:dubious: China and Vietnam are good examples of where communism and civil liberties co-exist?
Well, from the tenor of that statement i doubt that i can make one that you will find remotely convincing, but what i am saying is that what the rosenbergs did was so heinous that the american commmunist party could never overcome the hate and fear that their act caused. the fact is that whether or not they were members of the party they were acting in support of the soviet union just as many think all party supporters did, but there were many party members at one time or another who did not bow down toward moscow. in fact the commmunist party was at the forefront of the civil rights movement and many other progressive causes including the labor movement. what i am saying is that without all of the, bad press doesn’t begin to do justice to the perceptions of the public, but without all of the bad press the party might still be a positive influence for fairness and equality instead of being basically non-existent in the eyes of americans in general.
Regarding Vietnam, see Geekmustnotdie’s comments in this thread, in particular post #59.
Communist? What the hell is communist about China except for the pretensions of its leadership? I made much the same point about Stalin, Staliln wasn’t a Communist, he was a Stalinist, first, last, and always!
China is transforming from an authoritarian Communist regime to an authoritarian capitalist regime. The civil rights abuses are the abuses common to a regime that is determined to keep control, it has nothing to do with ideology.
The Argentine junta, during the bad years, used to fly dissidents out over the ocean and drop them, the dissidents being largely unionist, leftist, that sort of riff-raff. And there are many, many more.
The evil that offends you, Moto, is authoritarianism. Rightly so. But if you are going to excoriate “Communist” regimes for their crimes, might you not, in the interests of fairness, remember than such crimes are not exclusively, nor even predominately, the province of leftist regimes?
In your eagerness to point out, once again, the hypocrisy of the left, you have overlooked an important point.
Yeah, this thread is about authoritative regimes, isn’t it? Oh wait, it isn’t. It’s about Communist regimes. If you want folks to weigh in on authoritarian right wing regimes like Argentina’s previous gov’t, why don’t you start such a thread?
**Bob **mentioned China and civil rights in one post, which is highly dubious. People called him on it, as well they should have. Period.
I’m glad that Geekmustnotdie has had a good experience there, and maybe things are improving. But from what I have read, things are not quite so rosy as that.
Boy, you never expect the Thread Police.
One is, of course, ever grateful for John’s vigorous protection of thread integrity, but hastens to remind that the thread is technicly about Lucille Ball, who is not, so far as I can determine, Chinese.
Actually, it’s about the purported Communist affiliations of Lucille Ball.
actually didn’t this thread have something to do with Lucille Ball?
Actually, China is a good example of why economic freedom is so important. As bad as China’s record on human rights is right now, it’s at least an order of magnitude better than it was 25 years ago (if such things can be quantified like that). When you have some money of your own, the government is going to have a tougher time regulating your behavior. But when you have to stand in line for the government to give you your daily bread, that government doesn’t even have to work too hard at keeping you in line (pardon the pun).
The Chinese are far from having the political freedom we enjoy and that they deserve. And although we’ve seen many a capitalist authoritarian regime, we’ve also seen many capitalist democracies. Some may think it purely coincidental that we’ve never seen a democratic communists regime. Odd coincidence, that. Very odd.
It’s probably more accurate to say that the Communist party infiltrated the civil rights movement, as well as many other Progressive causes, including the labor movement. It’s a process called “entryism”.
And I’d argue, as to your comments about the Rosenbergs, that, by the time the Rosenbergs were arrested, the Communist Party was already pretty dead as a mass party. What most hurt the Communists was the Nazi-Soviet pact.
Eh. It’s still about communism, not right wing authoritarianism. I do however invite our good friend **elucidator **to lead by example if he wants others to be even handed and “fair”.
Snarky reply surely to follow…
I enjoyed her TV show. Once. In the 1960s. For 20 minutes.
John, by what authority do you make these determinations? Did anyone give you a whistle and a striped shirt?
Point of fact, classical Marxism demands authoritarianism, hence the “dictatorship of the Proletariat”. Or course, it also insists that any such revolution must arise from an industrialized economy, which required Mao to do a bit of creative fudging. Authoritarianism is central to Marxist ideology, reason #215 why I am not a Communist.
It is fair to point out the prevalence of authoritarianism in human affairs simply to avoid the suggestion that it is somehow unique or particular to leftist ideology. It is no such thing. Men have oppressed others in the name of Jesus, which raised hypocrisy to a level previously undreamed of.
I am entirely and firmly opposed to authoritarianism of any stripe. But I will not pretend that the ideology draped over the mailed fist to lend legitimacy is of any consequence.
There was one in which Harpo Marx appeared, and Lucy dressed as him and did a spot on impression. There is a scene therein where she trys to make Harpo believe that he is observing himself in a mirror that is pure genius.
You sure that wasn’t Karl Marx?
Nothing odd about it. Anyone who tried to establish one got knocked off by the CIA. 
However, the personal sniping is getting wearisome. Everyone back off the comments on other posters, their posting styles, their capacity for comprehension, their ability to deal with facts, and which way they fold the tissue paper after blowing their nose.
[ /Moderating ]
Oh no, no, no. I definitely could have phrased it better. They are examples of communist systems that work to some degree. I also said that communism and civil liberties were not necessarily mutually exclusive. I didn’t say that there have been any examples of THAT. Perhaps I mentioned these points too close to each other. No, Vietnam and China are not bastions of civil liberties. But they could become that without going capitalist.
Good call. Mea culpa.
I also think the idea that there were no true communist regimes is a red herring. Stalin might not have been a “true communist” but his predecessors were close enough-- especially if we’re going to say the US was founded by “true capitalists”. The fact is, we are a power hungry species and when we create the conditions for someone to grab the reigns of power and yank them tight around our necks, someone will inevitably rise to the challenge. History shows us this over and over and over again.
Now, it could be that this modern experiment with liberal democracy and capitalism is just a longer term set-up for someone grabbing that power eventually. Maybe. But we’d be silly to fall into the trap of thinking that “true communism” hasn’t been tried. It has. Repeatedly. And it’s proven to be a disaster for those subject to it.
We’ve also seen the difficulty of making the change from such a system once the people throw it off. Russia isn a good example of how not to do things (ie, let the old elite seize the assets and run the country as an oligarchy), although some of the smaller eastern European countries seem to have done quite well.
China presents all sorts of unique challenges because it is largely an empire, not a nation (much like the old USSR). It’s entirely unclear that a liberal democracy could flourish in China without the country as it exists now splitting along ethnic fault lines. There are large segments of the population who do not consider themselves Chinese. It’s also a mistake to say that China is now effectively a capitalist economy. China is a patchwork of systems, with a minority (though still large in absolute terms) urban population living in a largely capitalist society but with the vast majority of the people living in an effectively feudal society in the rural areas. The split was about 80/20 rural to urban a few years ago. I’m not sure what it is now, but maybe it’s 75/25.
Vietnam probably has a much better chance of making the transitions successfully, if it chooses to do so. It’s a smaller country, and while it has it’s ethnic divisions, they are not so much associated with geographic fault lines like you see in China (eg, Tibet).