Capitalism or Communism? Is communism really that horrible?

[Wehrwolfen]

The Black Book of Communism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression is a book authored ...
groups in Russia were not very much different from similar policies by Nazis. ....
communism is reduced to terror only, there was a bad conflict, which couldn't be ...
The Black Book of Communism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia- 93k - Cached

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

The Black Book of Communism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression is a book authored ...
groups in Russia were not very much different from similar policies by Nazis. ....
communism is reduced to terror only, there was a bad conflict, which couldn't be ...
The Black Book of Communism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia- 93k - Cached

I have never understood why liberals spied for Stalin rather than Hitler?

 

[Unkotare]

but "Conservatives" are their useful idiots.

if Aristotle Jefferson and Friedman were idiots please say why or admit you lack the IQ to do so.

Since you mention "IQ" in just about every OCD post of yours, do you want to tell everyone what an amazingly high IQ you have? Is that what this is all about? Fishing? Or fantasy? Or just mental illness?

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

but "Conservatives" are their useful idiots.

if Aristotle Jefferson and Friedman were idiots please say why or admit you lack the IQ to do so.

Since you mention "IQ" in just about every OCD post of yours, do you want to tell everyone what an amazingly high IQ you have? Is that what this is all about? Fishing? Or fantasy? Or just mental illness?

if Aristotle Jefferson and Friedman were idiots please say why or admit you lack the IQ to do so.

 

[Unkotare]

if Aristotle Jefferson and Friedman were idiots please say why or admit you lack the IQ to do so.

Since you mention "IQ" in just about every OCD post of yours, do you want to tell everyone what an amazingly high IQ you have? Is that what this is all about? Fishing? Or fantasy? Or just mental illness?

if Aristotle Jefferson and Friedman were idiots please say why or admit you lack the IQ to do so.

Did you and your IQ, and your straw man miss the questions in my post? Let's try again:

Since you mention "IQ" in just about every OCD post of yours, do you want to tell everyone what an amazingly high IQ you have? Go ahead.

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

Since you mention "IQ" in just about every OCD post of yours, do you want to tell everyone what an amazingly high IQ you have? Is that what this is all about? Fishing? Or fantasy? Or just mental illness?

if Aristotle Jefferson and Friedman were idiots please say why or admit you lack the IQ to do so.

Did you and your IQ, and your straw man miss the questions in my post? Let's try again:

Since you mention "IQ" in just about every OCD post of yours, do you want to tell everyone what an amazingly high IQ you have? Go ahead.

if Aristotle Jefferson and Friedman were idiots please say why or admit you lack the IQ to do so.

 

[Unkotare]

if Aristotle Jefferson and Friedman were idiots please say why or admit you lack the IQ to do so.

Did you and your IQ, and your straw man miss the questions in my post? Let's try again:

Since you mention "IQ" in just about every OCD post of yours, do you want to tell everyone what an amazingly high IQ you have? Go ahead.

if Aristotle Jefferson and Friedman were idiots please say why or admit you lack the IQ to do so.

Hello? You are confused. I never made that claim. Now, can you answer my question about YOUR IQ?

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

Did you and your IQ, and your straw man miss the questions in my post? Let's try again:

Since you mention "IQ" in just about every OCD post of yours, do you want to tell everyone what an amazingly high IQ you have? Go ahead.

if Aristotle Jefferson and Friedman were idiots please say why or admit you lack the IQ to do so.

Hello? You are confused. I never made that claim. Now, can you answer my question about YOUR IQ?

if Aristotle Jefferson and Friedman were idiots please say why or admit you lack the IQ to do so.

if you need to change subject why not start a new thread on that subject???

 

[Unkotare]

if Aristotle Jefferson and Friedman were idiots please say why or admit you lack the IQ to do so.

Hello? You are confused. I never made that claim. Now, can you answer my question about YOUR IQ?

if Aristotle Jefferson and Friedman were idiots please say why or admit you lack the IQ to do so.

