Maryland abolishes death penalty.

[FireIceTalon]

The USSR claimed they were communist. They claimed it. No one else.
Cuba Claimed to be communist. Castro said it. No one else.

Very very untrue (and you know this), the U.S. and plenty of Western countries have called The USSR and Cuba as communist - which is intellectually dishonest since the term 'communist country' is an oxymoron, much in the same way the expression 'true lies' is. And in fact, to my knowledge, neither Lenin nor Castro ever said that their respective nations were communist, but even if they did, this still doesn't mean shit. Just cause a country calls itself something doesn't mean it is what it calls itself. The Nazi's called themselves a 'socialist' party, but they were anything but socialist. Labels do not matter man, only material conditions do.

Castro might be a communist, he might want to build socialism, but Cuba is not (and cannot be) a communist country since capitalism is still the prevailing social order. The Cuban Revolution wasn't even a actual proletarian revolution, it was actually a 'National Liberatiion' movement (something most Marxists do not support anyway, though some do). Castro's goal was NOT the overthrow of capitalism, but simply the liberation of the Cuban people from the US sponsored dictator Batista, and the preservation of Cuban culture being altered or destroyed by Western imperialism. And indeed, the Cuban people have prospered much better under Castro than they did Batista - this is a COLD, HARD fact whether you acknowledge it or not, and the statistical data and evidence support this (for instance if we look at the literacy rate of Cubans during Batista and Castro, 60% and 99.8%, respectively). This isn't to say everything Castro has done is great - in many ways his national liberation movement can be seen as reactionary to some extent since national liberation movements tend to preserve or restore a particular culture or nationalism, rather than destroy a class dictatorship (though his did this to some extent, though it obviously still has class distinctions). Do you see the difference here? What I described here is a material analysis (though undoubtedly comrades with a greater knowledge of the history of the Cuban Revolution would be able to provide you with a better and more comprehensive analysis than myself) of the Cuban Revolution, as opposed to an idealist "Castro is bloody tyrant, he killed millions of people that damn communist, blah blah blah!!!", which doesn't explain or help us understand anything.

But if you want to know why countries that are called 'communist' tend to be more authoritarian, the answer is because of capitalism, and that a global proletarian revolution has not yet materialized since they have, also due to capitalism and due to the extreme sectarianism of the left, been unable to form themselves into a revolutionary force. Part of Marxism is understanding why this is the case using a historical material analysis, and how it can be changed. When revolutions are isolated, as was the case in the USSR and Cuba for instance, it is easy for capitalism to attack it and crush it from all sides. From a socialist perspective, if you have spent years (perhaps even decades) trying to build socialism but are surrounded by a global, hostile capitalist world...this presents a dilemma - 1. you either let imperialist nations invade your borders and restore capitalism in full, or 2. You try to hold on to the socialist progress you have made, but under these conditions of isolation, resource scarcity, and only being limited to resources you already have and resources given to you by nations that support your revolution, you face a perversion of socialism and fall into authoritarianism, because the odds are so stacked against you....then it makes for great bourgeois propaganda who point out and say "see, socialism doesn't work" (a useless non-materialist analysis, since all revolutions have their own unique circumstances), even though it was the capitalist nations that MADE it not work, because they do not want it to work. It's like saying a single, working-class mother who is working 3 jobs to feed her children and make ends meet is just lazy and not working hard enough to better her situation, thats the capitalist mentality and rationale - destroy the lives of others and then victim blame. Fucking a, I HATE this system. With a passion....it really is an effort for me to make these posts honestly w/o my blood beginning to boil. Anyways...

Contrary to popular belief, socialism is not a organization of society that works only in small populations - its actually quite the oppposite. It DOESN'T work in small populations (which is why the whole 'socialism in one country' philosophy of Stalin was bound to fail). Capitalism is a global system, and therefore socialism, its anti-thesis will need to be also for it to work. Simple geopolitics here.

You mean Communism will remove the human idea to covet someone else's "stuff"? Because "Stuff" isn't just material stuff. Let's deal with the easiest to point out.

I'm married. I have a beautiful wife.
You want to sleep with my wife.
And she decides to sleep with you.
And I catch you sleeping with my wife.
And in a stupid rage, I kill you both.

What happens to me?

