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Would any of ye have liked to live in a communist country?

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    #152
    [Deleted User]
    Posts: 13,712 ✭✭✭✭ [Deleted User]


    Nehemiah Billions Mound wrote: »
    My wife and her family lived in a communist country.
    You don't want to have lived in one!
    Dickensian England was probably the zenith of European capitalism, and I wouldn't want to live there either.

    Irrupting into the history books to find places and times of misery & squalor is of very limited value. Any economic and philosophical system that has ever been attempted has been botched at some point or another.


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    #153
    BalcombeSt4
    Registered Users Posts: 1,792 ✭✭✭BalcombeSt4


    Nehemiah Billions Mound wrote: »
    My wife and her family lived in a communist country.
    You don't want to have lived in one!

    Where was it?


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    #154
    Icepick
    Registered Users Posts: 2,454 ✭✭✭Icepick


    You are an idiot OP.

    If you disagree, think about this:
    Would any of ye have liked to live in a fascist country?

    same thing


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    #155
    beach_walker
    Users Awaiting Email Confirmation Posts: 976 ✭✭✭beach_walker


    Nehemiah Billions Mound wrote: »
    My wife and her family lived in a communist country.
    You don't want to have lived in one!

    Yeah, some of the stories are amazing to hear first-hand.

    It's interesting how few communists from Ireland/the West ever seemed to emigrate to these places, despite signing their praises.


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    #156
    [Deleted User]
    Posts: 13,712 ✭✭✭✭ [Deleted User]


    Icepick wrote: »
    You are an idiot OP.

    If you disagree, think about this:
    Would any of ye have liked to live in a fascist country?

    same thing
    Have you never heard of Yugo-nostalgia, genius?

    Plenty of people in the former Yugoslavia had better lives under Tito than they do even now.

    Yugoslavia was never so corrupt as when its successors became market economies.


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    #157
    BalcombeSt4
    Registered Users Posts: 1,792 ✭✭✭BalcombeSt4


    ScumLord wrote: »
    It seems poor people would rather run the risk of being eternally poor if it means there's the slightest possibility tohey could be rich.

    There's no guarantee in communism that's you'll get either a roof over your head or a meal. At best they can guarantee you'll get what the next guy gets which could end up being nothing.

    I don't agree with the top part. All the countries that thaught they were communists were all poor & corupt countries to begin with.

    Well then it's not socialism.
    The core principal of socialism is that workers control the means of production, if they control the means of production I'm sure they could produce a meal & and roof.

    Marxism-Leninism is not socialism, it's a form of totalitarianism.


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    #158
    BalcombeSt4
    Registered Users Posts: 1,792 ✭✭✭BalcombeSt4


    Icepick wrote: »
    You are an idiot OP.

    If you disagree, think about this:
    Would any of ye have liked to live in a fascist country?

    same thing

    No, it's a very different thing.
    And attack the post not the poster, like I'm going to do.
    Worst comment in the thread so far. Worst comment ever.


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    #159
    Das Reich
    Registered Users Posts: 736 ✭✭✭Das Reich


    Only place true socialism existed was in the Italian Social Republic. DDR was not a bad country at all, olympic power and strong military. Also, there was not pornography and homosexualism. Bad point was that abortion was legal on all those communist countries.


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    #160
    JuliusCaesar
    Registered Users Posts: 4,882 ✭✭✭JuliusCaesar


    Fleawuss wrote: »
    No. I always think of them as cold, grey, boring, with sad people trudging through slush watched by pig eyed secret policemen. And cabbage. People gnawing on cabbage. So no.

    Sounds like Ireland in the 1950s.

    Except the secret policemen were dressed in clerical collars.


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    #161
    beach_walker
    Users Awaiting Email Confirmation Posts: 976 ✭✭✭beach_walker


    JuliusCaesar wrote: »
    Sounds like Ireland in the 1950s.

    Except the secret policemen were dressed in clerical collars.

    So given the choice between living in Ireland in the 50's and Stalin's USSR, where would you live? Where do you think you had a higher chance of being murdered by the state for thought crimes?

    I mean Ireland wasn't perfect throughout the 20th century and certainly had its faults. The communist regimes were in a different galaxy in comparison and trying to conflate the two is funny tbh.


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    #162
    Larry SR
    Closed Accounts Posts: 61 ✭✭Larry SR


    Das Reich wrote: »
    Only place true socialism existed was in the Italian Social Republic. DDR was not a bad country at all, olympic power and strong military. Also, there was not pornography and homosexualism. Bad point was that abortion was legal on all those communist countries.

    What is 'homosexualism'?


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    #163
    Permabear
    Closed Accounts Posts: 39,022 ✭✭✭✭Permabear


    This post has been deleted.


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    #164
    wakka12
    Registered Users Posts: 9,786 ✭✭✭wakka12


    Das Reich wrote: »
    Only place true socialism existed was in the Italian Social Republic. DDR was not a bad country at all, olympic power and strong military. Also, there was not pornography and homosexualism. Bad point was that abortion was legal on all those communist countries.

