Is communism immoral?

Discussion in 'Political Science' started by sxane, Sep 3, 2016.

  1. Distraff

    Distraff Well-Known Member

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    I have my personal happiness. I want to live a happy fulfilling life.
     
  2. AlNewman

    AlNewman Well-Known Member

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    You have not only described with perfect clarity but additionally subscribed to moral relativism. In fact you have gone beyond moral relativism to the ideology of solipsism, the ideology that only one's mind is sure to exist. Solipsists contend that knowledge of anything outside of one's mind is unsure, hence there is no such thing as objective truth, and nothing about the external world and it's workings can actually be known.

    Therefore it is impossible to define morality for you as you have no ability to assimilate the information by your very statements. Your understanding of metaphysics is a world of illusionary fragments, unpredictable miracles and ceaseless flux thereby limiting understanding of anything objective.

    Epistemology identifies the proper means of acquiring knowledge and it is impossible for knowledge based on reason to be understood when you portray a being that is based on faith or the instinct of society. I doubt you even recognize these definitions within the context of your words, but they are there.

    The branch of philosophy that studies values is ethics or morality, which rests on both the metaphysics and epistemology of the person - on a view of the world in which man acts, and of mans nature, including the means of knowledge. Ethics defines a code of values to guide human actions. It tells men the proper purpose of man's life and the means of achieving it, it provides the standard by which men are to judge good and evil, right and wrong, the desirable and the undesirable.

    Politics is the ethics that applied to social questions, which studies the nature of social systems and the proper functions of government. Politics is not the start, but the product of a philosophical system. By their very nature, political questions cannot be raised or judged except on the basis of some view of existence, of values, and of man's proper means of knowledge.

    So without a change of your world view and the mental processes you use to identify and acquire knowledge, there can be no understanding of morality leading to a very slanted view of politics. That is about as clear as morality can ever be defined but from what you have stated, I doubt it helped.


    Common sense requires one being a sentient being. As clarified above, you are far from being a sentient being. If common sense is not working, then it isn't common sense, it's today's substitute, common ignorance. Your problem with common sense stems with your use of the subjective and ignorance of the objective. Morality does not come from common sense, common sense comes from morality. If you have no morality, you have no common sense.
     
  3. AlNewman

    AlNewman Well-Known Member

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    Human beings say that they want certain conditions to be present for both themselves and their species as a whole, such as happiness, health, peace, freedom, prosperity, etc. However specific requirements exist in order for human beings to obtain those conditions. If the requirements for obtaining those conditions are not met, those conditions do not just manifest automatically, by "magical" means.

    Since human beings, as a species, do not already have the things they say they want, it follows logically that the knowledge of the requirements to obtaining the things they say they want either must be absent, or if present, that knowledge must be willfully ignored. As long as this knowledge continues to remain unknown or ignored, the manifestation of the desired conditions will be impossible.
     
  4. Distraff

    Distraff Well-Known Member

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    Not true I have already refuted subjective morality.

    I have never argued for this at all.

    Nope, you have completely failed to back up your claims and you are fooling yourself into believing that my brain isn't working which is why I am not believing you.

    Actually I have studied and debated philosophy extensively. It seems like you just rehash theistic philosophical things you have heard without actually debating or reasoning with it.

    I do not believe in beliefs based on faith or the instinct of society. In fact, given the utter lack of evidence in your arguments I suspect this is the basis of your beliefs.

    Thanks for reading off from a dictionary, now try to actually show morality is objectively true and objectively exists.

    Common sense is simply good judgement from a simple perception of the facts. Common sense works most of the time in most situations, but more advanced problems often require more advanced complex reasoning and often defy common sense. Common sense works for common situations but in special cases and exceptions it fails. Your fallacy is that you try to define common sense as perfect when it by its nature is imperfect.

    LOL, no. A lot of common sense has nothing to do with morality, like putting on your shoes instead of your socks. Many amoral people have quite a bit of common sense and are able to achieve high positions of power using it.
     
  5. Kode

    Kode Well-Known Member

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    If you know what you're talking about, you can quote Marx on his description/definition of "communism". And if you do, you will see that it is impossible to impose communism on a society. Hence, it cannot be involuntary.
     
