# Is Communism the Answer?



## Purple (26 Jan 2009)

_"Owners of capital will stimulate the working class to buy more and more of expensive goods, houses and technology, pushing them to take more and more expensive credits, until their debt becomes unbearable. The unpaid debt will lead to bankruptcy of banks, which will have to be nationalised, and the State will have to take the road which will eventually lead to communism". 

Karl Marx, Das Kapital, 1867 _


For a beardy lunatic he wasn’t far off the mark!


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## MugsGame (26 Jan 2009)

Purple said:


> _Karl Marx, Das Kapital, 1867 _



Can you provide an authoratative link which substantiates this source?



Purple said:


> Nationalise private industry and collectivise the farms to socialise the means of production. Public Servants are immune from the vagaries and temptations of the free market which got us into this mess.



Don't you hate when people misquote you?


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## Purple (26 Jan 2009)

MugsGame said:


> Can you provide an authoratative link which substantiates this source?


 Nope, and after looking into it a bit more it does look like a hoax quote (even though it's being quoted all over the place).
Mods; feel free to delete this thread.


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## bamboozle (26 Jan 2009)

i'd be happy to see communism introduced for 24 hours, if during that 24 hours all members of government for the last 10 years be rounded up and taken off to the Urals and left there, then we could re-introduce democracy and elect a new government....


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## jhegarty (26 Jan 2009)

MugsGame said:


> Can you provide an authoratative link which substantiates this source?




Every reference I can find to this days from the last month.

The word technology doesn't fit right to me for the alleged date of the quote.


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## DavyJones (26 Jan 2009)

I think the exact wording of the quote is irrelevant or even who said it.  Whats more important is, is the statement true? and would we be better off in a communist state?


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## Caveat (26 Jan 2009)

Have a look.


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## jhegarty (26 Jan 2009)

DavyJones said:


> Whats more important is, is the statement true? and would we be better off in a communist state?



I would rather live in a country where the secret police don't disappear you in the middle of the night.

Anyway I think examples like east Germany has shown that communism just don't work.


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## Purple (26 Jan 2009)

Right so, that's that. It turns out he was just a beardy lunatic and was nowhere near the mark.


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## Padraigb (26 Jan 2009)

Purple said:


> Right so, that's that. It turns out he was just a beardy lunatic and was nowhere near the mark.



Marx was quite close to the mark in his analysis of how society works. It was only when he proposed ways of improving society that he lost the plot.

Communism has not yet been tried.


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## D8Lady (26 Jan 2009)

Padraigb said:


> Communism has not yet been tried.


Oh Please! Cuba, China, USSR, Albania, North Korea.....

At least Cuba has rum, music and health care.


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## Vanilla (26 Jan 2009)

MugsGame said:


> Can you provide an authoratative link which substantiates this source?
> 
> 
> 
> Don't you hate when people misquote you?


 
Very clever. I fell for that one.


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## j26 (26 Jan 2009)

D8Lady said:


> Oh Please! (1)Cuba, (2)China, (3)USSR, (4)Albania, (5)North Korea.....
> 
> At least Cuba has rum, music and health care.



(1)Nationalist - turned to USSR after attenpts to establish detente with the USA failed
(2)Nationalist totalitatian - state capitalist
(3)State capitalist - never claimed to be communist, but at some stage claimed (the eighties iirc) to have reached "developed socialism"
(4)Not too sure
(5) Just mad - nothing to do with communism at all

The nearest attempts at  large scale communism were the Communards (Paris Commune) and Catalonia (in an anarchist way).


Anyway, Marx's analysis was too simplistic.


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## AlastairSC (27 Jan 2009)

The early Christians tried it, too, after Christ's death. If you read the first few chapters of the Acts of the Apostles, you get the gist. It seemed to descend into anarchy pretty quickly, I think - obviously mankind is not ready for so civilised and high-minded a system. Oh well, perhaps in another few centuries.......


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## Purple (27 Jan 2009)

Padraigb said:


> Communism has not yet been tried.


