Communists = Democrats

[nageov3t]

I haven't heard Obama talk a lot about achieving species being... honestly, I wouldn't even consider the communist party in the US to be really communistic as far as Marx envisioned at least.

 

[Craig234]

Originally posted by: RY62

Originally posted by: UberNeuman

Originally posted by: RY62

Originally posted by: sandorski
Fair? No.

Why not? What do you think the differences are?

Quit asking others to prove a point to you. Make your case, or shut up........

This time, without another quote from another's opinion...........

Will you please ignore this thread. It's obvious that you don't want to discuss differences or similarities between the parties, which is what I hoped this thread would do.

George Bush ran on humility in foreign policy, restrained use of the military, and budget surpluses. You have to look at 'real' policies not just marketing info.

The communists ultimately believe in far more state control than democrats. If you don't know the history of the communist party, start there for differences.

Of course on the road from Bush to communism, there will be some things in common between democrats and communists. Things like on your posted list.

Look at your list and ask yourself if that describes the communist societies historically. I like the list you posted pretty much, and I do not like historical communism at all.

 

[Arkaign]

That list of stuff is pretty generic.

BTW, the Dem party overwhelmingly voted for the Patriot Act. So that alone is pretty different.

Real Communism (Mao's China, Stalin's USSR) is far far different than anything listed there. The US Communist parties are so disorganized and marginalized that taking anything they have to say seriously will only cause you brain damage from wasting the time to read it. They are completely and utterly irrelevant.

 

[BansheeX]

Hmm, you're just now realizing this? I would say that both the Democratic party and today's Republican party have major socialist policies and differ now only in a few ways. Remember, Vietnam was started by the Dems. Iraq was started by the Repubs. First-strike interventionism has been an attribute of both, it's just that America has the long-term memory of a drugged up lemming. They only really go after each other on it when it's politically convenient to take the other side. We've certainly drifted towards bigger and bigger government involvement and I can't remember the % of income now taxed and controlled by government. Something like 50%. So yeah, we're getting there.

Since I'm bored, I'm going to go down that list of communist policies and beat them to death with my logic stick.

It is shameful and unacceptable that any child should live in poverty, and that anyone should go hungry, homeless, without medicine, or without a living wage in our nation of such great wealth.

And the main cause of grinding poverty around the world is not a result of idealist centralized government run by inherently corruptible men? Look at the situation in Myanmar right now. Totally oppressive and isolationist government, utter lack of free trade, utter inability for people to truly pursue their own separate interests and benefits themselves more than their government. I doubt foreign businesses are allowed to come in and "exploit" their workers by offering them wages and environments better than what their idealist state-run companies can possibly match in their decrepit local currency. Damn evil capitalism!

Meet the Needs of Working, Unemployed and Farm Families
- Raise the minimum wage to $12 an hour.

It was an economically retarded idea when it started and it still is. Companies compete for labor and exploitative wages not reflective of real skill and demand DO NOT EXIST in a true free market economy rife with competition, small capital, and no special privilege legislation. When it was instituted in this country, it drove up unemployment of low-skill workers by like 10%. Teenagers and minorities were affected the most. Because the law can be summarized as saying "employers must discriminate against people with low skills." If en employer cannot offer a low-skill worker less than what the minimum says, the worker is either not hired or he is hired and the government coerced charity drives the small business under and he becomes unemployed that way.

To make this dummy proof, consider this: if setting the minimum wage higher is an effective way of increasing the prosperity of the average worker, then why stop at $12? Why not $20? Why not $2000?

-Unemployment insurance for all workers.

And where does the government get the money to pay for that? Taxpayers who work? Yes, this won't create an incentive quandary...

- Moratorium on farm foreclosures

Yeah, because we can't allow poorly run businesses to go under. Let's get taxpayers to bail them out. Oh wait, what was it again that made businesses strive to be as efficient and productive as possible? Oh yeah... COMPETITION AND THE FEAR OF FUCKING BANKRUPTCY.

- Labor law reform to remove barriers to workers who want to join a union.

Workers have every right to form a special club and demand higher wages for their privileged members. But employers also have every right to compare their productive capacity to someone else willing to work for less. If there are workers capable of doing the same shit for less cost, then that union was pretty dumb and is going to get fired. Four things can happen:

1) The employer concedes and goes bust because the new wages are too much.
2) The employer fires them all and goes bust because the new cheap labor is less productive per dollar.
3) The employer concedes and continues to do well, but prices may go up for the consumer.
4) The employer fires them all and the new cheap labor is more productive per dollar. Prices go down for consumer.

