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> It's a dangerous ideology fueled by envy and contempt. You should do some reading on the condition of the ordinary worker at the time Marx was writing. This

> It's a dangerous ideology fueled by envy and contempt. You should do some reading on the condition of the ordinary worker at the time Marx was writing. This would give you a more balanced perspective. By and large, communist movements were successful in countries where a small amount of people exploited the rest. > One in which each man exists only to serve the ends of society, another where each man is an end in himself. Except for part where Western governments have no issues with regimes where each man exists only to serve the ends of a few (most of Cold War South America, for instance). Not that I'm defending communism, which everywhere resulted in oppressive, inefficient and ultimately conservative bureaucracies, but there are good reasons while it was attempted in so many different places, and this wasn't solely due to USSR/Chinese/Cuban influence.

marcoperaza 11y ago
I can't and won't defend all of the things that the West did to win the Cold War. Some were outright wrong. But some were pragmatic choices between two evils. Supporting Pinochet's coup in Chile is the most famous case. Interestingly, and conveniently left out of the narrative by those who want to demonize the West, the Chilean Congress authorized Allende's removal because he was flouting the law, was a totalitarian communist, and was a close ally of Castro. Pinochet then refused to relinquish power back to the congress. He was not a good man, and sent death squads to kill people for being suspected communists, but it probably would have been worse if Allende had his way. People overestimate the amount of power the US and the West had to influence those kinds of events. We could influence things one way or the other, but we didn't have a liberal democracy wand that would magically transform a country's political culture. We tried that in Iraq and it was a failure. You can draw analogies to the Spanish Civil War. Both sides sucked. Orwell went to fight for the Republicans, but came back completely disillusioned because the Republicans were totally dominated by the Soviet Union. He writes about his experiences in Homage to Catalonia, which I strongly recommend. The Nationalists were not good people either, but Spain would have been much worse off if the Republicans won and turned it into a Soviet satellite.
- mercurial 11y ago
  > We could influence things one way or the other, but we didn't have a liberal democracy wand that would magically transform a country's political culture. We tried that in Iraq and it was a failure. I'm not disputing that (well, unless you mean that the main point of the Iraq war was to bring Coca-Cola and democracy to the oppressed Iraqi masses). It's just that IMHO, most of each block's policy was about protecting their own political and economic interests, camouflaging such unpalatable truths under the guise of "freeing people from oppression". You certainly had people who believed in what they were doing, but IMHO, for most of the people pulling the levers, that was about knowing on which side the bread was buttered. > You can draw analogies to the Spanish Civil War. Both sides sucked. Orwell went to fight for the Republicans, but came back completely disillusioned because the Republicans were totally dominated by the Soviet Union. He writes about his experiences in Homage to Catalonia, which I strongly recommend. The Nationalists were not good people either, but Spain would have been much worse off if the Republicans won and turned it into a Soviet satellite. It's ironic you write about the Spanish Civil War, considering that the main reason Stalin-backed communists got so much power was that the Republic was entirely dependent on them for weapons, largely in part due to the passive British support for Franco.

marcoperaza 11y ago

I can't and won't defend all of the things that the West did to win the Cold War. Some were outright wrong. But some were pragmatic choices between two evils. Supporting Pinochet's coup in Chile is the most famous case. Interestingly, and conveniently left out of the narrative by those who want to demonize the West, the Chilean Congress authorized Allende's removal because he was flouting the law, was a totalitarian communist, and was a close ally of Castro. Pinochet then refused to relinquish power back to the congress. He was not a good man, and sent death squads to kill people for being suspected communists, but it probably would have been worse if Allende had his way. People overestimate the amount of power the US and the West had to influence those kinds of events. We could influence things one way or the other, but we didn't have a liberal democracy wand that would magically transform a country's political culture. We tried that in Iraq and it was a failure. You can draw analogies to the Spanish Civil War. Both sides sucked. Orwell went to fight for the Republicans, but came back completely disillusioned because the Republicans were totally dominated by the Soviet Union. He writes about his experiences in Homage to Catalonia, which I strongly recommend. The Nationalists were not good people either, but Spain would have been much worse off if the Republicans won and turned it into a Soviet satellite.

mercurial 11y ago
> We could influence things one way or the other, but we didn't have a liberal democracy wand that would magically transform a country's political culture. We tried that in Iraq and it was a failure. I'm not disputing that (well, unless you mean that the main point of the Iraq war was to bring Coca-Cola and democracy to the oppressed Iraqi masses). It's just that IMHO, most of each block's policy was about protecting their own political and economic interests, camouflaging such unpalatable truths under the guise of "freeing people from oppression". You certainly had people who believed in what they were doing, but IMHO, for most of the people pulling the levers, that was about knowing on which side the bread was buttered. > You can draw analogies to the Spanish Civil War. Both sides sucked. Orwell went to fight for the Republicans, but came back completely disillusioned because the Republicans were totally dominated by the Soviet Union. He writes about his experiences in Homage to Catalonia, which I strongly recommend. The Nationalists were not good people either, but Spain would have been much worse off if the Republicans won and turned it into a Soviet satellite. It's ironic you write about the Spanish Civil War, considering that the main reason Stalin-backed communists got so much power was that the Republic was entirely dependent on them for weapons, largely in part due to the passive British support for Franco.