Obama is Anti-Communist?

[Linderman]

And yet you don't know something that I learned in 5th grade about this topic.

You're starting to sound like a conspiracy theorist when you say stuff like the Soviet Union was not a communist and the US education system is out there to deliberately deceive children (or alternatively, all the US history teachers I have ever met in my life ''are shit'').

So what you're saying is that you and your teachers know more about left-wing theory than the bulk of left-wing individuals and theorists over the past 150 years.

Please carry on this conversation, it's getting hilarious.

Bad logic there.

You said "If the world calls America one and it calls itself one", America is a dictatorship. Therefore if America doesn't call itself one, it isn't. Therefore, as North Korea doesn't call itself a dictatorship, it can't be one, if we're to apply your logic consistently.

Or it could be that your logic is inconsistent and you're trying to make America a special case.

I said if X calls itself Y while most of the rest of the world also calls it Y, X is almost certainly Y. As in the case with the Soviet Union being communist.

When did the USSR call itself communist?

I never said when X doesn't call itself Y (or calls itself the opposite of Y), it's almost certainly not Y.

How did you go there?

So we've still established that if the rest of the world calls America a dictatorship, then using your "logic" it probably is, regardless of, you know, facts.

That's actually impossible. Unless you have some kind of mutation...

You were bullshitting. I called you out on it.

When the rest of the world agrees, it's time to broaden the definition of ''mouse'' to include those mice that are elephants wearing mouse skin and declaring themselves mice.

That's ridiculous. Does that mean that if I personally act like a woodlouse and wear a woodlouse costume that I suddenly become a woodlouse if other people think I am, even though I'm a man in a woodlouse costume.

When someone claims to be serving communist goals and justifies what they do with communist logic and the rest of the world tends to agree that they are communist, those someones are communists (at least one type of them).

Except they didn't serve communist goals, didn't use communist logic to justify it and completely rejected almost all of communist theory.

Clearly you have not been keeping up with the news.

Snide bullshit isn't a source. Actual source, please.

I'm not surprised because if you did you would not dispute the communist nature of regimes like the Soviet Union... It's all over the papers a few decades ago.

I don't understand why you're so proud of your own ignorance on the topic. It's baffling.

Actually that would be what you are doing. You are refusing to label any attempts to reach communism as a communist enterprise UNLESS it succeeds.

Not really, no. I'd call the Paris Commune, the Ukrainian Free Territory and Revolutionary Catalonia communistic in nature. They didn't succeed in the long run.

Since the ultimate goal of communism by default and common sense is impossible,

False, and "common sense" is the last resort of someone with no argument.

your definition is the one that has no basis in reality and never can have.

Please, tell me more about how Marx, Bakunin, Luxemburg and others didn't exist and didn't lay down the theory upon which I base my views.

A person who is trying to reach communism isn't communist unless he succeeds.

I've never said that.

A regime such as the USSR that tries to reach communism isn't communist unless it succeeds.

It's not communist if it employs a capitalist economic structure and retains a totalitarian state. Read what I've written instead of replying to what you think I've written.

Even though the communist end goal is an impossibility...

You have no evidence to support that assertion.

Based in history? History has shown us no idealistic communist countries

That's because the concept of a country is antithetical to communism.

lrn2theory.

but it has shown communism's true face. That it inevitably leads to authoritarian hell holes and mass murdering manipulators taking power through the fools who believe its end goals are practical.

It's like reading a less coherent version of things Reagan said. They were bullshit too.

If you want to help the working class, one approach is to increase the size of government and government programs/reachout programs. That means that some forms of socialism very much have to do with government size.

The actual economic concept of socialism doesn't have anything to do with government size. Some models employ bigger governments than others, but the underlying theory has nothing to do with government size.

It is not JUST capitalism with regulations attached as there are many many different types of socialism... however, capitalism with regulations attached is one of its forms.

No, capitalism with regulations attached is capitalism with regulations attached.

Private ownership of the means of production, with regulations, =/= workers' control of the means of production.

This is not bloody difficult.

Obama is a socialist, just watch Fox News. I think you are really disconnected from reality...

>"I watch Fox News."
>"You're disconnected from reality."

So what you're saying is that you and your teachers know more about left-wing theory than the bulk of left-wing individuals and theorists over the past 150 years.

Please carry on this conversation, it's getting hilarious.

No, just that they know what communism is and that the Soviet Union was communist.

They may or may not know more about left-wing theory than another group... I love your leaps of logic.

Me: ''America's not a completely democratic nation.''

You: ''So you're saying they are a dictatorship.''

You said "If the world calls America one and it calls itself one", America is a dictatorship. Therefore if America doesn't call itself one, it isn't. Therefore, as North Korea doesn't call itself a dictatorship, it can't be one, if we're to apply your logic consistently.

Or it could be that your logic is inconsistent and you're trying to make America a special case.

Let me give you a basic lesson on logic.

What can you assume from the statement ''If X and Y then Z''? The ONLY thing you can infer from that is ''If not Z... then not X or not Y.''

You CAN'T say ''If not X or not Y... then not Z.'' That statement may be true based on my the premise (''if X and Y then Z'') or it might not... assuming its certainty is bad logic.

For example, I can say ''If I killed someone and I stole a purse then I am a bad person.'' Then I tell you that I did NOT kill someone. YOU can't say based on those two premises that I am therefore, NOT a bad person.

Why? There are so many ways I can be a bad person and for this to be still logically consistent with the two facts (''If I kill someone and I stole a purse then I am a bad person'', ''I did not kill someone''). For example, maybe I ran someone over with a car and injured him without killing him. Maybe I cheated on my wife. etc...

