Communism?

I find it amusing how there are still communist supporters around. I'm interested to know what you all think of the Soviet Union, and uh, why it collapsed if it was so great? Not to poke fun, but I've been reading some insanely biased communist information. It's ridiculous how some people ignore factual history and create their own.

 

Communism is a great theory, but horrible in practice. Humans aren't perfect, and therefore a perfect organization derived from humans cannot be perfect either.

 

Most communists today ahte the bearaucrati reigiemes of the soviet union. When the beauracracy closed in, aka when stalin took over, most socialsits see that as the end of Russia being a socety going in the direction of socialism.

 

Without the Armsrace, who knows how things would've ended up.

I'm falling more and more in favour of state-run economies, however.

 

I think that any philosophy that divides the whole of humanity into two antagonistic groups is doomed to fail.

 

Communism doesnt do this, it's a well regesterd fact that society is divided into protaletaria and beugorise, people were saying that a long time before marx. The beugoirse themselves said that.

 

Actually the whole structure of communism depends on the dialetic evolution of the classes. He said we started out with the priest/slave class struggle, then the king/serf, and eventually leading to the capitalist/worker strife that we see today. At each step in human evolution he creates in his mind a division of wealth between two groups of people based on their breeding, this causes friction, which causes revolt, which ends up with a new class structure where the same old divisions and fights lead to another revolution.
But the problem is that the line between worker and capitalist isn't a clear distinction, and there is a huge gray area.
That, and philosophies like this invariably create an 'us vs. them' mentality that never ends up being a boon for humanity (I.e. left vs. right, aryan vs. non-aryan, christian vs. infidel), because 'we' are more 'human' than 'them', and thus 'we' have more of a right to live than 'they' do.
Marx himself once said that in order to kill your enemy you must believe make him less than human.

 

Socrates would have a field day.

 

unfortunately communism was a failure, society cannot work together envsioned by marx, its principles were really just a waking dream something to think about but not to be taken seriously. human society as we know it in the civillised world is about a parasite and a host, western history is based on this, class war etc is a manifestation of this. communism a la soviet style was about death camps, secret police, torture, invasion of other countries and the eradication of the intellect. communism to your average peasant (to quote hg wells) was as far from their minds as was flying to the mind of a whale. i have always found the communist manefesto a little scattered but it does have interesting points.

 

MM

Just because something is called something does not necessarily mean it is. If someone comes up to you on the street and offered you a gold watch for 2000 dollars would you buy it on the persons say so or get it checked out first? If you would just buy it I have this bridge in Brooklyn I could sell you.

You talk about ‘communism’ then mention the Soviet Union then ask “why it collapsed if it was so great?” Then go on to talk about the lessons of history.

The thing is that it is a matter of debate amongst historians if the Soviet Russia was ever communist in anything but name or as to how much and in what element communism actually did showed itself.

This is before they begin to discuss just how ‘great’ it was (or wasn’t) and just what it did (or didn’t) achieve and then follows the reasons for the ‘empires’ collapse.

The thing about history is that it can often be a matter of who is writing it and how they are viewing and using the evidence.

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It is convenient for those opposed to left wing politics to portray Soviet Russia as the failed experiment in socialism because it suites their purpose since they fear any call for a more distributive and equitable society.

 

my aunt went to cuba a few years ago. she says she's never seen people so happy. they are poor (and they wish they weren't) but they are happy. .. so I'd say communism didnt fail in that country. .. when castro dies, it maybe different. but we'll see.

 

I'm not a very big "fan" of the Soviet Union. Sure, people had free music lessons, could work out at a training studio for free etc., and 75 percent of Russians today say that the Soviet period was better than Russia today. But the Soviet Union did have many weak points. I think that, in many ways, it showed the failure of strict leninism in practice.

Great, as in compared to what?

Marxists have generally been critical of the Soviet Union. Marxists-Leninists have generally been opposed to a) the leadership under Stalin and from then on, or b) the leadership after Stalin. The leaders lived in luxury while the people had to struggle through everyday life. Che Guevara commented on that when he visited the Soviet Union.

 

Summary of Thread:



Soviets Sucked.



Class struggle is only a symptom of a greater illness in mankind.



Regardless of the results, Marx was a genius who we'd all bone.

 

Care to elaborate?

Why?

Humanity has lived 3/4ths of its time in primitive communist societies. How long has capitalism existed? Say 200-300 years, give or take? Anyways, you get the point.

 

No.

Again, I was just summarizing what was already stated in the thread.

Questions?

Reread the thread.

 

One more flaw with the Soviet russia didnt work argument.


capitalism is not working. take a look around and tell me that the world is in a good state. i dotn think its possible to do that without lying.

 

Well does anything ever work?

 

Capitalism is the only system that has brought any nation out of poverty. Look at what capitalism did for Japan and Germany after WWII. Look at what communism did for east european countries over the same period. It is obvious - communism took wealthy countries and made them poor. Capitalism took countries in ruins and made them wealthy. It also brought Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, and many other countries out of poverty. It is bringing the largest country in the world - China - out of poverty righ now.

Anyone who thinks capitalism doesn't work obviously doesn't want to accept reality.

 

Goes and takes a look around the US, Canada, UK, Ireland, Italy, Germany, France, Netherlands, Japan, Australia, Switzerland, Belgium, South Korea, China, Singapore, Taiwan, Austria, Finland, Hong Kong, Israel, New Zealand, seems to be working pretty well there.

Laos, Cuba, Noth Korea, the old china, not exactly so good, eastern Europe compared to western Europe, not that great there. Look at South Africa which has pretty decent market economy, always has been the biggest economy in Africa, look at what happend to China after they started to allow capitalism, and Vetnam now too.