Comments by "Awesome Avenger" (@awesomeavenger2810) on "ContraPoints"
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Why is it that we learn about nazism? I would say that it is to avoid making the same mistakes. Extremist ideologies normally look for easy answers. Populist answers to complicated questions. Generally involving the undesirable 'out group'. Whoever that may be.
So if it is important to remember the horrors of fascism in order to prevent it ever happening again, then I would argue we also need to remember and learn about the horrors of communism. From Stalin to Lenin to Trotsky to Mao to Pol Pot to the Kim's. Because if we don't, we are in as much danger of following in their footsteps as we are in Hitler's.
But that's not the case, is it? Because while we make a thing about swastikas and Hitler salutes, we ignore the Trotsky/Lenin iconography. And even go so far as to teach Marxism in our universities.
Obviously, I expect the usual defence of Marxism (its not the same as fascism, its about building a fairer society, etc), but in actual fact it is exactly the same as fascism. The one gave birth to the other. Both preach the subservience of the rights of the individual to the needs of the many. Only one defines the outgroup along racial or ethnic lines, while the other does the same along ideological lines.
I have read much on both the nazis and communism. And while people rightly know of the dangers of fascism, I am fuckin appalled at the lack of knowledge about the crimes and genocides of communism. Those who propagate communist ideals either are extremely ignorant of the subject they are preaching. Or they support its crimes. Or they don't care. Which is the more dangerous?
I'm all for punching the odd nazi. But I'm equally enthusiastic about beating the shit out of communists!
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Don't take my word for it, look at history. You will find it proves my case time and time again. Fascism and Marxism are one in the same. They both subjugate the rights and freedoms of the individual to the state. Rather than the other way around. With the exact same inevitable results.
I can point to Stalin, Pol Pot, the Kims, Mao, as examples. All following the same arrogant ramblings of an overly educated ignoramus with a god complex. And those are just the big names. There have been many, many more.
By contrast, fascism has a far lower body count. Even when you factor in fascist dictators like Franco or Mussolini. Neither of which advocated genocide of whole peoples. So the notion that genocide is at the core of fascism is false. I don't know where you get that idea from. They actually promise pretty much the exact same thing as your average communist (as my above quote proves). After all, Mussolini was a socialist.
Communism will (and always has) infringed on the rights and freedoms of the individual. Its core values are unnatural and authoritarian. It is built on the idea of subservience to the state in the name of equality of outcome. An impossibility no matter how authoritarian the system.
This would be bad enough, but when you advocate its implementation through violent revolution, as many socialist revolutionaries do, (even within democratic systems), you then hand power to the most violent and ruthless in society. Which is the reason why Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin came out on top. They were ruthless men with no compassion. Totally blinded by their unworkable ideology. And willing to expend the lives of many millions in pursuit of their socialist utopia.
But the correlation between fascism and Marxism doesn't just end there. Because both ideologies believe absolutely in the purging of society. The removal of undesirables or 'enemies of the people' (in actual fact, enemies of the ideology). Stalin believed another war in Europe would be the catalyst for the further expansion of Marxism. And his rearming of Germany after the first world war was calculated and deliberate. Because as with fascism, communism believes the ends justifies the means.
Don't know if you've ever heard of Eric Hobsbawm. He was a British Marxist historian who died not long ago. Just before he shuffled on, he was asked in an interview whether he thought the sacrifice of millions of lives in Stalin's soviet empire would have been worth it, if the result was his longed for communist utopia. The rancid old fucker replied 'yes'.
He went on to say, ''...In a period in which, as you might imagine, mass murder and mass suffering are absolutely universal, the chance of a new world being born in great suffering would still have been worth backing" but, unfortunately, "[the] Soviet Union was not the beginning of the World Revolution"
There have always been the ideological puritans who somehow believe suffering is virtuous. That you have to suffer before being reborn. It comes from the belief that the victim is righteous. And therefore pure. The same goes for society as a whole. Or, when you break it down further into multiple subsections (race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexuality, religious creed, etc), that the minority is by definition more virtuous than the majority.
