DebateGate
General Category => 3DHS => Topic started by: Kramer on March 27, 2010, 09:28:11 PM
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http://apnews.myway.com/article/20100327/D9EN48U80.html (http://apnews.myway.com/article/20100327/D9EN48U80.html)
The number of U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan has roughly doubled in the first three months of 2010 compared to the same period last year as Washington has added tens of thousands of additional soldiers to reverse the Taliban's momentum.
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Gee, how sad. Whatsamadda wit dose dumb Afghans anyway? Don't they realize the U.S. is just killing them for their own good and that the American Way is the Better Way?
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We have already tried allowing them to kill each other with out our help.
That was working pretty well , but Osama Bin Laden made use of the situation to rent himself a country and build himself a suicidal army.
So we had no choice but to become involved , and once we broke it we had bought it.
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We have already tried allowing them to kill each other with out our help.
That was working pretty well , but Osama Bin Laden made use of the situation to rent himself a country and build himself a suicidal army.
So we had no choice but to become involved , and once we broke it we had bought it.
you are wasting your time with Mikey, he's a lost cause.
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Anything that kills more American troops, he's good with that, regardless of who the President is
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<<We have already tried allowing them to kill each other without our help.
<<That was working pretty well , but Osama Bin Laden made use of the situation to rent himself a country and build himself a suicidal army.
<<So we had no choice but to become involved , and once we broke it we had bought it.>>
It's another one of plane's "history lessons," always short and sweet, always showing how good and reasonable the Americans have been, and always almost totally fictitious. Well done, plane!
In the first place, the "without our help" is totally disingenuous. When a Marxist Afghan government invited the Red Army into the country to help them put down a "rebellion" by a bunch of 14th Century anti-Soviet religious fanatics, you gave plenty of help to the fanatics, including the shoulder-fired ground-to-air missiles which neutralized Soviet air-power and ultimately enabled them to drive out the Red Army, overthrow the Afghan Communist government and torture its last leader to death. The end result of your meddling in another country's internal affairs was to enslave the Afghan people and particularly the women of Aghanistan, to the most backward and ignorant segment of the local population. So much for the "without your help" bullshit.
The Afghan government then made the mistake of allowing OBL to launch an attack from its territory on the continental United States, killing just under three thousand Americans, a terrible slaughter of innocent civilians to be sure, but nowhere near the number of innocent Muslim civilians killed by that time by forces armed and enabled by the U.S.A., particularly in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in which the number of child victims alone had probably run into the hundreds, if not thousands. Nevertheless, the U.S.A. was certainly entitled, and well within its rights in so doing, to launch a punitive strike against Afghanistan for harbouring the attackers and refusing to give them up for trial in the criminal courts of the U.S.A. Probably at that point, even to invade Afghanistan in pursuit of the attackers.
<<Once we broke it, we bought it>> is doubly misleading - - first, you did not "break" Afghanistan, you invaded it. A country, of course, can't be "broken" the way a doll or a plate is broken, and all you did in the real world was to destroy the authority of the clique of individuals constituting the "government" of the day. Left to their own devices, the Afghan people would have found other individuals to govern the country, some more effectively than others, and probably none with undisputed authority, but then again, that was more or less how Afghanistan was being governed before the American and Soviet invasions anyway.
Secondly, there is no such principle in international law as "You broke it, you bought it." It's not even a principle of domestic American law, which would probably say, "You broke it, you pay the owners of it (the Afghan people in this case) enough money to replace whatever it was that was broken, or to fix the damage caused by the breaking," or some such measure, but in any event, you are generally made to pay damages to anyone whose property was broken. Effectively, you illegally used the attack on Sept. 11 to justify an invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and to force down the throats of the Afghan people, at gunpoint, a form of government which you think they should have, whether they want it or not.
Furthermore, "we had no choice" is a lame and pathetic argument that has been used at one time or another by every fucking criminal and criminal regime on this planet, from Adolf Hitler to George W. Bush. Every time a crime is committed, big or small, the criminal of course does have a choice: to commit or not to commit the crime. In the case of the criminal George W. Bush regime, there were plenty of choices: to mount a short, sharp, punitive strike on Afghanistan, probably by an intensive bombing raid on Afghan government or military bases, with a warning that more will follow if more attacks are made on America; to bring the Afghan government before the World Court for harbouring criminals before and after the September 11 attacks; to stop provoking revenge attacks on America by ending the financial support and enabling of the ongoing Jewish efforts to ethnically cleanse the West Bank and to illegally settle Muslim lands there; etc. There were plenty of choices.
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Afghanistan was doing far better in the early 1970's. When Brzezinski got in power, his plan was to punish the Russians for what they had done to the Poles, so he got the Saudis to start sending missionaries to Afghanistan, hoping that Islamic fundamentalism would spread to the various Soviet "stans" and give the Russians a hard time. Eventually the Soviets felt threatened and invaded Afghanistan, and the US and the Saudis allied to run them out. The country was devastated as a result. After the Soviets left, the Taliban took over, and allowed their allies in Al Qaeda to train there.
http://www.counterpunch.org/brzezinski.html (http://www.counterpunch.org/brzezinski.html)
The CIA and clowns like Brzezinski were at least partly responsible for the ruination of Afghanistan and therefore 9-11.
9-11 was blowback from another stupid CIA trick.
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Today, a senior Canadian diplomat and a former hostage of al Qaeda in Africa had this to say about Afghanistan, speaking at a Liberal Party "renewal" conference:
Fowler spent five months as an al-Qaida hostage in western Africa in 2009 after being kidnapped while serving as the United Nations special envoy to Niger.
<<"The bottom line is that we will not prevail in Afghanistan," he said.
<<"We are simply not prepared to foot the massive price in blood and treasure which it would take to effectively colonize Afghanistan ... and replace their culture with ours, for that seems to be what we seek." >>
You know, it seems to me that I have been saying the same God-damn thing almost from the beginning. All that was required was to administer a swift kick in the ass for 9-11 and then get the fuck out. Instead, we get this fucking fiasco, which, like Iraq, just keeps getting worse and worse, with nothing to show for it.
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Today, a senior Canadian diplomat and a former hostage of al Qaeda in Africa had this to say about Afghanistan, speaking at a Liberal Party "renewal" conference:
Fowler spent five months as an al-Qaida hostage in western Africa in 2009 after being kidnapped while serving as the United Nations special envoy to Niger.
<<"The bottom line is that we will not prevail in Afghanistan," he said.
<<"We are simply not prepared to foot the massive price in blood and treasure which it would take to effectively colonize Afghanistan ... and replace their culture with ours, for that seems to be what we seek." >>
You know, it seems to me that I have been saying the same God-damn thing almost from the beginning. All that was required was to administer a swift kick in the ass for 9-11 and then get the fuck out. Instead, we get this fucking fiasco, which, like Iraq, just keeps getting worse and worse, with nothing to show for it.
I guess Obama isn't as smart as you gave him credit for.
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All that was required was to administer a swift kick in the ass for 9-11 and then get the fuck out.
That was also tried , several times, by Bill Clinton. While Clinton escalated threats and rocket raids incrementally, the Al Quieda activity , recruiting , fund gathering and plans for bigger attacks clser to America continued to increase.
You are advocateing that we learn nothing from our own recent history.
What we hve learned is that capture and criminal procicution of a few conspiritors doesn't handicap a conspiracy involveing thousands very much. We tried that.
We learned that ignoreing small raids does nothing to prevent bigger attacks .We tried that.
We learned that small specificly targeted attacks on training bases and headquarters does not reduce or impede the growth of an orginisation aleady in fluential in the national government.We tried that.
WE even learned that we cannot praise and make friends with fumdimentalist religious Islamists , even tho we had gifted them with incredable amounts of money and wepons in the past.We tried that.
Summing up MT, you are advocateing that we try again everything we have tried already and seen fail , you know what we say in this country about people who try the same thing many times over again hopeing for diffrent results each time?
George W Bush , our 43rd President, got it right and his efforts resulted in a halt to the escalation and attacks of Al Quieda in the US home territory , he got it right and what works needs to be repeated , what does not work need not be repeated.
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, which, like Iraq, just keeps getting worse and worse
Michael do you really believe that?
Iraq just completed another election.
The Iraqi people now have Saddam gone and a democracy in place.
How can you describe that as "worse and worse"?
Even Vice President Biden recently said "Iraq could be one of the great achievements of this administration.
You're going to see 90,000 American troops come marching home by the end of the summer. You're going to
see a stable government in Iraq that is actually moving toward a representative government."
The vice president said he'd been to Iraq 17 times and visits the country every three months or so.
"I know every one of the major players in all the segments of that society" he said. "It's impressed me.
I've been impressed how they have been deciding to use the political process rather than guns to settle their differences."
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How can you describe that as "worse and worse"?
It's not socialism; they're not lining people up against the wall anymore. It's a tragedy.
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Indeed
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<<Michael do you really believe that?
<<Iraq just completed another election.
<<The Iraqi people now have Saddam gone and a democracy in place.
<<How can you describe that as "worse and worse"?>>
It looks too good to be true. Give me a little more time on that one. If it still looks like a stable democracy in a couple of years' time, I'll probably have to admit that I called it wrong. However, here's how I see Iraq in two or three years' time:
The oil money will be flowing out of Iraq into foreign hands. How much of the outflow will wind up in U.S. and British pockets will never be known, but we will know how much of it remains in Iraq. Whatever percentage the Saddam Hussein government kept from oil sales will have been reduced to a third or a fifth of the original percentage. It's possible that in absolute terms, the revenues may have increased due to (a) higher oil prices and/or (b) increased productivity, but the share remaining in Iraq will be a hell of a lot less than what it would have been had Saddam and the Ba'ath Arab Socialist Party remained in power.
The torture chambers will be back in business and running into overtime, as the faction in power will need to defend itself against violent overthrow by the party or parties not in power.
The size of the occupying army will not have changed much, but the fiction of "troop withdrawal" will have to be matched by corresponding increases in mercenary manpower, so the mercs will constitute a much larger proportion of the occupation forces.
<<Even Vice President Biden recently said "Iraq could be one of the great achievements of this administration.
You're going to see 90,000 American troops come marching home by the end of the summer. You're going to
see a stable government in Iraq that is actually moving toward a representative government.">>
That's more or less what I'd have said in his place. Talk is cheap when you are in politics. Cheap and meaningless.
<<The vice president said he'd been to Iraq 17 times and visits the country every three months or so.
"I know every one of the major players in all the segments of that society" he said. "It's impressed me.
I've been impressed how they have been deciding to use the political process rather than guns to settle their differences.">>
Well, we'll have to wait and see how long THAT goes on for and who gets screwed in the process.
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It is true that time is the real test.
How much time?
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Good question.
I'm not happy with my earlier answers in this thread, either.