    Are you claiming that no homosexuals happened to be born there during the time it was a communist state. And that nobody ever recorded sex for commercial value.


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    #165
    Zxclnic
    Closed Accounts Posts: 611 ✭✭✭Zxclnic


    Das Reich wrote: »
    Only place true socialism existed was in the Italian Social Republic. DDR was not a bad country at all, olympic power and strong military. Also, there was not pornography and homosexualism. Bad point was that abortion was legal on all those communist countries.

    I think you might be confusing socialism with national socialism (fascism), opposite ends of the political spectrum.


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    #166
    Das Reich
    Registered Users Posts: 736 ✭✭✭Das Reich


    Zxclnic wrote: »
    I think you might be confusing socialism with national socialism (fascism), opposite ends of the political spectrum.

    They are not opposite on the political spectrum as they share many things. Fascism is just a socialism adapted to the reality of post WWI Italy. In fact the Fascist Party was called Socialist Party. And on the Italian Social Republic (RSI) had the economy politics based on people like Bombacci (a marxist):

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicola_Bombacci

    If you want to talk about National Socialism, many people there were more National Bolshevik like Goebbels.


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    #167
    Zxclnic
    Closed Accounts Posts: 611 ✭✭✭Zxclnic


    Das Reich wrote: »
    They are not opposite on the political spectrum as they share many things. Fascism is just a socialism adapted to the reality of post WWI Italy. In fact the Fascist Party was called Socialist Party. And on the Italian Social Republic (RSI) had the economy politics based on people like Bombacci (a marxist):

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicola_Bombacci

    If you want to talk about National Socialism, many people there were more National Bolshevik like Goebbels.

    I don't want to talk about National Socialism/Fascism, but it seems that you do.

    Socialism as espoused by the likes of Paul Murphy, Clare Daly, Jeremy Corbyn etc. is a left-wing idology.

    'National Socialism' as espoused by Mussolini, Hitler etc - is right -wing.
    Simples.


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    #168
    Giacomo McGubbin
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 677 ✭✭✭Giacomo McGubbin


    There are all types of socialists. Bertie Ahern famously announced when was taoiseach that he was a socialist.
    What he didn't tell people was he meant socialism for the rich, where their private speculation and gambling debts of the rich would be nationalised, and the rich would become richer than ever before.


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    #169
    Richard Hillman
    Registered Users Posts: 12,033 ✭✭✭✭Richard Hillman


    Zxclnic wrote: »
    I don't want to talk about National Socialism/Fascism, but it seems that you do.

    Socialism as espoused by the likes of Paul Murphy, Clare Daly, Jeremy Corbyn etc. is a left-wing idology.

    'National Socialism' as espoused by Mussolini, Hitler etc - is right -wing.
    Simples.
    They both have the same belief systems bar national pride. The likes of Murphy, Corbyn etc despise their own countries and their own people, The National Socialist loves their country a bit too much. Economically They are the exact same. They are both essentially undemocratic too. They dont care about common concensus, they will just do whatever they feel is best.

    We get way too wrapped up in the left and right thing.


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    #170
    Zxclnic
    Closed Accounts Posts: 611 ✭✭✭Zxclnic


    Richard Hillman wrote: »
    They both have the same belief systems bar national pride. The likes of Murphy, Corbyn etc despise their own countries and their own people, The National Socialist loves their country a bit too much. Economically They are the exact same. They are both essentially undemocratic too. They dont care about common concensus, they will just do whatever they feel is best.

    We get way too wrapped up in the left and right thing.

    Love the bit in bold....the word 'understatement' hardly does it justice.

    Btw, you'll find it's nearly always those on the 'right' who complain about left/right labelling, whereas those on the left are quite prepared - and not ashamed - to say where they stand in the political spectrum.


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    #171
    Giacomo McGubbin
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 677 ✭✭✭Giacomo McGubbin


    Richard Hillman wrote: »
    The National Socialist loves their country a bit too much.

    Some of the low level stoogies perhaps, but their leaders only love power, they just use the well worn tools of patriotism and propaganda to control and manipulate said stoogies into doing their bidding.


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    #172
    Raging_Ninja
    Registered Users Posts: 1,717 ✭✭✭Raging_Ninja


    A Tyrant Named Miltiades! wrote: »
    Have you never heard of Yugo-nostalgia, genius?

    Plenty of people in the former Yugoslavia had better lives under Tito than they do even now.

    Yugoslavia was never so corrupt as when its successors became market economies.

    If a system is dependent on the benevolence of one person at the top to keep it "pure", then it's a bad system.


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    #173
    [Deleted User]
    Posts: 13,712 ✭✭✭✭ [Deleted User]


    Permabear wrote: »
    This post had been deleted.
    You're Irish, right?

