communism. is it really so evil?

[tyranim]

*grabs hainkarga's face and kisses*
ty for a VERY strong opinion (and reviving this thread)

[Glitch]

True Marxist Communism has never happened, and it scares the crap out of America because America is the closest to becoming a Marxist Communism ever.

People forget that step one of Communism (according to Marx) /is/ capitalism.  A country has to try capitalism until the populace gets fed up with it and demands reform.  At that point, the citizens will rule themselves creating the ultimate fair country.  It's actually really great, in concept.  You can imagine why those in political leadership want us to believe it's evil.

[johannhowitzer]

Great in concept, yes, but completely impossible to pull off in real life.  I believe Greece came the closest to true democracy/communism, but the problem with communism is that, unlike capitalism, it has no defenses against self-interest.  Capitalism is designed to harness self-interest, rather than idealistically attempt to do away with it.

We can already see vast reservoirs of corruption in the more communist systems in the USA - the example that leaps most readily to mind (and is the simplest to understand) is welfare fraud.

[hainkarga]

Great in concept, yes, but completely impossible to pull off in real life.  I believe Greece came the closest to true democracy/communism, but the problem with communism is that, unlike capitalism, it has no defenses against self-interest.  Capitalism is designed to harness self-interest, rather than idealistically attempt to do away with it.

We can already see vast reservoirs of corruption in the more communist systems in the USA - the example that leaps most readily to mind (and is the simplest to understand) is welfare fraud.

There is no “more communist system” in usa, because its not a subsystem of capitalism. You can call them, more social democrat states. It is still capitalism at its best. The wellfare frauds has nothing to do with communism. Feodalism, slavery, capitalism, socialism, communism are systems based on how economy and production tools are handled and are owned by. Germany gives one of the best social rights in the whole world, but its still capitalism. Capitalist entities such as corporates still own & control the production & trade, influence laws & governments.

Even a dictatorship can be any of those; dictatorship (franco) of spain, dictator pinochet of chile was capitalist where korea is socialist. Also capitalism and democracy are not the same thing and does not necessarily need each other. Ancient greece(athens) was not capitalist but democratic, so was rome before caesar. And i can challenge if we can say usa government actually has / likes democracy.

And yes, slavery isn't a racial thing, its an economic system. Usa fought against slavery because feeding and providing shelter for slaves became more expensive than new improved farming methods (check the discussions of north & south before civil war), not because of "liberating afro americans", it was a coverage. Till 1960s they didnt even have the rights to sit in front of the public buses, now how is that "liberating afro-americans" ? You could sell yourself as a slave in ancient rome even tho you were in the same race.

One of the problems in current capitalism is that it is promoting worldwide idiocy to handle the uprising problems. As it is easier to control idiots provided by terrible education systems & rising religion. This is remarkable because it is just the opposite of how capitalism used to be when it had baby steps. Every revolution, including industrial revolution, has its two types of revolutionists; the reformists and conservatives. The reformists used to have the upper hand as capitalism needed brain power, open minded people in the beginning. Now that it grew enough, the paradox of capitalism is rising, and it needs to control public. Usa is promoting worldwide idiocy and anxiety right now, to its own people and to the countries it has power over.

[Boingo]

There is no “more communist system” in usa, because its not a subsystem of capitalism. You can call them, more social democrat states. It is still capitalism at its best. The wellfare frauds has nothing to do with communism. Feodalism, slavery, capitalism, socialism, communism are systems based on how economy and production tools are handled and are owned by. Germany gives one of the best social rights in the whole world, but its still capitalism. Capitalist entities such as corporates still own & control the production & trade, influence laws & governments.

Even a dictatorship can be any of those; dictatorship (franco) of spain, dictator pinochet of chile was capitalist where korea is socialist. Also capitalism and democracy are not the same thing and does not necessarily need each other. Ancient greece(athens) was not capitalist but democratic, so was rome before caesar. And i can challenge if we can say usa government actually has / likes democracy.

And yes, slavery isn't a racial thing, its an economic system. Usa fought against slavery because feeding and providing shelter for slaves became more expensive than new improved farming methods (check the discussions of north & south before civil war), not because of "liberating afro americans", it was a coverage. Till 1960s they didnt even have the rights to sit in front of the public buses, now how is that "liberating afro-americans" ? You could sell yourself as a slave in ancient rome even tho you were in the same race.

One of the problems in current capitalism is that it is promoting worldwide idiocy to handle the uprising problems. As it is easier to control idiots provided by terrible education systems & rising religion. This is remarkable because it is just the opposite of how capitalism used to be when it had baby steps. Every revolution, including industrial revolution, has its two types of revolutionists; the reformists and conservatives. The reformists used to have the upper hand as capitalism needed brain power, open minded people in the beginning. Now that it grew enough, the paradox of capitalism is rising, and it needs to control public. Usa is promoting worldwide idiocy and anxiety right now, to its own people and to the countries it has power over.

I see you've raised a lot of grand ideas, but your reasoning is quite silly. 

The US Civil War was fought because it became too expensive to house and feed slaves:  If that were true, then the motivation for the South to secede from the Union is so it could continue to pay too much?  Simple self-interest of the Southerners would require them to drop slavery (since they were the only ones practicing it at the time of the war) instead of fighting for the ability to continue an overly expensive venture.

And how exactly do you propose that "current capitalism" is promoting "rising religion"?  Where is this religious revival supposed to be happening?  If anything, the areas with the most capitalism are becoming the least religious. 

