Should democracy get tough on communist party's in the west?

[New Freedomstan]

1) Democracy that allows freedom of expression for all groups despite the majority view.
2) Democracy that follows the will of the people. For example if 95% of people want communists killed the will of the people is overwhelmingly to kill them.

1) Yes.
2) No. Hold the fuck up. That's tyranny by majority. Democracy protects.

Tyranny by majority is only true democracy. "Constitutions" and "Rights" are nothing but bourgeois tools of oppression.

[Conscentia]

The one with the democracy. That one.

1) Democracy that allows freedom of expression for all groups despite the majority view.
2) Democracy that follows the will of the people. For example if 95% of people want communists killed the will of the people is overwhelmingly to kill them.

2 Is the people suppressing democracy - using the power democracy gave them to poison democracy.

[Ovisterra]

The one with the democracy. That one.

1) Democracy that allows freedom of expression for all groups despite the majority view.
2) Democracy that follows the will of the people. For example if 95% of people want communists killed the will of the people is overwhelmingly to kill them.

1) Yes.
2) No. We have these things called "rights". Tyranny by majority is a Bad Thing.

[Imperiatom]

Ah by strange coincidence i am reading Bloodlands at the moment. He does produce compelling evidence but the fact that so many other estimates are out there leaves open all possibilities from between 2-8 million.

Not really, no. There a possibility that Stalinist collectivisation was carried out by enormous green rabbits, not a mish-mash of central government figures, party cadres, the NKVD and local troikas and dvoikas, to name a few types, but that doesn't make the possibility of the rabbits worth spending time on when another version of events has far more evidence.

Right not quite sure what that has to do with anything other than your vivid imagination, but unless you can find me an enormous live video of a real rabbit that is not a hoax, i shall dismiss that as a whimsical fantasy.

[Imperiatom]

You should vote for the status quo, as that one is also for you, vote for your continued existence .

Or boycott the vote and demand we start the people's revolution. That could be more entertaining...

You will probably also die....

[Quib-quib]

I said "ban Communist parties from forming", but that's simply because I do not support the idea of political parties, rather than any real feelings towards Communism, Socialism, or Marxism. From everything I have encountered, heard reliable reports of, and seen reasonable speculation on, a multi-party democratic system will eventually result in a small number of parties passing power back and forth by extremely small electoral margins, dependent mainly on which can smear its opponents the most effectively, and the populace extremely unsatisfied with the government regardless of who is in power.

[Conscentia]

1) Yes.
2) No. Hold the fuck up. That's tyranny by majority. Democracy protects.

Tyranny by majority is only true democracy. "Constitutions" and "Rights" are nothing but bourgeois tools of oppression.

Poe's Law

[Maledixit]

2) Democracy that follows the will of the people. For example if 95% of people want communists killed the will of the people is overwhelmingly to kill them.

Not liking an ideology is one thing.

Genocide against people that have a right to believe their own alternative ideology, in breach of civil law, is something else.

Think about why you hate 'communism' in the first place, then reread what you wrote here.

[Of the Free Socialist Territories]

Not really, no. There a possibility that Stalinist collectivisation was carried out by enormous green rabbits, not a mish-mash of central government figures, party cadres, the NKVD and local troikas and dvoikas, to name a few types, but that doesn't make the possibility of the rabbits worth spending time on when another version of events has far more evidence.

Right not quite sure what that has to do with anything other than your vivid imagination, but unless you can find me an enormous live video of a real rabbit that is not a hoax, i shall dismiss that as a whimsical fantasy.

And I'll dismiss the estimate of 8 million as whimsy until it's supported by evidence which you present, and instead stick with the figure of 3 to 3.5 million for the Holodomor itself*, for which there is something more of a consensus.

*Excluding similar famines elsewhere

Now, the topic.

[Imperiatom]

1) Democracy that allows freedom of expression for all groups despite the majority view.
2) Democracy that follows the will of the people. For example if 95% of people want communists killed the will of the people is overwhelmingly to kill them.

1) Yes.
2) No. Hold the fuck up. That's tyranny by majority. Democracy protects.

Is it possible to have democracy without tyranny by majority? As all western countries can fall into this category.

[New Chalcedon]

1) Yes.
2) No. Hold the fuck up. That's tyranny by majority. Democracy protects.

Is it possible to have democracy without tyranny by majority? As all western countries can fall into this category.

Read about this concept called "Constitutionally-guaranteed rights", and then tell me that democracy = tyranny by majority.

[Densaner]

No. Communists have the right to put their case to the people. Denial of that right is just tyranny.

[Johto and Kanto]

You know, if a party is outlawed, it ain't much of a democracy.

It could be a republic.

[Conscentia]

You know, if a party is outlawed, it ain't much of a democracy.

It could be a republic.

So?

[Chinese Regions]

1) Yes.
2) No. Hold the fuck up. That's tyranny by majority. Democracy protects.

Is it possible to have democracy without tyranny by majority? As all western countries can fall into this category.

