Why Isn't Communism Viewed As Negatively as Nazism?

[Sean Hayden]

Did I read that right? I only glanced at it. But it looked like the US was a full democracy until Trump got elected when it became a flawed democracy.

Is that right?

God, I hope that isn't right. That'll be right up there with Obama's peace prize in terms of silly cunts elsewhere giving a bit of approval or disapproval in the hopes of influencing them poor dumb mericans.

[Forty Two]

Did I read that right? I only glanced at it. But it looked like the US was a full democracy until Trump got elected when it became a flawed democracy.

Is that right?

God, I hope that isn't right. That'll be right up there with Obama's peace prize in terms of silly cunts elsewhere giving a bit of approval or disapproval in the hopes of influencing them poor dumb mericans.

That is exactly right - and they had the US fall to juuuuuuusst under "full democracy." Full democracy is 8 and up. The US is 7.98. They have Uruguay well up over 8, full democracy. They have Canada standing with Uruguay as the only full democracies in the western hemisphere.

The reason they dropped the US out of full demo status when Trump was elected was because "The change reflected what the report said was “a sharp fall in popular confidence in the functioning of public institutions." Now, here I would think that any country that allows the sharp fall in popular confidence to be publicized would be considered quite a functioning democracy. I mean, since when does trusting one's government have anything to do with democracy? Democracy is public participation in elections and popular government, not "trust that the FBI isn't fucked up" or something like that.

Now ranking 21st, the US was among other countries with flawed democratic systems including Italy, South Korea, France, Chile, Botswana and Mexico. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/worl ... 95121.html

Well, we'll get ourselves all fixed up right quick and we'll rejoin the 19 full democracies out there. I mean, that should be the really scary bit - fewer than 1 in 10 countries in the world are full democracies.

[Seabass]

Did I read that right? I only glanced at it. But it looked like the US was a full democracy until Trump got elected when it became a flawed democracy.

Is that right?

God, I hope that isn't right. That'll be right up there with Obama's peace prize in terms of silly cunts elsewhere giving a bit of approval or disapproval in the hopes of influencing them poor dumb mericans.

If you look the decimals, the US drops from 8.05 to 7.98. It's not that big of a shift. Given Trump's refusal to do anything about the Russian meddling, the loser of the popular vote once again winning the election, the continually worsening voter suppression and gerrymandering among other problems, it would seem to me that the drop in rank might not be so silly.

[Sean Hayden]

I had originally laughed because the label flawed democracy. The whole exercise is a bit silly. --not necessarily useless, but silly-- But when I saw that they had downgraded the US after Trump's election that's just too obvious. Why not downgrade us after Clinton's nomination? That would seem to be another plausible indicator of "flawed democracy".

I keep hearing that "flawed democracy" in a booming voice from heaven...

[pErvinalia]

Nazism is the worst of two evils. You could ask a high school kid about Hitler and he would explain something about it. You could as the same kid about Stalin and if they took history they would go "yeah, wasn't he a bad dude too? And he was in World War II." And that would be it. Marx is obscure to most people.

Stalinism is State Monopoly Capitalism, the exact opposite of Communism.

Feel free to provide examples of workers control of the means of production in Stalin's Soviet Union, if you disagree.

One could argue, and I think with a fair degree of rationality, that the attempt to impose communism on any given society, no matter how lofty the ideals, breaks down on the rocks of human nature to lead inevitably to authoritarian strong-man rule...

Even if there is not a "strong man" rule, the communist model does envision the individual subjugating himself or herself to the collective. The collective decides what people will do economically, for example, and it brooks no dissent. So, there is a system for deciding what the collective wants, and it's either democratic, or some other form of decisionmaking. Even if it is democratic, the individual may not deviate from whatever is ultimately decided, and the system contemplates that the collective will decide how many loaves of bread to bake and of what kind by the baker, and how many bakers will bake, etc. It will also decide how much yeast to produce and how it will be distributed, and how much wheat to produce and of what sorts, and how many ovens will be made by the oven factories, and how much stone/metal/other materials will be ordered by the factories to make the ovens, and the like. Since there is no private ownership of bakeries and oven factories (i.e. the means of production of baked goods), then somehow the collective will decide how these places are run.