Given that the elections are fatally flawed, being foreign-shaped and foreign-dictated, and lacking in the participation of all elements of the population, what is the value of five years of relative peace following an election? Especially considering that in the absence of the invasion, they could have had the same five years of relative peace, only enforced by Saddam's people instead of foreign-installed people.
Suppose that after five years another Saddam, either Shi'a or Sunni, takes over. Is the operation a total failure if they got five relatively non-despotic years out of it?
What if the price of ANY stability and freedom from despotism was purchased at the price of a million dead Iraqis? Was THAT worth it? What if the price was total loss of Iraqi control over 50% or 60% or 70% or 80% of the revenues of the oilfields? Was THAT worth it?
I'll tell you what a better answer would have been. I don't think anyone can establish an equation or a formula where the violent deaths of a million Iraqis plus the loss of a certain portion of the nation's oil revenues is "worth" a certain degree of political progress towards Western-style democracy. Would our domestic criminal law regard a murder as justified if it resulted in a certain degree of social benefit?
I don't have the time to pursue this line of thought much further but I would certainly like to come back to it later.
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Good question.
I'm not happy with my earlier answers in this thread, either.
Given that the elections are fatally flawed, being foreign-shaped and foreign-dictated, and lacking in the participation of all elements of the population, what is the value of five years of relative peace following an election? Especially considering that in the absence of the invasion, they could have had the same five years of relative peace, only enforced by Saddam's people instead of foreign-installed people.
Suppose that after five years another Saddam, either Shi'a or Sunni, takes over. Is the operation a total failure if they got five relatively non-despotic years out of it?
What if the price of ANY stability and freedom from despotism was purchased at the price of a million dead Iraqis? Was THAT worth it? What if the price was total loss of Iraqi control over 50% or 60% or 70% or 80% of the revenues of the oilfields? Was THAT worth it?
I'll tell you what a better answer would have been. I don't think anyone can establish an equation or a formula where the violent deaths of a million Iraqis plus the loss of a certain portion of the nation's oil revenues is "worth" a certain degree of political progress towards Western-style democracy. Would our domestic criminal law regard a murder as justified if it resulted in a certain degree of social benefit?
I don't have the time to pursue this line of thought much further but I would certainly like to come back to it later.
Mao thought that killing half of the Chineese woulde worthwile if it made China better.
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<<Mao thought that killing half of the Chineese woulde worthwile if it made China better.>>
Where'd he say that?
I know at the time of the Cuban missile crisis, he and Fidel both thought that the U.S.S.R. should stand its ground even if it came to a nuclear exchange with the U.S.A. since the Eastern Bloc could absorb a much higher casualty level than the U.S. could and would still come out the winners. But I never heard the comment that you attribute to him.
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<<Mao thought that killing half of the Chineese woulde worthwile if it made China better.>>
Where'd he say that?
I know at the time of the Cuban missile crisis, he and Fidel both thought that the U.S.S.R. should stand its ground even if it came to a nuclear exchange with the U.S.A. since the Eastern Bloc could absorb a much higher casualty level than the U.S. could and would still come out the winners. But I never heard the comment that you attribute to him.
You are admitting that they had an incredably bad attitude reguarding wasting the lives of the people.
Since we agree on this point, what further need I look for?
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotations_from_Chairman_Mao (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotations_from_Chairman_Mao)
I liked this one myself.
“Passivity is fatal to us. Our goal is to make the enemy passive.”
http://thinkexist.com/quotes/mao_tse-tung/4.html (http://thinkexist.com/quotes/mao_tse-tung/4.html)
"Thousands upon thousands of martyrs have heroically laid down their lives for the people; let us hold their banner high and march ahead along the path crimson with their blood. "
Most of these quotes are boilerplate that could have come from anywhere , I am not actually finding anything that reveils what limits Chairman Mao had on the sacrifice he might ask for, if any limit were ever implied I would like to find it.
Not finding such an enumerated limit doesn't really prove much. I think that if there were a limit in his mind there would be few he could safely tell it . The limits of the peoples will and willingness would have been a good secret to keep if he actually knew them.When George WAshington or Winston Chirchill gave rousing speeches they didn't usually include an escape clause for the occasion that things got just too harsh , that would simply have become the target of the enemy.
We have better evidence of his attitude, the numbers of dead he was willing to tolerate on projects like the" great leap forward" the defense of the North Korean Government or the colectivisation of agriculture.
http://www.paulnoll.com/China/Mao/Mao-19-Revolutionary-Heroism.html (http://www.paulnoll.com/China/Mao/Mao-19-Revolutionary-Heroism.html)
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Chairman Mao had a solid appreciation of the depths of the suffering and poverty of the Chinese people and the underdevelopment of the nation. Knowing better than any Western statesman or commentator how long and hard the way forward would be, and how abysmal the Chinese starting position, I think would make him more prepared than, say, FDR or Churchill, or perhaps even Stalin, to tolerate the greatest conceivable sacrifices in order to clear the way to a brighter future for his people. The sacrifices of the millions would pave the way forward for the billions.
Frankly, I think any judgment on Mao based on the sacrifices he exacted from his own people are hollow and meaningless from any source, but particularly from Western sources, who have no real idea of the challenges that had to be overcome. The proof of Mao's statesmanship is to be found in today's China, risen from the depths of foreign exploitation and oppression and now poised on the brink of becoming the world leader. Mao's way was the only way.
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I doubt Maos genius.
I do not even know if he appreaciated how much he made the condition of the common man in China worse.
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<<I doubt Maos genius.>>
I respect your opinion, but I have a very hard time understanding how anybody could doubt Mao's genius regardless of what side of the ideological line he was on. This guy spearheaded a movement that turned Chinese destiny around 180 degrees; someone like that comes along just a handful of times in China's entire history.
<<I do not even know if he appreaciated how much he made the condition of the common man in China worse.>>
They were starting from rock bottom - - nobody could have made the condition of the common man in China worse, IMHO.
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Here was the original question that I had posed that I thought was kind of interesting:
<<I don't think anyone can establish an equation or a formula where the violent deaths of a million Iraqis plus the loss of a certain portion of the nation's oil revenues is "worth" a certain degree of political progress towards Western-style democracy. Would our domestic criminal law regard a murder as justified if it resulted in a certain degree of social benefit?>>
Somehow this has degenerated into an examination of the alleged evil nature of Chairman Mao. Does no one have any thoughts on my question as originally put? plane? anyone?
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Would our domestic criminal law regard a murder as justified if it resulted in a certain degree of social benefit
It already does.
That man just needed killin' is a valid defense in many a state.
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<<That man just needed killin' is a valid defense in many a state. >>
No it is not. At most it is the rationale of a jury nullification, an example of the system malfunctioning.
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No it is not. At most it is the rationale of a jury nullification, an example of the system malfunctioning.
Sometimes the system is sidestepped.
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<<Sometimes the system is sidestepped. >>
So you agree that the system never can justify murder in terms of the social benefit gained.
What do you think of the people who sidestepped the system?
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So you agree that the system never can justify murder in terms of the social benefit gained.
That is the complete opposite of what I said.
But perhaps you are confused and believe there is but one system.
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What do you think of the people who sidestepped the system?
Depends on their motivation.
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<<That man just needed killin' is a valid defense in many a state. >>
No it is not. At most it is the rationale of a jury nullification, an example of the system malfunctioning.
Why elese is a jury needed?
If someone kills someone elese , for reasons that are easy to explain and clear to the jury as justifyable the jury will bring the voice of the community to the trial.
Jurys are a sort of pot luck , I am sure that some are better than others , but they are the best way we have at present to involve the real person who has not devoted his life to the arcane study of law.
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They were starting from rock bottom - - nobody could have made the condition of the common man in China worse, IMHO.
More Chineese died to produce a Communist society than died to support the "greater east aisia co-prosperity sphere".
If Mao was rougher on them than the Japaneese Imperial Army , what indeed were the improvements that were worthy of such carnage? China is modifying its Communism to make it more practical , and the further they depart from Marx the more they have success.
Why should we suppose that they couldn't have had this success a lot earlyer without the side trip through the extremes of enforcement of Marxism onto the people?
On you origional question I bring up the question of Mao because you seem ready to accept the huge losses Mao was causing , the losses of the Iriqui people being less and the results being sooner and potentially better , I think that the balance you were asking for ,does appear.
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<<More Chineese died to produce a Communist society than died to support the "greater east aisia co-prosperity sphere".>>
I assume you mean "than died to oppose the GEACPS." Well, so what if they did? All it proves is that the forces of reaction were even stronger than the Japanese Imperial Army. And still the people under Chairman Mao overcame them.
<<If Mao was rougher on them than the Japaneese Imperial Army , what indeed were the improvements that were worthy of such carnage? >>
Come on, plane, you know that as well as anyone. Look at China today and look at China as it was a hundred years ago.
<<China is modifying its Communism to make it more practical . . . >>
That's a BAD thing? If I were to criticize capitalism on the basis of what it was in the 19th century, you'd be the first to cry foul, and protest that capitalism had changed with the times. Why is it only communism that must be judged on its distant past, and can't be allowed to change?
<< . . . and the further they depart from Marx the more they have success.>>
Yeah. They adapt and evolve. Just like you. And how much adaptation and evolution did they accomplish before Chairman Mao came along and brought them Marx?
Why should we suppose that they couldn't have had this success a lot earlyer without the side trip through the extremes of enforcement of Marxism onto the people?
<<On you origional question I bring up the question of Mao because you seem ready to accept the huge losses Mao was causing , the losses of the Iriqui people being less and the results being sooner and potentially better , I think that the balance you were asking for ,does appear.>>
That's just fantasy posing as history. The Iraqis under Saddam were a prosperous, educated and highly Westernized society, with the rights of women more fully realized than in any other Arab countries except for Syria and Lebanon, which were at about the same level. They STILL are much worse off than they were under Saddam, and now they've lost a substantial chunk of their oil revenues to boot. The Chinese, OTOH, were starting from rock bottom. You couldn't find one Chinese in a hundred who'd want to return to a pre-1949 world. I haven't met an Iraqi, Christian or Muslim, who won't admit that things were at least materially better under Saddam, and almost all the ones I know are refugees from Saddam.
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<<More Chineese died to produce a Communist society than died to support the "greater east aisia co-prosperity sphere".>>
I assume you mean "than died to oppose the GEACPS." Well, so what if they did? All it proves is that the forces of reaction were even stronger than the Japanese Imperial Army. And still the people under Chairman Mao overcame them.
What more than that is needed to prove that Communism was a bad idea for China?
If domination by imperial Japan is less painfull, what could possibly be worthy of that much more pain?
Communism was wastefull and learned the rules of economics from knowing nothing. Now that they know better they are less communist and less hungry, overthrowing the Nationalist Chineese govrnment replaced the corrupt with the ignorant and corrupt.
