When choosing between evil and evil, you can always choose good(franco debate)

[Strike For The South]

All Communist States are/were Communists only in name.

What's the reason for that?

[InsaneApache]

It's the same old tired cliche trotted out by those on the left who deny reality.

You know the one that says that socialism hasn't failed because it hasn't been tried yet. Pathetic.

[LittleGrizzly]

To remove all our personal bias out the equasion lets think of it in a different way....

Some guy, lets call him Marx, comes up with an amazing way to make pies, he writes a book listing the basics but never gets to try out his own recipe, a while later theres another guy who's quite fond of pies, lets call him Stalin, stalin and a bunch of friends get together and decide to try out marx's pie recipe, but when it comes to making the pie stalin realised he could make a pie that would work out far better for him than marx's pie would, so he makes some slight adjustments and makes his pie....

The pie goes terribly! it works out fine for stalin but causes misery for almost everyone else

Years down the line when discussing pie recipe's someone criticised marx's pie recipe, pointing out how Stalin, Castro and many others tried it and failed, someone then correctly pointed out that stalin castro and the like all used thier own recipe's roughly based off marx's but fundamentally different thanks to the changes they made....

It is clearly a logical fallacy that marx's pie recipe is tried and failed...

[Incongruous]

Exactly, Lenin was the first to show what Communists really are, peasant slayers, mass murderers and tyrants.

That is the reality of communism.

[Ironside]

What's the reason for that?

To win revolutions it seems to be best to have a small, but very focused group, usually very powerhungry (and sometimes delusional).

The last stage of communism (when the state is more or less disolved) is rather the opposite, so the true ideologues doesn't really want power, thus giving them a tendency to ignore politics a bit too much. That's a fine recipy to be undermined and ending up killed by the more powerhungry ones.

Exactly, Lenin was the first to show what Communists really are, peasant slayers, mass murderers and tyrants.

That is the reality of communism.

That's why the Spanish civil war had been interesting if the (general lack of) international support for the left had been different, as it would then had the chance to develop without or with very little stalinistic influence. Not sure were it would've ended up, but it's certain that it would, atleast initially, been less repressive than the Nationalists and Franco.

[HoreTore]

What so funny Brenus? Compare it to happy communist countries whom were allowed to rise under safe protection of USSR.

Why not compare it to Spains neighbor, France? Apart from WW2, I can't seem to think of a time they had death squadrons or anything like that... Which is why sane people support democracy, and only democracy.

You know the one that says that socialism hasn't failed because it hasn't been tried yet. Pathetic.

I think western europe is more than enough proof that socialism works splendidly.

And you do know that the current PM of Spain is a socialist, right? Seen any death squads lately?

[CountArach]

It's the same old tired cliche trotted out by those on the left who deny reality.

You know the one that says that socialism hasn't failed because it hasn't been tried yet. Pathetic.

Utopian Socialism and true Communism have never been tried. Nor will they ever be.

[Husar]

Yes, it is clearly proven that everybody who tries to make a pie according to Marx's recipe will see all those nice other ingredients and be tempted to put some of them into his pie, making the pie worse.
So whether Marx's pie is actually good or bad can never be found out because the process of making it is obviously so flawed that one can never ever make that pie. Now that begs the question how a recipe that can never result in the intended pie and instead always leads to poisoned pies due to inevitable user errors is a good recipe?

[KrooK]

People gloryfing socialism here should remember that there have never been real socialism, fascism and communism in the history. No white-black situation into life. We can compare existing states that claim themselves fascist and socialists.
I see "socialist" countries of western europe. France - problems with immingrants, Spain - like France, Italy - like France. Thx for this socialism where your country becames muslim republic with sharijat.
On the other side of the world country closest to communism were .... Kampucza. Red Khmers practically executed workers revolution and as a result..... 1/4 of population murdered, country ruined and rest saved by..... Vietnamese offensive.

People - when will you understand that socialism is dead as reasonable way of development. It could work only if 90% of population were workes (and Saints - to leave all private property). But workers have never been more than 40%. Classic example of democracy that 40% can never win elections vs 60%. And then 40% starts revolution, which makes socialism and breaks everything. There is joke here - communism is loved by people whom never experienced it. If France and Spain finally became 100% socialist countries, trust me - 10 years later you would come here to clean streets.

