[Gorm]

quinny. you are wrong. The diffrence was huge and they were VERY poor in the outer areas of USSR, and for the rest of your text.. geez.. get real.

[deMolay]

As much as many here may despise the USA, in the former Communist Russia or China today you would not be having this discussion. You would be on your knees in Communist China having your organs harvested. To compare the USA to any of these brutal states and to ignore the butchery of hundreds of millions of innocent people who died horrible deaths is very dishonest to say the least.

[Quinny]

'Communist' China? I thought they'd bought the capitalist lie!

I had a serious accident and had to undergo life saving surgery in the USA:
1st they wouldn't even admit me to hospital till I proved I had the means to pay. The ambulance guy was embarassed by the hospital administrator and apologised to me.
2nd I had to sign a disclaimer to accept that I stood a fairly good chance of AIDs or Hepatitus B because much of the blood came from the poor of America.

In communist Yugoslavia when I had a diving accident, I was treated immediately no questions asked! I wouldn't start arguing against communism in the area of medical treatment.

[deMolay]

How about this medical treatment Quinny. Did you need an organ. link

[deMolay]

In Communism you do not even own the right to your own body, let alone property. Many articles on organ harvesting by the benevolent Communists. http://en.epochtimes.com/211,111,,1.html

[Gorm]

US healtcare system sucks big time. But that has nothing to do with communism, just decency

[Munqi]

There are very few people out there that actually generate their own wealth entirely. We live in a society where everything is linked to everything. A business owner would not be able to do business without his workers therefore those workers deserve their share. Just because the owner owns the business he should not be the only person deciding what kind of life his employees get to live. Ofcourse if theres more work than there are workers then its the workers that make the rules but thats often not the case.

Secondly, if we consider oil companies for example. Do they own that oil just because they were the ones to discover it first? Hell no, it belongs to the people. (This is the only thing i respect about Palin)

edit: Communism has nothing to do with Obamas spread the wealth policies. Use countries like Sweden and Canada in your examples.

[Carlhole]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Chief', 'L')ets flip this around and see what bona-fide wealth re-distribution a.k.a communism gets you: Devestation. Hopelessness. The feeling that no matter what you do you'll still be poor. I spent a lot of time in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union from 1985 until 2003 and saw this first hand.

[Alcassin]

At least Carlhole reads something, and asks himself "why".
Keep up, I don't believe reading Marx make people believe in socialism, like reading Quran doesn't make you muslim.

First stage is to know what's going on, and ask - why?
Why organized labor exist?
Why the factory was so important?
What was the cause of the left?

Most of people are just feeding almost every topic with their blind, uneducated hate? They doesn't understand social dynamics. For me what Marx really did was the analysis of power relations in rapidly industrializing world.

But it's not the topic.
Mixing social-democracy with totalitarian apparatus of Joseph Stalin (why not Brezhnev, guys?) is intellectually dishonest. Mixing some social projects with communism of that era is not only intellectually dishonest, it's just sequel of MacCarthyist red purges.

I unfortunately see here very often mixing most of European countries which have such social programs with Bolshevik totalitarianism/communism/socialism/whatever. I read that kind of misinformation as a part of American way of life - Americans, to put it simply, don't travel abroad too often. It's a part of American exceptionalism (together with creationism, evangelicals, sodomy laws etc.), and I think it's a part of the cause why the US are on the course downward.

[Gorm]

why must this be discussed from an american angel?

If we talk about socialism, well, them sweden was/is more socialistic than USSR ever was, but, We Were never communist. There is a big difference between that.

[Quinny]

Good post, I personally think that what's happening at the moment is the wealth is starting to be shared about, the problem is that it will lead to massive disruption in western society. If we had been more forward thinking and not exported death through imperialism, we might have been able to get away with a more ordered re-distribution.
My grandfather worked for an engineering company that made looms for the cotton industry. He always said we should have included a shop steward in the sale!
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Carlhole', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Chief', 'L')ets flip this around and see what bona-fide wealth re-distribution a.k.a communism gets you: Devestation. Hopelessness. The feeling that no matter what you do you'll still be poor. I spent a lot of time in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union from 1985 until 2003 and saw this first hand.

[jasonraymondson]

You are right!!! Nothing should be discussed by an America Angel.

Primarily, because I don't thing they exist.

[VMarcHart]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Gorm', 'A') Liberal is very very far from a communist/socialist. But not in the US as I get, there liberal equals some kind of communist/socialist. Why is that?

[VMarcHart]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Gorm', 'C')ommunism is definitly in the stricter laws, more punishment category, one can get shot fore almost anything, for exampel, in the 60´s some were shot in the soviet union for selling jeans on the black market, which were illegal as an example.

[VMarcHart]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Gorm', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('VMarcHart', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('deMolay', 'C')ommunism as in Russia or China usually ended up murdering an awful lot of their own citizens. In the hundreds of millions.

[Gorm]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')sn't that rather an example of totalitarian/semi-dictatorial governmental regime?

[deMolay]

VMarkH I posted endless links for you to use. Don't be so lazy. Are you really so blind and uneducated and brainwashed like some other useful idiots here, that even when confronted with facts immediately start the appologist machines up. To smooth over the rough patches with National Socialism in Germany, Communisim in Russia/ China etc. And hundreds of millions of innocent dead, and they are still hacking off parts and selling them this veryday. Well boys I hate to tell you but when you shine a turd, shit sticks to your hands. And you apologists for brutality have shit on your hands right now.

[VMarcHart]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('deMolay', 'h')ttp://www.osaarchivum.org/gulag/e.htm

[VMarcHart]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Gorm', 'q')uinny. you are wrong. The diffrence was huge and they were VERY poor in the outer areas of USSR, and for the rest of your text.. geez.. get real.

[Gorm]

the numbers incudes china.