Influence your thoughts and feelings

[Occhidiangela]

Cuba.

Everyone is educated, all are employed, there is almost no poverty, children have access to afterschool programs, medical care is free and open to all.  I've spent a lot of time down there recently, and as it's not very big, I've got to see it all, not just the tourist resorts.  The people in Cuba a genuinely happy for the most part.  There are of course extemists who oppose the government and are persecuted for it, but that happens in America too, hello Guatanamo Bay.

You are confusing corrupt goverment in general with communism.  Anywhere where government puts its needs ahead of its peoples will have problems similar to those in the old Soviet Union, China, et al.  Communism isn't perfect, especially with the high rate of corruption seen in communist governments.  Corruption happens in all levels of government regardless of the governing system however.  Do not blame communism for the evils of abuse of power and corruption.  It is possible to have communist government that is not corrupt and looks out more for its people that itself.

In most cases this doesn't happen.  The greed that rules a capitalistic nation, such as America, corrupts those with good intentions unless there is democratic control over who is in power.  In cases like that, you get places like Sweden.  Socialistic paridises.  The people elect the government who is bound by laws.  There are VERY high taxes, but everyone is extremely well educated, employed and cared for.

If a G8 nation embraced communism do you really think that it would suffer the same fate as an impovershed nation that does?  Do you abhor all socialist movements, or just communism?  Do you think that because someone has more money than someone else they are more deserving of care and education?

The spirit of communism is not many dominated by few, it is community - the many for the many, with goverment used as a tool to help with the distribution of resources.  That ideal may falter due to human nature, but I don't see how as an ideal it is evil.
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Ninjadruid

You appear to confuse autocratic socialism with Communism. A common mistake. If you recall Marx and his original framework, socialism is an interim stage to the Utopian ideal of the Communist state. You can't achieve communism, since in Communism, everyone has chosen to agree and the state slowsly evaporates.

Even if there are some successes in Cuba, the form of government the Communist Party runs there is at best "Communism, not quite there yet." Given Fidel's methods, he is simply another Latin American strong man running his country by force of will and his own considerable political savvy. He and his inner circly have chosen to implement some of the socialistic features that any society that would where socialism is the fundamental method.

Consider this quality standard for a country: how many people are trying to get in, and how many people are trying to get out? Apply it to Cuba. Are they free to do so if they want to? In Sweden, a fairly Socialist nation, yes. In Cuba?

Hmmmmm.

Occhi

[Guest]

At some point you need to call it what it is Occhi.

It no longer matters what Marx and Engal invisioned. What does matter is that the world has had 3 moderately successful goverments which called themselves Communist(they all lasted at least 50 years so they deswerve to be called "moderatly successful".)

All 3 of these were tyranical for the entire time they tried to be communistic.

[Guest]

BTW - Why are you talking to that poster.

Step back look at what he said. He doesnt believe that, he just wants a response. He is the definition of a troll(And Im prety sure hes a ban evader.)

[Occhidiangela]

BTW - Why are you talking to that poster.

Step back look at what he said. He doesnt believe that, he just wants a response. He is the definition of a troll(And Im prety sure hes a ban evader.)
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The reply was to the header topic, not the poster per se, as you should be able to surmise from the way I addressed the topic he linked, rather than the Void of Wit person who Lemmy banned.

As to your Communism is basically unable to free itself from autocratic, plutocratic, or oligarchic models . . . so far, so bad. Marx was wrong. So was Lenin.


Occhi

[Ashock]

Cuba.

Everyone is educated, all are employed, there is almost no poverty, children have access to afterschool programs, medical care is free and open to all.  I've spent a lot of time down there recently, and as it's not very big, I've got to see it all, not just the tourist resorts.  The people in Cuba a genuinely happy for the most part.  There are of course extemists who oppose the government and are persecuted for it, but that happens in America too, hello Guatanamo Bay.

You are confusing corrupt goverment in general with communism.  Anywhere where government puts its needs ahead of its peoples will have problems similar to those in the old Soviet Union, China, et al.  Communism isn't perfect, especially with the high rate of corruption seen in communist governments.  Corruption happens in all levels of government regardless of the governing system however.  Do not blame communism for the evils of abuse of power and corruption.  It is possible to have communist government that is not corrupt and looks out more for its people that itself.