That's what constitutions, and different branches are for.

[New Freedomstan]

Tyranny by majority is only true democracy. "Constitutions" and "Rights" are nothing but bourgeois tools of oppression.

Poe's Law

Poe's Law is also a bourgeois tool of oppression.

Although, for serious arguments, there's no point in banning us Marxist-Leninists, or even the liberal heresies of "libertarian communism", "eurocommunism" or any other idealistic nonsense. We are revolutionaries, the only reason Marxist-Leninists even bother to contest the elections of the bourgeois system is to spread propaganda. Recruit members. Agitate for revolution. Banning us from legal organization and running for these shams simply drives us underground, and hell, probably makes it easier for us to recruit. Not to mention the act of doing so in countries like Cyprus or Moldova, where the Communist Parties are large, expansive but quite revisionist, might just radicalize them enough to get off their asses and establish Socialism.

Banning something doesn't make it dissappear. You think FARC or the Shining Path are non-existant just because they are illegal? Hell no. All banning western Communist Parties would do, is force the communists to use different tactics.

[Kavck]

Should democracy get tough on communist party's in the west is the question, and if so how tough?
I am interested to find out what the members of nation states feel about this. As if the communists ever took power i doubt we could use this site as we do presently. The outlawing of other political party's would i believe occur, swiftly followed by the repression of free speech and expression. Given that the attitude of the communists is my way or the highway( Road of bones- for those who don't understand my pun) should we tolerate them or should we crack down on them as Germany does for example on Nazi ideology.

I am torn between Keeping the status quo or outlawing the party.

Hello, good sir. I am a Communist.

I believe in freedom of speech, I believe in political freedom and I believe in democracy.

Why should the Democracy that I willingly support incriminate me because I don't agree with those who are currently in charge of it?

[Imperiatom]

And I'll dismiss the estimate of 8 million as whimsy until it's supported by evidence which you present, and instead stick with the figure of 3 to 3.5 million for the Holodomor itself*, for which there is something more of a consensus.

*Excluding similar famines elsewhere

Now, the topic.

A 2002 study by Vallin et al utilizing some similar primary sources to Kulchytsky, and performing an analysis with more sophisticated demographic tools with forward projection of expected growth from the 1926 census and backward projection from the 1939 census estimate the amount of direct deaths for 1933 as 2.582 million. This number of deaths does not reflect the total demographic loss for Ukraine from these events as the fall of the birth rate during crisis and the out-migration contribute to the latter as well. The total population shortfall from the expected value between 1926 and 1939 estimated by Vallin amounted to 4.566 million. Of this number, 1.057 million is attributed to birth deficit, 930,000 to forced out-migration, and 2.582 million to excess mortality and voluntary out-migration. With the latter assumed to be negligible this estimate gives the number of deaths as the result of the 1933 famine about 2.2 million. According to this study the life expectancy for those born in 1933 sharply fell to 10.8 years for females and to 7.3 years for males and remained abnormally low for 1934 but, as commonly expected for the post-crisis peaked in 1935-36.

Taking into account that in 1932 the Ukraine had a population of 32,680,000 people, different sources converge to put the estimated number of victims at between 4.5 and 6 or 7 million. The journalist Paolo Rumiz talks about "at least six million starved to death in the Ukraine alone", which means "25 thousand a day", "17 every minute", specifying further that "one out of every three deaths was that of a child or a newborn baby". Andrei Gregorovich, the American specialist of Ukrainian History, puts the death rate at 7 million Ukrainians and quotes the testimony of Stalin himself to Churchill, according to whom the number of dead in four years of collectivization was 10 million; he states that "prudent estimates" believe that approximately 4.8 million people died, whereas "numerous well-known scholars" estimated anything between 5 and 8 million. In the "Black Book of Communism" Nicolas Werth writes of "over 6 million victims" (pag.147) and Giovanni Gozzini, in the book dedicated to the exhibition "Gulag - The lager system in the USSR" recalls that "the most recent and accurate estimates made on official demographic sources put the result of this use of famine as a tool for normalizing the class structure in the countryside at between 4 and 6 million dead" (p. 49), referring to the research done by S.G.Wheatcroft and also mentioning the documentation "put together by A. Graziosi in Letters from Kharkov. Famine in the Ukraine and in the orthern Caucasus in Italian diplomatic despatches 1932-1933. By comparing the 1933 and 1926 censuses, it appears that the population of the USSR had grown by 15.7%, while that of t he Ukraine had fallen by 9.9%.

By the end of 1933, millions of people had starved to death or had otherwise died unnaturally in Ukraine, as well as in other Soviet republics. The total estimate of the famine victims Soviet-wide is given as 6-7 million or 6-8 million. The Soviet Union long denied that the famine had ever taken place, and the NKVD (and later KGB) archives on the Holodomor period opened very slowly. The exact number of the victims remains unknown and is probably impossible to estimate even within a margin of error of a hundred thousand. Numbers as high as seven to ten million are sometimes given in the media and a number as high as ten or even twenty million is sometimes cited in political speeches.

