"Godless Commies" Topic

Who else do you want to shoot? These guys, right?

To the aisle of misfit Bolsheviks with you! Yes I spelled aisle correctly, an isle is much too remote to store bad guys.

A local store sold a bag of plastic army men in two colors labeled "Good old USA and Red Commies." Of course, it was marked "Made in China."

Grelber

@Grelber:

China is a CINO country: communist in name only. It's actually just another capitalist oligarchy, not that different in its essential organizing principles from Russia.

I'm not sure that there are any countries that are even trying to apply Marxism-Leninism any more.

@etotheipi:

Great-looking miniatures, and I love the flag idea! I'm going to try it, too.

Kill a commie for your mommy.

Or kill a capitalist for the planet.

capitalist oligarchy

Not capitalist. There are no worker unions.

Nor oligarchical. The government owns the means of production and distribution. The fact that it funnels profits disproportionately to its officials and their proxies, doesn't make it an oligarchy. You don't become rich which gives you power in the government; you rise to favor in the party, which lets you become rich (for a cut).

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Thanks. Have at the symbol idea. I also use (thin fridge) magnets for changing insignia, but that only works for large flat surfaces.

inlgames.com/magv.htm

Yes, where the party owns the means of production (physical facilities and the people) you have a communist slave state. BTW has anyone ever seen the unicorn known as a communist environmentalists?

BTW has anyone ever seen the unicorn known as a communist environmentalists?

Hunh? Neither communism nor capitalism has anything to do with environmental protection.

Within whatever economic system you operate (most real ones are neither "this" nor "that", buy dynamic mixes of many philosophies, though capitalism could be, in an extreme case, a superset of communism), if those who make decisions – consumers, government, producers, etc. – place a high value on specific aspects of production (such as environmental damage), then those will be optimized.

Communism isn't necessarily a slave state. If the government were actually responsive to "the needs of the people".

The core problem with communism is that it doesn't scale. It is based on the idea of a "commune", a small group of people in self-sustaining, autonomous operations.

When you scale the system "horizontally", you end up with a diversity of opinion that cannot be handed in a pure democratic manner. So the people end up creating sub-divisions (parties) and implementing republican ideas by deferring judgement to representatives of those groups. This works at cross-purposes to the autonomy the system is supposed to give to the producer (the worker-individual).

When you scale "vertically", and take on a larger set of different types of operation, the producer (worker-individual) no longer has the competence nor the time to make a rational decision on every issue under their control (by definition, every issue). In this case, the people naturally create "bureaus", groups of people with specific expertise to which the individual defers in judgement. This also works at cross-purposes to the individual's power in the communist system.

There are a number of other challenges, but fundamentally, with any substantive growth beyond a commune, the infrastructure degrades from the inside, leading to corruption as a built-in feature, rather than brought to the system from the outside.

As a result, yes, most communist systems either oppress the worker they were supposed to liberate (Soviets) or become dependent on internal and external capitalist systems to be sustained (Mondragon).

Managerial Capitalism would be a better term.

The same brought down the Soviets.

Joe Collins

I'm not sure that there are any countries that are even trying to apply Marxism-Leninism any more.

Since that led to mass starvation and death, not very surprising.
That's the thing with people bad-mouthing modern China: Sure it's a horrific totalitarian nightmare, but life is ludicrously better than in the Maoist era. This is why there's going to be no rebellion. Enough people alive still remember what it used to be like during real Marxism, and they saw with their own eyes that the current system brought incredible improvements.

Cuba has limited a long despite the US trying it's bessed to smoother it.

Many Cuban families depend of their relatives in the US sending them dollars. They don't drive around in 1950s cars just for the fun of it.

There was an interesting study on Cuban-American opinion on Cuban-American foreign policy.

It started out to validate that younger Cuban-Americans had more favourable opinions toward a more open relationship. They found that perception to be a biased interpretation. That actual numbers showed that the strongest correlation was between number of generations removed from actually living in Cuba (of course, the 3rd and 4th generations removed also strongly correlated with being younger).

Overstating things and oversimplifying, anyone who actually lived in Cuba felt the régime should be beat with a stick, and the 4th geners felt we should all have a collective group hug. People with closer relationships to actually living in Cuba also made stronger distinctions between the regime in Cuba and the people of Cuba.

Anyway, I'm one generation removed from Nazi occupation and abandonment/betrayal to the Soviets after helping the Allies fight the Nazis. I have opinions. :)

"depend of their relatives in the US sending them dollars." This can be said of many of our southern neighbors. They have produced more doctors per capita then any other country, the main trouble with their economy has been the US.

Cuba has a very impressive for-profit private healthcare system, mainly to attract foreign visitors on low prices and/or short wait times. They also rely on a vacation industry aimed at Canadians and Europeans. In short, capitalism works for them. Well, those able to tap into these industries.

In short, capitalism works for them.

Actually, communism works for the capitalists.

The government controls all the infrastructure, support, and grunt labour industries that make modern medicine possible. By "dedicating resources to medicine", They manipulate supply and labour markets to allow the price on the for-profit side to be lower for the same quality of care.

They also control the production of medicines, specifically intellectual property control. If you don't have to pay back the people who invested billions of dollars and the labourers (skilled through unskilled) who spend hundreds of thousands of hours coming up with the medicine, many medicines are really cheap.

I can't believe those rip-off artists want to charge $50 USD for this rule book! I'll just scan in my friend's copy and print one for cost.