: moral, righteous Synonyms: Christian , clean, conscientious, correct, decent, elevated, equitable, fair, fitting, good, high-principled, honest, honorable, humane, just, kosher*, moralistic, noble, principled, proper, respectable, right, right-minded, square, straight, true blue, upright, upstanding, virtuous Antonyms: corrupt, dishonest, immoral, improper, unethical, unjust, unrighteous

So, children, what did we learn today? We learned that a chain of synonyms can very quickly be found that leads from a word to its opposite, simply by employing the fallacy of equivocation^WP, and therefore that claiming two words mean the same thing because you can construct such a chain is a completely worthless argument.

Stay tuned, now; epix has plenty more completely worthless arguments for your edification and entertainment!

Dave

 

[Mirrorglass]

 

[westprog]

As long as it didn't say you had to be a communist to be an atheist, it doesn't have any bearing on the question of whether they're synonyms. Subsets are not identities.

Dave

I think we've pretty well disposed of the contention in the OP. There is no question that atheists don't have to be communists. The possibly interesting question is whether (Marxist) communists have to be atheists.

 

[westprog]

Yeah, a reasonable question would be whether Communism (Marxism/Leninism/Maoism) is synonymous with Totalitarianism, and which ideas are necessarily strangled by it.

Linda

It certainly seems as if the only way that such regimes can survive is through repression of all dissent. When the likes of Gorbachev or Dubcek try to loosen things up, they create something unstable.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

It certainly seems as if the only way that such regimes can survive is through repression of all dissent. When the likes of Gorbachev or Dubcek try to loosen things up, they create something unstable.

What about other examples, like the kibbutz^WP?

Kibbutz members were not classic Marxists though their system partially resembled Communism. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels both shared a disdain for conventional formulations of the nation-state and Leninists were hostile to Zionism. Nevertheless, in the late 1930s, two kibbutz leaders, Tabenkin and Yaari, initially attracted to anarchist ideas, pushed their movements leftward to reverence of Stalin's dictatorship.[14] Soon Stalin became hostile to Israel as it served Soviet diplomatic and military interests in the Arab world. This caused major crises and mass exit in both Kibbutz Meuchad and Kibbutz Artzi kibbutzim, especially after the 1953 Doctors' Plot in Moscow and the Prague showcase Trials. Kibbutzim were run as collective enterprises within a free market system. Kibbutzim also practiced active democracy, with elections held for kibbutz functions and full participation in national elections.
Kibbutzim were not the only contemporary communal enterprises: pre-war Palestine also saw the development of communal villages called moshavim (singular moshav). In a moshav, marketing and major farm purchases were collective, but other aspects of life were private.

On a large scale, pure economic systems of either capitalism or communism do not exist. On a smaller scale, perhaps they can, but my guess is in both systems a pure state is just impractical. One needs both some communal economic activity (police, fire, government, etc.) and some capitalist economic activity which communist Russia and China both never completely eliminated and now even support.

Totalitarianism is a different issue than the economic system. Perhaps the government in a totalitarian system controls the profits, but even those countries trade with capitalist countries and are not purely communist.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I'm an atheist, life long. I used to kill communists for $250/month, less taxes.

 

[westprog]

What about other examples, like the kibbutz^WP?

On a large scale, pure economic systems of either capitalism or communism do not exist. On a smaller scale, perhaps they can, but my guess is in both systems a pure state is just impractical. One needs both some communal economic activity (police, fire, government, etc.) and some capitalist economic activity which communist Russia and China both never completely eliminated and now even support.

Totalitarianism is a different issue than the economic system. Perhaps the government in a totalitarian system controls the profits, but even those countries trade with capitalist countries and are not purely communist.

I don't think you can quote an article about a system where the first line states that its proponents are not Marxists, and then use it to draw conclusions about Marxism.

If there are people out there who describe themselves as Marxists, but who explicitly reject certain aspects of Marxism, then I'd be interested to hear about them.

It's also worth pointing out that Marxist communists do not, in general, promote communal living. They promote the Marxist analysis which says that societies inevitably pass from Capitalism to Socialism, and only after a period of Socialism does a state where Communism holds sway emerge. Mao, Lenin, Stalin et al. were trying to establish a Socialist state, even though they were Communists. Communism was the long term goal. I believe that in the very latter days of the Soviet Union they declared Communism to have been reached, but at that stage nobody believed much of it any more.

 

[sthomson]

I like this discussion about whether communism and the CCCP are equivalent better than whatever epix is going on about.

A few days ago on All Things Considered, a British journalist was discussing the candidates for leader of the Labour Party. He mentioned that the two front runners were brothers, and stated

Well, David and Ed Miliband were raised by their parents who were Marxist intellectuals, not necessarily communists - they weren't lovers of Stalin. But they were very left wing, indeed.

Clearly, some people think it is possible to be a Marxist without being a communist. It must be a cultural thing - perhaps Americans associate communism most closely with Marxism while Britons associate it most closely with the CCCP/Stalinism. I'd like to see that Venn diagram.

 

[Foster Zygote]

I like this discussion about whether communism and the CCCP are equivalent better than whatever epix is going on about.

A few days ago on All Things Considered, a British journalist was discussing the candidates for leader of the Labour Party. He mentioned that the two front runners were brothers, and stated Clearly, some people think it is possible to be a Marxist without being a communist. It must be a cultural thing - perhaps Americans associate communism most closely with Marxism while Britons associate it most closely with the CCCP/Stalinism. I'd like to see that Venn diagram.

Sadly. I suspect most in the U.S. don't really know who Karl Marx was. I expect that a disheartening number would think that he was the first leader of the U.S.S.R.

 

[westprog]

I like this discussion about whether communism and the CCCP are equivalent better than whatever epix is going on about.

A few days ago on All Things Considered, a British journalist was discussing the candidates for leader of the Labour Party. He mentioned that the two front runners were brothers, and stated Clearly, some people think it is possible to be a Marxist without being a communist. It must be a cultural thing - perhaps Americans associate communism most closely with Marxism while Britons associate it most closely with the CCCP/Stalinism. I'd like to see that Venn diagram.

In Britain, I think that the range of left-wing views encompasses the Communist party, which would be Stalinist, and various Trotskyite groups - Vanessa Redgrave's Socialist Worker's Party, etc. I think most of them would probably qualify as Communist in some sense, but they'd probably prefer to be labelled as Marxist to demonstrate their commonality. That's why "Marxist" is a more useful lable, in some ways.

 

[sthomson]

but they'd probably prefer to be labelled as Marxist to demonstrate their commonality.

Or because "communist" is a dirty word similar to the way that some people attempt to make "liberal" a dirty word in the US?