Jesus, where did I find the time to argue with people over hypotheticals on the fucking internet.

@Keyguyperson

First off, communism has never been achieved.

I always thought this was just a meme lol.

As for violence, are you REALLY going to make an argument against an economic system by saying that it used violent revolution to come about?

Absolutely, yes.

Would you be opposed to a revolution in, say, Iran?

I would not say that I categorically oppose revolution in the middle east. After all, I do not live there so when a country revolts against a dictator and then descends into internecine war I am not affected. On the balance I would say that I am generally against it, however, looking at the evidence of the Arab Spring. The middle east seems by and large unable to govern itself without the presence of a strongman. Perhaps that will change someday but by it doesn't seem to have changed yet.

Would you have sheltered minutemen during the American Revolution?

Certainly. Life is not so dear, nor peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery ~_^

Violence is not an inherent evil. You should know this by now.

First, there is no need to be condescending. Second I have never claimed that violence was always inherently evil. You misrepresent my claim. I hope it wasn't deliberate :-)

"Communist" economics don't do poorly

Let me ask you a question. If communism has never been achieved, how do you know this? If the experiment has never been run, how is it we can claim the hypothesis has been validated?

For example if I hypothesize that red cars go faster than all other types of cars but no car is ever successfully painted red, how can I claim that my prediction is validated? (Note: I don't use the silly example to belittle your case, merely for clarity and ease of reading.)

I doubt you care about the 21,000 people that starve to death every day (7,665,000 or so a year) beyond liking facebook posts and maybe sending 20 bucks to some charity that takes 15 of them for itself.

And no, your 20 bucks a month isn't helping.

My friend you know nothing about me. Yet you seem to be taking this quite personally and making a number of assumptions about my behavior.

Jesus, where did I find the time to argue with people over hypotheticals on the fucking internet.

no fuck.

i swear y'all NEETs or something. I come back from work and everyone's written a few essays.

I always thought this was just a meme lol.

It's a failure of semantics. Communism, as in classless stateless society, has not been tried on anything more than a wartime regional scale. Communism, as in the Marxist/Leninist method of working at this society via dictatorial government, has been tried dozens of times and been found wanting. The Soviet type states probably should have used a different word to describe themselves.

First off, communism has never been achieved. Tried? Yes. Achieved? Not even close...

_{but seriously, why do you think that?
just why???}

Fuck Communism. Fuck Capitalism. Fuck Democracy. Fuck all of it.
Lets just go back to Feudalism, its the best thing we've ever made so y'all can go and get executed by the king if you disagree.

Warning: May contain mild shit posting. (Because I cannot take discussing communism as a possible good thing seriously, even in the slightest.) I have read none of the previous arguing but (barely skimming) it already seems like personal attacks have been done, because of f**king course they have. So please refrain from the glorious personal ad-hominems if you could. (to me and others having this discussion.) Thank you. :D



You may not agree with everything this thing states, but just hearing karl marx's ideas of how of he wanted people to be, is scary as shit..."MOST people shouldn't work or do anything at all. High Unemployment? That's great! Try calling it "FREEDOM!" that just happens to keep you and your family poor." "Profit from work = Theft" <- Can't imagine this being said by anyone working like the person, under real communism, the person who invented the internet should be just as poor as someone who never accomplished anything...or even like the "fight for 15." people, can't earn more if you aren't suppose to earning "profit" to begin with.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_un..

theepochtimes.com/n3/2212529-communism..

85 to over 100 million deaths...



I feel like people arguing for communism are purposefully doing it to be controversial...(*Note: Generalization doesn't imply YOU (random reader) is doing so.) Ignoring how awful communism is and every time it's practiced it fails and leads to mass murder.

Because when people like this try to debate it...and the question is "Does a women have a right to say no to a man asking for sex and can a man stop another man from eating your arm." And you reply with "I believe in Majority Rule." I DO NOT want to follow your belief system.





My liberal/left side questions, since socialism and communism are different but both lead to the wealth redistribution that they both clearly want. Why would one prefer communism OVER socialism?

There's my two cents. Now I disappear and wait to be called evil. ^3^

My liberal/left side questions, since socialism and communism are different but both lead to the wealth redistribution that they both clearly want. Why would one prefer communism OVER socialism?

My two, poorly minted cents is that its the whole idea of utopia that comes with having polarizing views. Socialism is a compromise more in the middle (despite a lot of people claiming that socialism is literally renamed communism which it isn't). Communists want a communist utopia where everyone has equal rights to the means of production and the products, Capitalists want a Capitalist Utopia where government doesn't interfere with the market and everyone gets rich. People don't like compromises so I guess its that. A less likely theory is that because so many people think communism = socialism, communists and socialists just get lumped together.

My personal (real) take on what would be "ideal" is socialism leaning towards communism but not full on communism (out side of memes). I trust the government more than I trust business since government has the purpose of keeping a nation together while corporations have the purpose of making money which I believe can lead to some interesting predicaments where an action take makes money, but fucks over a lot of people (ie axing all social welfare and letting people hopefully figure shit out on their own). I know people are going to say "you're stupid/blind/foolish for putting your faith in a centralized government!" but I don't really care since again, I have faith in the central government just like how people have undying faith in the free market. I find that to be a foolish notion, so in a sense, everyone is a fool to everyone else.

