I don't think tax refund programs are socialism. That's gotta be capitalist.

Looks like OG Groucho couldn't handle the truth and did a Houdini from the thread.

I wouldn't call myself a communist.

Also, people in this thread keep conflating economic systems and political systems. There are capitalist systems which are totalitarian. Many democratic capitalist countries seem to be lurching more and more towards totalitarianism. Some countries that are closer to communism on the spectrum of economics are also much more democratic than a lot of the most prominent and most capitalist countries in the world today.

How about the Covid bailouts?

Could you give an example? Do you mean Scandinavian countries perchance, because I wouldn't really call those communist. Certainly not what Victor and OG Marx mean when they talk about communism. I would say that a centrally planned economy and very limited or non-existent private enterprise are amongst the defining features of communism.

I did have them and Bolivia in mind and I also wouldn’t call them communist but they are closer to it than many others and successful. My point is, there is a spectrum between capitalism and communism, and democracy and totalitarianism that doesn’t have a fixed relationship. If you move up the scale towards communism you’re not bound to get less democracy. Obviously, if you embrace a totalitarian version of socialism you’re going to have a bad time but the same can be said of capitalist systems.

My counterpoint would be that while capitalist societies can be antidemocratic, communist societies are always inevitably antidemocratic. This is using the definition of communism that Victor uses - i.e. Soviet Union, Cuba etc. KOG seems to use some other definition which is something along the lines "all the good stuff and none of the bad stuff", which is only going to ever exist in his fantasies.

They're not always inevitably antidemocratic by definition. I don't think we've had enough examples to say that it will always be the case. Communism is just collective ownership. It doesn't necessitate totalitarianism, which is the problem, not collectivism.

It would appear that 100% of the time it has been tried so far, collectivism on the scale of countries has in fact necessitated totalitarianism. Not sure how many attempts you think is enough to arrive at this conclusion with a reasonable degree of confidence.

"All the good stuff without any of the bad stuff" is just not a thing that exists in the real world.

That national collectivism has happened under totalitarianism doesn't mean totalitarianism is a necessity for collectivism. I get that you think the two are inextricably linked though so we can just agree to disagree.

Collectivism is sold as a utopian ideal, and when the ideal fails to transpire, as it always has, the society becomes totalitarian to continue to force the ideal upon its members.

The defining feature of a robust democracy is that there are checks and balances which make turning it into a totalitarian society very difficult. When you introduce the defining features of collectivism, those checks and balances all but disappear.

I'll put it another way - even if you have collective ownership, some small group of people still has to control and administer the stuff that is "collectively" owned. Those people become the de facto rulers, and we know what they say about power and absolute power. It has always been and will always be thus. But good news, there is a very simple solution to this problem - we just let each person or group own, control and administer their own things.

Ppp loans or expansion of unemployment benefits?

I have been a bit delirious today due to a fever, so I hope I make sense here.

Communism is both an economic and political system. Saying that you can have Communism without authoritarianism is akin to saying that you can have Fascism without authoritarianism. This is because:

(1) Communism requires that there be a "proletariat revolution", which means that it requires violence against people that are within a nation. That means that (at best), the proletariat band together and seize control of the means of production. Historically, what has actually happened is more akin to what Lenin pushed, which was that there be a group of elite "professional revolutionaries" that lead their group into seizing the means of production and governing the people that cannot govern themselves.

You can argue that every new form of government requires revolution. That is not necessarily true, but let's go with it: The difference is that you can have a revolution against your oppressors, and eventually that revolution can end. We fought a revolution against the English for the right to have our own American government. When that ended, the revolution ended. Communist revolution is a continuous revolution against a people within that community. That means...

(2) Communism requires continued violence. Communism's revolution is not against some outside power. Communism's revolution is not even against a specific type of person. The enemy of Communism is anybody that can challenge Communism, so in that case, the bourgeoisie can be anybody: business owners, doctors, lawyers, accountants, computer programmers, people that know how to read, nerds that wear glasses, etc. Doing continuous violence against people for arbitrary reasons is, by definition, authoritarian.

(3) Trying to make Communism work requires authoritarianism. The 20th century was one big experiment in attempting to implement Communist principles. Every time it was attempted, tons of people died from a combination of extreme famine and government persecution. Communism is such a stupid system, even on paper, that it will never work as Marx wrote. The people that have to actually suffer under the yoke of people pushing Communism are not going to continue on with it voluntarily; they will be forced to do so by the elites in their Communist government.

