Split Thread Is communism a viable alternative economic system these days?

[Toontown]

Why communism always fails:

1. Communists seize everything and throw it all into one huge communal pile, presumably preparatory to doling everything out equitably, on an as-needed basis.

2. The most ruthless mass-murdering thug in the region immediately hacks and slashes his way to the top of the pile, from which vantage point he proceeds to rule with a steel razor.

3. All others, bereft of all means of survival, cow down and knuckle under to the all-powerful pile-ruler in exchange for the basic necessities of life.

4. The all-powerful pile-ruler does a little math and determines that a smaller, more docile population would be in his interest.

5. Millions of heads roll. The goodie-pile is conserved. The survivors are...happy...until they discover that the needs of the few who are actually in control really do outweigh the needs of the many, who are stupid to begin with, having allowed all their stuff to be seized and tossed into a pile in the first place. What, after all, did they think was going to happen?

6. The goodie-pile is eventually exhausted, all the incompetently-directed efforts of the enslaved masses to replenish it notwithstanding. The utopia collapses and re-converts to capitalism. The former communist elites become the new capitalist oligarchs.

7. After a great deal of study, scholars decide that the entire fiasco stemmed from an inherent flaw in the national character. No remedy is suggested.

 

[bikerdruid]

Why communism always fails:

1. Communists seize everything and throw it all into one huge communal pile, presumably preparatory to doling everything out equitably, on an as-needed basis.

2. The most ruthless mass-murdering thug in the region immediately hacks and slashes his way to the top of the pile, from which vantage point he proceeds to rule with a steel razor.

3. All others, bereft of all means of survival, cow down and knuckle under to the all-powerful pile-ruler in exchange for the basic necessities of life.

4. The all-powerful pile-ruler does a little math and determines that a smaller, more docile population would be in his interest.

5. Millions of heads roll. The goodie-pile is conserved. The survivors are...happy...until they discover that the needs of the few who are actually in control really do outweigh the needs of the many, who are stupid to begin with, having allowed all their stuff to be seized and tossed into a pile in the first place. What, after all, did they think was going to happen?

6. The goodie-pile is eventually exhausted, all the incompetently-directed efforts of the enslaved masses to replenish it notwithstanding. The utopia collapses and re-converts to capitalism. The former communist elites become the new capitalist oligarchs.

7. After a great deal of study, scholars decide that the entire fiasco stemmed from an inherent flaw in the national character. No remedy is suggested.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=7886707&postcount=206

 

[Robrob]

It's funny how some people can base their entire POV on being afraid of the boogie-man.

 

[Virus]

Do you think the greatest mass-murderers in human history were a bogeyman?

I guess its easy to say that now that Communism is related to the dustbin of history along with sister ideologies of Fascism and Nazism. Would you say that Fascism and Nazism were just bogeymen?

 

[Robrob]

Do you think the greatest mass-murderers in human history were a bogeyman?

I guess its easy to say that now that Communism is related to the dustbin of history along with sister ideologies of Fascism and Nazism. Would you say that Fascism and Nazism were just bogeymen?

So I guess China isn't communist anymore? Who knew...

Out of curiosity, how much "mass murdering" went on in the communist nations of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, etc...?

And honestly, your ongoing attempts to pretend "fascism and Nazism" were one and the same as communism just betrays your serious lack of education.

 

[respect]

So I guess China isn't communist anymore? Who knew...

Every single person who has paid any attention to them at all in the past three decades or so.

The totalitarian government still calls itself communist but has been slowly dismantling communism for decades in practice. Unlike the Soviet Union which chose to immediately shift towards (classic) liberalism, China has been slowly liberalizing its economy. It is still very much a socialist country but cannot be accurately described as communist under any definition.

If you don't know anything about economics in China, why are you mouthing off about it?

Out of curiosity, how much "mass murdering" went on in the communist nations of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, etc...?

Quite a bit, see the Prague Spring for an example.

Again, if you don't know anything about the subject, why are you mouthing off about it?

Do the murders of political dissenters in those countries just not count? Or are you denying that they occurred at all like bikerdruid? If you would just like to deny them then, like bikerdruid, you every bit as sick and disgusting as a Holocaust denier.