In most cases this doesn't happen.  The greed that rules a capitalistic nation, such as America, corrupts those with good intentions unless there is democratic control over who is in power.  In cases like that, you get places like Sweden.  Socialistic paridises.  The people elect the government who is bound by laws.  There are VERY high taxes, but everyone is extremely well educated, employed and cared for.

If a G8 nation embraced communism do you really think that it would suffer the same fate as an impovershed nation that does?  Do you abhor all socialist movements, or just communism?  Do you think that because someone has more money than someone else they are more deserving of care and education?

The spirit of communism is not many dominated by few, it is community - the many for the many, with goverment used as a tool to help with the distribution of resources.  That ideal may falter due to human nature, but I don't see how as an ideal it is evil.
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Damn, reading this has almost made me nostalgic. It's like reading a textbook from 5th grade on the wonders of communism and the evils of capitalism. Thanks, that almost made me cry for my lost youth.


>>>>Everyone is educated - yes, they can read the communist manifesto and talk about the evils of capitalism.


>>>>All are employed - yet they make barely enough to eat. They also invent nothing, and do not strive to better themselves because there is no incentive.


>>>>there is almost no poverty - you're right. When everyone around you is poor, then no one is poor. Of course, Fidel and his buddies can afford a car or 2, but hey, they're the leaders, they're allowed.

>>>>children have access to afterschool programs - where if they happen to utter something that they've heard from their parents about their dislike of the government, they have a good chance to come home one day as orphans.

>>>>medical care is free and open to all - sure it's free. Unfortunately, to get any real medical care, people have to give bribes to doctors and nurses, usually bribes that cost more than a month's salary and bribes that do not guarantee any *real* care, just some care. For real care, they have to give larger bribes AND know the right people. But hey, they can sit at the hospital and wait for free and no bills come in the mail.


>>>>The people in Cuba a genuinely happy for the most part. There are of course extemists who oppose the government and are persecuted for it, but that happens in America too, hello Guatanamo Bay.<<<<

A, so those who oppose the regime are "extremists"? LOL, this is priceless. Whoever you are.... there are only 2 possibilities here. 1) Either you are actually this naive. In this case, there is really no point in arguing with you. 2) You are a communist, if not officially then unofficially. In that case, I have nothing to say to you.
Oh almost forgot. It could also be 3) You are trying to provoke me. In that case, see either of the above.

Personally, I think it is 4) All of the above.


Have a nice day.



-A

[Sir_Die_alot]

Hi,
That's the nature of the beast here in The Lounge (different 'rules' apply to the more focused fora of the LL). A thread will often diverge from the original topic and become something entirely different.&nbsp; Often more than once.&nbsp; That's the difference between a conversation group and a formal discussion group. Frankly, I love it -- it keeps the brain limber. :)

--Pete
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Also it's nice to see a troll rendered irrelevant in his own thread rather than the it just getting locked. ;)

[Guest]

It was 3 - and he won.

[--Pete]

Hi,

Welcome back.

As to your Communism is basically unable to free itself from autocratic, plutocratic, or oligarchic models . . . so far, so bad.&nbsp; Marx was wrong.&nbsp; So was Lenin.
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Actually, communism works fine. Just not for homo sapiens. But check out any bee colony or ant hill. ;)

The fundamental problem with communism is its basic underlying idea, often expressed as, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." That idealistic statement, just like Jefferson's, ". . . all men are created equal . . .", is impressive, even heart stirring. And totally wrong. No-one believes either statement, which is why we have leaders and followers. Which is why we have CEO's and NBA stars (the CEO's average more over a lifetime, the stars do better in any given year ;) ). And which is why communism must always be a failure for humanity.

I once heard, or read, the statement that, "Politics is the art of the possible. If the impossible is legislated, then a disastrous possible will occur instead."

