Me and Me

So according to you guys: Failed attempts in and of themselves mean bad system?

echidna

Fer f*ck�s sake moon, how many millions of political and economic refugees has communism generated ? Refugees fleeing to America and other western democracies, oddly all � capitalistic. Maybe true, the average peasant doesn�t think �well personally I�d favour living under a neo-capitalistic economy rather than a commune-based system�. Peasants simply want a better standard of living, something which capitalist countries could give them.

When you speak of just those freeing Stalinist regimes, you speak of the political refugees. Do you deny that economic refugees exist ? In reality they make up the bulk of any refugee population. Economic refugees flee an economy, I hope you can understand the difference.

Next time you visit a communist country (???), check which way the barbed wire faces. In countries without elections are you familiar with the expression �voting with one�s feet� ?

Next time you�re in a communist country (???) ask yourself why there is the desperate need to suppress the media and freespeech, including education, political discussions & opposition parties. See how communism is so closely linked with totalitarianism, something which even the US-backed dictatorships could rarely manage.

Inadmissable ? Do you have the slightest idea what it would take to make one risk one�s life and the life of one�s family. I suggest you travel to villages and hear the dreams of making it to America, or even just having a relative who can escape from your socialist paradise. Did such people dream of escaping to another socialist paradise like the Soviet Union or China ?
Sheesh, they're tired because some people forever shield themselves from the realities of the communism & marxism which they promote.
OK, they didn�t necessarily want the free market per se. They wanted anything except for the suffocating socialism which they lived under. You figure out the alternatives.
OK, let�s come clean. Exactly how familiar are you with exactly what motivated each proletariat revolution ? (Let�s not forget that Mao�s Long March would not have been so heroic if his small army had actually received voluntary assistance from the peasants along the way !!) Communist leaders like Ho Chi Minh were first and foremost nationalists & his main appeal was towards Vietnamese unity against colonisers rather than his precise economic model.

David M. Payne

I see you demoted hal9000 to hal 90, shame on you, JM! (Or JM wannabe?)

What Beyelzu said.

David

"God, Marx, and religion, the oldest scam(s) in history, and they still suck them in today. So free your mind, and your body will follow!

moon

Likewise. As one of the more sophisticated anti-communist zealots here, one who has nothing but praise for the U.S. intervention in Italy after WWII to keep the Communists from coming to power through the democratic process, a lot of the less sophisticated types look to you to supply them with their much-needed anti-communist ammunition.

Unfortunately for you, you have picked the wrong subject to make an attack on. Let's examine the historical record, shall we? While you pick out one or two facts, let's try to look at the whole picture. First of all, though, I just want to point to an example of your mendacity. You state,
By my calculation, there were 8 more years in the 1930's after 1932. Given that the years of 1931-32 were marked by a famine that left probably a million people in the USSR dead from starvation, it would seem pretty likely that when I said that Russia had experienced unprecedented growth in the 1930's, that I was not talking about the period from 1928-32.

Let us then look at the decade of the 1930's, a decade, let us keep in mind that was marked by a world-wide depression. Therefore, Russia's development is all the more remarkable, as it was accomplished almost entirely in isolation from the rest of the world.

To quote from Trotsky'sRevolution Betrayed, The USSR went, in a decade, from being a backward agriarian-based economy to a world industrial power. It had progressed from producing 2.6% of world production in heavy industry in 1913 to 13.7% in 1937.

There is nothing even remotely comparable in world history. While the anti-communists like Vorkosigan like to point to examples like South Korea, they use the facts in a very deceptive manner. South Korea did not pull itself out of the Middle Ages to become a world power. It merely capitalized on a huge influx of capital and expanded its economy. While its economy did grow, it wasn't that much to start with, and in no sense has South Korea become a world power. It was, and is, essentially a colony of U.S. imperialism, relying on the U.S. for its defense, unlike the USSR, which had to face unrelenting hostility from every capitalist state.

Facts are difficult things. All of the anti-communist ravings about how "communism doesn't work" cannot erase the facts about the incredible growth of the Soviet economy. Now that capitalism has been restored, and the economy has taken the opposite direction, namely in catastrophic collapse, the capitalists flail about for some explanation that does not have anything to do with the failure of the market economy. It must be because of the lack of "law and order," never minding the fact that the USSR is crawling with cops, and the state security apparatus has suffered no decline. Or corruption...yeah, that must be it! So, there was no corruption under the Stalinist regime? Or, what, corruption only happens in capitalism? Or what?

moon

You make me laugh, echidna. Faced with explaining your assertion that the proletariat in socialist states have "cried out" for the "free" market, you turn, yet again, to more capitalist shibboleths.

Why don't you just admit that you were wrong?

As for the refugees, you tell me. Why don't you do a calculation of all the refugees that communism has generated, and compare that with all of the refugees that capitalism has generated. From where I sit, I see the refugees generated by capitalism every day, as droves of people who have been suffering under capitalism in Mexico seek to escape their miserable conditions.

echidna

Cold War politics actually gives us the rare luxury of empirically testing the communist versus free market scenario, a luxury not available in 1960. Same people, same culture, comparable geography, the main difference, economic system.

Examples :

East versus West Germany
North versus South Korea
Mainland China versus Taiwan / Hong Kong

Moon, care to pick one which best demonstrates the wondrous superiority of communism / Marxism ?

Me and Me

Capitalism is so good you have to starve and bomb people into accepting it. hahaha.

As for refugees. Most people come from Mexico, a capitalist country.

David M. Payne

Who is this person that you say I want to be like?

moon

Sure. How about North/South Korea from the years 1952-1980? This is the only good comparison in your list, since, for one thing, you can't compare a city to a country where 1/4 of the population of the world resides. Also, East Germany is a special case. It had Stalinism imposed on it from above, and existed basically as a buffer from the imperialists who were constantly attacking the Soviet Union.

I have some other comparisons for you, though. How about these?

Cuba vs. Guatemala
Russia vs. Brazil


I further note that you are unable to defend your assertion that the proletariat of socialist countries have "cried out" for the "free" market.

Me and Me

South Korea was an oppressive millitary dictatorship until 1988.

beyelzu

god, me and me has latched on to moon, hes going to follow him around and learn how to post just like him next.


hey, me and me I would just like to point out two things. poor peasants will vote for communism because they are fucking poor and they want what rich people have. Because a communist government will "redestribute" wealth, whcih means steals from the rightful owners by he way, of course they vote for it.


and two, where the hell do you think the mexicans go, cuba?


oh, wait, they come to another capitlistic nation the us.

I also think that if the us wasnt mexico's neighbor they probably wouldnt flee. Its less that mexico sucks so bad as it is the us is the most prosperous nation on earth.