- No privatization of Social Security. Increase benefits.

Increase benefits? HOW? What magical pixie dust have the commies obtained that will get us more benefits, let alone the amount we already owe and can't pay. Absolutely absurd, and here's the nation's top accountant on the matter.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=OS2fI2p9iVs

No privatization? Right, because it wouldn't make any sense for people to keep that 12% now being taken per paycheck and invest it for their own retirement, which would yield them far better returns that what the government gives you back after the central bank debases it to pay for more government goodies and bailouts, presuming you didn't die before the retirement age, which can also be raised by government. Or you know, what if some poor person with kids wants to use that money on them and risk a bumpy retirement? Nope, can't do that with SS. You gotta pay. Totally against freedom, totally reprehensible, can't opt out, can't do a damn thing. There is no trust fund, it's all squandered. It's a giant IOU and this socialist fucking country can't pay it back. They're going to have to kill every old person in this country, it is a ticking time bomb.

- Universal prescription drug coverage administered by Medicare. Universal health care system.

Medicare is in even worse financial shape and more government in health care is the wrong direction. Obviously, we have a problem in attributing the sources of problems here. Hint: HMO Act and the socialist policies driving massive inflation resulting in price hikes across the board. I wonder what will happen when our innovation gets nationalized. I wonder what will happen to the socialist countries currently importing our shit once we go socialist. Socialist health care kind of depends on SOMEBODY innovating through capitalistic incentive, doesn't it?

- Restore social safety net. Welfare reform that includes job training, supports and living wages.
- Full funding for equal, quality, bi-lingual public education. No vouchers.

Who's paying for all this shit? Taxes would have to be increased by another 30%. How about we just let people keep and spend their own money, mmmkay? And get government out of the health care market, mmmkay? Because it makes no sense to tax 100% of the people to do something about 5%. It's creating more costs than benefits. But the utopian fallacy that a system exists in which nothing bad happens to anyone and poverty and unemployment and gun crime are completely eradicated by an unselfish, incorruptible all-powerful government capable of identifying between fair and unfair gain on an individual basis for 300 million people... I mean, huh? Who still believes this shit?

Make Corporate Giants Pay
- Repeal tax cuts to the rich and corporations.

Yeah, that won't incentivize even more outsourcing. Or, you know, we could repeal taxes on income/production period, forcing government to lose some weight, reduce government jobs and agencies getting paid taxmoney to collect taxmoney like the IRS (oh, my head). And last I checked, I got way more cool shit from evil Intel and Microsoft than I ever got from you fuckers.

- Close corporate tax loopholes.

Good luck! You wouldn't need to if you stopped taxing production, which is incredibly difficult to enforce. Look at what the IRS does all the time, running around doing random audits and intimidating the fuck out of people so the people they don't have the resources to audit (99% of us) are freaked out into paying.

Foreign Policy for Peace and Justice
- No to war with Iraq - End military interventions
- Repeal Fast Track and NAFTA, stop Free Trade Area of the Americas(FTAA). No secrecy.
- Save Salt II Agreements, reject Star Wars and Nuclear Posture Review
-Abolish nuclear weapons
- End military interventions.

Sure, except for the whole abolishing nuclear weapons thing. Are you nuts? M.A.D. is a good thing.

Defend Democracy and Civil Rights
- End racial profiling.
- Repeal the death penalty.
- Enforce civil rights laws and affirmative action.
- Repeal USA Patriot Act.
- Legalization and protection of immigrant>rights.
- Public financing of elections. Overall election law reform including Instant Runoff Voting.
- Youth and student bill of rights. Guarantee youth's right to earn,learn and live.

Yes
yes
no and this is a contradiction of #1
yes
sort of, no amnesty, that's unfair to people who OBEYED the law
dunno, probably fine
never read it, sounds redundant, everyone has rights in this country regardless of age

 

[Colt45]

American communist party is apparently not communist... More like social democrat... light light pink.

 

[Lonyo]

Originally posted by: RY62

Originally posted by: ProfJohn
No, they are socialists more similar to European socialists than communists.

Also from the Communist party link above:

Socialism, in our view, is a precursor to communism. Socialism is a stage of development where society transforms itself into an economic system based on production for use rather than production for profit, where social need plays a much larger role in political and economic decisions, where the "commanding heights of the economy" are socially owned and run on behalf of society, and where people can begin to transform themselves.

