What's so terrible about Communism ?
I think capitalism as a primary mode of societal organization has served humanity well historically. The positive reinforcement associated with personal enrichment has supported a great deal of benefit to humanity.
But survival does not accrete to the strongest, survival is a virtue of being adaptable to changing circumstances.
We live in a world in which their is no regulatory jurisdiction related to the toxic outputs of industrial society. Carbon dioxide, microplastics, PFAS, etc .... are all polluting the globally shared environment and capitalism is anti-regulatory. We are destined to suffocate in our own toxic outputs if we can't regulate the shared environment. It seems communism (at least pertaining to the environment) is the only form of government which can provide the necessary regulation.
anyway it is not a contradiction to find totalitarians with different priorities disagreeing about... priorities or goals.
What makes communists communists is their desire for totalitarian power, the state having 100% of the power and no other entity ever having any, and they controlling the state.
They can vary even a lot about what to do with this power once achieved, but it's mostly irrelevant (even if some plans are way worse than others, i mean no one can deny that north korea is worse than the USSR even under Stalin) given that no matter what they intend or declare they want to do with that power, they are a direct threat to our lives the same.
anyway it is not a contradiction to find totalitarians with different priorities disagreeing about... priorities or goals.
What makes communists communists is their desire for totalitarian power, the state having 100% of the power and no other entity ever having any, and they controlling the state.
They can vary even a lot about what to do with this power once achieved, but it's mostly irrelevant (even if some plans are way worse than others, i mean no one can deny that north korea is worse than t
I don’t agree with this definition of communism.
We're 5 pages into this thread and I still haven't seen anyone from the capitalist religion offer up a solution to the accumulation of deadly environmental toxins in the environment.
Yawn .... keep deflecting you selfish people.
The solution to this global problem would itself have to be global, so Communism doesn't come into it unless you're advocating a Communist world government, which is not within the realm of practical politics. Communist governments in any case do not have a good record on the environment, to put it mildly. Pollution in Siberia swiftly became catastrophic under Soviet rule, and it hasn't got better under Putin's hybrid quasi-Communist regime. The 'closed city' of Norilsk, an Arctic ore-mining and smelting centre, pop.175,000, produces as much sulphur dioxide annually as the entire United States. Red China is investing in renewables, but is meanwhile still burning coal like there's no tomorrow.
Britain, on the other hand, which has admittedly offshored most of its industry to China like the US, has halved its CO2 emissions in the last thirty years, mainly by coming off coal. No Communism required. Since China, the top-dog polluter, is Communist, clearly Communism isn't the cure-all you imagine.
You are probably thinking of a specifically American problem -- Donald Trump -- and then advancing a completely fanciful solution. The US is not about to go Communist, and nor is the whole of the rest of the world.
Putin's hybrid quasi-Communist regime
cmon man
Then, under Communist rule, you would be arrested as a bourgeois deviationist and you would get a bullet in the back of the head.
Well I think that you can have all communist states having those conditions without it being a good definition of communism. Absolute monarchy would also fit that definition and it’s clearly not communism.
Well I think that you can have all communist states having those conditions without it being a good definition of communism. Absolute monarchy would also fit that definition and it’s clearly not communism.
North Korea is an absolute hereditary monarchy and is Communist. The USSR under Lenin and Stalin was an absolute monarchy, just not hereditary. Romania was a monarchy under Ceaucescu, Yugoslavia was a monarchy under Tito, Cuba was a monarchy under Castro.
North Korea is an absolute hereditary monarchy and is Communist. The USSR under Lenin and Stalin was an absolute monarchy, just not hereditary. Romania was a monarchy under Ceaucescu, Yugoslavia was a monarchy under Tito, Cuba was a monarchy under Castro.
And China is under Xi, wasn't previously for some decades, was under Mao.
Well I think that you can have all communist states having those conditions without it being a good definition of communism. Absolute monarchy would also fit that definition and it’s clearly not communism.
An absolute monarchy with no property rights would be communist yes.