Can you show men where I said they were? Is there any place in that murky swamp of a mind that the least clarity can find its way in? You realize you are just spamming, right? You realize you have avoided a direct question many times in a row now, right? Is there anything that can reach you in that swamp there? Do you even understand these words?

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

Hello? You are confused. I never made that claim. Now, can you answer my question about YOUR IQ?

if Aristotle Jefferson and Friedman were idiots please say why or admit you lack the IQ to do so.

Can you show men where I said they were? Is there any place in that murky swamp of a mind that the least clarity can find its way in? You realize you are just spamming, right? You realize you have avoided a direct question many times in a row now, right? Is there anything that can reach you in that swamp there? Do you even understand these words?

if Aristotle Jefferson and Friedman were idiots please say why or admit you lack the IQ to do so.

if you wish to bring up a pressing new topic start a new thread and see if anyone else finds it as pressing as you apparently do. Thanks.

 

[Uncensored2008]

Really? They went all through the cycles of economies feudalism and capitalism and then the workers (proletariat) rose up? No these thugs usurped power and then tried different BS. Pol Pot tried some agrarian form of socialism and Stalin had something else and so did Lenin and on and on.

Marxism follows a very specific path that results in communism. It isn't an overthrow of power by one corrupt dick.

Utter nonsense.

Marx wrote his PREDICTIONS of the evolution of societies in Capital; but this was neither a prescription for creation of a communist society, nor is it a valid excuse for the failure of Lenin and Pol Pot with literal communism.

Let me remind you that Lenin abolished all property, currency, and even marriage in St. Petersburg. He established a system of collected Uparvdoms, each with a neighborhood Soviet, or congress. The Soviet had absolute authority of resources, allocating food, shelter, and work assignments.

This was precisely in accordance with Marx and Engels per the Manifesto - with the obvious disaster that such a system would induce.

Both Lenin and Pot instituted literal Marxism, both had the result of mass starvation, petty envy and arrogance leading to mass murder.

Marx and Engels offered the recipe for hell on Earth, Vladimir Lenin and Pol Pot cooked up a nice batch.

 

[Unkotare]

if Aristotle Jefferson and Friedman were idiots please say why or admit you lack the IQ to do so.

Can you show men where I said they were? Is there any place in that murky swamp of a mind that the least clarity can find its way in? You realize you are just spamming, right? You realize you have avoided a direct question many times in a row now, right? Is there anything that can reach you in that swamp there? Do you even understand these words?

if Aristotle Jefferson and Friedman were idiots please say why or admit you lack the IQ to do so.

Hey OCD-boy, you never did point out where I said anything about Aristotle, Jefferson and Friedman. And you never did reveal your own super-human IQ.

 

[tjvh]

I guess Communism is OK if you're content in never making a success of yourself, and don't mind being enslaved by people with silver spoons up their asses.

 

[GoneBezerk]

Human greed will never be eliminated by capitalism or communism, the key thing is which system better controls the greed.

In communism the power resides with the poltical elites that openly show off greed by living well while the masses work hard for nothing in the "planned" economy.

In capitalism power resides with the public and private sectors depending on wealth, popularity, etc. A politician can be powerful yet poor in this system given we are talking a democracy like this country. A powerful politician can pass laws to counter greed by some rich people in the private sector that are harming others like say child labor in factories.

In capitalism there is a free flow of money and power to the individual, while in communism the power and money resides with those making the laws. You are screwed when all the power resides with greedy people that also write the laws.

Communism can only survive as long as the powerful political elites can keep the oppressed masses under their thumb, see the USSR, China, North Korea, etc.

For you pro-communist idiots....tell me when a capitalist country needed to put up walls to keep its people from escaping..

 

[Cecilie1200]

Well, since the progressives like to pretend places like the former Soviet Union, China, and Cambodia "weren't practicing REAL communism" as an excuse, how about THIS example? I know this story has been told many times.

