Senate A thread to combat the factual errors on Josef Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili and Mao Zhe Dong

But, wait -- you haven't read it. So what exactly are you DOING debating this subject again? What makes you think, if you have not even read that most preliminary piece, that you have any right whatsoever to debate the subject? It's roughly equievelant for me to enter a debate on Virgil's writing ability without having read any Virgil at all.

May I ask you, have you yourself read Wealth Of Nations? Don't worry, if you haven't, I'm not going to run around screaming calling you ignorant and stupid, and start patronising you, because I'm not like that.

Then you'd be wrong. If you've ever taken an economics course, see which names are mentioned most frequently. Furthermore, I'm finding it difficult to read your sentences - could you possibly attempt to amend the grammar?

For your information, I am a second year Pol Sci student and first year Econ student. Having breifly looked through my textbooks, I find these names mentioned most frequently (Not in any particular order):
1. Adam Smith
2. Alfred marshall
3. John Maynard Keynes
4. Milton Freidman
5. Peter Costello *

Hmm. Karl Marx gets one mention, and for your benefit I will quote that section:

Karl Marx, in contrast, argued in the nineteenth century against a laissez-faire approach. Marx's idea led to the view that the governemnt should essentially own and control all production. ... The centrally planned economies of the former Soviet union, Eatern Europe and China can be traced to Marx's ideas. ... Virtuyally every country that has tried a command economy has rejected it and moved towards a market economy.

(Sourse: Taylor 2002 page 19)

Communism clearly as an economic system is totally discredited. it is in the pat, and hopefully, that is where it will stay. Give the dead some peace, for heavens sake!!!

Learn how to read. My response came as a reply to a comment about armed revolution, which I confessed I couldn't win. Which is hardly surprising, as I don't even have a gun.

Well, you betta get a gun, because that's the only way you will ever successfully det up a communist regime! (By the way I will ignore your rather inoffensive flame)

MarvinTheMartian

* This symbol signifies a joke

 

May I ask you, have you yourself read Wealth Of Nations? Don't worry, if you haven't, I'm not going to run around screaming calling you ignorant and stupid, and start patronising you, because I'm not like that.

Yes, I have.

Furthermore, my comments about ignorance were directed in response to your attempting to debate Communism without any idea what it is.

Hmm. Karl Marx gets one mention, and for your benefit I will quote that section:

What is the name, publisher, author and date of this textbook? Its words on Karl Marx are incorrect, and one mention, in relation to economics, is pitiful.

Communism clearly as an economic system is totally discredited.

Stalinism and Maoism are discredited, I acquiesce. Marxist Communism? Not by a long shot.

Well, you betta get a gun, because that's the only way you will ever successfully det up a communist regime!

Ever heard of peaceful revolution? It can, and has, happened. All it would take to tip the scales in Communisms favour would be a significant financial catastrophe which would lay class antagonism bare, or some kind of actual physical violence between the proletariat and bourgeois in an industrial nation.

I recommend that both you, and Darth Mischievous, as well as anyone else who has not already, read the following:

The Manifesto of the Communist Party

I would also recommend purchasing Capital, but that would be an arduous read and you could be forgiven for not attempting it.

- SCarlet.

 

Thank you for the link. I will read it and get back sometime later.

And for your information, here is the publishing info on my textbook:
Microeconomics 2 - 2nd Edition
Taylor, John B. & Frost, Lionel
Australian Edition published 2002
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Company

Taylor is a professor of Economics at Stanford university. he has also been an economic advisor to the Californian governeor, and to the US Congressional Budget Office, and to the President.

...and one mention, in relation to economics, is pitiful

Hardly. he said in the text that it is a discredited theory. No bounds of logic were needed to come to that conclusion.

MarvinTheMartian

PS: Are you Australian? Your link is from the ANU, in Canberra. Just curious, becaud I grew up there.

 

TSB: "As were the Founding Fathers."

The Founders ROMANTICS?!

Scarlet, how can you say something like that?! They were white englishmen of the enlightenment tradition. Hell, they had a row over having a king instead of a President! Marx's father was of a similiar tradition, but Marx himself was not.

TSB: "Marx was not a 'romantic' in any sense of the world, he saw the science of socialism and dialectic materialism as a verifiable science like any other - not a hopeless ideal."

Whoah, hold on. Take a closer look at what you just wrote and examine it against the backdrop of mid-late-19th century Europe. Not Romantic?! And I don't mean low-lit candles, soft-music romanticism either and you know it. LOL!

He didn't follow the more pessimistic strains of romanticism that were besically fatalistic,no. But, Marx certainly drew from romantic aspirations of struggle, protest, and an activist approach to politics. These all were romantic virtues.