One reason for estimate variance is that some assess the number of people who died within the 1933 borders of Ukraine; while others are based on deaths within current borders of Ukraine. Other estimates are based on deaths of Ukrainians in the Soviet Union. Some estimates use a very simple methodology based percentage of deaths that was reported in one area and applying the percentage to the entire country. Others use more sophisticated techniques that involves analyzing the demographic statistics based on various archival data. Some question the accuracy of Soviet censuses since they may have been doctored to support Soviet propaganda. Other estimates come from recorded discussion between world leaders like Churchill and Stalin. For example the estimate of ten million deaths, which is attributed to Soviet official sources, could be based on a misinterpretation[citation needed] of the memoirs of Winston Churchill who gave an account of his conversation with Stalin that took place on August 16, 1942. In that conversation, Stalin gave Churchill his estimates of the number of "kulaks" who were repressed for resisting collectivization as 10 million, in all of the Soviet Union, rather than only in Ukraine. When using this number, Stalin implied that it included not only those who lost their lives, but also forcibly deported.

This is just to illustrate my point, that is as i said earlier bloodlands gives a very good account for the numbers it is by no means the conclusive proof you suggest.

[Regnum Dominae]

No. We shouldn't sink to their level.

[Ieperithem]

Should democracy get tough on communist party's in the west is the question, and if so how tough?
I am interested to find out what the members of nation states feel about this. As if the communists ever took power i doubt we could use this site as we do presently. The outlawing of other political party's would i believe occur, swiftly followed by the repression of free speech and expression. Given that the attitude of the communists is my way or the highway( Road of bones- for those who don't understand my pun) should we tolerate them or should we crack down on them as Germany does for example on Nazi ideology.

I am torn between Keeping the status quo or outlawing the party.

The way I see it, most people will be intelligent enough to avoid communism so long as its representatives are allowed to embarrass themselves. Ban them and we end up with a paranoia - esque resistance movement that hails John Lennon and Groucho Marx. Also, in the USA, the constitution tells you not to do that.

[Imperiatom]

Should democracy get tough on communist party's in the west is the question, and if so how tough?
I am interested to find out what the members of nation states feel about this. As if the communists ever took power i doubt we could use this site as we do presently. The outlawing of other political party's would i believe occur, swiftly followed by the repression of free speech and expression. Given that the attitude of the communists is my way or the highway( Road of bones- for those who don't understand my pun) should we tolerate them or should we crack down on them as Germany does for example on Nazi ideology.

I am torn between Keeping the status quo or outlawing the party.

Hello, good sir. I am a Communist.

I believe in freedom of speech, I believe in political freedom and I believe in democracy.

Why should the Democracy that I willingly support incriminate me because I don't agree with those who are currently in charge of it?

If you believe that then do you concede that as long as people have their own minds communism can never succeed.

[New Freedomstan]

This is just to illustrate my point, that is as i said earlier bloodlands gives a very good account for the numbers it is by no means the conclusive proof you suggest.

How, exactly, are the USSR in the 1930s relevant at all in how to deal with Communist Parties in Western Europe and North America in the 21st century? Should Monarchists be banned for the actions of Leopold in the Congos? Should the Democratic Party be outlawed for defending slavery in the 19th century? Should free marketeers be banned for the Pinochet Regime in Chile in the 1970s? Should democracy be outlawed because of the horrors of the French Revolution?

[Kavck]

Hello, good sir. I am a Communist.

I believe in freedom of speech, I believe in political freedom and I believe in democracy.

Why should the Democracy that I willingly support incriminate me because I don't agree with those who are currently in charge of it?

If you believe that then do you concede that as long as people have their own minds communism can never succeed.

Capitalist democracies succeed with Commies in them.


I don't see why a Communist society can succeed with Capitalists in them.

[Imperiatom]

Is it possible to have democracy without tyranny by majority? As all western countries can fall into this category.

Read about this concept called "Constitutionally-guaranteed rights", and then tell me that democracy = tyranny by majority.

I am from the UK we have no constitution. We don't have direct democracy ether and actually the US may have a constitution but it sometimes decided not to stick to it, Guantanamo for example. I would say that was tyrannical. Actually by very nature democracy is tyranny by majority as every election one party wins and then walks over the views of others that did not vote for it. Even those that did vote for it might not have their view heard and as such Representative democracy is not pure.

[Imperiatom]

This is just to illustrate my point, that is as i said earlier bloodlands gives a very good account for the numbers it is by no means the conclusive proof you suggest.

How, exactly, are the USSR in the 1930s relevant at all in how to deal with Communist Parties in Western Europe and North America in the 21st century? Should Monarchists be banned for the actions of Leopold in the Congos? Should the Democratic Party be outlawed for defending slavery in the 19th century? Should free marketeers be banned for the Pinochet Regime in Chile in the 1970s? Should democracy be outlawed because of the horrors of the French Revolution?

Read back to the other posts if you want to know why i posted that. I am too lazy to explain.