Is Communism good? This poll is closed. |
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Yes | 375 | 66.25% | |
No | 191 | 33.75% | |
Total: | 523 votes |
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One point I like from Slavoj Zizek is when he talks about how with Stalin, there was actual backlash of 'Stalin betrayed the cause of communism and the revolution etc' whereas no-body ever claimed Hitler was betraying the cause of fascism when he did his horrific acts. And again, Britain under the socialist labour party (Which is to me logically then a socialist state) did things like the NHS and the welfare state, and didn't genocide anyone.
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# ? Jan 24, 2017 11:12 |
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# ? May 8, 2024 06:59 |
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Democratic Socialism with some well regulated markets and luxury capitalism doesn't sound that bad as the go to model for the current world. The most important trick seems to be having an accountable, transparent, and well balanced(in terms of powers/oversight/adaptability) government. Especially in a world where you are constantly fighting off internal and external powers who all want a piece of whatever you got and will happily use every nasty tactic in the book to get their fingers into the pie. Once any country, organization, community, or union develops cancerous closed cabals, consolidating the means and strings of power beyond the eyes and reach of the system its screwed. The people can't unfetter themselves without unreasonable effort and/or violence and then it doesn't matter what the label of your system is. They can be vulture capitalists, military juntas, corporate mercenaries, puppet governors, or loving Negan. Communism's place seems to be in a future point for humanity when things like labor, markets, even money don't really make much sense anymore since technology has made such things obsolete. That sounds pretty far fetched and utopian, but its becoming harder to deny the power of automation. Human labor only has so much utility and nothing is stopping the growth technologies which not just make production scale into obscene quantities, but also taking over the managing aspects of the running and decision making as well. D.Ork Bimboolean fucked around with this message at 11:46 on Jan 24, 2017 |
# ? Jan 24, 2017 11:25 |
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Technology allowing for full communism already exists, the only obstacle stems from the reluctance of capitalists.
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# ? Jan 24, 2017 12:23 |
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Ardennes posted:How about Imperial Japan as well? How about the major European Imperialist powers? How about all those South American military dictatorships? How about all those ancient monarchies? Was Tsarist Russia really swell and the Bolsheviks just hosed it up? The KMT? yore right that makes it all okay then
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# ? Jan 24, 2017 13:11 |
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Rated PG-34 posted:The Act of Killing is a cool and good documentary and gives good tips on killing communists. And even greater tips on masking the guilt.
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# ? Jan 24, 2017 13:31 |
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Extreme0 posted:You're not dead though. I'm not a communist, trucknuts
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# ? Jan 24, 2017 13:49 |
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OwlFancier posted:
Or much else, it would appear
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# ? Jan 24, 2017 13:49 |
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Hogge Wild posted:I don't understand this post. Every communist country has genocided. The difference between horrible communist regimes and the nazis is that those communist regimes oppressed and murdered in pursuit of their goals, but for the nazis the oppressing and murdering was their goal. That's why, regardless of what economic system you like, equating communists to nazis is stupid.
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# ? Jan 24, 2017 14:04 |
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D.Ork Bimboolean posted:Democratic Socialism with some well regulated markets and luxury capitalism doesn't sound that bad as the go to model for the current world. I think the theory goes that capital by its very nature will coalesce with fewer individuals thus eroding socialist institutions. The model you speak of benifits disproportionately societies in which capital resides and niavely assumes no systemic incentives to erode that contract. gohmak fucked around with this message at 14:18 on Jan 24, 2017 |
# ? Jan 24, 2017 14:09 |
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gohmak posted:I think the theory goes that capital by its very nature will coalesce with fewer individuals thus eroding socialist institutions. The model you speak of benifits disproportionately societies in which capital resides. How do you get capital outside of developed countries without greatly reducing the quality of living of workers living there (ie free trade)? It is an open question. Higsian posted:The difference between horrible communist regimes and the nazis is that those communist regimes oppressed and murdered in pursuit of their goals, but for the nazis the oppressing and murdering was their goal. I will also just throw this out there before someone denies it, recent academics research has shown that the Nazis purposefully killed significantly more people than the Soviets. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 16:27 on Jan 24, 2017 |
# ? Jan 24, 2017 14:17 |
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Ardennes posted:How do you get capital outside of development countries without greatly reducing the quality of living of workers living there (ie free trade)? It is an open question. With capitalism, you don't. gohmak fucked around with this message at 14:26 on Jan 24, 2017 |
# ? Jan 24, 2017 14:21 |
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gohmak posted:With capitalism, you don't. if history has shown us one thing, it's that people would dramatically prefer to be subsistence farmers than to move to a city to work in a big smelly factory.
