China barely follows communism, mind you so did the USSR.
However no, it can not work. Communism requires a dictator to be put into effect and the freedom of a democrasy to work, and neither can be had.
Now if you could CONVINCE people to be communist, raise a generation of communists or gather communists fro macross the world together, then MAYBE you could create a communist state.
Well I did some research, and I retract ALL my statements about communism, My history teacher lied!!! she told us most of the stuff I was telling here, and its mostly all wrong.
however one thing does stand
there have been no real commusit regimes since its conception...totalitariansim, dictatorships, stalin's reign was almost fascist...but TRUE karl marx communism has never been really oput into effect.
one thing that communism definatly stands FOR is free speach(believe it or not) and basically most of our bill of rights, fall nicely into the communist manifesto...however ambitious rulers have taken the ideals of communism and seriously ****ed around with it, masking their true goals...or something like that. on top of that, for YEARS capitilists (U.S in particular) have been conditioned to think communism=bad
without any real reason why...so its natural to be against it if you an american...its education which is the key to making your own judgements anyway.
disclaimer...I'm still in the process of learning more about this, so forgive me if I don't know what the **** I'm talking about. I plan on reading the communist manifesto tonight, then I'll be sure to have a better outlook on it
I do like this discussion though, I feel communism needs to be understanded more, cause what I DO know about it doesn't seem so bad.
<strong>Notice how they never talk about the economy in Star Trek. Who pays for all these people to do that work?</strong><hr></blockquote>
They got replicators, dude! Work is optional or at least the requirement for workers is so small that volunteers can fill the void. I think I remember reading that the pyramids were actually built not by slaves, but by volunteers who worked for food, water, makeup, and something to do. I can sorta see this working. I mean, wouldn't you get kinda bored sitting on your ass after a while?
They got replicators, dude! Work is optional or at least the requirement for workers is so small that volunteers can fill the void. I think I remember reading that the pyramids were actually built not by slaves, but by volunteers who worked for food, water, makeup, and something to do. I can sorta see this working. I mean, wouldn't you get kinda bored sitting on your ass after a while?</strong><hr></blockquote>
You'd you get bored building replicators all day long?
I always wondered about Star Trek TNG. The serie started under Reagan (evil empire and all) and when "communism" still ruled in Soviet and east Europe. And still they have no money, people don´t care so much about themselves but work for a higher goal and they always try to go that extra mile to understand other species even when they are shot at aso. The first two episodes Picard is put under trial by Q for all humanities wrongdoings and he manages to convince Q that we have evolved beyond egoism since our times. Do anyone remember when TNG started? Were there anyone yelling "Commie" against it?
Someone must have written about TNG in a sociology context (not the sociology of Enterprise but how the serie was perceive and understood in accordance to the "real" society). I have tried to find anything on this on the net many times but can´t find anything.
<strong> Even EU socialism is showing to be highly ineffective. I have really enjoyed watching Europe slide and stagnate under its growing waves of incompetent socialist regimes which have really taken control over the past 15 years or so.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I consider myself liberal (almost opposite of being socialist here) so I am not biased to see everything the socialist governments are doing as the right thing: Europe (or rather the european countries) have been doing better in the last 10-15 years than it did in the 80s. Let me take Denmark as an example: In the 80s both our government and the country as a whole had a deficit and in the late 80´s we had an unemployment rate at 12% and owed one year GNP away. Now our unemployment rate is 4,3% (very low compared to how our labour market works) and according to the new governments plan our national loans will be paid within seven-ten years. And in same periode we managed to get much higher standart of living and let our help to third world countries and former second world ones grow from 1% to 1,5%. The overall unemployment rate in EU is 7.6% Try compare all this to US figures.
Certain countries like Germany have had a harder time than others for obvious reason (I dare US to accept half of Russia as the 51 state and then try to get it to US standard in all areas and see how you would be doing ten years from now).
The problems in Europe have very little to do with the colour of the governments. And the socialists governments in Europe is mostly of the "third way" kind which is a strange mix of socialist-conservative elements (the direct opposite of liberalism in my book).