Imagine a China that instead suffered the sort of "nation building " or "exploitation" that Japan suffered. There were plenty of Americans willing to help.
They coud be where they are now decades ago , and better off also by a couple of massive famines that Mao caused which would not have ever happened.
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<<What more than that is needed to prove that Communism was a bad idea for China?>>
What the hell is wrong with you? You see where China is 60 years after the Revolution and you see where China was 60 years before. If Communism was a bad idea, what the hell is a good idea? Poison Kool-Aid?
<<If domination by imperial Japan is less painfull, what could possibly be worthy of that much more pain?>>
I don't know what you mean by that and I'm not even going to try to figure it out.
<<Communism was wastefull and learned the rules of economics from knowing nothing.>>
So now Karl Marx did not know the rules of economics. plane are you actually reading this stuff, or is it just the product of some random word-generating program that goes on-line while you sleep? If you want to tell me that the Communist leaders of China made some mistakes after the Revolution and learned as they went, I'm prepared to listen. I think they admitted as much themselves.
<<Now that they know better they are less communist and less hungry . . . >>
They learned as they went along, and improved through experience and pragmatism, yes.
<< . . . overthrowing the Nationalist Chineese govrnment replaced the corrupt with the ignorant and corrupt.>>
Meaning that plane does not like Communists. OK plane, we get that. BTW, speaking of ignorant and corrupt, are you prepared to concede that those words will fit plenty of Western governments as well?
<<Imagine a China that instead suffered the sort of "nation building " or "exploitation" that Japan suffered. There were plenty of Americans willing to help.>>
Ha ha ha, yes there were. Henry Luce for one. They did everything in their power to help the KMT keep China in its accustomed subservient role, which was the whole point of the Revolution and the overthrow of the foreigners' puppets.
<<They coud be where they are now decades ago , and better off also by a couple of massive famines that Mao caused which would not have ever happened.>>
Right, plane, sure. Coulda, shoulda, woulda. And if my aunt had balls, she'd be my uncle. The foreign influence on China was dominant since before the days of the Opium Wars, and the Chinese, if not plane himself, had a pretty good idea of what it was doing for them.
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<<If domination by imperial Japan is less painfull, what could possibly be worthy of that much more pain?>>
I don't know what you mean by that and I'm not even going to try to figure it out.
It is very simple , the Japaneese did a better job of keeping Chineese people alive than Mao did.
And Yes Marx did not understand economics, he was sophisticated and complex in his understanding , but would you say that the astronimers who postulated an Earth centered universe understod astronomy well? The sophistication and complexity was all in a wrong direction.
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Jurys are a sort of pot luck , I am sure that some are better than others , but they are the best way we have at present to involve the real person who has not devoted his life to the arcane study of law.
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After having served on a jury and having been foreman of a jury, I do not think that justice is served as well by the average jury as it would be by a trained, three or five-judge panel with investigative powers, such as Spain uses these days.
The difficulty is that both the prosecution and the defense lawyers are often able to get very gullible people to sit on juries: in lieu of the best possibly qualified jurors, the most easily swayed are often chosen. The classic example has to be the OJ trial. REalluy food juries are possible, but the lawyers are given too much discretion in the selection of jurors by ruling out prospective jurors for no reason or too many silly reasons.
In the case in which I was elected foreman, it was a drug case involving some rather stupid people trying to smuggle cocaine into the US from Colombia inside the tube of a green-screen computer monitor, supposedly being returned for repairs. The most convincing fact, that such a monitor was available new for $80 at the time, and these poor saps had paid $225 to ship it from Bogota to Miami. Neither the prosecution nor the defense said a word about this matter. We of the jury felt that the prosecution and defense lawyers were people we would not hire for even a traffic offense.
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<<It is very simple , the Japaneese did a better job of keeping Chineese people alive than Mao did.>>
Yes they did a terrific job of keeping the Chinese people alive. The Rape of Nanking is just one sterling example of their handiwork. And this shows today in the way that the Japanese are still worshiped and revered by the Chinese people out of gratutude for keeping them alive, whereas Mao is universally reviled for killing them off like flies. All over China, people are calling for the Japanese Imperial Army to come back and take care of them.
plane, you live in a fantasy world so crazy and impenetrable that mere fact and logic are powerless to make any impression. I think we just have to agree to disagree. I don't even recognize the historical world you have created for yourself.
<<And Yes Marx did not understand economics, he was sophisticated and complex in his understanding , but would you say that the astronimers who postulated an Earth centered universe understod astronomy well? >>
No, I would not. That's why their theories are not taught in any university that I know of (other than as history) whereas Marxist university professors are still teaching.
<<The sophistication and complexity was all in a wrong direction.>>
Of course, we see how the philosophy and its followers have failed China.
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No, I would not. That's why their theories are not taught in any university that I know of (other than as history) whereas Marxist university professors are still teaching.
Teaching Marxist economic principles? As current, rather than historical, theories? Pray tell, please let us know who these professors are.
*No* current economist that I have read considers Marx anything other a curious footnote in history. Most of his theories were invalidated or subsumed within his lifetime.
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<<Teaching Marxist economic principles? As current, rather than historical, theories? Pray tell, please let us know who these professors are.>>
Andrew Kliman, of Pace University, is one. A Google search "Marxist professor of economics" turns up others as well as some very interesting sites.
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Andrew Kliman, of Pace University, is one.
Read up a bit on him. He's a proponent of the "Temporal single-system interpretation" (TSSI) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporal_single-system_interpretation) of Marx's economics. While Kliman admits that Marx's work has internal inconsistencies (http://libcom.org/library/Simultaneous-valuation-exploitation-theory-marxist-humanism), the proponents of TSSI say that the inconsistencies can be ignored because Marx was right on his bigger, philosophical issues (ie, communism / humanism is the way to go).
Basically, they take the same tact as many Christians - "sure the Bible has many internal inconsistencies, but we believe it just because
it's what we like / were raised with". In other words, Kliman has turned Marx's writings into a religion.
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Well, first you said that there were no professors teaching Marx and now you want to turn this into a critique of Kliman's work. I'm not an economist and not prepared to argue if Kliman is right or wrong - - basically you denied his existence, I found him and proved you wrong, and that's the end of it.
And BTW, the Google search I referred to shows plenty more like Kliman in the universities and still teaching one form or another of Marxist theory. To claim as plane did that Marx knew nothing of economics is totally ridiculous nonsensical bullshit. He knew a helluva lot about the subject, some of which is still being taught today.
Which was the only point I was trying to make.
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Well, first you said that there were no professors teaching Marx
Perhaps some reading comprehension is in order. Go back and read what I wrote.
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To claim as plane did that Marx knew nothing of economics is totally ridiculous nonsensical bullshit. He knew a helluva lot about the subject, some of which is still being taught today.
Which was the only point I was trying to make.
If you find and agust teacher , teaching students all about the flat Earth on the back of a turtle , would you let me know?
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Here is EXACTLY what you wrote:
<<Teaching Marxist economic principles? As current, rather than historical, theories? Pray tell, please let us know who these professors are.
<<*No* current economist that I have read considers Marx anything other a curious footnote in history. Most of his theories were invalidated or subsumed within his lifetime.>>
Pray tell, please let us know what reader of average intelligence would NOT take this as a denial that Marx was still being taught as economic theory today and a challenge to find at least one professor who was doing so.
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<<If you find and agust teacher , teaching students all about the flat Earth on the back of a turtle , would you let me know?>>
You'd be the first guy I'd tell, plane. I'm sure whatever you could learn from him or her would fit in well with all the "knowledge" you've already acquired about communism, the role of the U.S.A. in world politics and American "democracy" at home.
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Here is EXACTLY what you wrote:
<<Teaching Marxist economic principles? As current, rather than historical, theories? Pray tell, please let us know who these professors are.
<<*No* current economist that I have read considers Marx anything other a curious footnote in history. Most of his theories were invalidated or subsumed within his lifetime.>>
Pray tell, please let us know what reader of average intelligence would NOT take this as a denial that Marx was still being taught as economic theory today and a challenge to find at least one professor who was doing so.
Well, it obviously means that I have not read any works by current economists that do not say that Marx's theories were internally inconsistent (ie, wrong).
And, actually, even the guy you brought up says that - he just suffixes it with a "but we should believe it anyway, because it (communism) is the right thing to do."
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<<Well, it obviously means that I have not read any works by current economists that do not say that Marx's theories were internally inconsistent (ie, wrong).>>
There is nothing "obvious" about that. Your original reference (and mine) was to the TEACHING of Marxist economics, but now you say that your reference was "obviously" to current Marxist economists whose books you happen to have read. (Obviously.)
<<And, actually, even the guy you brought up says that - he just suffixes it with a "but we should believe it anyway, because it (communism) is the right thing to do.">>
Again, not being an economist, I don't plan to jump into a debate on how right or wrong Kliman may be, he's a Marxist in some aspects of his teachings, he teaches at Pace University, and he proves the point I was making, that contrary to plane's absurd belief that Marx knew nothing of economics, his theories, or at least some aspects of them, are still being taught today as economics.
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There is nothing "obvious" about that. Your original reference (and mine) was to the TEACHING of Marxist economics, but now you say that your reference was "obviously" to current Marxist economists whose books you happen to have read. (Obviously.)
Yeah, you even quoted it: "*No* current economist that I have read considers Marx anything other a curious footnote in history." Or did you forget quoting that? What do you think that statement means?
Again, not being an economist, I don't plan to jump into a debate on how right or wrong Kliman may be, he's a Marxist in some aspects of his teachings, he teaches at Pace University, and he proves the point I was making, that contrary to plane's absurd belief that Marx knew nothing of economics, his theories, or at least some aspects of them, are still being taught today as economics.
Did you read the paper that he wrote that I linked to? The paper explicitly states that Marx is internally inconsistent which is normally considered wrong. Then he goes on to say that regardless, because Marx advocates communism, we should just believe him, whether or not his work is inconsistent.
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The paper explicitly states that Marx is internally inconsistent which is normally considered wrong.
I didn't konw about internal inconsistancy, are these substantial mistakes?
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I didn't konw about internal inconsistancy, are these substantial mistakes?
Two of his fundamental theorems in Das Kapital contradict each other. They cannot both be true. And most of the rest of his work is derived from these.
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I didn't konw about internal inconsistancy, are these substantial mistakes?
Two of his fundamental theorems in Das Kapital contradict each other. They cannot both be true. And most of the rest of his work is derived from these.
Amazing , this contradiction can't be obvious.
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<<Yeah, you even quoted it: "*No* current economist that I have read considers Marx anything other a curious footnote in history." Or did you forget quoting that? What do you think that statement means?>>
What's the difference WHAT that statement means? It was SUBSEQUENT to your challenge to find a professor still teaching Marxist economics. Did somebody limit you to one statement per post? What a lame and childish attempt at distraction!