    The irony of an Irishman saying such an outlandish thing. That arrogant belief in the free hand of the market killed one million of our ancestors in the 19th century, and had even more drastic consequences in other areas of the Commonwealth. Lord Lytton's haughty refusal to intervene in the Indian Famine of 1876 killed 8 million people; he wanted to let the market solve the problem.

    Irish fawning at the invisible God of the market is, to my mind, as grotesque as seeing a Jew put on the garb of the Schutzstaffel.

    From the time of the Industrial Revolution, to the Great Recession, the Irish have more reasons than most peoples of the world to resent and distrust unregulated, free market codology.
    Raging_Ninja wrote: »
    If a system is dependent on the benevolence of one person at the top to keep it "pure", then it's a bad system.
    I agree. But enough about liberal democracy. What about communism?


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    #174
    Raging_Ninja
    Registered Users Posts: 1,717 ✭✭✭Raging_Ninja


    muck_master wrote: »
    bertie nearly trebled the old age pension while taoiseach and doubled public sector wages

    Helped stop a war too


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    #175
    BalcombeSt4
    Registered Users Posts: 1,792 ✭✭✭BalcombeSt4


    Permabear wrote: »
    This post had been deleted.

    During the Famine there was enough food to feed the entire population nearly 3 times over, the people who were helping produce the food were the ones starving if they controlled the food they produced instead of sending it over to British markets they could have feed themselves.

    The "Mill Girls" (female workers who came to work for the textile corporations in Lowell in the mid 1800's) were one of the fiirst groups of people to come up with the concept of workers owning the places they worked in. They just assumed that people working in the mills ought to own them. They viewed the dependence on the corporations for a wage as an attack on their liberty & freedom which is why they called it "wage slavery"
    they didn't see much difference between selling yourself and living on a slavers land, eating his food etc.. & renting yourself for wages, they viewed it as degrading.


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    #176
    BalcombeSt4
    Registered Users Posts: 1,792 ✭✭✭BalcombeSt4


    Das Reich wrote: »
    Only place true socialism existed was in the Italian Social Republic. DDR was not a bad country at all, olympic power and strong military. Also, there was not pornography and homosexualism. Bad point was that abortion was legal on all those communist countries.

    What does that have do with socialism? The Nazi's put on a good show in 1936 and they were obssessed with having a strong military also.


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    #177
    BalcombeSt4
    Registered Users Posts: 1,792 ✭✭✭BalcombeSt4


    Raging_Ninja wrote: »
    Helped stop a war too

    Albert Reynolds would have to share the praise for that as well with helping to get the ball rolling and Bertie did do a good job of it alrite especially after the ejit Bruton nearly wrecked the whole thing just because of his hatred of Republicans.
    I'd also say for Bertie he probably did more than any other Irish PM to improve relations with Britain & the 6 counties.


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    #178
    Jimbob1977
    Registered Users Posts: 2,239 ✭✭✭Jimbob1977


    Maybe for a short holiday in Albania.

    When Ireland played in Tirana, the hotels had frequent power cuts.... and the players reported blood on the sheets.

    It was a European country, yet seemed too backward to be European.

    Then Communism fell and the citizens were scammed by a state-run Ponzi Scheme. Cue another mass exodus on the rusty boats to Bari and Brindisi.

    These days, it gets rave reviews as a beach holiday destination. Sandy beaches and cheap.


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    #179
    BalcombeSt4
    Registered Users Posts: 1,792 ✭✭✭BalcombeSt4


    Zxclnic wrote: »
    I don't want to talk about National Socialism/Fascism, but it seems that you do.

    Socialism as espoused by the likes of Paul Murphy, Clare Daly, Jeremy Corbyn etc. is a left-wing idology.

    'National Socialism' as espoused by Mussolini, Hitler etc - is right -wing.
    Simples.

    This is were my understanding of real socialism comes from as well. Give me a Tony Benn, Dennis Skinner & a Michael Foot over a Lenin & a Mao anyday.


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    #180
    Das Reich
    Registered Users Posts: 736 ✭✭✭Das Reich


    Richard Hillman wrote: »
    They both have the same belief systems bar national pride. The likes of Murphy, Corbyn etc despise their own countries and their own people, The National Socialist loves their country a bit too much. Economically They are the exact same. They are both essentially undemocratic too. They dont care about common concensus, they will just do whatever they feel is best.

    We get way too wrapped up in the left and right thing.

    I agree 100%. However, being antidemocratic and authoritarian doesn't necessary mean that is bad.


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    #181
    karma_
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 6,798 ✭✭✭karma_


    Richard Hillman wrote: »
    They both have the same belief systems bar national pride. The likes of Murphy, Corbyn etc despise their own countries and their own people, The National Socialist loves their country a bit too much. Economically They are the exact same. They are both essentially undemocratic too. They dont care about common concensus, they will just do whatever they feel is best.

    We get way too wrapped up in the left and right thing.

    They are diametrically opposed ideologies, one based on internationalism and the other based on nationalism. For fúcks sake, it's the first word in the title of 'National' socialism.


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