Does anyone really think that the community as a whole can vote on all the issues necessary to run bakeries and oven manufacturing plants nationwide, or worldwide? Does anyone really think that the community can assign to it as subset of the community and task it with doing these things?

As PS said, you can have markets in communism. I imagine that (in theory) it works the same as a capitalist market, just without the profit motive. The producers of the ingredients at the bottom of the chain will find a greater demand for their products, so they will increase production (if they can). People aren't going to be voting on how many loaves of bread and of what type should be made.

Further, communism has always had massive efforts to arrest, kill and otherwise squelch "counterrevolutionaries" and "dissidents." Political prisoners in communist countries are sent away to camps in droves. Is that "against the principles of communism?" No, of course not. It's right in the fucking principle writings. They don't allow individuals to fuck up what the "community" wants by raising dissent -- it hurts the ability of the community to successfully implement economic and political goals. So, when North Korea sends hundreds of thousands of political dissidents and resistors to camps, they are following the rules of communism - get rid of the dissenters and rebels.

I suspect that the prison population of the US is greater per capita than NK. If it's not, it's got to be in the same realm. Not that it's a relevant comparison, as NK isn't communism, it's authoritarian state socialism.

And, what of individual freedoms, like freedom of speech? In a communist society, the individual's best interests are indistinguishable from the society's best interest. Thus, the idea of an individual freedom is incompatible with a communist ideology. The only reason to hold individual speech and information rights would be to better the society, a condition which would likely be met only in certain instances rather than across time, making the default a lack of freedom. I.e., you can't go out en masse in a communist society and protest the community's decisions and actions, because by doing so, you are a dissident and a rebel - and fomenting opposition to the community is seen as making it more difficult for the community to meet its goals and plans. You can't have a communist society and let the naysayers and contrarians foment opposition to the community.

I don't see why it would be any different to any other democratic system. You can protest in our system, as long as you follow the relevant laws. If you don't follow the rules, you face the justice system.

Did the real world attempts at communism deviate from ideological communism on free speech and press? Was ideological communism an ideology that supported every individual's right to speak his political mind, and write papers and books, criticizing the State, or the Community, or the various plans and attempt to argue against those entities down or move them in a different direction? Or, when the communist societies in the real world clamped down on free speech and the press, were they actually implementing the ideology of communism, or trying to?

Ideological communism is stateless. The people decide any rules and deterrents, not an elite behemoth state.

[pErvinalia]

There is such a thing as a democracy index. On Wiki ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index ). If one prefers another source - a tad more 'serious' perhaps ( https://infographics.economist.com/2018/DemocracyIndex/ )- The USA does not score as highly as one might imagine as it happens on either. Both the UK and the Netherlands score significantly better than the USA, which is classified as a 'flawed democracy' interestingly.

I'm not one to argue in the face of evidence and I find myself slightly surprised. Interesting though considering how much the USA tends to strut around being the champion of the system.

But, but, they export democracy all over the world!

[Sean Hayden]

We export democracy would be more appropriate for an aussie. --the nerve of you guys

[pErvinalia]

The phrase "exporting democracy" has never been uttered here in regards to us, in any official (or otherwise, to my knowledge) capacity. We just do what the US tells us to do, like the good lapdog that we are.

[Sean Hayden]

That's better. So long as you admit your country's inferiority my delicate inner American will remain unperturbed.

[DRSB]

That's the thing with communism though, why it will never work - people like to own stuff.

But there's no reason under certainly some forms of communism why the vast majority of people couldn't still own as much as they do under capitalism. There's no reason to end ownership of personal property. About the largest thing that could be considered personal property is a home. What would need to be stopped is private and for profit ownership of non-personal property e.g means of production or someone else's home.