Here, try this on for size: you challenged me to find a professor who was still teaching Marxist economics and then you told us about your reading habits.
I responded to your challenge and found you the economist. (Believe me, it was not hard; the search turned up many others as well.)
I did not respond to your second statement. How the hell could I? Who would know better than you what books you have read and what books you haven't read?
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<<Amazing , this contradiction can't be obvious.>>
LMFAO
As obvious as the contradiction between "turn the other cheek" and Augustine's "the just war?"
Give it up, plane - - contradictions or no contradictions, some Marxist theory is still being taught and Marx DID know a little bit about economics, some claim he even knew almost as much about it as Ami.
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Amazing , this contradiction can't be obvious.
Well, in the words of the august Dr. Kliman:
In the standard interpretation of Marx's value theory, distinct price and value systems exist, and the inputs and outputs in each are valued simultaneously. Another distinctive feature of this interpretation is that it construes wages in the price system as the price of the wage goods workers receive, and wages in the value system as the value of these wage goods.
Employing this interpretation, Okishio (1993a, 1993b) discovered a set of theorems that Morishima (1973) later dubbed the `fundamental Marxian theorem' (FMT). The FMT is often said to have shown that surplus labour is necessary and sufficient for positive profit when no joint products are produced (see, e.g., Howard and King, 1992: 230, 239).
Yet some versions of the FMT hold only if all producers' profit rates are equal in every period. This is a very particular case; if profit rates are only approximately equal, or only equalized over a span of time longer than one period (two days instead of one, for instance), these versions of the FMT no longer hold. The analysis below considers instead the general versions of the FMT (e.g., Okishio 1993a: 33; Okishio 1993b: 80-81; Roemer 1981: 47-50), which prove that the theorem holds for any set of positive market prices, not just for 'normal' prices. Yet these versions of the FMT rely crucially on an equally restrictive condition: in every period, a positive physical surplus of every good must be produced.
Physical surplus is output net of both consumed inputs and workers' consumption, and, in this interpretation, profit is simply the vector of physical surpluses valued at end-of-period (replacement) prices. Using the usual input-output notation,2 the column vector of physical surpluses is psi = (I - A - bl)x, so profit is
Unless the net products of all goods are non-negative, the aggregate price of the net product, and thus sigma, can be negative, even in highly productive economies. Imagine that net products of almost all goods are positive and large, and only a few are slightly negative. If the prices of the latter group are sufficiently high, the aggregate price of the net product will be negative. Thus, an economy that would have a positive sigma under certain prices could have a negative sigma under different prices. Even a slight change in prices could lead to such a reversal.
A couple of other perverse implications of these interpretations are noteworthy. When sigma is negative, equation (5) implies that a fall in the money wage rate will lead to a fall, rather than a rise, in the amount of surplus labour extracted. As an anonymous referee has noted, moreover, necessary labour (the labour-time equivalent of money wages) is defined here as (l/sigma) w/x, so it is negative when sigma is negative. Workers supposedly produce an equivalent of their wages in less than no time! No oddity of the labour market or technology underlies this result-workers' wages and the amount of work needed to reproduce their means of subsistence are both positive, and necessary labour might well be positive if only relative prices were different.
All of these paradoxes disclose a serious conceptual flaw in the claim that the monetary expression of the value added by living labour can be measured by the price of the net product.4
The proportionality of surplus labour and profit also fails to imply that surplus labour is necessary for profit to exist. As Dmitriev (1974) discovered, if we imagine a fully automated economy that produces a positive net product of all goods -- and if, in addition, prices in such an economy exist and are positive - then profit as defined above is positive, even though no labour or surplus labour is extracted.
Apart from this case, the interpretations in question do imply that, when the price of the net product happens to be positive, positive profit and positive surplus labour will coexist. The relevant issue, however, is not whether they coexist, but why. Unless a theory denies that profit could be positive if no human labour were employed-and those under consideration seem not to do so-then we must conclude that it admits the possibility of positive profit without surplus labour. Putting the same point differently, the only way to refute Dmitriev's challenge to Marx's theory of profit is to deny that the physical surplus of a fully automated economy is effectively the same thing as profit under capitalism. This requires that one deny either that the price of the physical surplus constitutes profit, or that this surplus could have a positive price under complete automation.no. 73 (Spring 2001): p. 97-112 The definitions of profit given above do not do so.
I wouldn't want to contradict Mikey's source, after all.
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Hahahahahahahaha..!!
That is not obvious , I don't even get it .
What I get is that "from each according to his ability , to each according to his need" absolutely requires that earning count for nothing.
This is an internal contradiction that is too simple to explain.
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<<Amazing , this contradiction can't be obvious.>>
LMFAO
As obvious as the contradiction between "turn the other cheek" and Augustine's "the just war?"
Which was wrong?
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<<I wouldn't want to contradict Mikey's source, after all.>>
Since I'm not an economist and don't pretend to be, I don't get involved in theoretical arguments between them. Ami has no such problem and jumps in with both feet, but that doesn't mean he's right, only that he has chosen to support one of two sides in an argument between the experts, IMHO a pretty foolish and arrogant stance to take.
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<<What I get is that "from each according to his ability , to each according to his need" absolutely requires that earning count for nothing.>>
Instead of "earning," substitute "production" to see how ridiculous your conclusion is. Or, better yet, define "earning" and "counting for" - - if you're careful in your definitions, you might be able to salvage your conclusion from its current state of meaningless absurdity.
<<This is an internal contradiction that is too simple to explain.>>
Well, why don't you humour me anyway, plane, and "explain" it to me? I'm a very simple fellow.
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<<What I get is that "from each according to his ability , to each according to his need" absolutely requires that earning count for nothing.>>
Instead of "earning," substitute "production".... of meaningless absurdity.
No no no , production is not the same as earning!
Taking someones earnings has to be justified and have due process.
And Communism assumes it belongs to others in the first place on the basis of their need.
Abe Lincon had to go to war to wean us from liveing on the sweat of anothers brow , Marx proposed a retrograde step to bring us back to livein on that others sweat.
Giving to each according to his need is even worse than confiscateing the earnings of an earner for frivolous reason .
Who is going to decide what I need , and reconcile this with what is availible? Ineed a king to tell me what I need like a need a hole in the head but anything less than a despot will be unable to tell me what I need and make me accept it as the correct amount .
Marxism is therefore an inescapable road to serfdom if not slavery , it cannot operate its most basic tenant without a despotic leader and has nothing to offer without robbery of earnings from those able to earn .
Fortunately the same sort of flaws also keep Communist nations from realiseing their full potential for strength , Communism is itself a handicap to its own propagation.
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<<No no no , production is not the same as earning!>>
Of course it's not. That's why I suggested you substitute it. You claim that earning counts for nothing, but in a socialist society, it SHOULD count for nothing. Production OTOH will always count for something, the value of which, under socialism, will accrue 100% to the benefit of the people. THAT was the point I was trying to make.
<<Taking someones earnings has to be justified and have due process.>>
Bullshit. The earnings themselves, to the extent that they benefit exclusively their producer, represent an illegitimate theft from the people.
<<And Communism assumes it belongs to others in the first place on the basis of their need.>>
Wrong - - it could also belong to the producers, depending on their need.
<<Abe Lincon had to go to war to wean us from liveing on the sweat of anothers brow , Marx proposed a retrograde step to bring us back to livein on that others sweat.>>
You don't see the difference between those with the least need (the planters) living off the labour of those with the most need (the slaves) and a philosophy of serving the neediest first?
<<Giving to each according to his need is even worse than confiscateing the earnings of an earner for frivolous reason .>>
That's what everyone says who confiscates the earnings of the working class for frivolous reasons.
<<Who is going to decide what I need , and reconcile this with what is availible?>>
Most normal people have little trouble figuring these things out. You build a home for the homeless before you build a swimming pool for the suburbanite. You feed the guy who is starving before you pay for champagne and caviar for the owner of your local bank. You buy a bike for the guy who has to hike twelve miles to work every day before you upgrade the boss's Caddy to a Benz. It's not all that difficult, plane, unless you NEED it to be difficult.
<<Ineed a king to tell me what I need like a need a hole in the head but anything less than a despot will be unable to tell me what I need and make me accept it as the correct amount .>>
Others have figured this all out before you many and many a time, and it seems to work out just fine.
<<Marxism is therefore an inescapable road to serfdom if not slavery , it cannot operate its most basic tenant without a despotic leader and has nothing to offer without robbery of earnings from those able to earn .>>
If it's inescapable roads to serfdom you are looking for, please don't neglect to look at wage-slavery while you're at it, families with both parents working longer hours and fifty-week years to pay the bank for the house they live in, the oil companies for the cars they drive, the agribusiness conglomerates for the toxin-laden swill they call food and their government to maintain an army of rapists, thugs and murderers to keep the third world for the benefit of the ruling classes.
<<Fortunately the same sort of flaws also keep Communist nations from realiseing their full potential for strength , Communism is itself a handicap to its own propagation.>>
I guess that's what kept China down these past 50 years, eh?
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I guess that's what kept China down these past 50 years, eh?
How true , I suppose you have no realisation for how true it is.
China was much damaged in WWII , incredable suffering and loss of capabilitys.
Not worse than Japan.
Thirty years later China has a wage of cents a day and Japan has developed the worlds second biggest economy.
Mao and Communism were helping China progress in the way that a pocket full of rocks helps you swim.
Productive people earn money because they are actually makeing the stuff. If you limit what they can earn why should they work one iota more than the minimum?
Indeed won't a very productive worker earn the ire of his co -workers when he gets the quota improved?
A worker in a communist system has a lot of incentive to make his needs known to the petty despots who decide what he ought to be paid , no particular incentive to earn it.
Communism is in its most basic concept a mistaken idea of what work and what money actually are.
Benjamin Franklin had it right a lot sooner than Marx got it wrong, "Time is money".
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Your lesson in fantasy history left out a few points of comparison between Japan and China. China under foreign capitalist imperialism since the Opium Wars of the late 19th C. had never realized its potential whereas Japan was a major trading (exporting) nation since the beginning of the 20th C. but especially so in the Nineteen Thirties. the total devastation of WWII was a long-term term benefit to exporting nations such as Germany and Japan, since their production facilities had to be rebuilt from scratch, often with far superior results to the aging plants of the victor nations. Japan rebuilt with the help and support of the Western capitalist countries, Communist China against their active opposition.