I feel that Communism is too idealistic for humans as a race because the idea of not taking ever advantage we can goes against our biological and evolutionary coding. That's why Capitalism works; because it better works off our primal programming. A society without government where all are free to do as we wish and all are equal and rich is something that would appeal to everyone on both sides, but human nature will never allow it. We're just too competitive and we just want more stuff no matter what that path towards stuff does to use or the Earth.

There's my two cents. Now I disappear and wait to be called evil. ^3^

<Snipped quote by SleepingSilence>
(despite a lot of people claiming that socialism is literally renamed communism which it isn't) A less likely theory is that because so many people think communism = socialism, communists and socialists just get lumped together.

(ie axing all social welfare and letting people hopefully figure shit out on their own). I know people are going to say "you're stupid/blind/foolish for putting your faith in a centralized government!" but I don't really care since again, I have faith in the central government just like how people have undying faith in the free market. I find that to be a foolish notion, so in a sense, everyone is a fool to everyone else.

Just a very quick response, more to get my "belief" across. Despite me posting a video saying otherwise. I do think "calling socialism and communism the same thing." Isn't a productive statement either and is often brought up, when I do think there called different ideals for a reason. And there's probably a little more nuance than the average person may think.

I certainly won't be the one to argue that, (the welfare system axing thing.) Just because I don't really think there's an easy/sensible way to do so and frankly I think it's absolutely necessary for temporary moments of crisis. But I will give credit to those that do, in all the problems those good intentions have done. And I will argue to death, that charity is a possible and completely viable solution, and isn't just some "made up" thing. People don't want to see starving bodies on the street, people will pay as a collective for things they want. Kickstarter and Gofundme are highly used platforms.

Also my first video going into the "people that have faith in government is same/similar to people that have faith in free market." There is a difference. (At least in my opinion which I will share. ^3^)

In the video it states, Karl Marx believes "all forms of power in ANY system, there is inevitable corruption that follows."

Which is a true statement. So, the obvious question that follows...Now what do you do? If you don't like the corrupt big bank, that went bankrupt and needed bailouts to stay afloat. Do you instead go to a locally owned credit union that didn't get bailouts? Or do you let that become "The bank" your only bank. I think trusting in people/ideas blindly is silly regardless. So, I know "picking from the lesser evils." doesn't sound super appealing. But it has to better than having no choice at all. I just wanted to say that I do think there is a difference between relying on a single body vs as many bodies as the people want. You can't realistically have competition in a communist state. At least that's how I'm aware how their system works...

My two, poorly minted cents

Don't devalue yourself. (I know it's sarcasm.) But I think you did a perfectly suitable job expressing your opinion. :3

<Snipped quote by Dinh AaronMk>

And vice versa, and anon, and so forth or whatever. To me that sounds like a good reason to be leery of political models with revolution at their core. Humans don't have a great track record with revolutions or freedom fighters for that matter. America too. Shit I bet we spent more than 100x the equivalent funds of the Sons of Liberty to help those brave and noble Al Qaedas fight off the Soviets).

If I'm gonna back a revolution, odds are, it's not gonna be the one proposed by hundreds of troglodytes who spend most of their days debating whether or not selling a unicorn frappuchino should count as a hate crime. And I bet the plastic thing it came in is made from recycled Kony 2012 friendship bracelets.

Yet the entire world - or the majority of it - is built on the back of revolution. Like it or not, one man's violent radical that's a threat to the system status-quo is the liberator to the other. Whether this does mean smashing Star Bucks for concocting a drink fit only for insta-gram or to lash out a system considered unresponsive to the needs of the whole.

Is that, like.... better, though? "Someone else probably would've also killed a shitload of people out of incompetence" isn't exactly a roaring endorsement.

No, but it goes over the contextual details which may be worth noting. As noted by @Keyguyperson situations like that per the Great Leap Forward are complicated by notions ultimately outside of the philosophy but rather are fault of the structure. Which per revolution's sake just often means the revolutionary party gets to adopt the administrative structure of that country. In China's case, communists adopting almost quasi-feudal structure and trusting it to work.

I'm just.... sorry, I'm hitting on this like every other sentence this time around but..... the goal of communism in the past has been to, like.... feed people, and have them be not dead.

Read Mutual Aid or something god damn.

I need to learn more about the different sects? Sects, right? Whatever. I think we're overstating the role of the government. Innovation isn't.... well, isn't USUALLY a product of the state. I don't know enough about like Roman aqueducts and that sort of thing. Wild horses don't need to be led to water, or, like, some other folksy metaphor for "fuck it we're prolly fine."

This assumes all possible models of communism are state reliant. There is a handy discussion I threw myself in elsewhere where one part is actively questioning the whole, "Is state-owned capital all that better compared to private-owned capital?"

Capital in this case being something like the farm fields or the factory.

But to risk being declared as a MARKET COMMUNIST REVISIONIST I'm going to simply invoke Proudhon and move along.

Dammit I told you once, it's called a Krautteste. Don't make me tell you a third time. I am the krautteste baron. Don't question it.

Soooooooooooooo peg leg?

We can drop this thread if you like. I don't think we're arguing prosthetic development on equal, uh.... footing god damn it kill me.

I mean hell, if we're going to go the route of publically owned 3D printers and open for free the ability to learn yourself some CAD whenever you want and however far you want to go, if that's what you want to print out then sure. But if out of all the things that are now in their own way your property and you don't want to build Venom Snake's bionic arm v3.0 then be my guest.

I still don't fully understand this meme.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Pinochet

It's almost like revolution isn't needed to kill all your enemies anyways.