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# ? Jan 24, 2017 14:51 |
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gohmak posted:I think the theory goes that capital by its very nature will coalesce with fewer individuals thus eroding socialist institutions. The model you speak of benifits disproportionately societies in which capital resides and niavely assumes no systemic incentives to erode that contract. Don't get me wrong, I know they're still going to try, but the fact that it's taking them so long to unveil a plan is indicative of how careful they know they have to be about it. Also if you look at polls on how Americans feel about 'socialism' and 'capitalism', it's clear that the younger people are increasingly comfortable with 'socialism' and don't treat it as a boogeyman nearly as much as earlier generations did. Ardennes posted:How do you get capital outside of development countries without greatly reducing the quality of living of workers living there (ie free trade)? It is an open question.
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# ? Jan 24, 2017 15:26 |
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It doesn't matter how many posts on the internet reactionaries make about why commumism is bad, or how many billions and billions of people supposedly died of it. People around the world will keep rising up and attempt to overthrow capitalism because capitalism will never stop producing increasingly large masses of pissed off proletarians who literally have nothing to lose but their chains. The lessons of every past failures will be passed down through history and, in the end, Communism will win.
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# ? Jan 24, 2017 15:57 |
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Well more specifically Capitalism will fall, what it's going to be replaced by is open to debate. Communism was just proposed as the preferred choice.
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# ? Jan 24, 2017 15:58 |
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[hello time travelers, there was only garbage here]
Jaded Samurai fucked around with this message at 12:11 on Mar 14, 2017 |
# ? Jan 24, 2017 16:21 |
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Jaded Samurai posted:You can file that research right here *hands you a shredder*. At least the Nazis explored the idea of relocation for the Jews. The Russian and Chinese agrarian class was executed at a stroke as a matter of course, as though they couldn't afford the paperwork to at least let them file a protest. They probably couldn't. HOLY poo poo you actually believe the Nazis about the Madagascar plan? Ardennes fucked around with this message at 16:32 on Jan 24, 2017 |
# ? Jan 24, 2017 16:29 |
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Why is it that all these internet anticommunist posters like nazis so much hmmm i wonder When it comes down to it and the poo poo really hits the fan, when capitalism shits itself and the institutions of liberalism fail, in the end everyone turns out to be either a communist, or a fascist
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# ? Jan 24, 2017 16:37 |
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Bob le Moche posted:It doesn't matter how many posts on the internet reactionaries make about why commumism is bad, or how many billions and billions of people supposedly died of it. Oh, i get it, you're a gimmick, made to sound like a labor poster from 1893
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# ? Jan 24, 2017 16:37 |
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Ardennes posted:HOLY poo poo you actually believe the Nazis about the Madagascar plan? There were other relocation plans. In Bloodlands, Timothy Snyder claims that there was a proposal to create a "reservation" around Lublin (considered too close to core Reich territory to work) and another further east in occupied Soviet territory. Apparently this was abandonded due to the area not being securely controlled enough, so they settled on the extermination plan.
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# ? Jan 24, 2017 16:42 |
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Jaded Samurai posted:
Communism isn't against the idea of personal property, just private property. You can "own" most things you already do, clothes, furniture, a dishwasher, you just can not own a house, a factory, a river or 5000 acres of forest. Communism isn't coming to take away your PS4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_property Essentially all of the the people you mentioned above would benefit from communism (what exactly is a dissenter?). Of course, if they align themselves to hold onto capitalism that is area of conflict. White Rock fucked around with this message at 16:57 on Jan 24, 2017 |
# ? Jan 24, 2017 16:45 |
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"Private property is your toothbrush and the vase you put flowers in" - very serious people who would probably insist it's the other side that is uneducated
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# ? Jan 24, 2017 16:45 |
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Kopijeger posted:There were other relocation plans. In Bloodlands, Timothy Snyder claims that there was a proposal to create a "reservation" around Lublin (considered too close to core Reich territory to work) and another further east in occupied Soviet territory. Apparently this was abandonded due to the area not being securely controlled enough, so they settled on the extermination plan. Or maybe it was abandoned it because they wanted to exterminate the Jews as everything about the final solution indicates? This is going to be the Eastern Front of threads.
