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It was a glorious progressive life under Communism after all

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See Comrades! All those tales of death camps and gulag were all myths – just listen to comrade Jesse Myerson, THE expert on the lack of suffering under the splendor of collective society:

Lefty Rag Salon's Insane Defense of Communism: Denies Millions Killed By Soviets And Mao Had To Do With Ideology, Claims “Oppressive Communism” Is A “Myth”…

Why you're wrong about communism: 7 huge misconceptions about it (and capitalism)

Most of what Americans think they know about capitalism and communism is total nonsense. Here's a clearer picture

JESSE MYERSON

As the commentary around the recent deaths of Nelson Mandela, Amiri Baraka and Pete Seeger made abundantly clear, most of what Americans think they know about capitalism and communism is arrant nonsense. This is not surprising, given our country's history of Red Scares designed to impress that anti-capitalism is tantamount to treason. In 2014, though, we are too far removed from the Cold War-era threat of thermonuclear annihilation to continue without taking stock of the hype we've been made, despite Harry Allen's famous injunction, to believe. So, here are seven bogus claims people make about communism and capitalism.

3. Communism killed 110 million* people for resisting dispossession.

*The number cited is as consistent as it is rooted in sound research; i.e., not.

Greg Gutfeld, one of the hosts of Fox News' “The Five” and a historical scholar of zero renown, recently advanced the position that “only the threat of death can prop up a left-wing dream, because no one in their right mind would volunteer for this crap. Hence, 110 million dead.” In declaring this, Gutfeld and his ilk insult the suffering of the millions of people who died under Stalin, Mao, and other 20th Century Communist dictators. Making up a big-sounding number of people and chalking their deaths up to some abstract “communism” is no way to enact a humanistic commitment to victims of human rights atrocities.
See Comrades, all those deaths are all myths and falsehoods.

People aren't really staving and being oppressed in North Korea, China and Cuba to name a few places that know the pure joy to live in a worker's paradise!

Those gulags and death camps are all a myth.
[My guess is that those millions that did die must have slipped on a bar of soap or something]

Comrade Šterpin wrote:In declaring this, Gutfeld and his ilk insult the suffering ...

It should be obvious to any true fellow traveler that ilk can not be trusted to see the truth. For one thing, those big antlers get in the way.

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What I can't believe is how many of the commenters at Salon are posting negative comments like "Myerson is full of shit," and "So that's why they put fences up...to keep the flood of proles trying to get into the worker's paradise out."

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Ivan Betinov:

To be honest, that article really angered me given the author's intent to whitewash the evil that is collectivism.

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Myerson will probably thank the comrade who helps him into the cattle car. He is a true believer. He does not, or cannot, fathom evil intent.

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Point 1 of the Salon article: Only communist economies rely on state violence.

Obviously, no private equity baron worth his weight in leveraged buyouts will ever part willingly with his fortune, and any attempt to achieve economic justice (like taxation) will encounter stiff opposition from the ownership class. But state violence (like taxation) is inherent in every set of property rights a government can conceivably adopt – including those that allowed the aforementioned hypothetical baron to amass said fortune.

In capitalism, competing ownership claims are settled by the state's willingness to use violence to exclude all but one claimant. If I lay claim to one of David Koch's mansions, libertarian that he is, he's going to rely on big government and its guns to set me right. He owns that mansion because the state says he does and threatens to imprison anyone who disagrees. Where there isn't a state, whoever has the most violent power determines who gets the stuff, be that a warlord, a knight, the mafia or a gang of cowboys in the Wild West. Either by vigilantes or the state, property rights rely on violence.

This is true both of personal possessions and private property, but it is important not to confuse the two. Property implies not a good, but a title – deeds, contracts, stocks, bonds, mortgages, &c. When Marxists talk of collectivizing ownership claims on land or “the means of production,” we are in the realm of property; when Fox Business Channel hosts move to confiscate my tie, we are in the realm of personal possessions. Communism necessarily distributes property universally, but, at least as far as this communist is concerned, can still allow you to keep your smartphone. Deal?
Leaving alone the fact that he'll need capitalism to make a smartphone, the author establishes a false moral equivalency between the violence of an aggressor and the violence of the defender. In his world, a mugger is equal to a cop. If a cop resorts to violence, why not a mugger?

