What would the U.S. be like if it became a communist country? (weapon, suspect)
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So does capitalism, there are always winners and losers in a capitalist system.
No, not in a purely free market, where the government protects and maintains a level playing field. You're referring to vulture capitalism, where the government maintains a stacked field and plays crony politics. That IS NOT Capitalism.
I can't remember the last time someone forced me by law to purchase a product... ...oh, wait!
What would a bird be like if it was in a turtle's shell?
This is just about a perfect answer to a really dumb question - the only thing that would make it better would be to explain that the bird is a baby bird and it's never seen or heard of a turtle.
I think his point was that the 1%ers make out quite well in a Communist state. There is always a group of elites at the top who live quite well on the backs of the serf class. Communism/Socialism offers shared misery for the masses, while the men at the top do quite well. Throughout history these men have shown an inclination to massacre millions to hold on to their power.
The fact that people who quote/carry the Constitution are considered lunatics is quite a tell on the Marxist scale.
In the Soviet Union and in the Peoples Republic of China 7 and 20 million people were or are members of these states Communist Parties. This works out to about 3 and 1.8 % of the population respectively. The elites of the USSR and todya's China are small fractions of the population.
Another thing to consider is the best predictor of ones chances at becoming a member of the Communist Party in todays China is whether your parents are members of the Communist Party so the elite is becoming hereditory.
People become distracted by the meaningless details that can change in any given situation for any given communist country.
This distraction can work to obfuscate the true communist nature of a communist state. The economics actually matter little, except as a means to control the minds (and bodies through malnutrition) of the dis-empowered proletariat in a communist state. Class warfare will be emphasized, but economics are not the defining characteristic of a communist state. In fact, a communist state can utilize capitalism for a long time, to obscure its nature, while putting the social conditions in place that are necessary for communism (a society without a middle class and with a powerless underclass) to take hold. Communism can best be described as a set of social conditions rather than economic conditions, although the classic economic rhetoric that is commonly associated with communism will be present at later stages when it is correctly implemented. Russia ultimately failed as a communist state not because of any inherent weakness of communism versus capitalism, but because communism was instituted too quickly without better fundamental social conditions being first ensured.
The Bolsheviks should have instead killed the Czar under a non-Bolshevist flag, instituted the necessary social conditions over time, and then introduced communism a few decades later. They were impatient, and perhaps did not correctly estimate just how necessary the correct social conditions were. Of course, those social conditions were in-fact enforced but via edict, the gulag, and murder but society wasn't changed at its root because the social changes were not seen as entirely consensual nor natural. Much of the culture of the Russian people endured. If the Bolsheviks could have predicted the invention of television, I would wager that they would have been more patient to better ensure lasting communism.
The core of communism, and all you need to know to identify a communist state (using the word "nation" to describe a communist state is a contradiction in terms) is as follows:
In a communist state you have a maximum degree of individualism and a minimal degree of family and community cohesiveness. Of course, humans are naturally community and family oriented and will become so if left alone, and so that instinct must be disarmed because that instinct and the tight knit groups that it fosters breeds grassroots political power; ie: actual power. In a communist state, the natural human tendency toward family and community cohesiveness is replaced with the false, powerless cohesion of the proletariat (politically powerful, hard to shake community interests that are born out of cultural and ethnic interests are replaced with weak, easy to manipulate economic interests). Thus, communism is branded as "collectivism" when in reality people are not allowed to be collectivist in the way that engenders political power: via ethnicity or culture. The family, as the root of all aforementioned political power, is strongly undermined. In reality, the strength of the family unit, as well as culture and ethnic bonds, are bred out of communist societies through the cult of the individual. The "rights" of the individual are emphasized and given priority over the rights and interests of any traditional group. Groups who have agendas that are anathema to traditional groups are supported in the short to medium term, until all traditional social groups and units can be effectively undermined.
The genius of modern communism is the idealism switch and spin that has been branded into it. Most people have been led to believe that it is something that it is not. The complimentary branding has been accomplished with "libertarianism". Libertarian "conservatives" (sorry if you were fooled - I know your heart is in the right place and it isn't your fault) have been fooled into believing that conservative ideals lie within communist concepts of social individualism. Their basic strategy is that you can't figure out nor win the game if you have been fed the wrong rules, and therefore you are fed the wrong rules and definitions. This insidious disinformation is especially effective because it causes many well-meaning conservatives to lobby for cultural conditions that will eventually usher in an openly communist state.
Individualist, liberal social privilege and ideals are anti-family values, and therefore families are fractured when these social ideals reach a tipping point. When families are fractured, communities are fractured. When communities are fractured, there is no community political co-operation and the resultant slave class (defined as a class of people without political power because they lack incentive to co-operate on a meaningful intergenerational level) is ripe to be fed the class warfare BS to substitute as a replacement for the power that they lost through the disintegration of family, community and culture.
The class based social cohesion (economic "cohesion") engenders exactly no power because money can be manipulated to manipulate the proletariat. If you want them happy with no incentive to co-operate with one another then pay them. If you want them stressed out and co-operative under the banner of class warfare then don't pay them. Money can be printed at any time. There is no weaker form of political structure for any group.
An aristocratic over-class remains in place with no hope of their being challenged by the middle class, because the middle class was destroyed by both class warfare politics (convenient for the upper class) and the inability of the culture-stripped proletariat to maintain middle class habits and values. Also, the over-class never disintegrates as Marx disingenuously predicts. They remain embedded in a position of complete despotism, as we can see in the Soviet Union rear view. There is literally not a single avenue toward the dissolution of the state in a Communist country. Half-starved (or even well fed), poor, cultural-less people who can barely co-operate with one another have no chance of dissolving the state.
