As usual, you relativize, you consider it was a game of influence, and like Ted Welch, you see it as not genuine communism. I repeat to both of you that the theory, even coming from a peaceful man, who accepted velvet revolution, the theory divided the world into rich and poor, exploited and exploiters, oppressed and oppressors, promoted class warfare, revolution and this led directly where it led: blood baths and dictatorship.
You hairsplit, abstractize and relativize it, and I'm telling you again that for one, the situation as I have it is generally accepted (including the designation as communist of those regimes) - except marxist theorisers and philosophic circles marred in endless highly abstract discussions on this or that aspect not present or not precisely as postulated by Marx; for two, all this is pointless, since I'm well aware we can play sophisms ten more years from now; playing intellectual games may bring you some aura in extreme leftwing circles, but it has no relevance whatsoever here, or for myself. It's exactly what you did with those other issues. Here the original point was my mentioning the press freedom in communist dictatorships. There it was about politicized extremist French unions. And so on. I am doing no more fighting against extreme left sloganeering, Jake. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
The regime in South Viet Nam invited in an American colonial regime because they were scared shitless that Ho Chi Min was going to win the elections fair and square. He might not have - that's in the nature of elections - but both the US and the regime in Saigon very clearly thought that he would. Blaming Ho Chi Min for the lack of elections caused by an American invasion is like breaking into my house, shooting me and then accusing me of theft because I am now in possession of your bullet!
And now you claim that Ho Chi Min was a client of the USSR. Last time, you claimed he was a client of the PRC. So who did he take marching orders from? Both Moscow and Beijing? What about the issues they disagreed about (and they did not have the same policy on Indochina, except in the very superficial sense that they agreed that the USA had bugger all to do there).
Or do you simply fail to distinguish between China and Russia "cuz they iz all commiez"?
I'm not going to go into a philosophical fight about the nature and ideals of communism, partly because I'm not a communist and partly because political factions like the Perónists provide all the empirical evidence needed to dismiss the claim that communism and class consciousness deterministically lead to repression and totalitarianism. And besides, weren't you opposed to historical determinism yesterday?
If you want to see Marxism with a human face, look to Latin America. If you prefer to stick with your bigotry and nurse your resentment over whatever wrongs were inflicted upon you by the Soviet empire, there's bugger all I can do to drag your head out of your ass for you.
Your view of history is extremely naïve, and your view of the history of half the 20th century is straight out of the Springer-presse's la-la land. But why do I even bother? I'm not here to give you remedial history classes.
And by the way, I'm sick and tired of hearing you imply that I deny or minimise the wrongs committed by the Soviet Union - that's pure, base libel when I have acknowledged them in so many words, on several different occasions, both here and elsewhere.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
Well, you are debating someone who sought to prove Christian tolerance in the Roman Empire with policies of the sole non-Christian 4th-century Emperor -- who 'earned' the epithet "the Apostate" for his attempts... *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Worse, DoDo also seems to be memory challenged, and desperately so. My point about emperor Julian, far from being about some "christian tolerance", was in the context of a discussion about the separation between church and state.
I imagine this isn't the only time that you happen to remember things not quite as they actually were. The least you could do for the community is to check the facts before posting. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
