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

[deepsepia]

Originally Posted by Enrico32

I gave the answer before -- cultural conservatism.
Being monarchist/capitalist by upbringing, they shied away from the next step.

You think Pol Pot "shied away" from anything?

He was willing to kill something on the order of %15 of the people in his country.

He eliminated money-- blew up the Central Bank with dynamite.

The suggestion that he somehow "shied away" from something is nuts.

He was willing and eager to do whatever he thought he had to do.

Mao was the same-- in the Cultural Revolution, he ordered the Red Guards (radical students from the countryside) to "bombard the headquarters" -- to attack his own government!

The idea that somehow there was some holding back is simply crazy.

These communists did whatever they could to "make it real".

Mao, for example, decided that cooking your own food in your own kitchen wasn't "communist" enough-- too much individuality.

So he had the CPC cadres go through villages and confiscate cooking utensils and stoves, all private stores of food.

The idea was that good communists should eat in communal dining halls.

Instead they starved . . ..

[Enrico32]

Originally Posted by deepsepia

You think Pol Pot "shied away" from anything?
He was willing to kill something on the order of %15 of the people in his country.
The suggestion that he somehow "shied away" from something is nuts.
He was willing and eager to do whatever he thought he had to do.

Mao was the same--
The idea that somehow there was some holding back is simply crazy.

Check the Chinese/Asian history and understand how Mao and Pot simply copied ancient emperors.

Or read Mao, where he explicitly "shies away" from building true Communism, instead preferring to play around with bourgeoisie.

Quotations from Chairman Mao
The People’s democratic dictatorship is based on the alliance of the working class, the peasantry and the urban petty bourgeoisie - 1949

The spontaneous forces of capitalism have been steadily growing in the countryside in recent years, with new rich peasants springing up everywhere and many well-to-do middle peasants striving to become rich peasants. On the other hand, many poor peasants are still living in poverty for lack of sufficient means of production, with some in debt - 1955

[deepsepia]

Originally Posted by Enrico32

Check the Chinese/Asian history and understand how Mao and Pot simply copied ancient emperors.

They didn't

Ancient Emperors revered learning and scholarship.

The Khmer communists killed every educated person they could find; the Chinese communists were slightly less murderous, but they brutalized anyone with any expertise or professional standing in traditional culture.

College professors were imprisoned by radical students in "cowsheds" -- makeshift prisons constructed at universities, where they were beaten and sometimes killed.

That's not "shying away" from anything.

Mao let his comrade in arms, Zhou Enlai die of a disease he could have been treated for, out of the fear that if Zhou had outlived him, he might be less radical. . .

Originally Posted by Enrico32

Or read Mao, where he explicitly "shies away" from building true Communism, instead preferring to play around with bourgeoisie.

"plays around"?

One of his most famous political campaigns was against "the Four Olds" ( 四旧 )

namely "Old Customs, Old Culture, Old Habits, and Old Ideas"

Mao's campaign against them was merciless. They trashed the graves and homes of Confucius-- you can't get any more radical than that in Chinese culture.

[Roubignol]

Deep... I really appreciate your knowledges about some particular points of old fashion socialists governments (I insist about Socialist terms and not Communist one, because as Mao agreed himself, Communism never was reached. He said "Bourgeois are now in our Party")...

but... that doesn't change finally the goal of this topic.
Today we can even get a modern form of Communism. A society in which the exploitation of the man by the man will be abolished.

I tried to incorporate your observations in "our" new Constitution... but it seems that you are not enough satisfied. So what would you like to add? I'm open minded. Don't you see?
The only things that would be forbidden is:

1) any forms of exploitation of the man by the man
2) the destruction of the environment and natural resources.

So what would you like to add?

My goal is that the most beautiful and caring worldwide democratic Constitution will emerge from a porn forum. A Constitution that will protect the people from any form of potential dictatorship.
Isn't fantastic?

Dr Pepper, bowlinggreen, Wendy, Estreeter, Mal Hombre, haroldeye are welcome too.
Be constructive, not destructive please!