In the same way... I've told you ''If a country calls itself something and almost everyone else calls it that something too, then it is that something.'' You've gone ahead and misapplied this logic to make assumptions about NK and America that don't follow with absolute certainty.

North Korea doesn't call itself a dictatorship... but it can still be one and my logic doesn't fall apart. I didn't say the ONLY WAY for a country to be a dictatorship was the criteria I described (it calls itself one while most of the rest of the world considers it one).

You can't read ''If something is X and Y then it is Z'' and then come to the conclusion that because S is not X, it is not Z with absolute certainty.This is the thing you are doing.

I hope you've learned something...

By the way, when I pointed out that America was not a dictatorship because it didn't call itself one... that was in response to a hypothetical scenario YOU described (in which the rest of the world considered America a dictatorship). I think you got confused.

All I said was that in such a hypothetical scenario, without establishing that the USA considers itself a dictatorship too... you can't jump to a conclusion that it has become one. Now you've muddled this up with everything else...

When did the USSR call itself communist?

What party controlled the USSR? It has a C in it.

So we've still established that if the rest of the world calls America a dictatorship, then using your "logic" it probably is, regardless of, you know, facts.

No we have not established that. Only if X and Z are both true can we say America is a dictatorship with certainty. You have not addressed both X and Z... you've only talked about one of these two (what other people say).

You were bullshitting. I called you out on it.

So anyone who doesn't agree with your conspiracy theories is automatically a ''bulshitting?''

That's ridiculous. Does that mean that if I personally act like a woodlouse and wear a woodlouse costume that I suddenly become a woodlouse if other people think I am, even though I'm a man in a woodlouse costume.

Yes IF almost everyone else starts to consider people who act like woodlouse with a woodlouse costume such as yourself as such. Remember, terms change over time depending on what the majority of the people think they mean.

Bastard wasn't a swear word when it first came out, now it is.

Except they didn't serve communist goals, didn't use communist logic to justify it and completely rejected almost all of communist theory.

If they use communist logic to justify all of their actions, were controlled by a communist party, and the rest of the world considers them to be communist... it takes a LOT of mental gymnastics to consider them anything but communists.

Snide bullshit isn't a source. Actual source, please.

So now all of the newspapers I have read are full of ''shit'' too along with every single history teacher I have ever met right? Your credibility is dwindling by the second...

I'm not surprised because if you did you would not dispute the communist nature of regimes like the Soviet Union... It's all over the papers a few decades ago.

I don't understand why you're so proud of your own ignorance on the topic. It's baffling.

And yet I'm not the one who goes from 1) If X and Y then Z, 2) something is not X... to ''AHA! That something IS NOT Z!''

Not really, no. I'd call the Paris Commune, the Ukrainian Free Territory and Revolutionary Catalonia communistic in nature. They didn't succeed in the long run.

You mean they weren't around long enough to start killing and enslaving people like their larger brothers did? Convenient.

False, and "common sense" is the last resort of someone with no argument.

No actually, common sense should always be the first place you go to. What kind of argument can you make if common sense already rejects it?

Please, tell me more about how Marx, Bakunin, Luxemburg and others didn't exist and didn't lay down the theory upon which I base my views.

Theory and practice are too different things.

I've never said that.

Ok.

It's not communist if it employs a capitalist economic structure and retains a totalitarian state. Read what I've written instead of replying to what you think I've written.

Except you couldn't start and own a business in the USSR and make profits in the open and the vast majority of the people had no property rights and could not sell and buy in a free market. To say the USSR followed a ''capitalist economic structure'' is beyond absurd...

You have no evidence to support that assertion.

All the evidence in the world thus far stands on my position. Every single society you could consider communist in ideology has not survived the test of history... they have all faded...

That's because the concept of a country is antithetical to communism.

Oh yeah? What about Stalin's communist ideology of ''socialism in one country first''?

It's like reading a less coherent version of things Reagan said. They were bullshit too.

Reagan was a man of wisdom. I take it as a compliment. He contributed to the capitalist victory in the Cold War over communism.

The actual economic concept of socialism doesn't have anything to do with government size. Some models employ bigger governments than others, but the underlying theory has nothing to do with government size.

ONE economic conception of socialism might not have anything to do with government size. Not all conceptions of socialism... especially not with regards to the relevant version of socialism that America has to contend with.

No, capitalism with regulations attached is capitalism with regulations attached.

Private ownership of the means of production, with regulations, =/= workers' control of the means of production.

This is not bloody difficult.

Capitalism with a ton of regulations attached to protect and benefit workers at the expense of the free market is a form of socialism.

>"I watch Fox News."
>"You're disconnected from reality."

I don't get it...

[Antikua]

USSR = Union of Socialist Soviet Republics

[Linderman]

USSR = Union of Socialist Soviet Republics

A version of socialism that openly declared its intention to achieve communism as the end goal... thus making it a nation that follows a communist ideology.

[Antikua]

USSR = Union of Socialist Soviet Republics

A version of socialism that openly declared its intention to achieve communism as the end goal... thus making it a nation that follows a communist ideology.

It has intention but didn't do any major moves after Stalin Death .

Brezhnev , Khrushchev or any other post Stalin didn't try to expand Socialism .

[Sauritican]

being anti-communist is a requirement to get into the major parties after all

[ALMF]

This is pretty old, but read this excerpt from Barack Obama's Second Inaugural Speech:

For the American people can no more meet the demands of today's world by acting alone than American soldiers could have met the forces of fascism or communism with muskets and militias. No single person can train all the math and science teachers we'll need to equip our children for the future, or build the roads and networks and research labs that will bring new jobs and businesses to our shores. Now, more than ever, we must do these things together, as one nation, and one people.

