Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 10,222 
|
Post by Confessor on Aug 4, 2018 6:42:36 GMT -5
Stalin and Mao, well yeah, the power-hungry maniacs they were who closed their countries (the opposite to communism ideology!), they had nothing to do with the ideas of Karl Marx, no historian would say otherwise. Getting a bit off topic here, but just to say that Stalin practiced and originated Stalinism, which combined ideals of centralisation and totalitarianism with Communism. While Maoism is fundamentally a form of Marxism-Leninism, with a particular emphasis on advocating small-scale industrialisation and peasant-like agriculture. Both are forms of Communism though and Maoism in particular is closely linked with Marxism. As such, Joseph Stalin and Chairman Mao were definitely both Communists. President Putin definitely isn't though. I'm a Socialist, who is deeply romanced by ideas of Communism, even though I don't really think it's a viable political ideology. But I've read a thing or two about various forms of Communism in my time, so I had to just chime in here, cee.  |
|
cee
Full Member
Posts: 105
|
Post by cee on Aug 4, 2018 8:22:33 GMT -5
Getting a bit off topic here, but just to say that Starlin practiced and originated Starlinism, which combined ideals of centralisation and totalitarianism with Communism. While Maoism is fundementally a form of Marxism-Leninism, with a particular emphasis on advocating small-scale industrialisation and peasant-like agriculture. Both are forms of Communism though and Maoism in particular is closely linked with Marxism. As such, Joseph Starlin and Chairman Mao were definitely both Communists. I'd like Starlinism to be a Mark Millar/Howard Chaykin book, but until then, yes you are right about him, which means that in the end, whatt he implemented wasn't communism to the least, as totalitarim and isolationism are opposite concepts to the socialist international at the root of communism. Maoism is less far away, that's true, but its complete banishement of art and isolationism makes it a different beast as well. So no, they both started out within communist systems and changed those so radically that it became something else. Stain was on the record defiant to marxism... I was about to edit this post to add to my Stalin part, "do you think that Trotsky would have considered Stalin a communist in 1923?". But that reminded me that most western Europe communists in the 60/70/80ies were troskists. There even were prime ministers in major european countries who started out their political journey as such. Lenin himself was firmly oppoed to bureaucratic states, such as Stalin and Mao implemented. Unfortunnately, he died early, and Trotski was marginalized if not worse. Russian communist history is such a complicated mess, that it would be difficult to say that there was any sort of real communism in place after 1922. When you see tat smoe people believe that Russia and Putin still are communists, that shows how weird the whole situation just is. Heck, you even have some people who are die hard believers that because the nazi acronym uses the world socialist, socialism is kin to nazism. There's a reason why stalinism and maoism are such common words, because they are usefull : they help us remind us that the history of communism is filled with misconceptions and conspiracies.  |
|
|
|
Post by adamwarlock2099 on Aug 4, 2018 9:19:11 GMT -5
Stalin and Mao, well yeah, the power-hungry maniacs they were who closed their countries (the opposite to communism ideology!), they had nothing to do with the ideas of Karl Marx, no historian would say otherwise. Getting a bit off topic here, but just to say that Starlin practiced and originated Starlinism, which combined ideals of centralisation and totalitarianism with Communism. While Maoism is fundementally a form of Marxism-Leninism, with a particular emphasis on advocating small-scale industrialisation and peasant-like agriculture. Both are forms of Communism though and Maoism in particular is closely linked with Marxism. As such, Joseph Starlin and Chairman Mao were definitely both Communists. President Putin definitely isn't though. I'm a Socialist, who is deeply romanced by ideas of Communism, even though I don't really think it's a viable political ideology. But I've read a thing or two about various forms of Communism in my time, so I had to just chime in here, cee. Confessor in here smearing the name of Starlin. We’ll just hope it was the autocorrect on his phone when he posted this.  |
|
Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 10,222
|
Post by Confessor on Aug 4, 2018 10:05:39 GMT -5
I'd like Starlinism to be a Mark Millar/Howard Chaykin book, but until then... Confessor in here smearing the name of Starlin. We’ll just hope it was the autocorrect on his phone when he posted this. Oops! LOL...sorry, fellas. That's the danger of talking politics on a comic forum. Sometimes your fingers just go to the most familiar spelling.  I edited my original post. |
|
|
|
Post by Cei-U! on Aug 4, 2018 10:08:16 GMT -5
Communism, the original Marx/Engel version and its many later interpretations, can never work because it's predicated on a fundamental misunderstanding of history and human nature. The oppressed, on achieving power, always become oppressors in turn, unless held in check by safeguards like those built into the US Constitution. Socialism, particularly democratic socialism, can and does work, imperfectly to be sure but with a proven track record of improving peoples' lives. I'll take it over unregulated corporate capitalism--which is in my opinion a bigger threat to civilization in the 21st century than communism, Islamic fundamentalism, and fascism (its occasional servant) put together--every time.
