Comparing communists to liberals

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Well, there were different stages of communism in Russia. The way it started was, yes, the suppressed groups wanted to overthrow the oppressor and, in fact, they went as far as throwing naked parties in rebellion against morality that they associated with the Czar. But then the late stages of communism were different: they had new elite and new moral principles they upheld: and no, you wouldn't see any naked parties at the late soviet union -- on the contrary they were criticizing the west for them. I think the turn-around started from Stalin (in fact Stalin was the one who criminalized homosexuality). Now, I wouldn't praise Stalin since mass arrests are worse than everything good he might have done put together; but I guess if I go to Brezhnev time (we had Lenin 1917-1924, Stalin 1924-1953, Khruschev 1953-1964, Brezhnev 1964-1982, Andropov 1982-1984, Chernenko 1984-1985 and Gorbachev 1985-1991) then I guess Brezhnev was when conservative and moral principles were upheld "without" mass arrests. By the way I was 2 when Brezhnev died so I wasn't there to see it, but I guess I can sort of infer from the leftovers as well as from the stories I was told.

Also, I wasn't talking about the difference between revolution and voting. Rather I was talking about the actual regime, and I am saying that the regime communists were trying to bring about at the late soviet union is different from the regime that is being brought about here in the US, since late soviet regime upheld conservative principles that american liberals are opposing.

Last edited by QFT on 07 Aug 2019, 6:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I see. You're very focused on the moral code of things which is not a topic I get into much. Any humans forcing a moral code on other humans aside from protection from aggression/violence is very disturbing to me.

Whether forcing morality is a good thing or a bad thing is a different topic. But the point is: the moral code that communists force is very different from the moral code the liberals force -- herein lies my point that they are different from each other.

I would add "communist Russia" and add a time frame to clarify, but sure, I get your point.
Communism is just a style of government and not unique to Russia. There have been several different flavors of it over time with different moral codes enforced.
Modern day US Liberals and late Soviet communists definitely carried a different moral code. What they share in common is that both are willing and dependent on the state to enforce that moral code and that's all I see. Arrogant statists...

Well, statist doesn't imply communist. For instance, Spanish Inquisition as well as Nazi Germany were statists too, but nobody calls them Communist.

Every communist is a statist, not every statist is a communist.

Exactly. So then maybe American liberals are examples of statists that are "not" communist?

While in practice this is true, it's also true that in practice everyone is a statist because anarchists never take power. The vast majority of anarchists are anarcho-communists, so if anything being a communist makes you less likely to be a statist.

Libertarian forms of communism do share common political stances with liberalism.

Anarchism for example, is critical towards all forms of domination. Because of this; consistent anarchists must reject racism, except LGBT people and support feminist causes. To do otherwise would be making peace with unjust hierarchies.

And I thought being around a group of people with autism would free me from people making up their own definitions of words...

I wonder what the word would be for people who instead of being statist, trust in capitalist greed and really believe the oil oligarchs for instance have our best interests at heart. Like people who if it was up to them we'd get rid of the government and just have the corporations run everything.

Glad you used an expression "liberal forms of communism", since not all forms of communism are "liberal" -- not the soviet one anyway. I guess since the soviet communism is the most common communism there is, it makes me think that "liberal forms of communism" would be quite rare indeed (unless you are trying to misuse that term in order to emphasize a point or something).



Actually they wouldn't have to reject racism. On the contrary, if a private agency "chooses" to be racist in its hiring, it is free to do so. "If" the idea that Whites are smarter than blacks is wrong, then the companies that erroneously believe this will be "punished" due to failing to hire best qualified candidate, thus being out-competed by the companies that do. If, on the other hand, the idea that Whites are smarter is true, then the racist companies might be "rewarded" by winning the competition. But, in either case, any company will have a right to either be racist -- or not -- by its own wishes.

As far as LGBT goes, the same thing: the companies will have a right to refuse to make a cake for gay marriage if they choose so -- or they have a right to make one. Now, if you look at American liberals and Russian communists, you have two extremes: American liberals would force you to make a cake for gay marriage, and Russian communists will force you not to. Well, anarchists will be right in the middle, since they would just say its up to you.

The way anarchist "would" be pro-gay is that the government won't be able to stop people from engaging in homosexuality. But then, by the same token, it also won't be able to stop people from marrying multiple wifes, having incest, bestiality, and so forth. That is actually one of the weirdest things I see about gay rights movement: if people agree that all those other kinds of sexual perversion are immoral, what makes homosexuality so special that they have to go out of their way to accommodate it? But I guess its a different topic.

As far as feminism goes, I guess it depends on "which" feminist cause you are talking about. As far as abortion, sure, anarchists would support abortion. But, by the same token, they would legalize any other kind of murder too: if an adult decides to murder another adult, you won't have any government to punish him. It would strictly be a fight between those two adults and whoever stronger will win, there won't be any police to come for help. So in this case, sure, if you can murder another adult, you will be able to murder an infant too. But thats not where you want it to go, is it?