Just the white landowners though lol. Okay, so maybe I should dial down the founders-worship a touch. BUT -- the people who got a say, back in the day, were the ones who had a financial stake in things. That worked great, right? Pay no attention to the slavery or civil war or repression or clubbings. Yeah. Okay. Yeah definitely dial back the founder-worship.

Oh, posh. That's an act of petty vandalism, fit for the cover of Enquirer at the worst. The start of the American Revolution is more accurately (probably) attributed to the already-ongoing wars of the French and British within the context of global colonialism. If it weren't for all that, honestly our shenanigans never really rose to a level which should've warranted a war. Except maybe that Declaration... I guess that would probably merit a royal bitchslap.

I'm rambling. The Tea Party would never pass for terrorism. Unless you consider pouches of Earl Gray as citizens...... wait are you British?

Boston's Sons of Liberty totally weren't vandalizing crown property not just on sea but on land, killing and assault magistrates, and doing all sorts of things to vent their anger and cause financial or personal ruin across the board. And Loyalist militias totally were not doing the same.

It's like nothing happened.

But the definition of terrorism - or what constitutes as terrorism today - has been broadly expanded to include large scale destruction of property, so much so in some cases simply opening a hole in a stockyard fence to release some cows may be considered terrorism in a court of law. For dumping tons and tons of tea into the Boston harbor the Boston Sons of Liberty would have dealt such a financial attack on the East India company they could be charged for terrorism on the notion they carried out large-scale property damage.

This too along with all the many charges of assault Sam Adams and his men lead and a shit ton of smuggling charges.

Jesus, where did I find the time to argue with people over hypotheticals on the fucking internet.

It's like we're 18th century modernists in the coffee houses or taverns of Britain debating Newtonian logic and progressive government reform and the idealism of the Republic. Or much the same but further in French coffeehouses, cafes, and salons in Paris.

A liberal Republic was just as experimental then as a communist state is now, with much the same historical models to operate on (a roughly twenty-thirty year span of the Roman Republic namely, but also oligarchical republics like that of Venice or the impoverished confederate republic of Switzerland, and always the looming specter of revolutionary failure that is Cromwell).

Gee, if some of these same arguments were abided by then as they are now, we would be in a totally different world.

We should be very careful with the "Communism killed X amount of people" thing, since more often than not it is propaganda with questionable methodology.

This is the problem; with Nazis, we can pull up a number easily because Hitler literally corralled those people into camps and killed them methodically, and because this was an explicit goal of Nazism. With the deaths by communism thing however, it gets weird.

Do we count famines? Collectivization certain exacerbated them; force collectivization of the peasants is one of the most glaring failures of the Soviet system. But they weren't malicious deaths (in the sense that death was not the intended goal of the regime). Mao didn't want to cause a famine. Who knows with Stalin, I'm not well read enough on the subject to get into it. If we are counting non-Malicious deaths though, doesn't the same thing apply to capitalism then?

Do we count extra-philosophical additions by specific regimes? Democracy has the Reign of Terror and the post-1776 Native American genocide on their hands, and capitalism has the Congo Free State, but none of these things were explicitly demanded by democracy or capitalism. Like I said, with Nazism we can safely put their murders on Nazism itself because racial purity was explicitly part of their philosophy. But Communism doesn't say "We need to kill people who live in cities." So does Pol Pot count?

History is super complicated shit. When we say "Communism killed X amount of people" the implication is that Marxist philosophy ordered those deaths, which isn't necessarily the case most of the time.

Alright, commies. What are your thoughts on reeducation camp, reeducating those that do not follow the communist rule book? And what if they refuse to adopt communist ideas and values? What then?

@Dinh AaronMk This is a roleplay website.

We should be very careful with the "Communism killed X amount of people" thing, since more often than not it is propaganda with questionable methodology.

This is the problem; with Nazis, we can pull up a number easily because Hitler literally corralled those people into camps and killed them methodically, and because this was an explicit goal of Nazism. With the deaths by communism thing however, it gets weird.

Do we count famines? Collectivization certain exacerbated them; force collectivization of the peasants is one of the most glaring failures of the Soviet system. But they weren't malicious deaths (in the sense that death was not the intended goal of the regime). Mao didn't want to cause a famine. Who knows with Stalin, I'm not well read enough on the subject to get into it. If we are counting non-Malicious deaths though, doesn't the same thing apply to capitalism then?

Do we count extra-philosophical additions by specific regimes? Democracy has the Reign of Terror and the post-1776 Native American genocide on their hands, and capitalism has the Congo Free State, but none of these things were explicitly demanded by democracy or capitalism. Like I said, with Nazism we can safely put their murders on Nazism itself because racial purity was explicitly part of their philosophy. But Communism doesn't say "We need to kill people who live in cities." So does Pol Pot count?

History is super complicated shit. When we say "Communism killed X amount of people" the implication is that Marxist philosophy ordered those deaths, which isn't necessarily the case most of the time.

1. I don't think we should be careful about something that has caused ten of millions of death. It's not propaganda...it's recorded deaths. It's kind of dismaying to deny those regimes happened. It's a high amount, no matter where you get the facts...

2. I didn't want to bring up fascism and Nazi's because their slightly different, and I didn't want there to be a compassion made...but even then communism dwarfs the fascist kill count. (*Not implying Nazi's were good in anyway.*)

3. They didn't have any food because they had bread lines and massive shortages. (like all of them have throughout history.) Because of the system they inherited, vs the overabundance that capitalist countries have. I wouldn't even try to compare "LACK OF EDUCATION" to REGIMES that put guns to people's head.