Cei-U!
I summon my personal manifesto!
|
|
|
|
Post by Roquefort Raider on Aug 4, 2018 11:18:43 GMT -5
Communism, the original Marx/Engel version and its many later interpretations, can never work because it's predicated on a fundamental misunderstanding of history and human nature. I fully agree. In fact, the most important thing that made me believe that communism could never, ever work was reading Marx and Engels' manifesto. (And I was a pretty devout socialist back then!) The proof is always in the pudding. Communist societies never worked, while social democracies thrive in most cases, and today's countries where life has the highest standards are almost all social democracies. Unregulated capitalism doesn't work either, I agree... it can only lead to the accumulation of riches in the hands of the few, and when the many are driven to complete destitution they revolt and bring society down. It is a wise capitalist who insists on enough wealth redistribution to keep the hoi polloi complacent. (And it is a decent capitalist who genuinely believes that he, too, will benefit from a society where wealth redistribution is important enough to give everybody a fair shot at being happy in life). |
|
|
|
Post by comicsandwho on Aug 4, 2018 14:22:46 GMT -5
Well, 'agreeing with every word Chaykin said'...when most of the rest of us wouldn't go that far...doesn't sound like a very 'moderate' position.
Chaykin complains about people glorifying and romanticizing the Reagan era...after he glorifies FDR and rips Reagan a new one for somehow being 'responsible' for getting rid of the New Deal. Was Chaykin in a coma for several decades, and missed everything between the '40s and '80s? Like f'rinstance, all those other Presidents who weren't FDR?
Reagan wasn't some conservative 'response' to the New Deal. He was the result of Jimmy Carter being such a terrible President that 'Reagan Democrats' crossed party lines to create a landslide unheard of before or since.
|
|
|
|
Post by beccabear67 on Aug 4, 2018 14:27:27 GMT -5
I've never considered or called Bernie Sanders a communist. I'm Canadian, I'm well aware of socialism and socialized health care and how U.S. does incorporate socialist programs and agencies to a lesser extent as well.
You are wrong about Putin in that he absolutely was a communist who rose through the party and accrued power and wealth and used it's agencies against enemies. He is a communist now in that he is the head of the party. He may also be a gangster. He is no capitalist, he gets wealth through sheer thuggery and power, which is why a failed would-be businessman like Trump admires him so openly and often. Communism is the fat left historically and not conservative.
Capitalism balanced by regulations proven necessary over time for sustainability has gifted the world with so much in terms of invention and imagination... especially when multi-cultural... communism is a black hole in comparison. Too much socialism would just feed a class system, generations of people attached to government grants and insider bidding and so forth. Asians erected statues of Karl Marx despite his racist teachings that Asians are only fit for manual labor. Mao, Kims Jung-Un and Il, and Pol Pot fed directly on these teachings and added some of their own and look how many of their own people died, millions. They even say Mao might have been responsible for more deaths than Stalin, and Stalin for more than Hitler, and it'[s the communists who kill their own kind which you'd think liberators of the people and all their other crap promises would be against... The U.S. even recognized a Kampuchian government at one time and supplied support to it based on their title of democractic people's liberation or somesuch, against the much less lunatic Vietnamese communists! Kids informing on and turning in their parents, village chiefs executed as capitalist land barons, one state media, none of that stuff is conservative and you need to beware when you see attempts at bringing such things to our own countries under the guise of conservatism. The more people use these terms of 'revolution' on either extreme the more nervous you should get. There was a perfectly good revolution in the 1770s-80s and you don't need further ones.