Yup. But that doesn't mean that socialism has to lead, or even does lead to communism.
The Communist party of the US wants to become more socialist so that they can then eventually become communist.
The Democrats want to become more socialist so they can be more socialist, much like Western Europe is (and Western Europe hasn't been heading towards communism AFAI can tell).

The initial step of both parties is the same, but on one hand the communists want to take another step, and on the other, the democrats want to hold station.

I don't see what the issue is. They are two obviously different parties with different aims, and it just happens that the way to get to those aims for both has steps which intersect.

Plus the communist party is moderate in itself, so it doesn't want to go too far away from the socialism which seems to have been relatively successful in many european countries.

 

[Cold Steel]

From dictionary.com:

communism:
?noun
1. a theory or system of social organization based on the holding of all property in common, actual ownership being ascribed to the community as a whole or to the state.
2. (often initial capital letter) a system of social organization in which all economic and social activity is controlled by a totalitarian state dominated by a single and self-perpetuating political party.
3. (initial capital letter) the principles and practices of the Communist party.

socialism:
?noun
1. a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.
2. procedure or practice in accordance with this theory.
3. (in Marxist theory) the stage following capitalism in the transition of a society to communism, characterized by the imperfect implementation of collectivist principles.

Not a huge difference, but different for sure.

No, the Dems are not communist, as much as some on the right would like to think so. They do, however, have socialist leanings, as do the Repubs. The main difference seems to big government with lots of spending by the Dems, versus big government with lots of spending by the Repubs. It just depends on what they're spending it on that determines Dem or Repub.

 

[StageLeft]

Democrats, socialists, communists, the lines can quickly blur. Republicans, idiots, morons, again the lines can quickly blur. Both parties are a joke.

A highly regulated free market economy with high taxes that provide TONS of social services to everyone.

That is no where near communism. Get a clue already.

Communism = state control of the economy and no Democrat is even suggesting that.

In all fairness, when you start increasing taxes people are working more and more for gov anyway, so they may be ostensibly privately owned, but in reality are not, so it's six of one half dozen of another.

 

[Jhhnn]

I have to agree with Wirelessenabled- the ACP has obviously changed, not the Dems. I'm not even sure that the ACP would be considered "communist", at all, certainly not in terms of their revolutionary heritage.

The rightwing hasn't really changed much, at all, other than in perverting the system into welfare for the wealthy. That's really what mounting federal debt is all about, providing a safe, govt insured investment vehicle. They talk a good game of rewarding the risk of capital, but US govt securities comprise the backbone of every great portfolio...

And I don't have a problem with Skoorb's contention about how larger taxes mean you're working more for the govt- provided the govt is working for you, too... and by "you", I mean all of us, not the current situation where most of the benefit goes to those who can pay to play...

 

[Siddhartha]

com?mu?nism \"kam-ye-'ni-zem\ noun [F communisme, fr. commun common] (1840)
1 a : a theory advocating elimination of private property
b : a system in which goods are owned in common and are available to all as needed
2 cap
a : a doctrine based on revolutionary Marxian socialism and Marxism-Leninism that was the official ideology of the U.S.S.R.
b : a totalitarian system of government in which a single authoritarian party controls state-owned means of production
c : a final stage of society in Marxist theory in which the state has withered away and economic goods are distributed equitably
d : communist systems collectively

(C)1996 Zane Publishing, Inc. and Merriam-Webster, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

 

[Lemon law]

I think what is getting confused here is not the difference between communism and socialism. Which according to Cold Steel dictionary is not that great-----socialism:
?noun
1. a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.

What is getting confused is the concept of Government regulations and the degree of State control of the economy. And those are two different things.

It may be possible to have a pure unregulated economy as envisioned by Adam Smith, but not in any kind of modern
industrialized State. If anything, the Adam Smith model always ends up looking like the Haitian economy as all the wealth ends up concentrated into a very few hands. But we should not look to republicans to deliver Adam Smith, The OP on this thread should look to the libertarian party is my immediate reaction.

Where Adam Smith fails is in the area of concentrated capital and the monopoly. While anyone has the capital to set up a lemon aid stand to prevent the rise in prices, setting up something like a rail road, steel mill, or a telephone network is a different story.

And then we have a what amounts to the absolutely correct analysis of that ultimate students of capitalism with Marx and Engels, who quire correctly predicted large industries can only control their costs by depressing wages. And then we start heading for a Haitian style economy. And ultimately we have ever more efficient business being able to produce large amounts of goods thrown at a free market in which very few have the money to buy.

