Communism Debate

I'm pretty neutral towards communism.
Since my parents come from the USSR and actually grew up there until adulthood, I know a lot of good things about it.
But because of Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao or the russian civil war I also know a lot of bad stuff about it.

Octagon History wrote:Ok and? This is the Communism debate thread. We will debate on this till everyone quits this thread or it keeps on going until its too big and has to have a second thread.

Didn't know if you were giving me a passive aggressive response, but I was just saying it was never ending. I don't think this will last very long as I keep seeing the same responses and this debate isn't getting anywhere. First off what decides if something is evil or not? Let alone an Ideology being evil?

SamSkey wrote:

Octagon History wrote:Ok and? This is the Communism debate thread. We will debate on this till everyone quits this thread or it keeps on going until its too big and has to have a second thread.

Didn't know if you were giving me a passive aggressive response, but I was just saying it was never ending. I don't think this will last very long as I keep seeing the same responses and this debate isn't getting anywhere. First off what decides if something is evil or not? Let alone an Ideology being evil?

Agreed.

Interesting. By the 70's it was much differently than its original form. In the late 80's they even had their 'congress' which Estonia took as their chance to leave and thus lead the USSR dissolving. So by that point it was basically socialist. In fact it had always been just nobody was actively trying to make it communist. Like Stalin and Lenin had tried.

Well it's to going anywhere since we have to wait 7 days till we can post links and every time I try to engage in debate I'm met with "The end goal is peace so therefore it's good". Which is sidestepping the issue and best and ignorance at worst.

Octagon History wrote:Interesting. By the 70's it was much differently than its original form. In the late 80's they even had their 'congress' which Estonia took as their chance to leave and thus lead the USSR dissolving. So by that point it was basically socialist. In fact it had always been just nobody was actively trying to make it communist. Like Stalin and Lenin had tried.

No, Stalin didn't try. He didn't try to spread it. he only joined the bolshiviks because he was power hungry. He was an evil man, a lunatic, a dictator and nothing more.
Lenin yes, but the most revolutionary and most communist person there is was probably Trotsky.

Octagon History wrote:Well it's to going anywhere since we have to wait 7 days till we can post links and every time I try to engage in debate I'm met with "The end goal is peace so therefore it's good". Which is sidestepping the issue and best and ignorance at worst.

I think we should wait a little while since we can't post links. I'm also not trying to sidestep the issue of this debate. It's just that right now we can't define what is evil and what is not. Unless you can. If so I would like to know

Brusilov wrote:

Octagon History wrote:Interesting. By the 70's it was much differently than its original form. In the late 80's they even had their 'congress' which Estonia took as their chance to leave and thus lead the USSR dissolving. So by that point it was basically socialist. In fact it had always been just nobody was actively trying to make it communist. Like Stalin and Lenin had tried.

No, Stalin didn't try. He didn't try to spread it. he only joined the bolshiviks because he was power hungry. He was an evil man, a lunatic, a dictator and nothing more.
Lenin yes, but the most revolutionary and most communist person there is was probably Trotsky.

Look up Lysenkoism. Stalin actively promoted it because helped push not his dominance over others but the Communist agenda. Basic genetics would actually help Stalin as he could use women's naturally weakness to assert his dominance over them. He chose instead to promote Lysenkoism which denied genetics in its entirety because it would help make male and females indistinguishable. Getting him closer to the Marxist paradise.

Yeah I agree we should wait. I wanted to do this post about how we as a forum could do research to find out the truth of the Mongolian Empire,but I needed citations to prove why. So I couldn't.

When it comes to declaring stuff evil that was more of a hyperbole than anything. Though communism does seek to destroy my core religious beliefs.

Octagon History wrote:Yeah I agree we should wait. I wanted to do this post about how we as a forum could do research to find out the truth of the Mongolian Empire,but I needed citations to prove why. So I couldn't.

When it comes to declaring stuff evil that was more of a hyperbole than anything. Though communism does seek to destroy my core religious beliefs.

I think every month we should have a huge research forum to find out the mysteries of history or declare old debates of who was right or wrong. I think it would grow the community together and would help new people get use to the old users.

I was just talking about on trying to learn the truth of the Mongolian Empire since there is so much misinformation. Such as the Wikipedia article for it. But your idea sounds cool.

Tigerstar said we should be able to post links now.

Yep I just posted that thread I was talking about.