I know that Denmark is a very special case of success but I haven´t seen rest of europe go the exact opposite way. The formula for us have been a very open economy (I think more than 50% of our production is exported and visa versa) and EU really need to embrace that as a whole and stop protecting special interests like farmers (which is protected by the right winged at least here in Denmark).
This is not an attempt to say "We are better than You" but to use the economic development in the last ten years in Europe as an example of how bad socialism work is wrong since 1: It haven´t been a bad decade for us and compared to the 80s it have been a really good one, 2: It haven´t been real socialist governments.
In short:
Denmark under Conservative right winged gowernment in the 80s: Higher unemployment rate, deficit and very slow economy.
Denmark under pseudo socialist government in the 90s: Reduced unemplyment rate to almost a third, surplus on government spending and international trade, reduced state and international loans and very active economy.
Certain countries like Germany have had a harder time than others for obvious reason (I dare US to accept half of Russia as the 51 state and then try to get it to US standard in all areas and see how you would be doing ten years from now).</strong><hr></blockquote>
East Germany = half of Russia? And wasn't East Germany supposed to be a communist showcase anyway? How come they were still so far behind the west?
One more thing: Marx wasn't just describing his idea of an ideal economic order. He was also supposed to have outlined a theory of history. Marxism was alleged to be a scientific inevitability. It wasn't.
Denmark under Conservative right winged gowernment in the 80s: Higher unemployment rate, deficit and very slow economy...</strong><hr></blockquote>
Define Denmark's version of right wing. How big was the public sector? How much of the workforce was unionized? Was your health care system socialized?
East Germany = half of Russia? And wasn't East Germany supposed to be a communist showcase anyway? How come they were still so far behind the west?</strong><hr></blockquote>
Half of russia is to USA as east germany is to West germany. And "showcase"? <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" /> The economy of East Germany was an integrated part of Eastern Europe so what does it help that their industry was half shitty instead of completely shitty when it is of no use (okay i´m exaggerating to get my point across). Perhaps East Berlin was a real showcase. Karl Marx Straße is impressive but I have also been to East Germany before the unification and thats a different story.
[quote]Originally posted by roger_ramjet:
<strong>One more thing: Marx wasn't just describing his idea of an ideal economic order. He was also supposed to have outlined a theory of history. Marxism was alleged to be a scientific inevitability. It wasn't.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Beside the fact that Marx didn´t say much about the future but concentrated on the revolution that lead from feudalism to capitalism historical materialism suffers from flaws in its fundament. But many accepted theories have flaws like it (psycho-analysis to name one) and Marx is used widely in many areas of social sciences and is an very important theorist in areas like sociology and social anthropology. I find more truth in the liberal side of sociology (Weber and the tradition after him) but Marx is an important inspiration to critical theory, Foulcault and Habermas (very important theories and theorists in sociology) and many others.
Define Denmark's version of right wing. How big was the public sector? How much of the workforce was unionized? Was your health care system socialized?</strong><hr></blockquote>
Very different than yours. But if you take status quo and see what way the government want the development to go I say it was right winged: We got private hospitals under them, the educational system was streamlined (more business orientated), they opened up for outsourcing of public work (but still paid via taxes), less focus on unimployment figures and more on economy (although they failed big time on both). The public sector was reduced and they wanted to make changes to our health care system but knew the population wouldn´t accept it (they would loose the next election). And luckily our government doesn´t decide if people should be allowed to be member of unions (why would this be a indicator of how right winged a government is ) .
The pseudo-3rd way-socialist government that took over from them perhaps didn´t want to drag us over to the left but rather let the things stay more status quo. But they used a classic euro-socialist strategy to kick start our economy: spent spent spent (pure Keynes) and it was actually a huge succes on all areas. On top of than focus came on environment (in food production, wind turbines and other areas), the unemployed (and not the conservative type "trickle down" economy but education aso), the infrastructure aso.
[quote]<strong>The economy of East Germany was an integrated part of Eastern Europe so what does it help that their industry was half shitty instead of completely shitty when it is of no use (okay i´m exaggerating to get my point across). </strong><hr></blockquote>
Very different than yours. But if you take status quo and see what way the government want the development to go I say it was right winged...</strong><hr></blockquote>
In other words, not something I'd recognize as conservative.