When the Pilgrims arrived on the Mayflower, they set up a society in which no one could own property and everyone shared equally, no matter how much work they did. The result was misery and hunger. But when the governor allowed each man to plant and raise crops for his own household, something amazing happened.

William Bradford recorded the experiences of the Separatists who came to the New World on the Mayflower and later voyages some years after the events actually occurred. His memory was evidently aided by personal letters that had been retained as well as his own contemporary writings. The following occurred around 1622 and 1623, three years after the establishment of Plymouth colony. It involved not more than probably two-dozen families. For some time, the “Pilgrims” had raised meager crops, running short of food stores every winter. Infusions of new mouths to feed on ships from England did not help, but that, it turns out, was not the source of their problem. Mr. Bradford can speak for himself:

All this while no supplies were heard of, nor did they know when they might expect any. So they began to consider how to raise more corn, and obtain a better crop than they had done, so that they might not continue to endure the misery of want. At length after much debate, the Governor, with the advice of the chief among them, allowed each man to plant corn for his own household, and to trust to themselves for that; in all other things to go on in the general way as before. So every family was assigned a parcel of land, according to the proportion of their number with that in view, — for present purposes only, and making no division for inheritance, — all boys and children being included under some family.

This was very successful. It made all hands very industrious, so that much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been by any means the Governor or any other could devise, and saved him a great deal of trouble, and gave far better satisfaction. The women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to plant corn, while before they would allege weakness and inability; and to have compelled them would have been thought great tyranny and oppression.

The failure of the experiment of communal service, which was tried for several years, and by good and honest men proves the emptiness of the theory of Plato and other ancients, applauded by some of later times, — that the taking away of private property, and the possession of it in community, by a commonwealth, would make a state happy and flourishing; as if they were wiser than God.

William Bradford's writings go on to explain that the young men objected to being made to labor to support other mens' wives and children. The older and more experienced men felt that being ranked equally with those younger and less-wise was an insult to them. And the women regarded being made to labor for men other than their own husbands as a form of slavery, and their husbands were offended by it.

It wasn't until the Pilgrims - or Separatists, as they called themselves - were released from their communal arrangement to work solely on behalf of themselves and their own families that their colony became prosperous.

The Pilgrims' failed experiment with communism | Goldwater Institute

Feel free, if you don't like this source, to find any references you like to Bradford’s History of the Plymouth Settlement; 1608-1650, by William Bradford. The whole sad tale is down there in black and white.

 

[dominico]

Communism did not work very well for anyone targeted in the Soviet purges

 

[regent]

Well, since the progressives like to pretend places like the former Soviet Union, China, and Cambodia "weren't practicing REAL communism" as an excuse, how about THIS example? I know this story has been told many times.

When the Pilgrims arrived on the Mayflower, they set up a society in which no one could own property and everyone shared equally, no matter how much work they did. The result was misery and hunger. But when the governor allowed each man to plant and raise crops for his own household, something amazing happened.

William Bradford recorded the experiences of the Separatists who came to the New World on the Mayflower and later voyages some years after the events actually occurred. His memory was evidently aided by personal letters that had been retained as well as his own contemporary writings. The following occurred around 1622 and 1623, three years after the establishment of Plymouth colony. It involved not more than probably two-dozen families. For some time, the “Pilgrims” had raised meager crops, running short of food stores every winter. Infusions of new mouths to feed on ships from England did not help, but that, it turns out, was not the source of their problem. Mr. Bradford can speak for himself:

All this while no supplies were heard of, nor did they know when they might expect any. So they began to consider how to raise more corn, and obtain a better crop than they had done, so that they might not continue to endure the misery of want. At length after much debate, the Governor, with the advice of the chief among them, allowed each man to plant corn for his own household, and to trust to themselves for that; in all other things to go on in the general way as before. So every family was assigned a parcel of land, according to the proportion of their number with that in view, — for present purposes only, and making no division for inheritance, — all boys and children being included under some family.