An absolute monarchy where private citizens can have a lot of money (and so power) isn't totalitarian, power (the capacity of effecting change in society) doesn't rest solely on the monarch in that case. Totalitarianism FULLY REQUIRES the complete direct control of all assets (=communism). There is no totalitarianism possible if property is in the hands of private citizens.
Even when the monarch can threaten, arrest, kill, his actual power is but a fraction of what it would be if ALL the assets were entirely under him.
A putin doesn't have 1 /10 of the actual power over russian society that every communist leader in actual communist countries had or has.
North Korea is an absolute hereditary monarchy and is Communist. The USSR under Lenin and Stalin was an absolute monarchy, just not hereditary. Romania was a monarchy under Ceaucescu, Yugoslavia was a monarchy under Tito, Cuba was a monarchy under Castro.
Sounds like we have different definitions of monarchy. I am using the standard definition as used in the political science and historical literature. What is your definition of monarchy?
Also even if I accept that, then we just push back the discussion to what exactly makes monarchy different from communism. Because if you are saying all communists have kings clearly not all kings are communist. So I think we again need to clarify what the definition of absolute monarchy is such that it is different from Luciom’s definition of communism.
Putin is a former KGB officer, he relies on the Stalinist model of one-man totalitarian rule including the routine murder of opponents, and his declared political goal is to recreate the Soviet Union of his youth, whose disappearance he considers 'the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century'.
Putin is a former KGB officer, he relies on the Stalinist model of one-man totalitarian rule including the routine murder of opponents, and his declared political goal is to recreate the Soviet Union of his youth, whose disappearance he considers 'the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century'.
none of that makes it at all communist. and I would argue he does not want to recreate the SU, but rather at most just its territory. he has no desire to collective the industries and destroy the private ownership of the oligarchs.
An absolute monarchy with no property rights would be communist yes.
An absolute monarchy where private citizens can have a lot of money (and so power) isn't totalitarian, power (the capacity of effecting change in society) doesn't rest solely on the monarch in that case. Totalitarianism FULLY REQUIRES the complete direct control of all assets (=communism). There is no totalitarianism possible if property is in the hands of private citizens.
Even when the monarch can threaten, arrest, kill, his a
Wait you seriously think absolute monarchs didn’t have the power you’re talking about?
Sounds like we have different definitions of monarchy. I am using the standard definition as used in the political science and historical literature. What is your definition of monarchy?
From the Greek, the word means 'rule by one person.' Bonaparte was a monarch. Hitler was a monarch. There was quite a famous satirical British TV film about Stalin in the early 1980s called Red Monarch, based on a book of the same title by a Soviet ex-KGB author, Yuri Krotkov. Modern constitutional monarchies, of course, are called that, just because the ceremonial heads of state have royal title, but they aren't monarchies at all, they're democracies. Ireland, Germany and Israel, and to some extent Italy, are all parliamentary democracies patterned on the British model, but they're republics because the ceremonial head of state is elected and is called the president (though polls tend to show that most Germans never know who their president is).
Wait you seriously think absolute monarchs didn’t have the power you’re talking about?
Yes i do , generally monarchs didn't and don't have actual totalitarian absolute power. When they try totalitarian moves they very often get killed and substituted.
I mean there is a reason if they had to beg the bankers for centuries otherwise they had no money to wage wars. Do you remember the whole templar thing for example? for how long did the templar develop massive power even under theoretical "absolute monarchies"? or just think about how much of the productive assets were in fact held (and with them, the production) by lower level nobles not the king himself.
+ ofc the perennial sharing of power with the church (or mandarins elsewhere) even under theoretical "absolute monarchy"
Sounds like we have different definitions of monarchy. I am using the standard definition as used in the political science and historical literature. What is your definition of monarchy?
Also even if I accept that, then we just push back the discussion to what exactly makes monarchy different from communism. Because if you are saying all communists have kings clearly not all kings are communist. So I think we again need to clarify what the definition of absolute monarchy is such that it is differ
Private property rights (factual, not on paper). But explained monarchy isn't in opposition to communism, it's a different axis.
You can have a monarchy even in democracy technically, but it only happened once in history afaik (Singapore), and it was very far from being an absolute one.