Starting with the strawman that "capitalists want to dismantle all government," Myerson operates with so many false premises that it would take me ten times more time to debunk them than it had taken him to pile them up.

Having claimed in the beginning that we know nothing about communism or capitalism, the author then successfully demonstrates it with his own example - he doesn't know jack about either.

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Comrade Myerson must be correct about the overblown death figures concocted by KKKapitalist revisionist scum. It takes hours to recite less than 3,000 names of the dead from 9/11 in memorial, so if 110 million had died, including 10's of millions in the 1960's under Mao we would still be reading all those names. You don't hear anyone reciting the names do you?

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I first saw this Salon piece discussed on Western Rifle Shooters. They also posted this image with a quote by our friend Gerard Vanderleun over at American Digest:

Communism_Gerard_Quote.jpg
I was going to write about this but Comrade Šterpin is a faster shooter.

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I was going to write about this but Comrade Šterpin is a faster shooter.
Sorry about that Red Square, but that piece incensed me such that I had to say something.

A couple of astute observations on the piece:
1). The author uses the tried and true methodology of setting up strawmen against which he can easily knock down. Take a look at the ‘myths' he takes on – who has actually stood up and made these assertions?

2).. The author also use the tried and true technique of playing with the language to more easily foster his propaganda efforts. Instead of the usual words for common vestiges of government actions, he changes the terminology to create certain effects in the mind of the reader.
Example – he used terms like ‘economic justice' and equates it with taxation, and then later on equates taxation with ‘state violence'

His screed reads like a modernized version of Marx's manifesto – in as much as I know of that old document.

But I could be wrong in that assessment – I'm at pains to totally understand the insane mind, and both versions that lay out the ‘benefits' of communism are difficult to fully comprehend if one is imbued with the ideals of freedom and liberty
3. Communism killed 110 million* people for resisting dispossession.
*The number cited is as consistent as it is rooted in sound research; i.e., not.
You'll note that the author doesn't actually do anything to disprove these alleged ‘myths' – in his screed on 110 Million dead he merely claims the number to be false, but fails to provide any supporting evidence in his counter claim.
5. 21st Century American communism would resemble 20th century Soviet and Chinese horrors.
This little strawman ditty is just another variation on the ‘This time socialism will be different' theme.

Forget about the millions that have died or will die under Communism's utopian constructs, forget about the necessity of state oppression.

No, this time (the author insists) it'll be different because Marxism is perfect in theory or something – and besides, we have modern technology to get the old broken down theories to function.

The problem is, human nature is still human nature, and as Lord Acton once stated:
Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely
The same rules apply whether we're sending smoke signals or conversing on smart phones.
Whenever the legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any farther obedience, and are left to the common refuge which God hath provided for all men against force and violence." -John Locke

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Comrade Red Square. I would choke down my pride and agonizingly engage in the act of Capitalism to read your debunking of Salon's screed, errr korrect thinking apology for glorious Communism.

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Comrades, all those deaths, while true and sadly indisputable, can be said that they merely committed suicide by not accepting slavery the party; and further were simply gracious enough to keep breathing until they could be transported to a more convenient place to drop. The World Of Next Tuesday™ cannot be had without breaking a few beets along the way.

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Well, now we know why so many Floridians risk their lives in makeshift boats trying to sail to Cuba, why the W. Germans built a wall to keep their citizens from going E. to become comrades, why N. Korea has had to build robust defenses in order to deter S. Korean aggression. Yes, it all makes sense now.

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Anyone on the Right that even talks about this article is guilty of McCarthyism. They should all be lined up and shot.

