Forum:Communism - suggestion

From RationalWiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search

First of all, can anyone kindly explain the meaning of this quote:

Communism and fascism, the two principal anti-liberal ideologies that shaped twentieth century politics, inspired a large proportion of that century's democides.

? I understand that german fascism implied jews being saboteurs and generally inferior race which lead to Holocaust. But I fail to understand in which way communist ideology could lead to any mass-killings. Sure, some folks died during 1917' revolution, but their number is too small to be compared even with WWI casualties, so it surely can't be named "a large proportion of that century's democides".

Also I think there is a very important and very wrong (although very popular) misconception inherited which should be made clear in article. I better let Wikipedia speak though, because my English obviously isn't that great (and I'm sorry about this):

If you go to the Wiki's Communism article then you can read

For the Western term for the form of government in which a state is governed by a Communist party, see Communist state.

Emphasis is mine and it is actually very important because as you can read in Wiki's "Communist state" article:

In practice, communist states do not actually refer to themselves as such. They do this not to disguise the fact that the ruling party is communist, but rather because they do not consider themselves to be a communist society at present. Instead, they constitutionally identify themselves as socialist states or workers' states. The primary goal of these states, which also explains their official name, is to guide their respective countries in the process of building socialism, ultimately leading to communism.

That's right, China, North Korea and USSR (I'm not sure about Cuba) all are/were socialist states and no one claimed that they demonstrate "Communism in practice". Even though everyone outside of these countries seem to believe in the opposite.

That actually makes a great difference because now all the lessons we can and should learn from failure of USSR and to-be-failures of NKorea and China are applicable in fact to any other totalitarian/authoritarian state and not just to those labelled "Communist". While the "communist dream" itself has nothing to do with all the dreads of XX century. It's actually "from each according to his will(sic!), to each according to his need" formula and I honestly believe that most of the humanists would agree with this slogan, which also goes very tightly with so-called "christian" and "democratic" values. It just appears that we are very far from it yet.

So, my suggestion is to change article and possibly others as well to reflect clearly the difference between communism and socialism (communism is goal which some socialists try to pursue) as well as to explain that communist states are called this way (in Western countries) only to reflect names of ruling parties in them.

Also, btw calling communism principal anti-liberal ideology is obviously wrong, article to which footnote is linked makes it only the more obvious, and so is the statement that

The economies of communist countries have proven themselves largely unable to meet even the basic needs of their citizens.

Average soviet person in 60th-80th could buy twice as much as she needed for living and actually that was the problem - there weren't enough rare and exquisite items where to stuff money and few that came from other countries were primarily reserved for party members. But I guess I don't need anyone's permission to do such little changes, - that's what wiki is meant for, isn't it? — Unsigned, by: Alm0 / talk / contribs

  1. No one gives a shit about how you're offended that people with a functional ideology are mocking your worthless communist bullshit
  2. Communism killed more people then any other single ideology through a combination of incomptence and malace (Holodomor and the Great Leap Forward)
  3. Why the fuck do you think we care about humanism, or that most humanists are apparently crypto-communists?
  4. Communism is definitely anti-liberal, and if you don't see that, you have bigger issues kiddo
  5. Considering people in communists states had this problem of dying from starvation, yes, the countries were unable to meet the basic needs of their populations.
  6. We are not going to include your idiotic ideas about what Communism is or is not, because communism is a dead worthless ideology that should be thoroughly mocked.--Token Conservative (talk) 16:49, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

  1. Hi, glad to see such a fast answer. First of all communism isn't my ideology, secondly I don't feel offended. I do apologise if I have unittentionally offended you though.
  2. Great Leap Forward demonstrates typical authoritarian socialist ideology - that lifes of humans were less important than the bright idea, however that doesn't really corellates with communism, does it? Holodomor was the result of famine multiplied by incometence, yes. However it is obviously wrong to describe human lives in USSR based only on data from 1932-1933, otherwise you can conclude that Japan doesn't meet the basic needs of it's population after reading some newspapers talking about 2011' Tsunami and even U.S. citizens have problems with basic needs, generally after each great hurricane.
  3. I make no assumtions about you. But clearly creating Yet Another Wiki and populating it with articles shows us that some other people care enough. Also, I am not the one who proposed to put here these political articles, however if you are pretending to be rational, please do.
  4. Explain yourself. Otherwise it is argumentum ad hominem.
  5. (answered in 2.)
  6. "communism is a dead worthless ideology that should be thoroughly mocked" - that's not very rational, is it? Don't you think encyclopediadramatica.se is more appropriate place (and much more popular) for such cheap trolling?

Btw, guys, is that just me or is this website (occasionally) loading painfully slow? You don't host Dwarf Fortress on VPS, do you? Alm0 (talk) 18:04, 20 April 2013 (UTC)