Example: "I think Communism requires that we go back to a self-sufficient agrarian economy. Therefore, anybody that may potentially challenge our agrarian utopia must die. Empty all of the cities and execute anybody that has an education! They are the enemies of the state!" This exact thing happened several times in the 20th century, and it will happen any time somebody attempts to implement "pure" Communism.


The thing that is most offensive to me are people like Victor that have the nerve to say that China was better after Communism than before. Mao's idiotic experiment led to one of the biggest death tolls ever seen in human history. The same can be said for the Soviet Union. He cherry picks numbers and says "things were objectively better after Communism than before Communism", knowing full well that there were tens of millions of people executed in the name of Communism.

Then there are people like Karl_OG_Marx, whom I seriously hope is still a kid, coming in with his bizarre ideas. He doesn't want Communism, as much as he wants to be the leader of the world and implement his own utopian ideas.

Then there is the more mainstream idea that (random country with some socialist policies) has "communist policies." These are the most common arguments made for Communism these days. France has free medical for everybody, Sweden has free college, or America has social security, therefore "cOMmuNism iS nOT aLl Bad!" It is a fundamental misunderstanding of what Communism entails. When we are talking about Communism, we are not talking about a capitalist society that has a couple of policies where taxes are used to help the poor. It is a desperate attempt at trying to justify something with a false equivalence.

Communism requires violence against its own people for acting against the basic laws of economics. It is inherently authoritarian or totalitarian. Yes, there are capitalist societies that have also been authoritarian or totalitarian, but that does nothing to justify the inherent violence that comes from a Communist system.

One of the main things is that since actual countries that have had communist revolutions haven't been successful,would be armchair communists would be well suited to explain how to avoid previous failures by adding in error correction, like more free societies have and how to avoid totalitarianism in a communist framework. But they just straight up defend Stalin which is the opposite of what they should be doing.

QFT. Well written.

I don't want attention from basic level 1 liberals like you or anyone else. I've discussed issues of Communism, socialism, etc., in a far more sober and detailed manner than you and your kind, for which I get little-to-no sober, detailed response. But somehow you think it's the one-liner dorks who offer nothing of substance who are the quality posters.

Edit: I see you gave it an effort earlier today. There you go! It's all very basic 100-level apologia, but thanks for a legitimate attempt to meet me at my level.

Yeah wow, I had no comeback for all the personal trolls and non-sequiturs all of you offering. Either that or I was playing poker and didn't have the time for your dumb ass.

U mad bro?

I have already stated that I am in favor of the economic policies of the Scandinavian states. I've already mentioned how well they do on many quality-of-life metrics. I would very happily settle for a somewhat more muscular version of that to take place in the USA or anywhere else.

I'm more accurately described as a Marxist socialist than a Communist. I know I use these terms somewhat interchangeably (although more accurately than the people that say that NK practices Communism, of course). I am not a supporter of the former Soviet Union, (although I do not hold them to be more evil than the US hegemon). I'm not a supporter of ANY nation, for that matter; nationalism and patriotism are great curses on this planet.

I've already said something to this effect in this forum, but you still do not understand "what I mean when I talk about communism".

I get mad at stupidity, which you show in great supply. Got 'em though, with the sickest meme from 2003.

I can see you like calling everyone who disagrees with you (so, basically, everyone) stupid, which is a cool "hook", don't get me wrong. Why don't you prove it like your buddy PointlessWords and challenge me to a test for a bet?

almost everything in here is objectively false

you are entitled to your opinions. ie you can be offended. but the facts show that life expectancy, education, quality of life improved immensely after the Communists took over Russia, China, and Cuba.

Ignored my posts teaching you to forum and to logic, so might as well have.

this liberals regurgitating Turning Point USA videos will never not be funny

The Scandinavian countries are great evidence of how capitalism works and socialism does not.

Well, for one thing, PointlessWords is not my buddy, I disagree with him most of the time, although I do appreciate that he recognizes the humanity of the Palestinian people.

For another, I'm not about to make the 1 billionth IQ test for rollz challenge that will obviously never happen. I don't feel a need to prove my intelligence to the likes of you; I do that already by making more accurate, incisive and detailed posts than you and your basic friends typically muster.