Communism...

[timmys]

Thats true. Theres exceptions though...Cuba isnt haveing alot of problems being a communist country.

 

There are alot of poverty in communist countrys and thats because the leaders of such countrys are corrupt. THey take more than there share of money. So technically it isnt real communism

cuba has a large problem with communism. it has trade sanctions, poverty, rations, no education, people fleeing in boats and washing ashore in the US, and people who wind up in jails or dead if they oppose it. their prime currency is US dollars and not their own peso

[supercanuk]

cuba has a large problem with communism. it has trade sanctions, poverty, rations, no education, people fleeing in boats and washing ashore in the US, and people who wind up in jails or dead if they oppose it. their prime currency is US dollars and not their own peso

Cuba is probably one of the most successful communist countrys however, they have or at least had the best medical and literacy rates beating out democracy's in that area. I know people who have gone to Cuba for univrsity, and they have very very good schools there, there literacy is actually quite high so your not entirely correct. And as im sure you're aware these sanctions ahve been on Cuba since JFK ext, probably earlier. Infact you only need to look at there automobiles to see when the sactions really began. Anyway im not going to go on about this but yah Cuba was probably one of the better communist country's,one that was slightly more successful then others.. still unsuccessful however.

[Boond]

but compare cuba with her neighbours...they are all doing poorly in tyhat region of the world....and cuba was worse off before becoming communist...it was essentially a nation full of cheap labour for american investors, and the communist revolution locked out the yanks

 

did you know fidel castro almost made an american major league baseball team?>

[The Foot]

Great in theory, just that human nature doesn’t allow it to work, it turns into a dictatorship rather than the government slowly becoming irrelevant.

[supercanuk]

HAha Fidel a major league baseball athelete? haha thats amazing! hahah, do you know how many times they tried to kill that guy? Its crazy!

[Boond]

i know!!!

 

if you watch king of the hill when fidel visits the US and Cotton tries to kill him...and he visists a yankees baseball game...he was there because was a very good baseball player

[eric2]

I just wanted to point out something. Admitedly, I haven't read through the entire thread so I apologize in advance if this was at all repeated.

 

But Karl Marx did not favour big government at all, in fact he advocated lessening government's power in favour of public ownership.

 

And it's really hard to make a distinction between socialism and communism since most of the time they're used interchangeably. Perhaps the only difference is the negative connotations which the term 'communism' acquired throughout history.

 

And communism was intended as an evolution of capitalism. When workers realized the injustices of their situation, blah, blah, blah... you know the story. If not, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism

 

I think the problem is how to convert an entire population's way of thinking and percieving, from capitalist ideology to communist ideology. Given all the capitalist ideals and propaganda we're fed starting in grade 1 with the formal education system...etc,etc. It's difficult to avoid a capitalist slant on our world view when we're being raised by it's institutions and whatnot.

 

It could work. It's a matter of ideology.

[miscellaneous]

I'm currently reading "The Essential Works of Marxism." On the Commusnist Manifesto, at this point.

[no yu begin wher i end]

I guess it's just a matter of fat cat businessmen who don't want to relenquish their grip on the government and society.

[ok_go_570]

the reason communism dosent work as a whole is becasue its human nature to strave to do better (in most cases).

 

Communism is all about equality and people dont want to be equal. We are competitive and those leaders of the communist government are only human. The point is that the population wont want to share everything and the leaders would want to take more than there share

[eric2]

I don't know... I'm always skeptical on arguments dealing with human nature. It seems to me as an easy way to justify the use of one form of government over another. It doesn't take into account that this "human nature" may be the product of a people being raised under the influence of a certain system of ideals.

[ok_go_570]

I am probably biast towards the capitalist system becasue of the way i was raised but i still think that humans are generaly greedy... if they wernt greedy then why colonise the new world? or why pick up that 20 bucks you found lying on the sidewalk

 

i think we should be using moderate scocialism because it would work to a degree. but all out communism is just a disaster waiting to happen

[Sparq]

You can prove that a political or social system doesn't work, but you can't prove that it does. Simply because sooner or later, every system of government and society in history has collapsed, disbanded, been absorbed, mutated, assimilated, etc. You can either view that as the failure of a specific system, or as the evolution of the global system - elimination of the weak in favor of the strong...elimination of the strong due to inept leadership...etc. I don't think there is a perfect system. Nothing seems to 'work' so far. They work for a while, sure, but eventually they all fail. It's a matter of time. The best you can hope for is a system that takes a very long time to degrade instead of collapsing suddenly, and perhaps violently.

 

It has come to my attention that when I try to write or type ideas, I often make sense only to myself...so fogive me if my posts sound like the lunatic ravings of a madman or an imbecile.

[Moonlight_Graham]

I am probably biast towards the capitalist system becasue of the way i was raised but i still think that humans are generaly greedy... if they wernt greedy then why colonise the new world? or why pick up that 20 bucks you found lying on the sidewalk

 

i think we should be using moderate scocialism because it would work to a degree. but all out communism is just a disaster waiting to happen

i agree.

