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

[scoundrel]

Originally Posted by Mal Hombre

In Spain during the Civil war,The Communists massacred the Marxists and the Socialists,George Orwell narrowly avoided being purged Himself..

Franco and the Nationalist side in the Spanish Civil War are thought to have murdered around 400,000 opponents or supposed opponents. He also presided over a very repressive government; for example women could not have their own bank accounts until after he died, but had to have their husband, brother or father as co-signatory. However it is a moot point whether Franco was actually a genuine fascist as such. For example he never enacted anti-Jewish laws in WW2 and politely refused to repatriate Jewish refugees to Axis countries.

I don't have a lot of sympathy with George Orwell or with any of the International Brigade volunteers. There was a world war coming and they needed to stay at home and prepare to defend their own turf. It is a very long time now since I learned that just because one side is evil and bad it doesn't follow that the other side must be the good guys. It is quite common that both sides in a war are evil and bad. Evil and bad is a fair description of the Communists who came to dominate the Republican side and who waged war on their own side in their purges of the International Brigade.

As for Communism v. Fascism, they were both oppressive and in rather similar ways. Neither is compatible with a free society.

[Roubignol]

Originally Posted by scoundrel

As for Communism v. Fascism, they were both oppressive and in rather similar ways. Neither is compatible with a free society.

In real free societies, there would be at least no army, no borders, no ghettos, no classe differences, no homeless, no poor people, no private propreties (as huge domains inherited from generation to generation), no unrevokable political mafiosi, no fear to become jobless, no dividends, no financial benefits, etc...

There would be a worldwide common language, a unique currency, direct democracies to chose fair society projects, areas of total freedom, pure spontaneous cooperation...

Robots would make the most painful and disgusting works.

We still are very far from really free societies.

[scoundrel]

Originally Posted by xyzde69

In real free societies, there would be at least no army, no borders, no ghettos, no classe differences, no homeless, no poor people, no private propreties (as huge domains inherited from generation to generation), no unrevokable political mafiosi, no fear to become jobless, no dividends, no financial benefits, etc...

There would be a worldwide common language, a unique currency, direct democracies to chose fair society projects, areas of total freedom, pure spontaneous cooperation...

Robots would make the most painful and disgusting works.

We still are very far from really free societies.

If any country except the Vatican or Monte Carlo abolished its army and opened its borders on Monday, this country would cease to exist by Saturday. It would not join a hippy commune of happy-clappy mutually supporting idealists. It would merely be conquered and enslaved by a more militaristic neighbour. There is no freedom unless people are willing to stand up and defend it; both against foreign invasion and against subversion at home. IMHO the United States of America is being subverted at home by enemies of freedom who possess enough money to buy the politicians and the judges. Britain has similar issues, though less extreme, and the British judiciary is more problematic than the American judiciary, because it is not elected and not directly appointed by politicians. But without an army no country can survive.

[Wendigo]

Originally Posted by xyzde69

In real free societies, there would be at least no army, no borders, no ghettos, no classe differences, no homeless, no poor people, no private propreties (as huge domains inherited from generation to generation), no unrevokable political mafiosi, no fear to become jobless, no dividends, no financial benefits, etc...

There would be a worldwide common language, a unique currency, direct democracies to chose fair society projects, areas of total freedom, pure spontaneous cooperation...

Robots would make the most painful and disgusting works.

We still are very far from really free societies.

And there will never be free societies as described above, it's an idyllic romantic fantasy notion, human nature means that someone will always want to be sat on the big chair giving out orders.
That's the nature of the beast.

[deepsepia]

Originally Posted by Brecht

I think that the ordinary people (English, Irish and Jewish workers, labor activists of whom most were anarchists, socialists and communists) who stood up to the march of the British Union of Fascists in London's East End in 1936 knew the big difference between fascism and communism,

Unfortunately many of them were unwilling to confront the reality of Stalin's bodycount. Its easy enough to confront your sworn enemy-- but what happens when it becomes clear that "your guy" is a monster?

The 1930s offered Communists that test, everywhere, as Stalin piled on the horrors. Some folks cheered on the venomous prosecutor Vyshinsky as he berated Stalin's sometime allies, good communists like Bukharin, Zinoviev and Kamenev and sent them for a bullet to the neck. Ironically, Hitler's favorite prosecutor in the Volksgerichthof, Ronald Freisler, was himself a great fan of Vyshinsky, and modeled his berating assaults on defendants on the Moscow Show Trials.