|
|
|
|
Post by beccabear67 on Aug 4, 2018 14:37:10 GMT -5
There are still people on the extreme right bent on undoing every last New Deal accomplishment or regulation (protection). It's kind of like Trump with Obama era anything, it's just mindless, and luckily often disingenuous too, Trump has maintained and not interfered with some Obama economic policies that were working and continue to work. The disaster he misrepresent was what Obama inherited, and you're lucky Bush Jr. was unsuccessful in tying in social security to the free market stock exchange given what happened in 2008!
Reagan was a Democrat before he was a Republican, and it amazes me how many conservatives who make some sort of secular saint of the guy will at first accuse me of lying when I point out to them how he more than tripled the national debt! He also raised taxes nineteen time. Bush Sr. had to do a lot of what Dukakis was saying straight needed to be done economically after Reagan and the eight thousand dollar coffee pot blank check he gave to anything military. I do agree with Reagan that the soviet union was an evil empire keeping (and still trying to keep) various buffer or satellites in that would leave of their own free will (Ukraine, they added the Crimean part in order to control it, w could be happy to make some kind of deal for it separating from the Ukraine actually, as the rest minus the almost totally historically Russian addition would become democratic).
|
|
|
|
Post by beccabear67 on Aug 4, 2018 14:45:52 GMT -5
I would most like the Democractic party or liberal parties in the west generally to not try so hard to bank on things like access to abortion, overly ambitious health care dreams, subsidizing education or developing business directly (crown corporations) at least beyond what has been established in the past, as well as not adding to hysterics and exaggeration. The U.S. Republican party is in a huge mess right now and we need a functioning healthy non-extreme conservative wing for democracies to function period. Union-busting and total bans on reproductive health services or not covering pills and devices etc. is not conservative, it's fringe extreme stuff, same as no regulations on firearms or borders or using abortion as birth control which is horrible (Russia). Pandering to blocks whether of would-be revolutionaries or even ethnic race-based demographics can really unbalance things.
|
|
cee
Full Member
Posts: 105
|
Post by cee on Aug 4, 2018 15:23:10 GMT -5
I've never considered or called Bernie Sanders a communist. I'm Canadian, I'm well aware of socialism and socialized health care and how U.S. does incorporate socialist programs and agencies to a lesser extent as well. You are wrong about Putin in that he absolutely was a communist who rose through the party and accrued power and wealth and used it's agencies against enemies. He is a communist now in that he is the head of the party. He may also be a gangster. He is no capitalist, he gets wealth through sheer thuggery and power, which is why a failed would-be businessman like Trump admires him so openly and often. Communism is the fat left historically and not conservative. Capitalism balanced by regulations proven necessary over time for sustainability has gifted the world with so much in terms of invention and imagination... especially when multi-cultural... communism is a black hole in comparison. Too much socialism would just feed a class system, generations of people attached to government grants and insider bidding and so forth. Asians erected statues of Karl Marx despite his racist teachings that Asians are only fit for manual labor. Mao, Kims Jung-Un and Il, and Pol Pot fed directly on these teachings and added some of their own and look how many of their own people died, millions. They even say Mao might have been responsible for more deaths than Stalin, and Stalin for more than Hitler, and it'[s the communists who kill their own kind which you'd think liberators of the people and all their other crap promises would be against... The U.S. even recognized a Kampuchian government at one time and supplied support to it based on their title of democractic people's liberation or somesuch, against the much less lunatic Vietnamese communists! Kids informing on and turning in their parents, village chiefs executed as capitalist land barons, one state media, none of that stuff is conservative and you need to beware when you see attempts at bringing such things to our own countries under the guise of conservatism. The more people use these terms of 'revolution' on either extreme the more nervous you should get. There was a perfectly good revolution in the 1770s-80s and you don't need further ones. Then you see it's already hapening  Sorry but about Putin, you are deeply factualy wrong : He never ever was a communist. He was a KGB officer, and when the union collapsed and there was an attempted coup by the communist factions, he sided directly with the other side. He is the head of the party, yes, but which party? Certainly not the communist party, which currently is in the opposition. His party - Yedinaya Rossiya (Russia United) - is not based in ideology, it's a self serving tool for power, as was Forza Italia in Italy for Berlusconi. He hasn't tried to implement a single communist economical solution ever, and the only times he spoke about communism was against it. So I really don't understand why you insist that he is one. Economically, he has privatized all state owned industries, deregulated the economy, given huge tax breaks to the biggest private companies, and opened trade with every countries, ie capitalism. He is a self-described conservative who goes to church, how could he be a communist? The class system was the result of capitalism. Yes, Mao might be responsible for more deaths than Stalin, and Kissinger for more deaths than both of them, you really don't want to go that way . I don't really know how to answer the rest as it seems to me disconnected from what we where discussing. |
