Communism...What's so bad about it?

[Symmetry]

And it's communist.

Ohnowait.

How long should I wait for your perfect Communist state?

[muy_thaiguy]

This included a good majority of the military officers. Which is why Russia still used tactics from WWI, basically charging en masse and headlong against entrenched German positions. Caused massive casualties.

I just want to point out that this is in fact an urban myth. Yeah, the lack of high ranking officers with military experience hurt the Soviets in WWII, but they weren't using tactics from the first World War. The only time that Russians charged en masse against entrenched German positions would have been WWI.

Because battle like Stalingrad, where the Soviets even used cavalry (horse mounted soldiers) to charge headlong against the Nazi troops doesn't indicate WWI and pre-WWI tactics of charging en masse.

The only thing the Soviets had going for them against the Nazis (up until the T-130 tank, or whatever it was called), other than the weather, was sheer numbers. Like WWI, they couldn't even properly arm a good many of those soldiers with weapons, so those troops without weapons could only hope to loot a dead and armed soldier who died in order to have a weapon. The Soviets won the war of attrition, but at a ridiculously high cost.

[macbone]

Symm, I respect you, but you're either trolling or you don't really know what life was like under communism in the USSR and China.

People have been sharing resources with each other for thousands of years, long before Marx and Engels. America's problem isn't that it has a capitalist economic system; it's that many of its people have become increasingly selfish, focused on themselves rather than their communities. Compare de Crevecouer's Letters from an American Farmer to 21st century America. There are still many, many good people in the US of all races, creeds, and political affiliations, but the society has become fragmented. When I lived in the US, I only knew a few of my neighbors' names. It was mostly a hi-bye kind of thing. Yes, people at one church helped a single mom buy a car so she could drive to work. Students on my college campus raised funds to help with different disasters, or volunteered to speak about domestic violence. There is still good in the US. But people are increasingly focusing on themselves and not the people around them. I blame Thoreau, really. =)

And yes, Cuba has been very successful with their medical care. Life expectancy trends higher than the US and is on par with the UK for a fraction of the cost. Yes, doctors are only paid a few dollars a week, often have to hitchhike to work, and may have to operate all day without taking a break for lunch, but the system seems to work.

Symm, China's current growth is due to its capitalist programs. That whole exploitation of the working class? Yeah, that's every Chinese factory. China's doing extremely well in exploiting its people, but yes, some Chinese are getting very, very rich.

Do you consider killing 45 million of your own people in 4 years to be the hallmark of a successful government? Because that's what Mao did in the Great Leap Forward between 1958 and 1962.

Symm, are you familiar with the Selden map? It dates back to the 17th Century, and it shows China as the center of trade, commercial, and cultural development.

The Selden map: http://seldenmap.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/

The Communist revolution happened because of general dissatisfaction with the Qing dynasty (and granted, that is a vast oversimplification), but China didn't start developing in the 20th Century. In many ways, the Communist revolution closed China off until the reforms of Deng Xiao Ping starting in the late 1970s (with a setback after Tienanmen Square in 1989). Notice what happened when China started adopting capitalist strategies in the late 1970s?

Click image to enlarge.

The Selden map: http://seldenmap.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/

How about 10% percent of the population through inefficient agriculture? Thank you, Kim Il-Sung/Kim Jong-il/Kim Jong-un (who incidentally are totally the same guy, apparently). Despite the massive amount of food aid, people are still starving in North Korea.

Further reading: The Week: North Korea isn't Nazi Germany — in some ways, it's worse
NYT - North Korean Prison Camps Massive and Growing

Communism. It's a hell of a system.

On the one had, you have a selfish and fragmented society in capitalist countries. In the other, you have brutal oppression of dissent, forced labor camps, and millions dead from starvation due to government policies. Neither system is perfect, but give me capitalism over communism.

[Phatscotty]

Why won't this dude answer me. YOU ARE A FRESHMAN IN COLLEGE, RIGHT?

[Gillipig]

Sorry for making this thread guys, my socialist side was strong that day and demanded it's own account, I had no choice but to oblige.

[nagerous]

Successful example of Communism in action - Vietnam

Where it all went wrong - Cambodia

[mrswdk]

And it's communist.

Ohnowait.

How long should I wait for your perfect Communist state?

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=203972&start=90#p4465531

[oVo]

Successful example of Communism in action - Vietnam

Millions die in a war and the the predicted dominoes did not fall.

Where it all went wrong - Cambodia

Another misguided dictator, abuse of power and death for intellectuals.