So, no points to communists for opposing Nazi terror; we award points for decency to communists who opposed Communist terror. Men like Arthur Koestler ("Darkness at Noon") who stood up and said "this is wrong"; rather than doctinaire dittoheads who came up with mealy mouthed excuses for travesties like the Hitler-Stalin Pact.

Here's how one Trotskyite paper reported it in 1939

Originally Posted by Behind the Stalin-Hitler Pact What It Is and What It Isn’t

The Hitler-Stalin pact is the most sensational news to come out of Moscow in many years.

Up to yesterday, it was the general belief that Stalin was moving heaven and earth in an earnest attempt to establish a “peace front” of the “democracies” against the “fascist aggressors”, especially against Fascist Germany. Most people thought that Stalin’s only complaint against statesmen like Chamberlain and Daladier was that they favored negotiations and pacts with Hitler instead of uniting with Russia in an uncompromising and militant front against the Nazis. The friends and supporters of the Stalin régime said this repeatedly, and in so many plain words.

Suddenly, right in the midst of the Anglo-French-Russian military discussions in Moscow, came the news that Hitler and Stalin had made a very important trade agreement. And before the surprise at this announcement had reached its height, came the news that a “non-aggression” pact had been negotiated between the two countries. Forty-eight hours later, the Nazi Minister of Foreign Affairs and author of the Anti-Comintern Pact had flown to Moscow where he was greeted with swastika flags, and the pact was promptly signed.

[from: Socialist Appeal, Vol. III No. 65, 5 September 1939]

[Wendigo]

Originally Posted by deepsepia

Unfortunately many of them were unwilling to confront the reality of Stalin's bodycount. Its easy enough to confront your sworn enemy-- but what happens when it becomes clear that "your guy" is a monster?

The 1930s offered Communists that test, everywhere, as Stalin piled on the horrors. Some folks cheered on the venomous prosecutor Vyshinsky as he berated Stalin's sometime allies, good communists like Bukharin, Zinoviev and Kamenev and sent them for a bullet to the neck. Ironically, Hitler's favorite prosecutor in the Volksgerichthof, Ronald Freisler, was himself a great fan of Vyshinsky, and modeled his berating assaults on defendants on the Moscow Show Trials.

So, no points to communists for opposing Nazi terror; we award points for decency to communists who opposed Communist terror. Men like Arthur Koestler ("Darkness at Noon") who stood up and said "this is wrong"; rather than doctinaire dittoheads who came up with mealy mouthed excuses for travesties like the Hitler-Stalin Pact.

Here's how one Trotskyite paper reported it in 1939


[from: Socialist Appeal, Vol. III No. 65, 5 September 1939]

As I wrote earlier in response to this

Originally Posted by xyzde69

You quote Churchill... not 150 years ago, but 100 years ago.

Originally Posted by Wendigo

Er it was actually a speech in the House of Commons on 11 November 1947, just after WW2, that war in which one large group of Marxists couldn't quite decide which way to point their guns

The content of which was totally ignored as it doesn't fit the idealistic vision of Marxism.
The truth is Marx was a dreamer, there has never been a true Marxist state and there never will be, any attempt is always half hearted it might pay lip service to some of his ideas but will always end in dictatorship, the U.S.S.R was the ultimate in piss takes, it was never a union of socialist republics, it was an evil dictatorship that decayed over time till it eventually exploded.

[Roubignol]

Originally Posted by Wendigo

And there will never be free societies as described above, it's an idyllic romantic fantasy notion, human nature means that someone will always want to be sat on the big chair giving out orders.
That's the nature of the beast.

Two weeks ago, the last Nobel Price of Chemistry said during a party to celebrate his price: "Today, scientists has to search more for the interests of finance and less for the interests of science. I was not like that when I was a young scientist."

That's a case among hundreds of cases of destruction of freedom.

When you look today at the military budget, we could improve here and develop abroad education with that money. We could feed poor people abroad.
Today as Brexiter, if you are afraid by immigration, it's because the wealth is wrongly distributed. Our money goes in few wallet of private interests, even through national investments.

Army always was a business.
We all know that if USA still goes on war all around the world today, it's because it's a country that massively invested in that business.

Today massive immigrations is (and will be) the result of capitalism.

Very often people attribute words to Marx, because they never read him, because our last generations of politicians never read him. But 150 years ago, he explained the mechanisms of immigration and of relocation.
These mechanisms are inherent of the capitalism and were even more amplified through the disregulation that people like Reagan, Thatcher or Pinochet embraced when following the theories of Milton Friedman.

So... if it's what our fake democracies are able, I prefer that there are no such governments. Because our governments are pushing us to the human destruction.

