-
It's a fair point that people used the ideology as an excuse, but communism as an idea didn't cause those killings. At it's heart communism is about equality, all people being equal, the fact that there has been genocides in it's name doesn't change this. Whereas a nationalist ideology like Nazism is very much about one group of people being more important than others. That's why they can never be equivalents.
Sumo-
At it's heart communism is about equality, all people being equal
yeah but, I think problem is that to get here you have to engineer and subjugate the shit out of the population, so you need a bunch of more important people to manage this process and...
Yeah I read animal farm
-
Whether the idea behind the ideology is a good one, once it's been put in to practice we can see whether if it's good for humanity, or bad.
For me, communism works well on paper, but once you put humans in there with all their complexities and multitude of motivations, it always becomes a horror show. It doesn't matter if the idea itself didn't cause those killings, once people were involved it did.
I'm not drawing an equivalent of Nazism and Communism. I'm saying they are both are extreme and both should be avoided for the good of humanity.
-
I think the things we like about Communism, in theory, are laudable. It's just that in its implementation, it pretty much necessitates a lot of the terrible shit that has been discussed, so much so that it's generally just a question of extent.
There's more than a whiff of the 'no true Scotsman' about it all. We want to believe in it, but it tends to go 'wrong' almost by design.
-
Playing devil's advocate here...
If you; 1) didn't treat the "other" group in society in an objectively bad way - i.e. harming them, etc. and 2) as a result of the policy no harm came to the other group; is there anything intrinsically wrong with prioritising the citizens of a nation, and using the nation as a construct to unify and create solidarity in society?
Also out of curiosity (as an ideal) do you think employing communism would be positive because it creates economic equality / is inherently equitable, or because it would result in a happier more cohesive society? (if both, is one more important?)
Howard
Bainbridge
DayTripper_Mk2
hugo7
OK take a read of this
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_communist_regimes
110 million killed in Soviet Union from 1900 onward. And that's just one regime.
Those killings were made possible due to an ideology, just as the millions of killings under the Nazis were.
If the ideology allows these heinous things to take place (whether because it's a flawed system or flawed people exploit a system) then I don't think anyone should be proud to associate themselves to it.
If you are drawing an equivalence with your lone libertarian murderer then I find that a poor argument.