Looking For Answers to Some Arguments.

[Ehsivar]

Granted, the person worded these as statements, but look at these as arguments against communism.


- Mengistu communist regime in Ethiopia

- Asian Tigers, India and China rise from poverty due to capitalism.

- Felix Dzerzhinsky's secret police

- Robert Conquest, former Stalinist

- Sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson on communism

- Leszek Kołakowski former communist turned anticommunist

- Mikhail Gorbachev former communist turned social democrat


Some of these are easily refutable, but I'm interested in what people are going to say.

[ContrarianLemming]

they're not arguments against communism.

[fa2991]

Yeah, none of those are really arguments at all.


- Mengistu communist regime in Ethiopia

The Pinochet capitalist regime in Chile.


- Asian Tigers, India and China rise from poverty due to capitalism.Capitalism can create, growth, but not freedom or equality. China is a much more unequal society now than it was a few decades ago. India has grown from capitalism, but suffers from mass inequality, poverty, corruption, disease, and illiteracy. Hardly a success story.


- Felix Dzerzhinsky's secret policeThat doesn't really prove anything... it could have been done differently.


- Robert Conquest, former Stalinist

- Sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson on communism

- Leszek Kołakowski former communist turned anticommunistMurray Bookchin was a Stalinist who then became one of America's foremost anarchists. Does this necessarily mean that anarchism is the one true political philosophy?



- Mikhail Gorbachev former communist turned social democratHe wasn't much of a communist to begin with. :p

[Peace on Earth]

It bugs me when people use corrupt regimes that were, or are, obviously not communist, and just centered around state control, to somehow "prove" that Communism couldn't work. Communism isn't an all-seeing and all powerful state run by the elite, using fear and other tactics (secret police) to keep power in privileged hands. I would dare someone to find a capitalist nation that is perfect. If they can't, ask them if that is an argument against capitalism. I doubt that would say it is.

[fa2991]

It bugs me when people use corrupt regimes that were, or are, obviously not communist, and just centered around state control, to somehow "prove" that Communism couldn't work. Communism isn't an all-seeing and all powerful state run by the elite, using fear and other tactics (secret police) to keep power in privileged hands.

To be fair, that's how a lot of capitalist countries' history and economics classes portray communism on the theoretical level


I would dare someone to find a capitalist nation that is perfect.

Don't ask any conservative Americans that question. You just might get an answer. :p

[Shokaract]

- Asian Tigers, India and China rise from poverty due to capitalism.
The mythical success of the Asian Tigers is only a result of heavy foreign (esp. U.S.) investments and authoritarian capitalist rule. In the case of the Republic of Korea, there was the military dictatorship of Pak Chung-hee, whose policies (industrialization and preventing easy travel, and funds, to leave the country) and involvement in the Vietnam War strengthened the ROK as a regional power and U.S. ally. "Success" also lies with the fact that South Korea disregarded IMF recommendations and put in place policies to protect its fledgling industries.



[India] had, in terms of morbidity, mortality and longevity, suffered an excess in mortality over China of close to 4 [million] a year during the same period. … Thus, in this one geographical area alone, more deaths resulted from ‘this failed capitalist experiment’ (more than 100 million by 1980) than can be attributed to the ‘failed communist experiment’ all over the world since 1917.


In China, rapid development has raised the average income, but this average is heavily skewed by the extremely small minority at the top which makes many times that of the great majority. And it seems the government has long given up on addressing the divide between the countryside and the cities, and education is once again for the children of the wealthy. The Gini index indicates that economic inequality has greatly increased since 1978.

In contrast to the pockets of concentrated wealth in the coastal cities, hundreds of millions of Chinese saw their incomes decrease and the re-assertion of capitalism brought with it the oppression of women in the form of prostitution and human trafficking. Domestic abductions of women have been on the rise due to the gender ratio disparity. This (http://edition.cnn.com/2010/TECH/01/25/china.online.dating/index.html) CNN article on the unequal exchange of "love" for money reflects the unequal gender relations of the post-Mao era, in a reversal of the gains of the Mao era.

[ContrarianLemming]

tl;dr^

[ZombieGrits]

- Robert Conquest, former Stalinist

- Leszek Kołakowski former communist turned anticommunist

- Mikhail Gorbachev former communist turned social democrat

All that proves is that people can change their minds. Every single one of us here on revleft can attest to that, having changed our minds about capitalism :D


- Sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson on communism
First off, "sociobiologist" sounds like a totally bullshit occupation that the guy probably just made up. So anyway, what does he say about communism?

[Red Commissar]

First off, "sociobiologist" sounds like a totally bullshit occupation that the guy probably just made up. So anyway, what does he say about communism?

Taking a look at wikipedia (meh, I was too lazy sorry)


Edward O. Wilson, referring to ants, once said that "Karl Marx was right, socialism works, it is just that he had the wrong species", meaning that while ants and other eusocial species appear to live in communist-like societies, they only do so because they are forced to do so from their basic biology, as they lack reproductive independence: worker ants, being sterile, need their ant-queen to survive as a colony and a species and individual ants cannot reproduce without a queen, thus being forced to live in centralised societies. Humans, however, do possess reproductive independence so they can give birth to offspring without the need of a "queen", and in fact humans enjoy their maximum level of Darwinian fitness only when they look after themselves and their families, while finding innovative ways to use the societies they live in for their own benefit.


Basically going into the whole mindset that socialism will not work because of certain characteristics in humanity. One point of his argument is that what we call "Human Nature" has both an environmental/social aspect and a genetic one. The latter is where is argument comes out of is that humans are never going to be one of those that will function in a socialist frame work, unlike other animals which do live in a similar fashion due to their own inherent biological characteristics.

I guess just a really "scientific" way to say the ever common "Communism looks good on paper but human nature *insert argument*".

I do not see how his opinion though is the smoking gun that sinks Communism.