And any student of free market capitalism will find endless entertainment in looking at our economy of the 1890's. As various trusts tried to kite prices by cornering markets. Or they can fast forward to what happens when we allow too much unregulated power to be placed into capitalists hand. The entire Enron and Western electric crisis is a text book example of how to kite prices of basic commodities when government regulation is relaxed. Or we can go back to the S&L crisis which was a Regan brainfart of relaxing regulations while changing the rules in the middle of the game. Or we can look to the current mortgage crisis which again is a failure to regulate.

In any economy, there is only one iron rule of economics. Namely one can not distribute what you do not produce.

And as we move to a larger inequities between the wealthy and the poor, we must really start to worry about what happens when the consumer spending which drives this economy starts to seriously dry up.

 

[Skyclad1uhm1]

Democrats are more like the European centre-right parties, with some centre left ideas mixed in. The Republicans are a mix of all the worst parts of the centre- to right-wing extremist parties, with the religious extremists mixed in too.

The Dutch Socialist Party (SP) (with 25 of 150 total 'Congressional seats') for example does not allow their elected members to take gifts from companies or institutions, and even the party leader donates everything he earns back to the party, and then gets the country's average pay (about 1/4th or less of what he makes) as salary. The rest of the money is used for the party as well as to provide help to the sick and elderly in society.
Can you even imagine the Clintons giving away their own money to the needy?

And the SP stopped being Communist years ago, go figure what a really Communist party would be like.

 

[BansheeX]

Originally posted by: Lemon law
Where Adam Smith fails is in the area of concentrated capital and the monopoly. While anyone has the capital to set up a lemon aid stand to prevent the rise in prices, setting up something like a rail road, steel mill, or a telephone network is a different story.

There is nothing intrinsically bad about a monopoly if that monopoly continues delivering on consumer demand and creating good products, which is really the only way to prevent themselves from being overtaken by competition or their own irresponsibility. Look at how much market share Intel and Microsoft have. AMD seemingly came out of nowhere as Intel pursued marketing clockspeed over efficiency. Despite AMD being only a small player in the market, it was enough to spur them back into the right direction.

So long as the economic wealth of a country is preserved by sound monetary policy, small capital and the potential to take on a bigger business will exist, not by everyone, but it will exist. And it only takes ONE competitor to work. Big businesses are much more difficult to run efficiently, and there's really not a whole lot they can do to stave off innovative startups without these supposedly benevolent government regulatory powers with whom to collude for special privilege legislation: managed trade like NAFTA, subsidies, no-bid contracts, government bailouts of bankruptcies, etc.

And then we have a what amounts to the absolutely correct analysis of that ultimate students of capitalism with Marx and Engels, who quire correctly predicted large industries can only control their costs by depressing wages. And then we start heading for a Haitian style economy.

What does Haiti have do anything? Let's see: central bank inflation, check. History of oppressive government and bad economic policy, check. And how can large industry oppress wages? Are there not other places in which people can choose to work, leaving the depressor high and dry? How is that employer benefited by lost productivity? Or are millions of businesses in this country colluding together to simultaneously depress wages? I mean this is ridiculous.

And ultimately we have ever more efficient business being able to produce large amounts of goods thrown at a free market in which very few have the money to buy.

Umm, if no one can buy it then how do the companies survive? GM is huge ass company and have gotten many special breaks, but even they can't gouge on prices, because if they are selling way higher than cost, then that by definition allows somebody else to come in and turn a profit just by selling lower but still above cost. As that company begins taking away sales amounting to more than GM gains from less sales at a gouge price, then they will undercut the competitor. Thus, prices get bid down in an attempt to win the most consumers. And we see this every day, it works, and it accounts for our success as a nation relative to the rest of the world which more greatly follows the things you seem to be in favor of.

And any student of free market capitalism will find endless entertainment in looking at our economy of the 1890's. As various trusts tried to kite prices by cornering markets.

Care to give any examples which were not a result of government enablement? I believe certain railroads got a special act around that time which was detrimental to smaller railroads and prices went much higher for passengers. I also believe JP Morgan and Rockefeller lobbied heavily for a central bank.

Or they can fast forward to what happens when we allow too much unregulated power to be placed into capitalists hand. The entire Enron and Western electric crisis is a text book example of how to kite prices of basic commodities when government regulation is relaxed.