Monarchy is just about a single man having disproportionate power, close to the total political power in a country, for a long enough time.
none of that makes it at all communist. and I would argue he does not want to recreate the SU, but rather at most just its territory. he has no desire to collective the industries and destroy the private ownership of the oligarchs.
That's some of the hybrid part, along with the appearance though not the reality of democratic elections. The oligarchs created by Jeffrey Sachs's 'shock therapy' are now completely subservient to the Stalinist monarch Putin, unless they want to fall mysteriously from a high window, so they aren't really oligarchs at all, merely bagmen.
That's some of the hybrid part, along with the appearance though not the reality of democratic elections. The oligarchs created by Jeffrey Sachs's 'shock therapy' are all completely subservient to the Stalinist monarch Putin, unless they want to fall mysteriously from a high window, so they aren't really oligarchs at all, merely bagmen.
Today, yes, but that wasn't the case at all until 10-12 years ago
?
Canada economy is ok .
https://tradingeconomics.com/canada/gdp-...
https://tradingeconomics.com/canada/gdp
No idea what u talking about …
Might be hard for some people but then again it’s always hard for some people .
What state sponsored propaganda have you been guzzling?
Canada's real gdp per capita has mirrored the USA since at least the 90's. It began to deviate in 2015. It's now 70 something percent of the USA. When the typical trajectory is upwards Canada hasn't progressed and is falling behind badly
Just Google Canada vs USA GDP per capita graph
On top of that Housing costs are a total disaster. The medical system has pretty much fallen apart. I wonder what happened in 2015
What state sponsored propaganda have you been guzzling?
Canada's real gdp per capita has mirrored the USA since at least the 90's. It began to deviate in 2015. It's now 70 something percent of the USA. When the typical trajectory is upwards Canada hasn't progressed and is falling behind badly
Just Google Canada vs USA GDP per capita graph
On top of that Housing costs are a total disaster. The medical system has pretty much fallen apart. I wonder what happened in 2015
I agree with some of your points but not the hyperbolic nature or conclusions on where the blame lies. This GDP divergence is heavily tied to global crude oil prices. I'm on record saying this government has economic failings and that we need to push resource development, infrastructure, and vertical industry build out which I take it we agree on.
Medical and housing are non-federal jurisdictions and should absolutely be better integrated into national policies. Tear down the provincial barriers. Having dozens of health authorities on different systems is insanely inefficient. I like a lot of this government's policies and values but we do need an economy first perspective with those values integrated. Unfortunately there is no better alternative and this is not a reason to slide into empty right wing garbage.
Yes i do , generally monarchs didn't and don't have actual totalitarian absolute power. When they try totalitarian moves they very often get killed and substituted.
I mean there is a reason if they had to beg the bankers for centuries otherwise they had no money to wage wars. Do you remember the whole templar thing for example? for how long did the templar develop massive power even under theoretical "absolute monarchies"? or just think about how much of the productive assets were in fact held (a
I didn’t say monarchs I said absolute monarchy. I think this conversation is getting muddled because we’re not using terms in the same way as each other.
Private property rights (factual, not on paper). But explained monarchy isn't in opposition to communism, it's a different axis.
You can have a monarchy even in democracy technically, but it only happened once in history afaik (Singapore), and it was very far from being an absolute one.
Monarchy is just about a single man having disproportionate power, close to the total political power in a country, for a long enough time.
Ah I think this might be an issue of language use. It seems some people apply the label monarch like you do where other like me reserve it for regents/kings/queens/rulers. For me I wouldn’t consider hitler a monarch I would say he’s a dictator.
The ruling Kim family in North Korea (Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il and Kim Jong Un) has been described as a de facto absolute monarchy[41][42][43] or a "hereditary dictatorship".[44] In 2013, Clause 2 of Article 10 of the new edited Ten Fundamental Principles of the Korean Workers' Party states that the party and revolution must be carried "eternally" by the "Baekdu (Kim's) bloodline".[45] This though does not mean it is a de jure absolute monarchy, as the country's official name is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. The al-Assad family, which ruled Syria from 1971 to 2024, was similarly categorised as such.[44]