[Symmetry]

Symm, I respect you, but you're either trolling or you don't really know what life was like under communism in the USSR and China.

People have been sharing resources with each other for thousands of years, long before Marx and Engels. America's problem isn't that it has a capitalist economic system; it's that many of its people have become increasingly selfish, focused on themselves rather than their communities. Compare de Crevecouer's Letters from an American Farmer to 21st century America. There are still many, many good people in the US of all races, creeds, and political affiliations, but the society has become fragmented. When I lived in the US, I only knew a few of my neighbors' names. It was mostly a hi-bye kind of thing. Yes, people at one church helped a single mom buy a car so she could drive to work. Students on my college campus raised funds to help with different disasters, or volunteered to speak about domestic violence. There is still good in the US. But people are increasingly focusing on themselves and not the people around them. I blame Thoreau, really. =)

And yes, Cuba has been very successful with their medical care. Life expectancy trends higher than the US and is on par with the UK for a fraction of the cost. Yes, doctors are only paid a few dollars a week, often have to hitchhike to work, and may have to operate all day without taking a break for lunch, but the system seems to work.

Symm, China's current growth is due to its capitalist programs. That whole exploitation of the working class? Yeah, that's every Chinese factory. China's doing extremely well in exploiting its people, but yes, some Chinese are getting very, very rich.

Do you consider killing 45 million of your own people in 4 years to be the hallmark of a successful government? Because that's what Mao did in the Great Leap Forward between 1958 and 1962.

Symm, are you familiar with the Selden map? It dates back to the 17th Century, and it shows China as the center of trade, commercial, and cultural development.

The Selden map: http://seldenmap.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/

The Communist revolution happened because of general dissatisfaction with the Qing dynasty (and granted, that is a vast oversimplification), but China didn't start developing in the 20th Century. In many ways, the Communist revolution closed China off until the reforms of Deng Xiao Ping starting in the late 1970s (with a setback after Tienanmen Square in 1989). Notice what happened when China started adopting capitalist strategies in the late 1970s?

Click image to enlarge.

The Selden map: http://seldenmap.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/

How about 10% percent of the population through inefficient agriculture? Thank you, Kim Il-Sung/Kim Jong-il/Kim Jong-un (who incidentally are totally the same guy, apparently). Despite the massive amount of food aid, people are still starving in North Korea.

Further reading: The Week: North Korea isn't Nazi Germany — in some ways, it's worse
NYT - North Korean Prison Camps Massive and Growing

Communism. It's a hell of a system.

On the one had, you have a selfish and fragmented society in capitalist countries. In the other, you have brutal oppression of dissent, forced labor camps, and millions dead from starvation due to government policies. Neither system is perfect, but give me capitalism over communism.

I don't think you understand the basis of my argument- that Communism is an efficient transitional system, but one with flaws. If you can, please suggest a major Communist country that was better before Communism.

[oVo]

America's problem isn't that it has a capitalist economic system; it's that many of its people have become increasingly selfish, focused on themselves rather than their communities.

BINGO! but it isn't just an American problem. The bully pulpit and actions of super powers combined with the macho stance of world leaders... as if maintaining face and looking strong was crucial to a country's existence seems to prevail. History repeats, conflicts go unresolved. Nationalism and nudges towards a curious form of patriotism prevail as the military defense of the world dominates global expenses and the youth are trained to kill. Governments reinvent justifications for aggression and the war cycles repeat.

When traveling in other countries regardless of their styles of government, there is a common ground in the general populations that is welcoming, generous and kind. The curious nature of people often overrides absurd stereotypes as people interact, exchange life stories and share bits of who they are.

[macbone]

I don't think you understand the basis of my argument- that Communism is an efficient transitional system, but one with flaws. If you can, please suggest a major Communist country that was better before Communism.

To be honest, Symmetry, I don't know enough to answer that question. I think you'd find a resounding majority in mainland China saying no, China was a mess before the communist takeover. Here in Hong Kong, the response would probably be more nuanced, but you could probably find historians to support both sides, that yes, China was better after the takeover, and no, it wasn't.

I did a little digging around, and I came up with these sources.

Here's the first, from the Council on Foreign Relations, which is obviously a pro-Western source. This was written in 1954 by C.M. Chang, a former professor at Nankai University.