"The investigators found that approximately 245,000 deaths in the United States in the year 2000 were attributable to low levels of education, 176,000 to racial segregation, 162,000 to low social support, 133,000 to individual-level poverty, 119,000 to income inequality, and 39,000 to area-level poverty. "

wsws.org/en/articles/2011/07/pove-j13... <- Basically same study and it's arguing that poverty (being poor) is the link to death. And if that's true, does making everyone poorer somehow help that?

Also bet anyone a bizillion monopoly dollars almost all of these stats are linked to gang related crimes...which this neglects to mention. And even if you try to say capitalism killed them somehow, which isn't even what this link implies. 245,000 to millions isn't the most convincing comparison.

abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/FedCrimes/story?.. 80% According to this.

breitbart.com/big-government/2014/05/0.. Half from FBI and 90% according to others.

And no gang's aren't capitalism's fault...

4. Okay? We aren't a democracy, we're a constitutional republic so have no idea what you're even attempting to compare there...

"The Congo Free State was privately controlled by Leopold II, King of the Belgians through a non-governmental organization, the Association internationale africaine. Leopold was the sole shareholder and chairman, who increasingly used it for rubber, copper and other minerals in the upper Lualaba River basin (though it had been set up on the understanding that its purpose was to uplift the local people and develop the area). The state included the entire area of the present Democratic Republic of the Congo and existed from 1885 to 1908. The Congo Free State eventually earned infamy due to the increasingly brutal mistreatment of the local peoples and plunder of natural resources, leading to its abolition and annexation by the government of Belgium in 1908."

Yeah the whole "CONTROLLED BY A KING" part kind of makes me think this has absolutely nothing to do with a free market capitalist system.

Also, I feel like the video addressed this but it is a valid point. "Ignore the bad ones, name one good one that's been tried..."

5. Again, if we're trying to argue that poor people in a capitalist country (somehow means death it's responsible for.) Which I hate to use this argument because it sounds quite pessimistic, but our poor are still the best off compared to other places. So if being poor is linked to death which is the argument for a bad system...we'd have the best case against that...

pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/07/09/h..

mises.org/blog/poor-us-are-richer-midd..

Because in many cases, if you don't want to blame famine and starvation on deaths, alot of them were ignored and caused from direct actions, and not because of some by product or coincidence. A ton of people were still killed by actions personally directed by the leaders and governments of those regimes.



schwarzreport.org/resources/essays/why..

A simple, direct answer to the question, "Why does communism kill?" is-because the founder of Communism, Karl Marx, told them it was necessary to kill a large segment of the population in order to attain the basic objective of Communism.

Marx states in the Manifesto of the Communist Party:

You must, therefore, confess that by "individual" you mean no other person than the bourgeois, than the middle-class owner of property. This person must indeed, be swept out of the way, and made impossible.

Apologists for Marxism contend that Marx did not intend that this statement should be taken literally. They affirm that he was referring to the gradual elimination of property owners by the transformation of the economic system which Communism would bring to pass. They cannot deny, however, that many followers of Karl Marx, including Stalin, Mao Tse-tung, and Pol Pot have taken this affirmation literally and have proceeded to kill the "middle-class owners of property" once they have acquired power.

A part of the article in question...

Half of everyone in this thread is either reactionary, revisionist, or anarchist and therefore irrelevant. This thread is being taken over by the Tankie High Command, you all will accept that Stalin did nothing wrong and the kulaks deserved it or be gulaged.

Alright, commies. What are your thoughts on reeducation camp, reeducating those that do not follow the communist rule book? And what if they refuse to adopt communist ideas and values? What then?

Reeducation camps are an essential component of communism, it says so in the first paragraph of the Communist Manifesto. And we shoot them. Or make them slaves to Carlos Marco, the creator of the Bratwurst School of Cultural Marcoism (he's immortal don't question it).

1. I don't think we should be careful about something that has caused ten of millions of death. It's not propaganda...it's recorded deaths. It's kind of dismaying to deny those regimes happened. It's a high amount, no matter where you get the facts...

Yes, we should be careful about how we record and read history.

2. I didn't want to bring up fascism and Nazi's because their slightly different, and I didn't want there to be a compassion made...but even then communism dwarfs the fascist kill count. (*Not implying Nazi's were good in anyway.*)

Fascism is a whole other ball park. I stuck to Nazi's because they we pretty straight forward in that they, like, just built camps and killed people in them. But Facism's death count runs into the same issue as Communism's. So much of the other things Fascism did was done during wartime, which makes it awkward. Do we count passivizing rebellions or attacking enemy civilians?

I will note though that Fascism wasn't around very long and didn't take hold in much of the world, holding on only fifty years, and thirty of those years being in the person of a Francisco Franco cowed by the western democracies to at least kinda act good. If we wanted to compile a "Which political structure killed the most people" list, monarchy would take the cake because it's been around forever and in most countries in some form.

3. They didn't have any food because they had bread lines and massive shortages. (like all of them have throughout history.) Because of the system they inherited, vs the overabundance that capitalist countries have. I wouldn't even try to compare "LACK OF EDUCATION" to REGIMES that put guns to people's head.

I'm fine with counting "Gun to head" parts, which would be political pogroms and what not. I'm pretty sure that was central to my original argument, that we should count direct murders and not indirect deaths. Hence the whole holocaust thing. I'm not saying that Stalinism is innocent. I'm saying we are padding the numbers for propaganda value and that is intellectually dishonest.