  6. Kode

    Kode Well-Known Member

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    Why can't Americans discuss socialism and communism openly, honestly, sincerely, and without anger or hate? I know a woman who grew up in Italy. She left there about age 30. She told me she couldn't figure out Americans and their hangups over communism and socialism. She said in Europe people often discuss these things and people there are pretty well educated on what they really are but Americans are clueless. I told her that in the USA the problem is decades of anti-communist propaganda. It has been carefully designed to impose a virtual taboo on any such discussion. Here, if you're against it you're supposed to just throw stones of propaganda and bumper stickers at it. If you're open to it you're supposed to feel incredibly stupid for bringing it up or defending it. -A virtual taboo.
     
  7. yabberefugee

    yabberefugee Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Perhaps it has to do with the millions killed by Joe Stalin, or what Castro did in Cuba. All the dissidents jailed or murdered...... you know....history?
     
  8. Kode

    Kode Well-Known Member

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    Perhaps Europeans know better.
     
  9. yabberefugee

    yabberefugee Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    We are not going to become Europe. You can go there if you like. They should become like us.
     
  10. Soupnazi

    Soupnazi Well-Known Member

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    Which is bullshit as he clearly described the dictatorship of the proletariat.
     
  11. Kode

    Kode Well-Known Member

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    And it is not communism. I said COMMUNISM cannot be imposed on a society.
     
  12. Kode

    Kode Well-Known Member

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    The dictatorship of the proletariat is socialism, -not communism.

    I need to advise you that I will not be replying to your posts in the future as I am going to put you on "Ignore". I don't wish to be sucked in to pointless trolling again. Bye.
     
  13. The Rhetoric of Life

    The Rhetoric of Life Banned

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    Yes, Communism is immoral.
    It's forced charity as well as subjugation through no freedoms.
     
  14. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    That history is available to Europeans, also.
     
  15. The Rhetoric of Life

    The Rhetoric of Life Banned

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    Well how moral are Europeans?
     
    Last edited: Sep 3, 2017
  16. yabberefugee

    yabberefugee Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    They like the fact "history often repeats itself". It is evident.
     
  17. Llewellyn Moss

    Llewellyn Moss Well-Known Member

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  18. see you next tuesday

    see you next tuesday Active Member

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    America still love the C word doesn't it - Its like going back to the 1980's hearing the C word all the time.
     
  19. yabberefugee

    yabberefugee Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Why should we forget?
     
  20. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Geez, your would think that 100 million plus slaughtered would have answered that question. But apparently not. All forms of collectivism is immoral because it harms the nature of man as man. i.e., it points a gun at the head of the individual and states: your life is insignificant. You exist to serve the state. Well, the mind doesn't work at the point of gun, as evidence by the desperate poverty of the collectivist regimes. Capitalism is free men trading freely that which they have for that which they want; communism is a gun pointed at your head commanding obey

    Capitalism: [​IMG]

    Communism: [​IMG]

    Ayn Rand: "Collectivism means the subjugation of the individual to a group—whether to a race, class or state does not matter. Collectivism holds that man must be chained to collective action and collective thought for the sake of what is called “the common good.”--http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/collectivism.html

    Ayn Rand: "The Communists’ chief purpose is to destroy every form of independence—independent work, independent action, independent property, independent thought, an independent mind, or an independent man. Conformity, alikeness, servility, submission and obedience are necessary to establish a Communist slave-state."--http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/communism.html

    Ayn Rand: "The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live."--http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/morality.html

    Me--The moral is you living selfishly in the name of the best within you; The immoral: You living as a slave to serve the collective in the name of the common good.

    I've seen the past, I know the present, I fight for the future. I want what I want.
     
    Last edited: Oct 6, 2017
    yabberefugee likes this.
  21. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    The reality of it:

    Otto Warmbier before communism:
    [​IMG]

    After:

    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]

    The hardest thing in the world: Showing the obvious to willingly blind.
     
    Last edited: Oct 6, 2017
  22. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Here's the issue: Communism is the power of the gun; capitalism is the power of the wallet. In a capitalist system, production and ownership are private. You make what you wish and trade for what you desire. If those involved can't agree, they go their separate ways. As practiced to a certain extent in the freer countries of the world, this has meant wealth never before experienced, not even by kings.

