commy in Off Topic

ID:189758
 
May 22 2003, 8:19 pm
Commy..Communist. often heard as an insult. Great hatred is shone upon people for their beliefs and many varied people are called communists regardless of their differences. Being called a communist in public is a great insult that can follow you forever..but why?

Im curious as to the national education about Communism. Real communism..

I've personally been called a communist frequently and when bringing up the true historic and literal meaning of communism even men who i once respected blow up into angry beasts. is their intelligence merely limited to the text books?

A few decades ago, even today.. people were fed false information about communists and many people fought a war against people they truly knew nothing about.

But.. Ill save that for later..

Rest assured i know the true meaning to communist. but I am more than curious as to what people truly believe..

please have respect for my post. This is a very important issue to me, so i want each of you to respect what each individual posts.. do not reply to the answers.. merely edit your own. After a short amount of time i'll post what I feel to be the true answer and then the topic will be open to debate, until then and hopefully even after.. keep this civil. its possible..

(oops posted without the question)
In your opinion

1. What exactly is a communist?

2. What is wrong with their beliefs? (why wont it work)

3. What defines a single man as a communist?

#1 May 22 2003, 8:21 pm (Edited on May 22 2003, 8:26 pm)
Communism is a good theory, but has never worked out right in practice. Communism is supposed to make everyone equal, but people dont want to be equal, it just can't work. Thats my opinion.

edit: Communism has been givin a very bad rep by past institutions of it. Its been used for too much personal gain, and has never succeded because of it.

You can believe that communism has its merits, but theres nothing really making you a communist.
#2 May 22 2003, 9:12 pm
I'm curious about how you have been educated on communism, since you say you know what it really is. All I have to say is that communism is seen as evil because nothing good has ever come out of it, the results of it usually equals to a high casualty rate, and you should care about this since you just talked about life(Even to the extent of double posting.).

<<>>Kusanagi<<>>
#3 May 22 2003, 9:25 pm
In response to Kusanagi (#2)
You'd be surprised what happens when you read a newspaper and visit a library
#4 May 22 2003, 9:51 pm
Dareb wrote:
In your opinion

1. What exactly is a communist?

2. What is wrong with their beliefs? (why wont it work)

3. What defines a single man as a communist?

1. A communist is someone who practices the economic system of communism... What is communism? It is an economic system wherein the total product of a country is divided equally among its citizens... The government takes everything, and divies it up in equal shares to all of the citizens...

2. In theory, this type of economy is extremely effective... It ensures that everyone gets their fair share... No one gets left out... In theory, anyways...

The system always fails because of the simultaneous problems of freeloading and the dictatorial governments that usually go hand-in-hand with communism...

In a system like this, everyone is supposedly guaranteed an equal share...regardless of how much effort they personally put into it... A guy who works 16 hours a day will get the same amount as the guy who sleeps all day... And so, you end up with a LOT of people who don't do anything... After all, if you're going to get your share anyways, why work? They freeload off of the hard work of others... And those others have to work that much harder to make up for it... Eventually, though, the freeloaders outweigh the workers, and not enough work can be done to support everyone... The economy makes less money and product, which makes everyone's share less... This usually spirals out of control, until everyone is in poverty...

And on top of that, most communist economies are operated in countries that are governed by a dictatorship... What does a dictator do? He gets greedy... When he divides up the country's money, he takes more for himself... His country ends up in poverty, while he sits in a palace with golden toilets...

3. Nothing defines a man as a communist except for the fact that he operates in a communist economy... A man can't be a communist otherwise... So, anyone who uses the term as a derrogatory statement against someone who lives under a different economic system is just plain wrong...

But today, the term isn't used literally when used as an insult... People these days just know of it as an insult from decades past, when the "commies" were our perceived worst enemy... Back then, it meant something... Today, people just use it blindly as an insult they heard on TV...
#5 May 23 2003, 7:04 am
In response to Dareb (#3)
Dareb wrote:
You'd be surprised what happens when you read a newspaper

yeah...like they tell the truth all the time!

=p

#6 May 23 2003, 9:45 am
In response to digitalmouse (#5)
True Communism is the sharing of all of the nations goods. Everything is free yet in return they all share it. The government gets all the money you earn but it is free to you. True communism is a really good thing but corrupt leaders and power hungry politicians turn it into something terrible.
#7 May 23 2003, 12:48 pm
You don't know?


1. A communist is someone who believes that all are equal, and no one should be considered higher than another.

2. Why wont it work? Communism is well... The PERFECT style of government... But a perfect government needs perfect people. Communism takes freedom away, so you can't ever become great, for you always must be equal to your peers. The way communists inforce this is by throwing people in jail for things that define them better as the other. But, one thing that is extremely bad with a communist government, is that the government has the power to make themselves better than everyone else, even though it goes against the idea, and anyone else who tries to do the same as the government, and try to enjoy a better life, gets jailed by the government.

3. When he is in a commie society.
#8 May 23 2003, 1:02 pm
Although it reached a hysterical pitch that helped nobody (or at least nobody that deserved helping) and did a great deal of harm, the great struggle of the Cold War era was not so much misguided as it was mislabeled (OK, so it actually was both, but it sounded pretty clever). At the time, the world's major players were split into two camps, respectively headed by rival superpowers the U.S. and U.S.S.R. In theory there were many independant players on both sides, but in practice when one of the superpowers said "jump", their ally-subordinates said "how high?"--in the battered and shaken post-WWII world, nobody wanted to estrange their big brother and thereby leave themselves at the mercy of the enemy superpower.