It's a pretty biblical way of thinking. But then we all know about the purges and genocides in the old testament (the flood/Sodom and Gomorrah). And Lenin remains to this day immortalised in formaldehyde like a deity.
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The trick of socialism is to simply rename 'the state' as 'the people'. Job done, supposedly. But the abolition of the right of the individual to profit from his or her own labour is in itself an act of authoritarianism. Once you abolish that freedom, all other freedoms and rights are called into question. Capitalism is as old as humanity itself. It's human nature. So in order to implement Marxist socialism, you have to have an authoritarian state.
And of course, under Marxism the workers really don't own anything at all. That's the big lie on which all other lies are founded upon. In order to claim that the worker owns the means of production, Marxism must first redefine the very word 'ownership' to suit its ideology. Which it does in the same way as it redefines 'the state' as 'the people'. With those two falsehoods at the very heart of Marxist Ideology, it is easy to see why Marxism goes the way it goes. Every time. As reality is defined in a way that serves the ideology.
Marxism's fatal flaw is that it presupposes ill intent on it's ideological opposition (capitalism), whilst assuming only the best of intensions of those who propagate it's own ideology. But if capitalism is to be defined as the exploitation of the many by the few (the boss class), then Marxism is to be defined as the exploitation of the many by the even fewer.
In others words, if you don't fully trust your present government (in a western democratic system with all the checks and balances that system provides), then why the hell would you want a government that not only makes the laws you live by, creates the policies that effect your life, and enforces those policies via a system of rules and regulations, but to also employ you, and be the only employer available to you?
Too much power in the hands of a very small political elite. Who, as even your example of a nation that 'comes close' to real Marxism proves (Cuba), end up enriching themselves at the expense of everyone else.
The success of capitalism is down to choice. Choice brings competition. And competition brings innovation. Even Marxists know this. Which is why Marxist regimes expend so much effort on cutting themselves off from the capitalist world. Because along with economic freedom comes the demand for political freedom. As people who naturally see themselves as consumers, expect choice in government too.
Competition in politics is vital for a free society. Because if you have an opposition, it means that its always in someone else's interest to hold you to account. So when Marxists say 'one day, when society has progressed enough, only then will it be possible to have a truly Marxist state', what they are in effect saying is 'one day, when everyone agrees with me, then will it be possible to have a truly Marxist state'. But that will never happen. Because people are individuals, with different priorities, goals, and ideas. And if did, we only have to look back on every other Marxist regime in history to know how that would end.
Obviously, that's all just focusing on the social aspect of Marxism. The economic aspect doesn't even bare thinking about. And for your information, the USSR was a totalitarian state long before 1951. It began with the collapse of the tsarist regime, and the pretty much immediate seizer of power by the Bolsheviks. Who, in the name of socialism, enacted a counter revolution and shut down Russia's first ever truly representative parliament after its one and only meeting.
And that happened under Lenin. And Lenin was a Marxist.
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If the basis of capitalism is the individual profiting from his or her own labour, then that is as old as the hills. And that definition is the definition given to capitalism by Marxists themselves. Otherwise, why limit the ownership of production?
I can point to the successes of capitalism. Westerners live longer, healthier lives with more rights, freedoms, and privileges than at any time in human history. But can you point to a single Marxist system that has even got off the ground?
The very fact that you are reduced to complaining about income equality, rather than poverty proves the worth of the capitalist system. So what if there are millionaires? How does their success become your loss? Unless, of course, you are infected with the bullshit Marxist ideology of the exploitation of the masses?
And just how is capitalism responsible for the worlds poor? Is it responsible for the poverty in china? Or the poverty in Cuba? Or the poverty in North Korea? Or the poverty that still exists in eastern Europe today even decades after the fall of the soviet empire? Isn't that the responsibility of communism?