This was very successful. It made all hands very industrious, so that much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been by any means the Governor or any other could devise, and saved him a great deal of trouble, and gave far better satisfaction. The women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to plant corn, while before they would allege weakness and inability; and to have compelled them would have been thought great tyranny and oppression.

The failure of the experiment of communal service, which was tried for several years, and by good and honest men proves the emptiness of the theory of Plato and other ancients, applauded by some of later times, — that the taking away of private property, and the possession of it in community, by a commonwealth, would make a state happy and flourishing; as if they were wiser than God.

William Bradford's writings go on to explain that the young men objected to being made to labor to support other mens' wives and children. The older and more experienced men felt that being ranked equally with those younger and less-wise was an insult to them. And the women regarded being made to labor for men other than their own husbands as a form of slavery, and their husbands were offended by it.

It wasn't until the Pilgrims - or Separatists, as they called themselves - were released from their communal arrangement to work solely on behalf of themselves and their own families that their colony became prosperous.

The Pilgrims' failed experiment with communism | Goldwater Institute

Feel free, if you don't like this source, to find any references you like to Bradford’s History of the Plymouth Settlement; 1608-1650, by William Bradford. The whole sad tale is down there in black and white.

You don't have to go back to America's early history to find the failure of communism, check out Owen's New Harmony Indiana experiment. Check out the USSR and its failure of communism. Can anyone name any Marxian communist nation that has worked? So if the USSR did not practice Marxian communism, what did they practice? What economic system does Red China practice, what economic system does the United States practice?

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

what economic system does the United States practice?

oh great here we are with the idiotic questions again. State your conclusion or admit as a liberal you lack the IQ to do so!

Any Econ 101 text will tell you we have a mixed economy with some socialism and some capitalism. Why not go to college rather than ask dumb questions here??

 

[MikeK]

Human greed will never be eliminated by capitalism or communism, the key thing is which system better controls the greed.

In communism the power resides with the poltical elites that openly show off greed by living well while the masses work hard for nothing in the "planned" economy.

In capitalism power resides with the public and private sectors depending on wealth, popularity, etc. A politician can be powerful yet poor in this system given we are talking a democracy like this country. A powerful politician can pass laws to counter greed by some rich people in the private sector that are harming others like say child labor in factories.

In capitalism there is a free flow of money and power to the individual, while in communism the power and money resides with those making the laws. You are screwed when all the power resides with greedy people that also write the laws.

Communism can only survive as long as the powerful political elites can keep the oppressed masses under their thumb, see the USSR, China, North Korea, etc.

For you pro-communist idiots....tell me when a capitalist country needed to put up walls to keep its people from escaping..

For an American to be pro-communist one necessarily would need to be either utterly destitute with no hope of improvement, or abjectly ignorant, or both.

There is a common misunderstanding in contemporary American thought which holds that someone who recognizes the need for certain socialist controls over a capitalist economy is "pro-communist." This perception is as ignorant as is the notion that communism has the slightest chance of taking hold in contemporary America.

The problem we have today is the effect of Reaganomics, which is in fact the rise of laissez-faire capitalism. The Nation's wealth resources have been distributed upward while the middle (working) class economic status has been stagnant for three decades and is now declining. This is the result of three decades of deregulation of the finance industry and the banks, which has permitted a legalized form of looting.

Anyone who wishes to know more about how it was done is urged to follow the link in my signature line.

 

[regent]

what economic system does the United States practice?

oh great here we are with the idiotic questions again. State your conclusion or admit as a liberal you lack the IQ to do so!

Any Econ 101 text will tell you we have a mixed economy with some socialism and some capitalism. Why not go to college rather than ask dumb questions here??

As to your question, why don't I go to college rather than ask dumb questions maybe I will but what if the college asks dumb questions?