The great confusion here is a misnomer that lay at the heart of the Soviet Union: namely, that it was a communist state. The Soviet Union was no more a communist superpower than the modern United Kingdom is a monarchy: it was named as such, and had all the trappings for it, and it gave it a great deal of lip service, but it really didn't much resemble what any political philosopher has ever called Communism (unless you want to consider Stalin a political philosopher). At its heart, the United States' opposition to the Soviet Union was not a crusade against communism and it was not a crusade against Russians, it was a crusade against totalitarianism. The fact that this was widely misunderstood--something not helped by a great deal of propaganda misleadingly equating the brutalities of the oppressive Soviet regime with the philosophy of communism itself--does not make the American cause wrong, nor does it come any closer to justifying either the oppresive Soviet regime or the philosophies that it took the name of. True communism is a worthy ideal, but thus far very few attempts (and there have been many, not just the Soviet Union) have come anywhere close to creating a maintainable communist society on any scale. "Pure" capitalism has its share of problems, too--but it's shown to be a lot more feasible, and unlike the dangerously corrupt societies that failed communist ideals tend to turn out, the watered down sorts of capitalism we see today with modern welfare states have proven to be far better than the laissez-faire days of the imperial era. Indeed, some of today's capitalist nations are arguably better at communism than the Soviet Union ever was, if you take the stance that the most fundamental aspect of communism lies not in taking away everybody's surpluses, but in ensuring access to basic necessities to as many people as possible.

Not that I wouldn't put it past you to be endorsing Soviet-style totalitarian rule, given your past record of supporting the policing of everything that could possibly be watched, and many things that could not (including, but not limited to, people's very thoughts).
#9 May 23 2003, 3:44 pm
I can't quite define what a 'communist' is, other then a person who follows communism. Communism is where everybody is equal to everyone else, gets the same money, food, shelter, etc.

I think its a great idea, but would never work because of the absolute corruption of power, which is why their ideas aren't 'evil', they just won't work because people have the selfish urge to do things for them only, and when in power, you can do that.

I think what defines a single man as communist is the belief that communism is a great idea, or a great idea that works.
#10 May 23 2003, 4:34 pm
In response to Leftley (#8)
Leftley wrote:
Indeed, some of today's capitalist nations are arguably better at communism than the Soviet Union ever was, if you take the stance that the most fundamental aspect of communism lies not in taking away everybody's surpluses, but in ensuring access to basic necessities to as many people as possible.

I think both sides in the Cold War were correct in their criticism of the other system at its extreme: There is nothing worse in the world than a pure communist system (no motivation to better yourself or contribute, societal output is reduced to the bare minimum) or a pure unregulated capitalist system (all money goes to monopolies, all but an elite few are kept in poverty).

So far it appears that a capitalist society is more likely to morph into a "just society" with reasonable opportunity for all and the minimum number of people in poverty. I tend to believe that this morphing can't occur without a regulated market; some claim that the market would be ultimately self-regulating. As in, when Enron fails, the market punishes the bad companies and you don't need external regulation. I feel that there are still cases where regulation is needed, but agree that if market forces will handle it, the government should probably stay out of the particular issue.
#11 May 23 2003, 4:38 pm
3. What defines a single man as a communist?

The inability of communists to get dates?
#12 May 23 2003, 9:18 pm
In response to Hedgemistress (#11)
The inability of communists to get dates?

/me is a living example of this.
#13 May 23 2003, 10:51 pm
Okay, take my answers with a grain of salt because this isn't my field of expertise (actually I could say that about any topic). But if my answers are wrong, at least they're commonly-held wrong answers, and after all, commonly-held thoughts are pretty important to Communists...


1. What exactly is a communist?

Before Karl Marx, a communist was anyone who tried living in a "communal" subculture, whether it was focused on religion, political theory, or whatever else. Today, the general meaning of "communist" is a person who accepts Marx's predictions about the course of human history -- an inevitable evolution from feudalism to capitalism to the Dictatorship of the Proletariat to the ultimate withering-away of the State, and there are probably other stages in there too -- and who, moreover, actively seeks to hasten the fulfillment of those predictions.


2. What is wrong with their beliefs? (why wont it work)

Here's a laundry list of my own personal reasons for disliking Communism (note that by "State-sponsored prohibition" I mean "the government is permitted to make you sorry you did it"). I realize I'm painting with a broad brush here, and some or all of these points can be applied to non-Communist philosophies as well, but here goes:

* The belief that the individual exists to serve the State (as opposed to the State being a "necessary evil" to protect the rights of all individuals).
* Advocating State-sponsored prohibition of private property.
* Advocating State-sponsored prohibition of religious beliefs.
* Advocating State-sponsored prohibition of familial ties (individuals showing preference for other individuals, individuals getting married, parents raising children).
* The belief that any means are justifiable to hasten the goal of global Communist governance.
* The resort to increasingly implausible explanations for the failure of a revolutionary class to emerge in capitalist societies during the 20th century.
* The habit of viewing people as members of classes rather than as individuals.

Why won't it work? It could work. It could work if a government were pervasive enough, perceptive enough, and ruthless enough to imprison or kill off anyone who entertained any thoughts of resisting the government. Making Communism workable requires making fundamental changes in human nature, or more precisely, eliminating certain types of human natures.

To make a crude analogy, suppose you want to guarantee that all dogs in the world can "play dead" on command. First you have to track them all down. Then you have to send them all to obedience school. Then you have to kill all the dogs that are unable or unwilling to learn to play dead. Over time, you create a population with an increased likelihood of producing docile puppies, and you learn new techniques for identifying "problem puppies" early in their development. And presto! All dogs in the world -- at least all the dogs that are deemed fit to roam about in the world -- meet your standards of perfection. You have created the New Soviet Dog!