[Roubignol]

Originally Posted by bowlinggreen

You know how to knit? That's kind of... gay.

The man of the future have to know what women are now unable to make.

Originally Posted by bowlinggreen

Even if you do, where will you get the thread? Do you have a spinning wheel?

What about raw materials? Will you exploit poor innocent sheep for their wool?

If not that, what? Cotton might be hard to get sometimes in Switzerland in a backward commie world, what else can you use? Hemp? Nettles? Those would be somewhat uncomfortable socks, I think.

You clearly are radicalized by Capitalism.
If people who will provide to me the thread, need compensation for this commodity, I'll knick some pair of socks or help him(her) to plant potatoes in his(her) garden, etc...

Just think a little bit.
A very powerful spirit comes on the USA at the end of spring and steals all the clothes of American people, plus will destroy all the factories producing clothes in the USA.... and weapons (like that you can go on war against Mexico or Canada to steal their clothes )
But this spirit is not that bad. He'll let you enough needles and threads to knick clothes.

Will you cooperate in knicking new clothes with your neighbours or when people will knick them, you will take care of their orchard?

That's the true spirit of Communism.

[bowlinggreen]

Originally Posted by Roubignol

The man of the future have to know what women are now unable to make.



You clearly are radicalized by Capitalism.
If people who will provide to me the thread, need compensation for this commodity, I'll knick some pair of socks or help him(her) to plant potatoes in his(her) garden, etc...

Just think a little bit.
A very powerful spirit comes on the USA at the end of spring and steals all the clothes of American people, plus will destroy all the factories producing clothes in the USA.... and weapons (like that you can go on war against Mexico or Canada to steal their clothes )
But this spirit is not that bad. He'll let you enough needles and threads to knick clothes.

Will you cooperate in knicking new clothes with your neighbours or when people will knick them, you will take care of their orchard?

That's the true spirit of Communism.

What will you do if you plant the potatoes and then when you ask for the thread, the person laughs in your face and says "there is no thread, thanks for the free labor, sucker!"

Or what if they demand an outrageous amount of labor from you for the sock thread, just because they can?

What if they say you have to knit them 2 blankets, 2 sweaters, 6 pairs of socks for themselves and then you can knit one more pair and keep it for yourself?

There IS no "spirit of Communism", not in most people. When they can take advantage, they will.

You'll have to MAKE them be "fair".

Which is why Rougie must inevitably get some guys with guns, send some of the non-sock knitters and non-potato planters to the gulag, shoot the guy who lied about having thread, put everyone else to work knitting socks and planting potatoes while the guys with guns watch over them, and in the meantime Rougie is sitting in the house he confiscated from the dead guy, with new socks on his feet, reading Marx and eating fried potatoes with his feet up on the table while figuring out how to trade the capitalists potatoes for more sock thread.

Originally Posted by Roubignol

My goal is that the most beautiful and caring worldwide democratic Constitution will emerge from a porn forum.

Well, that dooms your aspirations right from the start.

[deepsepia]

Originally Posted by Roubignol

Deep... I really appreciate your knowledges about some particular points of old fashion socialists governments

By which you mean "every government that communists in power have ever formed"

I really appreciate your commitment to fantasy in the face of a century of reality.

That takes a real dedication the imaginary, in the face of all the evidence to the contrary.

Politics is the "art of the possible" -- things that can and do happen, not things you imagine and which never happen.

So your imaginary communism might be quite nice-- perhaps like a Swiss kindergarten, with a nice teacher, a good lunch, and everyone shares their toys.

Real communism ain't at all like that. Real communism has an all powerful leader, and a corps of revolutionary cadres and commissars breaking skulls.

Originally Posted by Roubignol

I tried to incorporate your observations in "our" new Constitution... but it seems that you are not enough satisfied. So what would you like to add?

Its as simple as this: you cannot give the State and Party all power over all transactions and property in the society without creating a tyranny. Its too much power in one place. But communism necessarily calls for that; once you've given the Party that much power, it doesn't matter what you write in your Constitution.