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Strong communism is coming out in full force lately. Yesterday's Rolling Stone magazine has an article that calls for the full communist agenda:

Five Economic Reforms Millennials Should Be Fighting For

1. Guaranteed Work for Everybody

2. Social Security for All

3. Take Back The Land

4. Make Everything Owned by Everybody

5. A Public Bank in Every State

Those are the five reforms with a few paragraphs on each "reform." This is all presented as if these are brand new ideas with no history or connection to communism. To read the article you'd think that these are new ideas, just some policy ideas for "economic reform." Communism is coming out of the shadows. But it's still a little shy about calling itself by name.

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Comrade Otis,
It all sounds great except for that first one. Work? Really? What's the matter with you? Have you never heard of welfare? Now excuse me while I get back to Candy Crush on my Obamaphone.

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Great Stalin's Ghost wrote:Comrade Otis,
It all sounds great except for that first one. Work? Really? What's the matter with you? Have you never heard of welfare? Now excuse me while I get back to Candy Crush on my Obamaphone.

Absolutely correct, Great Stalin's Ghost! This is why one of the ideas is Social Security for all:

2. Social Security for All

But let's think even bigger. Because as much as unemployment blows, so do jobs. What if people didn't have to work to survive? Enter the jaw-droppingly simple idea of a universal basic income, in which the government would just add a sum sufficient for subsistence to everyone's bank account every month.

Put another way: A universal basic income, combined with a job guarantee and other social programs, could make participation in the labor force truly voluntary, thereby enabling people to get a life.

As Marx said:

“In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.”

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Come, come Comrades. One cannot make giant omelette of social justice without breaking a few eggs. And by "breaking a few eggs" I mean "killing millions of people."And by "people" I mean "running dog capitalists." And my "killing" I mean "giving Marxist justice to."

That should help you feel better!

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Comrade Otis wrote:
Great Stalin's Ghost wrote:Comrade Otis,
It all sounds great except for that first one. Work? Really? What's the matter with you? Have you never heard of welfare? Now excuse me while I get back to Candy Crush on my Obamaphone.

Absolutely correct, Great Stalin's Ghost! This is why one of the ideas is Social Security for all:

2. Social Security for All

But let's think even bigger. Because as much as unemployment blows, so do jobs. What if people didn't have to work to survive? Enter the jaw-droppingly simple idea of a universal basic income, in which the government would just add a sum sufficient for subsistence to everyone's bank account every month.

Put another way: A universal basic income, combined with a job guarantee and other social programs, could make participation in the labor force truly voluntary, thereby enabling people to get a life.

As Marx said:

“In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.”
Comrade Otis, now you're talking! Let society work while I criticize society for not doing those jobs in the way I would have were I willing to work.

The genius of Marx shines through again!

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DasVodkaVidanya wrote:Come, come Comrades. One cannot make giant omelette of social justice without breaking a few eggs. And by "breaking a few eggs" I mean "killing millions of people."And by "people" I mean "running dog capitalists." And my "killing" I mean "giving Marxist justice to."

That should help you feel better!
Indeed it does!

Especially during this, Black History Month, when even more than usual I deserve Marxist justice for the good of the People!

These stupid capitalists have NO idea what they are talking about. Communism is the greatest socioeconomic system ever created by our glorious comrades in arms, the great Bolsheviks! Don't these ill bred democracy lovers know their history? Look what happened to Eastern Europe! It was once a proud bustling satellite of of Motherland. People not having to worry about the responsibility of owning anything, working 80 hours a week to grow grapes for us in return for a sack of flour once a week. A FREE sack of flour mind you, and high quality flour to boot! Now look at them! Drinking slevovitz just for fun instead of drinking it as an antibiotic. Starting their own businesses! Owning their own land! And even owning their own CELL PHONE! Their downfall is complete. No more productive hours working in the fields and pulling ox carts, they are now on Facebook. Lenin rolls in his shallow grave at the thought. It's a sad day comrades. But fear not, there is light beyond the smog. Soviet Russia will live again in the USSA. In time the White House will be the Red House and everyone will get to own a brown raincoat! Just like in Hungary...ah those were the days...


 
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