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# ? Jan 24, 2017 16:52 |
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White Rock posted:Communism isn't against the idea of personal property, just private property. You can "own" most things you already do, clothes, furniture, a dishwasher, you just can not own a house, a factory, a river or 5000 acres of forest. Communism isn't coming to take away your PS4. Sure you can keep any of the awesome consumer electronics brought to you by the communist world. That and your patch of ice and 3 potatos
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# ? Jan 24, 2017 17:47 |
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gobbagool posted:Sure you can keep any of the awesome consumer electronics brought to you by the communist world. That and your patch of ice and 3 potatos Don't worry, the goalposts are also personal property.
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# ? Jan 24, 2017 17:49 |
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gobbagool posted:Sure you can keep any of the awesome consumer electronics brought to you by the communist world. That and your patch of ice and 3 potatos you won't definitely have 3 potatoes you drat kulak
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# ? Jan 24, 2017 17:54 |
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Russia was the "sick man of Europe" and became one of the two great superpowers that controlled the world. They lost that fight, but damned close given what they started with. As Putin demonstrates, they still have a clear place on the international scene because of Communism. China was a collapsing archaic empire ridding with colonialism. Now it is a major world power. India was an important colony (but a colony) and now it is often discussed as a possible country of the future, possibly displacing China. Israel became the only stable democracy in the Middle East. Vietnam's success has been more mixed, but poverty has been halved and they were able to liberate Cambodia from the Khmer Rouge. Notable failures of Communism include: Cambodia: An omnicidal ethnostate. Lots of issues here, not sure how many of them can be meaningfully attached to "Communism" as opposed to "Nationalism" given that it was the nationalist ideology that led to the mass murder. North Korea: A secluded ethnostate ruled by a fairly incompetent dynastry. Lose a war, double down on the ruling dynastry and, yeah, you get a real shitshow. It's not like capitalist isolated petty dictatorships do well. Eastern Europe: These were Soviet Colonies post-WWII. Rather than build infrastructure, Russia purposefully dismantled their industry. Contrast that with Western Europe, where America flooded it with moeny from the Marshal Plan leading to the economic miracle. If you agree with the idea that massive government spending and interaction with business leads to explosive economic growth, you might be more amenable to Communist thought than you think.
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# ? Jan 24, 2017 18:01 |
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Actually consumer electronics do not come from private R&D investment, but from state-funded research projects that were caused by communism. For example the US government funded a nuclear & space race with the intent of destroying the socialist economy by forcing them to keep up, and this led to the invention of many of the technological innovations that consumer electronics depend on today. Also, the internet was originally a DARPA project aimed at creating an information network that could withstand a nuclear attack from the USSR, so we wouldn't have the internet without communism. Many of the software that underlie platforms like Google and Apple is ripped from open source projects, a form of communism. Also, China had a communist revolution and that's why it ever industrialized and why capitalists are now able to invest in tech manufacturing there. Without chinese communism there would be no cheap electronics hardware today. All the awesome consumer electronics have been brought to the world by communism. Also communism produced the most popular videogame of all time worldwide, Tetris. Only a socialist society could produce such art. We can thank capitalism for E.T. on Atari, the Zelda CDI games, and Sonic 2006.
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# ? Jan 24, 2017 18:06 |
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Bob le Moche posted:Actually consumer electronics do not come from private R&D investment, but from state-funded research projects that were caused by communism. For example the US government funded a nuclear & space race with the intent of destroying the socialist economy by forcing them to keep up, and this led to the invention of many of the technological innovations that consumer electronics depend on today. Also, the internet was originally a DARPA project aimed at creating an information network that could withstand a nuclear attack from the USSR, so we wouldn't have the internet without communism. Many of the software that underlie platforms like Google and Apple is ripped from open source projects, a form of communism. Also, China had a communist revolution and that's why it ever industrialized and why capitalists are now able to invest in tech manufacturing there. Without chinese communism there would be no cheap electronics hardware today. You know, I had a roommate in college, you just reminded me of him. He was a jewish kid from Long Island who insisted that virtually every celebrity, politician, captain of industry, etc were Jewish, up to and including then then Governor of our State, Mario Cuomo.
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# ? Jan 24, 2017 18:11 |
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gobbagool posted:You know, I had a roommate in college, you just reminded me of him. He was a jewish kid from Long Island who insisted that virtually every celebrity, politician, captain of industry, etc were Jewish, up to and including then then Governor of our State, Mario Cuomo. A talking about "secret Jews" everywhere. Sounds like a lot of people in the current administration! Was your roommate Paul Wolfowitz?