So you don't ever want to give a Party or a State authority over all property and transactions in a society. But that's what communism _is_, that's the irreducible core of it.

So your program isn't fixable by some edits.

Its not the details that lead to tyranny-- is the beating heart of the project. Its like saying "how do you design a human being without a spine" -- you can't

Ownership of all property, conduct of all commerce by the Party/State is the spine and beating heart of any communist project. Its not fixable.

[Enrico32]

Originally Posted by bowlinggreen

There IS no "spirit of Communism", not in most people. When they can take advantage, they will.

So true!

Most modern people love Capitalism. They embrace it, they succeed in it, and I respect that.

But why in this sea of capitalist minds the Communist minds continue to appear? The people who despise inequality and rigidness of capitalist dogma.

What should they do??

[Enrico32]

Originally Posted by deepsepia

Mao's campaign against them was merciless. They trashed the graves and homes of Confucius-- you can't get any more radical than that in Chinese culture.

Now you get a C in Chinese history.

Burning of books and burying of scholars (fénshū kēngrú) refers to the burning of texts and live burial of 460 Confucian scholars in 213-212 BC by Emperor Qin Shi Huang of the Qin dynasty. The event caused the loss of many philosophical treatises of the Hundred Schools of Thought

Violence and dictatorship were widespread in Chinese and Asian history.
This has nothing to do with Communism.

[deepsepia]

Originally Posted by Enrico32

Now you get a C in Chinese history.

Not sure what you're referring to there.

Do you know _anything_ about the Cultural Revolution? Have you even heard of it?

Any student of Chinese history knows of it.

The campaign against Confucius was famous, and conflated with the campaign against Lin Biao-- the famous Criticize Lin (Biao), Criticize Confucius Campaign [ 批林批孔运动 ]

Have you ever heard of it?

Here's a poster from the campaign



-- the character read, in part "pi Lin pi Kong" -- eg "against Lin, against Confucius"

I'd recommend "Confucius and the Cultural Revolution: A Study in Collective Memory "

Zhang, Tong, and Barry Schwartz. “Confucius and the Cultural Revolution: A Study in Collective Memory.” International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, vol. 11, no. 2, 1997, pp. 189–212.

As the Party's campaign against the Four Olds became more energetic, the measures it took against Confucius became more radical. The revolu tionaries had to destroy every reminder of Confucius?temples and relics, statues, shrines, monuments, and sacred texts (especially those located in Qu Fu, Confucius's birthplace)?to articulate fully their contempt for the old system's corruptness. Another respondent, in high school at the time, recalled: "Around March of 1974 we stopped classes for an entire month to study the history of the struggle between the Legalist School and Con fucianism. Our political textbook contained criticisms of Confucius and we were all required to criticize him in our composition." It was not that tenets of antique Legalism, which existed more than 2,000 years ago, were con gruent with the Cultural Revolution; it was a matter of the regime appropriating Legalism as a precedent, a second language, with which to condemn Confucius. A third respondent recalled an instance of guilt by association: "The regime's resentment of the intelligentsia extended to Con fucius, a worshiper of scholarship and leader of the intelligensia of his own day." A fourth respondent reported: "In the campaign against The Four Olds, I saw pictures and statues of Confucius among the antiques confis cated." All the media our respondents remembered?newspapers, maga zines, radio broadcasts, Party Central Committee documents, journals, textbooks, political study materials?condemned Confucius in the harshest terms. (For commentary on the anti-Confucius theme in the era's chiidren's books, see Liao 1985.)

Violence and dictatorship were widespread in Chinese and Asian history.
This has nothing to do with Communism.

Persecution of scholars and destruction of knowledge had no part in prior Asian history. Confucians worshiped ancestors, scholarship and the past.

Unlike you, I've actually taken Chinese history, can read some--

So no, Signor Enrico, history isn't "stuff I want to make up while having a coffee" -- its something you can know something about, if you take the trouble to study it.