The five years of Communist rule in China can thus be written down as years of betrayal. The democratic rights and freedoms promised by the Communists, the "union of the four classes," and the land reform were decoy programs bearing no relationship to the final objectives. The Communist rulers may be able to carry out an industrialization program more successfully than their predecessors, but at terrible human costs. Since the Chinese people live under a revolutionary totalitarian police régime it is too much to expect them to rise in revolt against their oppressors. It simply is not possible. However, the will to revolt, though smothered, is not dead. It may burst into vehement flame if the opportunity presents itself. At present the régime has been weakened by the disillusionment of its people and the critical economic dislocation. It needs the help of its enemies to forge ahead. Will the Western World oblige?

Source: http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/ ... e-in-china

If you favor economic advancement, then yes. If you care more about individual human rights, then no, at least according to Chang.

Here's a book that might be worth looking at, The Rural Chinese by Steven W. Mosher. Here's a selection from the New York Times review:

Mr. Mosher's book belongs to a growing body of literature on contemporary China that, reversing favorable portrayals written in the early and mid- 1970's, places the People's Republic squarely in the 20th-century totalitarian mainstream. But, while others have stressed urban life, the havoc of such mass campaigns as the cultural revolution and the absence of political freedoms in Maoist and post-Maoist China, Mr. Mosher's emphasis is on the hardness and brutality of everyday life. In describing the countryside, he is more critical of the effects of the Communist revolution than other recent writers. He concludes that for the Chinese peasantry - at least the 400 million peasants in the southern part of the country where he did his studies - life was better during periods before the revolution of 1949 than after the country's new rulers began to overhaul age-old patterns of everyday life.

That conclusion is striking if only because, as Mr. Mosher observes, it is ''the paramount myth of the Chinese revolution'' that Communist rule, whatever it has done in other areas of life, has produced great strides in the countryside where 80 percent of China's one billion people live.

So that's another source that says, actually, life was better in China before the communists took power.

And of course, there's always Tibet.

From an article in the Washington Post:

Chinese troops entered Tibet in 1950, restoring Chinese rule after 40 years of Tibetan independence. A year later the Communist Party forced Tibetan negotiators to sign a deal that would guarantee Tibet's autonomy from China as long as it acknowledged Chinese rule. In late 1955, Tibetans revolted against the Chinese when Communist Party members carried their revolution into traditional Tibetan lands in Gansu, Yunnan and Sichuan provinces. The revolt spread to Tibet itself; it was brutally suppressed, and the Dalai Lama fled China in March 1959.

Over the next 20 years, Tibet's religion and traditional ways of life were under almost constant attack. Repression reached a fever pitch during the Cultural Revolution of 1966-76. Gangs of Red Guards destroyed almost every Tibetan monastery.

In 1980, Communist Party chief Hu Yaobang traveled to Lhasa to apologize for "letting the Tibetan people down." But after Tibetans began to demonstrate for greater freedoms, martial law was imposed in 1989 and Beijing's policy changed again, with the emphasis on suppressing dissent. Since then, Lhasa has witnessed 100 violent incidents connected with independence activities, said Lhasa Deputy Mayor Ha Jie.

China says it's brought new economic wealth to Tibet. Tibetans, however, say that only a few people have gotten rich, and meanwhile, their traditions, customs, religion, and language have all been systematically under attack.

So in China, tentatively, the answer is no, the country was not better off with the communists in charge, but I should read much more about it. I can't speak about Cuba pre-Castro, but it seemed to be a pretty great place when Hemingway was there, at least what he wrote about it. The economy took a nosedive in the 1970s, and another hit after the fall of the Soviet Union, and human rights are strictly limited, so if economics or individual freedoms are a measurement of the state of a country, it's not great. However, as I said before, Cuba has good healthcare indicators, in part due to their emphasis on prevention over treatment. I think with Cuba you have a mixed bag. In some ways, life is better, and in some ways, it's worse, but it's not Haiti, and that's a good thing.

[mrswdk]

The Communists' major achievement was reunification of the country, an achievement that had nothing to do with their being communist and everything to do with their possession of an army. China's real progress only began after Mao died and Deng Xiaoping started to abandon the fucked up system he had inherited.

Symmetry knows nothing about China and is just trying to get a reaction. Pay him no heed.

[macbone]

But Symmetry has such a lovely avatar!