Communism, as an economic model, could never exist except under a regime that forced it. The reason is simple. Those that are more talented, that have worked harder, that are more committed want rewards commensurate with their efforts. They want a 'prize', whether it be money, power, or a larger herd of cattle. But under communism, although they give more, they (theoretically) get the same as those they have outstripped. After all, their 'needs' are no greater than those without talent, without ambition, without commitment.

Since communism, as practiced, only leaves one form of power, and that is political, it funnels most of the motivated people into one field. This has two detrimental effects. First, other fields are being robbed of these motivated individuals. And, second, many of these people have no talent for leadership. The net result is failure at all levels. The political because it is dominated by political incompetents who must use force instead of persuasion to rule. And everything else because the people who could have run things were too busy being politicians. The end result? Gross inefficiency, lack of consumer goods, a large and corrupt bureaucracy (the result of no checks from the government), dissatisfaction that leads to a growing need for ever more severe restrictions and an ever more powerful state police to enforce them.

Mark and Engels evil? Maybe in a negligent fashion. More sophomoric than evil, I think. They were wise enough to see the extremes of unregulated capitalism around them. They were smart enough to deduce the opposite extreme from what they observed. But they were too stupid to see the lesson that history put before them time and time again: a social problem isn't solved by going to the opposite extreme. It is solved by finding some workable middle ground. Only when dealing with fanatics is that solution not immediately workable -- but if the fanatic is 'eliminated' (and any means *are* justified to do so (i.e., WW II) :) ), the middle ground solution becomes workable.

As an aside, although I used Occhi's post as a springboard, this post is actually a summary on my view on communism in general.

--Pete

[wakim]

Apologies, I added a winkie.&nbsp; Didn't mean to sound snarky.
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I took no offense; your advice is worth heeding.

On a side note, if one's words fail to express meaning with clarity, what good is it to make faces? :unsure: If words are found ambiguous is not more so a grin, a raised eyebrow, a wry smile, or a glance askew? N.B. a post earlier in this thread by whyBish:

(Jeunemaitre @ Aug 19 2005, 05:58 AM)
Most anything I type that is followed by the whistler is intended for humor, or at least half humor.

I always thought the whistler was for sarcasm and irony

[Occhidiangela]

It was 3 - and he won.
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How so? It appears Ashock PWNED him. But maybe I am blind to something obvious. Care to share?

Occhi

[Brother Laz]

Marx and Engels - evil. Read their works... in detail.

Not as evil as a government that lets people starve and die of curable diseases in the richest country of the earth. Communism may not work in reality, but 1) that doesn't make them evil, and 2) this isn't an excuse to take the exact opposite path.

Hey, Hitler was evil, let's do the exact opposite: down with the government, anarchy rules!

They strove to correct it by advocating violent changes, and the fact that communism can't be stagnant and has to expand in order to survive as a system (which it does). Worldwide violent changes.

Like the violent changes brought upon Africa and Asia by imperialistic capitalism? The Opium War anyone? WW1?

1) I was born there and have many relatives with whom I can talk about these things, who actually lived through them as adults...

Congrats, you discovered what everyone knows: stalinist dictatorship is the evil offspring of communism. Nazism is the evil offspring of capitalism, though.

It no longer matters what Marx and Engal invisioned. What does matter is that the world&nbsp; has had 3 moderately successful goverments which called themselves Communist(they all lasted at least 50 years so they deswerve to be called "moderatly successful".)

All 3 of these were tyranical for the entire time they tried to be communistic.

Yes, and it doesn't matter what John Smith envisioned because all of the capitalist states have and have had a serious poverty problem. See Victorian England, contemporary fridge villages near LA, etc. Nice try, though.

the middle ground solution becomes workable.

What middle ground solution? The current US solution is 95% towards capitalism, the only difference with the 19th century is the fact that the lower classes are silenced and won't ever revolt again.

......

Summary: yes, communism was invented as the 'other extreme' during the steamroller capitalism of the 19th century, and doesn't actually work.

At the other end is unbridled capitalism, which leads to increasingly widespread poverty. Due to unavoidable positive scale effects [which get more and more noticeable due to the increasing level of technology] there is no way to stop the larger companies from pushing the smaller companies off the market, decreasing the amount of jobs on offer and forcing more and more people into poverty. In the limit, you get a small group of very rich shareholders and everyone else lives in a cardboard box.

