Red Death - The Horrors Of Communism

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Yes Stalin did use communism to justify atrocities, much like people in history have used religion to justify atrocities...doesn't nessisarily mean the religion at hand encourages such behavior. So yeah communism doesn't encourage such atrocities. If tyranny could end up becoming unavoidable that would still be failed communism resulting in a toltalitarian state like I mentioned before., not a successful example of communism. Also there is no room for dictatorship in communism period....no matter what you call it.

I'm well aware of the fact that Karl Marx never encouraged violence. Violence is an indirect consequence of communism, though, and it has been present in absolutely every large scale attempt at communism. Thus, we can conclude that communism doesn't work. People from the petite-burgeois who all of a sudden get absolute power, aren't able to keep their hands away from the cookie jar.

Communism will happen when there is no more cookies to grab. (or mabye nothing but small irrelevant crumbs) When people are done with authoritarianism. Power hungry have no power to obtain. Don't become a cookie crumb.

Revolutions do not necessarily reward those motivated by altruism; at least not in the case of collectivist ideologies. If there are no cookies to grab, then communism is essentially just equal sharing of misery.

Collectivism and individualism are misnomers, they both depend on each other. Micromanaging is not freedom. In the process of becoming a slave master; you enslave yourself. My freedom depends on the freedom of others.

You know, it's is possible to say your nation is one thing for propaganda purposes while it's actually something else entirely. For instance, the Nazi Party. They promised socialist policies and a close relationship to the Catholic Church. Then they turned around and screwed over the working class and the Church was just used for propaganda purposes (which was fairly successful, since a number of priests were willing participants).

Actual Communism is supposed to place the means of production in the hands of the workers, and the government is just supposed to make sure assets are properly distributed and not consolidated in one place. Stalin and Kim Il-Sung promised this, and then proceeded to consolidate all of the wealth within the Party elites and their friends. Which is pretty much what capitalist society does without apology.



Wealthy=/=A bastion of human rights



Except Chavez was nearly ousted by a military coup arranged by the CIA. After violent protests in which many people were shot/sniped, the palace guard arrested the military officials and arranged to have Chavez return from exile.



You said America can't be blamed. And no, Chavez's most vocal opponents are what little middle/upper class that Venezuela had. Guess why.

Rejecting the CIA's role in South America and the middle-east as negligible is intellectually dishonest.

Socialism isn't the regulations on child labor and unsafe working conditions, the people largely responsible for that are journalists and sheer forbearance.

Unions and strikes are sh***y for everyone who isn't on strike. I got left on a train in the middle of nowhere because some union arse decided he didn't have to do his job. Unions and strikes can shove it. All they do is make the workers into whiny drama queens who sass the boss. Complete disregard for the customer. Clinton did a better job being a husband.

Oh no, not boss sassing! Won't somebody think of the executives?

its called class struggle. The interests of management and workers are irreconcilable.

If workers are facing reducing wages or declining working conditions they have no recourse but to strike. Their allegiances aren't to the customers. If services are curtailed because of strikes, i don't blame the workers I blame the management that provoked the strike in the first place because more often than not its the product of penny pinching and profit orientated decisions rather than the greater good.

Nobody forced them to do s**t!

BOOHOO! This attitude of disregard for the customer and complete entitlement is a bunch of hysterical bs!

All unions ever do is fight for them selves, and for what, NOTHING!

How many effing regulations do these Whine Arse™s need to make sure they don't forget to wear a helmet?

Huh, I got a broken leg because I didn't look the hell where I was going...UNIONS HELLLPPPP,THE RICH PEOPLE MADE ME STUPID, GIMMIE MONEY!! !!

Its a never ending group of perpetual quitters who do nothing for the customer unless they feel like it get them more money.
That is all unions are. Need good working conditions cause your a sissy? Call an effing representative!! !! !! The consumer doesn't have time for your bs!! !

I come from a union household, and I can tell you they don't make workers "into whiny drama queens who sass the boss." It wasn't just journalists who had accomplished workers rights, but rather, it was by and large guys like my Dad and Grandfather who had practiced their right as Americans to protest to get what they want. You know why wages have been stagnating, why benefits have been cut, and why companies have gotten away with outsourcing jobs in this country? Because unions have been made out to be the bad guys, and have seen their influence diminish.

yes, the old libertarian cannard of ''if you don't like it, you can quit''. The freedom of choice under a free market, especially one under the current climate is a fallacy.

You can scarcely quit in an environment where you have 5 or more unemployed individuals chasing the same job, and especially not in the USA when you may have your entitlement to medical treatment and that of your family attached to your job.


Screw the customer. If workers don't stand up for themselves, then the conditions of their workplace will deteriorate. The reason why workers have it better in the west as opposed to sweatshops in south east asia isnt the inherent 'niceness' of western employers, it is the tradition of western workers unionising and sticking up for themselves.

Next time you are enjoying your saturday off work, or getting paid time off, you have a union shop steward to thank for that.

Forget it, appletheclown is probably a bosses child. He is so far up their backsides he is practically chewing their caviar and lobster.

Its like to trying to debate industrial relations with Ayn Rand or the guy off the monopoly logo.

The hyperbole and dramaticism of opening thread subject matter says it all really.

I'm going to be Machinist! I'm still not going to be in any effing union! I love dirt, fumes, metal, and arcing that can kill!

This is a bunch of bs.

HA! Your calling me rich! This is becoming entertaining! Although, I do recall my great aunt owning a chemical lab that made circuits for missiles, my grandfather started as a machinist, then became an engineer, and that my great grandfather was a machinist for 44 years straight.
So maybe I'm not poor, but I'm not some pushover who doesn't know how to weld, or is afraid of dangerous working conditions.
Machining is dangerous inherently.

When you quote me can you please stick my name in the response, I thought I was reading a response to Kurgan and then my own words were being quoted. As to the statement above, I never equated the two. LKL defended the Chavez Government on the grounds that it was successful in lifting people out of poverty, I agreed that there had been progress on that in Venezuela. So I don't know how a person who actually read my statement would reach the conclusion that I was equating the two together.



So what? How does this effect the identification of an independent variable?



I have no idea where you are broadcasting from at this point. I never said the US could not be blamed, anywhere. The issue I pointed to was the simplification of complex politics into ideological points of view (I will put the last paragraph of my post below so you can compare). The US is involved in Latin American and has made mistakes, I said that in the first sentence of the statement (I will underline your points that cannot be reconciled with my own post). I take the accusation seriously but you really should look to your own account of my prose, because it is fundamentally inaccurate and seems deliberately misleading.

"The mistake of the United States in Latin America was to see all issues through the prism of the Cold War, it obscured the realities of what was going on and driving things. On this, reform movements were Soviet Plots and Socialist Governments were seen as violating the Monroe Doctrine. It seems that by continuing to see things through a simplistic lens, leftists like Chomsky and yourself are repeating the very same mistake that is at the heart of the criticism they level at the feet of US involvement in the region. On such a view Chavez resists imperialism and he is authoritarian because he is resisting creeping interference. However, when one looks at the opposition to Chavez style rule in Venezuela, it becomes clear that much of the opposition he faces is leftist and not sterotypically reactionary. Rather, such rule faces a broad coalition of concern, from Journalists, to socialists and industrialists as well. As such your position does not recommend itself to me and I must reject it. I don't see the US as a universal boogeyman and so things that occur in the world don't have to be smashed to fit my preconceived narratives."