And actually, even when considering the vast corruption of the Putin regime, Russian living standards are higher now than during the height of the old soviet days.
And I have no idea where you get the idea that life improved under the communists in Russia.
To claim this you must be so ignorant of the facts, as to call into question the truth of everything else you say. And do you really know anything about the Paris commune? Or have you simply read ideology driven bullshit, rather than the facts? I didn't need to argue against these anarchist systems because I assumed people would know the reality of them.
As for Cuba, we don't know what the Cubans want. As they are stuck with a Marxist dictatorship that has been in power since 1959. Those that disagree with that regime are, as always, denounced as enemies of the people and forced into exile. And I'm sorry, but Cuba's health system is third world. You are simply buying into the propaganda of an authoritarian regime. One that controls every aspect of Cuban society. And you believe them?
And US foreign policy is US foreign policy. It doesn't define capitalism. But nice try.
The idea of 'false consciousness', or as you put it the 'illusion of choice', was a theory designed by Marxists to explain away the reasons why the proletariat in the capitalist west had not risen up to join their comrades under the soviet system. They argued that it wasn't that those in the west actually were free and far better off for it, but that they were too stupid to realise they were being duped.
This argument inevitably goes the way of all such flat-earth based conspiracies, and rapidly ends up with a secret NWO, often the Jews, pulling the strings behind the scenes. This is where the extreme left meet the extreme right. As this is the very argument the nazis used.
Even in a two party system, you still have competition. And therefore, it is still in the oppositions interest to call out those in power. If you then have a free and open media, owned by individuals rather than the state (impossible under the Marxist system), you have even greater accountability.
And lastly, capitalism didn't fail in Russia. The revolution was against the authoritarian tsarist system of government. Not capitalism. Not against the right of the individual to hold property. That only came with the Marxist counterrevolution. Where Lenin and Trotsky broke the backs of the kulaks (a broad term meaning any peasant successful enough to own property or employ others). And in order to wipe that class out, the two of them instigated the Red Terror and butchered hundreds of thousands.
So when you say ''...They [the non-Marxists] didn’t do the necessary reforms to satisfy the people and bring it [Russia] up from agrarianism'' what you really mean is that they (the non-Marxists) weren't ruthless enough. You are, in effect, echoing Eric Hobsbawm when he claims his communist utopia would have been worth the sacrifice of millions.
And that is the evil of Marxism. The individual (and that means everyone) is expendable for the 'good of the state'. Society must be purged of those who disagree. It stands to your reasoning that you don't question why millions had to die. They just have too. Because a socialist revolution isn't a socialist revolution without a purge.
But of course, they had their purge. Their genocide. And the results, as always, were abject failure and the loss of decades of progress. And as so often with Marxism, it was the peasant class or the proletariat who paid the biggest price.
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In a free society, people are at liberty to use the profits of their labour to invest in private business, just as others are at liberty to work for private business. That method of economics has been about for thousands of years. Marxist socialism believes in the exact opposite. The individual is prohibited from investing in private business. And employees are prohibited from working for it. If, as you claim, socialism truly believes that the product of the individual's labour is his own, then how do you square that circle?
Under the Marxist system, is the individual free to invest the profits of their own labour as they see fit, or aren't they? If your answer is anything other than 'yes' then your statement on this is clearly a lie.
I'll ignore the infantile 'imperialism' argument. Like US foreign policy, imperialism (whether western, oriental, ottoman, Roman, Aztec, or otherwise) is not intrinsic to capitalism. And of course, soviet imperialism has been far more destructive than western capitalism ever has been. In fact, Marxism has to be the most dangerous and destructive of all ideologies.
And again, inequality is not simply a capitalist failure. There was inequality under the soviet system. Only it was considerably worse. And poverty, real poverty, (the type that exists on soup made of tree bark), was endemic whenever Marxist economics were applied.
Political parties who work within the democratic system cannot afford to listen only to their donors. If they did, they will quickly lose votes (assuming, as you appear to believe, that big business is always out to enslave the masses and is therefor harmful to the rest of society).
