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Re: Invisible Victims
Okay, where were we?
"At this point in history why has it (communism) not been successfully implemented"
The modern day concept/philosophy of communism is about 150 years old.
As Marx and others envision (ed) its development at a FUTURE time, we would have to make a transition from straight out capitalism to that FUTURE form: communism and the interim form would be socialism or STATE controlled economies with the goods and services being fairly distributed as to ensure the health and well being of all.
This interim step alone requires a moral transition in how we think about one another from the "screw-you I've got what I need" way of thinking to thinking of every other person as you would a brother or sister and in much the same way as you would have every other person think of of you and your well being.
(This thought will usually get a lot of people responding by saying "Humans are
innately greedy and that can't work" and ""Socialism/communism doesn't /can't / hasn't ever worked." and I don't have the time to explain again why this thinking is invalid. For the sake of argument accept that for all its faults, Cuban society has accepted those principles or if that's too much just suspend your incredulity on this point so I can explain things)
Once, as happened in Cuba where the revolution cut rents by half, gave ownership to every 25 year renter, guaranteed free health, education and social security from hunger , crime, etc, the people quickly turned their thinking around as would any worker here who was suddenly and practically overnight given a much better life.
Forget your thoughts on Cuba but think about if the much bigger pile of wealth in THIS country were suddenly used to do all those things for everyone. I don't see how anyone would want to go back to what was just as the Cubans do not now.
SO...once the transition is made from a dog eat dog life run by a corrupted government in thrall to the dictatorship and cruelty of the corporations don't you agree that people's thinking will also make a dramatic transition to a more brotherly way of treating one another when everyone has enough? Again you have to suspend your belief in the inborn greed of humans and assume that while we can and have been bent to do incredibly cruel things to one another , just as that behavior was taught, is environmental so too can a more pleasant and fulfilling life of brotherly feelings toward one another be also taught.
Would you rather fight one another, compete with one another or all work together to provide decent lives for all.
At present we live and work in a solitary fashion and are lucky to have any family upon which to depend in hard times ?
If everyone treated one another as family, whether they are next door or living in Botswana and thought of them as we would our own family (even though I hate Uncle Sidney) would that not create a different mind set if it were made possible instead of impossible as it is under the "rugged individualism" of capitalism ?
I know, these are foreign concepts to most of us who have only known the barbarism of capitalism but is what we commies believe is so.
You DO have to be an optimist and you DO have to think highly of the human potential to be a communist which is why so many think none of this is true or that communism will work.
All this explanation is necessary to show that we have not yet as a world gone through that first step from capitalism to socialism that is so necessary.
Why haven't we been able to establish socialism and have it work?
The answer is that from the earliest days of the first socialist ( of sorts) revolution in the Soviet Union the movement towards world socialism was attacked by the capitalist powers and since then there have been around 50 or so intervention, invasions, corruption of elections in which leftists were likely to win by primarily the United States but certainly with help from most of the advanced capitalist countries of Europe and countries like Australia.
You need only read one book to see this clearly and that would be William Blum's 'Killing Hope" which catalogues and details those many interventions to stop socialism and social changes that would lead to socialism. Many chapters are printed and are free while for most you'd need to buy the book. Take a look when you have the time and just look at the countries that head each chapter and you will see that had those countries been permitted to establish socialism much if not all of the world would now be socialist.
As it is , as it was in Nicaragua and elsewhere the people get killed, brutalized, tortured etc until they give up their attempt at establishing anything other than capitalism.
Not only that but the United States et al also make examples of countries like Nicaragua and Vietnam much as the Mafia used to just kneecap people who got out of line and let them limp around as an example of what happens to problem people.
A destroyed country is a big deterrent to those in countries nearby who are thinking of socialism.
Beyond that, the Western/corporate/ capitalist media are especially now extremely effective in their methods of propagandizing the public and we as a people can be led to believe that the sky is green if that was necessary to those in power.
So as you probably think , there was a long line of failed socialist states and movements that failed because of shortcomings within those movements when the truth is that they would be doing fine and socialism would spread like wildfire without that massive and one hundred years of U.S. et al interventions and propaganda programs.
Now.. to go back a bit. That transition that is absolutely necessary from capitalism to socialism in order to make the next transition to a communist society was not allowed to happen.
THAT is why COMMUNISM was never established. I know you said "successfully established" but, if something is never established to begin with, it certainly could not be successful.
By now you should have some inkling as to the true nature of communism but consider that the image that you and most people carry of that "never happened yet" philosophy is the one that has not only been placed in your head by those who violently oppose it but one that is constantly reinforced by the government and the media for the benefit of
their corporate owners who have no greater fear than having to share the wealth of the world fairly.
It is very difficult to sum all this up in a post or two or to effectively pass on to you or anyone something that will seem so alien to you and what has taken me a great many years to absorb and assimilate .
It's a very complex mosaic but each of the parts in itself is not that complicated nor that difficult to understand nor to see where they fit in the big picture .
I hope I've given you a few of the key pieces but it is really up to you to go out and find the pieces that fill it all in for you.
Lastly and perhaps most important is what I've said previously and that is you must be an optimist and you must think that man/ humanity is a basically good and not evil thinking being.
I can't speak for those who believe in 'intelligent design"' but (again, as opined before)
it is hard to imagine an omniscient being creating man and creating him to be evil at his core. I would find it most depressing to think that were so.
We just have to free ourselves from the primitive restraints of capitalism and the selfishness it enforces on us to reach that higher level of consciousness and
brotherhood.
But of course I think that way.