 It has, in as much as it can be tried. It can't work and won't work. Utopia cannot be achieved through coercion and without coercion as long as one person in a million doesn’t buy into the ideal it will collapse.


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## MOB (27 Jan 2009)

Is Communism the answer?


Yes,

If the question is "what political ideology has inflicted more unnecessary poverty on its proponents than any other?"


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## csirl (27 Jan 2009)

D8Lady said:


> Oh Please! Cuba, China, USSR, Albania, North Korea.....
> 
> At least Cuba has rum, music and health care.


 
Then how come they have a low life expectancy?


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## jhegarty (27 Jan 2009)

csirl said:


> Then how come they have a low life expectancy?




Cuba has life expectancy inline with western countries.

What they do lack is advanced modern technology, but the doctors are amongst the best in the world.


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## MOB (27 Jan 2009)

I don't think Cubans have such a low life expectancy.   It is higher than such near neighbours as Haiti, Dominican Republic and even Bahamas.   It is only slightly behind us.

This is according to WHO stats -see for example http://www.who.int/countries/cub/en/

Of course, it may well be argued that statistics from Cuba may need to be taken with a pinch of salt.  I have not researched it in any great detail.


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## Purple (27 Jan 2009)

MOB said:


> Of course, it may well be argued that statistics from Cuba may need to be taken with a pinch of salt.  I have not researched it in any great detail.


 Indeed, communist countries with a state run personality cult as head of state aren't usually that reliable.


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## DrMoriarty (27 Jan 2009)

Indeed.

[broken link removed]


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## MOB (28 Jan 2009)

I know we are getting slightly off topic; but staying for a minute with Cuba, one of the things positively associated with longer life is restricted calorie intake.  

It may be the case that material poverty in Cuba is associated with a (relatively) healthier diet than would be the case if Cubans could all afford a staple diet of quarter pounders and large fries.   

It would be interesting to see some detailed stats for the diseases which are more likely and less likely to affect you if you are Cuban.  I suppose I would not be surprised to see a higher than normal prevalence of some ailments linked to particular nutritional deficiencies (I can't think of them off the top of my head - but I presume there are some types of food in short supply; meat and dairy perhaps?) but a lower prevalence of many ailments which are linked to obesity and heavily processed foods\ diets short of fresh fruit and veg ( heart attacks, bowel cancer).  I might take a look and see if I can post any useful info.


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## Purple (28 Jan 2009)

DrMoriarty said:


> Indeed.
> 
> [broken link removed]



Ehhhh, nice one!


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## Simeon (28 Jan 2009)

Read Animal Farm. As I'm sure everyone has. We are human and to get to the top of the evolutionary tree we had to be selfish ........... ie. bash everything that closely resembled us or would try to get even/pass us out. This, I might add was the order of the day thousands of years ago but there is and will be residual.


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## Elphaba (29 Jan 2009)

"All fingers are not alike, If you cut bigger ones to make all equal it is communism, If you stretch smaller ones to make all equal it is socialism, If you do nothing to make all equal it is capitalism."


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## AlastairSC (30 Jan 2009)

Capitalism is the exploitation of man by man but Communism is the complete opposite!


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## c00lcarl (30 Jan 2009)

Simeon said:


> We are human and to get to the top of the evolutionary tree we had to be selfish ........... ie. bash everything that closely resembled us or would try to get even/pass us out. This, I might add was the order of the day thousands of years ago but there is and will be residual.


 
How is that thousands of years ago it seems a fairly apt description of where we are now, every area we inhabit or visit we destroy - the plant life, the animals, the environment and most of the time it is done in the name of progress but in reality it is to make the richest 5% of the population richer and keep the poorest of the poor disempowered.


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## UptheDeise (21 Feb 2009)

I don't care what type of health care Cuba has, I won't touch the country with a barge pole. I cherish my liberty, thank you very much.

'Thanks, little stranger, for all thy care, 
But dearly I love the clear cool air ; 
And my snug little nest, on the old oak tree, 
Is better than a golden cage to me.'


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