And honestly, your ongoing attempts to pretend "fascism and Nazism" were one and the same as communism just betrays your serious lack of education.

He didn't claim that they were the same, the comparison is to the need to oppress opposition.

 

[bikerdruid]

So I guess China isn't communist anymore? Who knew...

Out of curiosity, how much "mass murdering" went on in the communist nations of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, etc...?

And honestly, your ongoing attempts to pretend "fascism and Nazism" were one and the same as communism just betrays your serious lack of education.

really, they don't want to be bothered with facts.

 

[respect]

really, they don't want to be bothered with facts.

So you too are denying China's shifts towards liberalism and the Prague Spring?

 

[Virus]

Out of curiosity, how much "mass murdering" went on in the communist nations of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, etc...?

Mid-range estimates;

Poland: 22,000
Czechoslovakia: 65,000
Yugoslavia: 1 million, plus 100,000 by partisans.

So the answer is, heaps.

Ha! In your face.

And honestly, your ongoing attempts to pretend "fascism and Nazism" were one and the same as communism just betrays your serious lack of education.

They're variants of totalitarianism. Different strains of the same disease. Past the superficial layers they're all the same. With the vantage point of hindsight this should be fairly obvious.

 

[Virus]

I didn't have figures for Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania but the Global Museum on Communism has some interesting info;

Latvia:

Ostensibly liberating one of their republics, Soviet forces and authorities, abetted by their collaborators, treated Latvia as enemy territory and Latvians as fascist collaborators. Men were sent to "filtration" camps, arrests were an everyday occurrence. A war-after-the-war was fought by the "forest brethren" until 1956. A huge deportation in 1949 of over 44,000 (about 3% of the post-war population), mainly Latvian farm families and partisan supporters, destroyed Latvian agriculture and further emptied the country for immigrants from other parts of the Soviet Union.

Soviet colonization policies included large-scale industrialization with an imported labor force, resisted even by some local communists. By 1989, the share of Latvians had sunk almost to 50% from 75% before the war. Russian language had become the means of communication in many public spheres of life: government, commerce, industry, inter-ethnic social interaction.

Estonia:

The final major step in the Sovietization of Estonian society was the collectivization of agriculture in March 1949. As peasants naturally did not want to give up their farms, property and livestock, collectivization was achieved through terror. Stalin was determined to eliminate the kulaks as a class. Kulak was an elastic term which referred to practically any enterprising farmer, but could also be applied to nearly anyone out of favor with the local Communist Party authorities.

Operation Priboi (Wave) was carried out simultaneously in the three Baltic republics in the early hours of 25 March 1949. The Kremlin had set a quota of 30,000 families to be deported from the Baltic republics. In the Estonian case, this resulted in over 20,000 people, mostly women and children, being resettled in the harsh conditions of Siberia. Those who survived were allowed to return to Estonia in 1956-58, but most were not permitted to return to their own homes.

Lithuania:

Despite determined, even desperate, resistance, in the absence of significant aid from the West, the Lithuanians had to submit. The communist authorities carried out a continued program of mass deportations – the largest, totaling some 40,000 persons, occurring on May 22, 1948. (Deportees had to live on the local economy in Siberia as opposed to gulag prisoners who lived under greater control in the labor camps.) In 1949 the regime’s massive collectivization campaign deported another 32,000 persons. In all, Soviet police records reported deporting 112,000 Lithuanians in Stalin’s last years, about one-sixth of all the people deported in this period in the entire Soviet Union. (Lithuanians made up just over one percent of the Soviet Union’s 220 million population.)

Unfortunately we don't know how many people were murdered by Communists in these countries but Robrob has something of a point, those countries are probably as good as it gets when it comes to Communist rule.

 

[mortimer]

Those weren't mass murders, just reeducation, mmmmkay?

 

[WildCat]

Those weren't mass murders, just reeducation, mmmmkay?

How could anyone be against education?

 

[timhau]

Mid-range estimates;

Poland: 22,000
Czechoslovakia: 65,000
Yugoslavia: 1 million, plus 100,000 by partisans.

So the answer is, heaps.

... or at least as much as in Chile under Pinochet (or significantly more in the case of Yugoslavia).