......

Modern technology makes people redundant. According to the theory, this causes the workers' wages to drop until it is more cost-efficient to employ more people than to use machines to do it, which would theoretically insure full employment. The problem is that machines are so much faster and better than workers that in order to reach this equilibrium, the workers' wages have to drop way below living wage.

Example: a newspaper printing machine can crank out thousands of newspapers in one hour for virtually free after the initial cost of purchase, there is no way human worker can compete with that. Those are lost jobs that will never come back.

Additionally, machines give their owners an advantage on the market, but are only affordable by the large companies. This is why economists are opposed to anti-trust laws, but they conveniently ignore the fact that less companies = less jobs. One newspaper company that prints 200K newspapers does not equal ten newspaper companies that print 20K newspapers a day.

And due to the low cost of operation of most technology, no matter how low the wages drop, this will generate hardly any new jobs, so the economy will drop below full employment, and the employment rate gets worse and worse as technology advances.

The worst example of positive scale effects is Amazon.com. Just how many employees does Amazon have, 500? 1000? Including truckers and forklift drivers. Yet Amazon, if the delivery time is reduced even more, could easily replace the majority of bookstores in the world. This equals millions of jobs lost. E-books? Even more jobs lost.

......

And not only do smaller companies stand no chance in the long term due to positive scale effects, but poorer civilians are also excluded. The way the economy works, a company will decide on a price and output that yields maximum profit or efficiency, then sell the output at the determined price. Very often, this does not fully saturate the market, but the cost of additional units outweighs the profits.

According to the theory, those left out are those for whom the product is not worth the price. However, sometimes those people do want the product but it is so expensive to them that they simply cannot afford it. The company could lower its prices to saturate the market, but this would cause its profits to drop and make the shareholders angry.

Example: medical aid in the US. Lowering the prices of prescription drugs would make them affordable to the very poor, but would cause an efficiency loss for the companies that produce them. So, they keep the prices high, avoidable deaths be damned.

......

In the end, to saturate the market or close to it, the prices need to be so low [due to increasing poverty] that maximum efficiency will be reached at lower and lower levels of output and higher and higher prices. As a result, the rich will mainly produce expensive goods for each other and the poor masses will have nothing.

......

I'm not claiming that communism is the end all solution. In fact, the lack of incentives to produce will lead to a collapse of industrial activity, unless the government forces the people to work and innovate, which is bound to happen sooner or later and we're back at square one.

......

Conclusion: at one end we have runaway capitalism, which inevitably leads to mass poverty and a small group of very wealthy people. At the other end we have communism, which inevitably leads to mass poverty and a small group of very wealthy people.

I suggest the happy medium, which is somewhere to the left of European socialism [everyone mentions SwEden, but many other European countries are close - for now].

There is a free market, but the government intervenes to prevent people from missing out on basic needs. This may slightly cut down on economic activity, due to the lowest profit projects ending up with negative profit and being cancelled, but you keep your citizens alive and off the streets, which more than makes up for this loss.

......

Phew!

[LemmingofGlory]

(And Im prety sure hes a ban evader.)

I see nothing that leads me to suspect NinjaDruid evaded any bannings.

-Lem

[Guest]

How so?&nbsp; It appears Ashock PWNED him.&nbsp; But maybe I am blind to something obvious.&nbsp; Care to share?

Occhi
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"3) You are trying to provoke me."

He provoked him into a big long answer. If Cuba actually cared about what he was saying - in that case Ashock would have indeed "owned" him.

[Guest]

Too long with too many mistakes to address everything, but heres a few things.

1
"Not as evil as a government that lets people starve and die of curable diseases in the richest country of the earth. Communism may not work in reality, but 1) that doesn't make them evil, and 2) this isn't an excuse to take the exact opposite path."

Thats dumb. A goverment is evaluated on its average effect on people and its ability to improve.

Communism failed utterly in both respects. Its reaonable to apply the evil tag to someone who created as system that hurt so many and helped so few. The notion of evil is indded subjective so people can define it many ways. The American or western European systems have issues indeed, but they do consistantly improve.

