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Communism vs Capitalism does anyone actually think we'd be better off in a Communist society?


Darzin

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1 hour ago, larrytheimp said:

How many 'communist' countries have enshrined white supremacy and slavery into their constituiton or founding documents in the same way as 'democratic' or 'capitalist' ones have?  

I would guess zero. Communist countries fail long before the mores of society change that much.

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4 hours ago, sologdin said:

squabs! good to see you kicking around.

of course, the USSR withstood two invasions from y'all, and lasted over 70 years under siege. 

The Soviet Union didn't withstood the invasions. The Soviet Union troops retreated like cowards because they were afraid to die. It was the Ingush and the Chechens that helped USSR win the war. 

 

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13 hours ago, Targknight said:

USSR could not defeat Finland. 

Don't exaggerate. The Finns put up much more of a fight than anyone expected, but in the end they were defeated and had to hand over some territory as well as war reparations.

18 hours ago, Squab said:

I would guess zero. Communist countries fail long before the mores of society change that much.

It's zero, but it's not obvious that all of them will fail. The most obvious reason is that Communism was first tried long after the abolition of slavery and serfdom. Another reason is that most societies don't care nearly as much about their founding documents as Americans do and therefore these documents are mainly aspirational and don't go into that much detail.

That said, most Communist countries don't share the recent Western obsession with "diversity" and in fact the dominant remaining Communist power definitely has a dominant ethnicity and is by no means ashamed of this. Here's the current composition of the CCP Politburo. As you can see, the Chinese are far more selective of the races and ethnicities they allow into power than, say, the Americans. Also note that only one of the twenty five is female (and not one of the Standing Committee, of course).

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9 minutes ago, Altherion said:

Another reason is that most societies don't care nearly as much about their founding documents as Americans do and therefore these documents are mainly aspirational and don't go into that much detail.

I agree with the first part but you're definitely wrong about the second part.  Take a look at the list of constitutions by state and sort by number of words.  The US' is decidedly among one of the least detailed in the world.  There's pros and cons to that, but constitutions have become less aspirational and more detailed since 1789, not the other way around like you're suggesting.

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2 hours ago, Altherion said:

That said, most Communist countries don't share the recent Western obsession with "diversity" and in fact the dominant remaining Communist power definitely has a dominant ethnicity and is by no means ashamed of this. Here's the current composition of the CCP Politburo. As you can see, the Chinese are far more selective of the races and ethnicities they allow into power than, say, the Americans. Also note that only one of the twenty five is female (and not one of the Standing Committee, of course).

Not sure I would agree with this. My own former country, Yugoslavia, was very careful about making sure that all republics and ethnicities were equally represented in the top leadership. There were many both written and unwritten rules regarding ethnic diversity, and it sometimes led to mediocrities being promoted to high positions simply because an ethnic quota needed to be filled. The most extreme example is probably random army sergeant briefly becoming acting head of state.

The USSR was similar to this, and even Stalin was very much concerned with ethnic diversity. Ironically, as a Caucasian (meaning person from the Caucasus region, not white person), he was constantly worried about Caucasians being overrepresented in the leadership roles and Russians being underrepresented.

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2 hours ago, Altherion said:

Don't exaggerate. The Fins put up much more of a fight than anyone expected, but in the end they were defeated and had to hand over some territory as well as war reparations.

It's zero, but it's not obvious that all of them will fail. The most obvious reason is that Communism was first tried long after the abolition of slavery and serfdom. Another reason is that most societies don't care nearly as much about their founding documents as Americans do and therefore these documents are mainly aspirational and don't go into that much detail.

That said, most Communist countries don't share the recent Western obsession with "diversity" and in fact the dominant remaining Communist power definitely has a dominant ethnicity and is by no means ashamed of this. Here's the current composition of the CCP Politburo. As you can see, the Chinese are far more selective of the races and ethnicities they allow into power than, say, the Americans. Also note that only one of the twenty five is female (and not one of the Standing Committee, of course).

