How is it that socialism/communism/Marxism have attracted so many genuine adherents over the years? I don't mean the billions of people brutalized under the reign of socialist rule, but the millions who advocate for it, actively work to spread it, idolize the figureheads of its regimes, are willing to do [b][i]anything[/i][/b] to see it come to fruition.

Do they think that they'll get to be in charge of the Tuscaloosa Peoples' Tractor Factory Number Four when the bourgeois running dog capitalists are pulled down and sent to the camps? Is that it? Are they just assholes with a grudge who figure that succeeding in the present environment would just take far too much work, but if they are loyal Party workers they will be rewarded on the morning after the Night of the Long Knives?

How can they legitimize and justify the wholesale slaughter and savagery necessary to bring about their workers' paradise? Every soc/com/Marx regime ever created was built on mass graves. The Katyn Forest, the Killing Fields, Hue City, etc: every one required that thousands die horribly and, in most cases individually, to bring about the Peoples' Democratic Republic of what the fuck ever. When the Khmer Rouge came out of the jungles and took over Cambodia, they killed everyone with prescription eyeglasses, one by one, with small arms or blades. In the case of the Khmer, they got rural children and bombarded them with harsh indoctrination that the "city people" were evil and the source of all of Kampuchea's problems, but it took educated, brutal bastards to indoctrinate and essentially destroy those children. Where did the Khmer Rouge find those willing to induce children to mass murder?

When the essential underlying falsehoods that constitute the entire ethos of socialism are revealed over time, does the Politburo or the Commissariat really expect people to continue to believe, or are they satisfied as long as everyone continues to repeat the lies? Does sincerity count, or are you a Party member in good standing as long as you turn up at the meetings in your red neckerchief and sing the songs and shake your fist at the regularly scheduled demonstrations in front of the US embassy?


These are the kinds of questions that occur to me in the middle of a Chemlawn commercial while watching CSI.

Elite-ism.

The socialist know better for the un-washed masses. It's better to give them your life energy and let them care for you. You're too stupid to do it on your own. You're too stupid to own firearms. You're too stupid to raise or educate your own children. You're so stupid that abortion is the best method of birth control. You're so stupid that you'll not read history or heaven forbid, the Constitution. You're so stupid that they have to protect you from morals, culture, or religion. You're so stupid that you don't think oral sex is sex. You're so stupid that you vote winners like Schumer, Fineswine, Boxer, and Clinton into office, Slick Willie twice. You're so stupid that you think that only the politicians know what best to do with the military - like putting gays in the ranks and cutting Army divisions, Navy ships, and air wings in half ...

the bottom line is that we're pretty stupid.

Nonresponsive, move to strike.

No one has touched on the violence, the pogroms, the extermination programs, the mass killings, the mass arrests and the gulags.

Stupidity.

Seriously, it's much more of a matter of who can or cannot think for his/her self.  It's substituting ignorance for intellect and integrity in order to make yourself 'feel good'

I was waiting to see if anybody got the right answer.  Nobody has yet (IMO).
People advocate socialism because they see only one thing: the perceived evils of capitalism.
They do not have a rational view of both economic systems.  They have only lived under one system, and do not realize that it is actually the superior system.  Their myopic view gives rise to a wish for another system that does not have the obvious "defects" of capitalism.
If somebody mentioned something about intellectual laziness, they are right.

If you believe the premise that there will always be a top/ruling class then both communism and socialism is designed to eliminate the middle classes.  The therory is to pull the lower classes standard of living up but in reality it just widens the gap between upper and lower creating more unrest.

Can anyone address how socialism can be advocated for given the 100% rate of socialist regimes that required purges and mass arrests/killings to accomplish the transition?

Or how it is that every socialist regime in history had to turn their border guards around to point their weapons inboard to keep their own people in?

Given the spectacular and very well publicized failures of socialist regimes to protect even the most basic rights for their people, do socialists just think, "Well, the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Poland, Yugoslavia, Albania, Hungary, Romania, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, North Korea and Cuba were/are all disasters, but it'll be [b]different[/b] when I'm in charge!"

Partially correct.  The intellectual socialists will point you towards corporate abuses, frauds, corruptions and monopolies.  They will point towards the focus on profit over safety, working conditions, pay or medical benefits.  Theoretically, when a company doesn't have to worry about staying on the razor's edge between profit and loss, they are freer to devote funds and time towards a good work environment, etc.  Practically, it doesn't happen that way, because free money is too good to pass up, no matter your station in life.  

I attempted to do just that, Jeff.  It's mental myopia.  The person has ONLY the evils of capitalism in view, and none of the evils of past socialist regimes.

That's not the result of a college education, but reading procommunist propaganda (such as DU), and analyzing (on my own time and energy) several things, such as the financial status of the speaker.

Hairsplitters of the world unite!

Now that's funny! [:d]

Yes, Allende was a socialist, but didn't get the chance to change the institutions of Chile to the point where he would get to make it a socialist [b]system[/b].


On the contrary. That just proves that Pinochet was as much of an asshole as socialist/Marxist/communist dictators are. Raising the example of a fascist dictator certainly does nothing to disprove the fact that every socialist/Marxist/communist system has required tyrrany and murder. All that does is prove that you aren't arguing on the facts, and are sidetracking the argument into "Well, your philosophy doesn't have spotless hands either!!" like my college girlfriend used to.

I've never advocated nor carried water for Pinochet, so pointing out the fact that he [b]also[/b] is responsible for thousands of deaths is completely inconsequential to the discussion at hand, and an attempt to either hijack the thread or bog down the argument.


Countries with a functioning ballot box, one that can turn the socialists/Marxists/communists out of their positions of power aren't actually socialist/Marxist/communist though. They're democracies that have a socialist/Marxist/communist party temporarily in power. To have a socialist/Marxist/communist government, whatever charter or constitution regulates their system of government would have to be scrapped or significantly altered, doing away with the previous nation and instituting the Peoples' Democratic Republic of what the fuck ever.