[eric2]

I am probably biast towards the capitalist system becasue of the way i was raised but i still think that humans are generaly greedy... if they wernt greedy then why colonise the new world? or why pick up that 20 bucks you found lying on the sidewalk

You're using examples from a capitalist perspective.

 

But I understand what you're saying... that these ideals had to come from somewhere right?

 

I'm still not convinced that there is a human nature though...to me that oversimplifies complex circumstances. It's like saying someone who commits crimes does so because she's evil.

 

There are still numerous examples of societies, particularly indigenous cultures, that are not based on greed. How do you explain those, if greed is human nature?

[HoboFactory]

There was actually alot of advantages to life in Communist Russia people don't hear about (for obvious reasons I suppose). They point to the fact that people in general were payed alot less than in America, this is true, but what they fail to note is that the people also needed alot less money. For example, the rent on our house (we had a family of 4 and it was easily large enough of a house) was roughly 19 rubles per month (back then when the ruble was actually worth more than the dollar, so it would've been like 24USD per month). For electrity (since the heat had to run constantly run in the winter, it was Siberia we were living in) we payed around 0.12 rubles per month, in the summer around 0.02 rubles per month. Instead being thousands of dollars in debt for higher education like here in the states and elsewhere, they actually payed you to pursue higher education. In most states the minimum retirement age is around 55 (although most people could never afford to retire that early because they've not got enough money saved up), in the USSR, after giving the state only between 7 to 10 years in work, you could retire at age 45 if you so chose.

[ToadMan]

That always leads me to ask the question. Are to problems we see with communism the result of propaganda that was produced during the cold war. Which leads us to theorize: is communism flawed, or is it the fact they also had nukes. We can all observe the power of the US propaganda machine, and the threat is a proportionally small group, with significantly less fire power. How effective would the demonization of communism be under the threat of nuclear holocaust.

 

I think that drawing any real world examples in this debate may be an exercise in futility. We can all present plenty of democratic, capitalist nations, that have human rights issues, high unemployment rates, and economic problems. That would suggest, that it is not always the system, but the administration of that system, that causes these issues. What we need to analyze is the ideas and concepts fundamentally suggested by the system, and there effectiveness based on our assumptions of human nature.

 

To take this full circle, I agree that allot of what we infer about 'human nature' is actually learnt behavior. To risk my credibility, we could parallel to the oppression of women. For many years it was believed that women where to weak or unintelligent to vote, or be anything. As such, many women believed this, enough that it took quite a long time before there was a revolution, and the attitude was changed (for the most part lets not debate the validity of the statement). The point is, that pre the actions of a number of women to change the system, it was most likely assumed to be 'human nature'

 

Peace

[HoboFactory]

Fidel once addressed the international (mainly Western ) media image of communism when asked what he thought about the handfuls of people frequently attempting escapes from Cuba into the USA, all he said was look at how many millions escape from capitalist Mexico. I think it goes to show that both systems can work in theory, but people make it so neither system is all that functional.

[compman_55]

No system in reality is perfect, there are positives and negatives to all. Its finding the balance.

[HoboFactory]

One system that seems to solve all modern society's problems is the system by which the Native Amnericans lived. Since they lived in small tribal units, they never had massive world wars simply because no nation was sufficiently large for that kind of carnage. Disease didn't pose as severe a problem (before the Europeans arrived), again because the tribal groups were pretty small and far apart, that doesn't lend itself well to carrying disease. This kind of set-up also discouraged crime because in a tribe, there were very few people (esepcially when compared with a modern city) so these cases would've been far easier to get to the bottom of. Sort of strange come to think of it.

[Moonlight_Graham]

One system that seems to solve all modern society's problems is the system by which the Native Amnericans lived. Since they lived in small tribal units, they never had massive world wars simply because no nation was sufficiently large for that kind of carnage. Disease didn't pose as severe a problem (before the Europeans arrived), again because the tribal groups were pretty small and far apart, that doesn't lend itself well to carrying disease. This kind of set-up also discouraged crime because in a tribe, there were very few people (esepcially when compared with a modern city) so these cases would've been far easier to get to the bottom of. Sort of strange come to think of it.

true, and its also kinda communist. ie: nobody owns the land, people share everything.

 

But yeah, tribes are very small, and everyone knows each other. It just doesn't work that way in a huge society where nobody gives a rip about anyone else they see on the street.

 

too bad.

 

maybe their should be more empahsis put on communities, and get people to socialize with each other. Seriously, when was the last time you talked to at least 2 of your neighbours (from different houses).

[HoboFactory]

True....I don't even know my neighbors' names, I never speak to them unless to give them the mail that the postman inadvertently put in the wrong mailbox.

[juanpe]

true, and its also kinda communist. ie: nobody owns the land, people share everything.

that is exactly the main nature of communism...

[HoboFactory]

There's quite a bit more to it than that, but it's a start.

[ToadMan]

We've gone full circle...

 

Peace