2
"Nazism is the evil offspring of capitalism, though."

Thats false - at least in the relative manner you relayed it.
History shows that Communism(not socialism) gets stuck in a totalitarian state.
Fascism on the other hand seems to be a result a bankrupt economy. Nazies never could have rose to power if France et al had not made a concious effort to keep Germany weak.

3 You are making the HUGE and general mistake of comparing capitalism to Communism.

"Capitalism" is a rather large umbrela title that should be compared to "socialism".



See these 3 conceptual mistakes up fronty I feel that nothing you said is well thought out.

[Chaerophon]

Mark and Engels evil? Maybe in a negligent fashion. More sophomoric than evil, I think. They were wise enough to see the extremes of unregulated capitalism around them. They were smart enough to deduce the opposite extreme from what they observed. But they were too stupid to see the lesson that history put before them time and time again: a social problem isn't solved by going to the opposite extreme. It is solved by finding some workable middle ground. Only when dealing with fanatics is that solution not immediately workable -- but if the fanatic is 'eliminated' (and any means *are* justified to do so (i.e., WW II) smile.gif ), the middle ground solution becomes workable.

As an aside, although I used Occhi's post as a springboard, this post is actually a summary on my view on communism in general.

Extremely well put, although I have always thought that you expect a bit too much of Marx and his compatriots. After all, the industrial revolution had no historical parallel. Engels, in particular, began to realize some of the error in his ways as he grew old.

[whyBish]

Welcome back.
Actually, communism works fine.&nbsp; Just not for homo sapiens.&nbsp; But check out any bee colony or ant hill. ;)
--Pete
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My personal feeling is that (for humans) communism works very well at very small scale groups (e.g. families and Iwi=>(tribes/clans)) This is because at least at the 'community' level there is:
- still the feedback loop to the leadership
- more cohesive 'world view' and goals of the members

[whyBish]

Yes, and it doesn't matter what John Smith

You mean Adam?

At the other end is unbridled capitalism, which leads to increasingly widespread poverty. Due to unavoidable positive scale effects [which get more and more noticeable due to the increasing level of technology] there is no way to stop the larger companies from pushing the smaller companies off the market, decreasing the amount of jobs on offer and forcing more and more people into poverty. In the limit, you get a small group of very rich shareholders and everyone else lives in a cardboard box.
etc...

You are doing a single iteration of a capitalist scenario without following through the feedback loops, so none of it really stands up.

Introduction of new technology may reduce jobs in the short term, but it also reduces the cost of living (a point that anti-'free trade' people also seem to forget). Plus it also adds jobs to higher added value enterprises (i.e. those that design / manufacture robotics)

The scenario where economies of scale reach limits where a portion of need is not met is very rare, particularly now we have such a global economy. The scenario on a small scale happens when a company is making the decision to open a new plant, but there is not enough demand to make it profitable. So at a larger level the scenario would only happen in the opening of a second plant, where the first plant already satisfies more than fifty percent of demand.

The scenario where rich shareholders are buying product off other rich shareholders and the poor can't afford to buy, forgets that unless there are large barriers to entry then we can't get to, and sustain, this scenario as competitors will be encouraged to start up and undercut.

[--Pete]

Hi,

My personal feeling is that (for humans) communism works very well at very small scale groups (e.g. families and Iwi=>(tribes/clans))&nbsp; This is because at least at the 'community' level there is:
- still the feedback loop to the leadership
- more cohesive 'world view' and goals of the members
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I don't think so. Communism is not just the process of "From all . . .", but fundamental to the concept is the participants' free and willing desire to be part of the process. This is not true in families, which are typically either a tyranny, or an oligarchy (as long as the parents are the oligarchies, a situation that is all too commonly not true). Thus the natural tendency for children to move out (and in and out and in, etc. in some cases ;) ).

In the case of tribes, clans, religious groups, etc., you can only have communism by permitting people to leave, indeed 'shunning' them if they don't comply with the rules. So, in effect, you have a commune, cut off from the main stream. They may adhere to the selfless rule of communism, but they are not the 'logical endpoint' of the Communist conception -- rather they are, at best, dead end escapes for a few people.

