Communism. Good or bad. What do you really know about Communism?

[palo5]

Originally Posted by deepsepia

Take a look at Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Germany -- any measure of environment is vastly improved over half a century ago. These are all market economies, where folks are very rich, getting tremendous amounts of their energy from renewables

They're social market economies, if that term helps. The further north you go, the more socially caring & environmentally responsible people are. The mentality of almost the entire people is different. That's the only way I can put it. No one here would want to trash people or the environment, and no one would let them

[deepsepia]

Originally Posted by palo5

They're social market economies, if that term helps. The further north you go, the more socially caring & environmentally responsible people are. The mentality of almost the entire people is different. That's the only way I can put it. No one here would want to trash people or the environment, and no one would let them

They are -- that's where many of the market economies end up, over time. They're dirty and dangerous when they start, but as they get wealthier, people value better healthier lives, and a clean environment gets a value.

Old timers may remember the controversy of Canada's "superstack" -- in the 1960s Sudbury's "superstack" was the symbol of pollution -- and the lakes around Sudbury were all pretty much dead. As Canada got wealthier, they valued the environment more, and today Sudbury is still industrial, but much, much cleaner.

Look at Sweden. They've still got metals and mining industry, the Kiruna mine is probably the biggest iron ore mine in the world today-- they make money and its plenty clean.

Originally Posted by Estreeter

People fuck, especially in Hippie Communes

Gotta love the hippie chicks. Years ago, there was a show on cable access in New York, called "If I can't dance you can keep your revolution" -- hosted by a truly hot ur hippie chick, the late great Coca Crystal, who died last year. She was sexy, she was stoned, her politics didn't make a lot of sense, she didn't wear a bra . . . it was all good

[Arturo2nd]

Originally Posted by palo5

They're social market economies, if that term helps. The further north you go, the more socially caring & environmentally responsible people are. The mentality of almost the entire people is different. That's the only way I can put it. No one here would want to trash people or the environment, and no one would let them

It is interesting that my dad's parents grew up on farms and my grandfather later worked as a logger before the Depression hit. It was my dad and his father that taught me to respect the environment, clean up the campsite before you leave, etc.

Really it is the freaking city folk who have no concept of the natural world and how interdependent everything is. Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Mao, and the rest of those guys were city folk. If they had been raised by country folk, they never would have tried to collectivize agriculture. In fact, when you had peasant villages as the source of your agriculture, plowing, planting and harvesting were cooperative ventures. But individual families were responsible for tending particular plots. The better farmers grew more crops. Each family had its own vegetable garden.

My dad's maternal grandfather had an orchard and farm, but relied on hired hands to do the farm work while he built barns and houses for the other settlers. All the neighboring farmers turned out when it was time to raise the barn frame. Many of the barns and houses he built are still in use.

Dinner at Grandma's was always a feast because she had grown up helping her mother feed the farmhands, then raised four sons of her own. My mom was just in awe of how her mother-in-law made all kinds of baked goods from scratch strictly by relying on her memory.

[deepsepia]

Originally Posted by Brian249x

Really it is the freaking city folk who have no concept of the natural world and how interdependent everything is. Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Mao, and the rest of those guys were city folk. .

Mao was the son of a farmer.

He saw the peasants and agriculture as central to revolution-- that's the big difference between "Maoism" and more traditional "Marxist-Leninist" thought. He wasn't interested in the "city folk", his revolution would be in the countryside.

It didn't work any better that way, to be honest. In some ways, it was much worse.

Its Mao who imposes the "learn from the peasants" stuff on the cities-- they send all sorts of folks, including Xi Jinping, out to agricultural communities. Xi likes to tell stories . . . he was sent out to dig pits and dump animal waste in them, to produce methane.

[Arturo2nd]

Originally Posted by deepsepia

Mao was the son of a farmer.

He saw the peasants and agriculture as central to revolution-- that's the big difference between "Maoism" and more traditional "Marxist-Leninist" thought. He wasn't interested in the "city folk", his revolution would be in the countryside.

It didn't work any better that way, to be honest. In some ways, it was much worse.

Its Mao who imposes the "learn from the peasants" stuff on the cities-- they send all sorts of folks, including Xi Jinping, out to agricultural communities. Xi likes to tell stories . . . he was sent out to dig pits and dump animal waste in them, to produce methane.

Well, then I am shocked that he tried to change the peasant culture after Stalin warned him against doing so. Talk about arrogance. Of course, it predictably didn't work, millions of people died, and China wasted 30 years to get its rebuild going. They should build urinals atop his mausoleum.

[Wendigo]

Originally Posted by Brian249x

Well, then I am shocked that he tried to change the peasant culture after Stalin warned him against doing so. Talk about arrogance. Of course, it predictably didn't work, millions of people died, and China wasted 30 years to get its rebuild going. They should build urinals atop his mausoleum.