"The investigators found that approximately 245,000 deaths in the United States in the year 2000 were attributable to low levels of education, 176,000 to racial segregation, 162,000 to low social support, 133,000 to individual-level poverty, 119,000 to income inequality, and 39,000 to area-level poverty. "

wsws.org/en/articles/2011/07/pove-j13... <- Basically same study and it's arguing that poverty (being poor) is the link to death. And if that's true, does making everyone poorer somehow help that?

Also bet anyone a bizillion monopoly dollars almost all of these stats are linked to gang related crimes...which this neglects to mention. And even if you try to say capitalism killed them somehow, which isn't even what this link implies. 245,000 to millions isn't the most convincing comparison.

abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/FedCrimes/story?.. 80% According to this.

breitbart.com/big-government/2014/05/0.. Half from FBI and 90% according to others.

And no gang's aren't capitalism's fault...

Exactly. That was the point I was making. Indirect deaths are too fuzzy to count. I wouldn't count "Homeless person who freezed to death for lack of housing" either.

4. Okay? We aren't a democracy, we're a constitutional republic so have no idea what you're even attempting to compare there...

You're being pedantic. You know as well as I do that by "Democracy" i mean the Liberal governments. It's been short-hand for that since forever.

"The Congo Free State was privately controlled by Leopold II, King of the Belgians through a non-governmental organization, the Association internationale africaine. Leopold was the sole shareholder and chairman, who increasingly used it for rubber, copper and other minerals in the upper Lualaba River basin (though it had been set up on the understanding that its purpose was to uplift the local people and develop the area). The state included the entire area of the present Democratic Republic of the Congo and existed from 1885 to 1908. The Congo Free State eventually earned infamy due to the increasingly brutal mistreatment of the local peoples and plunder of natural resources, leading to its abolition and annexation by the government of Belgium in 1908."

Yeah the whole "CONTROLLED BY A KING" part kind of makes me think this has absolutely nothing to do with a free market capitalist system.

Also, I feel like the video addressed this but it is a valid point. "Ignore the bad ones, name one good one that's been tried..."

The Congo Free State is interesting because he ran it like a corporation rather than a kingdom. It was put under direction of a corporate entity (the Congo Free State). It's weird case that is fun to read up in. Now, was it free market capitalism, no. It was colonial capitalism. But I didn't say free market capitalism in the first place, I just said capitalism.

5. Again, if we're trying to argue that poor people in a capitalist country (somehow means death it's responsible for.) Which I hate to use this argument because it sounds quite pessimistic, but our poor are still the best off compared to other places. So if being poor is linked to death which is the argument for a bad system...we'd have the best case against that...

pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/07/09/h..

mises.org/blog/poor-us-are-richer-midd..

That second link, if you dig around their stats a bit, makes the argument that Alabama is wealthier than the United Kingdom, which is interesting, and very Austrian of them. I don't have time to dig through their methodology, but I suspect they are comparing post-tax dollars and not considering social services correctly, because some of the stats that website makes is bizarre to say the least.

Because in many cases, if you don't want to blame famine and starvation on deaths, alot of them were ignored and caused from direct actions, and not because of some by product or coincidence. A ton of people were still killed by actions personally directed by the leaders and governments of those regimes.

Yes, this is my case. Let's count the political murders and shit like that.

Marx said...
You must, therefore, confess that by "individual" you mean no other person than the bourgeois, than the middle-class owner of property. This person must indeed, be swept out of the way, and made impossible.

Apologists for Marxism contend that Marx did not intend that this statement should be taken literally. They affirm that he was referring to the gradual elimination of property owners by the transformation of the economic system which Communism would bring to pass. They cannot deny, however, that many followers of Karl Marx, including Stalin, Mao Tse-tung, and Pol Pot have taken this affirmation literally and have proceeded to kill the "middle-class owners of property" once they have acquired power.

Taking that particular statement literally would be to suggest Marx wanted people to be moved with brooms... taking it metaphorically, which the author of this article does, is how you decide it means death. Or disenfranchisement, which is how I would take it.

The rest of the article focus on quotes by Lenin and Stalin and the like, which yeh, they liked to bloody their swords. I'm not arguing against that at all.

I feel like you believe I am arguing that the Communist states were innocent. That's not what I am going on about. I'm arguing that the really big gajillion number is bloated by shoving in tangential deaths.

An example I can pull out of my head to explain why this matters is this; in the eighties in Ethiopia while it was ruled by the Communist Derg, there was an infamous famine that became a humanitarian crisis that until this day colors what everybody imagines when they think "Ethiopia." It was exacerbated by forced collectivization of farms, and by the Derg's embarrassment at their situation and effort to keep foreign aid out of the country. We could do what I have complained of above and throw those numbers into the Communism Death toll, but it gets complicated.

Ten years prior to Derg rule, Ethiopia was an American ally ruled by an old monarchy. Feudalism was in place and limited how much land was being worked. There was a famine. This famine, incidentally, is seen as one of the main cause of the Communist revolution that took place soon afterwards.

...and now. in the modern world, Ethiopia requires foreign aid to stave off famines. It is a very corrupt Republic, but still a Republic. They are selling large swaths of arable land to Asian firms growing food.

In all three cases, droughts largely cause the famine to start, and political circumstances make it worse.