[Ronin]

What's the reason for that?

Communism is deeply flawed on a basic level because it goes against human nature......at some point on the road to communism someone or a small group of people will always seize power and turn into a dictatorship.....so you can never reach the target...the process defeats itself.

there have been a number of countries governments that have claimed the name of communism...an those governments did horrible things ...but none where communist...they are your run of the mill dictatorships.

It's the same old tired cliche trotted out by those on the left who deny reality.

You know the one that says that socialism hasn't failed because it hasn't been tried yet. Pathetic.

I´m not a supporter of communism but I would have to agree that it has never been tried....but because it simply is not possible to do on a large scale....maybe like a small town could live in at totally communistic way...but an entire society? no way...the method is flawed and doesn´t support it.

[CountArach]

I´m not a supporter of communism but I would have to agree that it has never been tried....but because it simply is not possible to do on a large scale....maybe like a small town could live in at totally communistic way...but an entire society? no way...the method is flawed and doesn´t support it.

Spot on. Anarchist colonies do exist that are run on a cashless society, but Communism for a State can't work because it requires two things:
1) A State to redistribute the property.
then...
2) The non-existence of a State.
Marx never explained how to get from 1 to 2.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

I thought it was supposed to go from a "dictatorship of the workers" socialist state and then essentially disband into communism.

[Koga No Goshi]

Communism is deeply flawed on a basic level because it goes against human nature......at some point on the road to communism someone or a small group of people will always seize power and turn into a dictatorship.....so you can never reach the target...the process defeats itself.

there have been a number of countries governments that have claimed the name of communism...an those governments did horrible things ...but none where communist...they are your run of the mill dictatorships.

Although I do not know if Communism would apply so much as a Socialist format, many Native communities -- most in fact-- were cashless and many had controls over personal acquisition of "wealth." (Though it wouldn't have been thought of as "wealth" as much as "that guy is hogging way too many animal skins and using up more animals than he needs".) A lot of that "acquisitive" nature was more in the direction of prestige than ownership of property, though you can find some instances of personal wealth acquisition in Native societies, especially large southern hemisphere ones. With a lot of the nomadic tribes, though, the socialist themes were pretty overt, including limits on how hunters couldn't eat what they hunted and fishermen couldn't eat what they caught. This made sense pragmatically as not overstretching your sustainable (if properly accessed in moderation) resources was a survival trait for non-agricultural societies. The idea instead of "how much corn can I get for myself right this very moment" was more like "how much corn will there be for everyone season after season" so to speak.

There are also many very humorous stories about the Spanish priests in the Mission System trying to ... "get across" the idea of labor for profit, which was apparently quite foreign to many of their "wards." Trying to get them to make bricks, for instance, for the construction of other buildings, there was this story of how the Indians would make the bricks until they filled up the small warehouse behind the church where they were told to stack the bricks. When it was done, they would all immediately stop working and go to various leisure activities. And the priests (the whole "work ethic = godliness = good Christian morals" thing being part of the missionary charter for conversion) would have a cow and be like, "Why did you stop working?!" The Indians (from these particular tribes at least) did not have any conception of the notion of making more than what you needed, because of some imaginary (monetary) future value in the excess. Very foreign concept. (This is also, incidentally, why so many Indians got into trouble even in the early 20th century with the concept of "credit", which was often exploitively "introduced" to Indian communities as a way of getting them to unwittingly get involved so deeply that before you knew it, their land was taken away from them for the coverage of debts for things like kettles and blankets and animal feed.)

We could get into, I'm sure, myriad discussions over which of these socities were more consumerist and which were more socialist, and to what degree they were socialist, and if their socialist hallmarks could have weathered a much larger society. But I think to say socialism has not and can never work because of something inborn into human nature is false, I've always thought so, and it's very much a westernism to assume that all of human society has always been "x way" and that therefore it's universal human nature. The whole concept of surplus and profit is man-made... so how can desire for it be inborn? Doesn't make sense.