What did Marx call workers anyway? He reached back to a Roman term "proletarians" to describe the working class, and he saw in history an "evolution" to the class struggle that would eventually bring about a labor revolution.

He most certainly was a romantic in the way he saw history as one large system to be deconstructed and analyzed. "The history of all hitherto existing societies has been the history of class struggle."

Marx developed his theories against a backdrop of increasing industrialization, a near-global domination of ancient monarchies, lack of vote for a majority of peoples in "free" societies, and terrible working conditions.

The fact Marx sought a country for the working man also shows some romantic tendencies. Nation-states were a by-product of romanticism.

He also was influenced by Hegel's "nature of man" and so saw capitalism as a contemporary, artificial construct. Communism was natural and a part of ancient tribes and primitive societies. Marx's telling of their destruction and exploitation at the hands of the new capitalists, as a look-back to a fallen era, is also a characteristic of romanticism.

 

It was so long ago that I read The Communist Manifesto, so I don't remember a lot of it, to be honest.

Mill came BEFORE Marx, IIRC, and Kerensky CERTAINLY criticized Marxism quite frequently.

Um, the Founding Fathers PREDATE the Romanticism movement. They were of the ENLIGHTENMENT period!

Sheesh!

Kids today don't know history!

 

Just as I don't need to read "The Satanic Bible" by Anton LeVey to know what evil is really like, I don't need to read the Manifesto nor Mein Kampf to know what evils communism and national socialism have wrought upon the world.

 

The Founders ROMANTICS?!

Read my comment again, pleb. I said "As were the Founding Fathers" in response to your "belonging to their own place and time" comment.

Um, the Founding Fathers PREDATE the Romanticism movement. They were of the ENLIGHTENMENT period!

You need to read my comment again. Perhaps it wasn't clear, but I was addressing the "time and place" comment, not the Romantic one.

Just as I don't need to read "The Satanic Bible" by Anton LeVey to know what evil is really like, I don't need to read the Manifesto nor Mein Kampf to know what evils communism and national socialism have wrought upon the world.

Communism has not "wrought upon the world" any evils (how melodramatic). Stalinism and Maoism, have. And yes, you do need to read the books if you want to debate the subject and argue properly. Otherwise, you just appear ignorant.

- Scarlet.

 

I'd rather be ignorant and righteous, than marxist and blind.

 

I'd rather be ignorant and righteous, than marxist and blind.

Sounds very religious.

Being ignorant does not make one righteous, Mischievous. It makes one ignorant. And look idiotic when they attempt to debate a subject which, as they have confessed, they are ignorant of.

Reading and understanding Marxism will not make you blind. What makes you blind is refusing to open your eyes to even at least read something, which you don't have to agree with, and refusing to understand, if not accept, its ideology.

Your comment sounds highly religious, Mischievous, and utterly incredible; in a so-called enlightened society, what room does willfull ignorance have?

- Scarlet.

 

And furthermore, the Satanism expressed in Anton LeVey's Satanic Bible is not a generically evil one.

It is based upon practice of the seven deadly sins with other consenting adults, and self-gratification. Not exactly evil, as a lot of people do that.

- Scarlet.

 

Scarlett Banner, I have a question for you, just so I know where exactly you are arguing from: What is your definition of communism??

 

Yeah, I've read it Scarlet. I used to tutor political thought. I was suprised to learn the Moor lived live a bourgois gentleman, and had a fierce intellect. I knew the Moor was smart, but not as smart as he truly was. I mean, the man had a mind few could outwit, and the tenacity to match.

Interestingly enough, the Dutch electronics firm, Philips, is linked to Marx: His uncle was Lionel (?) Philips, who founded the company (and leant Marx money, which he was ever running out of).

Darth Mischevous, I understand what you're saying, but IMO it's better to know why it's your enemy, rather than simply stating it is because it is. I've read so much Islamist and al-Qaeda propaganda to understand them, though they are my (and of course your) enemy. You're a smart guy, don't act otherwise!

Mill came BEFORE Marx, IIRC

Yeah, that's right, Guan, but it was more of less the same time period. The two met, and Marx was convinced JS Mill would make a fantasic socialist. IIRC, it was Henry George who influenced Mill to break with his father's brand of utilitarian liberalism and more to egalitarian liberalism. I was teaching this in 1999, so I've forgotten a bit!