Communists of NationStates, and everyone else, what do you think of his use of the underlined words? Obviously, he's far from a communist, but I've seen many communists praise him 'round here. The CPUSA even endorsed him last year. Is this like being thrown under the bus for you? Does it mean anything at all? Does it even matter?

Discuss.

Better it with the hounisty than it without as it was in the 1st term.

[4years]

A version of socialism that openly declared its intention to achieve communism as the end goal... thus making it a nation that follows a communist ideology.

It has intention but didn't do any major moves after Lenin's Death .

Stalin, Brezhnev , Khrushchev or any other post-Lenin/Trotsky didn't try to expand or even implement Socialism .

Fixed.

[4years]

USSR = Union of Socialist Soviet Republics

A version of socialism that openly declared its intention to achieve communism as the end goal... thus making it a nation that follows a communist ideology.

North Korea openly declares that it a democracy. Therefore juche is a democratic ideology.
/your logic

And it wasn't a version of socialism. Socialism is worker's control of the means of production, that is the basic definition. The worker's didn't control the means of production in the USSR. Stalinism is a state capitalist ideology, e.i. The means of production controlled by the state and run for a profit without participation in decision making by the working class.

[Of the Free Socialist Territories]

So what you're saying is that you and your teachers know more about left-wing theory than the bulk of left-wing individuals and theorists over the past 150 years.

Please carry on this conversation, it's getting hilarious.

No, just that they know what communism is and that the Soviet Union was communist.

They may or may not know more about left-wing theory than another group... I love your leaps of logic.

If your teachers call something communist which is not, according to the vast majority of left-wing theory, communist, and you agree with them, then the implication is that you believe them to be better able to identify what is communist and what is not than left-wing theorists looking at left-wing theory.

Me: ''America's not a completely democratic nation.''

You: ''So you're saying they are a dictatorship.''

Except, if we go back to the original assertion instead of putting words in my mouth that I've never said, we see this:

So if the majority of the world considers the USA to be a dictatorship, it suddenly becomes a dictatorship?

Yes if the US starts calling itself a dictatorship while the above is true.

You said that America would only be a dictatorship if it called itself one, because I'd pointed out that the rest of the world doesn't consider North Korea democratic but it calls itself a democracy.

The chain of posts actually reads as such:

No, I think you don't understand that just because a country calls itself something, doesn't make it that.

North Korea calls itself a democracy. Does this mean that North Korea is a democratic nation?

Yeah but while North Korea calls itself a democracy the majority of the rest of the world don't consider North Korea a democracy. So clearly it is not.

So if the majority of the world considers the USA to be a dictatorship, it suddenly becomes a dictatorship?

Yes if the US starts calling itself a dictatorship while the above is true.

North Korea doesn't call itself a dictatorship. Therefore it's not one, clearly.

You never claimed that America is not a completely democratic nation. I never claimed that it was a dictatorship. I posited a hypothetical.

Me: "Just because North Korea calls itself a democracy doesn't make it a democracy."
You: "The rest of the world doesn't consider it a democracy, so it isn't one."
Me: "So, hypothetically, if the rest of the world considers the USA to be a dictatorship, it is a dictatorship?"
You: "No, because it doesn't call itself one."

You claimed that North Korea didn't have to call itself a dictatorship because the rest of the world called it that. I said that, applying your logic consistently, the USA would be a dictatorship if the rest of the world called it that, regardless of whether it called itself one or not.

Me: X calls itself Y. Does that make it Y?
You: Everyone except X calls it Z, so it's Z, not Y.
Me: So if everyone except A calls A Z, A is Z?
You: No, because it doesn't call itself Z, so it doesn't matter is everyone calls it Z.

Or, more simply, your position is as such:

X is Z, not Y, because everyone else calls it Z.
A is not Z when everyone calls it Z.

So, TL;DR, you refuse to apply your own logic consistently if it'll hurt your argument.

*snip*

That's an awful lot of words

When did the USSR call itself communist?

What party controlled the USSR? It has a C in it.

I didn't ask "Which party governed the USSR", I asked "When did the USSR ever call the USSR, the country, a communist country?"

Answer the question I asked, not the one you want me to have asked.

So we've still established that if the rest of the world calls America a dictatorship, then using your "logic" it probably is, regardless of, you know, facts.

No we have not established that. Only if X and Z are both true can we say America is a dictatorship with certainty. You have not addressed both X and Z... you've only talked about one of these two (what other people say).

For North Korea only Z is true (other people call it a dictatorship), while X isn't (it doesn't call itself a dictatorship), so applying your logic here, it isn't a dictatorship.

You were bullshitting. I called you out on it.

So anyone who doesn't agree with your conspiracy theories is automatically a ''bulshitting?''

It's not a conspiracy theory. It's called understanding and learning about left-wing theory.

You might like to try it.

That's ridiculous. Does that mean that if I personally act like a woodlouse and wear a woodlouse costume that I suddenly become a woodlouse if other people think I am, even though I'm a man in a woodlouse costume.

Yes IF almost everyone else starts to consider people who act like woodlouse with a woodlouse costume such as yourself as such. Remember, terms change over time depending on what the majority of the people think they mean.

Terms change. Facts don't. I am not a woodlouse no matter how much I want to be, because my genome is not the same as a woodlouse's. Similarly, the USSR was considered by many to be communist. However, its "genome" (its actions, its economy and its theoretics) was not the same as the "genome" of communist theory.

Bastard wasn't a swear word when it first came out, now it is.

