Is Communism the Answer?

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Purple

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"Owners of capital will stimulate the working class to buy more and more of expensive goods, houses and technology, pushing them to take more and more expensive credits, until their debt becomes unbearable. The unpaid debt will lead to bankruptcy of banks, which will have to be nationalised, and the State will have to take the road which will eventually lead to communism".

Karl Marx, Das Kapital, 1867


For a beardy lunatic he wasn’t far off the mark!
 
Purple said:
Karl Marx, Das Kapital, 1867
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Can you provide an authoratative link which substantiates this source?

Purple said:
Nationalise private industry and collectivise the farms to socialise the means of production. Public Servants are immune from the vagaries and temptations of the free market which got us into this mess.
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Don't you hate when people misquote you?
 
MugsGame said:
Can you provide an authoratative link which substantiates this source?
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Nope, and after looking into it a bit more it does look like a hoax quote (even though it's being quoted all over the place).
Mods; feel free to delete this thread.
 
i'd be happy to see communism introduced for 24 hours, if during that 24 hours all members of government for the last 10 years be rounded up and taken off to the Urals and left there, then we could re-introduce democracy and elect a new government....
 
MugsGame said:
Can you provide an authoratative link which substantiates this source?
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Every reference I can find to this days from the last month.

The word technology doesn't fit right to me for the alleged date of the quote.
 
I think the exact wording of the quote is irrelevant or even who said it. Whats more important is, is the statement true? and would we be better off in a communist state?
 
DavyJones said:
Whats more important is, is the statement true? and would we be better off in a communist state?
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I would rather live in a country where the secret police don't disappear you in the middle of the night.

Anyway I think examples like east Germany has shown that communism just don't work.
 
Right so, that's that. It turns out he was just a beardy lunatic and was nowhere near the mark.
 
Purple said:
Right so, that's that. It turns out he was just a beardy lunatic and was nowhere near the mark.
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Marx was quite close to the mark in his analysis of how society works. It was only when he proposed ways of improving society that he lost the plot.

Communism has not yet been tried.
 
D8Lady said:
Oh Please! (1)Cuba, (2)China, (3)USSR, (4)Albania, (5)North Korea.....:rolleyes:

At least Cuba has rum, music and health care.
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(1)Nationalist - turned to USSR after attenpts to establish detente with the USA failed
(2)Nationalist totalitatian - state capitalist
(3)State capitalist - never claimed to be communist, but at some stage claimed (the eighties iirc) to have reached "developed socialism"
(4)Not too sure
(5) Just mad - nothing to do with communism at all

The nearest attempts at large scale communism were the Communards (Paris Commune) and Catalonia (in an anarchist way).


Anyway, Marx's analysis was too simplistic.
 
The early Christians tried it, too, after Christ's death. If you read the first few chapters of the Acts of the Apostles, you get the gist. It seemed to descend into anarchy pretty quickly, I think - obviously mankind is not ready for so civilised and high-minded a system. Oh well, perhaps in another few centuries.......
 
Padraigb said:
Communism has not yet been tried.
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It has, in as much as it can be tried. It can't work and won't work. Utopia cannot be achieved through coercion and without coercion as long as one person in a million doesn’t buy into the ideal it will collapse.
 
Is Communism the answer?


Yes,

If the question is "what political ideology has inflicted more unnecessary poverty on its proponents than any other?"
 
csirl said:
Then how come they have a low life expectancy?
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Cuba has life expectancy inline with western countries.

What they do lack is advanced modern technology, but the doctors are amongst the best in the world.
 
I don't think Cubans have such a low life expectancy. It is higher than such near neighbours as Haiti, Dominican Republic and even Bahamas. It is only slightly behind us.

This is according to WHO stats -see for example http://www.who.int/countries/cub/en/

Of course, it may well be argued that statistics from Cuba may need to be taken with a pinch of salt. I have not researched it in any great detail.
 
MOB said:
Of course, it may well be argued that statistics from Cuba may need to be taken with a pinch of salt. I have not researched it in any great detail.
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Indeed, communist countries with a state run personality cult as head of state aren't usually that reliable.
 
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