If you look at the top exporting countries in the world today (more or less, since I'm not sure of the date of the first source that popped up on my Google search, http://www.mapsofworld.com/world-top-ten/world-top-ten-exporting-countries-map.html, (http://www.mapsofworld.com/world-top-ten/world-top-ten-exporting-countries-map.html,)
they are Germany, China, U.S.A., in that order.Germany, of course, is a capitalist country, but with many socialist features lacking in the U.S.A., chief among them being a much shorter working year for its workers and significantly better benefits, so your bogus theory of "more capitalism, better results" needs to be re-examined on that issue alone.
Japan is in fourth place, but considerably behind the top three, which are bunched fairly close together. I could find no similar "Top Ten" lists showing China's place among world exporters prior to WWII or prior to the triumph of Communism in China, but I am pretty sure they enjoyed nothing like their current relative position.
China was wracked by famine throughout its four thousand years of history, as you at least partially recognize by singling out the one alleged famine that may (according to you) have happened in Communism's early years in China as if it were the only one they ever had, but in fact the famine problem appears to have been licked in China thanks to Communist rule and discipline.
China today and its position in the world is still a work in progress but already its accomplishments under the Chinese Communist Party and without the phony charades which in the U.S.A. are hilariously still referred to as "elections," have made it truly unrecognizable from the basket-case that it became under the domination of foreign capital interests. Your ludicrous "comparisons" with Japan, an already industrialized exporting power, notwithstanding.
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". .......... the total devastation of WWII was a long-term term benefit to exporting nations such as Germany and Japan, since their production facilities had to be rebuilt from scratch, often with far superior results to the aging plants of the victor nations. Japan rebuilt with the help and support of the Western capitalist countries, Communist China against their active opposition."
That is rediculous you know ,as if the US would have been much better off if it had been occupied a while and heavily bombed.
Japan recovered (and WGermany) while occupied by foreigners.
your bogus theory of "more capitalism, better results" needs to be re-examined on that issue alone.
Germany is unique in the world for haveing an ability to appreaciate how much of an handicap communism is.They have a liveing communist party and forbidden facist party why arn't the communists likely to win controll of the government ? Plenty of Germans have personal experience being raised up as communists. The progress of West germany as contrasted with East Gernamy is nearly as pure an experiment in Communist advantages as North vs South Korea. I suppose Germans are indeed more socialist , it was there that the predicessor of Social Security was invented , It was there that a Socialist Party was near to conquering all the rest of Europe.
Japan is in fourth place, but considerably behind the top three, which are bunched fairly close together. I could find no similar "Top Ten" lists showing China's place among world exporters prior to WWII or prior to the triumph of Communism in China, but I am pretty sure they enjoyed nothing like their current relative position.
It does depend a lot on when you look Japan has been as high as Second for decades at a time. China has done wonders since they pegged their currency to the Dollar, threw out the "iron rice bowl" and stopped forbidding entrepenurship.If they continue to trash Communist practices they may indeed become the largest economy in the world in one or two decades and might keep that status for several decades.
Why not?, there was nothing but Communism itself keeping them from these advances five decades ago.
China was wracked by famine throughout its four thousand years of history,
This is very meaningless to say. Every peoples in every land have a history of famines occuring and reoccuring. Why tho is the worst famine of all human history almost unknown even tho it was not all that long ago?
Mao needed so much privacy that there can't be any proof found one way or the other?
North Korea is still a land of Communism , its people are eager to tell you so and they are also a land of current famine, why?The Communism itself explains this sufficiently to me , what is the alternative explanation?
[/quote]
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<<That is rediculous you know ,as if the US would have been much better off if it had been occupied a while and heavily bombed.>>
While you argue hypotheticals which can never be proved or disproved ("as if the U.S. would have been . . . ") I stick to the facts. The facts show that the old equipment of Germany and Japan was wiped out or taken away as "reparations" by the victors. It was replaced with brand-new state-of-the-art equipment. There is no "would have been, could have been" in this, plane - - we ALL know the result. Not what "would have been, could have been," but what WAS.
<<Germany is unique in the world for haveing an ability to appreaciate how much of an handicap communism is.>>
They have as much opportunity to appreciate the benefits of communism as its alleged "handicaps." And nothing unique about it, either.
<<They have a liveing communist party and forbidden facist party why arn't the communists likely to win controll of the government ?>>
Most likely due to corporate control of the German MSM, obviously. And the fact that it takes plenty of money to run successful campaigns.
<<Plenty of Germans have personal experience being raised up as communists. The progress of West germany as contrasted with East Gernamy is nearly as pure an experiment in Communist advantages as North vs South Korea.>>
What bullshit. The West showered West Germany with money and went easy on the prosecution of former Nazi war criminals to win the support of former Nazis. The East hunted, imprisoned and killed Nazis. The Germans who took power in the East were the Communists who survived the war by escaping to Moscow, the ones who took power in the West had many fruitful Nazi connections. The popularity of anti-Communist policies in the Western part of the country was due in large part to support from ex-Nazis.
<<I suppose Germans are indeed more socialist , it was there that the predicessor of Social Security was invented , It was there that a Socialist Party was near to conquering all the rest of Europe.>>
Why look that far back? The French and the Germans have roughly equal vacations with pay for their workers, way more than American workers. According to you, that is more socialistic. But they live better than you under "socialism" than you live under capitalism. Their workers have more benefits.
<<It does depend a lot on when you look Japan has been as high as Second for decades at a time. China has done wonders since they pegged their currency to the Dollar, threw out the "iron rice bowl" and stopped forbidding entrepenurship.If they continue to trash Communist practices they may indeed become the largest economy in the world in one or two decades and might keep that status for several decades.
Why not?, there was nothing but Communism itself keeping them from these advances five decades ago.>>
More bullshit. Five decades ago they were staggering out of the chaos of WWII and the Civil War. ALL of the progress from then till now was under Communism. Sometimes the communists relaxed their grip, sometimes they tightened it. Lenin went from War Communism to NEP (New Economic Policy) with limited opportunities for capitalism, then back to more classical communist principles after the NEP; Fidel did something like that in Cuba with the Mercados Libres of the Eighties, which were then abandoned. Communism can be flexible and adaptable - - remember "Two steps forward, one step back?" It was communism that brought them to where they are today and nothing but Communism.
Your "would have done better without . . . " is just more speculative crap trying to obscure the solid and obvious achievements (which DWARF the achievements of the USA in the same period of time in terms of bettering the life of the people) of the Chinese Communist Party. Your aversion to reality is such that you need to retreat into speculation, hypothesis and fantasy in order to avoid the reality that is staring you in the face. Did you realize that over the past THIRTY YEARS the small advances in real wages made by the American people have been eaten away completely by the rise in the costs of health care alone?
<<This ["China was wracked by famine throughout its four thousand years of history"] is very meaningless to say. >>
Well, I guess if you lived there and went through the events or heard family stories and local histories of the events, I don't think it would be totally meaningless.
<<Every peoples in every land have a history of famines occuring and reoccuring. >>
That is nonsense. Some countries are much more susceptible than others. China had a particularly long and severe history of famines before the advent of communism.
<<Why tho is the worst famine of all human history almost unknown even tho it was not all that long ago?>>
Maybe because it's just a bunch of anti-communist propaganda?
<<Mao needed so much privacy that there can't be any proof found one way or the other?>>
How do you find "proof" of an event that didn't happen?
<<North Korea is still a land of Communism , its people are eager to tell you so and they are also a land of current famine, why?The Communism itself explains this sufficiently to me , what is the alternative explanation?>>
Their leaders obviously decided that weapons and self-defence were more important than surplus food. People are on tight rations. I don't know where you find evidence of actual famine. It does not seem likely to me. It's probably more lying U.S. propaganda. They produce containerloads of this shit by the minute. On every topic, on every country.
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- remember "Two steps forward, one step back?" It was communism that brought them to where they are today and nothing but Communism.
after two steps in a forward direction why would a step back be needed? did the people need some releif , or food?
(which DWARF the achievements of the USA in the same period of time in terms of bettering the life of the people)
China has done well since Nixon , which they owe more to Nixon than to anyone elese.
<<Why tho is the worst famine of all human history almost unknown even tho it was not all that long ago?>>
Maybe because it's just a bunch of anti-communist propaganda?
<<Mao needed so much privacy that there can't be any proof found one way or the other?>>
How do you find "proof" of an event that didn't happen?
The Holocaust didn't happen either , for people who have a political reason to not like the facts. Next tiem you hear of a holocaust denyer , don't feel smug against him , you are suffering the same malady.
I understand that people touring North Korea are told by their guides that the US attacked North Korea and started the war. My understanding is that the US didn't even allow South Korea to buy any tanks before the war and the North s attack caught us unprepared because we had so little equipment of any kind on the scene.
I think one of these versions is fiction , but how could I prove this to someone who thought all negatives were propaganda?
North Korea is intent on strength so much thatthey are killing their people for it . Uselessly of course, they have nothing the US needs to take without payment. They have precious little at all , they have devoted so much to fortifacaton that they have nothing to keep safe in the fort.
If they arn't starveing in NKorea and if China never had a huge famine in 59 thru 62 where are the reports and records kept that you would actually trust?
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- remember "Two steps forward, one step back?" It was communism that brought them to where they are today and nothing but Communism.
after two steps in a forward direction why would a step back be needed? did the people need some releif , or food?
(which DWARF the achievements of the USA in the same period of time in terms of bettering the life of the people)
China has done well since Nixon , which they owe more to Nixon than to anyone elese.
<<Why tho is the worst famine of all human history almost unknown even tho it was not all that long ago?>>
Maybe because it's just a bunch of anti-communist propaganda?
<<Mao needed so much privacy that there can't be any proof found one way or the other?>>
How do you find "proof" of an event that didn't happen?
The Holocaust didn't happen either , for people who have a political reason to not like the facts. Next tiem you hear of a holocaust denyer , don't feel smug against him , you are suffering the same malady.
D'OH :D
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<<after two steps in a forward direction why would a step back be needed? did the people need some releif , or food?>>
That's a good question. I don't really know the answer. I would expect that in any period of rapid revolutionary change, there are people who can't adjust and will resist any kind of change. It's got to be kind of disarming to their resistance if you first show them how far forward you COULD go, and then step back, which shows some kind of moderation on your part in not taking the most forward position possible.
<<China has done well since Nixon , which they owe more to Nixon than to anyone elese.>>
Who knew Nixon was such a multi-tasker? Running China at the same time as he was President of the United States is some fucking accomplishment! My hat's off to Tricky Dick.
I notice that the above quote was your response to my claim that the progress made by the Chinese people since the seizure of power by the communists has dwarfed the achievements of the American people over the same time period, to which it seems your only answer is, "Nixon did it." You could have at least argued that the Chinese people were starting off from a much lower base-line.
