White Supremecists Slay 49 in NZ Mosques

[Belsnickel]

(03-19-2019, 11:11 AM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: I get the point you're making in this, and the previous, post.  However, you're making it in a vacuum.  At some point an idea must be judged by its fruits.  In this case, communism, whenever put into practice in the real world has produced a single party autocracy often with an all powerful dictator at the helm.  This is almost invariably accompanied by human rights atrocities, often on a vast scale.  Even when it occasionally does not it results in an oppressive government that allows no dissent or variation of thought.  So, I am forced to disagree.  Communism, as an idea, is a polluted and dangerous ideology.

I would only make the argument that what is being called communism is not, in fact, communism. Communism has never been achieved. Soviet leaders, and others, have used an end goal of communism as an excuse to consolidate power. They saw in Marxist writings a way to foment revolution and they seized on that. Just looking at the Bolshevik/Menshevik split you can see the way Lenin, and later Stalin, saw the revolutionary ideals of Marxism as a way to really wrest power for themselves rather than for the people.

Classical Marxism is dangerous in the way it requires revolution to reach communism. It is predicated on there being a violent revolution against the ruling class and at the end there is no such thing as class. There has always been a ruling class in every attempt at "communism," though, which means that communism has never been attained. I think the better argument to make against communism would be that it is unattainable and far too many have died under the guise of trying to attain it. This reliance on revolution, by the by, is why I am a social democrat.