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Post #361
Communism will fail every time until(if?) we make the transition to a post-scarcity society.
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That's a bit of a contradiction since that will never happen under capitalism. Communism and abundance pretty much need each other.
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Any reasons or evidence to back up that claim?
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A free market workers' democracy works around that catch quite well.
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it depends on your view in my opinion communism could never have truly worked though capitalism does has its flaws it hasn't really gone under yet so i'm gonna go capitalism
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Full blown Communism, lead to anger.
Full blown Capitalism, anarchy.
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Full blown Anarchy is impossible.
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I'm sure you'd like to prove that causation.
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I always thought that Communism wasn't do-able in practise and should just be forgotten. Well not forgotten, but you know what I mean. Just not even be brought up as an idea to run a country.
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Because someone told you so?
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Capitalism relies on scarcity in order to work. It's simple economics that scarcity is a major driving force behind the capitalist market economy.
Communism was theorized to work, by utopians and by Marx, in an environment where capitalism created significant spoils and advancements. Post-scarcity.
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Capitalism works by demand and offer, scarcity is not really a major factor. But it happens from time to time that the things that are highly demanded are scarce.
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Without scarcity nothing would be profitable, including labor (thus perpetual unemployement). It's why improvements in production efficiency are unrecognizable profit-wise once it's widespread, or why there is a lot of planned obsolescense in products.
With steps away from scarcity the rate of profit tends to fall, leading to overproduction and thus unemployment in a cycle of destructive deflation. Pretty much anytime this happened there was great friction with the working class and a rise of class consciousness.
Some people are forgetting capitalism is a system of rationing with an interest in keeping it that way, there is no other way to accumulate capital.
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Capitalism would have to collapse first, because by its own mechanics it would not allow post scarcity to exist.
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Communism has never existed ever. Those who call themselves Communist are not a communist. For example, if you look at North Korea their official name is the "Democratic People's Republic of Korea". Are they Democratic? Hell no. The Soviet Union and all these other countries you are arguing about weren't communist either. You can call yourself whatever you want that doesn't make it so. People who use the title communist just use that to get into power promise the people equality, then rule with an iron fist. The basic morals of communism would work and have worked. If you look in Israel the kibbutz have worked fine, and have had the same basic idea.
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I just look at history to see which one is better.
Genocide, imprisonment, getting banished from your homeland, getting your home stolen by the state, forced labour in a factory, no income, etc.
Or!
Free market, minimal taxes, no limit on how rich you can get and other lovely goodness!
I think the answer is clear.
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Shitty posts like these should be avoided like the plague.
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what about 1 billion people starving, half the world living on less than $2.50 a day, wars for profit and much much more.
Marx's theory of Communism is now obsolete, yet so is capitalism. Dont front as if capitalism is the holy grail when it has massive flaws.
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I've covered this before in these threads:
http://facepunch.com/threads/1158035...1#post34919754
http://facepunch.com/threads/1156058...1#post35043257
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If its so shit, my friend, why don't you point out my false things? Oh wait, they are true.
Haha, yes my post is a bit biased to Capitalism, I agree. But the fact remains that you don't see genocide in a healthy nation with Capitalism but you do see genocide in Communist countries. That point alone is enough in my opinion. Its strange how Communism hasn't been placed in the same category as National Socialism.
But yes, capitalism has flaws, but I would rather become unemployed and lose my house and start at the bottom than speak something that the State didn't like and be put away for life.
Also the 2.50$ per day thing is not a thing you can blame directly on Capitalism but much rather on the corruption and poor organization of their current governments. Besides, 2.50$ per day is a lot more than nothing per day except a ticket for a meal.
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state censorship isn't related to communism because communism isn't supposed to have a state
christ
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Yet it has always failed to follow that. At least always in any serious case of Communism.
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not only is that not true, it's also irrelevant when arguing about communism and capitalism.
capitalist states are just as capable of censoring or chopping off people's heads.
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Yes, they are just as capable but they usually don't do it en masse.
Also, give me an example where censorship and other things related to harassment of non-Communists if its so false? A serious case. Not an area that was free for 2 years.
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sure they do. Haiti is a good example.
not to mention all the horrible states the US supported in the cold war.
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This is not communism, this is dictatorship with a state, read Marx then come back here.
Firstly, half the worlds working population earns less than $2.50 a day on average. In a third world country with huge amounts of inflation, this is fuck all. You have to consider that huge capitalist economies allow corrupt dictators to thrive, as long as they co-operate with the interests of their government and big corporations.