We're getting off topic. I read the mammoth book, "The Great Terror: A Reassessment" by Robert Conquest. It is the single best book on Stalin's purges, and should shed any doubt as to the pure evil of the man. I was wondering if anyone's seen "Utomlyonnye solntsem", or "Burnt by the Sun" (which I think is a mistranslation, it should be Exhausted IIRC), esp. Gharlane, if he's still around. Directed by ex-Party member and acclaimed Russian filmmaker Nikita Mikhalkov, it's about ex-Bolshevik hero Comrade Colonel Sergei Petrovich Kotov, who is betrayed by an NKVD officer who was once his wife's lover, and sent to the Gulag to be "purged". I recommend it to anyone who likes character films (like Gosford Park).

Furthermore, of the factual errors concerning Iosef Vissarionovich, do you count Khruschev's secret speech to the 20th Party Congress as one of those errors, Gharlane?

E_S

 

As a mode of Governent? Maybe. As an Ivory Tower theory? Certainly not. Just because it isn't found much anymore in the outside world doesn't automatically discredit relevance.


And tone it down, please.

 

Lucky for the rest of us, neither KW or I share your opinion on banning bad ideas or faulty arguements, or even those with which we disagree.

Um, I don't think you understood what I meant. I retracted my statement that Gharlane should be banned, and my only reason for that feeling was that the bad ideas were posted only for everyone to respond to them and make everyone angry (which I now realize they weren't), not because they were bad ideas. I am all for people posting bad ideas here, and if they were banned then there would be no Senate Floor.

However, I was also pointing out the fact that most of the mods on this board ban extremely faulty ideas all the time instead of deal with them.

I am still trying to figure out why I need to watch myself, as I haven't done anything save posting faulty arguements.

R-7, you better ban me quick if you want to join the mods-who-have-banned-me club, because I won't be here forever, ya know.

 

I'd rather be ignorant and righteous, than marxist and blind.

D_M - Ignorance is one of the greatest weakness that any one can possess. To be willfully ignorant is the height of stupidity. People who are incapable of questioning their own beliefs or examining the beliefs of others are the people most vulnerable to those who would manipulate them. A common claim of conservatives, including myself, is that we support the empowerment of individuals. There is no greater empowerment than knowledge.

 

I cannot understand why anyone would wish to be ignorant. If anything good comes of this thread, I think it can be the idea that ignorance is never good, and that knowledge is important.

 

It was just a metaphor people!

 

Do you even know what a metaphor is? ?

 

Whenever you mention Communism, Darth Mischievous, you include National Socialism as well. Why bring Naziism into the debate at all? It has nothing to do with Communism, and by comparing the two the way you are, you are displaying a lack of knowledge of the ideologies in question.

 

I thought we were talking about Mao Zedong and Iosef Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, aka Stalin.

Stalin means "man of iron" or "man of steel" (not Superman, of course). Think about this; what would the offspring of the Man of Iron, and the Iron Lady (Maggie Thatcher) be like? The most evil cold and heartless being known to mankind!



E_S

 

Stalin means "man of iron" or "man of steel" (not Superman, of course). Think about this; what would the offspring of the Man of Iron, and the Iron Lady (Maggie Thatcher) be like? The most evil cold and heartless being known to mankind!

Don't even think about comparing Stalin and Maggie Thathcher. To compare them is grossly insulting.

 

Well, Thatcher was no saint either. She's not nearly in the same league with Uncle Joe, but she isn't exactly pure and good.

 

I know Ender Sai was just kidding about Thatcher, but nevertheless I have to agree with DarthKarde -- to compare them really is insulting. Thatcher won her reputation by being a strong leader in a democratic country - defending her nation's interests abroad, taking on the unions, reforming the economy (so successfully that even the Labour opposition essentially conceded its validity in the early 90's, giving up the "Clause IV" commitment to socialism and adopting Thatcherite policies as part of the Third Way), and helping end the Cold War along with Reagan and Gorbachev. She never killed political opponents, senselessly murdered untold millions, or brutally repressed other nations. And when her party decided she was no longer an effective prime minister, she was ousted in Parliament -- peacefully and democratically. To seriously attempt any kind of moral equivalence between Thatcher and Stalin is indefensible.

 

I dislike Margaret Thatcher. She repressed the Catholics of Northern Ireland and made no attempts whatsoever to deal with the Irish republicans (even before their assassination attempt).
However, I would NEVER compare Stalin and Thatcher. Stalin was a paranoid madman who murdered millions more people than Hitler (not "sacrificed", as Gharlane put it) and was truly evil. Thatcher wasn't NEARLY as bad as Stalin, and to suggest so is way out of line.

 

Oh people, FFS! It was a joke. An attempt at levity. Sheesh. Did I compare them? NO! I suggested that their offspring would be cold hearted and evil in a supervillain way. Guys, new word: LAUGH!

E_S