The idea that western democracy is a sham is something authoritarian regimes the world over propagate. The thinking goes that if there is no such thing as democracy, then there ain't no point in anyone demanding it. This way of thinking plays well to a certain kind of privileged, but discontented first worlder desperate to feel oppressed by something. But again, the results speak for themselves. No student of Marxism would ever truly wish to live under the system it advocates. If they did, they haven't studied its effects well enough.
Marx simply pulled the old leftist trick of rebranding one thing to appear to be another. Marx was all for an authoritarian state. He had to be. Otherwise there would be no way to inforce his new world order. He simply declared his ideal state not to be a state. Nothing more than a cheap rebranding designed to appeal to those who don't look too hard at the small print.
The roots of communism have been no less conspiratorial as those of nazism. I quoted Gregor Strasser for a reason. Because like Marx, the Nazis believed it was their right to remake society to fit their vision of a utopia. I simply take Marxists at their word when they say they are Marxists. Stalin was a Marxist. Mao was a Marxist. Pol Pot was a Marxist. Castro was a Marxist. And the Kim's were and are Marxists. They enact Marxist economics with the inevitable failures all that brings about.
But the real joke is that there you are complaining about big brands being owned by the same people (how terribly oppressive, how do you manage to soldier on?), when the very basis of Marxism itself is built on that very principle. One brand. One system. One party.
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We are not talking about what you believe. We are talking about whether in a free society an individual has the right to work for who he wants. For example, I'm an atheist. But I recognise that in a free society people should have the right to believe in whatever deity they like.
But your answer was as clear as I expected it to be. As we can see that, despite its claims, Marxism is not about respecting the rights and freedoms of the individual. It's about forcibly enlisting them into an ideology. Which is why all Marxist ideologies are fascistic in their core beliefs.
Your second paragraph is meaningless guff. An attempt at drawing an arbitrary line between hiring a person short term and hiring them long term. Only most people would prefer the stability of a long term contract.
And once again, we are not talking US foreign policy. So your third paragraph can be ignored.
In answer to your fifth paragraph, please define 'ownership'. This is important. Because Marxists, as I have already said, have a habit of redefining words to suit their ideology. So we have to make it clear what we are talking about when we say 'ownership'.
Lets take your truck driver as an example. Under the Marxist definition of ownership (whatever that is), could the truck driver in a Marxist economy take the truck home with him? Could he sell it and invest the money along with some of his wages into buying a better truck?
Once again anything other than a 'yes', would prove that my definition of the word ownership (along with the vast majority of everyone else's) is different to that of the Marxist definition of ownership. Why would that be do you think?
Words matter. As do the definition of words. We have already seen that the Marxist definition of freedom (the freedom to sell your own time/labour for example) is simply a lie. With that in mind, it is also important to get right how we are to define the word ownership under the Marxist ideology. Does it mean what it is supposed to mean? Or has the word be redefined for ideological reasons?
On the question of conspiracies, it is a fact that the soviet union worked to undermine governments around the world in an effort to spread the communist ideology. If your argument is that we shouldn't be wary of extremist ideologies, then let the nazis in Charlottesville march! After all, what's the worst that could happen?
And it took you long enough, but finally we got around to the ol' lie of soviet sacrifice against the nazi menace. You call out the US for not getting involved sooner. But then fail to mention the fact that the soviets didn't intervene against nazi Germany until the soviets union itself was attacked. You also fail to mention that up until that point, the soviet union was in effect allied to nazi Germany. The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact was an alliance between communism and nazism to carve up Europe between them. Like two thieves conspiring before one thief turns on the other.
This is important to remember. Because as it does to this day, the far left defines itself as being against a greater evil. That is deliberate. Because without the role of 'the vanguard against fascism', the far left would itself be recognised as no better than the far right. Authoritarian. Genocidal. And Fascist.
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