Thread: Communism Vs Democracy

Ok, all of you in america are insulting communism and saying it makes people work like robots and you have no say in anything...

well lets look at democracy: how is it different? yes, maybe you can own your own property? so what? you still wake up and go to work just like in communism, you work like a dog. so whats the difference between 2?

look at russia now, theres no communism, people are uncontrollable, they do whatever they want

i know a lot are gonna say freedom of speech and blah blah but so what? look at the war in iraq..noone had to say anything in it, it just happened... the UN proved that there was no threat yet bush still went to attack it..
its just a battle between american and osama, if america minded its own business, 9/11 would never happen, no innocent people would die in iraq, how is the war in iraq different from 9/11? its all the same, innocent people die and thats it, theres no difference

if you think the war should happen..then explain to me why?

Blah, blah, blah!

You start out by wanting to talk about communism and democracy but then you just can't help yourself, you just have to turn this into "Bush in Iraq", again.

Lynx, do you know why is that?
USSR never was a communist or socialist society. It was 'building communism'. Setting Soviet agitprop aside, in fact USSR had state capitalism system.

Well in fact it was communist, because of "means of production" was in the hands of state. I.e. you can work at factory, but you can`t own a factory (driller, shop, oil tank etc).
About "freedom of speech"...AFAIK nazi Germany was a capitalist country, but they didn`t have such freedom, too...I mean this things doesnt correlate...
Now common term is "social country"-when state takes care about their sitizens (free medicine, free education and such stuff)-many countries in Western Europe are such countries, and imho USSR was such country, too...

Maybe we should rather discuss communism-socialism (state-national enterprise) vs. capitalism (private enterprise) or democracy (republic) vs. totalitarianism-dictatorship or monarchy?

yeah, it will be more correct. Peoples are often mixing such conceptions.

Communism-socialism cannot be state-national enterprise. Communism-socialism supposes disappearance of state. It's ABC. Read primary sourse - Marx&Engels. Although maybe you mean another kind of communism-socialism. There were some like Thomas More etc.

"communism makes people work like robots "..

Старый-престарый анекдот:

встречаются американец (А) и русский (Р).
А: У вас в СССР нет никакой свободы!
Р: Почему ты так решил?
А: Ну, вот, например, я могу расхаживать перед Белым домом, повесив себе на грудь плакат "Никсон -- дурак". И ничего мне за это не будет. А вот ты можешь выйти на Красную площадь с плакатом "Брежнев -- дурак"?
Р: Да ты что! Меня сразу же загребут!..
А: Ну, вот видишь! Нет у вас свободы!
Р: Послушай, а ты можешь придти на работу выпимши?
А: Ни в коем случае! Меня оштрафуют!
Р: А можешь напиться и вообще не придти на работу?
А: За такое меня уволить могут, и такое рекомендательное письмо разошлют, что я больше нигде не устроюсь...
Р: А можешь весь месяц на работу не ходить, пьянствовать, а в конце месяца придти -- и получить зарплату и премию в полном размере?
А: Да ты что, это фантастика какая-то... Такого не бывает...
Р: Ну, вот и ходи со своим плакатом!

In my experience Americans work harder than all other industrialized countries with the least amount of vacation time. Like robots!

I heard such thing about Koreans and Japanese...

Originally Posted by ST

I heard such thing about Koreans and Japanese...

According to the ILO in Geneva, the average American worker works nearly 2,000 hours, or about 49.5 weeks a year. That's 36 hours more than we did 10 years ago, 3.5 weeks more than Japanese workers, 6.5 weeks more than Brits and over three months -- yes, months -- a year more than the Germans.

Americans are quick to boast that they have the worlds best working conditions in the world but these boasts are made by people who know nothing. I have seen it time and time again. Working conditions in the US suck, especially for me since, being Australian, I know better.

Originally Posted by Lynx

look at russia now, theres no communism, people are uncontrollable, they do whatever they want

you say this as if it was something bad. imho it's the way it must be: people doing what they want as long as they don't interfere with each other.

The USSR was basically a planned state capitalism, Communism is basically a thoretical model that was never really implemented on a country wide level. A form of communism exists on Israeli kibuz's, so basically you can say it can work in an agrarian society if people really decide to make it work.