Except bastard was always a pejorative term, being used instead of "illegitimate" to insult someone, so your example is a bad one.

Except they didn't serve communist goals, didn't use communist logic to justify it and completely rejected almost all of communist theory.

If they use communist logic to justify all of their actions,

They didn't.

were controlled by a communist party,

It called itself a communist party.

and the rest of the world considers them to be communist...

Although they themselves didn't. The USSR, as I have already pointed out to you, considered itself to be a socialist state in transition, not a communist society.

it takes a LOT of mental gymnastics to consider them anything but communists.

The term you're looking for is "intellectual honesty", not "mental gymnastics".

Snide bullshit isn't a source. Actual source, please.

So now all of the newspapers I have read are full of ''shit'' too along with every single history teacher I have ever met right? Your credibility is dwindling by the second...

I said "give me a source". You gave me a remark.

A remark is not a source. It is not a URL. It is not an ISBN number. It is a remark. Not a source. Give me a source.

I'm not surprised because if you did you would not dispute the communist nature of regimes like the Soviet Union... It's all over the papers a few decades ago.

I don't understand why you're so proud of your own ignorance on the topic. It's baffling.

And yet I'm not the one who goes from 1) If X and Y then Z, 2) something is not X... to ''AHA! That something IS NOT Z!''

You appear to be labouring under the delusion that the entirety of left-wing theory on the topic, spanning 150 years, is wrong, and you, a lone child on the Internet with no understanding of that theory, are right.

Somehow I find that hilarious.

Not really, no. I'd call the Paris Commune, the Ukrainian Free Territory and Revolutionary Catalonia communistic in nature. They didn't succeed in the long run.

You mean they weren't around long enough to start killing and enslaving people like their larger brothers did? Convenient.

They were fundamentally different in nature, given that they were to a greater or lesser degree entirely stateless. And the Free Territory lasted for three years, give or take; that's enough time to launch a purge if you're going to. They didn't, AFAIK.

False, and "common sense" is the last resort of someone with no argument.

No actually, common sense should always be the first place you go to. What kind of argument can you make if common sense already rejects it?

"Common sense" is not a thing.

Please, tell me more about how Marx, Bakunin, Luxemburg and others didn't exist and didn't lay down the theory upon which I base my views.

Theory and practice are too different things.

And if the practice doesn't match the theory in any way, shape or form, then it probably has nothing to do with the theory, the theory's name or its principles at all. Shocking, I know.

In the same vein, if I start a political group, call it the "Pro-Capitalist Terrorist Group", and immediately begin executing capitalists, it's a fairly good sign that my group isn't actually pro-capitalist.

It's not communist if it employs a capitalist economic structure and retains a totalitarian state. Read what I've written instead of replying to what you think I've written.

Except you couldn't start and own a business in the USSR and make profits in the open and the vast majority of the people had no property rights and could not sell and buy in a free market. To say the USSR followed a ''capitalist economic structure'' is beyond absurd...

Again, you show your ignorance.

State capitalism is still capitalism.

You have no evidence to support that assertion.

All the evidence in the world thus far stands on my position. Every single society you could consider communist in ideology has not survived the test of history... they have all faded...

Somehow, a territory being invaded by a foreign army and then shut down by the foreign army doesn't show me that the ideology itself is at fault.

That's because the concept of a country is antithetical to communism.

Oh yeah? What about Stalin's communist ideology of ''socialism in one country first''?

This'll be the Stalin who had most of the communists murdered and put into place capitalism.

It's like reading a less coherent version of things Reagan said. They were bullshit too.

Reagan was a man of wisdom. I take it as a compliment. He contributed to the capitalist victory in the Cold War over communism.

He actively funded death squads across Latin America, which killed thousands of men, women and children. He was fiscally irresponsible.

The actual economic concept of socialism doesn't have anything to do with government size. Some models employ bigger governments than others, but the underlying theory has nothing to do with government size.

ONE economic conception of socialism might not have anything to do with government size. Not all conceptions of socialism... especially not with regards to the relevant version of socialism that America has to contend with.

I don't think you understand what I'm saying.

The one, the only common principle of the different branches of socialism is workers' control of the means of production.

That has literally nothing to do with government size.

You get big-government socialists, small-government socialists and no-government socialists (anarchists and communists). That is to do with the political aspect of their beliefs, not the economic aspect, because socialism is purely about economics, not government size.

No, capitalism with regulations attached is capitalism with regulations attached.

Private ownership of the means of production, with regulations, =/= workers' control of the means of production.

This is not bloody difficult.

Capitalism with a ton of regulations attached to protect and benefit workers at the expense of the free market is a form of socialism.

Listen to me. Just once. Listen to what I'm saying instead of seeing what I write and ignoring it entirely.

Socialism. Is. Workers'. Control. Of. The. Means. Of. Production. If. The. Means. Of. Production. Are. Not. Controlled. By. The. Workers. Then. A. Country's. Economy. Is. Not. Socialist.

>"I watch Fox News."
>"You're disconnected from reality."

I don't get it...

FOX is a right-wing propaganda network well known for lying in order to project its inherent biases onto its viewers.

TL;DR: You don't have a clue what you're talking about, you apply logic inconsistently, you're ignorant about economics, you're ignorant about left-wing theory and you're ignorant about history.

[Of the Free Socialist Territories]

I've just realised that I wasted half an hour of my life posting that.

Oh well.

[Solsteim]

Name me one American president whom wasn't socialist phobic?

In fact there has only been 1 US senator in the last 60 years who identified as socialist (Bernie Sanders).