[quote]<strong>And luckily our government doesn´t decide if people should be allowed to be member of unions (why would this be a indicator of how right winged a government is ) .</strong><hr></blockquote>
It's not a matter of government deciding if people should be allowed to belong to a union. It's a question of how difficult is it for a business to function and not be unionized.
It's not a matter of government deciding if people should be allowed to belong to a union. It's a question of how difficult is it for a business to function and not be unionized.</strong><hr></blockquote>
What do you mean by unionized then? Our wages are agreed upon by what the buisnesses are willing to pay and what people are prepared to work for. In reality its agreed between the unions of companies and workers and both are very satisfied by this model. Even though we don´t have a official minimum wage here in reality noone over the age of 18 work for less that $10 not even at McDonalds. And the companies have an interest in paying a relative high wage for a large part of that wage go into the educational system through taxes and they don´t have to pay for medical insurance aso. But on the other hand is it very easy to fire people here because we have relative generous unemployment benefits. If this model was a problems I think it would be hard to have both a high average income, surplus and low unemployment rates at the same time. I think the companies would flee the country asap.
[quote]Originally posted by roger_ramjet:
<strong>
In other words, not something I'd recognize as conservative.</strong><hr></blockquote>
No thats why words like "liberal" and "conservative" can´t be taken as meaning the same on both side of the atlantic but what I described is taken as right winged economic policy here. But the original claim that I wrote my reply to was that socialist governments had been bad for Europe in the 90s and I show that a relative more socialist orientated government had been much better for us in the 90s than a lesser one had been in the 80s.
The government of the 80s was mainly between the Liberal and Conservative party supported by our social-liberal party, the Center party and Chritian peoples party. In the 90s it was a coalition between the social democracy and the social liberal party.
"Social liberal" may sound extreme left for you and the direct translation of it, Radical Left, have in the past made it difficult for it members to enter USA but in reality its a seen as a contradiction in terms here and is a center party.
Comments
However no, it can not work. Communism requires a dictator to be put into effect and the freedom of a democrasy to work, and neither can be had.
Now if you could CONVINCE people to be communist, raise a generation of communists or gather communists fro macross the world together, then MAYBE you could create a communist state.
however one thing does stand
there have been no real commusit regimes since its conception...totalitariansim, dictatorships, stalin's reign was almost fascist...but TRUE karl marx communism has never been really oput into effect.
one thing that communism definatly stands FOR is free speach(believe it or not) and basically most of our bill of rights, fall nicely into the communist manifesto...however ambitious rulers have taken the ideals of communism and seriously ****ed around with it, masking their true goals...or something like that. on top of that, for YEARS capitilists (U.S in particular) have been conditioned to think communism=bad
without any real reason why...so its natural to be against it if you an american...its education which is the key to making your own judgements anyway.
disclaimer...I'm still in the process of learning more about this, so forgive me if I don't know what the **** I'm talking about. I plan on reading the communist manifesto tonight, then I'll be sure to have a better outlook on it
I do like this discussion though, I feel communism needs to be understanded more, cause what I DO know about it doesn't seem so bad.
<strong>Notice how they never talk about the economy in Star Trek. Who pays for all these people to do that work?</strong><hr></blockquote>
They got replicators, dude! Work is optional or at least the requirement for workers is so small that volunteers can fill the void. I think I remember reading that the pyramids were actually built not by slaves, but by volunteers who worked for food, water, makeup, and something to do. I can sorta see this working. I mean, wouldn't you get kinda bored sitting on your ass after a while?
<strong>
They got replicators, dude! Work is optional or at least the requirement for workers is so small that volunteers can fill the void. I think I remember reading that the pyramids were actually built not by slaves, but by volunteers who worked for food, water, makeup, and something to do. I can sorta see this working. I mean, wouldn't you get kinda bored sitting on your ass after a while?</strong><hr></blockquote>
You'd you get bored building replicators all day long?
<strong>
You'd get bored building replicators all day long?</strong><hr></blockquote>
Up late too, eh? I would assume that one could replicate replicators. Or maybe have holographic characters assemble them.
Man, we're solving world problems here.
Someone must have written about TNG in a sociology context (not the sociology of Enterprise but how the serie was perceive and understood in accordance to the "real" society). I have tried to find anything on this on the net many times but can´t find anything.