The problem with this is that you assume relationships between people will stay the same under communism as they are now - this is highly presumptuous, and very deterministic! No Marxist would dare make such a bold prediction, yet you do it freely - this is typical of telological idealists who believe human nature is some fixed intrinsic concept that assumes people are ALWAYS the same (hint: they are not, and demonstrably so). Marriage between 1 man and 1 women is a bourgeois concept, and was originally done for property purposes (and in most cases still is). You assume polyamorous relationships will not exist, which under communism is a very strong possibility that they would since monogamous relationships are a product bourgeois society. Even under capitalism, polyamorous relationships while still very stigmatized, are becoming more common - though such a relationship isn't beneficial since most industrialized western societies recognize marriage between two people, usually 1 man 1 women, and the economic and social benefits are much greater (which is why marriage, ultimately, is tied to private property). If your wife wants to sleep with me (or anyone else) she has a right to do so without fear of you killing her. She is NOT your fucking property (nor are you hers), as you seem to imply. Does this make it right for her to do? Not necessarily, but neither do you have the right to physically harm her or the person she slept with. In a communist society, if you guys decide ahead of time to have a monogamous relationship, that is your preference that you are entitled to, but if she cheats on you, you cannot kill her, just as you cannot do so now. And vice versa. The only difference is, in a communist society, it will be the community, instead of a state, that decides your fate if you did such a thing. Most socialists tend to be more forgiving than capitalists, because we have a less cynical view towards human nature, so you may actually be punished less harshly than you would under capitalism. But who knows for sure, it would probably depend on the particular community you lived in, as well as the particular nature and circumstances of the situation.

You are so obsessed with the idea that Communism (the "REAL" Communism) wipes out all of the materialist based inequalities in the world.

but it doesn't remove jealousy.
It doesn't remove adultery.

Nor does it claim to. But again, you presume relationships will be the same as they are now, which is idealistic, and faulty logic. And again, adultery is a bourgeois concept - since marriage implies you are one anothers property (though usually the woman belongs to the man since patriarchal relationships predate capitalism even, but continued well into it). Not that I am against marriage if you two want to have a monogamous relationship, do your thing. But what applies to you doesn't necessarily apply to others. If I want to have a relationship with 2, 3, or more women (or men), whose to say I cant, in a communist society? In a capitalist society, I may still be able to do it, but not without being scoffed at, discriminated against, stared at, or judged by others that view my life style as "fringe", "undesirable", or too far outside what is acceptable in our culture, etc.....and that is the whole point I am making here in a critique of capitalist social relationships. The reason I can safely assume things will be so different under communism is due to a material analysis of past systems - people in different social organizations of society, be it tribal society, slavery, feudalism, or capitalism all had very different class structures (or lack thereof in the case of tribal/hunter gatherer society), technology, culture, institutions; and thus their views, behavior, and thought processes, as well as their entire conception of the world around them and how they interacted with it were very different from one another. There is absolutely no reason NOT to believe that the nature, behavior, mentality and outlook of people in a communist organization of society will differ radically than under capitalism, or any other given social organization.

It doesn't remove people who will steal. My Son's mother could ask her grandparents for ANYTHING. They would give her money to go buy drugs if it meant that she would not steal from someone. She has anything and everything she could ever want. She just had to ask.
2 months ago, instead of asking them for money, she stole their 50" LCD TV out of the basement, and got high.

Why does your son's mother get high in the first place? Probably because it feels good and takes her away from reality for a bit, which means there is probably something in life that does NOT make her feel good. Most people who do drugs do so because of the daily stresses of living under capitalism, financial or security issues, working long hard hours, or any number of other factors. Then they become co-dependent on the drug, physically. I do the same thing, except with video games, to help me escape the stress and harsh reality of living under capitalism - even if it takes me away only temporarily and I have to wake up the next day and face it all over again. No one is gonna steal your personal property in a communist society man - if somebody wants something, they can have someone who is capable within the community produce it for them, and they produce something that other person needs with an equal labor value in return. And if someone did happen to steal a personal item of yours, well, like with anything else, it would be up to the community to decide what to do.

What do you do with Drug Dealers? Will you go Brave New World, and hand out drugs with their weekly pay?
These are serious questions. This isn't "ahistorical idealism and 'appeal to emotion' politics "

These are real questions that you seem to have a problem with. The minute that anything is questioned, you treat it as a troll type thing.

Drugs very likely would be legalized, so there would be no need to "sell" them (in the context of which you are referring to). Interestingly enough, drug use is very likely to be reduced greatly since communism will be a much less stressful environment than capitalism. Shit, even under capitalism, the legalization of drugs in some states has already reduced the usage compared to nations where they are still criminalized. If people don't have to live from paycheck to paycheck anymore, they can work the jobs they want to (so long as they are capable), produce the goods THEY want to produce instead of some boss wants them to, have access to quality medical care and education without worrying about finances or discrimination, believe me....the amount of drug usage AND selling is going to be way down from what it is now. I am quite confident that many drugs (except those vital for medical purposes obviously) would eventually not even be produced anymore, or very little since there would be such little demand for them, and there is no longer a profit motive from selling them illegally as they are in many places now. Of course, these are just my thoughts, some other comrades may disagree.

And I stand by my previous assertion, that Communism is a great theory on paper. You just won't see it ever happen the way it looks on paper.