My family lived during communist times in Lithuania, my parents told me about how they lived, which was around the fall of it and they said it wasn't awfully bad back then.
My dad told told me my grandparents had a good enough life under it, my grandmother went to college and studied Accountancy and my grandfather studied Engineering, he said there wasn't such a thing as "unemployment" (there was high amounts of state propaganda saying things like communism end unemploment etc. etc.) , the gov. would find you a job and you'd earn a livable wage. My grandfather worked in a plane manufacturing plant and they got things like free milk and meals in the cafeteria, but the plant was one of the newest in the Union and factory working conditions like these definitely didn't exists around Moscow and other big Russian cities, mostly the satellites states. You also weren't allowed to practice your religion of course but many did so in secret anyways. Education and Healthcare were free and blah blah blah you know the rest. But my great grandmother was sent to a gulag, no one knows why though, my dad said you were better off to not ask, but she returned later when she was free.
Now not all of these things sound bad (ofc apart from the gulag ) but he said the worst part was never being able to go above your station and so it was very limiting in terms of the ambitions that you could hold pre 80s and 90s. Overall, life was a lot better once communism fell though and I don't think Communism is evil per se but it definitely feels like you're locked in one place for your whole life.

Basically Communism makes everyone work but they can't change the status quo. Capitalism doesn't make anyone work but anyone can change the status quo. Leading to its success.

Octagon History wrote:Well first off calling all left wing ideology Pacifist and all right Wing ideology not pacifist is extremely disingenuous. Even then Communism isn't the only ideology that promotes pacifism and pacifism isn't the only core tenant of Communism. Those other tenants contradicting the first. I mean heck even in the Communist Manifesto it speaks of the Communist revolution which requires bloodshed by default.

Karl Marx's calls for revolution were more symbolic. It was people like Lenin, Trotsky, and Mao who tried literal revolutions, thinking that it could work as some sort of shortcut.

Octagon History wrote:Well it's to going anywhere since we have to wait 7 days till we can post links and every time I try to engage in debate I'm met with "The end goal is peace so therefore it's good". Which is sidestepping the issue and best and ignorance at worst.

I fixed that. You should be able to now.

i believe communism can work but only in a small society for example the Israeli kibbutz's

Now those benefits I wanted to talk about:
In the soviet union, it was illegal by law to be unemployed.
Which means, that the country would always provide a job. No matter how bad you were in school.
Healthcare was completely free and everything was paid by the state.
Let's say, you broke a rib. Or need a surgeon because of something else.
That wouldn't have cost you a dime.
Also, it was illegal to be homeless. Or, you know, a bum.
The government would also provide every single citizen with a home and every single citizen with enough money to live off of it.
Now it wasn't much. My parents got 100 rubles each in the late 80s.
And they were both just doctors. One of the lowest paid people in the USSR and now CIS (Yeah, I know it sounds like the trade confederation from Star wars but it's actually this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_of_Independent_States )
And let me say this, 100 rubles were too much money.
It was more than some people got though.
But considering that a loaf of bread was 20 kopeykas. That's a fith of a ruble.
It was more than enough to live off.

Quixotical Skeptic wrote:My family lived during communist times in Lithuania, my parents told me about how they lived, which was around the fall of it and they said it wasn't awfully bad back then.
My dad told told me my grandparents had a good enough life under it, my grandmother went to college and studied Accountancy and my grandfather studied Engineering, he said there wasn't such a thing as "unemployment" (there was high amounts of state propaganda saying things like communism end unemploment etc. etc.) , the gov. would find you a job and you'd earn a livable wage. My grandfather worked in a plane manufacturing plant and they got things like free milk and meals in the cafeteria, but the plant was one of the newest in the Union and factory working conditions like these definitely didn't exists around Moscow and other big Russian cities, mostly the satellites states. You also weren't allowed to practice your religion of course but many did so in secret anyways. Education and Healthcare were free and blah blah blah you know the rest. But my great grandmother was sent to a gulag, no one knows why though, my dad said you were better off to not ask, but she returned later when she was free.
Now not all of these things sound bad (ofc apart from the gulag   ) but he said the worst part was never being able to go above your station and so it was very limiting in terms of the ambitions that you could hold pre 80s and 90s. Overall, life was a lot better once communism fell though and I don't think Communism is evil per se but it definitely feels like you're locked in one place for your whole life.

Yeah, my great grandma was sent to the gulag aswell. But she left it a couple years later.

I am, as one can see by my avatar, an communist.

And you all use one word without ever questioning it:
Human Nature. Your arguments are often centered around it and you use it as an "excuse" (Not meant in an bad way, I don't think anyone of you had an malicious intent) to put communism away as a flawed ideology. But please, tell me what you mean by it. Because it will make it much easier. Like common sense, this word often reflects an certain set of ideas that one thinks are true by default and can not be questioned.

