Above the law.

[brokenergy]

Communism is the only ism that tries to do away with the 'elite'.

Yes by firing squads, gulags, transportation for life, all delightfully combined with suppression of free speech.....how could the Russian people be so foolish to have wanted to rid themselves of that utopia?

 

A, I've studied politcal science, development studies and modern history and I'm just going to say that you fail at understanding what communism even mean. Please try reading some actual books on this subject next time old timer before posting because a facepalm is just not worth it.

 

***

 

Also about Russia, if you look at Marx's theory he stated that in order for a nation of go from captialism to communism, the nation must be in an advance state of captialism before going into communism. Something which Russia never did.

[Aurielius]

@BrokenEnergy

Actually I am conversant with history which means I can easily refute your contention an advantage of being an 'Old Man' who has not only read a book or two but absorbed the lessons there in. One may attempt to divorce the theory from practice but as of yet that has not occurred. So a few facts that YOU might want to absorb.

This is an objective account of the actual system not the theory, it's called history not political science.

 

Kill tally: Approximately 20 million, including up to 14.5 million needlessly starved to death. At least one million executed for political "offences". At least 9.5 million more deported, exiled or imprisoned in work camps, with many of the estimated five million sent to the 'Gulag Archipelago' never returning alive. Other estimates place the number of deported at 28 million, including 18 million sent to the 'Gulag'.

 

Gulag is the acronym for Chief Administration of Corrective Labor Camps and Colonies (Russian: Гла́вное управле́ние исправи́тельно-трудовы́х лагере́й и коло́ний, tr. Glavnoye upravlyeniye ispravityel'no-trudovih lagyeryey i koloniy) of the NKVD. It was officially created on April 25, 1930 and dissolved on January 13, 1960.[2] Eventually, by metonymy, the usage of "the Gulag" began generally denoting the entire penal labor system in the USSR, than any such penal system.

http://img64.imageshack.us/img64/299/400pxgulaglocationmap.png

Locations of the Gulags.

 

1937 the purge of the Red Army begins. The purge results in the execution, imprisonment or dismissal of 36,671 officers, including about half of the 706 officers with the rank of brigade commander or higher. Three of the army's five marshals and 15 of its 16 top commanders are executed.

 

The Katyn massacre, also known as the Katyn Forest massacre (Polish: zbrodnia katyńska, mord katyński, 'Katyń crime'; Russian: Катынский расстрел Katynskij ra'sstrel 'Katyn shooting'), was a mass execution of Polish nationals carried out by the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD), the Soviet secret police, in April and May 1940. The massacre was prompted by Lavrentiy Beria's proposal to execute all members of the Polish Officer Corps, dated 5 March 1940. This official document was approved and signed by the Soviet Politburo, including its leader, Joseph Stalin. The number of victims is estimated at about 22,000, with 21,768 being a lower bound.[1] The victims were murdered in the Katyn Forest in Russia, the Kalinin and Kharkiv prisons and elsewhere. Of the total killed, about 8,000 were officers taken prisoner during the 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland, another 6,000 were police officers, with the rest being Polish intelligentsia arrested for allegedly being "intelligence agents, gendarmes, landowners, saboteurs, factory owners, lawyers, officials and priests.

 

On 24 March 2004, Memorial releases a list naming 1,345,796 victims of Stalin's purges, including the 44,000 sent to trial on the former dictator's personal orders.

[marharth]

The point they are trying to make is that Stalin was not really a communist. Or any country ever.

 

I think we can all agree that the things Stalin did were messed up.

[brokenergy]

*snip*

 

What you just quoted was history, not political science. Political science is different to history as it is a study of political theories. You can spew whatever you want but the fact is that you can't objectively distinguish between history and poltical science. I don't care about what Stalin did, I'm stating that you need to start brushing off your political science books and read what communism is about, because there is a huge difference between communism theory and practice.

[juderodney]

I would like to point out that Marx and Engels were expecting this workers' revolution to take place much sooner than it did. Now, over a century-and-a-half later, most of the countries that even tried to acvieve Utopia are those too underdeveloped for such a thing. The result has been utter disaster with people being punished or killed for not agreeing 100% with the party. Others were simply left by the wayside in the name of "progress".

 

I would also put forth that much of Eastern Europe had some form of advanced capitalism (at least before Hitler came around). These were not much better as people were oppressed and forced-fed the Communist Party line. Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Poland each made an attempt to gain their freedom from the oppression the Communist Party brought to them, only to be invaded and forced back to the old order by the Soviets. When the Soviet Union fell, the party heirarchy could do little but watch the entire Easten Bloc turn towards more capitalist ideas.

[Aurielius]

*snip*

'Snip'

because there is a huge difference between communism theory and practice.

Yes there is, which is why theory is all so much fluff in comparison to reality, reality is what actually occurs, theory is what an ideologue supposes will happen, being able to discern the difference is something that comes with experience on how the world actually functions.

 

 

"Cuiusvis hominis est errare, nullius nisi insipientis in errore perseverare".- Cicero

I'm all done here...Aquila non capit muscas.

[HeyYou]

*snip*

 

What you just quoted was history, not political science. Political science is different to history as it is a study of political theories. You can spew whatever you want but the fact is that you can't objectively distinguish between history and poltical science. I don't care about what Stalin did, I'm stating that you need to start brushing off your political science books and read what communism is about, because there is a huge difference between communism theory and practice.

 

That's the difference between the way it is Supposed to work, and what actually happens. In a human society, pure communism won't work. So, all we get is an approximation, that is CALLED communism. You can argue the point until you are blue in the fingers, but, that doesn't change the fact that the government in the USSR was indeed CALLED communism. Whether it was an accurate rendition or not really isn't relevant.

[marharth]

*snip*

 

What you just quoted was history, not political science. Political science is different to history as it is a study of political theories. You can spew whatever you want but the fact is that you can't objectively distinguish between history and poltical science. I don't care about what Stalin did, I'm stating that you need to start brushing off your political science books and read what communism is about, because there is a huge difference between communism theory and practice.

 

That's the difference between the way it is Supposed to work, and what actually happens. In a human society, pure communism won't work. So, all we get is an approximation, that is CALLED communism. You can argue the point until you are blue in the fingers, but, that doesn't change the fact that the government in the USSR was indeed CALLED communism. Whether it was an accurate rendition or not really isn't relevant.

This is what I have been saying for the past few pages.

[grannywils]

Before I point out again that we are totally off topic here, I just need to ask, BE, did you read what you just wrote? Who cares what it says in political science books, if what happens in the real world is what actually happens? Don't you think that real world experience is going to give you a better idea of what life in general is all about. Aurielius gave you what I thought was an exemplary description of how communism actually worked in one instance (regardless of what it said in the books). I believe that was his point. And this particular old timer still has a functioning brain, thank you very much....

 

 

[Ghogiel]

. Whether it was an accurate rendition or not really isn't relevant.

China. A communist party is still in power. However is communism going on there? No, not really.

 

The reality is, a dictatorship such as Stalin's, was never following communism. What you see is Stalin, and assume Communism is that. :laugh: