Why won't the nightmare dream of communism die?

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I am not answering anyone’s post, just posting my own thoughts.
  • There is something to be said for the idea that communism fails because it has never been implemented correctly. But it has been tried enough times that it would seem it is very, very difficult be implemented correctly, except in very limited, short run circumstances.
  • The idea that it won’t work until all privately owned capital is eliminated in the world may be true, but it can never happen. Even under supposed Communism, people in power gerrymander wealth for their own purposes. It’s human nature. They may not technically “own” what they enjoy, but that the result is the same.
  • Central control of resources can work temporarily to stabilize an economy that is out of control. Communist principles can be useful as band-aids. It’s when people start to see the band-aid as the cure that problems happen.
  • Communism is not nearly as efficient in creating resources, being productive, as communism. Even most communists admit that.
  • Capitalism is the most efficient system for being productive and creating resources, but it lacks fairness of outcomes and even sometimes fairness of opportunity.
  • Socialism is distinct from communism, but as far as outcomes, it is pretty much communism-light. All the same principles apply, just not as much.
  • So there is a balance that needs to be struck. Every country needs to decide what is right for it. The problem comes in when a group pushes that “their idea that their way is the only way.” There may be countries where communism might be the best system, others where socialism might be the best, etc.
  • In the US, we have a Constitution that protects the ownership of private property and generally supports as minimal government control as we can get away with. That is what we stand for and there are a lot of people who will fight fiercely, skillfully and effectively to protect that. As long as that is true, capitalism will be what is right for us.
 
No, Christ was not a Communist by any means. Any people who lived in a situation in which everything was shared were there freely and voluntarily. Communism by definition must be forced on the majoriity.

Bishop Fulton Sheen said that in Communism, men followed an idea; in Christianity, a Person. Catholics follow the same path and share because of love; Communists… not so much.
 
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TheButler said:
How many died in WW2 and the Holocaust? No communism,
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WW2, no Communism? What was the USSR if not a Communist state? What was Stalin then of not a Communist? And was the USSR’s involvement in WW2 nothing to do with a desire to spread their influence and promote their ideology? Was the falling of the iron curtain across Europe at the end of WW2 and the setting up of sattelite Communist states across eastern Europe just a coincidence?

20 million people are said to have died under Stalin during his time in charge of the Communist USSR.

 
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I sometimes do think that Communism seems to get a pass for all the attrocities that have resulted from it. Just ignore the tens of millions who died under Mao, Stalin etc and celebrate Communism as some sort of benign force for good in the world.

It would be very wrong to turn round and claim that Nazism is basically a good idea, but that Hitler got it wrong and that the millions killed in the name of this ideology had nothing to do with true Nazism. So why does Communism get a pass with the attrocities committed under Stalin and Mao deemed to have nothing to do with true Communism?

Is it because the likes of Trotsky and Guevarra looked cool? Even Lenin had a certain look about him? Or is it the intellectual aura of Marx, or the cigar-puffing style of Castro? Either way Communism has reportedly caused the deaths of up to 100 million people, yet people in the West are happy to walk about openly supporting it.
 
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Jesus never advocated for seizing people’s wealth and giving it to the poor. He told us to do that with our things and our own things only.

Also, see Acts 5:3-4.
 
JanSobieskiIII said:
Jesus never advocated for seizing people’s wealth and giving it to the poor. He told us to do that with our things and our own things only.

Also, see Acts 5:3-4.
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He never said that the government could not engage in redistributive policies.
 
Communism is not about redistributing wealth in order to create a fairer society for individual citizens, it is about seeing all the resources of society (including the people) as a state owned resource to be used or disposed of in order to propagate an ideology and create a state where the individual has no inherent rights. A society where the concept of morality does not exist, where all that matters is whether or not an action serves the aims of the state. Communism is not about serving the needs of the people.
 
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There were many topics that weren’t covered, doesn’t give them tacit approval.
 
JanSobieskiIII said:
There were many topics that weren’t covered, doesn’t give them tacit approval.
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Which of course is why we have the magisterium. Can you link us to where the Church has taught that redistributive government policies are immoral?
 
The whole meme of “It wasn’t real communism” is pretty ignorant. I don’t think the USSR or PRC aren’t communist because they killed lots of people or anything. I think they weren’t communist because of the capitalist social relations that were maintained - the existence of commodity production, wage labour and capital. There is no such thing as a communist country either, since the communist movement transcends the nation-state.

Communism isn’t a political or economic system to be imposed onto the world. Communism is the movement that strives towards a truly human society based on the free association of individuals. It does this as a reaction against the old world, by destroying everything that prevents humanity from achieving this. It’s the movement against capital and private property, and it isn’t composed of ideologically motivated communists, but anyone who lives in opposition to capital. The most radical revolutionaries are not ideologically motivated communists, but normal people who are tired of the way they live.
 
The church has directly condemned communism, which is built on redistributive properties. Now there are some that are acceptable, that’s how taxes work. But taxes are a long way off from seizing all the means of production from private ownership.
 
Regular_Atheist said:
free association of individuals.
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No, that’s free markets. Communism only works when everything is enforced by the state through a monopoly on violence. If even one person tries to opt out and keep their own property that person has to be destroyed by the state. There’s nothing “free” about communism.
 
No, that’s free markets.
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But any society that maintains the existence of commodity production and capital is necessarily going to not be a society based on free association, but instead a society in which man’s relations are mediated and controlled by the exchange of commodities. Rather than being able to choose our own social relations and consciously plan our own production, the way in which we produce is imposed on us externally by the “laws” of economics. Humans don’t get to choose how we organise our society, we are forced to obey economics and its laws. We live in an inverted world where our own social relations control us, where we are forced to obey the market. Communism is the opposite of this, a society where human beings can consciously choose how to associate with one another and consciously and rationally plan the conditions of production. It is the abolition of economics, which is a “science” rooted in the existence of commodity production.
Communism only works when everything is enforced by the state through a monopoly on violence.
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Communism is stateless, and it’s weird that you should write this because the existence of private property necessarily entails the existence of the state to safeguard that property. How can private property exist without a monopoly on violence to defend its existence?
 
You don’t get to re-define communism and then say, See? communism is a good thing!
 
Not under Communism - your logic is inconsistent. Stalin may have hated polysyllablism because the proletariat use only less than three syllables, but capital punishment could be applied for inconsistent logic when it is judged to hurt the party. Of course, lying to get elected is okay dokey.
Who needs personal capital when you work the books, a.k.a. budget, of the party?
Are we not ecstatic that mainland China has reformed this booking for the party almost to the level of the U.S. Government? Well, at least well enough to be the main publishing house for the U.S. Soon, they will be free and doctors can then profit from unborn baby parts.
 
Well, the minor problem with destroying the dignity of human persons has to be worked out. Lenin is of course the true course to this goal. Hate your mother and know that family is the biggest problem. Nanoo, Nanoo. I long so much for my eggshell.
But, remember, pornography is empowering! A postulate directly revealed by, “What is to be done.”
Communism is a lie, by tyrants, nothing more.
 
Doesn’t common sense tell that government redistribution takes away a person’s free will??? Jesus doesn’t want to FORCE us to love. He wants us to love as HE loves. He made us for freedom. Even freedom to Hate HIM if that seems best for us.
 
There’s definitely a roll for government to help out the least foruntuate in society. The debate is over how much and how to do it in the most efficient manner. The problem i have is the people who just want to continually tax more and more and give more and more without regard to efficiency or results.
 
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