[phaster]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('xerces', 'O')n election night, I was hanging out with a group of friends. And we were basically discussing some of the wealth re-distribution plans that Obama was proposing. I strongly disapprove of such methods and very quickly found out that nearly all of my friends were for it. In short, almost all of a group of educated mid-20s people were supporting a government that would give them money that they didn't earn.

Being a little perplexed by all of this, I gave my old man a call and we talked about this obsession with socializing other people's wealth. My father mentioned that when he was my age, he believed it as well. He believed as a young man that people should willingly give up their wealth and material possessions for the greater good. That a society should take all that a person is capable of producing and give to those that needs it. He also mentioned that it was all government bullsh*t, just propaganda designed to get young people to do stupid things for a political party. He told me that during the cultural revolution in China, a generation of young people sacrificed their youth and energy for the corrupt goals of handful of political power-brokers. In the end those people woke up in their 30s with no money, no skills, and was totally abandoned by their own government. And that was why he stopped believing that communism could work.

I'm interested in hearing everyone's opinion on this matter?

[Keith_McClary]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('LoneSnark', '
')Have you been to a forest recently? I grew up on a farm and spent a lot of time in the woods hunting and such. The briars tear your flesh, the cluttered ground sprains ankles, and the insects dig wounds and spill blood.

[cube]

Maybe off topic but there seems to be a "certain group" of people on this board that basically believe "becoming one with nature" would be a lot of fun.
It's like they think all we have to do is leisurely spend 30 minutes a day picking forest mushrooms and afterwards we can all go back to the hobbit village and smoke those mushrooms.

Can you handle the truth?

If it weren't for Adam Smith division of labor, Henry Ford economies of scale, and massive mechanization thanks to cheap energy a return to a more simple lifestyle would be HARD work.
The sweat would pour down your forehead as you toil from sunrise to sunset. Your hands would become callous and your skin would become tough as leather under the scorching sun. Without the aid of heavy machinery and being limited to only hand tools your body would become mangled over time from the repetitive labor.
You think I'm joking? Take a look at pictures of subsistence farmers from the 3rd world. You may notice they don't look very pretty.....there's a reason why!

[paimei01]

Want to know why is communism appealing to young people ?

First : Communism never existed. Russia, Eastern Europe, China, Korea, Cuba were all dictatorships where the many were ordered around by the few.

The idea of working together for ourselves not for some slave master, that is appealing to young people.
You are 20 years old, ready to take over the world, and your first desire is to find a slave master, work for him hoping you will get rich ? The in the evenings and weekends you find some time to truly "live" for yourself.

Yes yes, it can't be done, bla bla, people are evil. It can be done and people are not evil just lost. The story they are enacting is what you see today. Slavery , greed and walking around clueless.

Did you know that slave masters used to feed and care for their slaves ? Because they were valuable, a slave was worth 50000$ in today's money. Now we have to feed ourselves.

Do you know where communism appeared ? Research for working condintions in 1900. Those people never intended to establish dictatorships.

[Byron100]

I think communism appeals to a lot of young people is the security factor that it offers. Instead of having to compete in a dog-eat-dog world, you would be guaranteed a job matching your skill / intelligence level, free or low-cost housing, free health care, and a guaranteed retirement. If communism can be made to work like it's supposed to, then sign me up!

As Eastbay has suggested in a recent post, communism doesn't have to be totally equal pay for everyone, which would stifle all ambition and innovation. A system could be put into place to put a floor at the bottom and a ceiling at the top, in order to ensure a decent standard of living for all. In order to have a sane and just society, you really do need to have a way of providing *guaranteed* basics for everyone - this means equal education (no "slum" schools, for example), jobs awarded based on need as opposed to one's "bullshitting" skills, and an overall economy governed by intelligent policy to insure sustainability and to prevent the boom-bust cycle that's caused so much pain and suffering over the centuries.

We could go a long, long ways to implementing such a system via our educational system, a la what we had in the 1970's and early '80's, which was when I was in school. Basic stuff like sharing = good, greed = bad. Helping others, good, taking advantage of others, bad. Materialism, bad, minimalism, good. Cutting down the stalk that grows too tall to help the little plants grow. That sort of thing. To me as a child, I thought all this was well and good, but when I came home to demonstrate these wonders of modern living to my dad, all he'd do was to get snippy and ornery with me, which I resent to this day. Talk about the clash of the old ways with the new...