As far as other feminist causes, that don't involve abortion, I am not so sure actually. What if the person who does a job hiring is sexist and decides he doesn't want to hire any women. Under the anarchy, nobody would be able to force him to. The only "punishment" for not hiring women is that his company will be out-competed by the other company that hires women. But what if he has such a strong view against hiring women (lets say, he is a muslim) that it doesn't matter to him? Well, then he wouldn't be hiring women, and nobody will be able to do anything about it.

I am confused why you wouldn't even like liberals when you had actually wrote lot of nice things about them.

People who think liberals are into communism really need to read The Giver because that was communism. So many people would be opposed to that lifestyle.

There is socialism. That is social security, public libraries and schools, the police, welfare, WIC, affordable housing, Medicaid, this is all socialism right here because we all pay into this system to help out our community and people in need. Conservatives are against it but yet are totally fine with public libraries and the police for some reason.

Liberals believe in helping people in need and believe healthcare is a right. I have never seen any liberals say everything should be handed out like candy like if you want a nice big house, you are entitled to it or entitled to a new game system.

What I don't like about them is that they aren't consistent in granting freedoms -- the ones that "are" consistent would be libertarians. As far as liberals go, they "decide" as to what freedom they grant and what they don't. For example, liberals would be "in favor" of freedom when it comes to homosexuality, yet they are opposed to freedom when it comes to higher taxes, they are in favor of freedom when it comes to abortion, they are opposed to freedom when it comes to gun control, etc.

Now, conservatives are equally hypocritical by having opposite opinion on the above issues (in order not to be hypocritical you have to agree with liberals on half of them and agree with conservatives on the other half -- and that would make you a libertarian). What I don't like about liberals though is the "message" those policies send: by "consistently" imposing humanist ideas "without" imposing Gods ideas, you are sending a message that God is less important than humanism. If you were, instead, to say "okay I am not imposing either of the two" then I am fine with that: you aren't saying God is less important, you are just keeping your hands out of it. But if you "do" impose "some" moral standards -- and they consistently contradict God's standards -- thats when I have an issue. So I guess if I were to "pick a dictator" I would rather have a dictator that favors God rather than opposes God -- although ideally I wouldn't want to have any dictator altogether.

Now, even though what I said in this message seems to favor liberatarian idea, I see its problems too. If there is no government, who would be stopping the murder for example? So I guess we do need a government, just a small government. But still, I don't really think we have to be picking between Democrats and Republicans, since this kind of dichotomy brainwashed Americans into thinking that global warming has anything to do with race relations, when it doesn't. I personally would be in favor of multiple parties, that way we would be able to vote more on issue by issue basis.



Actually, I disagree with the use of the word socialism in American context, as well. The reason for this is that the politics of Soviet Union was called "socialism" -- while the "communism" was its goal. And like I kept pointing out, what liberals are doing has nothing to do with soviet union.

But then again, could it be that in America they just use those terms in an entirely different way than they do in Russia? Maybe thats the reason I am so confused about what I keep hearing.



Well, the thing is that they help everyone who is low income -- and this pretty much motivates people not to work: why work if you can get money freely? In fact, there is a good possibility that in the long run the minorities would be better off under conservative policies since the life will push them to work harder -- which would be a lot of pain at first, but their grandchildren will thank them for it. I mean ask yourself: why are blacks still in this situation even though the slavery ended over 100 years ago -- and then contrast it with Jews who are doing very well, despite the fact that they were confinded to the ghettos throughout europe all the way until 19-th century? So the issue is not the past discrimination, the issue is that blacks can use it as an excuse to get liberal sympathies and not work hard.

We’re called libertarians.
It requires an enlightened citizenship who would withhold giving their money to businesses they don’t like and would cause the business to go bankrupt.

When under government control they have a monopoly on the service and act even worse than under free market conditions due to lack of recourse for their negative action.

It’s not as insane a philosophy as you seem to imagine. The system we have now allows a country, Saudi Arabia, to be the largest funder of terrorism, and the most complicit country in the 9/11 attacks to fly under the radar due to oil/government alliances... pick your poison wisely:

Last edited by Roboto on 10 Aug 2019, 1:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I said libertarian, not liberal.

Although liberalism shares commonalities with libertarian forms of communism, there are still ideological differences that prevent liberalism from being combined with communism.


I should note that the fact that the word "libertarian" originated in use from communist anarchist, Joseph Déjacque in 1857. He used the word "libertarian" instead of an anarchist to avoid government prosecution.


Libertarian Communism (ideologically speaking) isn't rare in the 21st century.


Social anarchism is much more prominent in the western world today in comparison to marxist-lenninism.

As of today; the anarchist subreddit has more readers than the "communist" one.

https://old.reddit.com/r/Anarchism/

https://old.reddit.com/r/communism/


Misunderstandings here

The main problem with these arguments is anarcho-communists aren't only interested in getting rid of the government. We want to change fundamental social relations in society.