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Why Communism is Wrong.

theprestige said:
ruthless ideologues who will absolutely use force to advance their program.
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Never mind all the ruthless leaders whose only 'ideology' was gaining as much wealth and power for themselves as possible. But this has little to do with communism.

Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, Queen Mary I (Bloody May), Tomas de Torquemada (Spanish Inquisition), Vlad the Impaler, Ivan the Terrible, Francisco Franco, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Idi Amin, Augusto Pinochet... the list goes on. Plenty of ruthless leaders who didn't claim communism as their ideology.
 
theprestige said:
Hell, the nuclear family is probably the most communistic social arrangement ever. From each according to their ability, to each according to their need? No better example than the love of parents for each other and for their children.
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How about the nuclear family motto: Father Knows Best! Hardly communistic, is it. ;)

The problem with Communism is, that doesn't scale. Try to force it on a national level, and you'll end up with atrocities that make capitalism look like a Hallmark movie.
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Neither scale well, really.

As soon as the ideological fervor you've drummed up starts to fade, your grand socialist family falls apart in the most toxic ways. And while the ideological fervor is running strong? That's when the pogroms happen.
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Any rigid ideology will run like that. Seen Catholic schools?

Tell me more about how Jesus endorsed Communist pogroms. What's the Aramaic for "gulag"?
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Don't be silly. :rolleyes:
 
Norman Alexander said:
No, he didn't. He was the first hippie, if you like. He and his followers lived in a commune together. Nothing mystical about that.
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Hippie communes aren't communism. We already know that small communes are viable as long as there are no bad actors. This does not scale to a system of the world. As history has made abundantly clear.

But you're still fumbling around the edges. You're still not coming up with any kind of Christian sermon that functions equally well as a Marxist-Leninist sermon. Or a Marxist-anything sermon.

I do think it's cute that you're all struggling to find a Bible based defense of Communism. You don't believe in either, but here you are.
 
theprestige said:
Tell me more about how Jesus endorsed Communist pogroms. What's the Aramaic for "gulag"?
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I'm sure you know that until 1917 Russia was a Christian nation, right? (Orthodox Christianity having been made the state religion in the year 987)

So...

Gulag
The Tsar and the Russian Empire used both forced exile and forced labor as forms of judicial punishment. Katorga, a category of punishment reserved for those convicted of the most serious crimes, had many of the features associated with labor-camp imprisonment: confinement, simplified facilities (as opposed to prisons), and forced labor, usually involving hard, unskilled or semi-skilled work... approximately 6,000 katorga convicts were serving sentences in 1906 and 28,600 in 1916. Under the Imperial Russian penal system, those convicted of less serious crimes were sent to corrective prisons and also made to work. Forced exile to Siberia had been in use since the seventeenth century for a wide range of offenses and was a common punishment for political dissidents and revolutionaries.
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theprestige said:
Tell me more about your ideology that uses force of law and arms to prevent me from imposing the death penalty on anyone who insults my honor. Tell me more about how this is an ideal you believe in, but would never dream of imposing on someone else.
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Dealt with elsewhere, but it's not an ideology because it doesn't form a basis of economic or political theory and policy. It really allows for many different forms of economic and/or political theories and policies to sit on top of it and be quite different, all based on what the particular society wants.

My basic principles are that as long as a person's actions harm no one else, then they should be allowed to pursue that action. Governments should be in place to do little more than to make sure that the rights that society determines people to have are upheld for everyone in the society, to provide for a method of grievance reconciliation should those rights be violated, and provide for the safety and well-being of those that are members of the society.

If society determines that people have a right to life then your want to enforce the death penalty would be in violation of that right. I'd also note that such law and force of arms that might then come from that violation of rights does not actually prevent you from living as you want in your ideology, it prevents you from forcing that way onto others about you. Which is what I stated at the beginning. Your right to your own ideals stops when you want to force those ideals onto someone else.
 
theprestige said:
Hippie communes aren't communism. We already know that small communes are viable as long as there are no bad actors. This does not scale to a system of the world. As history has made abundantly clear.

But you're still fumbling around the edges. You're still not coming up with any kind of Christian sermon that functions equally well as a Marxist-Leninist sermon. Or a Marxist-anything sermon.

I do think it's cute that you're all struggling to find a Bible based defense of Communism. You don't believe in either, but here you are.
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I'm barely even trying because this is hardly important to me. It is more of a passing amusement in my lunch hour.

The biblical Jesus is a fantasy, concocted over 300 years later at Nicea. If you really wish to compare Marxist communism, or any other form of communism (and there are many), to this mythical Jesus story, you are comparing ancient apples and modern oranges. It's pointless. If you are wanting me to magically produce the COMMUNIST JESUS MANIFESTO, then you will be waiting a long time.
 
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Norman Alexander said:
I'm barely even trying because this is hardly important to me. It is more of a passing amusement in my lunch hour.

The biblical Jesus is a fantasy, concocted over 300 years later at Nicea. If you really wish to compare Marxist communism, or any other form of communism (and there are many), to this mythical Jesus story, you are comparing ancient apples and modern oranges. It's pointless. If you are wanting me to magically produce the COMMUNIST JESUS MANIFESTO, then you will be waiting a long time.
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Somehow you're directing this at me, and not abaddon. Have you even considered the possibility that we're on the same page about abaddon's claim?
 
theprestige said:
I do think it's cute that you're all struggling to find a Bible based defense of Communism. You don't believe in either, but here you are.
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I think it's cute that anyone struggles to find a Bible based defense of capitalism - yet many countries claimed Christianity as their justification for holding power over the people. One only has to look at the endless wars and constantly changing territories in Europe to see that a toxic combination of religion and capitalism was not working out well for the general population.