[Incongruous]

Spot on. Anarchist colonies do exist that are run on a cashless society, but Communism for a State can't work because it requires two things:
1) A State to redistribute the property.
then...
2) The non-existence of a State.
Marx never explained how to get from 1 to 2.

The Communists and the Anarchists disagreed very loudly with one another, now I have nothing against anarchists, but Communists are bad news, it is impossible for one party to understand the needs of every strand of society. It also requires a revolution, revolutions are always bloody and nasty.

[lars573]

What's the reason for that?

Because they all bent Marx's theories to work inside a state. Which if his theories were rigidly imposed would cease to exist, some how.

[Koga No Goshi]

Because they all bent Marx's theories to work inside a state. Which if his theories were rigidly imposed would cease to exist, some how.

If you're going to be academic about it don't be academic halfway and then leave out the rest to make a snark. ;)

The reasons they don't work and the reason Communism is NOT Marxism is becuase neither Russia nor China fulfilled the prerequisites of Marx's descriptions of a society on the verge of a proletarian revolution-- a highly advanced capitalism where wealth was so prevalent that many did not even need to work. The U.S. and the richer parts of Western Europe would be much closer to Marx's preconditions of a socialist emergence than agrarian Russia and China were at the time of their revolutions.

Socialism is NOT an imperialist government type, though people have equated it with Communism, especially Americans. Socialism is basically a worker/social movement where (I am really paraphrasing it here) people reject the notion that ownership is the pure and only function by which distribution of wealth and resources should be determined in society.

Personally, I always found the theories of Marx, himself, in literal form, fanciful. It's like reading a fantasy book because I think humans who've been mentally and culturally submissive and enslaved to the notion of "you work, if you weren't born inheriting a lot of property and businesses" for so many centuries/milenna are unlikely to all wake up one day and decide to reject it. That doesn't mean, however, that the basic premise of "wealth does not have to be distributed on the basis of paying the lowest possible wage, with everything else going to the owner of the business" is untrue or unworkable in any form. States in Europe obviously have adapted elements of the basic philosophy with generally very positive results in terms of overall quality of life, access to housing and income, and educational levels.

And while on the topic, I would submit that, for as much as everyone "agrees" that "pure socialism can't work", the exact same is true of pure free market capitalism. It would be a cesspool.

[lars573]

If you're going to be academic about it don't be academic halfway and then leave out the rest to make a snark. ;)

The reasons they don't work and the reason Communism is NOT Marxism is becuase neither Russia nor China fulfilled the prerequisites of Marx's descriptions of a society on the verge of a proletarian revolution-- a highly advanced capitalism where wealth was so prevalent that many did not even need to work. The U.S. and the richer parts of Western Europe would be much closer to Marx's preconditions of a socialist emergence than agrarian Russia and China were at the time of their revolutions.

Socialism is NOT an imperialist government type, though people have equated it with Communism, especially Americans. Socialism is basically a worker/social movement where (I am really paraphrasing it here) people reject the notion that ownership is the pure and only function by which distribution of wealth and resources should be determined in society.

Personally, I always found the theories of Marx, himself, in literal form, fanciful. It's like reading a fantasy book because I think humans who've been mentally and culturally submissive and enslaved to the notion of "you work, if you weren't born inheriting a lot of property and businesses" for so many centuries/milenna are unlikely to all wake up one day and decide to reject it. That doesn't mean, however, that the basic premise of "wealth does not have to be distributed on the basis of paying the lowest possible wage, with everything else going to the owner of the business" is untrue or unworkable in any form. States in Europe obviously have adapted elements of the basic philosophy with generally very positive results in terms of overall quality of life, access to housing and income, and educational levels.

And while on the topic, I would submit that, for as much as everyone "agrees" that "pure socialism can't work", the exact same is true of pure free market capitalism. It would be a cesspool.

Well Marx was a communist, he labeled himself as such. Marxism is a brand of communism. He also though that Russia might be able to skip the industrial phase and go straight from agrarian to communism. He also said that any ideology would be corrupted in Russia. He also refused to believe that an industrial society like Britain, France, or the US (of the pure free market system, like they were in his time)could change to make the lot of the working class livable. Which they did, just not in his lifetime.

