You've been looking in the wrong direction, the dangers are coming from the Left - read OP

Flaneur OBrien

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120555120#Comment_120555120

Where are you getting that from?

Can you give me an example where communism failed that had no interference from capitalism?

I've read many of your posts here, your avatar suits you and if I was you, I would certainly be embarrassed.

You bring nothing but trollworthy behaviour to the forum, and I look forward to you getting banned. (Again)

Flaneur OBrien

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120555094#Comment_120555094

Have you an example of communism failing where capitalism hadn't interfered?

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120555517#Comment_120555517

Have you an example of Communism ever succeeding?

And capitalism doesn't have agency; it's an economic system. Politics interferes.

Snake Plisken

....

nullzero

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120555517#Comment_120555517

Let's see your evidence first.

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

Has communism ever been attempted? I mean, on a national scale? Soviet Russia and China are more socialist then communist.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120560424#Comment_120560424

Communism is currently the official ideology of five countries: China, Cuba, Laos, Vietnam, and North Korea. Furthermore, the idea of a "pure" communist state is about as accurate as the idea of a "pure" capitalist state. There is no pure capitalist state. So the examples we have, of those countries officially espousing Communism are not exactly glaring examples of a successful economic system.

And the idea of a "one party" political, economic, and social system sounds questionable to me.

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120560482#Comment_120560482

That's my point: the system of government is offficially one-party socialist republic in all of those countries - either with a party or with a dictator - so that doesn't really answer the question.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120560532#Comment_120560532

Well, we have to take their word for it.

If they are presenting themselves as Communist and that is the ideology which animates the country going forward, we can't really come along and disagree with that.

That's their manifestation of what it means to be Communist, in the same way that Western countries present capitalism in a variety of ways.

tesla_newbie

China was clearly under a very different communist philosophy under Mao than it is today and has been for twenty years, state capitalism might perhaps be a better descriptor of it today

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120560545#Comment_120560545

No I don't.

In any case the question wasn't what were they officially or unofficially, the question was, has communism ever been attempted on a national level? Where the people own everything collectively? Yes or no?

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120560824#Comment_120560824

Economic, political, and social systems are too complex to be reduced to some hyper-concentrated focus.

It's not possible to apply your question to either Communism or Capitalism - it's too restrictive and unrealistic.

nachouser

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120560841#Comment_120560841

Human cargo. Esky.

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120560841#Comment_120560841

In other words, no, no it has not. So how can you say it's either failed or suceeded?

nullzero

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120560924#Comment_120560924

In reality the supposedly "true" puritanical version of Communism that is held up in these type of discussions was never achieved but also residing in reality is the fact that multiple countries described themselves as Communist and contrived to commit an awful lot of identical human rights abuses and justified them via their Communist ideology.

If you're trying to suggest that "true" Communism was never attempted in some attempt to rationalise why Communism could be viewed as a rational proposal for the modern world, you're going to have to ignore the fact that numerous self described Communist regimes failed and tended to touch a lot of the same bases; including but not limited to, a poor quality of life, imposition of authoritarianism, forced migration, denial of basic freedom of expression, detainment in prison camps for any number of perceived slights against the ideology, mass killings, poor economic planning leading to famine and civil unrest and more mass killings.

That's a hell of a lot things that need to be ignored to split the hair of "oh well, the USSR et al were really only Socialist regimes pursuing the end goal of Communism".

In the end the Communism dreamt up my Marx and Engels was unworkable and anyone who attempted to introduce it ended up causing havoc and killed people by the truck load.

The Nazis killed a lot of people in their concentration camps, a pure hate filled exercise in the elimination of "undesirables" that remains for all time a stain on the human race. Not to be outdone Communism managed to kill even more of its own people in more countries through the basic pursuit of that very ideology. That's why Communism is, was and always will be a terrible idea, even if it's possible to butt in and place an asterisk next to Communism and declare it to have actually been socialism.

That type of argument is akin to saying "guns don't kill people, people kill people". It requires a huge amount of dedication to ignoring obvious truths to even begin to say it.

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120561029#Comment_120561029

But what if the 'obvious truth' was a lie?

All it just needs people to stop assuming that they are told is true and actually question it.