[United Marxist Nations]

USSR = Union of Socialist Soviet Republics

A version of socialism that openly declared its intention to achieve communism as the end goal... thus making it a nation that follows a communist ideology.

It can have communist leadership and not be communist; communism is an economic system, one which the USSR never claimed to have achieved.

[Franklin Delano Bluth]

Which hand does he write with?

Haha.

That'd be funny, but I know you actually believe that anyone that isn't a communist is a rightwing demon. Obama is probably the most liberal president in US history.

Exactly. Liberalism is about as anti-communist as it gets.

[Divair]

Haha.

That'd be funny, but I know you actually believe that anyone that isn't a communist is a rightwing demon. Obama is probably the most liberal president in US history.

Exactly. Liberalism is about as anti-communist as it gets.

Do you mean economic liberalism?

[Coccygia]

Which hand does he write with?

Haha.

That'd be funny, but I know you actually believe that anyone that isn't a communist is a rightwing demon. Obama is probably the most liberal president in US history.

Hardly. He's about as genuinely liberal as, maybe, Eisenhower. If that. He is really only liberal on PC issues...on often not even then: remember he opposed gay marriage until he realized how bad he needed the gay vote to get reelected.

[Linderman]

No, just that they know what communism is and that the Soviet Union was communist.

They may or may not know more about left-wing theory than another group... I love your leaps of logic.

If your teachers call something communist which is not, according to the vast majority of left-wing theory, communist, and you agree with them, then the implication is that you believe them to be better able to identify what is communist and what is not than left-wing theorists looking at left-wing theory.

Me: ''America's not a completely democratic nation.''

You: ''So you're saying they are a dictatorship.''

Except, if we go back to the original assertion instead of putting words in my mouth that I've never said, we see this:

Yes if the US starts calling itself a dictatorship while the above is true.

You said that America would only be a dictatorship if it called itself one, because I'd pointed out that the rest of the world doesn't consider North Korea democratic but it calls itself a democracy.

The chain of posts actually reads as such:

[spoiler]

No, I think you don't understand that just because a country calls itself something, doesn't make it that.

North Korea calls itself a democracy. Does this mean that North Korea is a democratic nation?

Yeah but while North Korea calls itself a democracy the majority of the rest of the world don't consider North Korea a democracy. So clearly it is not.

So if the majority of the world considers the USA to be a dictatorship, it suddenly becomes a dictatorship?

Yes if the US starts calling itself a dictatorship while the above is true.

North Korea doesn't call itself a dictatorship. Therefore it's not one, clearly.

You never claimed that America is not a completely democratic nation. I never claimed that it was a dictatorship. I posited a hypothetical.

Me: "Just because North Korea calls itself a democracy doesn't make it a democracy."
You: "The rest of the world doesn't consider it a democracy, so it isn't one."
Me: "So, hypothetically, if the rest of the world considers the USA to be a dictatorship, it is a dictatorship?"
You: "No, because it doesn't call itself one."

You claimed that North Korea didn't have to call itself a dictatorship because the rest of the world called it that. I said that, applying your logic consistently, the USA would be a dictatorship if the rest of the world called it that, regardless of whether it called itself one or not.

Me: X calls itself Y. Does that make it Y?
You: Everyone except X calls it Z, so it's Z, not Y.
Me: So if everyone except A calls A Z, A is Z?
You: No, because it doesn't call itself Z, so it doesn't matter is everyone calls it Z.

Or, more simply, your position is as such:

X is Z, not Y, because everyone else calls it Z.
A is not Z when everyone calls it Z.

So, TL;DR, you refuse to apply your own logic consistently if it'll hurt your argument.

*snip*

That's an awful lot of words

What party controlled the USSR? It has a C in it.

I didn't ask "Which party governed the USSR", I asked "When did the USSR ever call the USSR, the country, a communist country?"

Answer the question I asked, not the one you want me to have asked.

No we have not established that. Only if X and Z are both true can we say America is a dictatorship with certainty. You have not addressed both X and Z... you've only talked about one of these two (what other people say).

For North Korea only Z is true (other people call it a dictatorship), while X isn't (it doesn't call itself a dictatorship), so applying your logic here, it isn't a dictatorship.

So anyone who doesn't agree with your conspiracy theories is automatically a ''bulshitting?''

It's not a conspiracy theory. It's called understanding and learning about left-wing theory.

You might like to try it.

Yes IF almost everyone else starts to consider people who act like woodlouse with a woodlouse costume such as yourself as such. Remember, terms change over time depending on what the majority of the people think they mean.

Terms change. Facts don't. I am not a woodlouse no matter how much I want to be, because my genome is not the same as a woodlouse's. Similarly, the USSR was considered by many to be communist. However, its "genome" (its actions, its economy and its theoretics) was not the same as the "genome" of communist theory.

Bastard wasn't a swear word when it first came out, now it is.

Except bastard was always a pejorative term, being used instead of "illegitimate" to insult someone, so your example is a bad one.

If they use communist logic to justify all of their actions,

They didn't.

were controlled by a communist party,

It called itself a communist party.

and the rest of the world considers them to be communist...

Although they themselves didn't. The USSR, as I have already pointed out to you, considered itself to be a socialist state in transition, not a communist society.

it takes a LOT of mental gymnastics to consider them anything but communists.

The term you're looking for is "intellectual honesty", not "mental gymnastics".

So now all of the newspapers I have read are full of ''shit'' too along with every single history teacher I have ever met right? Your credibility is dwindling by the second...

I said "give me a source". You gave me a remark.

A remark is not a source. It is not a URL. It is not an ISBN number. It is a remark. Not a source. Give me a source.

