03-29-2021, 02:39 PM
(03-29-2021, 02:03 AM)Einzige Wrote:(03-29-2021, 01:47 AM)nikkifromcanada Wrote: Are the elites pushing Communism to get rid of the globalists or does the ruling class want to get rid of the 99%?
Alternatively, libertarians are retarded bootlickers and Communism is the only thing that can actually stop MUH ELITES, aka the capitalist class.
Fascists and institutional racists use the specter of Communism as a pretext for imposing despotism, terroristic repression, and extreme oppression on behalf of economic elites who want complete domination of all aspects of life in their countries. Communism is utopian... Marxism-Leninism is a failure as an economic solution for going beyond the early-industrial level of economic development. The contrast between countries at the same level of economic development at the same time, one going Communist and the other staying capitalist is that the Communist-ruled country had its development retarded:
1. Russia - Japan. If anything, Japan was poorer in 1910. The cultural match is poor, but to what country would one compare Russia?
2. German Democratic Republic (east) - German Federal Republic (west). To be sure the pluralistic Germany was more swiftly rebuilt while Communist East Germany endured severe reparations from the USSR... and the DDR was more rural in its economic make-up. Still, East Germany had some highly-industrialized areas in its southwest (Saxony and Thuringia). Central planning does not work.
3, North Korea - South Korea. If you ever saw the movie Black Panther, which is about a hidden African kingdom that has solved all its problems as the world has big problems, you will find an amazing credit for the high-tech wonder tucked away... the country that is South Korea. If anyone comes back from the Korean peninsula and says "I have seen the future and it works", then that person has visited South Korea. To China, North Korea is a money pit and South Korea is a big trading partner. North Korea is a political Hell almost as horrible as Nazi Germany was.
4. Bulgaria - Greece. Despite their long enmity these two countries were more alike in history and culture (especially religion) than one might expect. Bulgaria went Communist and Greece remained capitalist. Greece did much better.
5. Hungary - Austria. The two countries were part of the same empire as late as 1918, and they were peers. Austria is comparatively socialist in government ownership of the steel mills, but otherwise Austria is basically capitalist., Hungary needed an electrified fence to keep people from fleeing. Hungary's 'goulash communism' may have made Hungary the 'jolliest block in the Soviet prison'... after 1956. But it still underperformed a once-equal neighbor.
6. Czechoslovakia - Netherlands. Before World War II, both countries were exporters of luxury goods. Countries can get rich as exporters of luxury goods. Even after losing the captive market that was Indonesia, the Netherlands still prospered. After going Communist, Czechoslovakia backtracked to fit a reactionary and obsolete model imposed by the USSR. The difference between the two countries was not that the Nazis bled them unequally (the bleeding was about equal) or that the countries endured great differences in wartime devastation to infrastructure. It was that the Netherlands had a multi-party system that remained intact since the end of the Second World War and that Czechoslovakia went under Commie rule.
7. Yugoslavia - Italy. They were about even in economic development before World War II. Italy had an economic boom while Yugoslavia stagnated.
8. Romania - France. It seems unlikely and absurd now, but France and Romania were similar in culture and economic development in 1940. Romania had oil, and France didn't... forty years of Commie rule, much of it insane, did unspeakable damage.
9. Poland - Spain. The cultural similarities are remarkable, and both countries experienced similar brain drains in the 1930's and 1940's. Spain lost large numbers of creative people to other countries (including France -- many contemporary French are really Spaniards) and the United States. Hitler destroyed a huge part of Poland's middle class (heavily Jewish before World War II) Spain went fascist and Poland went communist, and Franco's Spain was about as culturally repressive as Poland's commies were. Spain remained the sort of place that was great to visit on a holiday but a place that people chafed in if they were smart. Spain never had central planning, and capitalist investments paid off.
10. Vietnam - Thailand. Thailand has done better longer, and Vietnam is becoming an economic powerhouse as it liberalizes its economy and abandons (as did China) central planning.
11. Cuba - Florida. Not perfect, as Cuba was poorer... but Florida was one of the poorest states in the US and Cuba was by far the richest country in Latin America in 1959. Florida was practically an Apartheid-like state, but Florida is about as free-wheeling a free-enterprise community in the world. Florida isn't quite up to the US average but it is much closer than it was in 1959, thanks in part to many Cuban refugees and their offspring. Cuba does have good medical care, which is one thing it does well. (Maybe we Americans would fare better with cheap education as Germany does that keeps the cost of physicians' services in check. Physicians get poorly paid by US standards and pay higher taxes, but they got inexpensive education through medical school if they had the grades).
12. Somalia - Namibia or Botswana. Say what you want about Apartheid, but once Namibia cast off that yoke it became one of the most prosperous countries in sub-Saharan Africa despite being (like Somalia) entirely desert or semi-desert with a long coastline. Namibia quickly went to free-wheeling free enterprise, and it is a huge exporter of fish and other seafood. Somalia became a haven for pirates as its Commie social order broke down. See also Botswana, arguably the best country in sub-Saharan Africa in which to live. Botswana doesn't have diamonds as a source of taxable revenue, but it does have cattle ranches. Somalia had a horrible famine and Botswana didn't during a drought that afflicted both countries.
13. Estonia - Finland. One country stayed out of the Soviet political and economic orbit, and one became the richest SSR in the Soviet Union. You know how that goes.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.