Marxism

[Bomb#20]

Want more examples of US atrocities?

Knock yourself out -- I've no doubt they'll have as little point as your first example had. It sounds like the case I was making went whizzing over your head. I wasn't arguing that we can tell communism didn't work from the fact that its rulers committed atrocities. I was arguing that we can tell communism didn't work from the fact that its subjects hated it so much they were prepared to risk being murdered to escape from it, and their rulers knew they needed to murder their subjects to deter them from escaping. So do you have any examples of U.S. atrocities that provide us a measure of how desperate people are to escape from the U.S.?

 

[Bomb#20]

The problem isnt that they didnt work They just didnt work the way people in the west with money and power want an economy to work

To be honest I dont think you really can say whether such and such system works or not universally for all because it depends on who you are, your values and how you want an economy to function . A Confederate slave holder would say a slave economy is just fine, not so much if you ask the slaves opinion.

Yes, whether it works is a matter of opinion. I guess we'll never know this guy's opinion,

but we could ask the East German border guard that shot him.

In your opinion what would have justified the shooting?

Huh? Nothing would have justified the shooting. The shooting was unjustified, period. If you mean, can I think of a scenario in which a border guard would be justified in shooting a guy trying to escape from a country that forbids emigration, of course I can. If a would-be emigrant kidnaps a busful of school kids and shoots a kid and threatens to shoot another every ten minutes until he's allowed to leave, then a guard would be justified in shooting him, sure. But that wouldn't justify "the" shooting; it would justify some completely different shooting from the shooting of Peter Fechter by Erich Schreiber.

If you mean, would morality being completely different from what it is -- like if Divine Command Theory were correct and Schreiber had shot Fechter because God told him to -- have justified the shooting, then no. Divine Command Theory is a steaming pile of dingos' kidneys. The shooting was unjustified, period. Same as Abraham trying to kill Isaac was unjustified, period.

 

[No Robots]

So do you have any examples of U.S. atrocities that provide us a measure of how desperate people are to escape from the U.S.?

Draft dodgers?

 

[lostone]

Rights and freedoms fully developed in the past communists Soviet Union, today's communist China, Cuba, Ninth Korea....

Whatever the faults of western liberal democracy and free market economics these systems provide a historically unprejudiced level of freedom of action and right along with material wealth never before seen.

See4ing is believing and the proof id in the pudding, IOW results trump theory.

I took a cruise to Cuba a few years ago. Cuba made every effort to welcome US tourists when Americans were allowed to visit there. Their tour guides were quite open about the shortcomings of their political system and their own dissatisfactions with it. I am not adventurous enough to try China, and it is downright dangerous to visit North Korea. Cuba seemed to be coping, but struggling with our sanctions.

Many Islamic nations are as unfree as Communist nations. I was also in Egypt in 2006, and the weight of the state on its citizens was quite open to observation. Iran is a bad place to be a woman. Afghanistan and Pakistan ditto.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Want more examples of US atrocities?

Knock yourself out -- I've no doubt they'll have as little point as your first example had. It sounds like the case I was making went whizzing over your head. I wasn't arguing that we can tell communism didn't work from the fact that its rulers committed atrocities. I was arguing that we can tell communism didn't work from the fact that its subjects hated it so much they were prepared to risk being murdered to escape from it, and their rulers knew they needed to murder their subjects to deter them from escaping. So do you have any examples of U.S. atrocities that provide us a measure of how desperate people are to escape from the U.S.?

Yup. I've been behind the Iron Curtain and in various other places with authoritarian governments. You can learn a lot about a country simply by observing how the border formalities work. Good country, outgoing border control is minimal. (Or even non-existent: see USA.) Good country, the average traveler will not have their bags looked at except for agricultural reasons. Prohibited materials are illegal drugs and things which can carry pests or pathogens. Bad country, inspection is likely and they often care about "subversive" things. The only object we had that was not inspected at some point was my mother's blind-cane--looked at a couple of times until it was identified but never past that point. That despite the fact that any observer who thought about it knew it was hollow as there was a cable running through it to allow it to fold up.

Add to this, three times we crossed borders of good countries without even opening our passports. Never once did we not get a reasonable amount of scrutiny from not good countries.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I took a cruise to Cuba a few years ago. Cuba made every effort to welcome US tourists when Americans were allowed to visit there. Their tour guides were quite open about the shortcomings of their political system and their own dissatisfactions with it. I am not adventurous enough to try China, and it is downright dangerous to visit North Korea. Cuba seemed to be coping, but struggling with our sanctions.

At least in years past China has not been problematic. Follow the rules, they don't give you trouble. Simple test: we were in a market, my wife had spent some time talking to one seller, then I pointed out her misunderstanding and we left--and the seller was very unhappy at seeing what expected to be a good sale walk away. He was following us, got shooed off by a cop--and argued with the cop that he had done nothing wrong. That says an awful lot about the system, you absolutely would not have seen that in a police state.

Many Islamic nations are as unfree as Communist nations. I was also in Egypt in 2006, and the weight of the state on its citizens was quite open to observation. Iran is a bad place to be a woman. Afghanistan and Pakistan ditto.

The border crossings weren't nearly as oppressive as in the Iron Curtain countries. When we were there Iran was actually the best of your list, that is no longer the case. Afghanistan was definitely the most backwards of those four.

 

[No Robots]

^All this means is that the US allows its criminals to freely export their crimes.

 

[Bomb#20]

So do you have any examples of U.S. atrocities that provide us a measure of how desperate people are to escape from the U.S.?

Draft dodgers?