Sure. But that's not really communism is it?

Actually, it is. Marx and Engels never wrote about the expropriation of private property in the context of your underpants, toothbrush or roof over your head. They only ever used the term "private property" in the context of privately owned means of production. Only through the judicious application of quote mining can one attempt to argue otherwise.

This is true, the interpretation of what Marx and Engels wrote took perverse proportions in Russia because it was made by people who had never actually read the works. And Lenin was a syphilis-stricken professional revolutionary who liked to live abroad on somebody else's money. On the eve of the Great Revolution he had tutti-quanti outfits made for himself (coat, suits, etc.) because he knew they would disappear from the shops.

[Hermit]

Milton Friedman explains how the spontaneous order of the free market is always going to be superior than order imposed by a committee or government:

Look at this lead pencil. There’s not a single person in the world who could make this pencil. Remarkable statement? Not at all. The wood from which it is made, for all I know, comes from a tree that was cut down in the state of Washington. To cut down that tree, it took a saw. To make the saw, it took steel. To make steel, it took iron ore. This black center—we call it lead but it’s really graphite, compressed graphite—I’m not sure where it comes from, but I think it comes from some mines in South America. This red top up here, this eraser, a bit of rubber, probably comes from Malaya, where the rubber tree isn’t even native! It was imported from South America by some businessmen with the help of the British government. This brass ferrule? [Self-effacing laughter.] I haven’t the slightest idea where it came from. Or the yellow paint! Or the paint that made the black lines. Or the glue that holds it together. Literally thousands of people co-operated to make this pencil. People who don’t speak the same language, who practice different religions, who might hate one another if they ever met! When you go down to the store and buy this pencil, you are in effect trading a few minutes of your time for a few seconds of the time of all those thousands of people. What brought them together and induced them to cooperate to make this pencil? There was no commissar sending … out orders from some central office. It was the magic of the price system: the impersonal operation of prices that brought them together and got them to cooperate, to make this pencil, so you could have it for a trifling sum.

That is why the operation of the free market is so essential. Not only to promote productive efficiency, but even more to foster harmony and peace among the peoples of the world.

Adam Smith's invisible hand at work. It also reminds me of private greed resulting in public good. I'll get back to those shortly.

Before I do I want to mention (once again) The Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894. Read it, please. It's hilarious, and true. There is no better illustration of human impotence in regard to planning than the great horse manure crisis. For that reason it is also a favourite moral sermon of libertarians - because humans are utterly shit at planning, communism will not, cannot, ever work.

I am opposed to communism for that reason (and another, which I regard as more important), but that does not blind me to the many myths Friedman and Co are parading as truths.

To begin with, capitalist markets are not level playing fields. Once one or more major players in any industry are on the scene their clout makes it next to impossible for new players to enter. It's like big weeds basically suffocating smaller ones. Here's an anecdote illustrating how it can happen: Many years ago I drove a truck for a small transport contractor operating about ten units. A national express company set a couple of sales reps on to the heels of them. When the trucks left a pickup or delivery point the sales reps entered the offices of those points and offered fantastic freight rates. In a matter of just a few weeks my boss lost a quarter of his customers. With fixed costs being what they are, he started losing money. LOFO meant I was among the first drivers to get laid off. By sheer coincidence I finished up driving a truck for the national company calling. in part, on the same customers that I called on when driving for my previous boss. That is how I found out that, having lost some more customers the same way as the others, he closed his company down three months after he fired me. A year later the option on 1 x 1 contracts his ex-customers were signed with were not exercised by the national transporter and the new rates were significantly costlier than the ones they paid to the small operator. Of course they could not go back to him. He was gone, as were several other smaller outfits who suffered the same fate.