[Koga No Goshi]

Well Marx was a communist, he labeled himself as such. Marxism is a brand of communism. He also though that Russia might be able to skip the industrial phase and go straight from agrarian to communism. He also said that any ideology would be corrupted in Russia.

Yes and? I don't recall anyone saying Marx was a genius and had it all figured out. I already stated that I thought his predictions of how socialist revolutions would occur were unrealistic.

He also refused to believe that an industrial society like Britain, France, or the US (of the pure free market system, like they were in his time)could change to make the lot of the working class livable. Which they did, just not in his lifetime.

Then in a way he was correct, no? The societies which embraced more progressive changes were different societies than the ones he saw and wrote about during his time. In the U.S., the role of unions and organized labor cannot be overstated in terms of some of the changes that came about to improve working conditions. And that movement faced a lot of hostility and retribution once it was identified and castigated as "red/communist."

[CountArach]

Well Marx was a communist, he labeled himself as such. Marxism is a brand of communism. He also though that Russia might be able to skip the industrial phase and go straight from agrarian to communism. He also said that any ideology would be corrupted in Russia. He also refused to believe that an industrial society like Britain, France, or the US (of the pure free market system, like they were in his time)could change to make the lot of the working class livable. Which they did, just not in his lifetime.

At the end of Marx's life he said he was not a Communist under any definition of the day. Further, he considered himself a Socialist, not a Communist.

I thought it was supposed to go from a "dictatorship of the workers" socialist state and then essentially disband into communism.

That's the idea, yes, but Marx never said how to disband.

[Kralizec]

No offense intended, but the argument that "socialism has never been tried before" is utter tripe. It's like saying that Lenin or Mao and their assorted ilk sat around a table and say "we have two options: A) implement socialism, or B) not"

The two key features of state-socialism (i.e. Marxism) are:
1) all goods, or at least means of production, belong to the state
2) because the state is democratic, ownership is collective
Communism in Marx' vision was a post-state society with no concept of property since noone was entitled to exclude others from use of any and all goods.

Lenin thought that he could create a socialist state in a pre-industrial country by establishing a short-lived dictatorship; he feared that if the country was ruled democraticly the "proletariat" would settle for less than they could potentially get and would stay stuck in trade union consciousness. So he launched a coup d'etat (not a popular revolution) against the provisional Kerensky government and decided that it would enter the history books as the October Revolution.
You could argue that the socialist "revolution" in Russia failed but not that socialism wasn't tried. To do so would be equating "trying" with "succeeding". The truth is that it started out as an honest attempt to forcibly socialise the economy and evolved into a bureaucratic one-party state, where Stalin soon managed to squeeze his way to the top.

That said, Marx' predictions in regards to industrialised societies are evidently false. He argued that an industrial society with an educated and exploited workforce could, in the long run, not satisfy both the proletariat's demands and the elite's desire to cling onto their positions and that these unsurpassable contradictions would inevitably erupt into a revolution. In reality extended voter suffrage and bargaining between unions and employers led to a situation where everybody's reasonably satisfied and where the majority has zero desire to screw it all up by following utopian pipe dreams.
I would not call the success of western European nations the result of "socialism" because they're all mixed economies; they're succesful because they managed to avoid real socialism. Most Europeans who call themselves socialists are better described as social democrats because they believe in redestributing the fruits of a relatively free market. Personally I'd reserve the label socialist for those few who believe in truly collectivised economies and who use "capitalism" to describe both the present and the 19th century.

[LittleGrizzly]

You could argue that the socialist "revolution" in Russia failed but not that socialism wasn't tried. To do so would be equating "trying" with "succeeding". The truth is that it started out as an honest attempt to forcibly socialise the economy and evolved into a bureaucratic one-party state, where Stalin soon managed to squeeze his way to the top.

I have to disagree its probably more of a semantics argument but to argue socailism is failed as a political ideaology because of the attempt you mention would be similar to saying Kerry failed as an american president...

The statements are eqaully misleading, more accurate statements that avoid confusion would be... socialism has never been tested as a political ideaology and kerry has never been tested as an american president...

