Sorry, that is not good enough. Idle talk of what may theoretically happen is nothing but mental masturbation. Realistically speaking, the system is set up in such a way as to cement the power of the two parties while marginalizing all third parties.
The US political system is very much a Catch 22. In order to win votes, a party needs mandatory media coverage and federal funds, which it will receive only if it is recognized to be a major political party. But in order to become a major political party, it needs to win votes, which it cannot without mandatory media coverage and federal funds.
I find it interesting how obtuse you are. Despite my countless clarifications of my political ideology, you insist on stubbornly misunderstanding each and every facet thereof. It is almost as if you have a conveniently demonized vision of what a Communist ought to be like, and are entirely unwilling to recognize the fact that real-world Communists may not fit your entirely stereotypical viewpoints. You are like an old-world racist, closed-mindedly maintaining that individuals of other races are primitive animals, despite all evidence to the contrary laid at your feet.
Let’s go over this one last time:
(1) I am not opposed to voting, provided that it does no harm to the socialist foundations of the system.
(2) I am a proponent of free speech, provided that it does not harm the people.
(3) I am a proponent of economic well-being, considering that this is the very point of socialism in the first place.
(5) [sic] Death penalty in limited cases only. Per capita, fewer people ought to get executed than are currently being executed in the US.
Backpedaled? I caused a misunderstanding by using hyperbole to describe my stance on Solzhenitsyn’s lies, and then clarified my position to remove all misunderstanding. I think everyone else here understood the clarification. I am sorry that it continues to confound you but, really now, that seems to speak poorly of you and your closed-mindedness. Apparently, you do not think that Communists are entitled to make mistakes when communicating; we are second-class humans that are to be held to a much higher standard than anyone else. How very sad and discriminatory.
Yes, but what you are overlooking is that the parties themselves are not ideologically stable. They are large collections of competing power blocks and what each party stands for is determined by who can muster enough votes. If a large-enough block of American voters wanted socialism, then the Democratic Party would move left to capture those votes.
You can watch this happening RIGHT NOW with the Tea Party Movement’s attempt to pull the Republican Party to the right. The Tea Party will never be able to win elections as an independent third party, but it can exert a powerful influence on what the Republican Party stands for.
That is true, but I’m not convinced that it tends to work out that way on a practical level. In representative democracies, what happens more often is that the parties drift toward each other, rather than to the edges to pick up marginalized voters.
You can see that with the Republicans and the Democrats. Since the 1970s, the Republicans have shifted slightly to the right; at the same time, the once more-or-less progressive Democrats have swung wildly to the right, to the point that they are now only a tad less right-wing than the Republicans.
Meanwhile, there is a sizable minority of us that would like to see nationalized healthcare, strong welfare programs, and significant investment in infrastructure, and are willing to pay European-rate taxes to achieve that. Why are the Democrats not accommodating us? Why, in other words, do they prefer to poach off of the ideologically confused rather than to work with the true left?
Come to think of it, many people in my city (Thunder Bay, Ontario), moved to the USSR to become part of the great communist movement. Of course they were purged. Here’s a trouching video on it.
Letters from Karelia: Letters from Karelia by Kelly Saxberg - NFB
One has to understand that if his parents were as comfortable as the positions he describes would have us believe, they were certainly Party members.
And, as such, they would have not only gotten a full dose of indoctrination, but our OP friend here, assuming he is not an epic whooosh, most certainly got it from a young age himself.
Being Party members, and part of the Intelligentsia during the rise of Gorbechev meant that his family was probably given more and more “freedom” as he was a child. Gorbechev saw that neglecting the educated upper tiers of the people had been a bad mistake.
So I imagine our young Commissar was hip deep in indoctrination and “education” right from the start.
Young Octoberist, Pioneers, the whole kit and kaboodle. He was taught from a young age just how awesome the Soviet system was, and nothing we can say will change his mind on that. Remember Dopers: you cannot rationally argue someone out of a position they did not rationally put themselves in.
Then, right when he was a teenager, the whole gravy train fell apart, because the proles were unhappy.
Doesn’t matter that Gorby was really trying to give the people what they wanted, with a much loser and less oppressive Union. Doesn’t matter that the Soviet system was corrupt beyond belief (like all Communist systems).
Commissar is a product of his upbringing, and should be pitied.
What surprises me is that he hasn’t moved back to his beloved Russia. There is still a strong Communist party there.
Am I the only one who finds it more than a little bit absurd to blame communism -essentially an ideology with the goal of a classless society- for atrocities that people comitted while using it as a pretext?
Because, had Marx and Engels and all their predecessors (Thomas Müntzer, Gerrard Winstanley etc) never lived, and had no one ever come up with any socialist or communist ideas and theories, would the world be a better place then? I doubt it. I’m pretty sure that assholes like Stalin would have just found another cause or ideology to do horrible, fucked-up things supposedly in the name of.