Oh well, this country has a long ways to go yet...I just hope that a few people are able to carry the torch into the future and establish a decent, humane society for our descendants, however long that might take.

[Keith_McClary]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('cube', ' ')Take a look at pictures of subsistence farmers from the 3rd world. You may notice they don't look very pretty.....there's a reason why!

[vaseline2008]

It's finally dawned on me...communism (or some form of it) is all they have ever known their whole lives. Let me explain:

1. Parents are like "dictators". "Do as you're told or no dinner/soup for you!"
2. Teachers are like "dictators". "Time for Reading."
3. All students are "equal". "Treat others like you would like to be treated."
4. All us students can "do things". "United we stand, divided we fall."

As children, we grow up being told what to wear, eat and do (for the most part and I take exception to the rebellious few) and the majority of us conform.

I know it's a very simplistic point of view, but perhaps I may be too biased as I have two children of my own...

[Ferretlover]

"Why is communism so appealing to young people?"
Because most parents teach their children to share, and it takes a while to break this habit.

[pana_burda]

Regarding the original question of the thread and begging forgiveness for intruding, I hardly doubt there is a movie as enligthening as this one bellow, regarding how such badly needed social/political/economic proccesses, degenerate into plain delinquency and caos.

And sorrowness IF you ever felt you could support it without getting affected by it. At least, down in Venezuela, the list of mr. "Esteban Truebases" is larger than anyone could´d have ever thought possible. Especially in lower and middle class people.

The house of the spirits

It really worths the watch, if you could grab a copy of it!.

[Gorm]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ferretlover', '"')Why is communism so appealing to young people?"
Because most parents teach their children to share, and it takes a while to break this habit.

[mgibbons19]

Because communism seems like a fairer system in an unfair world.

At first.

Life experience and reading will cure that.

Whoever said capitalism was more honest was right. It's still a brutal mean unfair world - but at least you know that's the game you're playing.

[Ferretlover]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Gorm', 'N')o, under commmunist you cant share because you own nothing. The state own everything.

[Sixstrings]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'C')hina today celebrated its wealth and rising might with a show of goose-stepping troops, gaudy floats and nuclear-capable missiles in Beijing, 60 years after Mao Zedong proclaimed its embrace of communism.

Tiananmen Square became a hi-tech stage to celebrate the birth of the People's Republic of China on October 1, 1949, with President Hu Jintao, wearing a slate grey 'Mao' suit, and the Communist Party leadership watching the meticulously disciplined show from the Gate of Heavenly Peace over the Square.

The regime has come an enormously long way in six decades, from a society of peasant collective farms, hidden from the world behind a veil of secrecy, to the world's fastest-growing economy, an industrial and military superpower-in-waiting.

But beneath today's orgy of celebrations that marks the anniversary lurks a disturbing reality. Mao's successors may have embraced cut-throat capitalism to a degree that makes even Western economists blanch. But the arrangements for the parade are a reminder that China remains a deeply authoritarian society.

Tibet has also been closed off to foreigners for the duration - a reminder of China's expansionist ambitions, and of the threat it could pose to world peace in years to come.

When the Communists seized control in 1949, China was a poverty-stricken basket case, ravaged by famine, ethnic tension and feuding between rival warlords.

And in the years that followed, Mao's policies of forced industrialisation and collective farming, as well as his murderous purges of the middle classes, accounted for millions of deaths.

One scholarly estimate suggests that in 40 years, almost 80 million Chinese were slaughtered or died as a result of government policy - making the regime the biggest killer in history.

But now, of course, all that is conveniently forgotten. And British politicians are more likely to pay tribute to China's economic renaissance than to draw attention to the undemocratic brutality of its Communist regime.

When the Communists seized control in 1949, China was a poverty-stricken basket case, ravaged by famine, ethnic tension and feuding between rival warlords.

And in the years that followed, Mao's policies of forced industrialisation and collective farming, as well as his murderous purges of the middle classes, accounted for millions of deaths.

One scholarly estimate suggests that in 40 years, almost 80 million Chinese were slaughtered or died as a result of government policy - making the regime the biggest killer in history.