[Kralizec]

I didn't say that socialism is impossible (though I am leaning towards the position that it is at best very unpractical and unappealing besides)
I said that there have been attempts to establish socialism and that you can't claim otherwise because none of them worked out as intended.

The second-last paragraph merely says that Marx was no Hari Seldon and that he was wrong about the inevitability of a revolution.

[LittleGrizzly]

I didn't say that socialism is impossible (though I am leaning towards the position that it is at best very unpractical and unappealing besides)

I have to agree

I said that there have been attempts to establish socialism and that you can't claim otherwise because none of them worked out as intended.

I didn't claim there hadn't been attempts to establish socialism but there is a huge gap between trying to establish socailism and trying socialism.. its this line i have a problem with

but the argument that "socialism has never been tried before" is utter tripe.

That is the line CA used and he is perfectly right!

Example
Kerry tries and fails to become US president

what has failed here
a) kerry as a us president
or
b) kerry becoming a us president

calling an ideaology failed when you mean the transition to the ideaology failed is at best misleading at worst wrong...

[Kralizec]

I think that you're trying to say that because Soviet Russia never managed to live up to Marx' image of a socialist paradise, we can't draw conclusions about the feasibility of such a paradise?

"Socialism" can refer to either the political movement and ideology or to the economic system. Russia was in the hands of socialists, who tried (to establish) socialism as a functioning system and failed.

[LittleGrizzly]

I think that you're trying to say that because Soviet Russia never managed to live up to Marx' image of a socialist paradise, we can't draw conclusions about the feasibility of such a paradise?

Kinda, basically im saying we can't draw conclusions about it from russia, assuming that lenin was sticking to the plan we can draw conclusions about the transition to socialism but not socailism in action

"Socialism" can refer to either the political movement and ideology or to the economic system. Russia was in the hands of socialists, who tried (to establish) socialism as a functioning system and failed.

Yeah, imo that bracketed bit does make alot of difference in the sentence, i now the argument is picky and i wasn't even going to say anything when IA made his point, but when CA made the argument and you disagreed i couldn't bite my toungue any longer...

[Koga No Goshi]

It's the same old tired cliche trotted out by those on the left who deny reality.

You know the one that says that socialism hasn't failed because it hasn't been tried yet. Pathetic.

How is it a tired old cliche? Read Marx, then study pretty much any country that called itself Socialist or Communist. None of them fit the preconditions Marx laid out. So either the countries are wrong to call themselves Socialist, or Marx was wrong and those countries really were Socialist and he set a definition of Socialism which is no good.

It's really one or the other.... we're not spinning our wheels for fun.

Canada or the EU, for instance, could call itself a free market capitalism. Over, and over, and over, and over. Would that make them one?

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

Marx's theory of communism wasn't the only theory of communism, I'm sure you're aware.

[Koga No Goshi]

Marx's theory of communism wasn't the only theory of communism, I'm sure you're aware.

Of course. But the point stands. You can argue some distorted secondary interpretation of socialism by someone else failed, but if the discussion point is about Marx and basic socialism, there isn't a society out there to point to. There are only societies which have adopted in some fashion the basic philosophy, such as many EU nations.

[LittleGrizzly]

Its fairly simple really, if you want to say stalinism, leninism and maoism have all been tried and failed you will have no argument from me, or if you clarify when you make the statement that you mean one of the bastardised versions created by Stalin or Mao then thats fine.

Communism as a political and economic theory was created by marx in thoery, like (i think it was da vinci im not sure though) da vinci designed the first plane in theory, but if someone took da vinci's theoratical plane and made some changes and the thing didn't work would it be da vinci's theoratical plane (or marx's communism theory) that didn't work or would it whoever made the plane (stalin, mao ect.) and made changes plane that didn't work ?

Its like taking a thoeratical science experiment and putting it into practice, but then deciding that you can improve on the original experiment, when the experiment is a disastier what you have actually tested is some new science experiment based loosely on the last one, so you can say the new experiment (stalinism leninism ect.) failed but you cannot draw fair conclusions on the original theoratical experiment as fundamental aspects had been changed for the new experiment

You could make criticisms about how easy the theoratical experiment is to achieve but to say the original experiment has been tested is just flat out wrong....