As the world celebrates the 20th Anniversary of the Fall of Communism, it’s only fair that we should honor those who played a part in its downfall.
Tex Ritter may be best known for singing classic cowboys tunes such as “High Noon”, …..

Do you really think Apple rejecting an iPhone ap is in any way equivalent to communists jailing or killing people for criticizing the government?

http://www.pcworld.com/article/181765/apple_rejects_app_because_of_politician_caricatures.html?tk=rss_news

Yes I understand that. It doesn’t change the fact that some Vietnamese and Koreans were all for communism.

Of course there were, they fall into two categories:

1. people who see it as a great way to acquire power in a totalitarian government
2. idiots who think that they will reach their maximum prosperity by living in a communist system where we’ll all share our incredible wealth

We see the same thing playing out all over the world even today.

As someone else said, capitalism is the default condition of people – it’s communism that must be forced upon them.

So not silly at all then. I’m pretty sure that the Nazis who started WWII were anti-communist.

And remember that when discussing “Communism” in this context, we mean the real world political system that developed in the 20th century, not some fantasy Utopian idea.

Are you even trying? ”

Yes, I’m trying to show that contributing the deaths caused by the Great Leap Forward to Communism is as silly as blaming WW2 on anti-communist Nazi’s.

anyway, so they said, if it weren’t for that long series of unfortunate dictatorial coincidences, communism would certainly have shown itself to be everything they (still) tell us it would be. then too, we must be careful to balance communism’s alleged 100,000,000 people killed with the fact the survivors got free healthcare: “all the placebos you can eat!” so basically, it’s no worse than capitalism.

Do you understand that both of those were proxy wars where we were fighting the communists of Russia and China through a third country?

Yes I understand that. It doesn’t change the fact that some Vietnamese and Koreans were all for communism. To be clear, not all Russians and Chinese were pro-communism, nor does any evils perpetrated by Country X represent the views of all of its citizens. It was good for you to raise this point.

The trouble with critiques of capitalism like that book is that it assumes that capitalism is a system which is imposed on people just like communism, monarchism, fascism or whatever. Capitalism, or more precisely the free market is not a system in the same way these other ‘isms are. It is simply people doing what people do, voluntarily engaging in exchange. No one had to come up with the market economy; it is not an ideology, it just happens. It is part of human nature.

Are you even trying? Attributing these deaths to capitalism is so weak. So WWI and WWII were the results of capitalism? Really? It had nothing to do with facism in Italy and Gernamy? Nothing to do with a theocratic state in Japan?

And none of the famines were the results of communist governments huh? None of them? And I’m sure colonialism is the result of capitalism and only capitalism. The Soviets and PRC weren’t essentially colonizing N. Korea and N. Vietnam in the same way the French colonized Indochina? Obviously colonial wars were only fought by capitalists and that whole Soviet-Afghanastan thing never happened.

Well, at least you aren’t biased.

the Vietnamese, the Koreans

Do you understand that both of those were proxy wars where we were fighting the communists of Russia and China through a third country?

In Cambodia, Pol Pot was able to destroy 2 million of 9 million people with his vision of Communist Utopia – this was something to fight against.

Look at North and South Korea today to see the difference in a single country between Communism and Capitalism.

I could go on, but I think I’d rather just do the bashing my head into my desk thing I mentioned earlier.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_black_book_of_capitalism

#3 | Dave Krueger | November 9th, 2009 at 2:25 pm

…….

Uh-oh…

Sometimes I feel like just banging my face against the desk.

I’m wondering how people make these estimates? We have a good idea what the Nazi’s did because they kept such detailed records of their atrocities. But the Russians and Chinese haven’t been known for honest record keeping. How do we estimate with such faulty information floating around?

If we’re talking 20th century, then don’t forget the Vietnamese, the Koreans, the various European countries, and the USA. Oh wait, Team USA is always right, so I must be anti-American an unpatriotic.

Drawing a line from Tsarist Russia forwards without the revolution doesn’t lead to a world without death or suffering. Communism, and Stalin in particular, undoubtedly made things worse by taking serfdom one step further and turning people into an industrial input to be used until they broke down but, as someone has pointed out above, the totalitarian police state that came before the totalitarian police state was different in the inefficiency with which it corralled and broke people rather than in any substantial difference in ethics.

On the other hand the fear of communism was a key tool that Hitler used to get into power so in some alternate universe where the Russian revolution was averted the twentieth century might have been substantially less bloody in general (though one can always draw these lines of thought out ad infinitum and find an alternate universe where nuclear weapons were developed for longer before being used and a lot more people died).

Overall, though, communism is a silly idea but it’s not the sole factor in those 110 million deaths.

I guess it doesn’t really matter. Even if his estimates are off by half, 50 million is still the equivilant 10,000 or 12,000 Iraqi Wars.

the ideology itself is contrary to personal liberty. so i don’t like it.