Presumptuous. There was a time when people said we would never walk on the moon either. If you could go back to the middle ages in a time machine and bring them here, they'd fucking shit themselves at how different our world is from the one they came from. Hell even someone from 50 years ago would shit themselves now probably.

Humans have a long and storied history of not being able to live in a society that espouses the ideology. Call it Human Nature, Call it the Original Sin, whatever you want. Humans have a penchant to destroy, and be hierarchical, lord over those who they think are weaker. That's what my Bourgeois Capitalist Education taught me. And I agree. After lots of thought, I agree.

And they taught you wrong (probably on purpose). Humans have a penchant to destroy, be hierarchical, lord over those who they view as weaker AS A RESULT OF LIVING IN CLASS BASED SOCIETIES. There is overwhelming archeological evidence that hunter/gatherer societies were very highly egalitarian in structure, and there was no state. Humans in fact, in these societies were very cooperative with one another, otherwise they wouldn't have been able to live and evolve for over 100,000 years - they were actually a form of 'primitive communism' if you will. If we were the savages that idiots like Hobbes and todays bourgeois philosophers make us out to be, we would have never made it out of the trees. But here we are. Enlightenment philosophers were progressive and perhaps even brilliant thinkers for their time, but now, they are just outdated, backwards, and plain silly to me.

Class based societies have existed for only a very tiny portion of our existence, somewhere between 5-10,000 years, and capitalism has only existed for the blink of an eye (about 250-350 years give or take). The whole notion that humans are destructive and selfish is based on a cynical view of human nature used as propaganda to justify one groups oppression of another, under capitalism we here it under such absurd statements that "capitalism is the natural order of things". It is ANYTHING BUT the natural order of things, or it would have existed since the beginning of human evolution, but it has not. Not even close. The whole human nature argument that capitalists use to justify their privileged position is easily disproved by using a material analysis of both our history and pre-history. It is actually capitalism, not communism, that is a betrayal of our nature, and the first 100-150,000 years of human evolution, which was essentially classless, is pretty solid evidence of this.

Humans are actually very rational, adaptive creatures that can adjust to a variety of environments. The reason class socities developed to begin with was a change in the mode of production and technology. In tribal/hunter-gatherer societies, people labored and produced what they needed to survive, and that was it - it didn't result in a surplus of goods because there were no bosses that existed that we had to produce a surplus of goods for, which they would extract as a profit for themselves. The change in technology and the mode of production came during The Agricultural Revolution, when surpluses of goods started being produced - and it was this where classes began to form because a stronger few found they could horde the surplus resources for themselves, and exploit those who were weaker. This was the first development of the first class based societies (slavery) which culminated in the formation of large empires like the Roman Republic - the accumulation of goods and wealth required the formation of a centralized power - the state - to protect the interests of the ruling class, and thus began the history of class struggles - all of which have either resulted in the common ruin of the involved conflicting classes by economic and social decay, or by the revolutionary overthrow of the ruling class by the ruled class. Hunter/gatherer and tribal societies lacked a state, because there were no classes, thus no state was needed. Only the proletarian has the ability to put an end to all class struggle, and build a society based on common ownership to the means of production, where goods are produced based on human need, and not for profit and exploitation. Capitalism will ultimately meet the same fate as prior class systems have - it will either be destroyed by a revolutionary working class who then create a new, more just and humane society that sees its own class interests met, or it will result in some form of barbarism or other economic and social catastrophe for the human race. As Marxists, we want to ensure the former takes place, and prevent the latter from happening.

I too, had a bourgeois education (and to a great extent still do) like most here probably did, and it took me some 15-20 years to figure out that virtually almost everything I was taught in my primary education, outside of math and maybe a couple science classes, was a lie, a misconception, or a half-truth designed to indoctrinate me with capitalist ideology. In college, there is still plenty of bourgeois indoctrination going on (not quite as bad as when I was in high school, since college encourages critical thinking a bit more, but definitely still there), but at least now my bullshit detectors go off when it happens, whereas in high school and before we were just fed information and told to accept it as truth, and we more or less did. As a result, most people have a very poor or limited conception of how the world really works, and a very ahistorical understanding of human interaction in general. Marxism is the most stupendous, logical, and so far, the highest form of analysis for understanding the material world in which we live. It is a very different perspective and way of looking at the world to be sure, and it is a more complex one as well. I've only been a Marxist for roughly two years and I am still overwhelmed at how complex it can be to understand and apply its methods to events sometimes, yet at the same time it is incredibly logical and as a system of thought it makes perfect sense to me, with its materialist conception of history and dialectical way of thinking.

The closest we'll ever get to communism as a theory is probably socialism. Past that, and it really starts to fall apart.

Did you see this in your crystal ball as well? Not sure what you mean here anyway, since most Marxists use the terms socialism and communism interchangeably and not sure where you got the idea that they are different. I guess for Marxist-Leninists there is a distinction between the two. I however, am not a Marxist-Leninist.