But now, of course, all that is conveniently forgotten. And British politicians are more likely to pay tribute to China's economic renaissance than to draw attention to the undemocratic brutality of its Communist regime.

There is no doubt that the facts and figures are extraordinary.

Thanks to the regime's embrace of capitalism, China's poverty rate has fallen from 53 per cent to just 8 per cent over the past 20 years.

China currently has territorial disputes with Japan, both Koreas, Bhutan, the Philippines and Vietnam, as well as one of the world's most enduring and most dangerous border disputes with India, which could easily bring two nuclear powers to the brink of war.

Perhaps most worrying, however, is the evidence of Chinese expansionism and interference in Africa.

In 1873 the Victorian explorer Sir Francis Galton suggested that one way to modernise the so-called Dark Continent was to fill it with ' industrious, order-loving Chinese', with Africa becoming a 'semi-detached dependency of China'. Such was the outcry that Galton soon dropped the idea. But more than a century later, he seems to have been ahead of his time.

For in the past decade, more than 750,000 Chinese have settled in Africa, and the red flag now flutters over jungles and prairies alike.
In the ports of East Africa, Chinese cargo ships are loaded every day with oil, timber and diamonds.

Vast Chinese-owned mines pay African labourers less than £1 a day to scratch out copper for the gigantic smoke-belching cities of East Asia. And deep in the heart of Africa, acres of forest are ripped down every day as timber for China's industrial revolution.

But there is another side to this new Scramble for Africa. For in return, the Chinese are selling African leaders the assault rifles, warplanes and mortars they need for their bloody wars of conquest and ethnic cleansing.

Only last year, Zimbabwe's despotic Robert Mugabe received a cool £200m in Chinese military aid.

And even the brutal slaughter in southern Sudan, in which hundreds of thousands of non-Muslim peasants were murdered by government militias, was carried out with £55m-worth of Chinese weapons, sold to the Sudanese in defiance of a UN arms embargo.

Meanwhile, China itself is well on the way to becoming one of the world's dominant military powers. Already, its standing army alone has more than 2.25 million men.

And for the past 20 years, the Chinese have been modernising at a staggering rate - ploughing the fruits of their industrial revolution not into welfare programmes, health care or the environmental protection their people so badly need, but into guns, guns and more guns.
It is no accident that the centrepiece of the 60th anniversary celebrations in Beijing is a massive military parade.

Like so many aggressively modernising regimes before them - Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union spring to mind - the Chinese leadership clearly equate economic progress with military spending. Only this week, their Defence Minister Liang Guanglie bragged that the parade would ' display the image of a military force, a civilised force, a victorious force'.

With its new J-10 fighter jets, naval destroyers and Cruise missiles, the Chinese army, he said, was a match for any in the Western world. 'This is an extraordinary achievement,' he boasted, 'that speaks of our military's modernisation and the huge change in our technological strength.

Within ten years, China's rulers plan to have a fully mechanised and computerised army. And within 20, the world's biggest military force could be capable of standing toe to toe with its American counterpart - especially if the U.S. economy continues to stutter and slide.

Imagine a scenario, 30 years from now, where the Western powers' resistance has been sapped by years of economic turmoil, environmental collapse and a bitter struggle for resources.

Imagine that China's Communist leadership, buoyed by decades of military spending, decide to celebrate their 90th anniversary by reabsorbing Taiwan and 'settling' their border disputes once and for all.

It is all too easy to close our eyes and wish for the best. But unless we are careful, what happens in 2039 could make 1939 look like a children's tea party.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1217310/Marching-world-domination-China-celebrates-60-years-communism-display-military-worry-West.html

[Jotapay]

Mao was a monster. My girlfriend had many in her family killed (sometimes murdered) in China under his policies. His policies starved tend of millions in the 1960s. He had no idea how to run a modern country, although he was a brilliant revolutionary.

To answer your question, China's policies where the government rules without protest or interference and strict control over the family (planning, etc) are our oligarchs' wet dream. They would love to have that control over us. Rockefeller wrote in the New York Times in 1974 that China was a model for all of us.

[crude_intentions]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'U')h-huh. This is puzzling.. I can't understand why the birth of Chinese totalitarianism needs to be celebrated on US soil.