 

[Robrob]

Every single person who has paid any attention to them at all in the past three decades or so.... It is still very much a socialist country but cannot be accurately described as communist under any definition.

Someone should probably inform the CIA about this.

(From the CIA Factbook China page: )

Government type:
Communist state

Do the murders of political dissenters in those countries just not count? Or are you denying that they occurred at all like bikerdruid? If you would just like to deny them then, like bikerdruid, you every bit as sick and disgusting as a Holocaust denier.

When you are done building your strawman, you might want to actually read what I wrote. Obviously there were/are murders of thousands into the millions - in each individual nation. Dictatorial, totalitarian regimes tend to do that. All of them, not just the ones you don't approve of.

There is/was never any such thing as "monolithic communism." Blanket claims such as "communism killed 100 million" are as meaningless as blanket claims "capitalism killed 100 million" or "religion killed 100 million" or "Islam killed 100 million."

He didn't claim that they were the same, the comparison is to the need to oppress opposition.

You might want to read what he actually wrote. "Communism is related to the dustbin of history along with sister ideologies of Fascism and Nazism." It's not the first time he's tried to pretend "all things ending in -ism" are one and the same. Except for capitalism of course, that's' sacrosanct.

Mid-range estimates;

Poland: 22,000
Czechoslovakia: 65,000
Yugoslavia: 1 million, plus 100,000 by partisans.

So the answer is, heaps.

But you claimed 100 million?

Ha! In your face.

What, are you twelve?

And honestly, your ongoing attempts to pretend "fascism and Nazism" were one and the same as communism just betrays your serious lack of education.

They're variants of totalitarianism. Different strains of the same disease. Past the superficial layers they're all the same. With the vantage point of hindsight this should be fairly obvious.

Funny, according to Respect you

didn't claim that they were the same, the comparison is to the need to oppress opposition.

But now you say they are the same?

Who's right?

 

[Virus]

There is/was never any such thing as "monolithic communism." Blanket claims such as "communism killed 100 million" are as meaningless as blanket claims "capitalism killed 100 million" or "religion killed 100 million" or "Islam killed 100 million."

Name the exceptional Communist states then.

You might want to read what he actually wrote. "Communism is related to the dustbin of history along with sister ideologies of Fascism and Nazism." It's not the first time he's tried to pretend "all things ending in -ism" are one and the same. Except for capitalism of course, that's' sacrosanct.

I've never pretended that. All totalitarianism is the same. Not all things that end in -ism.

But you claimed 100 million?

You made the list and asked how many were murdered in those countries by Communists. Ask a question, get the answer.

What, are you twelve?

You were asking for it by being all "You're so uneducated. Bleh Bleh".

Funny, according to Respect you

But now you say they are the same?

Who's right?

That's my opinion. Respect's opinion is his opinion.

 

[WildCat]

... or at least as much as in Chile under Pinochet (or significantly more in the case of Yugoslavia).

Communism, sometimes no worse than a military dictatorship!

 

[Robrob]

I've never pretended that. All totalitarianism is the same. Not all things that end in -ism.

Excellent, so you are against all murdering dictatorships - and are not just using "totalitarianism" as a buzz word to avoid condemning the murdering dictatorships you like?

You were asking for it by being all "You're so uneducated. Bleh Bleh".

So you are twelve. That explains the shallow world view.

 

[trustbutverify]

Communism, sometimes no worse than a military dictatorship!

Under optimal conditions.

 

[Virus]

Excellent, so you are against all murdering dictatorships - and are not just using "totalitarianism" as a buzz word to avoid condemning the murdering dictatorships you like?

It's not a buzzword. I've explained what it is.

Do you admit you made it up when you claimed I believed everything ending in -ism is the same?

 

[Robrob]

Excellent, so you are against all murdering dictatorships - and are not just using "totalitarianism" as a buzz word to avoid condemning the murdering dictatorships you like?

It's not a buzzword. I've explained what it is.

Do you admit you made it up when you claimed I believed everything ending in -ism is the same?

So at least we've established three things:

1) You are against all murdering dictatorships without exception.

2) You are not using "totalitarian" as a weasel word.

3) You are not conflating all -ims together.

Glad we got that sorted out.