|
cee
Full Member
Posts: 105
|
Post by cee on Aug 4, 2018 15:54:06 GMT -5
I would most like the Democractic party or liberal parties in the west generally to not try so hard to bank on things like access to abortion, overly ambitious health care dreams, subsidizing education or developing business directly (crown corporations) at least beyond what has been established in the past, as well as not adding to hysterics and exaggeration. The U.S. Republican party is in a huge mess right now and we need a functioning healthy non-extreme conservative wing for democracies to function period. Union-busting and total bans on reproductive health services or covering devices etc. is not conservative, it's fringe extreme stuff, same as no regulations on firearms or borders or using abortion as birth control which is horrible (Russia). Pandering to blocks whether of would-be revolutionaries or even ethnic race-based demographics can really unbalance things. The Democratic party currently is center-right, so I'm really not sure that what we need is a party even more to the right. Universal Healthcare is coming, you can bet on it, because that's what the people want. Just this month, Fox and Friends had a poll about it, asking its audience if the benefits would outweigh the costs, and 73% said yes. The Koch brothers just released a study about the ten year costs of universal healthcare, coming up with a huge and scary number. But unfortunately for them, economy analysts quickly saw that this number was 2 trillions less expensive than what we currently have! All this and more can be discussed in a healthy manner. But when you come to abortion, I think it's of little help, since it will inevitably be based in ideology. I can fully respect one's choice to exclude abortion as a personnal possibility, but not as a choice for anyone else but yourself. If your views on abortions are based on religion, fine, I respect that, but we live in countries where state and religion are separated, despite what many conservatives would like to believe. If your views are based on the belief that abortion is murder, without any spiritual considerations, then that's still ideology. I know that in the current state of affairs, a ban on private gun ownership is impossible, but it really saddens me to see that most people wouldn't even consider it as an unreachable ideal to tend to. I fully agree that the soviet union essentially was a terrifying perversion, but so is the US empire in so many regards : if you look at almost all central and south America, the middle east, south Asia, half of Africa, we're talking dozens of millions of deaths if we're being honest. We could go into details, but I guess that would take us into a much much longer discussion, and there are history books that do the job nicely already. I'm in no shape and form a communist, but I don't need to be to realize that US politics have duped the people for way to long into believing that because it has a binary political system, this means both sides are represented. You said it yourself in the second of your series of three posts : a lot of what conservatives now consider liberal and progressive policies used to be simple common sense. People often seem to forget that the US church used to be on the left, until the neo-cons bought them in the late 70ies, that didn't help. I'm really not trying to be adverserial here, and find debate around this really interesting, but please understand that for many people like me, it is highly frustrating to constantly hear this argument that ld always aim for the center, when the center in the US is leaning so much to the right, that the middle line between what the republican and democrat parties currently is conservatism, in the vast majority of hte world, because it philosophically is. |
|
|
|
Post by comicsandwho on Aug 4, 2018 17:15:01 GMT -5
I'd like Starlinism to be a Mark Millar/Howard Chaykin book, but until then... Confessor in here smearing the name of Starlin. We’ll just hope it was the autocorrect on his phone when he posted this. Oops! LOL...sorry, fellas. That's the danger of talking politics on a comic forum. Sometimes your fingers just go to the most familiar spelling. I edited my original post. Starlinism: Using 1-900 telephone hotlines to determine which children live or die...  |
|
|
|
Post by beccabear67 on Aug 4, 2018 17:32:16 GMT -5
Well, I'm both pro-choice and anti-abortion (in the sense of who is actually pro-abortion), and those who do find it to be sometimes a truly horrific thing ought to be happily funding giving away birth control as well as funding planned parenthood for it's other functions.