If you think humans are greedy and selfish, than yes, I agree. (Ahh, paraphrasing the conquest of bread): But this means we have to abolish capitalism. Because capitalism allows people to act selfish and egoistical in hurtful way. When people have the ability to exploit other people, of course they will.
Just look at it this way: People are greedy, therefor they have to live under an ideology that supports and fosters greed, which will result in greediness becoming more common and this ends in an neverending circle.

HUNDmiau wrote:I am, as one can see by my avatar, an communist.

And you all use one word without ever questioning it:
Human Nature. Your arguments are often centered around it and you use it as an "excuse" (Not meant in an bad way, I don't think anyone of you had an malicious intent) to put communism away as a flawed ideology. But please, tell me what you mean by it. Because it will make it much easier. Like common sense, this word often reflects an certain set of ideas that one thinks are true by default and can not be questioned.

If you think humans are greedy and selfish, than yes, I agree. (Ahh, paraphrasing the conquest of bread): But this means we have to abolish capitalism. Because capitalism allows people to act selfish and egoistical in hurtful way. When people have the ability to exploit other people, of course they will.
Just look at it this way: People are greedy, therefor they have to live under an ideology that supports and fosters greed, which will result in greediness becoming more common and this ends in an neverending circle.

The cold war, wasn't a war between soviets and the USA, not between good and evil. It was, ideology against ideology.
Who won the war? Capitalism.
Communism lost and that's why it's called a flawed ideology.
The chinese are communist on paper and to the outside, but among their ranks are just as many corrupt politicians as there are in capitalist countries or the soviet union.
They're communist on paper, but capitalist in every other way.

RMNiMiTz wrote:Communism, in my opinion, is theoretically possible, but damned by its fatal flaw, which is humanity. Humans inherently need incentive, which capitalism provides and communism does not.

Aye. Communism fatally neglects the inherent desire in humans to continually improve their lives. There's no need to excel in a socialist society if there exists an equality of outcome.

Brusilov wrote:
The cold war, wasn't a war between soviets and the USA, not between good and evil. It was, ideology against ideology.
Who won the war? Capitalism.
Communism lost and that's why it's called a flawed ideology.
The chinese are communist on paper and to the outside, but among their ranks are just as many corrupt politicians as there are in capitalist countries or the soviet union.
They're communist on paper, but capitalist in every other way.

It was a war between State-capitalism and free-market capitalism. The Sovjet Union was not socialist, and especially not communist. Lenin said Russia had to go through capitalism first before it could become socialist. (Remember: Marx said society, through class struggle, would always strive towards socialism and communism, but couldn't jump over one form of society to achieve socialism. Russia was largely feudal back then, so Lenin, as an marxist, set up an capitalist economy under state-guidance, so that they could dictate how this capitalism would work. He then could've used the statepower to build socialism. Marx never intended things to be like: we have state-power, now we have socialism. He was always about, with State-power, we can build socialism. So he thought that taking state-power was not the goal, but a mean to an end. When Stalin proclaimed the Sovjet Union was socialist, without any transformation of society or mode of production, it was like a stab into the idea of socialism itself.

Also, your comment implies communism is one monolithic ideology. It is not, there are several ideologies all under the umbrella term of communism. To proclaim the Cold War was an war between communism and capitalism is simply false. It was one branch of capitalism against another branch of capitalism, sometimes allied with branches of socialism.

Calorean wrote:

RMNiMiTz wrote:Communism, in my opinion, is theoretically possible, but damned by its fatal flaw, which is humanity. Humans inherently need incentive, which capitalism provides and communism does not.

Aye. Communism fatally neglects the inherent desire in humans to continually improve their lives. There's no need to excel in a socialist society if there exists an equality of outcome.

Communism is all about bettering life. That's the whole point of it. Capitalism strive to increase profit. This is contradictory to improving lifes more than necessary.
In communism, people improve their own lifes aswell as the live of everyone else through work. You work to improve quality of life.

Calorean wrote:

RMNiMiTz wrote:Communism, in my opinion, is theoretically possible, but damned by its fatal flaw, which is humanity. Humans inherently need incentive, which capitalism provides and communism does not.

Aye. Communism fatally neglects the inherent desire in humans to continually improve their lives. There's no need to excel in a socialist society if there exists an equality of outcome.

A communist society do not lead to equal outcomes, it only leads to fairer, more balanced outcomes as the difference the starting positions of people are minimised by eeveryone sharing all the resources. The idea of equal outcomes is absurd as there is no way of measuring the outcomes, and because chosing different professions would lead to natural differences. Apart from that, there are other meaning to improve than just to in terms of capital, which wouldnt even exist in a communist society, such as feeling a sense of accomplishment and knowing that you contribute a part to society.