Enron went bankrupt, its stock paid no dividend yet the idiots working there chose to buy it, and several of its heads went to prison. No doubt many people were hurt by this, but you have to have a sense of proportion. Remember what I said about the fallacy of wanting a system in which no costs exist. The pain from Enron is just an inherent evil of freedom and ignorance within it. Giving government more regulatory power only opens the door for greater cumulative costs incurred as a result of more collusion between business and government and greater incentive to outsource to countries who don't have those taxes and regulations.

Or we can look to the current mortgage crisis which again is a failure to regulate.

No, it came from your very policies: the idealist socialist principle that market interest rates should be set by a man and not the market. The market wanted interest rates to rise for a correction/recession in 2000 after the last fed-created bubble popped, the internet stock bubble. But a man, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, held them down at 1% for an entire year, perhaps due to the political inconvenience of having a recession. This false signal spurred an artificial demand by investors in real estate and all subsequent risky lending that followed to meet it. They acted EXACTLY as you would expect someone to with that signal, and it could not have occurred if the market was allowed to correct when it wanted to. This idea that mankind suddenly evolved in 2000 into a far greedier species is absolutely ludicrous. Since the demand was artificial, it carried with it the seeds of its own inevitable collapse. It was never real, it was phony all along, and centralized manipulation of interest rates is THE ROOT CAUSE.

And as we move to a larger inequities between the wealthy and the poor, we must really start to worry about what happens when the consumer spending which drives this economy starts to seriously dry up.

Any sound economy is not driven by consumption and borrowing, it's driven by savings and production. If you're stranded on an island with ten other people, the people who are fishing are driving the economy, not the people who are eating it.

 

[manowar821]

*RED SCARE RED SCARE RED SCARE*

Seriously, you just gave the idiot conservative cowards a hard-on.

 

[Lemon law]

To BacheeX,

I suggest you do more reading about the history of our 1890's before you ret to be an apolgists, you have not said a word about the California electrical crisis which was made almost inevitable by deregulation, and we totally disagree about almost everything. And you really miss the point about a Haitian type of economy when a business runs out of buyers and kills itself off.

AS for J.P. Morgan and his ilk, they were quite a crew, they rigged the game and then claimed GOD Gave them their wealth. They were parasites and little else and caused major recessions with their little games.

 

[Zebo]

So guys who came up with the public roads idea are communists too? No, it's a wide spectrum between free market way over on one side and communist way over on the other side with everyone falling someone in between. All parties have some communistic leanings as well as free market ones. Both in pure form have proven miserable failures.

 

[Harvey]

Originally posted by: RY62

Topic Title: Democrats = Communists
Topic Summary: Is OP a wingnut?

Fixed it for ya.

 

[RY62]

Originally posted by: Harvey

Originally posted by: RY62

Topic Title: Democrats = Communists
Topic Summary: Is OP a wingnut?

Fixed it for ya.

Thanks for the fix Harvey. It's always a pleasure to have you contribute your immeasurable wisdom.

As other posters have pointed out, I think the correct fix would be Communists = Democrats with the key being Socialism. All Communists are for socialism, seeing it as a transition stage to communism. All socialists aren?t for communism; some see Communists as too radical.

I don't know how much influence the Communist party has on American politics but, at least for the time being, their interests seem to be best served by staying lockstep with the left of the Democrat party. I think most Americans are pretty comfortable with the label of socialist but it'll be a while before we see a viable candidate running under the banner of the Communist party. They'll be content to exert their influence and achieve their goals through the Democratic party. In my opinion there never has been a true Communist government and I doubt it's even possible. It seems to me that the seven deadly sins would prevent any form of Communist utopia.

Originally posted by: Zebo
All parties have some communistic leanings as well as free market ones. Both in pure form have proven miserable failures.

On both points I agree. Because of these points, it probably really is best that political environment continues to periodically swing back and forth, from left to right. Too far to the left, too far to the right, and even sitting still in the middle all seem destined to fail. We just need to be careful and not rock the boat too far in a knee jerk reaction to what is seen as a bad administration.

 

[BansheeX]

Originally posted by: Zebo
So guys who came up with the public roads idea are communists too? No, it's a wide spectrum between free market way over on one side and communist way over on the other side with everyone falling someone in between. All parties have some communistic leanings as well as free market ones. Both in pure form have proven miserable failures.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...s_in_the_United_States

I believe that there are a few legitimate arguments for some government control of roads, and I believe if our forefathers had a looking glass into the future, they would have granted this as a legitimate activity of government for national defense reasons.

But really, you're confounding the argument in an attempt to justify a "middle ground" containing dozens and dozens of poorly reasoned and failed social policies. The reality is that you want something very close to a free market, not half of all income under government control. And you certainly don't want government ignoring its own supreme law as they are today.

