The forgotten Holocaust

Oblivious · Dec 18, 2003, 02:17 AM

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Capitalism is a vague term, I believe it was invented by Marx (although I might be wrong).

Communism is an ambiguous term: many different entities from many different domains are called "communist". There are many social, economic, political *defined* theories or systems that bear the name "communist"; capitalism is defined more or less as the opposite of *some* of those (social and economical).There are/were political parties that entitle themselves "communist"; to my knowledge there is no Capitalist Party anywhere in the world. The political opposite of Communism is Democracy.

I can't agree with you. Democracy is a method for making governmental decisions which enables input from everyone. It's polar opposite would be Monarchy ( or Dictatorship, Totalitarianism ) in which decisions are made by a single individual. Communism is an economic policy that promotes the welfare of the individual regardless of his/her abilities and, more importantly, disabilities. It's polar opposite is capitalism which is an economic system which promotes the welfare a few of individuals with selected abilities. Democratic and Communistic policies do not intersect.

Also I would like to point out that there are capitalist parties all over the world. It is the de facto standard for a political party to espouse a decision making system as well as an economic policy. In fact, I can't imagine a nation operating without either. Parties such as the American Republicans and Democrats are capitalist parties. The fact that they don't chose to name themselves "The Capitalist American Party" doesn't mean that they aren't [capitalist]. edit

You just can't judge a book by it's cover. And like I said earlier: I think that the term "Communist" is misused, abused and misunderstood.

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Why Marx? To my knowledge, he came up with the term Communism. People calling themselves communists usually refer to Marx, or - without names - to his theories. To put it briefly: the historical class antagonism between the Rich and the Poor will eventually result in the elimination of the former (as a social class) and the institution of a society without private property (the source of all evil) where social classes will be obsolete.

But does this "elimination" have to be violent? You demonize the process by pointing at Marx. I don't believe that everything he said is gospel. His ideas were a reflection of his environment, his upbginging and his times.

I personally don't believe that anything good will come about through violence. Why should it? I also think we are all reasonable people - we can definitely resist killing each other.

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This is my turn to not quite follow you. You mean, if I buy a car, I don't own it?

You own it, at least in our society you do. When you buy a car in our society the entire society agrees that the car is now yours. That is why you own it. On the other hand we could easily decide that you are a drug dealer and that you are not worthy of owning that car; then have the police seize it. We do this all the time.

The point is ownership is just society linking you with some object. You do not own the car because you gave someone little green peices of paper. If you want to try this principle out: try "owning" something without society's consent - you will be arrested for theft.

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There are too many things here. First, the prospect of "buying" - if not owning - a car will make me work harder to earn more. In a communist state, material motivation is eliminated, so basicly to have people improve their work (in order to achieve any form of progress, economical, technological, scientifical), you need some other form of motivation.

I think that, at first, people will be less motivated to work without the same level of material profit. But I think we will find other motivations.

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Secondly, if I own a car and want it to function, I will have to personally assume responsability: keep it in a garage, clean it etc. In a communist state, that car will be everybody's, which ultimately means "nobody's". Someone might come and take the car right when I needed it, and nobody will care about it's state anyway.

No that car is yours to use and to maintain. No one will come and take your car from you without some bad consequences. Society assigned you that car and if you mess with the system you will end up spending time in prison ( in this case for theft ).

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You might say that there would be a car for everybody in the Communist state... Marx thought so, that communism will appear in a rich society, economically functional and capable of covering the needs of each of it's citizens. His prediction was England

Instead, his theories - the communist theory - really appealed to the masses in underdevelopped Russia.

It is statistically improbable that at any given point in time the entire world will all posess some thing. This includes everything from pants to televisions to 10 fingers on two hands. I don't see why anyone should be upset by this. Would you like to be exactly the same as everyone else in the world? ( Now that would be scary.

!! )

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So what can be motivating for the citizens of a Communist country? In theory, people would understand that everything is everybody's, and act responsibly towards public property. This doesn't seem absurd, after all people don't throw cigarette butts on the pavement, or paint walls with paint spray... Not in the quiet rich neighbourhoods, where they have better education and less stress...

This seems like almost two seperate points.

What is motivation? Motivation is what makes me write these words, it's what makes the world wake in the morning. We all have our own personal motivations. Without profit we can still be motivated by technological achievment, scientific discovery, exploration, love, faith.... anything. People will gain respect from their peers for their accomplishments and this is motivation in itself. I will not lose the will to live just because I can't look at my fat bank account every morning.

