Yup. “One man, one vote, one time.” Hamas gave us a neat demonstration of the theory in Gaza a few years ago - didn’t seem to quite grasp the idea that winning control of a branch of government doesn’t mean that you get to chase the other branch out at gunpoint.
When I learned about communist countries in school, one of the things I learned was that people who wanted to emigrate from them weren’t allowed to. Do you think that people who want to leave a communist country should be allowed to do so?
The Khmer Rouge took their ideas from Mao, and Mao’s China during the Cultural Revolution had a lot of the same problems that Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge did. You admire Mao but not the Khmer Rouge- what’s the difference?
Commissar, I agree with you on at least some points, and I strongly disapprove of red-baiting. Just one thing though: why did you call the Dope’s resident trotskyist (Hi, Olentzero! I’ll PM you back some time, and thanx for helping me learn a bit more about socialism!) a capitalist?
Oh, DARN.
I’m a big fan of keeping religion out of government. Determining whether someone’s religious affiliation is affecting the performance of their duties is clear-cut, at least, and unobjectionable, at least as long as we allow government officials to take time off for religious holidays. But how would it be determined, and by who, whether or not someone’s thinking process was affected by their religion? I’d want to make sure there was a clear-cut process for this that doesn’t depend on the popularity of the religion in question, or one or two people’s opinion of a given religion. I wouldn’t like to see it turn into “you’re a Christian, your religion obviously isn’t affecting your thinking, you’re a Muslim (or member of other unpopular religion), yours obviously is”. (And no, I am not claiming that the US or capitalist societies in general have a perfect record on this kind of thing)
Disclaimer: I only waded through about 2 pages of this thread.
Like **Kidney **I’m a huge China lover. I watched China evolve from being dirt poor and a pretty totalitarian state in 1985 to what it is today. The Chinese government has done at a minimum a very credible job in the last 3 decades. I don’t know if a different government or system of government could have done as well, and likely would have done worse.
A very significant part in the rise of GDP, reduction of poverty, modernization, etc was fueled by unparalleled in modern times foreign direct investment, and allowing the free market to flourish. ( IIRC the State Economy proportion of the total economy is now less than 20%.)
Commissar - I think you’re hopelessly naive about China, what constitutes communisim in China, and what life was like back when China was more than nominally communist. I truely hope you get the chance to live in “communist” China and experience for yourself.
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On #1. Would people be allowed to vote for non-communist candidates? The U.S.S.R allowed voting, after they hand picked the candidates, which pretty much kills the whole idea of voting.
On #2. Define ‘not harm the people’. Be specific and thorough.
On #3. How would you ensure economic well being for everyone, including those who decide not to work?
On #4. Apparently communists don’t believe in #4.
On #5. What crimes, specifically, would merit the death penalty? Be specific.
Why do you think one party in control of the government could change to keep up with the times? You mentioned the two major parties in the U.S., which control the politics for the most part right now. However, there have been a lot of other partiesthroughout the history of the U.S. Also, the two major parties in the U.S. have both have changed significantly in the past 100 years.
Slee
In my knowledge and experience, most people who don’t have a job did not “decide not to work”, so much as they either are too ill or disabled to work, or the capitalistic system currently has no use for their skills and labour power.
Well, your experience differs greatly from mine. There are many folks who have issues with their health that causes problems. No doubt. However, I spent two years working in the lowest income area in Albuquerque New Mexico and have very different experiences. I managed a restaurant and had employees quit for the following reasons:
One lady quit to attend a kegger*.
One lady quit because she decided that she didn’t want to wear the uniform. After 9 months of working at the joint.
One guy quit to screw his ex.
One guy quit because someone he didn’t like came into eat. (Seriously)
This isn’t including the no shows and there were a crap load of those. We lost, on average, two people a month. All of the above told me the reasons they quit. All of the above lived on welfare through out their life. All of them applied for unemployment after quitting. We had to deal with their applications since they were fired or quit.
In this particular area, this was standard behavior. I knew the other managers in the area and they all had the same problems.
I won’t even go into the people I had to deal with in the low income apartment building (government subsidized) that I helped manage.
There are many sad stories out there. However, there are a lot of people who just don’t want to work. Hell, if I could sustain my lifestyle with out working I’d sure as hell think about it.
As far as not being skilled, what would the government of this workers paradise do with able bodied people who cannot produce any useful work? Shoot 'em?
Slee
*The really dumb thing about this one was that I showed up at the same freaking party, only about 2 hours later than her. It didn’t really start until about a half hour after I got there. So she quit to get to a party that hadn’t started. She had 4 kids, no husband and lived in government subsidized housing.
Yeah, it is anecdotal but there are people out there who will do the minimum required to live. In some areas it is standard practice. Note, most people who have employment problems do not fall into this category but there are enough who do that it is a problem.
I wish I were still in touch with my professor, so I obtain more details of his experience, but it would probably seem a little awkward to do so now. Suffice to say, what little he did tell us did indeed jive with Solzhenitsyn.