<<The Holocaust didn't happen either , for people who have a political reason to not like the facts. Next tiem you hear of a holocaust denyer , don't feel smug against him , you are suffering the same malady.>>
Everyone's entitled to his own opinion. I don't believe that any famine that happened under Mao was due to communism and I don't believe it was the worst in human history. Repetition of that bullshit from the usual anti-Communist propaganda sources inside and outside of China doesn't make it any truer than repetition of the Holocaust deniers makes their story any truer. The plain fact is that there is indisputable evidence of the Holocaust and nothing but pathetic fraudulent crap against it, whereas there is very little evidence of the famines you are trying to pin on communism, and in view of the milennia-old history of repeated famine in
China, absolutely NO evidence tying any famine that might have occurred in the early years of communism to communism itself.
<<I understand that people touring North Korea are told by their guides that the US attacked North Korea and started the war. >>
Ha ha ha. I understand that the GOP is telling the American people that the US attacked Iraq because they were concerned about the threat that Iraq posed to America with its WMD.
<<My understanding is that the US didn't even allow South Korea to buy any tanks before the war and the North s attack caught us unprepared because we had so little equipment of any kind on the scene.>>
I sure don't know how "surprised" anyone was by the North Korean attack and I didn't hear the tank story before, but I do know that there are revisionist histories now published which cast a different light on the relationship between the two Koreas and their superpower sponsors, but that even those histories say that the fighting started with a North Korean push into South Korean territory. One day when I retire I'd like to read some of those histories. You probably should as well, you seem to have this "USA can do no wrong" attitude which is the mirror image of my "USA can do no right."
<<I think one of these versions is fiction , but how could I prove this to someone who thought all negatives were propaganda?>>
Same as you prove anything else - - you produce facts from unblemished sources and argue from them.
<<North Korea is intent on strength so much thatthey are killing their people for it .>>
Which, of course, you have no credible evidence of.
<< Uselessly of course, they have nothing the US needs to take without payment. >>
Nevertheless they WERE invaded by the U.S. during the Korean War, with great loss of life.
<<They have precious little at all>>
They seem to have developed some pretty powerful weapons.
<< they have devoted so much to fortifacaton that they have nothing to keep safe in the fort.>>
Other than their people, their people's army and their country.
<<If they arn't starveing in NKorea and if China never had a huge famine in 59 thru 62 where are the reports and records kept that you would actually trust?>>
That's a pretty odd way of putting it. Usually, I don't prove negatives with "reports I can trust." Who the hell reports negatives? If you allege famine in either country, produce a credible report.
As for China, you have an additional problem: where is the evidence that it was communism that caused the famine (if there was in fact a famine) rather than the same factors which had been causing Chinese famines over the past 4,000 years, which had not yet been corrected by the relatively new Communist regime?
And another problem - - why are there still famines in Africa, in countries which still operate non-communist systems and sell their produce through capitalist markets to capitalist countries? In fact why are you focusing on a single alleged Communist famine of over 40 years ago to the exclusion of famines which are currently sweeping the non-communist African economy?
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That's a pretty odd way of putting it. Usually, I don't prove negatives with "reports I can trust." Who the hell reports negatives? If you allege famine in either country, produce a credible report.
Here is a book review, the author documents the famine with papers smuggled out of China:
http://www.nytimes.com/1997/02/05/books/horror-of-a-hidden-chinese-famine.html (http://www.nytimes.com/1997/02/05/books/horror-of-a-hidden-chinese-famine.html)
There is a start for you.
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Well, thanks for the link, Ami. I Googled Jason Becker, which led me to this excerpt from his book:
http://www.amazon.com/Hungry-Ghosts-Maos-Secret-Famine/dp/0805056688#reader_0805056688 (http://www.amazon.com/Hungry-Ghosts-Maos-Secret-Famine/dp/0805056688#reader_0805056688)
I'd have to say at this point that Becker's work confirms that China has been cursed with severe famines for thousands of years, that there may have been a famine there from 1959 to 1962 (denied by Han Suyin, a writer who had been making annual visits to China from the beginning of the Communist government there, and CP Snow, a British scientist also familiar with the country) and that if there was, it was due to excessive government seizure of food supplies and/or hoarding by the peasant producers.
As far as I can see, there is no reliable way of ascertaining the extent of the role of either government seizures or producer hoarding in any famine that might have occurred. Middleman (capitalist) hoarding is not even discussed in the material that I read, although it would have been very unlikely that middlemen, jobbers or simply rice speculators could all have been eliminated by 1959. Although Becker claims that the government was firmly in control of the grain-producing areas of the country at the time of the alleged famine, that simply does not seem plausible, so vast is the country, so populous and so disoriented by the war with the Japanese. Even now, the central government does not exercise full control over the outlying regions.
Even taking this crap at its least favourable (to Communist rule) it shows only that China's Communist leaders made some particularly bad decisions at the beginning of their second decade in power, which at the worst were the major contributing cause of a major famine. What can ya do? Shit happens. They didn't intentionally cause the famine. And they evidently learned from the mistakes (if in fact they made any) - - after 4,000 years of famine, China's famines came to an end. Under Communism. And at the same time, their rise from foreign servitude took off.
Communism rules.
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Is foreign servatude really worse than slavery to locals?
Why is the census data from China which shows millions of missing so doubtable , the Chineese of the time had not yet learned to count , the census was taken by foreiners?
Mao rang down a curtain to provide a lot of privacy for his process and results , After George Washingtons Revolution there were from time to time food shortages , most of which can be perused in public documents.
Mao would not have needed any privacy for successes or for processes that were not shamefull. The thickness of the curtain that makes it uncertain even whether citys full of persons lived or died and the deepness of the shadow that envelops these facts is worse than merely suspicious , it is confirmation of Mao and company wishing to hide what is certainly a real failure.
In Chineese History books there is no Tein an Min massacre no gathering of dissatisfied there , no mention of anything for them to be dissatisfied about. Many of these people were young and their parents still live, suffering the sound of silence which like a cancer grows.
The Final solution that Hitlers crew tried to implement on Jews and Roma almost worked and was almost unknown outside his frontiers , within his fronteirs of course the whispers were hard to gather into a picture that would reveil the scope of the destruction even to persons who could see a part of it directly.
China was like that , China is still like that , this is the part I like the least the government controll of information so tight that they are able to make failure and famine and crime fade and be forgotten if it is the government that wants it to be so.
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<<Is foreign servatude really worse than slavery to locals?>>
You know what China was like and how her people lived in servitude to foreigners, and now you see how they live and where the country stands in the world when the Chinese are masters in their own house. They are not in slavery to anyone, BTW; they are ruled by the dictatorship of the proletariat, but the proletariat is Chinese too. You tell me which was better for the Chinese, foreign hegemony or the dictatorship of the proletariat?
<<Why is the census data from China which shows millions of missing so doubtable , the Chineese of the time had not yet learned to count , the census was taken by foreiners?>>
What's the big deal? Inventory counts get screwed up, census headcounts get screwed up. For every scholar that claims the census shows millions missing, I'm sure you can find another who can explain it. China was a vast, sprawling, unorganized mass of hundreds of millions when the Communists took it over, in the course of a civil war. Who knows what destruction of records had occurred, who knows what degree of disorganization in the census machinery had to be addressed, and who knows what the results of the census really proved?
<<Mao rang down a curtain to provide a lot of privacy for his process and results , After George Washingtons Revolution there were from time to time food shortages , most of which can be perused in public documents.>>
I don't buy that Mao rang down a curtain on what under the KMT was perfectly transparent. I think it's generally true that record keeping, statistics and facts in China were chaotically disorganized for many years both before Communism and for at least a decade after.
<<Mao would not have needed any privacy for successes or for processes that were not shamefull. >>
That's total bullshit. There were many reasons for restricting information flow in a communist society. Protection against foreign saboteurs, agents and invaders was a strong motive. I remember when we visited Moscow and tried to get street maps of the city, we were told that none had been prepared under Communist rule, because they did not want foreign spies skulking with ease through Moscow streets and subways. There was nothing "shameful" about the street layouts, but the information was definitely off-limits to foreigners for many decades. Mao would have many reasons not to allow what he considered to be sensitive national information fall into the hands of foreigners.
<<The thickness of the curtain that makes it uncertain even whether citys full of persons lived or died and the deepness of the shadow that envelops these facts is worse than merely suspicious , it is confirmation of Mao and company wishing to hide what is certainly a real failure.>>
Bullshit again. It's confirmation of nothing more than the fact that you don't know what the hell you are talking about but prefer to assume the worst.
<<In Chineese History books there is no Tein an Min massacre no gathering of dissatisfied there , no mention of anything for them to be dissatisfied about. Many of these people were young and their parents still live, suffering the sound of silence which like a cancer grows.>>
Who the hell knows what's in Chinese history books? You ever read one? Talk about American history books, because we've both read some of those. How much space to they give to lynching? How much to the Scottsboro Boys or the Haymarket Massacre, the Pullman Strike, the Thibodaux Massacre? Wonder how much they devote to the Ohio State Massacre after the Texas School Books committee gets through "revising" the history texts?
<<The Final solution that Hitlers crew tried to implement on Jews and Roma almost worked and was almost unknown outside his frontiers , within his fronteirs of course the whispers were hard to gather into a picture that would reveil the scope of the destruction even to persons who could see a part of it directly.>>
There are different schools of thought on how much the Germans knew about this.
<<China was like that , China is still like that , this is the part I like the least the government controll of information so tight that they are able to make failure and famine and crime fade and be forgotten if it is the government that wants it to be so.>>
You know how this looks to me? Like whether the famine happened or not, and whether it was the Communists' fault or not, you have to hang on to that desperately, because the benefits of Communism are so apparent in the first six decades of the regime that it's the only thing left to you. If not for that famine, real or imaginary, you'd have absolutely NOTHING to say against the argument that China is in and of itself proof positive of the superiority of the Communist way.
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The benefits of Commumnism ARE famine ,the worst famine of all human history .
And a coverup so tight that even people who want to prove it isn't so have nothing to go on.
Are you really saying that Chineese people could not count after a mere decade of Communism? The census shows millions fewer names and eyewitnesses recount piled corpses , what we have here is the same thing as the Holocaust of WWII Europe , but with the perpetrator winning and completing his coverup the way that Hitler probly intended to.
<<Mao would not have needed any privacy for successes or for processes that were not shamefull. >>
That's total bullshit. There were many reasons for restricting information flow in a communist society.
No,
The only reason for secrecy here is shame. There is no secret wepon in famine or prosperity , but to seduce the world with the false promises of Communism it is needfull to hide its incompetance at feeding its people. If they had success and prosperity it would have paid them well to show it off.
If it is the fact that the Chineese were actually dieing faster and over a wider area while under the care of Mao than when under the thumb of the Imperial Japaneese or the Imperial British then the theroy of "benefits" of Communism is entirely disproved , thus the need for secrecy.
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Communism rules.