Communism doesn't 'scale' it's true, but neither does any political system based on an economic theory that assumes rational actors. Capitalism leads to extreme wealth inequality and boom and bust cycles that affect the entire World. Pure socialism tends to fail too, and Libertarianism hadn't managed to get off the ground, but most countries have managed to find a balance that takes a little of each to produce a relatively stable mixed economy.

The bigger the country the harder it gets for different groups to agree on anything, and many large countries are actually several states each with their own laws and economies. The US is a good example of this, with half the Federal government arguing that it has too much power while simultaneously trying to force its ideologies onto the other half.
 
Norman Alexander said:
How about: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs", by one K. Marx.

Acts 4:32-35: 32 All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had.
33 With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all
34 that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales
35 and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need.
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Does this mean that communism is illegal under the first amendment?
 
Norman Alexander said:
The biblical Jesus is a fantasy, concocted over 300 years later at Nicea.
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Jesus may be a myth or a literary device, but Christian communism was real and predated the council of Nicea. I seriously doubt that they 'concocted' the stories of Jesus out of thin air, but even if they did their depiction of him as a 'communist' was almost certainly based on real examples.

Fast forward to the early 20th century and we see that 'communism' didn't spring out thin air either, but was a development of those early Christian teachings.
 
Roger Ramjets said:
Jesus may be a myth or a literary device, but Christian communism was real and predated the council of Nicea. I seriously doubt that they 'concocted' the stories of Jesus out of thin air, but even if they did their depiction of him as a 'communist' was almost certainly based on real examples.

Fast forward to the early 20th century and we see that 'communism' didn't spring out thin air either, but was a development of those early Christian teachings.
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Not to mention that the letters and gospel were well in use before 300AD, in fact, the earliest fragment we have of a Gospel is from early to mid 2nd century, so over 150 years prior to the Council. We also know that Christians were well settled in Rome by 64AD because, according to Tacitus, they were blamed by Nero for the great fire of Rome in 64AD.

I'd also note that considering the time frame, it would seem that there was most likely a real man named Yeshua who lived in Palestine during the period of about 8BC to 36AD, and who taught people and lead a group of men in what the leadership at the time considered a rebellion. And that this man was executed by Pontius Pilate. It would seem incredibly strange for such a movement to grow up and form in the numbers in had by 64AD, as few as 28 years after the events in question, had there not been some kernel of truth to the matter. For them, it would have been like us discussing someone from the late 1980s to early 1990s.

One could, however, certainly make the claim that the version of Jesus we have today was created in 300AD with the Council's selection of the letters and Gospels which would be used to form the New Testament, but anyone would be extremely hard-pressed to claim that the entirety of who Jesus was, was created in 300AD.
 
I moved 69 posts to AAH for being off-topic. The thread is not about spell-checkers, grammar, the tilt of the Earth, the Beatles or each other. Let's stick to a discussion about "Why Communism is Wrong," shall we?
Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: xjx388
 
Roger Ramjets said:
Jesus may be a myth or a literary device, but Christian communism was real and predated the council of Nicea. I seriously doubt that they 'concocted' the stories of Jesus out of thin air, but even if they did their depiction of him as a 'communist' was almost certainly based on real examples.

Fast forward to the early 20th century and we see that 'communism' didn't spring out thin air either, but was a development of those early Christian teachings.
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I suspect what some people call "communism" is not what is meant by this definition. They are thinking of Marxist economic theory, not a group with common community values. Perhaps it is a case of arguing past each other that has caused the confusion.
 
PhantomWolf said:
Not to mention that the letters and gospel were well in use before 300AD, in fact, the earliest fragment we have of a Gospel is from early to mid 2nd century, so over 150 years prior to the Council. We also know that Christians were well settled in Rome by 64AD because, according to Tacitus, they were blamed by Nero for the great fire of Rome in 64AD.

I'd also note that considering the time frame, it would seem that there was most likely a real man named Yeshua who lived in Palestine during the period of about 8BC to 36AD, and who taught people and lead a group of men in what the leadership at the time considered a rebellion. And that this man was executed by Pontius Pilate. It would seem incredibly strange for such a movement to grow up and form in the numbers in had by 64AD, as few as 28 years after the events in question, had there not been some kernel of truth to the matter. For them, it would have been like us discussing someone from the late 1980s to early 1990s.

One could, however, certainly make the claim that the version of Jesus we have today was created in 300AD with the Council's selection of the letters and Gospels which would be used to form the New Testament, but anyone would be extremely hard-pressed to claim that the entirety of who Jesus was, was created in 300AD.
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That was my sole point in my previous comments. The New Testament Jesus is a fictional character, not a complex dark-skinned Middle Eastern religious rebel. And much of the rabid right of today clings to the New Testament as "truth". They believe it is the foundation of such momentous documents as the US Constitution.

But we digress. Communism. Let's stick to communism.
 
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Shalamar said:
Communism bad.

Now what?
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Unregulated Capitalism can be indistinguishable from Feudalism, which is bad as well. Properly regulated Capitalism works better than anything else we know about.

The main problem I see these days is that there is a large segment of the population that believes it when they are told that these essential regulations are "a path to communism" when in fact they are really a path to "Capitalism functioning as intended. "
 
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