Which begs the question, how do you create a number from any of them that can be blamed souly on the political structure of that society? If a famine happens, how do we differentiate between natural deaths and death by mismanagement? Any way you try to do it will be arbitrary.

@Dinh AaronMk This is a roleplay website.

he is roleplaying a tankie

Alright, commies. What are your thoughts on reeducation camp, reeducating those that do not follow the communist rule book? And what if they refuse to adopt communist ideas and values? What then?

If you have to build camps, you already lost. Revolution of this sort has to be organic and supported by the people. If it doesn't, then it doesn't. That's why I'm working overtime and spending my day off shitposting instead of in the streets with a rifle in hand.

Which begs the question, how do you create a number from any of them that can be blamed souly on the political structure of that society? If a famine happens, how do we differentiate between natural deaths and death by mismanagement? Any way you try to do it will be arbitrary.

Well comrade Vilage it goes without saying that if the country in question hasn't paid the pre-requisite duty of Applebucks to our lord and savior Steve Jobs and other federal duties to the United States of Freedom then any and all issues and transactions are inherently Communist.

-Literal logic of someone I have talked to (not here, don't worry)

Yes, we should be careful about how we record and read history.

1. There's a difference between saying 85 to 100 million deaths are hard to verify 100% vs "it's just propaganda!" which leads to the question. By who? The FBI? The hundreds of places that record those deaths? You can't tell someone to be careful, if we're diving head first into conspiracy theories with absolutely no evidence.

Fascism is a whole other ball park. I stuck to Nazi's because they we pretty straight forward in that they, like, just built camps and killed people in them. But Facism's death count runs into the same issue as Communism's. So much of the other things Fascism did was done during wartime, which makes it awkward. Do we count passivizing rebellions or attacking enemy civilians?

I will note though that Fascism wasn't around very long and didn't take hold in much of the world, holding on only fifty years, and thirty of those years being in the person of a Francisco Franco cowed by the western democracies to at least kinda act good. If we wanted to compile a "Which political structure killed the most people" list, monarchy would take the cake because it's been around forever and in most countries in some form.

2. I feel this part of the conversation is off topic and an unimportant to the topic at hand. People can argue both were started for good intentions (in a way.) But it's clear history shows both lead to awful oppression. To be careful about history, you actually have to study that history so you don't repeat the same mistakes.

Again you're talking about everything beside communism, now you're going into monarchies. (which actually seemed to be what the congo state was since it was controlled by a king, and had nothing to do with free market capitalism. Which you acknowledge in this post.) Even if they claimed as such, it clearly wasn't being practiced.

I'm fine with counting "Gun to head" parts, which would be political pogroms and what not. I'm pretty sure that was central to my original argument, that we should count direct murders and not indirect deaths. Hence the whole holocaust thing. I'm not saying that Stalinism is innocent. I'm saying we are padding the numbers for propaganda value and that is intellectually dishonest.

You say that again, but propaganda from who? It's been recorded all around the world by many different people and organisations. Where is the evidence that those numbers are padded? You need to provide some kind of evidence to claims of intellectual dishonesty/lying. Well, what proof do you have of that lying? And once again, I will point that leaders have purposefully starved there populace. And that laws exist for willful ignorance. Even if you try to not blame the leaders that caused those famines...it could very well be the system in place that caused those in the first place.

Which I'm sorry, but it WOULD be there fault. (Actually you could argue, it would be even worse if it wasn't the leaders doing it. Because then you have to ask, what did cause mass famine? Is it the system they inherited that lead them down that path?) In free market capitalism we have no bread lines or food shortages...the poor in this country are obese...there's a stark contrast to say the least.

Exactly. That was the point I was making. Indirect deaths are too fuzzy to count. I wouldn't count "Homeless person who freezed to death for lack of housing" either.

But why is it too fuzzy too count if there isn't anyone else to blame? If no one. Then why nothing? If communism is a terrible system that caused food shortages, then yes it is to blame for that. A lot of the stuff your link provided is very more than likely gang related crime. If "racial segregation" doesn't immediately give that away.

You're being pedantic. You know as well as I do that by "Democracy" i mean the Liberal governments. It's been short-hand for that since forever.

I feel like you believe I am arguing that the Communist states were innocent.

No, my point was you brought up "democracy" and "capitalist" to make a point about the united states and how it could possibly be just as evil and violent as a communist regime because those things had an instance of violence in the past and why we aren't questioning our political system, when we are questioning communism? Then you provided two completely different systems that have nothing to do with how our system works. Just because people say we're a "democracy" a lot doesn't mean it's correct, and it's usually used for a political reason. (like when pointing out that democracy is evil.) So that's why I corrected it.

If it was a harmless/off-topic assumption, I'd of left it alone but if you're going to make a statement that's basically. "The United states system could be just as bad as communism because look a french revolution happened, they're a democracy just like we are!" I'm forced to correct that. There's a reason why we aren't a democracy and people need to also be more careful with the words they use.

And if you aren't doing these things on purpose, I apologize. I'm not saying you're denying everything. But there is seemingly a lot of deflections going on. The only purpose I can think of bringing up every other system you can think of, when they weren't originally apart of the discussion. Is attempting to compare them...

If they aren't making the point I assume they're making, Then do they have a point to begin with?

That second link, if you dig around their stats a bit, makes the argument that Alabama is wealthier than the United Kingdom.

$35007.96 is the average median family income earner in the UK. (2016)

$41,657 average median family household income in Alabama. (in the year 2000) which is the 42 highest...(meaning quite low.)

