that's a pretty silly and unsophisticated way of looking at it though. your 'considering the best and worst outcomes of either (based exclusively on cherry picked historical occurrences, not ideological arguments btw), and then deciding which one of the two teams to exclusively and loyally support' point there is based on pretty much exactly what i rejected in my first reply, and a typical red scare tactic: pretending like it's a fundamentally binary and binding choice, when in reality it's not ofc.
this has, at least in the US, led to a situation where people assume they have to put up with basically everything that "capitalists" want, because the only alternative was starving / sorting cabbages / freezing (speaking of which, maybe ask some texans what they think of unfettered capitalism these days), like many people undeniably did in authoritarian regimes ran under the "communist" banner.

the whole "a large number of people have such a hard on for communism - they must not understand (or even want) all the shittiness that happened in the soviet union - it's such an easy choice" angle is either a bad faith or just a simplistic approach to this debate. i think if you actually looked into it, you'd find that many of those people are simply fed up with the extreme injustices, inequalities, and exploitations of largely unchecked, cutthroat capitalist aspects of western societies, and attracted to some of the ideals and solutions found in socialist / marxist / or communist literature and ideology, that they might think in theory it's the better system.

i'm sure you'll be able to find me the odd radical who actually supports everything stalin ever did, calling themselves a communist, and i will happily mock them with you for being dumb fucks - but you'll have a hard time convincing me those are representative of your "large number" of communists.

just replaced a few words and i am now awaiting your "you cant compare that" bullshit response

these systems are equally bad and you would go apeshit if somebody made that altered post

Defending and promoting literal communism. A new low. Nazi equivalent. scum of the earth.

Imagine someone saying Nazism is great actually and that the holocaust is merely the 'worst outcome' and isn't representative of 'true nazism' ; Criticizing nazism and recognizing its evils is merely a 'scare tactic' by evil capitalists

I wonder how well that would be taken by the resident commies.


There is nothing close to 'unfettered capitalism' right now. Thats blatantly false.


i'm sure you'll be able to find me the odd radical who actually supports everything Hitler ever did, calling themselves a nazi, and i will happily mock them with you for being dumb fucks - but you'll have a hard time convincing me those are representative of your "large number" of nazis

Supporting everything Stalin did isn't the requirement for a communist to be a 'dumb fuck' or supporting a stupid ideology.

This support of communism demonstrates a severe ignorance of the inherent fatal flaws of communism.
Brushing off criticisms of communism and the recognition of genocides committed by communist regimes as mere 'scare tactics' by capitalists is intellectually invalid.

It won't be 'right' next time. Its a terrible and evil ideology that does not work.
ffs read a book.

I recommend:
Socialism by Ludwig von Mises
Economics in one lesson by Hazlitt

Available for free online.

political ideologies are like dating profiles, they might sound great on paper but the real thing can be quite disappointing and they often are. no one says "cause mass starvation" or "enslave people and sell them" yet it happens under ideologies that claim to aim for the greatest good. even seemingly benign religions like buddhism have hundreds of thousands of adherents (both civilian and military alike) that have carried out mass murder in it's name. this is why i evaluate ideologies based on what happens with a particular set of ideas and beliefs when people try to implement them in practice as opposed to how they sound in theory.

nonetheless if you want to discuss the ideologies themselves, then i have doubts about the perception of exploitation and how communism solves this so that'd be a good place to start

as for the demographics of people with a hard on for communism, lets just say i was a landlord for a number of years, will be again in the future and was surprised to find no shortage of hatred for people in my position

This post was edited by duffman316 on Apr 11 2021 12:15pm

In hindsight the US shouldn't have bothered with you lot during WW2, you'd be overrun and gobbled up by the Soviets.

The US wouldn't have lost good soldiers and assholes like you would have got their communist paradise. I bet you're creaming yourself just imagining it.

This post was edited by Djunior on Apr 11 2021 12:26pm

without the massive material help from the states we would have overrun the soviet union

the us had already participated in a crucial way without a single soldier on the ground, lets keep the facts straight here

AFTER all that they decided to try and stop the soviet advance

This post was edited by JohnnyMcCoy on Apr 11 2021 12:37pm

_________________________________________________________




well, i explicitly stated my personal preferences a few posts back, and already told you in earlier discussions that i'm not a communist myself. my main point here is that your approach is simplistic, as you don't have to support any of the extremes, neither late stage exploitative capitalism that brought war, death, and devastation to millions around the globe, nor to authoritarian communist dictatorships that lead to millions starving to death. yet you constantly post intellectually lazy shit that suggests even thinking about socialist / communist ideas, approaches, policies would somehow inevitably lead to those worst outcomes. that's bs. it's propaganda that was instrumental in disenfranchising the american working class, turning the US into a de facto oligarchy. maybe try to be a bit more nuanced, a bit more critical of those that actually rule over you, rather than fearmongering about something basically no one advocates for.

__________________________________________________________



guess what, replacing just a few words in the constitution would make it a recipe for meatballs. you don't have an argument.

This post was edited by fender on Apr 11 2021 12:43pm

You guys completely miscalculated the whole operation, instead of a couple months it dragged on forever due to the sheer size, manpower and because Stalin relocated armament factories far to the East.

You were running out of trained replacements / weapons / munitions / fuel / materials and partisans were blowing up your overstretched supply lines, it was a huge mess instead of a quick victory.

You could have won if you'd treated the Russians as humans as they saw you as liberators, they'd had helped you getting rid of Stalin instead of shooting you in the back and blowing up your supply lines

nice dodge fender, just admit that you get rekt



what you describe wouldnt even have happened, the wehrmacht only ran out of things, because the supplies enabled the soviets to hang on just a bit longer

mighty stalin couldnt even provide enough boots without american help

and yes, another approach could have been helpful, a lot of ukranians and others switched sides immediately to fight stalin

needless to say that any kind of victory doesnt change things in the long run

adolfs utopia would have collapsed like every other one in history (could have taken a while though)

i've already said i'm more than happy to ignore the history of the matter and made a thread to discuss communist ideas you've yet to engage in - threads still there if you want to discuss the topic of exploitation

also ... you ask for nuance in a political picture thread and post ghot level memes like this