I'm one of those evil communists .
Okay, where were we?
"At this point in history why has it (communism) not been successfully implemented"
The modern day concept/philosophy of communism is about 150 years old.
As Marx and others envision (ed) its development at a FUTURE time, we would have to make a transition from straight out capitalism to that FUTURE form: communism and the interim form would be socialism or STATE controlled economies with the goods and services being fairly distributed as to ensure the health and well being of all.
This interim step alone requires a moral transition in how we think about one another from the "screw-you I've got what I need" way of thinking to thinking of every other person as you would a brother or sister and in much the same way as you would have every other person think of of you and your well being.
(This thought will usually get a lot of people responding by saying "Humans are
innately greedy and that can't work" and ""Socialism/communism doesn't /can't / hasn't ever worked." and I don't have the time to explain again why this thinking is invalid. For the sake of argument accept that for all its faults, Cuban society has accepted those principles or if that's too much just suspend your incredulity on this point so I can explain things)
Once, as happened in Cuba where the revolution cut rents by half, gave ownership to every 25 year renter, guaranteed free health, education and social security from hunger , crime, etc, the people quickly turned their thinking around as would any worker here who was suddenly and practically overnight given a much better life.
Forget your thoughts on Cuba but think about if the much bigger pile of wealth in THIS country were suddenly used to do all those things for everyone. I don't see how anyone would want to go back to what was just as the Cubans do not now.
SO...once the transition is made from a dog eat dog life run by a corrupted government in thrall to the dictatorship and cruelty of the corporations don't you agree that people's thinking will also make a dramatic transition to a more brotherly way of treating one another when everyone has enough? Again you have to suspend your belief in the inborn greed of humans and assume that while we can and have been bent to do incredibly cruel things to one another , just as that behavior was taught, is environmental so too can a more pleasant and fulfilling life of brotherly feelings toward one another be also taught.
Would you rather fight one another, compete with one another or all work together to provide decent lives for all.
At present we live and work in a solitary fashion and are lucky to have any family upon which to depend in hard times ?
If everyone treated one another as family, whether they are next door or living in Botswana and thought of them as we would our own family (even though I hate Uncle Sidney) would that not create a different mind set if it were made possible instead of impossible as it is under the "rugged individualism" of capitalism ?
I know, these are foreign concepts to most of us who have only known the barbarism of capitalism but is what we commies believe is so.
You DO have to be an optimist and you DO have to think highly of the human potential to be a communist which is why so many think none of this is true or that communism will work.
All this explanation is necessary to show that we have not yet as a world gone through that first step from capitalism to socialism that is so necessary.
Why haven't we been able to establish socialism and have it work?
The answer is that from the earliest days of the first socialist ( of sorts) revolution in the Soviet Union the movement towards world socialism was attacked by the capitalist powers and since then there have been around 50 or so intervention, invasions, corruption of elections in which leftists were likely to win by primarily the United States but certainly with help from most of the advanced capitalist countries of Europe and countries like Australia.
You need only read one book to see this clearly and that would be William Blum's 'Killing Hope" which catalogues and details those many interventions to stop socialism and social changes that would lead to socialism. Many chapters are printed and are free while for most you'd need to buy the book. Take a look when you have the time and just look at the countries that head each chapter and you will see that had those countries been permitted to establish socialism much if not all of the world would now be socialist.
As it is , as it was in Nicaragua and elsewhere the people get killed, brutalized, tortured etc until they give up their attempt at establishing anything other than capitalism.
Not only that but the United States et al also make examples of countries like Nicaragua and Vietnam much as the Mafia used to just kneecap people who got out of line and let them limp around as an example of what happens to problem people.
A destroyed country is a big deterrent to those in countries nearby who are thinking of socialism.
Beyond that, the Western/corporate/ capitalist media are especially now extremely effective in their methods of propagandizing the public and we as a people can be led to believe that the sky is green if that was necessary to those in power.
So as you probably think , there was a long line of failed socialist states and movements that failed because of shortcomings within those movements when the truth is that they would be doing fine and socialism would spread like wildfire without that massive and one hundred years of U.S. et al interventions and propaganda programs.
Now.. to go back a bit. That transition that is absolutely necessary from capitalism to socialism in order to make the next transition to a communist society was not allowed to happen.
THAT is why COMMUNISM was never established. I know you said "successfully established" but, if something is never established to begin with, it certainly could not be successful.
By now you should have some inkling as to the true nature of communism but consider that the image that you and most people carry of that "never happened yet" philosophy is the one that has not only been placed in your head by those who violently oppose it but one that is constantly reinforced by the government and the media for the benefit of
their corporate owners who have no greater fear than having to share the wealth of the world fairly.
It is very difficult to sum all this up in a post or two or to effectively pass on to you or anyone something that will seem so alien to you and what has taken me a great many years to absorb and assimilate .
It's a very complex mosaic but each of the parts in itself is not that complicated nor that difficult to understand nor to see where they fit in the big picture .
I hope I've given you a few of the key pieces but it is really up to you to go out and find the pieces that fill it all in for you.
Lastly and perhaps most important is what I've said previously and that is you must be an optimist and you must think that man/ humanity is a basically good and not evil thinking being.
I can't speak for those who believe in 'intelligent design"' but (again, as opined before)
it is hard to imagine an omniscient being creating man and creating him to be evil at his core. I would find it most depressing to think that were so.
We just have to free ourselves from the primitive restraints of capitalism and the selfishness it enforces on us to reach that higher level of consciousness and
brotherhood.
But of course I think that way.
I'm one of those evil communists .
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