Why you use wikipedia?

http://heninen.net/sopimus/1944_e.htm 

I got confused with Estonia, Latvia, Lithuanian. I did not read history for a long time. Thanks for the correction.

The communists were defeated by Romania. The Soviet Union staged a revolt known as Tatarbunary Uprising.

Not to mention Afghanistan defeated the Soviets.  

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On 8/6/2020 at 6:27 PM, DMC said:

The intellectual/technical distinction on the proper definition of a "communist" regime is rather academic.

Sure. But this discussion  (this thread) is in fact academic, isn't it? By that I mean that if we are to discuss the merits of "communism" we can't focus on Stalin or Mao... or the discussion is moot. This thread can only make sense IF we make the difference between "Marxism-Leninism" or "Maoism" on the one hand and actual communism  (whatever that may be) on the other hand. 

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1 minute ago, Rippounet said:

But this discussion  (this thread) is in fact academic, isn't it?

Fair, this entire board is by nature "academic."  Just raising a different point about messaging.

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Just now, Rippounet said:

And I'm saying that point kills any discussion: if the Soviet Union was communist no one in their right mind could ever defend communism again. 

The point that we should distinguish "socialism" from the regimes of the USSR/China/Cambodia etc.?  I don't see how that kills discussion.  Again, if you wanna call that latter something other than communist, fine, but it's not surprising that most people do do so as a heuristic because most of those regimes called themselves communist.

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5 minutes ago, DMC said:

 it's not surprising that most people do do so as a heuristic because most of those regimes called themselves communist.

Most people also believed smoking was good for health when cigarette companies claimed so. I'm not sure why you of all people would dumb things down here. 

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10 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

I'm not sure why you of all people would dumb things down here. 

Because I'm talking about political messaging - particularly towards the American electorate but really any electorate.  In that vein, sometimes dumbing things down is the best communications strategy.

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2 hours ago, DMC said:

most of those regimes called themselves communist.

North Korea calls itself a democratic republic. Nobody uses that as an example of what a terrible idea democracy is.

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7 minutes ago, felice said:

North Korea calls itself a democratic republic. Nobody uses that as an example of what a terrible idea democracy is.

That's not my point, which I already conceded to solo a couple days ago.  The point is it's not surprising most people conflate communism with such regimes when the ruling parties call themselves communist.

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13 hours ago, Gorn said:

Not sure I would agree with this. My own former country, Yugoslavia, was very careful about making sure that all republics and ethnicities were equally represented in the top leadership. There were many both written and unwritten rules regarding ethnic diversity, and it sometimes led to mediocrities being promoted to high positions simply because an ethnic quota needed to be filled. The most extreme example is probably random army sergeant briefly becoming acting head of state.

The USSR was similar to this, and even Stalin was very much concerned with ethnic diversity. Ironically, as a Caucasian (meaning person from the Caucasus region, not white person), he was constantly worried about Caucasians being overrepresented in the leadership roles and Russians being underrepresented.

It's true that the USSR and Yugoslavia aimed for a balance of the various ethnic groups that inhabited them, but note that this strategy is what ultimately destroyed them: both nations split along the ethnic lines. The Chinese undoubtedly studied this and drew some conclusions.

8 hours ago, TsarGrey said:

Finns.

Fixed, thanks.

13 hours ago, Targknight said:

Why you use wikipedia?

Because it's quick, relatively accurate on topics which are not contested and contains links to the source documents.

13 hours ago, Targknight said:

The communists were defeated by Romania. The Soviet Union staged a revolt known as Tatarbunary Uprising.

The USSR lost a lot in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, in its civil war and in the subsequent conflicts of the 1920s (including in Romania). However, this does not say much about Communism as such because the USSR was absolutely devastated at this time and it's not clear that any other system of government would have done any better. In fact, one of the objective successes of Communism is that the USSR somehow went from the mess that it was in the 1920s to one of the two superpowers in the late 1940s. Of course, the success came at a terrible price, but still...

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