SD has hurt my feelings
Now, this whole tendency that certain debates have to get into cappy v. commie flamefests really must stop. I haven't the inclination to go back and read the thread to see who started it, but really, if someone tries to derail the thread into this sort of thing, IGNORE THEM. Now, just for the heck of it, I'll answer the charges since Delfos hasn't been doing a very good job. (sorry, but you really haven't.)
I know what communism is. Communism is the deaths of 12 million. Communism is walling off cities. Communism is forcing people to give up their right to ownership.
Myro, your critiques on this subject have always been juvenile and uninformed, and I'm really getting tired of having to refute the same false arguments over and over. So here's the short, annoyed version of a rebuttal.
1) not all deaths in communist countries can be blamed on the communist system, just as not all deaths in capitalist countries can be blamed on the capitalist system. The example I like to use to illustrate this point goes like this. Chad is a capitalist country, and produces almost no food for its people. But this lack of food production is not the fault of capitalism: it is the result of Chad being located almost entirely in the Sahara desert. Similarly, the Ukranian famine, whence came most of those twelve million deaths, was caused not by the collective system, but by environmental factors that blighted the wheat crop.
2) The Berlin Wall was one case, and this sort of action is not confined to the bureaucratic collectivist states of the Soviet bloc. Israel and the United States both want to put up walls defining their borders with their neighbors, and I don't see you critiquing them.
3) Any "right" is always arbitrarily defined, and is always dependant on the power of the ruling class to defend it. The whole concept of "natural rights" (as opposed to legal/political/civil rights) is an entirely idealistic notion, with no basis in reality. Your right to property depends on the ability to defend that property, or to have a State do it for you.
The revolutionary leaders of all of those states, however, all tried their hardest to make true communism work, and each and every time it devolved into totalitarianism.
Untrue. There is a very simple way to implement communism: implement workplace democracy, and at the same time place capital into the hands of the workers who use it. By capital, I mean physical capital, such as tools, buildings, land, machinery, etc. What the "revolutionary leaders" of the USSR, PRC, and RoC did was to
nationalize capital, and at the same time make the management of that capital dependant not on the decisions of workers, but on the decisions of bureaucrats.
RoC is moving ever so slowly towards implementing communism, since workplace democracy does exist in that country, and the recommendations of the workers are ususally taken into account by State planners. But until there is both workplace democracy and worker (as opposed to State) ownership, there can be no communism, and these "revolutionary leaders" know it.
Also, I would appreciate it if you'd read the debate "is Russia a Socialist Community" that took place between Earl Browder (affirmative) and Max Schactman (negative) in the 1950s. It was pretty clear even then that the USSR and its clones weren't even moving towards socialism, much less communism. It can be found on marxists.org, and probably elsewhere.
What the fuck does Hezbollah and Israeli politics have to do with the Jewish *religion*? And palestinians? Cry me a fucking river, Israel's been *too* accommodating, fuck 'em. Secondly, I am so fucking tired of hearing this "USSR and China and Cuba aren't true communists. And yet commies go round waving fucking soviet flags. This is so fucking full of hypocrisy that only the Left could be capable of it. I agree 1000000% with Myro and Oz and Inglo Scotia.
You're tired. Get some rest, eat a good breakfast, and come back in the morning. You'll feel a lot better, I promise.