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# ? Jan 24, 2017 18:15 |
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gobbagool posted:Sure you can keep any of the awesome consumer electronics brought to you by the communist world. That and your patch of ice and 3 potatos
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# ? Jan 24, 2017 18:17 |
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Jaded Samurai posted:The middle-income, center spectrum countries in the OECD/Benelux/Scandinavian countries have the best quality of life, the best living standards, the most tolerance for expression, the best political representation, the best civil societies and the best harvests. So yes, ceter paribus the truth is in the middle, wildly popular catch phrase or not. Communism has this Lol if you don't think capitalism is totalitarian and permeates children's minds starting at age 0
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# ? Jan 24, 2017 18:19 |
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I think it's hilarious that reactionaries think iPads are the trump card against communism. They are a luxury product that only a tiny fraction of the world's population has access to, they produce immense waste, and even smartphones are a thing that most people get because of job pressure and the accelerating and anxiety-inducing requirement to be constantly available and connected more than anything else. Guess what, the only reason why your iPads are so cheap in the first place is because capitalism has decided that the people who assemble them and mine the minerals to make them do not deserve to be fed, clothed, or medicated properly. They can work their entire lives in horrible conditions and never earn enough to buy a single iPad. It's like people who argued against the abolition of slavery by going "but the price of cotton will increase!!!" It doesn't matter how attached white western consumers feel about their fancy little toys and gadgets, the people who actually make them do not give a poo poo about that stuff, and they are the ones who have the power to halt the capitalist machine by going on general strike. Bob le Moche fucked around with this message at 18:28 on Jan 24, 2017 |
# ? Jan 24, 2017 18:26 |
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But what about the atrocities of Communism? *ignores slaves mining coltan*
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# ? Jan 24, 2017 18:28 |
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In all fairness, smartphones are pretty much a godsend from an accessibility POV and anyone who claims text messaging is inherently a luxury because we have phones deserves to get slapped. But yeah, their production is, like most consumer electronics, currently marred by the fact that most of the production line is almost as horrible as diamonds.
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# ? Jan 24, 2017 18:31 |
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Here's a good article about our beloved consumer electronics captains of industry in Silicon Valley, the great figureheads of the successes capitalism; and how they actually know that their days are numbered because a revolution is coming, and are loving quaking in their boots in fear at the specter of communism:quote:The fears vary, but many worry that, as artificial intelligence takes away a growing share of jobs, there will be a backlash against Silicon Valley, America’s second-highest concentration of wealth. “I’ve heard this theme from a bunch of people,” Hoffman said. “Is the country going to turn against the wealthy? Is it going to turn against technological innovation? Is it going to turn into civil disorder?” quote:Robert H. Dugger worked as a lobbyist for the financial industry before he became a partner at the global hedge fund Tudor Investment Corporation, in 1993. After seventeen years, he retired to focus on philanthropy and his investments. “Anyone who’s in this community knows people who are worried that America is heading toward something like the Russian Revolution,” he told me recently. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/30/doomsday-prep-for-the-super-rich
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# ? Jan 24, 2017 18:32 |
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Bob le Moche posted:Here's a good article about our beloved consumer electronics captains of industry in Silicon Valley, the great figureheads of the successes capitalism; and how they actually know that their days are numbered because a revolution is coming, and are loving quaking in their boots in fear at the specter of communism: The funniest poo poo about that article is the CEO of Reddit being an idiot prepper getting ready to defend his property with a bow and arrow.
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# ? Jan 24, 2017 18:35 |
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Agnosticnixie posted:In all fairness, smartphones are pretty much a godsend from an accessibility POV and anyone who claims text messaging is inherently a luxury because we have phones deserves to get slapped. But yeah, their production is, like most consumer electronics, currently marred by the fact that most of the production line is almost as horrible as diamonds. In parts of the developing world, texts have become currency.
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# ? Jan 24, 2017 18:36 |
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Why are the working conditions so awful in communist China's factories?
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# ? Jan 24, 2017 18:39 |
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# ? May 8, 2024 06:59 |
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Bob le Moche posted:I think it's hilarious that reactionaries think iPads are the trump card against communism. They are a luxury product that only a tiny fraction of the world's population has access to, they produce immense waste, and even smartphones are a thing that most people get because of job pressure and the accelerating and anxiety-inducing requirement to be constantly available and connected more than anything else. have your friends staged an intervention for you yet
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# ? Jan 24, 2017 18:46 |