View attachment 53703

I'm not following your argument. The army didn't massacre My Lai to maintain control of the US; they did it because when soldiers can't tell combatants from noncombatants it makes them gradually go crazy -- fighting out of uniform is a war crime for good reason. Draft dodgers mostly dodged not because they were afraid of becoming baby killers but because they were afraid of getting killed. Nobody needed to be desperate to escape from the US -- the US didn't stop draft dodgers from going to Canada, only prosecuted them if they came back. The penalty wasn't death, just five years in prison. And the draft ended fifty years ago; it's not anything the American economic system relies on, the way the Eastern Bloc relied on holding its population prisoner.

And, above all, the US is not some kind of defining standard of capitalism. It's just a country. The world is full of capitalist countries that had the wit not to draft their citizens and ship them off to an idiotic and unnecessary foreign war. Even if the US had really sucked just as bad as the Soviet empire, that wouldn't put communism in a better light; all it would prove is there's more than one way to be awful.

 

[No Robots]

And, above all, the US is not some kind of defining standard of capitalism.

Nor is the Soviet Union some kind of defining standard of Marxism.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

So do you have any examples of U.S. atrocities that provide us a measure of how desperate people are to escape from the U.S.?

Draft dodgers?

View attachment 53703

I'm not following your argument. The army didn't massacre My Lai to maintain control of the US; they did it because when soldiers can't tell combatants from noncombatants it makes them gradually go crazy -- fighting out of uniform is a war crime for good reason. Draft dodgers mostly dodged not because they were afraid of becoming baby killers but because they were afraid of getting killed. Nobody needed to be desperate to escape from the US -- the US didn't stop draft dodgers from going to Canada, only prosecuted them if they came back. The penalty wasn't death, just five years in prison. And the draft ended fifty years ago; it's not anything the American economic system relies on, the way the Eastern Bloc relied on holding its population prisoner.

Disagree on My Lai. It's not a matter of going crazy, but getting stuck in combat mode when facing those who looked like those who had been shooting at them. I don't really think that amounts to crazy.

 

[Bomb#20]

And, above all, the US is not some kind of defining standard of capitalism.

Nor is the Soviet Union some kind of defining standard of Marxism.

True. So can you point out some other (current or former) communist country that's a nice place to live, one foreigners try to move to? There are plenty of nice capitalist countries besides the U.S. with lots more would-be immigrants than would-be emigrants.

 

[No Robots]

^As I stated earlier, lax emigration is simply crime export.

 

[Tigers!]

And, above all, the US is not some kind of defining standard of capitalism.

Nor is the Soviet Union some kind of defining standard of Marxism.

So what is the defining standard of Marxism in your opinion?

 

[Harry Bosch]

And, above all, the US is not some kind of defining standard of capitalism.

Nor is the Soviet Union some kind of defining standard of Marxism.

True. But the USSR was the closest country to communism in history. They eliminated private ownership of means of production, implemented centralized economic planning, tried to eliminate class, they collectivized whole industries, and etc. They certainly had a goal of building a future communist society. And yet, Russia was a failed state. It was miserable to live in. They needed walls to keep people in. Would you want your children to live in such a state?

 

[No Robots]

^Marxism is a process of development. The first stage is the recognition that the nation state is the locus of economic power in the world. This realization opens the way to state capitalism. The first implementations of state capitalism, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, were crude. Today, state capitalism is universal, with various degrees of effectiveness and refinement.

The Soviet Union cannot be said to be a failure. It catapulted Russia to world dominance and established an example of transition from capitalism to state capitalism.

The future development of Marxism, from state capitalism to socialism to communism, is a matter of the spiritual/intellectual development of the common people and the self-organization of those who have attained a high level of spiritual/intellectual development into a cohesive community.

 

[BH]

I think what some call state capitalism is really a form of socialism. A socialist or communist government rules the country under the direction of its working class and ackowledges it as the owner of the country so really the big industries and so forth are still worker owned.

Also, realize in the USSR you could have worker coops and also privately owned businesses as long as you did not exploit another persons labor.

 

[BH]

As for shooting people trying to leave while it is sad and I hate it anyone dies it is very possible those peole trying to leave were fleeing the consequences from committing serious crimes or spying

Soneone else may have posted this before but I have read that many times a socialist state would agree to train a person at state expense for various jobs in agreement that person would use those learned skills to help develop and built up that country. The person would learn such skill and then try to go over to the west thinking they would get more than they would in the east. Those people were cheats and liars.

If someone got a car on loan from a bank and then tried run off with the car to Mexico thinking they could avoid paying the note no one would blame an officer of the law stopping them from gouing to Mexico or the loaner asking the Mexican government to expel that person back to the US.

Did the west ever return anyone back to East Germany for violating their agreement?

 

[Elixir]

in the USSR you could have worker coops and also privately owned businesses as long as you did not exploit another persons labor…

… in which case you’d be sent to a Gulag where the state would exploit your labor!

 

[BH]

Also, I am leery of trusting immigrants to the US from former socialist or communist block countries that criticize their former homelands economic systems. These immigrants are no doubt very aware of the hatred US elite have of socialism and communism and the immigrants nay fear having their right of work permissions being removed or a path to citizenship blocked if they say anything good .

Also, I also am leery of people from the US who supposedly traveled to socialist countries and badmouth them too because they may feel this is expected or they fear loss of job.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

^As I stated earlier, lax emigration is simply crime export.

This makes no sense.

1) Immigrants are generally less likely to commit crime than locals, other than status crimes associated with being illegal immigrants.

2) My wife was not born in the US. Cupid had his way with us, she is now a US citizen. Exported crime??? (It was categorically obvious we should live here and not there, not to mention that at the time it wouldn't have even been possible for us to live there.)

3) I do not live in the city or state of my birth. My parents moved halfway across the country because of her allergies. Exported crime??? (Yeah, I'm not talking international--doesn't change the basic concept.) And twice I have moved to a new state for job reasons. More exported crime???