Bring that government down
The Chinese are having problems controlling protests, especially after the Dongzhou incident. Gateway pundit has the whole story and the aftermath here. I second Stefania's and Freedom for Egyptian's Call to boycott chinese products and the olympics. That's the kind of government that should be boycotted by the whole world. On a side note, has there ever been a communist government that ended up not being a despotic regime and didn't violate the rights of its own people? Cause I am running down that list, and it's looking pretty bad for the communist movement. Let's see: The USSR.....check for tyranny, bad living conditions, lack of free speech, murdering their own people. Cuba.....check for tyrany, horrible living conditions, lack of free speech and violating the rights of their citizens. North Korea....check for..well..do I really need to explain that one to you? China....check for killing its citizens, violating their rights, censoring their free-speech and-oh shit- exploiting their workers.
posted by The Sandmonkey @ 12/14/2005 02:31:00 AM
11 Comments:
SM, your crazy!
If communism is so bad, how the hell do you explain why thousands of Americans use a floating 1957 Chevy to escape to Cuba?
Most people don't know that Stalin killed more people than Hitler! Communism ranks as the number one cause of violent death in the 20th century.
I think Liberals embrace Communism for the same reason they embrace Islam... we like supporting the underdog.
And if Communism or Islamic Fundementalism brings tyrrany and poverty everywhere it is implimented, its no problem!!! We can just blame the Jews and Americans and people will believe it everytime. :)
(its eree the way that trick works on both idiologies)
While always a capitolist, I must admit I was a bit socialistic in my early days.
"Why can't the government give everyone a house?"
"Why shouldn't we hand out profits to everyone equally?"
Ahh, its great to be a Utopian! Too bad people won't work for free eh? :)
Communisim always looks good if you have nothing. The thing is once communism is implemented everyone has nothing so there is nothing to share with the lower classes. Everyone then is equally miserable. It is one of those ideas that sounds good but never works.
"I think Liberals embrace Communism for the same reason they embrace Islam... we like supporting the underdog."
I should hope not. I think liberals embrace Islam when they concede that it has a positive core that's separate from its internal and external conflicts.
And I think the appeal of communism to most liberals , i.e. people who think and care about fairness and have not lived in communist societies, is mostly because of how it provides an appealing framework with which to understand society's faults, its crises.
SM - I respect that you put this as bluntly as you did: "How the hell can communism still attract followers and supporters is still beyond me." Because it's one thing to marvel that people believe in a particular ideology and another thing to just be like 'they're fuckin stupid/evil', which is so often the case (in general).
How do you know it has been implemented correctly? True, the 'hasn't been done right yet' argument is stale but still, i think there were many other factors that contributed to things get as bad as they did in communist countries. There are many who consider themselves socialists who do not believe in extreme centralisation, industrial development, unified national spirit, etc. I think that's why there are still people who believe in it. There are also those who have become so disgusted and with the very idea of capital and with the qualities of market-driven society, that they come to embrace even such vicious models of communism.
I'm just trying to say that I think there'smore to it. My own two cents: Ideology as such is what makes people do stupid things, not communism, not Islam.
"I should hope not. I think liberals embrace Islam when they concede that it has a positive core that's separate from its internal and external conflicts."
A very small, and hard to find positive core, but I suppose that one is there beneath the obvious plagiarism from the other holy texts, trumphalism and denegration of nonbelievers.
But certainly, don't ever mention that Allah has three daughters or nothing.
Hard to find...not really, not if you actually care to find or see it. Very small...now that's just mean. Just say you don't like it, that it gives you the creeps, that you're not interested.
Plagiarism, triumphalism, denegration of non-believers? Well, I guess the evidence is there if you want to cite it. But know that many Muslims find that secret-special-hidden core message to teach otherwise. And that is one reason why there's been internal conflict for so long.
I don't get your point about the three daughters.
To answer this question you need to look at the regimes it replaced (in the places where it wasn't imposed by force from outside) - the Tsars, Batista, Somoza, ...ummm, sorry, no clue what was going on in North Korea before comunism. Well, I guess Imperial Japan RIGHT before it, but not for the few centuries before that.
Anyway, if you're living under that kind of regime, communism can sound pretty attractive - at least the rhetoric, and if you're desperate enough you can squint hard enough to ignore the reality.
I do have to say that it's never been implemented correctly, but there's a simple reason for that: it's impossible to implement correctly.
Guess I should add that none of this is meant to justify communism. Actually watching the ChiComms bash the proletariat is particularly ironic right now, considering that Dec. 13 is the 24th anniversary of the imposition of martial law here in Poland.
Motaz,
"i think there were many other factors that contributed to things get as bad as they did in communist countries"
No, the only thing that "contributed" to the failure of communism, is a fundamenatl misunderstanding of human nature.
Sandmonkey summed it up pretty well. People won't work for free.
There's no motivation for people to be productive in a communist system. So, they aren't.
End of story.
Prog. Craig,
I definitely agree that the failure of communism is essentially due to a fundamental misunderstanding of human nature. But do you think all that tyranny was just to manage the inherent unwillingness of people to work for free?
I think it also had to do with the fact that entire social orders were shuffled around, people had to say specific things and do specific things that made little sense to them. Do you think a totalitarian society where people are paid proportional to their output is that much better?
I think reducing things to a matter of productivity might also be misnderstanding human nature. All these big communist 'experiments' were borne on myths of large-scale industrial growth and progress and there are many who have theorised that this is a natural progression for any society but there are also those who argued that it's bullshit and that it is in fact bad for humanity.
My point is still that it's not communism as such that fails, but more fundamentally the audacity of thinking there's one special, radically different way of doing things and imposing it on a whole bunch of people. And I think it's possible to fall into that trap whether you're a communist, a liberal or a Islamic fundamentalist
Communism looks good from the bottom and especially from the top. Those who seek absolute power seduce those on the bottom to do their bidding and voila disaster for all but those in power. Communism has always been implemented properly, it is only designed to benefit the powerful. If it was so great why do so many risk their lives to escape it while the silly young liberals on college campuses voluntarily wear Che shirts?
Motaz, if you still don't get it, you never will. Stop talking at me and go read preach it to 12 year olds and illiterates who don't know any better.
Wow. Prog Craig. First you sign off End of story and then you respond to my comment with a 'just shut up, ok'? How was I talking at you and what is it that I "still don't get"? That communism's a bad idea? Hmm. You could have made your point in a more respectful way.
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