Then there is the matter of industries satisfying demand. They do that. They also create markets. Advertising is supposedly about letting the public know what is available and leaving the decision to buy to prospective consumers. In reality a lot of those decisions are not made based on logical reasoning. More than anything, advertisements play on fear, desire and associating the product with something desirable. Hence, millions of dollars are spent on such ad campaigns as Marlboro Man rather than proving that Marlboro cigarettes are better than Winfield cigarettes. Similarly, the makers of Karloff vodka do not try to convince you that their spirit is any way superior to Smirnoff vodka. They create ads instead, illustrating how a boring drunk becomes an irresistible sex object to any and every beautiful woman when he drinks their stuff. There would have to be thousands of examples of an appeal to emotion tricking consumers into buying stuff they do not need and that are, or can be, actually quite harmful to them.

These are two of the ways in which private greed does not lead to public good and the invisible hand simply malfunctions, and they are intrinsic to so called free market capitalism. Friedman and his ilk simply ignore them. My own attitude is to go for a mixed economy; allow private ownership of production, but impose comprehensive, ever evolving regulations on it. The difficulty of this is of course to get the balance right, especially so because the location of the sweet spot keeps changing due to changing circumstances surrounding it.

[JimC]

I agree with most of your post, Hermit. I would add that another important counter-balance to unfettered capitalism has been (for all its faults) the union movement. A single worker by himself has little leverage, but joining in collective action can at least reduce the ability of corporations to exploit their workforce beyond a certain point...

[Hermit]

This is true, the interpretation of what Marx and Engels wrote took perverse proportions in Russia because it was made by people who had never actually read the works.

Crap. Lenin, Mao and most leading figures of the Russian and Chinese revolutions had studied the writings of Marx and Engels at length. They knew and understood what they were about. The problem with their respective revolutions was that they thought they could fit a communist revolution on a feudal society, which is plainly absurd. You can have any objection to the works of Marx and Engels. What you cannot do, is to disagree with the central tenet of communism, which is the overthrow of capitalist societies. The overthrow of Romanov dynasty should have been left to Alexander Kerensky to be followed by the growth of a capitalist social system. Likewise, the overthrow of the Quing dynasty should have been followed by the growth of a capitalist social system under the Kuomintang led by Sun Yat-sen. There is just no way you could adapt a scheme devised to overthrow capitalism to fit the overthrow of feudalism and still call it Marxism-Leninism.

[Hermit]

I agree with most of your post, Hermit. I would add that another important counter-balance to unfettered capitalism has been (for all its faults) the union movement. A single worker by himself has little leverage, but joining in collective action can at least reduce the ability of corporations to exploit their workforce beyond a certain point...

Unions are an important component of a mixed economy. I left them out in order to keep focus on the other aspects I mentioned. The last paragraph of my post was really just an afterthought I added in anticipation of someone asking me where I stand. To that end I saw no need to go into detail. In away, my post is already more tangential to the thread's title than it should be. I blame Hillary for that. Lock her up!

[L'Emmerdeur]

Did I read that right? I only glanced at it. But it looked like the US was a full democracy until Trump got elected when it became a flawed democracy.

Is that right?

God, I hope that isn't right. That'll be right up there with Obama's peace prize in terms of silly cunts elsewhere giving a bit of approval or disapproval in the hopes of influencing them poor dumb mericans.

The report explains that it wasn't the election of Trump that affected the score for the US, despite claims to the contrary by people who apparently haven't bothered to read the report. Why would you trust the hearsay of members of this site when you could read the report yourself? It's freely available. To get it directly from the EIU, a person would have to register an account with them. However other places have put it up for public viewing (here for instance).

Popular trust in government, elected representatives and political parties has fallen to extremely low levels in the US (See Box: A trust deficit is undermining democracy, page 14). This has been a long-term trend and one that preceded the election of Mr Trump as US president in November 2016. By tapping a deep strain of political disaffection with the functioning of democracy, Mr Trump became a beneficiary of the low esteem in which US voters hold their government, elected representatives and political parties, but he was not responsible for a problem that has had a long gestation. The US has been teetering on the brink of becoming a “flawed democracy” for several years, and even if there had been no presidential election in 2016, its score would have slipped below 8.00.