If you're against binary then a right and left are sort of beside the point but having been a mix of things identified as left and some as right I do find I am more or less the center and that there is where stability can be found, a balance.
I've caught so many U.S. people misrepresenting Canadian health care though I have no faith in their ability to run any kind of socialized health care in the U.S. in a sustainable way. People here do die waiting and many things are de-listed as the system runs out of money, and others never were covered like most dental and eye care things. You can pretty much discount everything Michael Moore has had to say about healthcare as he is full of at best half-truths about Canada and Cuba. I can't help when I do know something and it is not from googling or wiki-ing. I have my own health care problems and in the past my U.S. fiancee with my help had to navigate that medicare and private system (and it was these things that kept us from marrying or I could've died him having used up so much of the allotted coverage from our workplace and his medicare after that). Bernie sounds nice but be very wary of these visions and promises from anyone. There are obvious situations though where treatment earlier does save money,. but as I said her in socialized health care Canada the timely part is slip sliding away, and thanks to people south of the border (and north in Alaska) poaching our lower cost negotiated drugs we get situations now where prescriptions can't be renewed on time and people seriously can suffer from that).
KGB to me is central communist party muscle... it's a sham to say there are two parties there, there is one and they control all> Real opposition is harassed, vilified, jailed or murdered even when outside their borders.
Nothing personal taken. I really only see red big time over some of the nasty alt-right games online that ought to be exposed a thousand times and dispensed with by now. I do know the bloody history of most countries, we all can still strive to live up to the better ideals enshrined in our documents (and recongize where someone like Ho Chi-Minh was actually inspired by things like the Declaration Of Independence so we don't back another France who insisted on keeping Indochina enslaved after it itself had been liberated in WWII; Charles DeGaul! bleh).
|
|
cee
Full Member
Posts: 105
|
Post by cee on Aug 5, 2018 4:17:06 GMT -5
Well, I'm both pro-choice and anti-abortion (in the sense of who is actually pro-abortion), and those who do find it to be sometimes a truly horrific thing ought to be happily funding giving away birth control as well as funding planned parenthood for it's other functions. If you're against binary then a right and left are sort of beside the point but having been a mix of things identified as left and some as right I do find I am more or less the center and that there is where stability can be found, a balance. I've caught so many U.S. people misrepresenting Canadian health care though I have no faith in their ability to run any kind of socialized health care in the U.S. in a sustainable way. People here do die waiting and many things are de-listed as the system runs out of money, and others never were covered like most dental and eye care things. You can pretty much discount everything Michael Moore has had to say about healthcare as he is full of at best half-truths about Canada and Cuba. I can't help when I do know something and it is not from googling or wiki-ing. I have my own health care problems and in the past my U.S. fiancee with my help had to navigate that medicare and private system (and it was these things that kept us from marrying or I could've died him having used up so much of the allotted coverage from our workplace and his medicare after that). Bernie sounds nice but be very wary of these visions and promises from anyone. There are obvious situations though where treatment earlier does save money,. but as I said her in socialized health care Canada the timely part is slip sliding away, and thanks to people south of the border (and north in Alaska) poaching our lower cost negotiated drugs we get situations now where prescriptions can't be renewed on time and people seriously can suffer from that). KGB to me is central communist party muscle... it's a sham to say there are two parties there, there is one and they control all> Real opposition is harassed, vilified, jailed or murdered even when outside their borders. Nothing personal taken. I really only see red big time over some of the nasty alt-right games online that ought to be exposed a thousand times and dispensed with by now. I do know the bloody history of most countries, we all can still strive to live up to the better ideals enshrined in our documents (and recongize