And yet I'm not the one who goes from 1) If X and Y then Z, 2) something is not X... to ''AHA! That something IS NOT Z!''

You appear to be labouring under the delusion that the entirety of left-wing theory on the topic, spanning 150 years, is wrong, and you, a lone child on the Internet with no understanding of that theory, are right.

Somehow I find that hilarious.

You mean they weren't around long enough to start killing and enslaving people like their larger brothers did? Convenient.

They were fundamentally different in nature, given that they were to a greater or lesser degree entirely stateless. And the Free Territory lasted for three years, give or take; that's enough time to launch a purge if you're going to. They didn't, AFAIK.

No actually, common sense should always be the first place you go to. What kind of argument can you make if common sense already rejects it?

"Common sense" is not a thing.

Theory and practice are too different things.

And if the practice doesn't match the theory in any way, shape or form, then it probably has nothing to do with the theory, the theory's name or its principles at all. Shocking, I know.

In the same vein, if I start a political group, call it the "Pro-Capitalist Terrorist Group", and immediately begin executing capitalists, it's a fairly good sign that my group isn't actually pro-capitalist.

Except you couldn't start and own a business in the USSR and make profits in the open and the vast majority of the people had no property rights and could not sell and buy in a free market. To say the USSR followed a ''capitalist economic structure'' is beyond absurd...

Again, you show your ignorance.

State capitalism is still capitalism.

All the evidence in the world thus far stands on my position. Every single society you could consider communist in ideology has not survived the test of history... they have all faded...

Somehow, a territory being invaded by a foreign army and then shut down by the foreign army doesn't show me that the ideology itself is at fault.

Oh yeah? What about Stalin's communist ideology of ''socialism in one country first''?

This'll be the Stalin who had most of the communists murdered and put into place capitalism.

Reagan was a man of wisdom. I take it as a compliment. He contributed to the capitalist victory in the Cold War over communism.

He actively funded death squads across Latin America, which killed thousands of men, women and children. He was fiscally irresponsible.

ONE economic conception of socialism might not have anything to do with government size. Not all conceptions of socialism... especially not with regards to the relevant version of socialism that America has to contend with.

I don't think you understand what I'm saying.

The one, the only common principle of the different branches of socialism is workers' control of the means of production.

That has literally nothing to do with government size.

You get big-government socialists, small-government socialists and no-government socialists (anarchists and communists). That is to do with the political aspect of their beliefs, not the economic aspect, because socialism is purely about economics, not government size.

Capitalism with a ton of regulations attached to protect and benefit workers at the expense of the free market is a form of socialism.

Listen to me. Just once. Listen to what I'm saying instead of seeing what I write and ignoring it entirely.

Socialism. Is. Workers'. Control. Of. The. Means. Of. Production. If. The. Means. Of. Production. Are. Not. Controlled. By. The. Workers. Then. A. Country's. Economy. Is. Not. Socialist.

I don't get it...

FOX is a right-wing propaganda network well known for lying in order to project its inherent biases onto its viewers.

TL;DR: You don't have a clue what you're talking about, you apply logic inconsistently, you're ignorant about economics, you're ignorant about left-wing theory and you're ignorant about history.[/spoiler]

If your teachers call something communist which is not, according to the vast majority of left-wing theory, communist, and you agree with them, then the implication is that you believe them to be better able to identify what is communist and what is not than left-wing theorists looking at left-wing theory.

Like I said, there is a difference between theory and practice. Communism in practice has never looked like what it is in theory... people learn that as they grow up.

My teachers are talking about the real communism, not what happens in the over-idealized fantasies of ''left-wing theorists.'' Practical applications and reality > theories.

Every communist party that has held unto power has ended screwing their countries over. Hence, communism screws countries over. Who cares about the ''theory''?

Except, if we go back to the original assertion instead of putting words in my mouth that I've never said, we see this:

Yes if the US starts calling itself a dictatorship while the above is true.

So? I didn't say the US was or wasn't, I just listed one hypothetical scenario in which it can become one in reply to an absurd hypothetical proposal by yourself.

The chain of posts actually reads as such:

No, I think you don't understand that just because a country calls itself something, doesn't make it that.

North Korea calls itself a democracy. Does this mean that North Korea is a democratic nation?

Yeah but while North Korea calls itself a democracy the majority of the rest of the world don't consider North Korea a democracy. So clearly it is not.

So if the majority of the world considers the USA to be a dictatorship, it suddenly becomes a dictatorship?

Yes if the US starts calling itself a dictatorship while the above is true.

North Korea doesn't call itself a dictatorship. Therefore it's not one, clearly.

You never claimed that America is not a completely democratic nation. I never claimed that it was a dictatorship. I posited a hypothetical.

Me: "Just because North Korea calls itself a democracy doesn't make it a democracy."
You: "The rest of the world doesn't consider it a democracy, so it isn't one."
Me: "So, hypothetically, if the rest of the world considers the USA to be a dictatorship, it is a dictatorship?"
You: "No, because it doesn't call itself one."

You claimed that North Korea didn't have to call itself a dictatorship because the rest of the world called it that. I said that, applying your logic consistently, the USA would be a dictatorship if the rest of the world called it that, regardless of whether it called itself one or not.

Me: X calls itself Y. Does that make it Y?
You: Everyone except X calls it Z, so it's Z, not Y.
Me: So if everyone except A calls A Z, A is Z?
You: No, because it doesn't call itself Z, so it doesn't matter is everyone calls it Z.

Or, more simply, your position is as such:

X is Z, not Y, because everyone else calls it Z.
A is not Z when everyone calls it Z.