<strong>
So the source of the news makes it invalid?</strong><hr></blockquote>
uhhh, YES. do you believe everything MOSR and theregister post?
btw i happen to agree that communism cannot work, just couldn't figure out your logic there
<strong>
I base it on the information in the report. That's how most normal people do it.</strong><hr></blockquote>
<img src="graemlins/oyvey.gif" border="0" alt="[No]" />
Ahem...
Chocolate rations were increased today by -14%.
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY!
<strong> Even EU socialism is showing to be highly ineffective. I have really enjoyed watching Europe slide and stagnate under its growing waves of incompetent socialist regimes which have really taken control over the past 15 years or so.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I consider myself liberal (almost opposite of being socialist here) so I am not biased to see everything the socialist governments are doing as the right thing: Europe (or rather the european countries) have been doing better in the last 10-15 years than it did in the 80s. Let me take Denmark as an example: In the 80s both our government and the country as a whole had a deficit and in the late 80´s we had an unemployment rate at 12% and owed one year GNP away. Now our unemployment rate is 4,3% (very low compared to how our labour market works) and according to the new governments plan our national loans will be paid within seven-ten years. And in same periode we managed to get much higher standart of living and let our help to third world countries and former second world ones grow from 1% to 1,5%. The overall unemployment rate in EU is 7.6% Try compare all this to US figures.
Certain countries like Germany have had a harder time than others for obvious reason (I dare US to accept half of Russia as the 51 state and then try to get it to US standard in all areas and see how you would be doing ten years from now).
The problems in Europe have very little to do with the colour of the governments. And the socialists governments in Europe is mostly of the "third way" kind which is a strange mix of socialist-conservative elements (the direct opposite of liberalism in my book).
I know that Denmark is a very special case of success but I haven´t seen rest of europe go the exact opposite way. The formula for us have been a very open economy (I think more than 50% of our production is exported and visa versa) and EU really need to embrace that as a whole and stop protecting special interests like farmers (which is protected by the right winged at least here in Denmark).
This is not an attempt to say "We are better than You" but to use the economic development in the last ten years in Europe as an example of how bad socialism work is wrong since 1: It haven´t been a bad decade for us and compared to the 80s it have been a really good one, 2: It haven´t been real socialist governments.
In short:
Denmark under Conservative right winged gowernment in the 80s: Higher unemployment rate, deficit and very slow economy.
Denmark under pseudo socialist government in the 90s: Reduced unemplyment rate to almost a third, surplus on government spending and international trade, reduced state and international loans and very active economy.
[Edit: some figures and added some text]
[ 02-13-2002: Message edited by: Anders ]</p>
<strong>
Certain countries like Germany have had a harder time than others for obvious reason (I dare US to accept half of Russia as the 51 state and then try to get it to US standard in all areas and see how you would be doing ten years from now).</strong><hr></blockquote>
East Germany = half of Russia? And wasn't East Germany supposed to be a communist showcase anyway? How come they were still so far behind the west?
One more thing: Marx wasn't just describing his idea of an ideal economic order. He was also supposed to have outlined a theory of history. Marxism was alleged to be a scientific inevitability. It wasn't.
<strong>
In short:
Denmark under Conservative right winged gowernment in the 80s: Higher unemployment rate, deficit and very slow economy...</strong><hr></blockquote>
Define Denmark's version of right wing. How big was the public sector? How much of the workforce was unionized? Was your health care system socialized?
<strong>
East Germany = half of Russia? And wasn't East Germany supposed to be a communist showcase anyway? How come they were still so far behind the west?</strong><hr></blockquote>
Half of russia is to USA as east germany is to West germany. And "showcase"? <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" /> The economy of East Germany was an integrated part of Eastern Europe so what does it help that their industry was half shitty instead of completely shitty when it is of no use (okay i´m exaggerating to get my point across). Perhaps East Berlin was a real showcase. Karl Marx Straße is impressive but I have also been to East Germany before the unification and thats a different story.