I mean I don't "know" 100% if that's a true statement, but it kind of seems like it can be true...

forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2014/08/2..

According to this, Britain IS poorer than ANY U.S state...

mises.org/blog/if-sweden-and-germany-b..

So is Sweden and Germany apparently...

But I feel like this is getting into the weeds, when the whole question is..."Why communism over free market capitalism?" or even "Why communism over socialism?" And the whole question. "Ignore the bad communism, let's name one that was good instead...?"

Taking that particular statement literally would be to suggest Marx wanted people to be moved with brooms... taking it metaphorically, which the author of this article does, is how you decide it means death. Or disenfranchisement, which is how I would take it.

I suppose it would highly depend on how karl marx behaved as an individual. Which no surprise, Marx was an asshole.

intellectualtakeout.org/blog/karl-marx..

An example I can pull out of my head to explain why this matters is this; in the eighties in Ethiopia while it was ruled by the Communist Derg, there was an infamous famine that became a humanitarian crisis that until this day colors what everybody imagines when they think "Ethiopia." It was exacerbated by forced collectivization of farms, and by the Derg's embarrassment at their situation and effort to keep foreign aid out of the country. We could do what I have complained of above and throw those numbers into the Communism Death toll, but it gets complicated.

Ten years prior to Derg rule, Ethiopia was an American ally ruled by an old monarchy. Feudalism was in place and limited how much land was being worked. There was a famine. This famine, incidentally, is seen as one of the main cause of the Communist revolution that took place soon afterwards.

...and now. in the modern world, Ethiopia requires foreign aid to stave off famines. It is a very corrupt Republic, but still a Republic. They are selling large swaths of arable land to Asian firms growing food.

In all three cases, droughts largely cause the famine to start, and political circumstances make it worse.

Which begs the question, how do you create a number from any of them that can be blamed souly on the political structure of that society? If a famine happens, how do we differentiate between natural deaths and death by mismanagement? Any way you try to do it will be arbitrary.

Forgive me, my back is killing me right now. So I might be reading things wrong today. So what I gathered from that is...it used to be monarchy in the 70's that was an American ally?...Then in the eighties it became a communist ruled nation and a giant famine happened?...That even today as a "Federal Republic" it hasn't recovered from? Is that the gist of it?

Well...if you want to wonder if communism caused the famine in the first place, or it was just a coincidence. Compare them to other communism systems taken place? Did famine happened in all of those to? It's not like it happens out of nowhere...

Which are we trying to argue here? That famine weren't part of communism, just the leaders and governments that enforced it? Like Stalin purposefully made the famines happen...Or famines can never be done purposefully and can't be influenced by the system making/distributing the food?

And once again ignoring the implementations done in the past. What Karl Marx says in that video, is disturbing and he clearly doesn't grasp how society works.

1. There's a difference between saying 85 to 100 million deaths are hard to verify 100% vs "it's just propaganda!" which leads to the question. By who? The FBI? The hundreds of places that record those deaths? You can't tell someone to be careful, if we're diving head first into conspiracy theories with absolutely no evidence.

People who don't like communism? Propaganda doesn't mean "Evil conspiracy theory." Most beliefs have somebody out there producing propaganda for it.

I'm not saying the numbers were made up whole-cloth btw, i'm saying they are being too liberal with how they calculate causation and it makes for oversimplified history.

2. I feel this part of the conversation is off topic and an unimportant to the topic at hand. People can argue both were started for good intentions (in a way.) But it's clear history shows both lead to awful oppression. To be careful about history, you actually have to study that history so you don't repeat the same mistakes.

I'm on board with this. I also think we should be more nuanced with causation, because oversimplification means we failed to truly understand history and are susceptible to the same failures.

Again you're talking about everything beside communism, now you're going into monarchies. (which actually seemed to be what the congo state was since it was controlled by a king, and had nothing to do with free market capitalism. Which you acknowledge in this post.) Even if they claimed as such, it clearly wasn't being practiced.

Communism is the primary topic of the conversation. I have made direct comparisons to several things that happened in communist countries. But I do need to draw from other systems if I am to make comparisons.

<Snipped quote by Vilageidiotx>

You say that again, but propaganda from who? It's been recorded all around the world by many different people and organisations. Where is the evidence that those numbers are padded? You need to provide some kind of evidence to claims of intellectual dishonesty/lying. Well, what proof do you have of that lying? And once again, I will point that leaders have purposefully starved there populace. And that laws exist for willful ignorance. Even if you try to not blame the leaders that caused those famines...it could very well be the system in place that caused those in the first place.

I don't quite understand what evidence you need me to produce, because my argument is about methodology. I'm not saying they are inventing deaths that don't exist, I'm saying they are playing too fast and loose with causation.

Which I'm sorry, but it WOULD be there fault. (Actually you could argue, it would be even worse if it wasn't the leaders doing it. Because then you have to ask, what did cause mass famine? Is it the system they inherited that lead them down that path?) In free market capitalism we have no bread lines or food shortages...the poor in this country are obese...there's a stark contrast to say the least.

I disagree; malicious effort is worse than inefficiency.

But why is it too fuzzy too count if there isn't anyone else to blame? If no one. Then why nothing? If communism is a terrible system that caused food shortages, then yes it is to blame for that. A lot of the stuff your link provided is very more than likely gang related crime. If "racial segregation" doesn't immediately give that away.

Don't get me wrong, I'm against throwing gang statistics into a similar list, but that's exactly my point. It's oversimplifying things.