To observe true anti-communist/communism resistant societies in the modern day, observe the cultures of: the Amish, the various Jewish Orthodox sects and to a lesser extent Israel, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, and Japan. There are likely more but this is what I can think of at the moment. The first two examples and Saudi Arabia obviously represent the extreme end, but looking at the extremes can be good to gain an idea of relative measure.
People become distracted by the meaningless details that can change in any given situation for any given communist country.
This distraction can work to obfuscate the true communist nature of a communist state. The economics actually matter little, except as a means to control the minds (and bodies through malnutrition) of the dis-empowered proletariat in a communist state. Class warfare will be emphasized, but economics are not the defining characteristic of a communist state. In fact, a communist state can utilize capitalism for a long time, to obscure its nature, while putting the social conditions in place that are necessary for communism (a society without a middle class and with a powerless underclass) to take hold. Communism can best be described as a set of social conditions rather than economic conditions, although the classic economic rhetoric that is commonly associated with communism will be present at later stages when it is correctly implemented. Russia ultimately failed as a communist state not because of any inherent weakness of communism versus capitalism, but because communism was instituted too quickly without better fundamental social conditions being first ensured.
The Bolsheviks should have instead killed the Czar under a non-Bolshevist flag, instituted the necessary social conditions over time, and then introduced communism a few decades later. They were impatient, and perhaps did not correctly estimate just how necessary the correct social conditions were. Of course, those social conditions were in-fact enforced but via edict, the gulag, and murder but society wasn't changed at its root because the social changes were not seen as entirely consensual nor natural. Much of the culture of the Russian people endured. If the Bolsheviks could have predicted the invention of television, I would wager that they would have been more patient to better ensure lasting communism.
The core of communism, and all you need to know to identify a communist state (using the word "nation" to describe a communist state is a contradiction in terms) is as follows:
In a communist state you have a maximum degree of individualism and a minimal degree of family and community cohesiveness. Of course, humans are naturally community and family oriented and will become so if left alone, and so that instinct must be disarmed because that instinct and the tight knit groups that it fosters breeds grassroots political power; ie: actual power. In a communist state, the natural human tendency toward family and community cohesiveness is replaced with the false, powerless cohesion of the proletariat (politically powerful, hard to shake community interests that are born out of cultural and ethnic interests are replaced with weak, easy to manipulate economic interests). Thus, communism is branded as "collectivism" when in reality people are not allowed to be collectivist in the way that engenders political power: via ethnicity or culture. The family, as the root of all aforementioned political power, is strongly undermined. In reality, the strength of the family unit, as well as culture and ethnic bonds, are bred out of communist societies through the cult of the individual. The "rights" of the individual are emphasized and given priority over the rights and interests of any traditional group. Groups who have agendas that are anathema to traditional groups are supported in the short to medium term, until all traditional social groups and units can be effectively undermined.
The genius of modern communism is the idealism switch and spin that has been branded into it. Most people have been led to believe that it is something that it is not. The complimentary branding has been accomplished with "libertarianism". Libertarian "conservatives" (sorry if you were fooled - I know your heart is in the right place and it isn't your fault) have been fooled into believing that conservative ideals lie within communist concepts of social individualism. Their basic strategy is that you can't figure out nor win the game if you have been fed the wrong rules, and therefore you are fed the wrong rules and definitions. This insidious disinformation is especially effective because it causes many well-meaning conservatives to lobby for cultural conditions that will eventually usher in an openly communist state.
Individualist, liberal social privilege and ideals are anti-family values, and therefore families are fractured when these social ideals reach a tipping point. When families are fractured, communities are fractured. When communities are fractured, there is no community political co-operation and the resultant slave class (defined as a class of people without political power because they lack incentive to co-operate on a meaningful intergenerational level) is ripe to be fed the class warfare BS to substitute as a replacement for the power that they lost through the disintegration of family, community and culture.
The class based social cohesion (economic "cohesion") engenders exactly no power because money can be manipulated to manipulate the proletariat. If you want them happy with no incentive to co-operate with one another then pay them. If you want them stressed out and co-operative under the banner of class warfare then don't pay them. Money can be printed at any time. There is no weaker form of political structure for any group.
An aristocratic over-class remains in place with no hope of their being challenged by the middle class, because the middle class was destroyed by both class warfare politics (convenient for the upper class) and the inability of the culture-stripped proletariat to maintain middle class habits and values. Also, the over-class never disintegrates as Marx disingenuously predicts. They remain embedded in a position of complete despotism, as we can see in the Soviet Union rear view. There is literally not a single avenue toward the dissolution of the state in a Communist country. Half-starved (or even well fed), poor, cultural-less people who can barely co-operate with one another have no chance of dissolving the state.
To observe true anti-communist/communism resistant societies in the modern day, observe the cultures of: the Amish, the various Jewish Orthodox sects and to a lesser extent Israel, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, and Japan. There are likely more but this is what I can think of at the moment. The first two examples and Saudi Arabia obviously represent the extreme end, but looking at the extremes can be good to gain an idea of relative measure.
Sorry I'm not reading all of that. Were you saying being family and community like is bad?
Judging by "communist" China a communist USA would be exactly like it is now only there would be no Fox News, no Republican party, no guns and no talk radio and you'd be sent to jail(instead of just losing your job) for non PC-speech.
Basically imagine a mix of the UK(getting locked up for racist tweets) and China(one-party crony oligarch nightmare).
So basically most liberals wouldn't notice much of a change, since "their guys" would be in total power and thus all the corruption would be "for the greater good". Viva la toilet paper shortages!
What would it be like if vegetarians ate meat and meat-eaters ate only radishes?
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