where someone like Ho Chi-Minh was actually inspired by things like the Declaration Of Independence so we don't back another France who insisted on keeping Indochina enslaved after it itself had been liberated in WWII; Charles DeGaul! bleh). You can very well be pro choice and anti abortion in your sense, as long as you are those things for yourself and don't judge others for their personnal choices Being against a binary means that you want several parties, so that you don't end up in the current situation where you are being duped to believe that you have a "left" option with the democrat party, being that people tend to now think in binary ways, at least in the US. You see a side that is undisputably at the right end of the spectrum, it's only a natural reflex to assume that the ones who oppose it are at the other end. But that's where we're being dupped. I get that you have a beef with Michael Moore, but IMHO, you may be missing the larger picture here, as there is no such thing as a fault-free system. Even in the most advanced healthcare system in the world, you'll find people with reason to complain. The fact remains that no one in the world pays more for its healthcare system than the US, and no one gets less coverage per dollar than there. And it has now been thoroughly demonstrated that the US system is corrupt because this imbalance is only due to private interests. The reason why it works in France or other providing countries has nothing to do with scale, as republicans lazily wants us to believe, it's the system that is flawed in the US. And it all is connected, as in order to have a good healthcare system, you need to have a large number of real health professionals, which is impossible in the US because of the costs of education. So it is ultimatly a vicious circle masterminded by colluding pharma companies who want to price up their products in a free market system, which they couldn't do in France or maybe Canada (I don't know enough about this, I'll trust you there). Now one could make the argument that the cost of pharma is a very delicate discussion, since in reality, hte costs of developpiing a product aregigantic, and you only have roughly 5 years to make back what you invested before generic analogs are allowed to be produced. So indeed, the US market is a guge incentive for pharma corps. But that doesn't mean it is fair to the sick. I guess that on that side topic, we all still need to come up with a better solution (which to some degree could only come if pharma research was globally centralized and declared of being in public interest, which I believe it is, even if you'd rightly deem this as a communist solution). KGB iis communist to you. Exactly, to you, in your perception. But if you believe that, it means you also believe that CIA is republican neo con, which I hope you'll agree is more complex than that. But essentially, you are wrong : the KGB never ever had any political prerogative : as in any countries, it obeys the power in place, but contrary to the army, has no real numbers to challenge the powers. It is simply bureaucracy spies. I didn't say there are only two parties. There are far more in Russia than in the US? but only one matters, and it is Putin's, and the only thing it has to do with the communist party of te past is that it is the one currently in power. Maybe you're conflating the two things, but what you essentially seem to be believing is that Russia is eternally communist, and that the people at its head therefore are communists. If it simply is because you believe Putin is a commie simply because you believe being in the KGB 30 years ago makes you one, even the mere wikipedia page willl help you shatter that illusiion Charles de Gaulle? Ah... I think we can all agree that the 50ies weren't the most progressive times, and that the military thrives in this. De Gaulle had most of his flaws there, but he also had his strenghts. The Indochine war was largely beyond his control, but not the algerian war, which is a more potent reason to bleh him. And he eventually got shamefully boohed out by the french people after 68. Everyone should do themeselves a favor and read about the 100 years war to better understand the dynamics of the western world, and then the french and US revolutions (highly connected by Lafayette), and finally the birth of the 2nd Reich in 1871 (including Bismark.Versailles treaty, etc). But sadly, we tend to think that the modern world was born after WWII, and thus more than often completely miss the roots of why... well almost everything! And it's also the damn best drama you could ever read : the 100 year wars? Games of Thrones' got nothing on it! There's anice little movie with Omar Shariff partly about it, The Last Valley. Highly recommended. |
|