I do believe the Nazis had the same belief. In the end, BOTH are rabidly detrimental to freedom (and one's health if you don't toe the governmental line)
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<<The benefits of Commumnism ARE famine ,the worst famine of all human history .>>
Bullshit. The benefits of Communism are that China has been lifted from its subservient position to the point where its economy has overtaken that of most of the world and by mid-century will probably overtake the U.S.A. as well, not only economically but in all probability in military power as well.
Famine, which had plagued China for 4,000 years on a regular and severe basis (as was even documented by the source that Ami provided) has now been eliminated for the first time in history. If "the benefits of Communism are famine" then one has to ask, "Where is this famine now, after 60 years of Communist rule?" One would surely have to expect that if 10 years of Communism resulted in "the worst famine of all human history," that SIXTY YEARS of Communism would surely have killed them all off long ago. Perhaps we are looking at a nation of zombies or ghosts, the real Chinese people having died of starvation years ago?
plane, your view of history is so crazed by the fanatical anti-Communist bullshit produced by your own lying government and private capitalist sources for all of your life that you are not able to make any sense out of the world even when all the evidence is staring you right in the face. What you claim as historical fact is so at odds with reality that even a few seconds of logical analysis brings the whole temple of lies down in ruins, yet you persist in the fantasy that your dying capitalism, incapable of supporting itself without massive public bail-outs lifted from your own pockets before your very eyes, is the best way forward, and that Communism, adaptable to change and flexible in theory, intelligently applied by the dictatorship of the proletariat, produces nothing but famine.
<<And a coverup so tight that even people who want to prove it isn't so have nothing to go on.>>
TRANSLATION: I don't have any evidence, you don't have any evidence, so we can only assume (1) that China suffered "the worst famine of all human history" some fifty years ago and (2) that it has been covered up until now.
plane, at the most, you MAY have some evidence that a famine occurred about fifty years ago (in roughly the first decade of Communist rule and following four thousand years of periodic famine in China under non-communist rule) and that Communist policies MAY have contributed in SOME degree to its having occurred. You have NO reliable evidence that whatever famine may have occurred was "the worst in human history." As we say so often in this forum, shit happens. Nobody's perfect. Mistakes can be made. Since that time, there has been no more famine in China. Today I believe that China has overtaken the U.S.A. in such indices of consumer living as number of automobiles in private use, number of cell phones in private use, number of home computers, number of internet accounts, etc. Whatever the comparable indices of consumer living were in the 20th C. prior to the advent of Communism in China, you can bet your ass that China did not surpass anybody in anything and that none of this relative advance in living standards over any other country began until after the success of the Chinese Revolution.
However none of the above facts or logic will or can stop you from desperately clinging to the mantra that Chinese Communism has produced nothing except famine for the people. All that you have succeeded in convincing me of is the depth and thoroughness of the brainwashing that you have been subjected to, and the desperate need that you seem to have to justify the superiority of your collapsing system in the face of all evidence to the contrary.
<<Are you really saying that Chineese people could not count after a mere decade of Communism? The census shows millions fewer names and eyewitnesses recount piled corpses , what we have here is the same thing as the Holocaust of WWII Europe , but with the perpetrator winning and completing his coverup the way that Hitler probly intended to.>>
Now you're also an expert on what the Chinese Communist leadership INTENDED? What, you read their minds? Is it not equally possible that they fucked up, unintentionally produced or were unable to stop a famine which, while accounting for the memories of "piled corpses," falls far, far short of being "the worst in human history," and was covered up for the same kind of reasons that led the U.S. government to cover up both the My Lai Massacre and the more recent New Baghdad Massacre? Does the mere fact of the cover-up indicate that either of those two massacres was "the worst massacre in all of history?"
<<The only reason for secrecy here is shame. There is no secret wepon in famine or prosperity , but to seduce the world with the false promises of Communism it is needfull to hide its incompetance at feeding its people. If they had success and prosperity it would have paid them well to show it off.
<<If it is the fact that the Chineese were actually dieing faster and over a wider area while under the care of Mao than when under the thumb of the Imperial Japaneese or the Imperial British then the theroy of "benefits" of Communism is entirely disproved , thus the need for secrecy.>>
Even if they had something to hide - - as for example, the U.S. had reason to hide the My Lai Massacre - - how on earth do you get from the notion that a screw-up was hidden to the notion that a hidden screw-up is "the worst in all of history?" How do you get from the notion that a screw-up was hidden to the notion that the hidden screw-up is not just "a" screw-up but proof positive that the system that screwed up can never work?
At the very MOST, plane, your argument is that they screwed up, big-time or small-time, fifty years ago, and therefore despite all other contrary evidence of progress made, they are a failure. Not much of an argument, I'm afraid.
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In living memory China has had remarkable hard times both from invaders and home grown despots.
All of the evidence that there is shows that the Imperial Japaneese were pretty bad masters wantonly killing Chineese people as if they didn't matter much and carrying off resorces with no repayment to speak of, the Chineese coped with this admirably in my estimation. Resisting almost every time that resistance became possible.
Then from the late Fourtys to the late Seventys Mao took over and established a much tighter controll than the Japaneese did , resistance was put down with greater violence and from time to time food would be withheld from regions that would have otherwise have been self suficient.
Outkilling Imperial Japan is a real accomplishment and Mao should be seen in the light of this as his greatest work. Admiration of Mao is inspiring rediculous killing in India as we speak , lets hope that the Maoists of India learn better before they earn accomplishments comprable in scope to Maos total of kills in China.
How do you credit Communism for advances made since Maos death and paid with American Dollars? Without a supportive West there would be no such advances , without real anti-communism there would be no such advances , without reversal of Maoist economic principals there would be no such advances.
Without Nixon there would be no such advances , Mao deserves credit only for letting Nixon in to do his thing and promptly dieing to get out of the way. Maos replacement Zhou Enlai started the process of reforming, remakeing Communism in China such that it isn't a communism that owes anything to Marx at all , Chineese success has finally been found in the mode of Gorden Gecko. Greed has been Good for China and withthe incredable energy produced by entrepenurism their lagging has been converted to surgeing. Crediting Communism with the reversal of Communism is fantastic.
....suppose that Mao were to live to be 150 or that his wife had fulfilled her ambition to be his successor , they would still be pure Communists and still be worse off under the thumb of a Chineese person than they had been under British Hegemony, as it is they still have an overweening government as a legacy problem , but the way forward seems clear , as they depend on Hong Kong for citizens who understand finance , they will learn from some of the best capitolists on Earth how to make their "Communism" even more freindly to entrepenures. Perhaps they will discover the virtues of Democracy and Individual rights , stranger things have happened.
Of course you have a better idea of events in China than the Chineesse themselves , perhaps you should advise them to return to "the great leap forward" instead of this one step back that they are useing for prosperitys sake.
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<< . . . Mao took over and established a much tighter controll than the Japaneese did >>
How did you measure the tightness of the control? By what measure or standard does Mao's come out tighter than the Japanese? (And BTW it was not "Mao" but the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party that exercised control in those days, in the name of the working class.)
<< . . . resistance was put down with greater violence>>
Greater violence than the Rape of Nanking? Wow that's a pretty heavy charge. Too bad you don't have a shred of evidence to support it.
<< . . . and from time to time food would be withheld from regions that would have otherwise have been self suficient.>>
And you know this because . . . ?
<<Outkilling Imperial Japan is a real accomplishment . . .>>
Well, it probably would be, if anyone ever did.
<< . . . and Mao should be seen in the light of this as his greatest work.>>
Yeah, maybe he'll be seen that way when somebody proves that's how it was.
<<Admiration of Mao is inspiring rediculous killing in India as we speak . . .>>
And it's "ridiculous" for the workers' army to attack the Indian national army because . . . ?
<<. . . lets hope that the Maoists of India learn better before they earn accomplishments comprable in scope to Maos total of kills in China.>>
"Learning better," I presume, means learning to bend over so that the capitalists who run their country can fuck them up the ass? I don't think so.
<<How do you credit Communism for advances made since Maos death and paid with American Dollars?>>
How? That's real simple. They started managing their own resources for their own benefit and not for the benefit of the foreign exploiters, who they threw out with Chiang Kai-Shek. They organized better and more efficiently and produced stuff on their own account which could outsell anything made by their former masters. They organized their economy on the basis of what the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party felt made sense, not on whatever made money for whatever capitalist or group of capitalists happened to have the government in his pocket from one day to the next.
<< Without a supportive West there would be no such advances . . . >>
That's like saying that without guys like me to buy his products, Bill Gates would still be programming traffic computers for the City of Seattle. Won't work for Bill and it won't work for China. Sorry.
<< without real anti-communism there would be no such advances >>
Yeah? How do you figure that "real anti-communism" is behind the Chinese success story?
<< without reversal of Maoist economic principals there would be no such advances.>>
Listen, plane, Mao did NOT write the book on Marxist economics. He was one leader at one time and his accomplishments are enormous. Whether he fucked up on the famine issue or not, and you are still thousands of miles away from proving that he did. The Communists did not stick rigidly to outmoded theories and out-dated practices, they tacked to the winds as they blew and they remained true to the basic principles of Marxist economics - - public ownership of the means of production and maintaining the dictatorship of the proletariat rather than opting for the dictatorship of the marketplace. Mao's ideas were great for Mao's time (even allowing for some that didn't work out as planned) and today's Party leaders' ideas are great for today. Throughout the sixty years that followed the Revolution, the CCP maintained firm control and brought the country to the illustrious position that it occupies today and out of the mire that it occupied under the domination of foreigners. Your principal beef seems to be that the progress did not follow a straight line - - well, in an ideal world, it would have. This world not being ideal, the progress hit bumps in the road, took some wrong turns, but despite it all, the net result of communist rule, the progress made by the end of the day, is breath-taking. Way more impressive than anything the U.S.A. has done in the same period. They're on the way down, China's on the way up.
<<Without Nixon there would be no such advances >>
Nixon had nothing to do with it. He was trapped by the exigencies of an advancing communist world and had to do what he could to split it, to play one end off against the other. Mao, sensing the need Nixon had, took advantage of it to slip out from the burdens that until then the U.S.A. had placed upon China, lack of diplomatic recognition, trade embargos, etc. With Nixon or without, the Chinese advance was inevitable. All Nixon did was to recognize the unsustainability of US efforts to hold down China, and tried to reap some petty advantages while he still could.
<<Mao deserves credit only for letting Nixon in to do his thing and promptly dieing to get out of the way.>>
Mao deserves ALL the credit for organizing the party that drove the foreigners and their puppets from China forever, and building the core of the nation that others following him built into the colossus that we see today.