Communism is basically a system of organizing economy while democracy is a system of government, they are in different categories so you can't really compare them. Probably what you were meaning to ask was whether democracy is any better than a dictatorship. Imho democracy is far better, it has its shortcomings but a dictatorship is basically a form of societal insanity and in practically any dictatorship there's groups of people that have all sorts of nastry things happen to them on account of them being somehow different from the enforced norm. Think about it, you say something someone doesn't like and that someone just happens to be in a position of authority over you, and you wind up doing 10 years in jail or even facing a firing squad just because of something you said. doesn't it suck?

dictatorship is suxx, but it is much more simple and reliable system, too. I mean, such things like 9.11 and London terror atacks will be impossible.
And, IMHO, democracy, as more complex system, requires some brains from peoples, not just pushing "yes/no" buttons

Originally Posted by ST

dictatorship is suxx, but it is much more simple and reliable system, too. I mean, such things like 9.11 and London terror atacks will be impossible.
And, IMHO, democracy, as more complex system, requires some brains from peoples, not just pushing "yes/no" buttons

a dictatorship is no guarantee against terror attacks and it's not really that simple either. In fact in gvnt system is based on a social contract of one kind or another between the rulers and those they rule. So for a dictatorship to be successful over a long period of time, it either has to be run by a committe of gray cardinals or the dictator has to be a very charismatic person adept at manipulating the people, otherwise it will inevitably descend into coups. Dictatorships are inherently unstable, oftentimes, especially when you have a really powerful dictator, once this dictator is removed (for example he or she dies) the whole thing just falls apart. Or as was the case with the USSR, a new dictator comes who is intent on making the system change. In this scenario things just spin out of control and again the whole system just crumbles down.
A democracy, on the other hand, is a social contract not between the people and their dictator, but rather between the people themselves. Basically the main idea is for there to be rules that everyone is supposed to abide by more or less, or at least act in ways such that it looks as if they're abiding by the accepted rules. Can there be strong charismatic leaders in a democracy? Yes there can. Can such leaders sometimes hijack democracies and turn them into dictatorships? Again we have to say yes to this one if we remember the Weimar republic and how it all ended. But still a democracy is far less dependent on the leaders because while leaders come and go the system remains in place. While in deictatorships every leader change oftentimes ends in rather drastic political and economic changes, sometimes even in bloodshed. Think about the USSR, Stalin died and a bunch of people immediately got executed while heaps of others who'd been doing time in jail were pronounced innocent.
Speaking of 9/11 and the like, occasionally dictators may make things worse, think of the invasion of the USSR in 1941, the way Stalin was convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Germans would not attack despite all the intellegence that he was getting and what disaster his stubborness ended in and how many lives it cost.

well, when why democracy became common in the world only last 100 years? (while it was invented in ancient Greece few thousand years ago)... I guess it`s not by pure accident...

And in "StarWars", democraty Union becomes Empire, too

Originally Posted by ST

well, when why democracy became common in the world only last 100 years? (while it was invented in ancient Greece few thousand years ago)... I guess it`s not by pure accident...

And in "StarWars", democraty Union becomes Empire, too

actually it's been around far longer than the last 100 years, as you pointed out yourself it was first invented and practiced in Ancient Greece, think of the city states in Ancient Greece. Even the roman empire, inspite of its name was to a large extent democratic. Democracy in the mocdern sense of the word is a bit of a misnomer, because it doesn't really mean the rule of people, rather it's a system with established and well defined social rules. Since all societies are hierarchical the rules differ for different memebers of society depending on where in the hierarchy they're at. A lot of the medieval monarchies in Europe were in fact democratic in a lot of ways because the power of the kings was limited in different ways so that if a king turned out to be an idiot he was either turned into a figure head or just disposed of. In some countries like Rech Pospolita kings were elected by parlament.
To qualify as a dictatorship you have to have a situation where everything depends on the whim of the dictator. Russia's been a dictatorship most of the time. Think abt the time when Peter the 1st decided to europenize Russia; he just went ahead, hacking off beards , putting on wigs on people and generally wreaking havoc thru the society, it never even crossed his mind to ask the people whether they wanted to be europenized like this or not. And in any case the whole thing was purely superficial and never went beyond the wigs and clean shaven faces, because like many other Russian leaders before and after him he failed to grasp the main difference between Russia and Europe: in Europe there are rules that even the leaders are supposed to follow, while in Russia the csar does what he wants and constantly changes all the rules so they'd fit his actions.
Another very important characteristic of a democratic society is a well developed civil society, in other words people get together in groups and get things done and as long as they're acting within the established social rules they don't have to fear that the gvnt might just ban them as is the case in Russia. For example recently Putin banned National Bolsheviks. He just went ahead and banned them, signed a presidential decree or something like that. It would unthinkable in a truly democratic society, because there you'd have to prove that National Bolsheviks have really been breaking the rules of the game and doing something outragious, like resorting to violence etc. Here, on the other hand, we have a case where a party's political views happen to be unorthodox and outside the mainstream and the party just gets banned by the president. Nonesense. In all norma democracies parties are part of the civil society and you can't ban them.

