Is Communism misunderstood?

That oldjar is a problem because under Communism such a government is supposed to eventually wither away. Problem is no such government will ever go away of it's own free will.

That Philxx is the problem with communism. It always morphs into Stalinism, Leninism, (Lenin was complicit in the starvation of about half the Ukraine)Maoism, Pol Potism, or the like; and once it morphs into somebodyism, it starts killng people to maintain power.

That gentlemen is the reality. It isn't about whether you or I like the truth or not but in this case the truth is the truth and it paints what passes for communism in this current world very darkly indeed.

 

I was wondering if a real Marxist would show up! I haven't gotten a chance to debate one since Daft Punk left these forums. Anyway, I'll try to keep this as non-polemical as possible, and I ask that you do the same

The proletariat is not new. It may have been new in Marx's day, but now it can hardly be called a new entity.

1. Free market capitalism has never killed anyone. Insofar as it has it is because citizens allowed their governments to poison the system itself.

2. As far as free markets have been allowed to exist society has thrived. Even the poorest in developed society live better than almost anyone in Marx's day. The existence of steady economic progress is an entirely novel historical phenomenon brought on by capitalism. The wealth generated in a year after a century of capitalistic development in a small portion of the world dwarfed anything that history had ever before seen

3. Marx's predictions of universal destitution have utterly failed to manifest. Workers today are far better off than they were in Marx's day, except in those areas that have experienced the smallest amount of capitalistic growth.

4. The government is the entity that has always polluted capitalism and made it anything else than a consumers democracy. Unfettered capitalism is the true system of the proletariat, for it is the only system that can guarantee the masses consistently increasing standards of living. Fascism and mixed economies have always been the economies of the rich.

5. Wage Slavery is an utter contradiction, wages are the opposite of slavery, meanwhile even if you buy into it, it clearly doesn't exist within the capitalist world.

Marx is, has, and always will be far more popular in academia than in the arms of the proletariat. I have never met a "normal" person who is interested in Marx, but I have met several who have studied him in colleges. I also know of very few who could actually decipher Marx without help from an instructor. Colleges are overwhelmingly leftists, and many poor and uneducated people (read hicks/rednecks) are likely to be more anti-Marx than anyone.

The USSR was not a worker's state as such, and Marx would have likely disavowed it on conception. Not because the people running it weren't necessarily Marxists (at first), but rather because Russia was too underdeveloped to implement the socialist system.

6. Marx never showed a "way out", indeed Marx should be irrelevant to a way out. He never wrote in depth about how the socialist revolution would occur or what would replace it. At best we have a vague and Utopian vision of communism. This vagueness is part of why "communism" has often been so dangerous, because it has no clear platform beyond anti-capitalism.

7. Marxist economics are fallacious and neo-classical economics surpasses it in every manner. It is able to do so since it looks at the base component of social interactions; individuals, not classes. It also puts to rest all of Marx's mystical positions on the labor theory of value and components of commodity value.

8. You just said that it was written over a century ago and that "nothing has changed". Lenin claimed that communism was growing "irresistibly", yet it is still a remarkably small political movement internationally. So why is it so true if it's also so empirically wrong?

 

Not according to history, facts and current events communism only brought hardship, poverty, regression, oppression, persecution and death to thousands. Capitalism allows anyone the opportunity to succeed and prosper.

 

Communism or Marxism is a modern form of serfdom that is why it failed.

 

How well is that working for us lately? And, even FDR's brand of socialism, not communism, is what enabled the US to become more well developed as a political-economy.

 

FDR's reform which is also known as the New Deal is actually socio-capitalism it focus on encouraging progressive program to help Americans during the great depression to rise up and strive to be successful with government assistance it initiated sub programs such as women's rights while communism regard any form of progression an unequal distribution of wealth, unequal opportunity and communist government involvement is to make sure that society remain depressed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Deal

The New Deal was a series of economic programs enacted in the United States between 1933 and 1936. They involved presidential executive orders or laws passed by Congress during the first term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The programs were in response to the Great Depression, and focused on what historians call the "3 Rs": Relief, Recovery, and Reform. That is Relief for the unemployed and poor; Recovery of the economy to normal levels; and Reform of the financial system to prevent a repeat depression

In communism it is "No relief, No Recovery and No reform".

 

It may only be due to a simple lack of enough morals to be better Angels on Earth who have not the need for the Expense of Government on Earth.

 

Why does the government need to go away?

 

We simply won't need the Expense of Government any longer.

 

Yes, the rich will pave the roads.

 

"Some" is a generalisation you certainly mean the "orthodox" European communist parties who receive between 1and 5% in elections. In fact the critics of USSR started as early as the 50's and as few (yes a generalisation but i am too lazy to dig marxists.org right now) pointed out then and the majority points out today Sovietia had state capitalism with the beurocrats playing the role of the bourgouois .
From what i have seen in this forums comrades are equally appaled with everything "central" and "government" .

In your later post you said that free markets never killed anyone, well , 5000 suicides only in Greece and about 4000 in Italy ...

(appologies for spelling no spell check in this PC)

 

There is certainly central planning within the market, and capital is steadily bringing us to the point where we have just one megacorperation. Today we already have corperations bigger than countries, centrally planning their production and finances. Indeed, some of these corperations are bigger than the old centrally planned countries.

 

I don't believe Lenin was alive during the Holodomor atrocity, and I'm pretty sure it was far less than half of the Ukranian population who were starved.

 

I think so too, but in what ways? If they invested more in making light industry and consumer goods production and distribution more efficient and significantly reduced military spending, they would have probably caught up to the U.S. economically. Also, I think the Soviet Union should have focused more on getting productivity out of workers instead of full employment as a goal. With these 2 things, a centrally planned economy is more efficient than a free market economy. When most people look at the causes of the fall of the Soviet Union, they come up with the wrong answer. It is not that a centrally planned economy is inefficient. It is that resources were directed in the wrong areas, and this could just as easily happen in a capitalist country.

 

Because the government is a capitalist organ of class repression.

 

Holdomor is mostly a myth. Sure, there was some suffering and starvation, but it wasn't any worse than the Great Depression in the U.S.

 

Oh it was far worst and i think the great father wanted to make a point to the Ukrainians for all those nationalist , anarchist uprisings and cooperation with the nazis (as much as this can make sense). It is no secret that Russians always looked down to anything Ukrainian (i think they still call them pigs).

 

Uh, yes it bloody was more than a myth. It was a deliberate genocide by starvation.

 

A christian now believes liberalism.

why am I not surprised?

 

Brain injury?

 

Lenin was still alive and Hlodomor was defintiely not a myth. Had a college professor back in the day whose grand dad lived through it. How he wound up in the states is a damn interestng story that I wish I knew more of.

 

Industrial automation could have ended any shortages of goods and services.

 

I think communism had certain good aspects, that many people overlook. And some forms of communism can be successfully incorporated into a capitalist system. But to live under a pure communist economy, I would not want to do.

 

Would you make the same objection to a hypothetical, divine commune of heaven?

 

Of course, you're trolling. But you have a good point. Very few liberals denounce capitalism in general, so your attempt at sarcasm is really just ignorance.