Perhaps this is all a matter of semantics. Perhaps it is just that I'm using 'communism' wrong, and should be saying 'Communism'. Indeed, it is a strange insight to see that 'Communism' as practiced is nothing like 'communism' as preached. So much difference on one letter's case -- and how do you distinguish 'C' and 'c' in conversation? ;)

--Pete

[Occhidiangela]

Hi,
I don't think so.  Communism is not just the process of "From all . . .", but fundamental to the concept is the participants' free and willing desire to be part of the process.  This is not true in families, which are typically either a tyranny, or an oligarchy (as long as the parents are the oligarchies, a situation that is all too commonly not true).  Thus the natural tendency for children to move out (and in and out and in, etc. in some cases ;) ).

In the case of tribes, clans, religious groups, etc.,  you can only have communism by permitting people to leave, indeed 'shunning' them if they don't comply with the rules.  So, in effect, you have a commune, cut off from the main stream.  They may adhere to the selfless rule of communism, but they are not the 'logical endpoint' of the Communist conception -- rather they are, at best, dead end escapes for a few people.

Perhaps this is all a matter of semantics.  Perhaps it is just that I'm using 'communism' wrong, and should be saying 'Communism'.  Indeed, it is a strange insight to see that 'Communism' as practiced is nothing like 'communism' as preached.  So much difference on one letter's case -- and how do you distinguish 'C' and 'c' in conversation? ;)

--Pete
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Maybe it is just me, but it seems to me that the theoretical basis for Communism is best treated as a work in Utopian thought. Delving into the slightly Hegelian for the moment, the true Communism is an ideal, of which any number of the models found in reality of communism or attempts thereat can only be a partial representation. (Hegel's ideal of Table versus the tables one finds in everyday life. Or was that Fichte? I forget.)

It still doesn't work, since the ideal of Communism is that it transforms an industrial society, which implies the large populations, scale, is likely diverse but not necessarily so. That societal model goes well beyond the commune, clan, or familial micro-social entity. As in computers, not every thing scales up and down smoothely.

A well exercised clan or family model gone macro would be found in Rennaisance Europe, Enlightenment Europe, and in a number of modern day Arab states. None of these approach Communism, however, there is a certain care and feeding of family members, and ostracism for being too far outside of norms (Osama, anyone?). That clan/commune reality points to Communism in the macro being fundamentally untenable, unless, per the usual philosopher's dream, we'd all start thinking alike and correctly: to whit, thinking like the philosopher in question. Since he is right, and the rest of us are just unelightened, we just need to . . . get our minds right. Eh, Luke? :rolleyes:

Occhi

[Ashock]

2
"Nazism is the evil offspring of capitalism, though."

Thats false - at least in the relative manner you relayed it.
History shows that Communism(not socialism) gets stuck in a totalitarian state.
Fascism on the other hand seems to be a result a bankrupt economy. Nazies never could have rose to power if France et al had not made a concious effort to keep Germany weak.

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Nazism rose to power because they were backed by communist russia. Did you know that many if not most of the better german generals in WW2 actually studied warfare in the USSR in the 1920's? They were also allowed wargames on Soviet soil during those times, when they were prohibited from that as a result of their loss in WW1.

The USSR was largely responsible for WW2 also. Let's see... 1939 - Germany grabs Poland... 1/2 of Poland. The other 1/2 is grabbed by the USSR, accompanied by their murder of 10s of thousands of Polish officers and later on blaming it on the Nazis. Russian-German non-aggression pact. It made sure that the Nazis could concentrate on fighting the inept French and the determined but weak British and not have to worry about the big smelly bear to the East who's army was easily 5-6 times the size of the German army.
Besides, people forget or simply do not know that while Germany was grabbing it's share, the USSR was helping their german friends out by giving it to Europe from the other end. Poland, parts of Rumania, the 3 Baltic states, attack on Finland.

So, France and England might have tried to keep Germany weak, but the USSR helped make Germany strong. Ultimately, it is the USSR (along with Germany) that is responsible for WW2 just as earlier it was in no small way responisble for the rise of the Nazis.


-A