As has been stated previously Marxism was created by a well meaning intellectual who mixed too much with well off people and had bugger all experience of real life.

Is it any surprise that the communist states that follow his beliefs impose ill thought out long term plans on the people.

Slice it or dice it anyway you want but Communism has failed miserably, even the thread starter, who goes to bed with a blow-up Karl Marx doll, has now decided he really wants to be an Anarchist, what a great advert for Communism.

The only thing Marxism does well is to ensure that power rests in the hands of a few chosen ones who almost always become despots, I'm pretty sure that is not what Karl wrote on his jotter but he had a pisspoor understanding of human nature.

We now return you to your scheduled programming

[Roubignol]

Originally Posted by deepsepia

Take a look at Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Germany -- any measure of environment is vastly improved over half a century ago. These are all market economies, where folks are very rich, getting tremendous amounts of their energy from renewables.

First column: Country
Second column: Emission per country
Third column: Emission per people per country




China was out of the chart when it was a Communist country.
Since they became the manufacture of Westerners, they have become the most emissive country on the planet.

Since the beginning of industrialization USA has emitted 28% of the CO2 emission, China 10%.

Per sector: the industry emits 32% today, buildings and houses 18%, transports 15%, energy productions 13%, agriculture 12% and forest destructions 10%.



We have to come back to small rural egalitarian societies and leave asap the industrial one.

The Anglo-Saxon capitalist philosophy that was exported by force in destroying environmental resources is highly destructive.

Originally Posted by Estreeter

People fuck, especially in Hippie Communes

Only Chinese communist people understood that they had to regulate the birth rate and ask people to work all their life instead abuse of the next generations.

I'd agree on a principle: "People getting kid(s) have to work until their last day of their life, because they are responsible of overpopulation, when people getting no child could retire (if they want), when they would be... hmmm 30 years old.."

Edit: By the way, if you look at the first chart, Deepsepia and Estreeter are among the worst polluters on the planet!
I understand better why they defend Capitalism.

Originally Posted by Brian249x

Well, then I am shocked that he tried to change the peasant culture after Stalin warned him against doing so. Talk about arrogance. Of course, it predictably didn't work, millions of people died, and China wasted 30 years to get its rebuild going. They should build urinals atop his mausoleum.

The evidences about communist famines has never been clearly established.
They still are highly disputed by several European historians.
I was surprised to read that American historians pretending getting facts about these starvations never get access to them.
I do not remember the name of one of these American historians explaining he had access to the Chinese archives, read them and then never was able to access to them again.

Some historians tell that were nothing else as ... "classical" famines.

Just one point about this. Listening a debate about "decarbonisation of our societies", I listened an incredible fact: in 2003, when there was the great heat wave in France (and in several European countries)... French cereal production fell by 20%.... yes 20%... even with modern technologies.

I'm not disputing the facts there were famines in Ukrainia and China during the last century, but it maybe was nothing else as "bad luck" in front of mother nature, as the New Orleans faced Katrina in 2005 or Europe face heat wave in 2003.

Probably historians hardly will get access to the Communist archives to prove if they were volontary starvations or not.

One more and last word: Today the Western governments (and mainly US governments) are starving the last communist countries when they get some problems instead to help their populations.
Petrol against food. That's the terrible reality.

Originally Posted by deepsepia

Its Mao who imposes the "learn from the peasants" stuff on the cities-- they send all sorts of folks, including Xi Jinping, out to agricultural communities. Xi likes to tell stories . . . he was sent out to dig pits and dump animal waste in them, to produce methane.

And at the same time, Western countries irradiate our atmosphere thanks nuclear tests and pushed communist countries to get their own nuclear bombs.

That's difficult to blame ignorance.

I'd like to know how the next generations will read our topics.

Originally Posted by Brian249x

It is interesting that my dad's parents grew up on farms and my grandfather later worked as a logger before the Depression hit. It was my dad and his father that taught me to respect the environment, clean up the campsite before you leave, etc.

Hmmm....
You are a lucky guy.
Born and still living in a now "modern" rural area, I can tell you that farmers prefer to use pesticide and I understand them, because of Capitalism, if they don't produce they lose a lot of money.
One of my friends who get vineyards told me: "I'm against the bio productions, because I'm afraid to lose all my harvest."

In the late 70's, there were still farmers (and citizens too) having a very poor environmental notions.

When I walk in steep forests, I'm still surprised to find illegal dumps dating of the post WWII near rural villages, where old washing machines, bicycles, tires, etc... were dumped by local people.

I do remember quite well to have watched farmers directly emptying the remains of insecticides into the river.

Today there still are a lot of farmers still working like that.

[deepsepia]

Originally Posted by Brian249x

Well, then I am shocked that he tried to change the peasant culture after Stalin warned him against doing so. Talk about arrogance. Of course, it predictably didn't work, millions of people died, and China wasted 30 years to get its rebuild going. They should build urinals atop his mausoleum.

