(07-27-2020, 02:43 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(07-27-2020, 02:02 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Then who does? Yeah, my body is loaded with Commie tattoos -- hammers and sickles, images of Lenin, Marx, Engels, Mao, Castro, Che Guevara, and for good measure Kim il-Sung. And of course, the slogan "Workers of the world, unite!" Sure. And the household cat is a strict vegan.
Truth be told, we liberals recognize that Marxism-Leninism is a catastrophic failure that brought neither peace, progress, nor prosperity that a humane capitalism couldn't achieve. Markets are good controls for keeping people from producing worthless stuff and are good at getting people to do things that they might find unpleasant or inconvenient.
The only people that I know who believe most of the tenets of Marxism are those who believe that capitalism must be a brutal, inequitable, soul-crushing, repressive order in which over nine of ten people exist to suffer for a small elite responsible to none but themselves. Such people differ from Marxists only in endorsing what commies excoriate. It is best that such people wield no power, for if they do they are exactly the sorts of people who make a Marxist revolution a near certainty. Such people seek to meld the traditional hierarchy of feudalism with the productivity of capitalism. If you believe such, then it is a good thing that you have no power to exploit people as you endorse.
How many times have you expressed/promoted Marxist tenets and beliefs? You've done it enough over the years for me to associate you with them. So, you like them and open to them but you're interested in the system itself. Well, guess what, I'd say about a third is interested in having a socialist system instead of our system. So, how many European countries still have monarchs hanging around just in case their experimental democracies take a turn for the worst like it did in Germany? As far as I know, the English monarch still has an army, an air force and a navy.
You didn't even catch the sarcasm. Truth be told, I don't even have a tattoo on me. I'd rather have a canvas that I could sell.
I have explained much about Marxism-Leninism and why it fails to achieve what it promises (and Marx' promise is to create more economic progress by cutting out the profiteering capitalist who diverts much of it to self-indulgent excess that in no way leads to economic growth. His promise of a classless society fails to remain classless as a bloated government making decisions that entrepreneurs do not make develops a class of bureaucrats that end up living as well as capitalists and aristocrats of the Old Order... markets and the profit motive are far better than bureaucrats at making decisions to innovate and eschew waste.
As it turns out, world energy consumption dropped sharply in the 1990's despite people having more cars, refrigerators, and air conditioners because post-Communist regimes started recognizing that energy of all kinds was a valuable resource even though it requires far less labor to produce for its value than, for example, concrete (whose processing and shaping is highly labor-intensive). Commies couldn't recognize the value of a healthy environment, and some of the most egregious offenses against nature happened in 'socialist' countries in which an environmentalist movement would have been squelched with long-term stays in mental wards or prison camps.
That's before I consider the body count, and if anything debunks the validity of Marxism-Leninism, the mass death associated with Commies does.
One needs to know something about Communism to demonstrate how horrid it is in part because of its philosophical failure and the failure of Marxists to recognize human nature for what it is. Everyone wants to live well without doing any real work... and the raw truth is that no system works well without ordering its super-cheap labor about with the regimentation of soldiers. Except that we did that and people doing such work (as gets you cheap dairy and meat) started getting deathly ill from COVID-19 because the regimentation went to the level of requiring them to sacrifice personal sanitation for mechanical speed.
If you want my idea of how to make life better in capitalist societies... then it is to humanize capitalism.
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.