The common misconception is that communism has a strong government much like how soviet union had. That is socialism, not communism. Communism is more like anarchism when it comes to power of the state which is; None... Communism is supposed to be an evolution of socialism where state as a whole (bureaucracy, army, even the police force) is abolished. Hence, it cannot be evil because it does not even have any brute force.

It's hard to know where to begin here....first off, evil exists even outside of powerful central governments, so communism hardly gets a pass just because it isn't "supposed to" have a strong government.  Second, the question at hand is whether communism IS evil--none of the examples you have provided are examples of what you consider communism.  The examples of communist governments provided elsewhere in the thread that have been cited were self-described as communist. Your ideal of communism apparently has never existed or if it did was too short-lived for anyone to have noticed.  And finally, if we are only going to debate in abstracts and not their real-world constructs, then we might as well debate whether unicorns horns are always shiny.

[johannhowitzer]

The wellfare frauds has nothing to do with communism.

Welfare (wealth redistribution) is a communism-born system, not a capitalist one.

Germany gives one of the best social rights in the whole world, but its still capitalism.

Social rights and economics are only incidentally connected, that's why.  Germany suffered a terrible economic collapse, and recovered mightily when it began adopting Austrian economic ideas - ideas which are at the core of laissez-faire capitalism.

Usa fought against slavery because feeding and providing shelter for slaves became more expensive than new improved farming methods (check the discussions of north & south before civil war), not because of "liberating afro americans", it was a coverage.

Historically inaccurate.  The Civil War was begun over states' rights, not slavery - in fact, the high-sounding Emancipation Proclamation was only a very smart military move by Lincoln, an attempt to cripple the South's economy.  It served that purpose well.  Some in the USA did oppose slavery on moral grounds, and some thought it was acceptable, and were extremely reluctant to give up such a convenient source of labor.  It was the belief that people of African descent were subhuman that kept slavery alive for so long.

As it is easier to control idiots provided by terrible education systems & rising religion.

You mean the education system that is provided by the government - a welfare system?  It is not capitalism that has provided us with public schools.

Now that it grew enough, the paradox of capitalism is rising, and it needs to control public. Usa is promoting worldwide idiocy and anxiety right now, to its own people and to the countries it has power over.

Apart from being painfully oversimplistic, this sentence points out what your whole post has erred upon - that capitalism and communism are two mutually exclusive systems.  They aren't.  Both are complex systems of various principles - the core principles being laissez-faire noninvolvement in the case of capitalism, and government-supervised redistribution of wealth in the case of socialism (and its relative communism).  Any given government is neither of these extremes, but a mix-and-match of principles from both.

The USA began far closer to capitalism than it is today.  Corporate donations to candidates (among other factors) twisted the initial capitalist origins, prompting an outcry from the population, which has led us to adopt more and more socialist policies and programs - the most notable turning point being FDR's "New Deal," which mitigated the toll of the Great Depression while leaving us with a messy aftermath.

Capitalism and socialism/communism are of course susceptible to abuse and corruption - capitalism wins the day in the long run because of its methods of channeling selfish motives into a balanced whole.  Yes, we still have "Big Oil" and such companies that have a stranglehold, but that is a special case - a scarce resource.  For a good example of capitalism at work, look no further than Microsoft.  Yes, it did hold a monopoly, and still does to some extent, but it also gave rise to response from the open source community, and Microsoft Office is seeing a significant drop in popularity with the advent of OpenOffice - other examples abound.  The entrepreneurial sector has also played a part; while it can do nothing in the case of a scarce resource, a small upstart company with a strong commitment to quality over quantity can (and often does) edge out larger competition.  I know of many people who prefer non-Apple products over the iPod and iPhone because of non-proprietary licensing, not to mention the quality of the products themselves.

Capitalism resists corruption most strongly out of all economic systems because it encourages competition.  No matter the system, corruption will still be present - capitalism's just the best we've got.

[Glitch]

Historical references that disprove communism as a working form of government!

Need I remind you that no country has ever even ATTEMPTED marxist communism yet.  Marxist communism requires the nation to use capitalism until they get fed up with it and have a cultural/economic revolution.  So before you point to all the communist countries of the world, I ask kindly you remember they aren't /truly/ communist.

So when you say "good in theory, poor in practice", it's ironic.  Because marxist communism has never been practiced.  So you're really just saying "good in theory, it doesn't work if you do it wrong."

[johannhowitzer]

Ahem - I believe I said:

Great in concept, yes, but completely impossible to pull off in real life.

[tyranim]

(not a real reply to any post on here, just a little tidbit i decided to throw in)
if capitolism is so successful, why do we have the economic shits right now?

[Korugar]

(Not really a part of this discussion, just answering a little tidbit with another little tidbit.)

Because America is very close to socialism, and what we have is no longer true capitalism.

[Boingo]

(not a real reply to any post on here, just a little tidbit i decided to throw in)
if capitolism is so successful, why do we have the economic shits right now?

You can only have a great fall if you've climbed to a great height.  No system ever devised has distributed wealth and improved the living standard of so many people in such a short period of time as capitalism.  But this does not mean that capitalism is not without risks, and certainly does not mean that capitalism will be immune from people doing stupid things and making big messes.

But since this is a thread on the evilness of communism, not capitalism, i'll stop here.

[BC]

Communism, in any shape or form, even the idealistic marxist form, will never work, in any part of this world. Why? People are selfish. I am not saying this to demean humans. It is natural to look out for one's self interest.