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So uh, Scandinavia, Finland, Iceland, Europe are all just irrelevant? Also Europe during 1870-1914 was such a horrible place to live, right?
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i don't understand the prompt... you said that communists states kill you or censor your opinions and i said that it happened in plenty of capitalist states with an example.
and uh, Europe between 1870-1914 being horrible is completely dependent on who you were during that time.
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Uhh.. 2 nations are not plenty, my friend. Besides the USA was damn nice and it would be damn nice if a person like Ron Paul came to power, at least that is what I hope.
And talking about being completely dependent on who you are.. Same goes with Communism, if you aren't a Communist willing to work a lot for nothing then you got sent away! At least in Europe back then you were still free.
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You dont get it do you, what you describe isn't true communism, there has never been true communism.
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Because true Communism does not work.
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How scientific of you.
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Okay, can you then enlighten me why your true Communism will work and why it has not risen to power yet if it is so good?
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what no i think i mentioned the brutal regimes the US supported during the cold war such as:
Ferdinand Marcos, Phillipines, 1965-1986
Jorge Ubico
Syngman Rhee, Republic of Korea (South Korea), 1948-1960
Saudi royal family
Fulgencio Batista, Republic of Cuba 1952-1959
Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (deposed Mohammad Mossadeq), Iran, 1953-1979
Ngo Dinh Diem, Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam), 1955-1963
General Augusto Pinochet (deposed Salvador Allende in a coup), Chile, 1973-1990
General (military) Suharto (deposed Sukarno), Republic of Indonesia, 1975-1995
Saddam Hussein, Republic of Iraq, 1979-1990
General Manuel Noreiga, Republic of Panama, 1983-1989
Francois Duvalier and Jean-Claude Duvalier, Republic of Haiti, 1957-1971; 1971-1986
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I cant see how you relate that to Capitalism it self. I relate the genocides of Communism because they were done to those because they didn't support Communism, those people you mentioned there didn't go killing because they were Capitalists and wanted to exterminate non-Capitalists. Except the USA but their main enemy was Communism, not everything else except Capitalism.
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And what of the Red Scares of 1919/1920 and the 1950s? Were they not directed against Communists or those who seemed left-leaning?
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First and foremost, I directly countered your points in the posts I linked to. Read them.
Secondly, Liberia. Nigeria. There, two direct examples of capitalism enacting mass murder, if not genocide.
And if you count the deaths of millions of Africans in the mass wage enslavement by western Corporations, then there you go. There's your genocide.
And arguably, the semi-genocide of the Philippines was largely due to their religious beliefs, as much as their independence.
But let's extend that. Since you're too dense to figure out that Marxist-Leninist states are deformed workers' states that enact mass killings not based on communism, but on the tyranny of the state and suppression of the bourgeoisie and so-called enemies of the revolution, let's apply the same logic to capitalist countries.
The imperialism of America and Western Europe is, of course, the natural actions of a capitalist nation. Those deaths must be attributed to capitalism. The death of millions of factory workers across America and Western Europe, including in the Depression, all accountable to capitalism. Every expansionist war done by America and Western Europe- capitalism.
South Korean mass murders in Vietnam? Capitalists genociding communists.
Mai Lai? Capitlaists killing communists.
American war crimes in South Korea? Capitalists killing communists.
We didn't genocide communists, we massacre them and support their massacre.
Here's the deal. You can't have it both ways. Either the ideology in both cases is responsible for the deaths of the people, or the people are responsible.
Edited:
Funny story about the Red Scare. When the February Revolution broke out in 1917, Trotsky was in America. He got on a ship to head to Russia, when the Allies decided that communists were no longer allies, and detained him in a POW camp on Newfoundland. He converted the entire camp of German prisoners to communism before he was released at the request of the new government.
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Why do you assume that having no freedom of speech is an essential part of communism. Literally no serious communist/socialist thinkers even begin to say the actions of the soviet union were anything but morally abhorrent. Objectively speaking, they were an absolute butchery of everything communism ought to stand for. There shouldn't even be a state to censor us because the state is nothing but a monopoly of violence, a concept any reputable communist knows is one of the most morally repugnant things possible.
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If you want to have this discussion that is entirely fine with me, you're just going to have to do better than sourceless one line parroting. I've discussed this dozens of times and your post can be hardly called that, more of a snipe. Until you give me more there's not much to respond to.
Yet ironically all the things you pointed out aren't alien to capitalism (do you have any knowledge of history at all?), and regardless the USSR was state capitalist and cannot be called socialist.
Edited:
Wow nevermind the history question, you are incredibly ignorant.
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