I suggest you do more reading about the history of our 1890's before you ret to be an apolgists, you have not said a word about the California electrical crisis which was made almost inevitable by deregulation, and we totally disagree about almost everything. And you really miss the point about a Haitian type of economy when a business runs out of buyers and kills itself off.

As I understand it, the greatest rate of real growth, charity, and relative income was the highest during the time of the Industrial Revolution. It's no coincidence that this occurred at a time when regulation was low, government was small, money was backed by gold, no central bank existed, the income tax didn't exist, the SS and Medicare tax didn't exist, the department of education didn't exist, need I go on? Minor evils and costs existed under this system, sure, but this was the system with the least cost and the greatest benefit. The ordinary man benefited immensely. Immigrants with nothing, as poor as anyone in China or India or Russia was at the time benefited immensely, putting aside the contention that this blip of progress was an anomaly attributable to not being developed rather than the system itself. People saved and transacted with one another until fractional reserve banking resulted in bank runs which scared them into accepting one of the most destructive and embattled concepts in American politics.

 

[miketheidiot]

Originally posted by: Colt45
American communist party is apparently not communist... More like social democrat... light light pink.

the american communist party is the equivilent of a moderately left party in europe.

 

[Genx87]

Originally posted by: wirelessenabled

Originally posted by: ProfJohn
The Democrats want a system similar to Sweden and other nordic countries.

A highly regulated free market economy with high taxes that provide TONS of social services to everyone.

That is no where near communism. Get a clue already.

Communism = state control of the economy and no Democrat is even suggesting that.

If your OP proves anything it is that the US Communist Party is not a real communist party. It is the communists who look like Democrats, not the other way around.

Similarly the Republican Party wants a non-regulated monopolistic economy with high borrowing by the Federal Government to provide TONS of subsidies only to large corporations and the wealthy.

That is no where near a free market economy. Get a clue already.

What a waste of a response. And if have been paying attention the last 8 years. The republicans are far from a free unregulated market party.

 

[Thump553]

Two, three decades ago (maybe even as late as 1985) I could understand an obsession with and fear of communism. But now, face it, communism is a dead and throughly discredited political philosophy. Outside of Israel's kibbutzim and the occassional odd religious sect it is not practiced at all. Sure there are some countries that claim to be communistic (Cuba, Red China and North Korea come to mind) but those are really totalitarian states (although I will concede classifying Cuba as more or less communistic).

The real scourge today is the same as what my father fought in WWII-totalitarianism. Whether it is cloaked in religious terms (Bin Laden) or states led by dictators or de facto dictators (far too many to list) this is the greatest threat to freedom, personal liberty and society in general, including economic growth). Frankly, (hopefully) without sounding too much like a Bush paranoid, I would say that the current Administration has moved the USA a long way down the road of totalitarism. Our government seems intent on forcing all its citizens into the same box as far as acceptable thought and practices occur, with the exception of economic freedom.

 

[StageLeft]

But now, face it, communism is a dead and throughly discredited political philosophy.

Among political students, but most people are not. Does it really take, for example, a PHd in political history to see that Venezuelans made a bad decision with Chavez? And yet, he promises something ridiculous and they vote him in for it. You can give people history books, but ultimately when you contrast a rich guy driving down the street in his luxury car and you're riding on a rickity bike, you will support whoever seems to be able to deliver a bridge between you and the rich guy, even if the bridge will collapse when you're half way across.

 

[Genx87]

The idea communism is dead is silly. There will always be believers and eventually the right economic conditions for it to be tried again.

I have little doubt National Socialism in the form of the Nazi's will be seen on Earth again at some point. It just takes the right mixture to create the fire.

 

[Thump553]

Skoorb: Chavez could very well be on his way out. He lost the last national referendum, and the recent border spat with his neighbors didn't do him any good (except perhaps a very short term nationalistic blip that is probably already gone). He's been coming up with increasingly bizarre scemes-for example his recent, one person crusade to open an investigation into the death of Simon Bolivar in 1830. I don't see how he is classified as a communist, either.

What this thread, and the OP, both sorely need is an understanding of the difference between socialism and communism. And saying the Democratic Party has aspects of socialism in it doesn't make it a communistic entity, any more than saying the GOP, with it's clear inclination towards a strong central government mandating social behavior is a reincarnation of the nazi party.

I stand by my assertion that totalitarism is, far and away, a much greater scourge to humanity.