There was a time when the world rejected democracy. Now we treasure it. I see no reason why we can't or shouldn't accept communism.

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You see my point? If the masses are uneducated - civically, politically etc. - the communist state will not work. This was Lenin's problem, and subsequently Stalin's. When the formerly opressed mouzhiks finally had the land on their hands, they discovered they liked private property, and gave the finger to the theory they didn't understand anyway. They dissed the kolkhoz (kolektiva khoziaystva, "collective agricultural property", or maybe cooperative ~).

You are saying that the world is not ready for communism. Do you believe that the world will never be ready for it? Should we sit idly when there is a promising future within reach?

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What was there to be done? The only thing that seemed to be working was intimidation. To intimidate 200M you will have to push some 10M old ladies down the stairs. And don't be too hard on Stalin, he didn't kill innocent people: they were all guilty of not accepting (or understanding) the beatiful Idea. They were the Enemy of the People, the Greedy, the kulaks (rich peasants). It was communism or them millions. What would YOU choose?

Communism is about helping people, not killing them. So you will not find me pushing old ladies down stairwells.

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As long as communism remains outside this world, I promise to have as much faith in it as I have in God

Seriously speaking, I CAN see the beauty of sharing things with people you have no previous knowledge of. Surprisingly enough, in Romania, the only place where your idea actually worked was a small village by the sea (spent all my summers there since 88), where there was this camping site... most people who came there thought of themselves as hippies (which they were not, they weren't dropouts, just wore long hair, played lousy guitar, got drunk and shared most things). What's surprising about this is that it has always been a subject of intimidation from the government, and resisted mostly because some of their own kids liked it there. Ironic, isn't it?

Re-reading these, I didn't write a good part of what I intended to... The "new man" theory they came up with, in order to explain the failure of the masses to swallow marxism... If Man has to be reformed, than how can these be in it's own interest?

As for [Mao's] China, well, one has to see to believe. My father taught a course in Beijing in 76 I think, and came back with a lot of pictures and stories. They all wore the same blue clothes, and my father said they didn't "own" them, they - the clothes - belonged to "the people". Some make like the idea, I hate it. I want my jeans, and shirts to be mine, I hate uniforms, I'm sorry if this makes me a dinosaur, but that's the way it is.

Be good

merry

I think that you are too pessimistic.

All the world needs is some more honest people like you and a little more faith. Then communism can bloom.

BWX · Dec 18, 2003, 03:31 AM

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Originally posted by Oblivious
I think that, at first, people will be less motivated to work without the same level of material profit. But I think we will find other motivations.

Like what? Being drawn and quartered if you don't comply? You do know what that means right? Something I've seen communist governments use to "motivate" someone watching the event.

UberLord · Dec 18, 2003, 10:01 AM

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Originally posted by JavaFox
You can't differentiate between economics and politics in a Communist system. Both need to exist in full force for that system to "work"

Why?

They said if man was meant to fly then God would have given us wings.
Just because no country has tried democracy with communism doesn't mean it won't work.

BWX · Dec 18, 2003, 10:44 AM

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Originally posted by UberLord
Why?

They said if man was meant to fly then God would have given us wings.

God gave us brains intelligent enough to build machines that could fly- same thing.

If God meant for us to have the internet we would have cat5 cables coming out of out butts too? No.

UberLord · Dec 18, 2003, 12:50 PM

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Originally posted by BWX232
God gave us brains intelligent enough to build machines that could fly- same thing.

If God meant for us to have the internet we would have cat5 cables coming out of out butts too? No.

The point I was making is that when man sets his mind to make something work or happen, what we percieve to be impossible can become possible.

Also remember that social thinking changes over time. Years ago it was socially acceptable to smoke and take drugs in public. Today it's frowned upon. Then things like divorce, sex before marriage and same sex lovers were also frowned upon but these days are accepted as the norm.

Today a democratic communist country is impracticle and for the most part impossible with the present social climate where I live.

Maybe I'm just a dreamer of a utopia that I will never experience.
But then without dreamers we wouldn't have things such as the internet running up a cat 5 cable into your butt

BWX · Dec 18, 2003, 03:19 PM

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Originally posted by UberLord

But then without dreamers we wouldn't have things such as the internet running up a cat 5 cable into your butt

LOL- yeah, I'm sure it'll happen though. Eeek....