So, TL;DR, you refuse to apply your own logic consistently if it'll hurt your argument.

*snip*

That's an awful lot of words

Wow you really aren't getting it...

This is the rule ok? IF X is calls itself Z AND almost everyone else calls it Z, then it is Z. Ok? You always need to keep BOTH parts of this in mind (it's not exclusively about what Z calls itself or what the rest of the world calls Z... only when both agree can we be absolutely certain it is Z).

A country is X... only when 1 and 2 are true. 1) the country calls itself X... 2) almost everyone else calls it X too.

You said NK is not a democracy despite calling itself one. My reply was that this is logically consistent with my rules. Why? Because while the conditions of rule 1 are met... the conditions of rule 2 are NOT met.

You then asked me if the USA is a dictatorship in a scenario where we know rule 2 is met. I told you... no IF rule 1 is not met; but if rule 1 is met then hell yeah. Remember, can't call a country X with absolute certainty unless you have both rules 1 and 2 met.

Don't overcomplicate this. I don't see any logical flaws on my part.

And remember... I did not tell you what I consider North Korea. It could be a dictatorship or it could be a democracy. All I am telling you is that 1 and 2 are true... then you can say it's a X. But if 1 or 2 or both are not met... it's up in the air. When I said ''No'' I mean ''No'' as in you can't assume it with knowledge of only my rules as the premise. I am not telling you what regime type NK or America ARE... I'm just telling you what you can or can't assume with my rules.

Also, keep in mind that my rule (a country is X if it calls itself X and most other countries call it X) is not an ONLY IF proposal. There could be other ways a country is X in a situation where rule 1, rule 2, or BOTH are violated. This is how logic works. Here are the correct assumptions you can make.

IF a country calls itself X and most of the rest of the world calls it X... THEN you can assume that it is X.

IF we know a country is NOT X... then you can safely assume that the two conditions are not BOTH true in the first part of the last sentence.

That is ALL YOU CAN ASSUME.

Can a country be X if it doesn't call itself X and no one considers it X? We don't know based on this one premise; it's logically consistent for that to be possible or not possible; we would need more premises and more rules which I have not provided. What else do we know about a country when it is not X besides the fact that you can safely assume that it is not the case that both of the following are true; aka one of these or both of these are false (1) the country calls itself X, 2) most of the rest of the world calls it X)? NOTHING.

If you take a course on logic this would be second nature to you...

I didn't ask "Which party governed the USSR", I asked "When did the USSR ever call the USSR, the country, a communist country?"

Answer the question I asked, not the one you want me to have asked.

When a country is controlled by a communist party, calls itself communist, justifies everything it does through communist logic, AND the rest of the world calls it communist... it takes a LOT of mental gymnastics to say that country was not communist.

For North Korea only Z is true (other people call it a dictatorship), while X isn't (it doesn't call itself a dictatorship), so applying your logic here, it isn't a dictatorship.

I didn't say NK was or was not a dictatorship. Just that you CAN'T assume it's a democracy on the basis of what it calls itself alone. Why?

Because this is all we know:

If a country calls itself X AND most of the rest of the world calls it X... then it is X.

It's not a conspiracy theory. It's called understanding and learning about left-wing theory.

You might like to try it.

The real world > theory. Communism doesn't work.

Terms change. Facts don't. I am not a woodlouse no matter how much I want to be, because my genome is not the same as a woodlouse's. Similarly, the USSR was considered by many to be communist. However, its "genome" (its actions, its economy and its theoretics) was not the same as the "genome" of communist theory.

Communism is a term... not a fact. Terms mean whatever the majority want them to mean. That's how language works.

Except bastard was always a pejorative term, being used instead of "illegitimate" to insult someone, so your example is a bad one.

But the point still stands. You can keep calling something communist or something not communist but if the most of the rest of the world thinks differently... then it doesn't matter. A term means whatever the majority define it to mean.

They didn't.

The communist party never used communist logic to justify their actions?

It called itself a communist party.

And the rest of the world considered them communist too; they still do today. So except for a few conspiracy theorists, everyone knows their true nature.

Although they themselves didn't. The USSR, as I have already pointed out to you, considered itself to be a socialist state in transition, not a communist society.

A society claiming to be in a transitory stage with accordance to a communist theory that seeks a communist end goal is communist in ideology and practice. It is trying to reach communism.

The term you're looking for is "intellectual honesty", not "mental gymnastics".

Mental gymnastics sounds better. The obvious facts are there (the USSR was not communist), yet there are some who would go out of their way to twist common sense and somehow claim they are anything but communist... even capitalist.

I said "give me a source". You gave me a remark.

A remark is not a source. It is not a URL. It is not an ISBN number. It is a remark. Not a source. Give me a source.

For one.

Go to wikipedia and look up communism. You'll find Stalinism, Maoism and others as a branches of Marxism-Leninism which count as part of the communist umbrella. To the right of the page on communism you'll find a box that has ''leaders'' as a category... under it are listed many of the leaders of modern communism.. INCLUDING people like Stalin.

You appear to be labouring under the delusion that the entirety of left-wing theory on the topic, spanning 150 years, is wrong, and you, a lone child on the Internet with no understanding of that theory, are right.

Somehow I find that hilarious.

And you seem to be laboring under the delusion that communism did not kill hundreds of millions of people over the span of a few decades in the 20th century alone.

You also seem to be unable to understand the difference between the theory of communism and what it looks like in the real world.

They were fundamentally different in nature, given that they were to a greater or lesser degree entirely stateless. And the Free Territory lasted for three years, give or take; that's enough time to launch a purge if you're going to. They didn't, AFAIK.

