Well so am I, but at least our disagreement came honestly and I'm content with that.Quote:
Originally Posted by Caravel
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Well so am I, but at least our disagreement came honestly and I'm content with that.Quote:
Originally Posted by Caravel
Well, in that case, you're left only with pacifist. And there are, unfortunately, very few of those...Quote:
Originally Posted by Husar
I'm talking about the christianity we have in the real world, and the large majority are not very pacifist, are they? You have armies and wars everywhere... And the liberal world we now live in, was created when christianity and religion in general lost its stranglehold on society.
In my mind, a pacifist christian theocracy is about as likely as the world getting rid of poverty. It's far more likely to take the shape of a very intolerant and highly conservative society where most fun(like sex, blasphemy and alcohol) is severely punished with the laws of the old testament.
Uhm, no. There are about as many varieties of communism/socialism as there are socialists in the world. And the differences are like the differences between religions. Compare Mao and Lenin, for example. Mao loved the farmers and China, Lenin despised farmers and most things russian(actually using it as a derogatory term)...Quote:
Originally Posted by Caravel
Mao and Lenin were true lovers of peace as well. God knows they killed less folks than Billy Graham. You're not really saying that socialism and communism hasn't killed, oh, let's see MILLIONS of people and enslaved over a billion? But thank God (or Che I guess) they don't hear about that evil bastard Jesus. :laugh4:Quote:
Originally Posted by HoreTore
Caravel: I agree that yes, theocratic/religion-based states have had significantly longer life spans than communism states. I could perhaps try to argue that given the proper conditions, the differences in the historical context, blah, blah, but I'm not interested in following that path.
However, I hope you do note that, while communist states have only lived for at most, what, 70-80 years, their "efficiency" (i.e., their death toll) much surpasses that of any theocracy I can think of. Let me put it this way, if a "performance" criterion would be the number of people killed per unit of time, communism would win hands down.
Neither, thanks.
Democracy all the way!
Of course not, Dave, I'm not blind. You won't hear a good word about any of them from me, except that they knew how to get power, and how to use it...
I'm a socialist and pacifist, and don't like people getting killed, for any reason... If you got the impression that I'm thinking the USSR was any better, I apologize. On one level, I think it would be better, but when it comes to killings, then no.
That's good, I just feel that human nature is incapable of peaceful socialism because it just flies in the face of what being human is (I guess unfortunately) but it is a failed experiment that has failed over and over again and with MANY lives lost in the name of perfecting it. Hey, the same can be said about any Theocracy, because human nature is unable to remain in peace without greed. Basically the whole arguement is flawed becausewe as humans... suck!!!:wall:Quote:
Originally Posted by HoreTore
I said Blanqui tough ~;) . The blanquist didn't have the exact same ideas of Auguste Blanqui.Quote:
Originally Posted by HoreTore
Again communism can't be reduced historically to marxism only. And that famous frase is just one part of marxist ideology. Marxist ideology, is anti-ideologies (an evident contradiction), and he includes religion on the group of ideologies (so is law -and its various theories and doctrines, except marxist-, so is politics -and its various theories and doctrines, except marxist-, etc). He says, following Feurbach (who wasn't a communist), that ideologies alienate man.Quote:
But there was a wide range of people there. Republicans, mutulaists, marx etc. There were religious people there, but none of them shaped marxism. "Religion; Opium to the people" accurately describes a marxist view of religion.
You've to look at the whole history of socialism. There was and there is something called Christian Socialism, and many communist ideals (if not the very first principle of communism -social and economic equality) was born from religion or religious sociology and politics (if we consider that to be that group of sociological and political doctrines in wich the religious element predominates).Quote:
The only religious socialist I can remember who had an influence on anything, was a priest who talked with Lenin after a strike in around 1905(I think it was after he wrote "What is to be done?"). In fact, Lenin, and most others, saw them as mentally challenged...
Well the three were pretty similar in how they proceeded, they basically varied because one happened on Germany, one on Italy and one on Spain, very different countries. National Socialism was even less defined as a doctrine than facism was.Quote:
Regarding Fascism, remember that Hitler was a National Socialist, not a fascist. Fascism refers to the rule of Mussolini. Franco was sympathetic, but not fascist himself.
Peaceful socialism is working well in western europe. Revolutionary socialism has failed because it created an authoritarian state. The social democrats of western europe took a different path than the revolutionaries. A vastly more succesful one...Quote:
Originally Posted by Devastatin Dave
I'll take Norway as my example, as, well, I'm Norwegian...
The Norwegian Labour party was founded in 1887, as a revolutionary party. It split into two parties because of the communist international where Lenin sought to spread his revolution. The majority refused to accept the bolsheviks, while the minority remained loyal and founded the Norwegian Communist party. Labour abandoned the revolution in the early 30's to become reformists instead. It has followed the doctrine quite closely until about 20 years or so ago, when it began privatizing state property... However, that will(hopefully) change, as the left opposition is getting a lot stronger and dragging the right with them...
Although we have our years of conservative misery once in a while, the socialist left(arguably) is the strongest political force here.
It kind of annoys me when people claim that socialism hasn't worked any place in the world, as it is working well here...
Oh, and you're free to call me a dreamer, but I believe that the greediness of human nature can be eradicated... And I'm quite optimistic by nature...
Sorry, didn't notice the absence of the "'s"..Quote:
Originally Posted by Soulforged
Well, there are also Jewish and Muslim socialism, and I believe there was a Buddhist one as well... However, none of them had an influence on the shape of the communist states we have seen, which was my point, not that they didn't have an impact on socialist thought...
As for fascism, well, I don't feel I know enough to debate it... I'm hoping the fascism thread will turn out to be a nice thread so people can learn from it, instead of degenerating into people throwing mud at each other...
No problem it has happened a thousand times to me.:2thumbsup:Quote:
Originally Posted by HoreTore
I know. But my point is that marxist communism is an ideology, an ideology is a system of ideas, and many of the ideas wich form it have been there long before Marx came to this planet. Of course if we were discussing the actual forms of any of this political systems, then two undetailed options wouldn't be enough, since there's communisms and theocracies, not just Communism and Theocracy.Quote:
Well, there are also Jewish and Muslim socialism, and I believe there was a Buddhist one as well... However, none of them had an influence on the shape of the communist states we have seen, which was my point, not that they didn't have an impact on socialist thought...
Not much to learn tough. The great majority of the books treating the history of ideas give it two or three pages maximum (comparing it with liberalism wich usually has at least 50), nazism gets about the same and franquism gets two tops. If you want to learn about its "ideology", wich barely exists, then you can grab one of those books and have a light read, or simply read a simple history book since there's nothing much to learn from facism than what happened on reality.Quote:
As for fascism, well, I don't feel I know enough to debate it... I'm hoping the fascism thread will turn out to be a nice thread so people can learn from it, instead of degenerating into people throwing mud at each other...