The Ussr says it was Communist - so obviously true, and yet....

Bertie Ahearn said he was a socialist, s obviously true, and yet.....

People don't kill people, so obviously true, and yet...

Again, though, none of this answers the question I asked, so let me rephrase it in a way that will make you question it:

Has there ever been a system whereby there was no hierarchical leadership and where citizens had equal standing or ownership of the resources of the State?

And if not, how can you say its failed?

nullzero

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120561459#Comment_120561459

The pursuit of Communism resulted in tens of millions of deaths.

Any ideology that requires all that death before it can be judged to have even been attempted is a failure.

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120561634#Comment_120561634

Again, I'm not talking about the idea. Exactly the opposite.

Has there ever been a system whereby there was no hierarchical leadership and where citizens had equal standing or ownership of the resources of the State?

And if not, how can you say its failed?

Persuits of everything has caused death. Persuit of money, persuit of religion, persuit of ideas, persuit of perfection, persuit of natinoalism....

You're getting caught up in nohting more than a theory - that's the issue. The dangers aren't coming from the left, they're coming from an inability to tell the difference between hypothetical and real.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120561636#Comment_120561636

You don't measure the value of an economic system in terms of deaths.

Communism did, as a direct consequence of its principles in action, lead to tens of millions of deaths.

I don't remember the last time that Capitalism caused tens of millions of deaths. Instead, free market capitalism has opened up opportunities to more countries, expanded wealth and led to a revolution in creativity and innovation. It has lifted more and more people out of poverty.

Is it perfect? Of course not. No system is perfect.

But to dismiss tens of millions of deaths, repeated failure, and a one-party state system as "Ah well, sure everything can cause death really...", demonstrates that you aren't really interested in establishing the truth behind Communism.

Jordan Peterson answered the question well in response to "...but that wasn't real Communism" (particularly from 2:40).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXBjVau1w7Y

nullzero

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120561636#Comment_120561636

In the case of communism there was a disproportionate level of death associated with it's pursuit in a very concentrated amount of time.

Fascism hasn't existed since the 1970's yet it is held up as the epitome of a bad ideology yet it barely holds a candle to Communism in terms of body count, not to excuse the crimes of fascism but the world has seemingly forgotten the crimes of communism which is incredibly dangerous and let's not forget the most oppressive regimes in the modern world are still Communist.

The danger comes from all directions, but in western countries we have forgotten and seemingly forgiven the crimes of communism which is on its own bad enough, but then add to that the seeming appetite to ascribe the crimes Communism to capitalist interference and you begin to have a serious problem.

If we had people here saying that Nazi Germany only committed the crimes it committed because of outside influence and that true National Socialism never got a chance to play out because of interlopers from the outside trying to undermine it we'd have the person saying it banned and wheeled off to a looney bin. Saying the same thing about Communism gets a round of applause for some reason. There's the danger, not necessarily from the left but the inability to accept facts.

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120561716#Comment_120561716

You can take the first part of that up with nullzero, who mentioned deaths.

I don't listen to youtube clips in place of arguments. I you can't make the argument and have to reply on someone else, then I should just take the argument to someone else.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120561742#Comment_120561742

Not the same comparison: fascism was attempted and is widely regarded as a bad idea for whatever reasons. Communism hasn't because I don't believe it can. It is a system designed to work on a much smaller scale, so to say it's a threat or it failed is fallacy because it's a theoretical ideal, not a real one.

The "outside influence' is a debate I think you were having with someone else, not me.

But perhaps the dangers come from the extremists as opposed to being based on direction?

Dyr

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120561634#Comment_120561634

The fact yopu have people on here willing to defend communism tells you everything you need to know about the blind spot western democracies have when it comes to the dangers that are coming from the left, the blind spot was mostly caused by five decades of the soviets doing their utmost in trying to undermine the west via their left wing proxy agents

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120561784#Comment_120561784

Who defended communism??!

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120561789#Comment_120561789

The primary threat today from the far-left comes not from Communism itself, but rather intersectionality.

And just to define that before I go any further:

Intersectionality is an analytical framework for understanding how a person's various social and political identities combine to create different modes of discrimination and privilege. Intersectionality identifies multiple factors of advantage and disadvantage. Examples of these factors include gender, caste, sex, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, religion, disability, weight, and physical appearance. These intersecting and overlapping social identities may be both empowering and oppressing.

