What are your thoughts on communism -negative and positive?

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Rozellelily

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Communism has always talk about in a negative life, but as someone born under communist rule, perhaps hard to believe but there were positives also.

What are your thoughts?
 
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I defer to your experience on the day to day.

As for the theory, there have been communists who have made remarkable insights into politics and economics, along with much that was wrong. Just like pro-market economists and thinkers.

Ultimately, the obsessive focus on communism and socialism in the west, especially the United States, has been in my opinion for the worst. Due to the idea of a monolithic world communist conspiracy many died, alliances that could have been forged were lost, etc.

I do find it odd that Christians are so prone to deny the communistic nature of early Christianity. So be it.
 
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I think you have you would have to be a former communist ruler to state the positives, but most of them have been executed.
 
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What were some of the positives? (The Church is against it so I’m against it, btw)
 
lwest said:
The Church is against it so I’m against it, btw
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The Church is also against unbridled capitalism. This goes back to the early days of Catholic social teaching. See the references to Manchester liberals in Rerum Novarum I believe it is.
 
lwest said:
What were some of the positives? (The Church is against it so I’m against it, btw)
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My background is ex Yugoslavia and one of the positives there was that the communist rule brought varied ethnic groups (Croatians, Serbs, Bosnians, etc), IOW people of three major religions, Orthodox, Catholic, and Muslims to be able to be proudly united under one country and live in relative harmony for 30 years. Which is a big feat for anyone:)
 
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And I’m against unbridled capitalism. I’m not against capitalism. There’s a difference.
 
Rozellelily said:
My background is ex Yugoslavia and one of the positives there was that the communist rule brought varied ethnic groups (Croatians, Serbs, Bosnians, etc), IOW people of three major religions, Orthodox, Catholic, and Serbs to be able to be proudly united under one country and live in relative harmony for 30 years. Which is a big feat for anyone:)
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Um…

I’ll just say that I don’t think any country needs communism to help ethnic groups live in relative harmony with each other. Nor to ‘help’ Catholics and Orthodox live in relative harmony.

It’s not actually a big feat for any country to have Catholics and Orthodox coexisting harmoniously. There are almost no more closely connected two religious traditions on the planet.

Also, “Serbian” isn’t a religion.

Honestly the more I think about this claim the stranger it seems. Like a North Korean propaganda piece about how much harmony their dear leader has secured for them, that they can only think is true if they have no sense of how much more harmonious other places are under other systems.

Like… my country (not USA) has a market based economy. And it wouldn’t even occur to most of us that disharmony between “ethnic groups” or Christian denominations is even on the table. Ethnic and inter religious harmony is the default in the non-communist society where I live, and if anything the harmony is worsened when government tries to step in and control things.
 
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Capta(name removed by moderator)rudeman said:
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MNathaniel:
I’ll just say that I don’t think any country needs communism to help ethnic groups live in relative harmony with each other.
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Then you must not know much about the Balkans.
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You think the Balkans need communism to secure harmony?

I’m not denying that communism can secure an artificial harmony of collective shared oppression, by the way.

What I’m denying is that the kind of “harmony” imposed by communism is the kind of harmony that we “need”.
 
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MNathaniel said:
I… might peacefully check out of this thread If is actually going to turn into apologetics for totalitarianism.
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“I understand its appeal for specific people” =/= “I think it’s a good thing.”

I do not like or support totalitarianism but you at least need to understand that it isn’t always chosen and supported for evil reasons.
 
Capta(name removed by moderator)rudeman said:
I do not like or support totalitarianism but you at least need to understand that it isn’t always chosen and supported for evil reasons.
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I would assume it’s almost never chosen with (consciously) evil motives.

I used to be personally pro-communist. I meant well. I was wrong.

My natural temperament tends toward totalitarian power-grab. That’s also wrong. Even when my motive is ostensibly to save other people from themselves.
 
All I want to make clear is that we shouldn’t demonize people for choosing things that have certain appeal even if that appeal is not enough to objectively make it good.
 
Capta(name removed by moderator)rudeman said:
All I want to make clear is that we shouldn’t demonize people for choosing things that have certain appeal even if that appeal is not enough to objectively make it good.
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I hope I haven’t demonized any persons in this thread.

That said, I stand by every word against the structural political-economic system of state-imposed communism, with the Catholic Church teaches cannot be reconciled with human rights.
 
MNathaniel said:
That said, I stand by every word against the structural political-economic system of state-imposed communism, with the Catholic Church teaches cannot be reconciled with human rights.
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Yes. I do too.

I just wanted to make sure there was some nuance here because communism can sometimes bring up some grime in the way people talk and I don’t want that.
 
I agree that there is a place for nuance.

I also think that there is a place for stopping nuance in its tracks and making sure to clarify where the clear bright lines are, when clear bright lines exist.
 
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