Stalin never thought much of Mao, though Mao worshipped Stalin. Stalin was from a rural background, not a farmer, but he had a traditional Marxist idea that the Revolution would take place in the cities. As a boy, Stalin idolized a mountain bandit in a 19th century Georgian novel, that’s how he gets his childhood nickname “Koba”- so he’s not some urban intellectual type. His ideas about collective agriculture are probably more because he thinks that the peasants support the Whites than because he things it’s a good agricultural strategy. Basically, he doesn’t want anyone taking a piss without a commissar seeing it . . .

There’s a real fight over between Mao and Stalin in the 1930s, when the Soviets are sending military advisers and money to the Chinese communists. The Soviet advisers basically order the Chinese to contest the cities, where they get slaughtered by Chiang’s secret police.

The reason Mao comes to power is that he’s the guy who convinces the rest of the Chinese Communists “let’s make the Revolution in the countryside”. This actually works fine, as an insurrection strategy. China has a history of peasant insurrections, and Mao played to that.

. . .but it was a disaster as a governing strategy. The thing about both Mao and Stalin- governing was much less important to them than conspiracy, insurrection, and crushing enemies. Both fight extremely brutal and effective anti-guerilla campaigns; we remember them as the insurgents, but when they’re the government, they have lots of rural opposition, and they’ve got no problems in crushing it.

[bowlinggreen]

Originally Posted by xyzde69

China was out of the chart when it was a Communist country.
Since they became the manufacture of Westerners, they have become the most emissive country on the planet.

It's necessary here to point out that the Chinese Communist leaders CHOSE to introduce capitalist style manufacturing of goods for the west, probably out of some vague ideological hope that "we were giving them the rope by which we ourselves would be hung."

No one pointed a gun to their heads and forced them to build all those factories. That was a Communist choice.

Originally Posted by xyzde69

When I walk in steep forests, I'm still surprised to find illegal dumps dating of the post WWII near rural villages, where old washing machines, bicycles, tires, etc... were dumped by local people.

I do remember quite well to have watched farmers directly emptying the remains of insecticides into the river.

Today there still are a lot of farmers still working like that.

That is not good. We have laws against that sort of thing here now, but I am sure it still gets done on the sly.

I remember seeing a couple of fish kills in our local stream as a boy, when somebody dumped something they shouldn't have into the water.

Mostly it was trash fish that got killed though. Because there is a bigger problem - fertilizer runoff, which is unavoidable, really alters the ecologies of the whole watershed. Fish that were once common are now gone from the streams and rivers. So are some kinds of birds and other creatures.

But with no fertilizer and pesticides, the huge crops we need to feed the current population will not exist. Blight and insects will make huge inroads into what you CAN grow.

Get rid of the modern agriculture and its chemicals like you want to do all at once, and civilization will collapse. So that is not an option.

A gradual drawdown would require that the majority of young people must be forbidden from mating and making babies. How are you going to get people to go along with that? Have your own personal version of the KGB shoot those who go against your procreation restriction laws?

And how are you going to deal with the old people, who must substantially outnumber the newer succeeding generations as a result of your population policy? How will they be cared for? Or are you going to euthanize them, in the name of efficiency?

In order to make all this come to pass, you will have to be as cruel as Stalin was, for generations.

EDIT:

You want to be... Arslan.

https://www.amazon.com/Arslan-M-J-Engh/dp/0312879105



Maybe I have mentioned this one before, but read this book. It fits you like a glove.

[Roubignol]

Originally Posted by bowlinggreen

A gradual drawdown would require that the majority of young people must be forbidden from mating and making babies. How are you going to get people to go along with that? Have your own personal version of the KGB shoot those who go against your procreation restriction laws?

And how are you going to deal with the old people, who must substantially outnumber the newer succeeding generations as a result of your population policy? How will they be cared for? Or are you going to euthanize them, in the name of efficiency?

In order to make all this come to pass, you will have to be as cruel as Stalin was, for generations.

Honestly... I don't care. I don't get child and will not get any.
I think that people has to do what they want as long as they don't abuse of anybody.
The most important thing is to educate children with good notions.
Altruism, cooperation, sense of equity, sciences, etc... and not with egoïsm, competition, greed, nationalism and religions...

I recently watched several documentaries about anti capitalist societies.

- Slab City in California
- Auroville in India
- Mennonittes in Bolivia
- Nanjie a still Maoïst Chinese city

IMO, the most interesting community was Auroville in India. A city where highly educated and intellectual hippies live in peace eating as much as possible bio food and developping spiritual aspects.

I didn't like the three others communities. Slab City is too decadent, the Mennonittes in Bolivia are religious Evangelist fanatics and Nanjie is not free enough according to my Western point of view.