They weren't really stateless. They had leaders... otherwise they can't last three years.

"Common sense" is not a thing.

So you admit that your arguments go against common sense? Ok.

And if the practice doesn't match the theory in any way, shape or form, then it probably has nothing to do with the theory, the theory's name or its principles at all. Shocking, I know.

In the same vein, if I start a political group, call it the "Pro-Capitalist Terrorist Group", and immediately begin executing capitalists, it's a fairly good sign that my group isn't actually pro-capitalist.

It WOULD be if the rest of the world agrees to define you as part of the capitalist ideological movement. This in combination with you calling yourself capitalist WOULD make you capitalist.

Like I said, it depends on what most of the world chooses to call you... whether they go with your self-assigned label or not.

In the case of communism, the USSR called itself communist and most of the rest of the world agreed (they still agree today). That's why its part of communism.

Again, you show your ignorance.

So tell me when there was a free market and free enterprise in the Soviet Union...

Somehow, a territory being invaded by a foreign army and then shut down by the foreign army doesn't show me that the ideology itself is at fault.

They didn't last long enough for you to conclude either way. I'm talking about the big attempts in Russia, China and elsewhere that lasted long enough to self-destruct.

However, fact still stands... communism has always failed to create a lasting society wherever it is implemented.

This'll be the Stalin who had most of the communists murdered and put into place capitalism.

Who said communists could not murder other communists? I'm a capitalist... does that mean you can safely assume I would somehow NEVER murder anyone else who believes what I believe under any circumstances?

Have not Christians killed Christians? Frenchmen killed Frenchmen? Why does a communist killing another communist automatically rule him out as a real communist?

He actively funded death squads across Latin America, which killed thousands of men, women and children. He was fiscally irresponsible.

And yet he was responsible in large part for the final triumph of democracy, freedom, and capitalism over the forces of communism in the Cold War.

I don't think you understand what I'm saying.

The one, the only common principle of the different branches of socialism is workers' control of the means of production.

That has literally nothing to do with government size.

You get big-government socialists, small-government socialists and no-government socialists (anarchists and communists). That is to do with the political aspect of their beliefs, not the economic aspect, because socialism is purely about economics, not government size.

And yet the consequence of following socialism-inspired policies tends to be an increase in the size of government. Go figure...

Listen to me. Just once. Listen to what I'm saying instead of seeing what I write and ignoring it entirely.

Socialism. Is. Workers'. Control. Of. The. Means. Of. Production. If. The. Means. Of. Production. Are. Not. Controlled. By. The. Workers. Then. A. Country's. Economy. Is. Not. Socialist.

That is too narrow a conception of socialism... There are non-Marxist socialists you know?

FOX is a right-wing propaganda network well known for lying in order to project its inherent biases onto its viewers.

TL;DR: You don't have a clue what you're talking about, you apply logic inconsistently, you're ignorant about economics, you're ignorant about left-wing theory and you're ignorant about history.

I'm not the one out of tune with what most of the rest of the world knows is true. Go ask people who lived through the Cold War and specifically those who lived under communist countries; they'll tell you I am right.

Go out and take a poll on whether or the USSR was communist. You're the one speaking a different language from most of the rest of the world...

[Mike the Progressive]

I've just realised that I wasted half an hour of my life posting that.

Oh well.

You tried to explain something that was misinterpreted by an audience of infants and imbeciles that will most likely be forgotten come next week, so...actually I'm not sure where I was going with that.

[Yumyumsuppertime]

I've just realised that I wasted half an hour of my life posting that.

Oh well.

Bookmark it so that you can copy/paste it the next time someone brings up that nonsense.

[Arglorand]

FreeSoc, mate, don't even bother replying to this guy anymore. He's repeating already dismantled arguments like a drone. It's no use. Your dismantling of his imbecilic claims was impressive enough to just leave it there.

Oh, and Linderman? I live in a post-Soviet country and you are not a single fucking shred of right.

[Of the Free Socialist Territories]

*snip*

There is nothing, nothing at all in there that I have not already covered or carefully explained to you as best I can.

The fact that you're unwilling to listen lest it challenge your false preconceptions is not my problem.

Have a nice day.

[Antikua]

It has intention but didn't do any major moves after Lenin's Death .

Brezhnev , Khrushchev or any other post-Lenin/Stalin didn't try to expand or even implement Socialism .

Fixed.

Trots didn't accomplished anything in real life and Stalin manage to put a country in ruins in a world super power with nuclear weapons and almost set the things would be done related to space exploration.

[Of the Free Socialist Territories]

Fixed.

Trots didn't accomplished anything in real life

wat

[Ermarian]

Campaigning in America without mentioning (repeatedly) how much you hate communism, is pretty much a definite road to failure.

[Socialist EU]

Fixed.

Trots didn't accomplished anything in real life and Stalin manage to put a country in ruins in a world super power with nuclear weapons and almost set the things would be done related to space exploration.

What was the USSR's space exploration about? Socialism on one moon?

[Linderman]

*snip*

There is nothing, nothing at all in there that I have not already covered or carefully explained to you as best I can.

The fact that you're unwilling to listen lest it challenge your false preconceptions is not my problem.

Have a nice day.

I tried to help you see the real world... but unfortunately I have failed.

If you're happier in your communist fantasy land then so be it... Believe what you want so long as you hurt no one else.

I just don't want to wake up one day and see the world turned upside down because a bunch of commies tries to overthrow ''the corrupt capitalist world'' because they like yourself, believe in conspiracy theorists like ''the USSR was never communist.''

I wish you well...