Originally Posted by Wendigo

The truth is Marx was a dreamer, there has never been a true Marxist state and there never will be,

He was far more than a dreamer, he also was a brilliant critic of the capitalism who was followed on many points by our "improved" democracies.

As the Professor Noam Chomsky said :

"If you let Capitalism unregulated, it would immediatly collapsed."

and that's almost what happened when some countries followed Friedman's concepts during the 80's.... the Capitalism collapsed just 20 years after the first steps of disregulation and WE, the people, had to save it one more time.
But today, the bankers who were responsible of the 2008 collapse, are not in jail. They even give speeches and have fun.
Do some researches on the web, more than 10'000 people commited suicide after the subprimes crisis. BBC link

Originally Posted by Wendigo

any attempt is always half hearted it might pay lip service to some of his ideas but will always end in dictatorship, the U.S.S.R was the ultimate in piss takes, it was never a union of socialist republics, it was an evil dictatorship that decayed over time till it eventually exploded.

How can you tell that? Chavez reelected 4 times in a raw.
Watch non Occidental videos of the funerals of Chavez in Venezuela.
Hundred of thousands of people following his coffin. Women crying and telling that thanks to him, they finally had a roof on her heads.

According to some European journalists, who don't work for big news agencies, the actual precarity and violence in Venezuela is created by the right and extreme-right Venezuelian parties with the help of the USA.
The goods are there, but they are volontary not distributed in the supermarket. Video here in French

If Venezuela would be as rich in petrol as ... Malta, there would be no violence and precarity.

It's quite clear that still today, private financial interests and capitalist ruling classes want to see any form of socialisms failing and they use all the tricks possible to destroy "wealth distributed" societies.

Originally Posted by deepsepia

Unfortunately many of them were unwilling to confront the reality of Stalin's bodycount. Its easy enough to confront your sworn enemy-- but what happens when it becomes clear that "your guy" is a monster?

It's quite clear that Stalin didn't represent Marxism.
But still today bodycount and attribution of causes are contested by several historians.
On the other side, I've got Italian colleagues who see Mussolini as a great guy. Their grandfathers told them that the streets were secure and there was full employments in Italy.

Speaking about today, several Bush W administration members are still free in the USA.
I've listened on several radios, philosophers, journalists, lawyers telling that several of these members could be considered as war criminals, but they are protected in your country, because your country never signed international traitees of extraditions.

It's a fact, USA doesn't respect international laws. How fair! Is it because American politicians are too pure?

Confronted to the international treatees, is your country much better than USSR?
I personally never suffered of USSR politics, but today thousands of immigrants come in Europe after American wars in Middle East.

[Roubignol]

Originally Posted by deepsepia

Unfortunately many of them were unwilling to confront the reality of Stalin's bodycount. Its easy enough to confront your sworn enemy-- but what happens when it becomes clear that "your guy" is a monster?

Bodycount and attribution of causes, that are contested by several historians.

Speaking about today, Bush Jr administration members are still free in the USA.
I've listened on several radios, philosophers, journalists, lawyers telling that several of these members were war criminals, but they are protected in your country, because your country never signed international traitees of extraditions.

Is your country much better than USSR?
I personally never suffer of USSR politics, but today thousands of immigrants come in Europe after American wars in Middle East.

[Wendigo]

Originally Posted by xyzde69

Is your country much better than USSR?

Yes, we still exist

[Arturo2nd]

Originally Posted by xyzde69

Speaking about today, Bush Jr administration members are still free in the USA.
I've listened on several radios, philosophers, journalists, lawyers telling that several of these members were war criminals, but they are protected in your country, because your country never signed international traitees of extraditions.

Is your country much better than USSR?
I personally never suffer of USSR politics, but today thousands of immigrants come in Europe after American wars in Middle East.

This has been a policy of the United States government which I find particularly hypocritical and shortsighted. One can only hope that some future government will realize this and make corrections. The alternative is that at some future date, when our power has waned, an external agency will try American war criminals. The G.W. Bush administration was a great stain on our nation's history.

In fairness, our country has a pretty good record of punishing lower level personnel who commit crimes against prisoners and non-combatants. Bad things happen in war zones and people commit heinous acts in the absence of normal restraints. Many will escape punishment. To my mind, exposing one's soldiery to such moral hazard is an additional reason to think long and hard about engaging in warfare. The infection is always carried back home and creates domestic problems.

Punishing those in high places remains difficult. It is noteworthy that only losers and officials of small nations have been punished. This makes the whole "war crimes" process reek of vengeance rather that demonstrate justice.