No, my point was you brought up "democracy" and "capitalist" to make a point about the united states and how it could possibly be just as evil and violent as a communist regime because those things had an instance of violence in the past and why we aren't questioning our political system, when we are questioning communism? Then you provided two completely different systems that have nothing to do with how our system works. Just because people say we're a "democracy" a lot doesn't mean it's correct, and it's usually used for a political reason. (like when pointing out that democracy is evil.) So that's why I corrected it.

I don't recall, did I say the United States specifically? I'm out here making more general comparisons. I didn't pick democracy and capitalism because the US, I picked those because they are the status quo at the moment.

If it was a harmless/off-topic assumption, I'd of left it alone but if you're going to make a statement that's basically. "The United states system could be just as bad as communism because look a french revolution happened, they're a democracy just like we are!" I'm forced to correct that. There's a reason why we aren't a democracy and people need to also be more careful with the words they use.

And if you aren't doing these things on purpose, I apologize. I'm not saying you're denying everything. But there is seemingly a lot of deflections going on. The only purpose I can think of bringing up every other system you can think of, when they weren't originally apart of the discussion. Is attempting to compare them...

The Revolutionary government of France was a Republic too btw.

If they aren't making the point I assume they're making, Then do they have a point to begin with?

$35007.96 is the average median family income earner in the UK. (2016)

$41,657 average median family household income in Alabama. (in the year 2000) which is the 42 highest...(meaning quite low.)

I mean I don't "know" 100% if that's a true statement, but it kind of seems like it can be true...

forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2014/08/2..

According to this, Britain IS poorer than ANY U.S state...

mises.org/blog/if-sweden-and-germany-b..

So is Sweden and Germany apparently...

But I feel like this is getting into the weeds, when the whole question is..."Why communism over free market capitalism?" or even "Why communism over socialism?" And the whole question. "Ignore the bad communism, let's name one that was good instead...?"

What I am saying is those stats defy common sense. I've been to the south, and if Britain is doing as bad as that, they'd be a third world country.

Which is why I severely doubt their methodology but don't have time to dig through it.

<Snipped quote by Vilageidiotx>

I suppose it would highly depend on how karl marx behaved as an individual. Which no surprise, Marx was an asshole.

intellectualtakeout.org/blog/karl-marx..

Reading through that, he doesn't seem evil exactly. To quote...

after studying for a time in Bonn, he transferred to the University of Berlin to work on a doctoral degree in philosophy. But he was generally a lazy and good-for-nothing student. The money that his father sent to him for tuition at the University was spent on food and drink, with many of his nights spent at coffee houses and taverns getting drunk and arguing about Hegelian philosophy with other students.

I mean, shit, who didn't do exactly this in college?

I never said he was a Saint. Imma bet you can write something like that about most historical figures tbh. Thomas Jefferson raped slaves and then enslaved the bastard children. FDR cheated on his cousin-wife from a wheelchair somehow. Reagan was possessed by Lucifer sent to earth to sow discord and terror. Clinton got head from an ugly chick. Nobody is perfect.

Also, why on earth does the website you linked too have so many articles obsessed with "dressing up like a lady?" Seriously, there are several of those. How a website with a name like that going to sound so much like someone getting chewed out by old people?

1. Revolution:
Marx taught that a revolution to destroy Capitalism was both necessary and inevitable. He acknowledged the possibility that the revolution in England and the United States might be peaceful, but he believed that most revolutions would be violent. Lenin dismissed the possibility of peaceful revolution and declared that violence was essential.

A debate on the question whether revolution must be violent is presently raging in the ranks of the Communists. Certain Communist parties, known as Euro-Communist, such as the parties of Italy and Spain, believe that the revolution may be peaceful while others ridicule the idea as reformist. All are agreed that violence is permissible.

Do we count revolutions though? Revolutions, in my eyes, go in the same category as wars, as something that is way too complicated to put at just one door step. Like, I would roll my eyes if someone put all the deaths in WW2 on a Fascism death toll. Or all the deaths in the American Revolution on a Democracy death toll for that matter.

Forgive me, my back is killing me right now. So I might be reading things wrong today. So what I gathered from that is...it used to be monarchy in the 70's that was an American ally?...Then in the eighties it became a communist ruled nation and a giant famine happened?...That even today as a "Federal Republic" it hasn't recovered from? Is that the gist of it?

Well...if you want to wonder if communism caused the famine in the first place, or it was just a coincidence. Compare them to other communism systems taken place? Did famine happened in all of those to? It's not like it happens out of nowhere...

Not quite. Ethiopia has had famines. The monarchy in the seventies had a major famine that ultimately caused its demise. The Communists had a major famine that is usually put on their death tolls. Ethiopia now has hunger crises all the time that are kept from spiraling into full famine by foreign aid. So yeh, all three have the essential problem. Communism couldn't retroactively cause a famine ten years prior to its implementation. But the second famine is put on Commie death tolls regardless of the extenuating circumstances.

Which are we trying to argue here? That famine weren't part of communism, just the leaders and governments that enforced it? Like Stalin purposefully made the famines happen...Or famines can never be done purposefully and can't be influenced by the system making/distributing the food?

I'm not bringing up the Holodomor because I don't know enough about it to have a conversation about it. If Stalin is proven to have caused it on purpose, throw it on the death list.

And don't worry about posting stuff here about it. I know what it is, I just haven't read any books that go into it in enough detail to make me feel comfortable.