Not nearly as great as yours, though, mrs. =)

Symm, add Romania to the list of countries worse off under communism: 5 Things You Only Know If You Grew Up in a Communist Regime

There's a reason those kids above don't look all that happy (even beyond the default scowl that passes for a "communist smile"). Practica agricola wasn't the typical communist "share the burden equally" stuff -- it was closer to straight-up slave labor. There is a very fine line separating the two at all times, and practica agricola dug up that line with a makeshift hoe and buried its hopes and dreams under it. Everybody was forced to take one of these regular "field trips" to special farms. Once there, they harvested crops all day, regardless of the weather or their own personal health. Nothing got in the way -- not school, not education, not military training, not career. My parents both have engineering degrees, which only meant they had to pick peaches and apples in the most efficiently engineered way possible.

A tradition proudly carried on today by all loyal comrades in North Korea!

Meanwhile, the amazing feats of the outside world merited barely a passing mention. In 1969, when America landed men on the moon for the first time, the Romanian national newspaper briefly mentioned "a great success of scientific thought -- men on the moon!" along with a couple of lines from Nixon's telegram. That was it: about half the space you'd expect a tabloid to devote to Beyonce's new haircut. That's how much the friggin' moon landing merited. What could possibly have been a bigger headline that week? Why, Ceausescu driving a Dacia 1100, of course!

[tzor]

I don't want to get depressingly technical, but aren't we comparing a economic/political system to an economic system? Communism doesn't exist as a purely economic system. It is an economic system imposed by a political system; specifically a political system designed and run by despots. You really need to compare a like to a like, and if you don't want to have a two dimensional discussion, you probably need to keep both sides to the same political system. And that's where it gets complicated because the system that has despotic political powers in total control of a capital based economy is ... well it's Fascism and no one wants to talk about that.

Because, after all, the founding father nation of Fascism was ... Italy.

(Which is almost as ironic as the founding father of the progressive movement being a Republican - Teddy Roosevelt and the founding nation of communism being an agrarian nation - Russia.)

[Lord Arioch]

Is it bad to be labeled a communist?
is it bad to be labeled a capitalist?

the majority is in between i think...

ive allways since the age of 14 after reading marx, mills, weber and the works of politcal ideology labelled myself as a memeber of the world.

If a system works why question it... ? Is the US perfect for everyone? NO! was the soviet union perfect for everyone? NO!

We are discussing/trolling ideas that have different meanings fopr everyone.... IF, IF a communist state appeared where everyone where happy, everything were good and shiny and so forth would u stil hate it?

IF a capitalist state emerged with no homeless, and happiness for all would u commies still ahte it?

Sit back, pop a beer and reflect on WHAT, and HOW u are discussing htings and which points u want to get acroos...

And yes i know its monday! But hey no better day to be drunk on right, right:)

[kuthoer]

Yugoslavia was a peaceful communist country, until Tito died. Chaos prevailed once communism fell.

[Gillipig]

The Communists' major achievement was reunification of the country, an achievement that had nothing to do with their being communist and everything to do with their possession of an army. China's real progress only began after Mao died and Deng Xiaoping started to abandon the fucked up system he had inherited.

Symmetry knows nothing about China and is just trying to get a reaction. Pay him no heed.

Symmetry is actually a caricature of gay men, he's not really a gay communist, in fact he's not even gay, but he plays the role skillfully.

[AndyDufresne]

I played Civ 5 a couple of months ago. I was Ethiopia, and I was a successful communist state. I took over my half of the world, nuked some far off distant democratic or fascist powers, and me and my Commie buds (Sweden and Egypt I think), effectively instituted a universal communist government.


--Andy

[Gillipig]

I played Civ 5 a couple of months ago. I was Ethiopia, and I was a successful communist state. I took over my half of the world, nuked some far off distant democratic or fascist powers, and me and my Commie buds (Sweden and Egypt I think), effectively instituted a universal communist government.


--Andy

Andy you commie, I always knew you were the sort! Liberal? Pff, that's just a cover you stick to isn't it?

[kuthoer]

I played Civ 5 a couple of months ago. I was Ethiopia, and I was a successful communist state. I took over my half of the world, nuked some far off distant democratic or fascist powers, and me and my Commie buds (Sweden and Egypt I think), effectively instituted a universal communist government.


--Andy

Comrade Andy. I salute you.

[DaGip]

I played Civ 5 a couple of months ago. I was Ethiopia, and I was a successful communist state. I took over my half of the world, nuked some far off distant democratic or fascist powers, and me and my Commie buds (Sweden and Egypt I think), effectively instituted a universal communist government.


--Andy

Comrade Andy. I salute you.

Computers are not Capitalists...that's just a fact.

[warmonger1981]

Communism=America

I live it everday.

[DaGip]

Communism=America

I live it everday.

What's so bad about it?

[warmonger1981]

THE MAN!