1. Dictators never believe themselves to be "tsars" or like the people they've replaced. Everything is "different" because they're "doing it for the people" or "for the goals of the revolution". Even true revolutionaries like Lenin and Trotsky did that. Trotsky would have been just as ruthless as Stalin had he come out on top.
They can believe themselves living on animal farm; that does not mean they do, even if people who hate ranches repeat the claim.
2. Mao was certainly a communist. He was also a Marxist, if not traditional. Look at the platform in the Communist Manifesto and ask how many of them Mao tried to implement.
The biggest Marxist goal remains a proletariat dicatorship, to which autocrats like Mao remain fundamentally contradictory.
3. Stalin was certainly a true communist, unlike Hitler. He engaged in effective stratocide, killing nearly everyone who was from noble or bourgeois roots. He collectivized industry and farms. What else did he need to do, short of getting rid of money, to convince you? His implementation of socialism was total and unrelenting.
It would help convince me if he had actually collectivized anything instead of personally and absolutely controlling everything.
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Last First in wotmania Chat
Slightly better than chocolate.
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Last First in wotmania Chat
Slightly better than chocolate.
Love still can't be coerced.
Please Don't Eat the Newbies!
LoL. Be well, RAFOlk.
Is communism the true economy of democracies?
- 10/10/2011 01:35:24 AM
775 Views
Sorry, not following this.....
- 10/10/2011 03:33:11 AM
596 Views
Um, a LOT of places have mixed "free" market and state rule.
- 10/10/2011 05:43:49 AM
617 Views
WTF? Canada, Western Europe, and Japan are democracies, not state-rule like China - 
*NM*
- 10/10/2011 05:53:17 PM
227 Views
*NM*
- 10/10/2011 05:53:17 PM
227 Views
They are not similar.
- 10/10/2011 04:01:59 AM
468 Views
That's why Lenin came up with the soviets, though that was pretty naïve, too.
- 10/10/2011 05:54:37 AM
417 Views
Lenin died in 1924. The Civil War was over in 1920. He died after several strokes. *NM*
- 10/10/2011 05:30:58 PM
197 Views
Sorry, did not realize he survived it that long.
- 11/10/2011 04:21:05 AM
522 Views
There is no evidence that Lenin was poisoned.
- 11/10/2011 04:50:28 AM
450 Views
That is hardly the only way to kill; in Lenins condition, neglect would have sufficed.
- 11/10/2011 06:28:31 AM
481 Views
Let's see...you're asking if property theft by the state is compatible with freedom? No.
- 10/10/2011 04:58:14 AM
461 Views
I'm curious how you distinguish "full socialism" from "full communism."
- 10/10/2011 05:32:53 AM
432 Views
You obviously don't understand the definitions of socialism and communism.
- 10/10/2011 02:41:39 PM
515 Views
In theory, but economics is not politics, making social contracts a bit more dubious.
- 10/10/2011 05:18:39 AM
598 Views
No. A thousand times no.
- 10/10/2011 07:46:22 AM
604 Views
Guess I count myself among those fools, though I pretty much agree with Danny.
- 10/10/2011 10:52:11 AM
509 Views
I don't usually answer your scattershot rants, Joel, but you have overextended yourself.
- 10/10/2011 05:28:07 PM
547 Views
That still looks like Stalin and Mao rationalizing away the impossibility of their stated goals.
- 11/10/2011 05:59:06 AM
562 Views
No time to today, but you're very wrong.
- 11/10/2011 02:32:38 PM
443 Views
OK.
- 11/10/2011 03:08:17 PM
432 Views
Nope, because free-market democracy totally permits communism already
- 12/10/2011 12:50:36 AM
505 Views