as entertaining as it is to watch red here try and explain why communism is not responsible for it's crime do you think we can kinda of sorta get back on topic. and bells and tiassa dude you guys are freaking mods shouldn't you be trying to get it back on topic rather than encourage it to go even farther afield?
Ahem, what? If Bells applied the same standards she uses to discredit communism to capitalism, she'd conclude that capitalism is a failure. Her argument is that communism is a failure because "millions died and were arrested." As if millions do not die and suffer arrest under capitalism.
Also, Bells, regarding your ludicrous assertion that Lenin "hoarded the wealth of the people" or was a millionaire or whatever rubbish: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/33377.stm
RedStar Again you conflate an economic theory(capitalism)to a political one(Communism), showing your complete lack of understanding of either economics or politics amazingly similar to that of Marx and, to lesser degree, Lenin. Fascists were capitalist but most capitalists are not Fascists. Communists are socialists, but most socialists are not Communists. But isn't it curious that both extremes(Fascist/Communist)act so similarly when they are in complete control of politics? Or how similar(and miserable)the experiences of common people are under these regimes? GrumpyPlease Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Your bullshit definitions aside, even capitalism as we know it has murdered millions and led to great suffering.
You are very quick to defend the Societs and Chinese from claims that famines and the related deaths were not their fault, yet you blame capitalism for the deaths of millions. Philosophies do not kill anyone, it's people who do. "Capitalism" never took a single life, though it is very true that people have died while living in capitalist countries and that capitalists have decided to murder people and let people die. It is through those agents that philosophies matter. No capitalist has ever committed himself to a path of death on the scale of a Stalin, a Mao or even a Castro. The reason is not that capitalists are better than communists, but rather that all people are bad, and communism has a disturbing tendency to allow the worse instincts to run amok in singular unchecked leaders and ruling classes (which is what the Communist party members were in both the USSR and Mao's China). No capitalist has ever committed himself to a path of death on the scale of a Stalin, a Mao or Castro because capitalist systenms tend to check that sort of behavior. Again, as you yourself suggested, you cannot blame every death within a nation on an ideology that happens to be impacting that nation at a givn time. Sometimes famines occur and that is not always the fault of particular persons or their goals. Eventually all humans die, further muddying the waters of how much a given ideology contributed to a given death toll. In the same way, that people have suffered in capitalist nations is neither here nor there, because even more people would suffer in nations that had dysfunctional economies. The modern age of capitalism is a wonder in that regard. We live in an era where, in the first world, people consider the throttling of their internet connections by their ISP to be serious problem. People feel angst because the remote control for their televisions is broken, forcing them to get up, walk over and change the channel by pushing different buttons. We get upset when our flights re delayed by an hour, before magical flying machines whisk us thousands of miles away in just a few scant hours more. More interestingly., as humans we feel these pains as acutely as the less privileged in the third-work feel the sting of their (in many ways objectively far more serious) problems. We, as a species, complain about whatever is at hand that thwarts our prior hopes and expectations, without any regard for the relative severity of the issue as compared to others not similarly situated to ourselves. But, when you step back, it is truly remarkable that capitalism has left us complaining on a very large scale, about trivialities like the inconvenience that occurs when our iPods die. That is sign that capitalism has really lowered the bar, on average for what counts as a "problem" and points strongly to its massive success as an economic system. That you do not see the pronounced destructiveness to human life and dignity that concurrently arose in every serious implementation of communism that has been tried, is very strange. That you do see the far less pronounced destructiveness/indignities of capitalism is doubly strange.
No quicker than the others to do the reverse. Capitalism has inherent antagonisms which undoubtedly manifest themselves in repression and imperialism. These systemic contradictions cannot be reformed, nor are they dependent upon the goodwill of individuals. Capitalism literally cannot exist without the specific features of exploitation (appropriation of surplus value), capital-labor conflict, wealth concentration, and exclusion from the productive forces of the masses. First you have to qualify that Stalin, Mao, and Castro did indeed commit themselves to such a path. Next, capitalists did, and do. The wars between the nation-states since the emergence of capitalism have largely been motivated by wealth, property, and position. These are very much products of capitalism, of the private and exclusive ownership of wealth; of a system built on all the worst elements of so-called "human nature". Imperialism is synonymous with capitalism. The imperialism by the colonialists of Europe very much did match the death tolls of Stalin and Mao. In British India, 120,000,000 died of famines during the course of British imperialism precisely because of market forces and the modus operandi of capitalism. Apparently it failed to check the behaviors of colonialism and imperialism. Fascism, as you may remember, is a form of capitalism as well - specifically, the decay, the reaction, to social unrest and economic degeneracy. The reason the First World enjoys a better quality of life is because of the exploitation of the Third World. Your quality of life would crumble without the resources and goods expropriated by the impoverished in the Third World. See above. On the contrary, the tyranny of wealth has led to greater human suffering than any of the suffering you lay at the feet of communism.
"The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them."
You mean the way you deny the atrocities of the US? Why doesn't it work both ways? The US is not democratic just because you can vote for politicians, since they always serve the interest of...capital
Just read the first page of this debate, but Reason number one: Money "As Mitt Romney visits Israel, Democrats and Republicans court the Jewish vote" http://www.masslive.com/politics/index.ssf/2012/07/as_mitt_romney_visits_israel_d.html Sheldon Adelson Willing to Spend $100 Million to Beat Obama http://www.usnews.com/news/articles...on-willing-to-spend-100-million-to-beat-obama Reason Number Two: Racism Poll: Americans Prefer Netanyahu to Obama New poll finds that Prime Minister Netanyahu and Israel are more popular among Americans than their own president. http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/149644 Yes, even among the politicians. [video=youtube;_5lsbp7YmHI]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5lsbp7YmHI[/video] if you look around, you'll notice that the American system has now been replaced by an Israeli one
nope you get to eat only kosher McDonalds McDoubles and do the shabbat. The priest will pray for your health meanwhile, as part of the Israeli healthcare indictment.
That may be coming as well. But basically, opening prisons where people are thrown in without due process, shooting tear gas grenades into the faces of demonstrators and adopting a foreign policy of assassination and testing weapons on people you don't like Max has explained it here: From Occupation to “Occupy”: The Israelification of American Domestic Security And then there is of course the subversion of American politics to Israel, with representatives on an Aipac jaunt instead of working out the healthcare of Americans and fraternities pledging allegiance to the state of Israel instead of the United States. The American constitution is over. Now we have Presidents with a kill list wearing kippas and doing their pre-election posing at the Western Wall. So much for separation of state and religion.
Israel is a world power with quite a war machine at its feet. They invest in state of the art warplanes and gear. They are also thought to be the 6th nuclear powerhouse, although they neither confirm or deny this. The west has no choice but to tolerate.
The American military doesn't function on its brain. Otherwise, it wouldn't have brought down the US economy for pointless wars that are more useful to Israel and did nothing for the Americans except to diminish their global prominence and put the next 10 generations into debt. This is the strategy that the US military is working on http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/articles/article0005345.html