Originally Posted by igorfa100

Another very important characteristic of a democratic society is a well developed civil society, in other words people get together in groups and get things done and as long as they're acting within the established social rules they don't have to fear that the gvnt might just ban them as is the case in Russia. For example recently Putin banned National Bolsheviks. He just went ahead and banned them, signed a presidential decree or something like that. It would unthinkable in a truly democratic society, because there you'd have to prove that National Bolsheviks have really been breaking the rules of the game and doing something outragious, like resorting to violence etc. Here, on the other hand, we have a case where a party's political views happen to be unorthodox and outside the mainstream and the party just gets banned by the president. Nonesense.

Yeah, you're right, what you're written is total nonsense.
"National-Bolshevik Party" *was* banned -- not by "Putin", by but Moscow Regional Court ("Московский Областной Суд"). However, Supreme Court ("Верховный Суд") already cancelled this decision (on 16.08.2005); so NBPR is now a legally-operating political organization again.
Well, ignorance is strength, isn't it?

Originally Posted by Scorpio

Originally Posted by igorfa100

Another very important characteristic of a democratic society is a well developed civil society, in other words people get together in groups and get things done and as long as they're acting within the established social rules they don't have to fear that the gvnt might just ban them as is the case in Russia. For example recently Putin banned National Bolsheviks. He just went ahead and banned them, signed a presidential decree or something like that. It would unthinkable in a truly democratic society, because there you'd have to prove that National Bolsheviks have really been breaking the rules of the game and doing something outragious, like resorting to violence etc. Here, on the other hand, we have a case where a party's political views happen to be unorthodox and outside the mainstream and the party just gets banned by the president. Nonesense.

Yeah, you're right, what you're written is total nonsense.
"National-Bolshevik Party" *was* banned -- not by "Putin", by but Moscow Regional Court ("Московский Областной Суд"). However, Supreme Court ("Верховный Суд") already cancelled this decision (on 16.08.2005); so NBPR is now a legally-operating political organization again.
Well, ignorance is strength, isn't it?

well if it was banned or let us say outlawed by a court, in which case far as my understanding goes this court ruling only concerns the Moscow branch, then that is certainly a very positive sign, so for those of you who happen to read my previous messege just put it all in the subjunctive mood, that is
if Put had just gone ahead and banned National Bolsheviks then that would have been ....

Ignorance is not stragth is bliss - rember when Cipher in the first Matrix was selling out his Zion friends to the agent, there's this scene where he's in a restaurant with Agent Smith and he's telling Smith how once everythin'gs over he was to be reconnected to the Matrix and forget everything, then he goes on to talk about the piece of meat that he's about to put in hsi mouth, how it's not real but how the matrix will creat the illusion of its reality and taste, he puts it in his mouth, chews on it and then says, "Ignorance is bliss"

Originally Posted by igorfa100

well if it was banned or let us say outlawed by a court, in which case far as my understanding goes this court ruling only concerns the Moscow branch, then that is certainly a very positive sign, so for those of you who happen to read my previous messege just put it all in the subjunctive mood, that is if Put had just gone ahead and banned National Bolsheviks then that would have been ....

Ah, all of the above just was in "subjunctive mood"! Very well.

Originally Posted by igorfa100

Ignorance is not stragth is bliss - rember when Cipher in the first Matrix was selling out his Zion friends to the agent, there's this scene where he's in a restaurant with Agent Smith and he's telling Smith how once everythin'gs over he was to be reconnected to the Matrix and forget everything, then he goes on to talk about the piece of meat that he's about to put in hsi mouth, how it's not real but how the matrix will creat the illusion of its reality and taste, he puts it in his mouth, chews on it and then says, "Ignorance is bliss"

What I was quoting was not "Matrix", but Orwell's "1984".
"War Is Peace. Freedom Is Slavery. Ignorance Is Strength."