Commissar, what is your opinion of Gorbachev? (forgive me if this has already been asked, I’ve read the entire thread, but I may have missed it)
I taught in southwest China. My students were the children of farmers, and they were able to get a relatively free primary education at low-ranked schools (the rich, of course, went to private schools or pulled strings to get to high-ranked public ones) if they were lucky enough not to be a forbidden second child and were living within the areas that their parents have resident’s permits for- if there was an irregularity they’d have a lot of trouble getting an education. Many have siblings that had to quit school to work at 16. Most could not afford cram-schools or cheat services for the national exams, so they were routed into sub-par colleges that work on a “no fail cash for diploma” basis while the school leaders skim what they can from the school’s government support.
They generally had to pay for these colleges, putting a great strain on their parents who usually worked in sweatshop-style factories on the East Coast, living without medical care or other benefits because they were essentially illegal immigrants in their own country. Many of these parents are losing their farmland anyway, as local governments sell off land for some quick cash.
My students in general do not have the opportunity to become anything other than a rural primary school teacher, although a lucky few with good family connections may be able to make it in the private sector or can bribe their way to a good government post. My female student’s job opportunities will be directly related to their attractiveness, and many jobs have height, skin color and even bust size requirements. Hiring managers openly put resumes into stacks of “attractive” and “unattractive.” Minority students also face similar discrimination.
They do not have free healthcare. Health care is provided in a scattershot way, usually though their employers. Many people are left out and healthcare costs have ruined many families that I know. What healthcare there is is substandard for everyone who cannot go to the expensive private hospitals. My local hospital had hundreds of beds lining the halls, gave out expired or fake medicine, and had a number of other problems. Basic preventative care- even easy stuff like birth control- is unavailable to most people. Psychiatric care is available in only the largest cities, and seeking it could impair your career.
This is just basic quality of life stuff, not even getting into some of the real human rights issues. China has done a lot, for sure. But a lot of the country has a long way to go. A lot of what you read about China is written by people who did a two week trip, saw some skyscrapers in Shanghai, eat at a few banquets and see some cute girls, and figure that China is the bee’s knees. But really it’s a deeply divided place with huge class divides and a serious corruption problem (sure, they off an official now and then to make it look like they are doing something, but that doesn’t come anywhere near addressing the massive systematic corruption that runs the place.)
In any case, among most people the Party is a joke. It’s a club you pay dues to in hopes that it will advance your career.
Quick ‘n’ dirty answer - he didn’t know I was one until I identified myself directly. (The subtle Emily Dickinson hint apparently failed completely.)
There used to be a #4, but it was later deemed ideologically incorrect and was airbrushed out.
Funney. :rolleyes:
Thank you for starting this thread. I am quite intrigued by the communist system and welcome the opportunity to discuss it with someone who adheres to that philosophy. Many people are eager to point out that their particular philosophy works in a context devoid of greed, corruption and other human failings. Of course, that is true of virtually any system.
My own personal opinion is that free markets perform so well because they appeal to some of the baser aspects of human nature. Greed is one of the most problematic traits that humans exhibit. But self-interest is one of the prime engines of functioning markets. There are people who defect from a functioning market and seek to commit crime in order to meet their material needs. However, they are the exception, not the rule. Most people with needs and desires will engage in trade and the emergent behavior of markets will direct them to where they are needed.
People point out the problems with free markets. But in my opinion, the greatest threat to economies that operate as a free-market is crony capitalism. This is not a free market at all, rather it is the deterioration of free markets by those who seek returns impossible via free trade. To criticize capitalism by pointing to cartels, monopolies and various other restrictions to free trade, is analogous to criticizing the existence of police departments because of crooked cops.
The high cost of legal and medical services, serves to support my point. Lawyers and doctors are beneficiaries of a cartel that limits their numbers in order to inflate their compensation above what a free-market would produce as an equilibrium wage. The crisis in these particular areas then is caused not by free markets but rather by individuals who conspire to confound free markets for their own benefit.
I do not believe in the existence of so-called pure communism nor pure capitalism. Rather, real economies exist at some point on the spectrum between these theoretical extremes. The existence of state-funded, which of course is to say taxpayer-funded, entities like fire departments, police departments, military forces and other bureaucracies inches a society towards communism. Nevertheless, the economy as a whole can be organized as a free-market system. Government involvement in order to ensure a stable currency and suppress outright fraud is necessary. But a centrally planned economy that can match the emergent efficiency of a free-market is impossible, assuming we are discussing a large technologically-advanced culture.
Under Communism, how exactly will we sap and impurify the precious bodily fluids of the running pig-dog jackals of Capitalism?
Don’t know if this hurts or helps this discsussion, but a close friend of mine is a very serious Communist who belongs to a group of equally serious economic thinkers (I’m not part of this group, whose discussions are usually way too sophisticated for the likes of me). I sent him a link to this thread today, and he sent me back a link to his Marxist group, which is eager to answer questions from interested parties on their positions, which are thought out in great detail on their website here.
They might be able to deal with questions about current Marxist thought a little better than our friend here, who seems (from this thread) to value past personalities and practices rather than the philosophy and economic thinking behind them.
Not to worry. They’re only paper tigers.
He thinks he should have been shot for treason.
:smack: Yes, I went back and found it. D’oh. I wouldn’t mind though hearing some of his thoughts on glasnost and perestroika. At least on relaxation of censorship, and more “openess” in the former USSR.
Commissar - are you planning to be a leader or ahem Commissar or just a regular comrade when the red flag flies?