[quote]Originally posted by roger_ramjet:
<strong>One more thing: Marx wasn't just describing his idea of an ideal economic order. He was also supposed to have outlined a theory of history. Marxism was alleged to be a scientific inevitability. It wasn't.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Beside the fact that Marx didn´t say much about the future but concentrated on the revolution that lead from feudalism to capitalism historical materialism suffers from flaws in its fundament. But many accepted theories have flaws like it (psycho-analysis to name one) and Marx is used widely in many areas of social sciences and is an very important theorist in areas like sociology and social anthropology. I find more truth in the liberal side of sociology (Weber and the tradition after him) but Marx is an important inspiration to critical theory, Foulcault and Habermas (very important theories and theorists in sociology) and many others.
<strong>
Define Denmark's version of right wing. How big was the public sector? How much of the workforce was unionized? Was your health care system socialized?</strong><hr></blockquote>
Very different than yours. But if you take status quo and see what way the government want the development to go I say it was right winged: We got private hospitals under them, the educational system was streamlined (more business orientated), they opened up for outsourcing of public work (but still paid via taxes), less focus on unimployment figures and more on economy (although they failed big time on both). The public sector was reduced and they wanted to make changes to our health care system but knew the population wouldn´t accept it (they would loose the next election). And luckily our government doesn´t decide if people should be allowed to be member of unions (why would this be a indicator of how right winged a government is
The pseudo-3rd way-socialist government that took over from them perhaps didn´t want to drag us over to the left but rather let the things stay more status quo. But they used a classic euro-socialist strategy to kick start our economy: spent spent spent (pure Keynes) and it was actually a huge succes on all areas. On top of than focus came on environment (in food production, wind turbines and other areas), the unemployed (and not the conservative type "trickle down" economy but education aso), the infrastructure aso.
[ 02-13-2002: Message edited by: Anders ]</p>
<strong>
And "showcase"? </strong><hr></blockquote>
The best example of a communist state.
[quote]<strong>The economy of East Germany was an integrated part of Eastern Europe so what does it help that their industry was half shitty instead of completely shitty when it is of no use (okay i´m exaggerating to get my point across). </strong><hr></blockquote>
Yeah, so what's so great about communism again?
<strong>
Very different than yours. But if you take status quo and see what way the government want the development to go I say it was right winged...</strong><hr></blockquote>
In other words, not something I'd recognize as conservative.
[quote]<strong>And luckily our government doesn´t decide if people should be allowed to be member of unions (why would this be a indicator of how right winged a government is
It's not a matter of government deciding if people should be allowed to belong to a union. It's a question of how difficult is it for a business to function and not be unionized.
<strong>
Yeah, so what's so great about communism again?</strong><hr></blockquote>
Eh? What about asking a communist?
<strong>
It's not a matter of government deciding if people should be allowed to belong to a union. It's a question of how difficult is it for a business to function and not be unionized.</strong><hr></blockquote>
What do you mean by unionized then? Our wages are agreed upon by what the buisnesses are willing to pay and what people are prepared to work for. In reality its agreed between the unions of companies and workers and both are very satisfied by this model. Even though we don´t have a official minimum wage here in reality noone over the age of 18 work for less that $10 not even at McDonalds. And the companies have an interest in paying a relative high wage for a large part of that wage go into the educational system through taxes and they don´t have to pay for medical insurance aso. But on the other hand is it very easy to fire people here because we have relative generous unemployment benefits. If this model was a problems I think it would be hard to have both a high average income, surplus and low unemployment rates at the same time. I think the companies would flee the country asap.
[quote]Originally posted by roger_ramjet:
<strong>
In other words, not something I'd recognize as conservative.</strong><hr></blockquote>
No thats why words like "liberal" and "conservative" can´t be taken as meaning the same on both side of the atlantic but what I described is taken as right winged economic policy here. But the original claim that I wrote my reply to was that socialist governments had been bad for Europe in the 90s and I show that a relative more socialist orientated government had been much better for us in the 90s than a lesser one had been in the 80s.
The government of the 80s was mainly between the Liberal and Conservative party supported by our social-liberal party, the Center party and Chritian peoples party. In the 90s it was a coalition between the social democracy and the social liberal party.
"Social liberal" may sound extreme left for you and the direct translation of it, Radical Left, have in the past made it difficult for it members to enter USA but in reality its a seen as a contradiction in terms here and is a center party.