<<Maos replacement Zhou Enlai started the process of reforming, remakeing Communism in China such that it isn't a communism that owes anything to Marx at all . . . >>
Don't be ridiculous, the people still own the national resources and the means of production and the Party as the vanguard of the proletariat still exercises the dictatorship of the proletariat exactly as Marxist-Leninist principle demands. They have loosened state control for entrepreneurs to operate under their aegis, as did Lenin during the NEP in the USSR, but this is a long way from abandoning basic Marxist principle.
<<Chineese success has finally been found in the mode of Gorden Gecko. Greed has been Good for China and withthe incredable energy produced by entrepenurism their lagging has been converted to surgeing. Crediting Communism with the reversal of Communism is fantastic.>>
As I said, the CCP is harnessing greed for the benefit of the Revolution and the nation, but any "reversal of communism" is happening only in your own brain.
,,....suppose that Mao were to live to be 150 or that his wife had fulfilled her ambition to be his successor , they would still be pure Communists and still be worse off under the thumb of a Chineese person than they had been under British Hegemony, as it is they still have an overweening government as a legacy problem , but the way forward seems clear , as they depend on Hong Kong for citizens who understand finance , they will learn from some of the best capitolists on Earth how to make their "Communism" even more freindly to entrepenures. Perhaps they will discover the virtues of Democracy and Individual rights , stranger things have happened...
No, sorry, I'm not going to SUPPOSE any such thing. That is just part and parcel of the insanity of your way of thinking, ignoring the actual facts which of course make nonsense of your theories, and choosing instead to take your fantasies and speculations as facts instead. Back to earth, my friend. There is no escape in fantasy from the reality of the success of communism or the failure of capitalism.
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<< . . . Mao took over and established a much tighter controll than the Japaneese did >>
How did you measure the tightness of the control? By what measure or standard does Mao's come out tighter than the Japanese? (And BTW it was not "Mao" but the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party that exercised control in those days, in the name of the working class.)
The Japaneese never succeded in killing off the opposition , even though they tried pretty hard ,Mao killed off his opponents thouroughly.
<< . . . resistance was put down with greater violence>>
Greater violence than the Rape of Nanking? Wow that's a pretty heavy charge. Too bad you don't have a shred of evidence to support it.
The Rape of Nanking is one of the worst incidents of Cruelty in a century that produced many , but the greatest famine lasted at least three years and killed a much greater number , how would the famine not qualify as being in the same league? and same nature? There is evidence but just as there are people who accept no evidence of the moon landings I do not expect that there can be evidence you would accept.
<<Admiration of Mao is inspiring rediculous killing in India as we speak . . .>>
And it's "ridiculous" for the workers' army to attack the Indian national army because . . . ?
I did not know that you were ofended with the government of India What are they doing that bothers you ? <<How do you credit Communism for advances made since Maos death and paid with American Dollars?>>
How? That's real simple. They started managing their own resources for their own benefit and not for the benefit of the foreign exploiters, who they threw out with Chiang Kai-Shek. They organized better and more efficiently and produced stuff on their own account which could outsell anything made by their former masters. They organized their economy on the basis of what the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party felt made sense, not on whatever made money for whatever capitalist or group of capitalists happened to have the government in his pocket from one day to the next.
all right , that is what they did while Mao was alive not a period of great progress , instead a period of hardship and loss.<< Without a supportive West there would be no such advances . . . >>
That's like saying that without guys like me to buy his products, Bill Gates would still be programming traffic computers for the City of Seattle. Won't work for Bill and it won't work for China. Sorry.
What is your point? That is what worked for Bill and that is what worked for China. How you can state a truth and fail to understand it is remarkable.<< without real anti-communism there would be no such advances >>
Yeah? How do you figure that "real anti-communism" is behind the Chinese success story?
<< without reversal of Maoist economic principals there would be no such advances.>>
Listen, plane, Mao did NOT write the book on Marxist economics. He was one leader at one time and his accomplishments are enormous. Whether he fucked up on the famine issue or not, and you are still thousands of miles away from proving that he did. The Communists did not stick rigidly to outmoded theories and out-dated practices,
That is exactly what they did while Mao was calling the shots , untill he let Nixon the Camel put his nose in the tent Mao never succeded at anything other than maintaining tight controll. they tacked to the winds as they blew and they remained true to the basic principles of Marxist economics - - public ownership of the means of production
Stop and check your facts there , there are real Chineese Millionaires now and this was not Maos doing it is a liberalisation and increase in freedom that benefited all of the people almost instantly as soon as they stopped maintaining solepublic ownership of the means of production ! and maintaining the dictatorship of the proletariat rather than opting for the dictatorship of the marketplace.
True it is still a repressive stile of life but they can still improve further . Mao's ideas were great for Mao's time (even allowing for some that didn't work out as planned)
What Mao Idea did work? His ideas that promoted tight controll and repression worked fine with almost no exception , his ideas for improveing production or liveing standards were uniformly stupid.and today's Party leaders' ideas are great for today.
They could be better.Throughout the sixty years that followed the Revolution, the CCP maintained firm control and brought the country to the illustrious position that it occupies today and out of the mire that it occupied under the domination of foreigners. Your principal beef seems to be that the progress did not follow a straight line - - well, in an ideal world, it would have.
Mao turned a difficult life into a more difficult life , there is a real 90 degree turn taken at the point that Mao stops being the controlling influence. It is an interesting thought experiment to try to think abut what Mao might have done if Hong Kong had come under Chinees government during the time that Mao was produceing cultureal revolution. This world not being ideal, the progress hit bumps in the road, took some wrong turns, but despite it all, the net result of communist rule, the progress made by the end of the day, is breath-taking. Way more impressive than anything the U.S.A. has done in the same period. They're on the way down, China's on the way up.
<<Without Nixon there would be no such advances >>
Nixon had nothing to do with it.
Hahahahah only Nixon could go to China and only MT could completely ignore the event and its results! With Nixon or without, the Chinese advance was inevitable.
No, stupid management could have continued indefinately, what would have ever turned them from their calimity if the Gang of four had consolidated their position and crowned Madame Mao? Nixon really helped , and intelligent Chineese finally found their way to the top once Mao kicked the bucket.
Don't be ridiculous, the people still own the national resources and the means of production
Please check this fact! Chineese industry is devided between private and public ownership now and the energetic and productive part is not the part run by the incredibly constipated government bearurocyand the Party as the vanguard of the proletariat still exercises the dictatorship
still needs work of the proletariat exactly as Marxist-Leninist principle demands. They have loosened state control for entrepreneurs to operate under their aegis, as did Lenin during the NEP in the USSR, but this is a long way from abandoning basic Marxist principle.
<<Chineese success has finally been found in the mode of Gorden Gecko. Greed has been Good for China and withthe incredable energy produced by entrepenurism their lagging has been converted to surgeing. Crediting Communism with the reversal of Communism is fantastic.>>
As I said, the CCP is harnessing greed for the benefit of the Revolution and the nation, but any "reversal of communism" is happening only in your own brain.
Tell me about harnessing greed in the Communist manner.
Hehehehe
Greed is good ... comerade.
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They have loosened state control for entrepreneurs to operate under their aegis, as did Lenin during the NEP in the USSR, but this is a long way from abandoning basic Marxist principle.
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Why is this not exactly abandonment of Communist principal , or even an admission that entrepenurship is better than state controll?
Entrepenurship uses the principal of feeding your winning investments the most , including the people .
Communism uses the principal of bleeding the productive , strangleing initiative and reserveing greedy behaviors for the government.
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<<Why is this not exactly abandonment of Communist principal , or even an admission that entrepenurship is better than state controll?>>
They put limits on the entrepreneur and sort of harness his energy. It's like letting your race-horse run free, provided he's attached at the front of your carriage and somebody's in it and he can't leave the confines of your fenced-in field.
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<<Why is this not exactly abandonment of Communist principal , or even an admission that entrepenurship is better than state controll?>>
They put limits on the entrepreneur and sort of harness his energy. It's like letting your race-horse run free, provided he's attached at the front of your carriage and somebody's in it and he can't leave the confines of your fenced-in field.
That is a bit of improvement over lineing them all up against a wall.
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<<That is a bit of improvement over lineing them all up against a wall.>>
'fraid you've confused entrepreneurs with landlords and other enemies of the people.
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<<Yeah, you even quoted it: "*No* current economist that I have read considers Marx anything other a curious footnote in history." Or did you forget quoting that? What do you think that statement means?>>
What's the difference WHAT that statement means? It was SUBSEQUENT to your challenge to find a professor still teaching Marxist economics. Did somebody limit you to one statement per post? What a lame and childish attempt at distraction!
(http://www.cagle.com/working/100409/asay.gif)
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<<That is a bit of improvement over lineing them all up against a wall.>>
'fraid you've confused entrepreneurs with landlords and other enemies of the people.
Wasn't Mao often confused just that way?
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<<Wasn't Mao often confused just that way?>>
Mao was very clear about who was exploiting the people and who wasn't. To my knowledge, when the Communists took power in China, the entrepreneurial class would have already had the time to develop into middlemen, commodities speculators, currency speculators, hoarders, etc. and were much more clearly enemies of the people than they were in the last couple of decades, when their entrepreneurial skills, properly harnesed, could work to the advantage of the people under the watchful eye of the CCP.
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One would have to work hard to be a worse enemy of the people than Mao , who was responsible for killing more of them than any other.
Once you get that bad you get separated from reality by the wall of syncopants , who was left with the guts to say No to Mao?
Haveing every idea praised as genius is not the same as having good ideas.
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One would have to work hard to be a worse enemy of the people than Mao , who was responsible for killing more of them than any other.
Once you get that bad you get separated from reality by the wall of syncopants , who was left with the guts to say No to Mao?
Haveing every idea praised as genius is not the same as having good ideas.
who said no to Hitler?
Is anybody telling Obama NO?
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<<One would have to work hard to be a worse enemy of the people than Mao , who was responsible for killing more of them than any other.>>
He killed the bad Chinese who were holding the good Chinese back.
<<Once you get that bad you get separated from reality by the wall of syncopants , who was left with the guts to say No to Mao?>>
Don't you have Mao confused with George W. Bush? Who in his administration said no to Dubya?
<< Haveing every idea praised as genius is not the same as having good ideas.>>
Mao did not invent the Cult of Personality and in any event much of the lavish praise heaped upon him was well deserved. He turned China off the path of subservience to foreign interests and towards Marxism and the rest, as they say, is history - - today China is entering the century that it will soon come to dominate. Mao is the one who broke with the past that had kept this great nation in chains. More than any other Chinese leader, it is Mao who can claim the credit for China's unprecedented turnaround.
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<<One would have to work hard to be a worse enemy of the people than Mao , who was responsible for killing more of them than any other.>>
He killed the bad Chinese who were holding the good Chinese back.
And who gets to make that decision of who a "good Chinese" and who a "bad Chinese" is?? There you go folks, yet another example, by our fine fringe friend Tee, demonstrating again, just how evil a regime, communism is