I’m an anti-communist
June 24th, 2009I was talking to someone on another board about China and was thinking I should do a blog post about it. I am a rabid anti-communist. Why? Let’s use China as an example.
China used to be a world leader in cool inventions. They’ve invented everything from gunpowder to the kite. Arguably, the noodle (which is one of my favorite inventions of all-time). From a medicinal standpoint, I’d take Chinese medicine any day of the week over Western medicine. You hear Americans scream about health-care this, health-care that. Screw health-care. I don’t even want it. Most health-care plans don’t cover or barely cover acupuncture and I’d take acupuncture over anything we got. That came from China by the way.
I was talking earlier to a guy whose grandmother is a quadrapalegic and is in constant pain. She’s on morphine. That’s Western medicine for you. Fucking A, put me out of my misery. I’d want those machines taken off and want to be put out. That’s not living. When I’m dying, I don’t want to be anywhere near a hospital because with Western medicine, they’ll drag it out for years. A bunch of freaking misanthropes, I say. They’re not helping you, they’re making themselves richer.
But enough of that. My point is China used to invent cool things. Another thing, besides the Vikings, the Chinese got to America before white folks. There are even arguments that the Italian explorers used Chinese maps. Heck, China knew about the “New World” long ago. It’s just that white folk like to take credit for EVERYTHING.
Now China doesn’t invent shit. It doesn’t do anything cool. It’s because of communism. You could be a great writer, inventor, scientist, etc., but if you speak out, you die. It’s as simple as that.
Communism kills
I’ve already done my rant about how communism kills more than any other form of government. Mao killed 55 million. Stalin between 19-27 million. By comparison, Hitler killed 12 million. Not at all minimizing what Hitler did, but comparing figures and you’ll see just how evil communism is. Let’s not forget Pol Pot killed 25% of the Cambodian people. That’s one quarter of EVERYONE in Cambodia.
Learn from History
You’ve heard a million times that those who don’t learn from history are condemned to repeat it. That saying is lost on this species, I’m afraid. Humans don’t get it. Listen, very simply, a government that is powerful enough to give you things is also powerful enough to take things away. The more power a government has, the more dangerous it CAN be. And power corrupts. I can’t stress this enough. Power corrupts.
Even good people with power will become evil. It has happened so many times in history that you’d think people would figure it out but they don’t.
Communism puts too much power in only a few people, and those people become drunk with power and end up killing.
You can never trust anyone with too much power. That’s why we’re better off in a system like ours, where power is distributed as much as possible. For the record, beware those who want to centralize it. Remember what I said about power corrupting. You may start with good intentions.
Hmmm, Interesting. First… I am pretty sure that your system has the power distributed as much as possible on ‘paper’, but not in actuality. You might as well be communists for all the power the people have (or use). Power corrupts.. absolutely… and I am pretty sure the powers in the US are pretty corrupt, even without communism.
Now, if you want to look at people having people killed in the name of government, I would love to see some numbers showing how many soldiers and civilians have been killed in the wars the US has gotten involved in to spread democracy. Just curious.
I personally like the idea of communism (or some aspects of it), but truthfully not the reality. It is an idealistic way of life, as is a fully functioning democracy, but we are not evolved enough to pull off any system that requires more discipline then a weight loss diet, or quitting smoking.
A quote from ‘Waking Life’: “So what are these barriers that keep people from reaching anywhere near their real potential. The answer to that can be found in another question, and that’s this: which is the most universal human characteristic: fear or laziness?”
Clothosfate - Good comments.
How many have been killed by us? A lot, especially with the Cold War going on.
Now to be fair, this is a conversation I had with a friend of mine from a certain Central American country who had several people he knew and was close to that were killed by both the government and the “rebels” and we sided with both at different times, so yes, indirectly we’re responsible for his friends’ deaths.
He said America is great to her own citizens, but can be horrible to citizens of other countries. Do I agree? Unfortunately, yes.
As for the idea of communism, I’ll tell you exactly where it works - in very small groups. The Khoi-San people for instance can be called communist, as can certain other Stone Age groups. They work fine together. But once again, they are small groups.
A commune can work. But once again, it’s a small group. There is an active commune outside the college town I love. The people seem to be happy. More power to them.
I think once you get into thousands of people though, forget it.
I agree, the same can be said for Democracy, on a small scale it can work wonderfully, too big and the power gets too big. The answer in my mind is; we need to separate into smaller communities. Also we need to do away with all products and services that exist purely to maintain a consumptive society.
Truthfully, this world has too many people. If anything causes a loss of freedom and privacy, it’s overpopulation.
My answer is always the same. But it matters not. it really doesn’t matter what kind of government is in “power”, it is the premis of power to which we give and hold. between money and power we subsect ourselves into different classes of being, and it makes no matter if you are in a democracy, are communist, are socialist, whatever. it all boils down to people in a desk making choices on how you get to to earn, retain, and spend all of your power… and that is the simplistic nature of it all.
Actually - China is only communist in certain ways. A friend of mine who lived there for 8 months last year said in most ways it’s actually HYPER capitalist, just with zero regulation.
I kinda agree, you might want to check out my latest blog entry regarding the situation in Iran. It’s along the same wavelength regarding the power of the state.
Governments are all the same. Once you have power, you will do anything to keep it.
” Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
China is Communist in name only. It is an oligarchic dictatorship.
China stopped innovation several centuries ago as a very clear policy decision of the then Emperor. They have finally began to innovate again which is good for them and perhaps less good for us.
Ah, Laura and exmi beat me to my comment…that China is not true communism or even close to what communism is supposed to be.
But your points are interesting and thought-provoking as always.
“You can never trust anyone with too much power. That’s why we’re better off in a system like ours, where power is distributed as much as possible.” hahaha, that’s funny, since when capitalism distributes power evenly? have you ever heard about market failure?
you are right: ” this world has too many people. If anything causes a loss of freedom and privacy, it’s overpopulation.”… there is too much people like you, who don’t want to share all the benefits that they have. and that’s why you are anti-communist and pretend to be a “capitalist”.
In a rounda bout way, Communism was probably the best thing to happen to America.
Look at what China has accomplished economically in their short sojourn into capitalism.
( All the stuff crap? Suspect ingredients? Dangerous working conditions? No enviromental controls? Check,check, check, and check.)
Making a ton of money getting American companies to employ Chinese citizens to make things for Americans to buy? And check!
AS Karl Marx said :” Capitalists are so stupid and greedy they will sell me the rope I will use to hang them” And Check.
Now imagine if China had been capitalist for the last 100 years instead of the last ten.
Communism has also supplied the U.S. with a boogie-man. Russia and China were THEM.
Now they are us and we found another THEM.
Every government needs an enemy to focus the elctorates attention on, to take the attention away from itself.
If you look at the governments around the bad parts of the world that financially own the treasuries of democracies and look at the capitalist companies that sold it to them, ask who is responsible.