By requiring a one party state, and all that is required to keep that one party in power, communism sets the stage for the likes of Stalin, Mao, Pot, the Kims and Castro. All the nice words and grand ideas fall flat in the face of what communism usually results in.
Muffin, can you please give me a cite on the requirement of a one-party state? One from a source without a right-wing or libertarian bias would be best. Thanks.
In communist countries, people are secondary to the state and are little more than tools whose purpose is to serve the state. Thus it’s easy for them to become expendable, whether through murder or starvation.
Since there are nearly as many different factions of communism as there are communist intellectuals, I would not at all be surprised if one communist intellectual or another were to reject single party rule despite the 21 Conditions. At that point we need to look at reality, which is that of the existing communist states, all are single party rule or are single party rule with the inclusion of strictly limited adjunct parties. What communists call democratic centralism is no more and no less than single party rule.
So here I sit, a person who votes for the party that is left of the left of centre party in a country in which the party on the right is still to the left of the the American left, and yet I find myself agreeing with Starving Artist’s point about the relationship between people and the state in communist countries.
Purges lie at the heart of communism: “The communist parties of those countries in which the communists can carry out their work legally must from time to time undertake purges (re-registration) of the membership of their party organisations in order to cleanse the party systematically of the petty-bourgeois elements within it” (Lenin’s/2nd International’s 13th Condition). That establishes two classes – the ruling class with absolute power, and the subserviant class. That is certainly not a classless society, despite communists deceiving themselves into thinking that it is. The ruling classes in communist countries have repeately shown their willingness to kill members of the subservient classes on a very large scale so as to maintain their hold on power. Out of this we end up with purges that are not just re-registrations, but in fact are genocides.
I agree with Marx that “religion is the opiate of the people.” It is a malicious mental virus, an eater of intellect, an incubator of fanaticism, a celebration of primitive superstitions, a putrid swamp of ignorance. Nothing has caused more human suffering than religion has.
That being said, people do need their drugs. It is impossible to extinguish religion, and pointless to try. Let it stay out in the open, where we can keep a close eye on it. I would not put any restrictions on the practice of religion (except the obvious; sorry, human sacrifice is out).
The government, however, must be completely and utterly secular. No religious symbols in any government office, no new religious structures within 100 meters of any government building, no religious ceremonies at any government function. Government officials may belong to religious orders and wear required religious adornments as long as this does not affect their thinking process or performance of duties.
Not a fan.
The Khmer Rouge really went wild with their interpretation of Communist theory… Completely bouncing-off-the-walls wild. Somehow, they managed to miss the point that socialism is all about human progress, and instead decided to push their people back into the Bronze Age.
I have nothing good to say about them; they betrayed our philosophy, and they betrayed their people. I salute the good socialists of Vietnam for ridding the world of these lowlifes.
An interesting argument, but one based on erroneous premises. Neither my parents nor anyone else in their families was ever a Party member.
You seem to assume that everyone that was anyone in the USSR had to be a Party member. That was simply not the case; I think you have us confused with Ba’athist Iraq. My parents did not feel any need or pressure to join, and they did not feel that not joining hindered their careers. My father used to joke that joining was a meaningless exercise in symbolism; it didn’t get you any rewards, other than higher taxes and expected attendance of dull meetings.
With the exception of a short vaguely-right-libertarianish phase, I’ve always been generally left-leaning. I am, however, relatively new to the Big Mean Commie Stuff. I only became interested in, and started studying marxism less than a year ago, so apologies if I don’t yet know enough about the subject to discuss every aspect of it in-depth. That said… Commissar, I basically agree with everything you said in post #276.
Muffin, I’m not sure I agree with your interpretation of what Lenin said re purges and re-registration. In fact it seems like a bit of a stretch to me to say that “purges lie at the heart of communism”. But then, as stated above, I’m still a n00b. Thanks anyway for mentioning marxists.org. Even more extensive than thesetwo excellent German sites on the subject.
I actually more-or-less agree wtih your views on religion, but the quoted bit is problematical - you realize that a hundred-meter exclusion zone for new religious construction would come close to banning the construction of churches/temples/mosques/etc in major urban centers, right? Police stations, schools, tax offices, disability offices, post offices, libraries, and so on and so forth are all government buildings. This wouldn’t fly.
I’m glad you disaprove of the Khmer Rouge, but I’m surprised that you give the Burmese junta a pass - it would seem that, as with the Khmer Rouge, they’ve rather missed the point that they’re meant to be helping the people. As opposed to, say, killing them by the tens of thousands. Moreover, they’ve eschewed all of the economic liberalization that the PRC has implemented to its benefit, and which you’ve said you approve of. Finally, the junta has utterly revoked the rights to freedom of speech and the press, which you’ve said that you honor.