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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (8184)	3/12/2001 2:26:49 PM
From: epicure	Respond to of 82486

I wouldn't know. Mass murderers are mass murderers as far as I'm concerned. Extreme left and extreme right meet in the Evil department.

To: TimF who wrote (8184)	3/12/2001 2:37:41 PM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 82486

When Khruschev gave the famous "secret" speech condemning the crimes of Stalin in '56, it partly represented a defense of Lenin: See, Lenin was good, Stalin was the one who betrayed socialism. Therefore, Lenin's Party is good, now that it has been purged of Stalinism! Similarly, when Deng Xiaoping put the Gang of Four on trial, it was in part a rehabilitation of Mao, by blaming the Cultural Revolution on Madame Mao and her cronies. Thus, the Communist Party could retain legitimacy, and those who were in the Long March could continue to dominate the Politburo. I once met a lady who had grown up in Fascist Italy, and attended elite schools. She still adored Mussolini, and blamed everything on Hitler. "See, Fascism was a good idea!", she would say,"it was that monster Hitler who ruined everything!"..........

To: TimF who wrote (8184)	3/12/2001 7:09:11 PM
From: thames_sider	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 82486

communist are not looked at quite as negatively as nazis It could be because of some key ethical underpinnings. Communism dictated that all people are equal and shall be treated equally, giving from their means and receiving according to their needs. Of course, if as one with more means, you didn't see that you should help pay for those with less, there's a problem... And there were splits over whether 'revolution' in other countries should be actively fomented, or merely encouraged... the pure theory (as I understand it) indicates that the latter would happen spontaneously - hmm, shome mishtake shurely? Nevertheless, the premise of absolute equality of anyone before the state - the law, the people - is not uncommon and a good starting point. The Nazi beliefs held that certain 'races' were intrinsically superior, and that others were (at best) the untermensch, sub-human, deserving only of exploitation for the benefit of higher breeds of humanity - slavery: while the lowest of the other races were an evil to be eradicated. And that the desirable outcome was for the superior breed of mankind to rule the world. Nice. If you happen to be pure-blood Aryan, anyhow. Both ignore the market as a means of determining 'worth' and reward'. Both believe in the power of a central state body to determine human destiny. Both believe in their absolute correctness. But only one ideology called for genocide as an active policy, and world domination as the desirable aim and logical result. IMHO, that makes only one of them intrinsically evil. In practice, thankfully, both have failed. But I think it's understandable why communism retained some intellectual attraction, especially compared to the alternative.

To: TimF who wrote (8184)	3/13/2001 12:29:12 PM
From: cosmicforce	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

Re: Sometimes [communism] is even seen as a good idea that failed, either it was doomed to failure because of human nature, or it was just done wrong so it didn't work. That's about the size of it. Like many well-intentioned dreams, it went awry due to the abuse of power - a natural and logical consequence of centralization imposed by force. That's why I'm against dogmatic repression by centralized governments - whether they are left or right. It's pretty hard to argue that countries that have no socialism are better off than ones that don't. Do you know how many indigenous and Caribbean people died building the Panama Canal? The Central American states faired significantly better under leftist governments than they did under right wing governments. But I guess it is how you score. In terms of simple numbers (not adjusted by social standing) it was, on average, more benign than the right wing governments. China's history is a bad example because they had been under the various hegemonic influences of Japan, the U.S., Britain: it is a whole different story and I think it would be hard to create a meaningful baseline from which to compare the relative merits of communism vs. imperialism. Imperialism seems to have more in common with fascism than collectivism.