This all sounds great in theory, but we've all seen this theory in practice.

It seeks to divide society up into groups, and then pit group against group. There is the oppressor and the oppressed.

To take just a few examples - we see it with respect to "white privilege", for example, which pits white people against black people, or with the ongoing gender debate pitting women's rights against trans rights. The list goes on and on and on. It's an ideology that achieves the precise opposite of that which it claims to achieve - namely, more division.

In fact, division is the whole point.

Most people on the far-left don't really believe in what they're saying. They know it's largely nonsense designed to stir the pot. But they know intersectionality is divisive; a post-modern ideology designed to break the meaning of everything down. And what's useful about breaking society down is that you can then usher in a new ideology to replace it - namely, Marxist-Leninist Communism.

Because everyone in favour of intersectionality, whether they admit it or not, is always a hard-line socialist or Communist. That underlying ideology is always malevolently lurking behind what they say, though they daren't say so because they know it wouldn't be directly popular with the wider population. So instead they masquerade their real intentions with this care for minority groups and so on; this intersectional nonsense.

In the past, the far-left hoped to break society down by pitting the working class against the bourgeoisie - hoping that a conflict between the two would provide the opportune moment to create some Communist-Socialist utopia. That was a spectacular failure.

These people haven't gone away.

Now they seek to create division through intersectionality. The far-left believe that this will cause enough division to cause a breakdown in society, which may then eventuate society to this Communist-Socialist utopia.

Intersectionality is the greatest threat, and it's very much the biggest present danger coming from the Left.

nullzero

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120561772#Comment_120561772

There's the ideal of Communism you argue was never reached and then there's the reality of Communism that killed people by the tens of millions.

I've seen people on this site argue that the USSR was actually fascist state because it was a totalitarian regime and the term totalitarian was penned to describe Mussolini's fascist regime, which ignores the fact the Lenin was acting in a totalitarian manner years before that description was created.

Extremism should be avoided, yet we have a situation in the modern West where Communism has been almost cleansed of its misdeeds by people who feel agrieved by the unfairness of capitalism. I get it, capitalism is unfair and the boundless greed it creates isn't something I'm aligned with, however the alternative presented by left wing extremism has failed repeatedly throughout history.

Why is that? Simple, human beings will always act in a corrupt manner. The same negative traits that lead to people exploiting capitalism leads to the megalomaniacal behaviour that leads to communist/socialist police states.

That's why communism can never work, human beings can't adhere to that type of system, we're not robots, any attempt to live in that type of system have always resulted in the same outcomes, if you can't accept that there's not much anyone can do to convince you. You're entitled to your opinion.

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120561845#Comment_120561845

I think you may have responded to the wrong post here.

The question was simple. You wrote

The fact yopu have people on here willing to defend communism

And I asked

Who defended communism??!

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120561848#Comment_120561848

So one person takes control and kills millions, claiming it was in the name of communism and you see that as a serious attempt at communist ideals?

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120562039#Comment_120562039

You defended Communism by arguing that it wasn't real Communism that led to tens of millions of deaths in the 21st century. You also minimized existing Communist regimes and underplayed their Communist credentials.

That minimizes applied Communism in history, and in the real world, and that minimization is a form of defence.

I went on from that, further arguing that the real threat - today - is intersectionality, which its proponents hope will lead back to a form of Communist utopia.

Incidentally, do you believe that when applied to society, intersectionality is a good thing?

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120562049#Comment_120562049

I've said it doesn't exist - this is like claiming an athiest is defending the God of the Old testament.

Your best bet would be to claim I held it in a midly positive light be saying it could work on a small scale but never on a national level.

Tony EH

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120560424#Comment_120560424

Communism has never existed. No country in the world has ever achieved it, no matter what's said. None of the so called "Communist" countries has ever reached a stage of Communism and every one of them would have failed to have gained Marx's approval. The fact that they're are more akin to Fascism in operation alone means that Marx would have utterly rejected them and the people who were running the show.

What these so called "Communist" countries were/are is socialist, or at least a form of Socialism, which is a vast area of political thinking.