    In communism, all wealth and property belong to everyone, or if you prefer, the collective. The wealth is distributed not accordingly as a reward but as a necessity to those who need it most. As practiced in Russian, and in East Belin, this meant pointing a gun at your head commanding you stay and starve and freeze and dream of getting to America, or of going to a gulag to die. In other words, If you object, a gun shows up to prevent you from leaving. The result was the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain.

    Now, this knowledge is readily available to anyone who has eyes that can see and a brain that can think. The history of collectivism, i.e., socialism, communism, fascism, theocracies, etc., is well known and well documented, or can be found out by visiting a library. Castro, Chavez, Mao, Lenin, Stalin, Pol Pot, Kim, Ayatollah Khomeini, etc., for the most part did not hide their history of mass murder and this history is well documented in any American Library.

    Furthermore, two of today's greatest examples, Venezuela and North Korea, are certainly ample empirical evidence to demonstrate to even a child with down syndrome the horror and hell of communism, and the prosperity and happiness of those nations with even a smidgen of a capitalist system.

    So how this readily available knowledge is beyond your grasp baffles me. It has to be willful suspension of your own reason. And the only reason I can think of for such an act of treason to your own soul is that you wish to take part in the collection of unearned wealth, which would make you at the very least, a human with the soul of a thief, and the real possibility of becoming a murderer, if you were ever part of such a system.

    Communism is evil. It steals from those that do and gives to those that can't or won't. It violates the principle of the prohibition against the initiation of force, and the rights of the individual. It is mass murder practiced at a level that most psychopaths can only dream of.

    Ayn Rand: "It is the Communists’ intention to make people think that personal success is somehow achieved at the expense of others and that every successful man has hurt somebody by becoming successful. It is the Communists’ aim to discourage all personal effort and to drive men into a hopeless, dispirited, gray herd of robots who have lost all personal ambition, who are easy to rule, willing to obey and willing to exist in selfless servitude to the State."--http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/communism.html

    Miss Rand is right, in my opinion, and as evidence, I offer you the world today. But of course you must be willing to open your eyes and look, see, and think, and decide for yourself.
     
    Last edited: Oct 7, 2017
  23. Kode

    Kode Well-Known Member

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    Right. Capitalists don't use a gun, -not in Iraq, not in black US neighborhoods, not against Tamir Rice..... Nope.
    Obviously your "formula" is spun BS, not that I care for communist methods, but a distortion is a distortion.


    More of the same. Capitalism produces far more poverty and suffering than any Scandinavian democratic socialist system.


    How do you know this? Where has a communist economy been so organized and ruled?


    Again, WHERE?


    Russia never had a communist economy. Communism has never existed anywhere. See what I mean by propaganda and brainwashing? You believe this crap but I can prove, just logically, to any rational person, that communism has never existed. It just takes a bit of basic thinking.


    Wrong. This BRAINWASHING PROPAGANDA is readily available to anyone. Are you willing to examine it? It only takes about 3 minutes.


    What a nice, tangled mess.


    N.Korea is not communist and that is easily seen by anyone with an interest in objective facts. I have posted on this forum about Venezuela and the very heavy, intense, persistent, long-term campaign against it by the USA, meddling within the country, spreading lies and confusion, undermining everything it could, and even attempting assassination of Chavez. The propaganda spread here in the US against them has been just as intense. Try reading the work of Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, and that of American lawyer, Eva Golinger.


    That's just it: it's NOT "knowledge". It's propaganda. I'm going to be interested to see if you are a serious student of truth and choose to engage me in a civil, honest discussion of the things I've said here, or whether you will just hide behind more propaganda and tuck into your little protective partisan nest of BS. As I said, some of this only takes about 3 minutes of rational thought until it becomes obvious.


    Actually it proves to be the reverse that is true. YOU will now have to suspend reason to reject my invitation to discover the truth.


    You're dancing dangerously close to a personal attack. And all you need do is to think about the many well-to-do, successful people who reject your crap and advocate socialism today to see through your parroted theory.


    Again, you don't know that because you can't. There is no system, and there has never been a system of communism for you to examine other than the primitive tribal societies of native Americans and other hunter-gatherer societies.


    Rand RAVED AND SPEWED against "communist" systems like Medicare and Social Security, but when she needed them she quietly took them like a good hypocrite that she was.

    I have seen all the same propaganda all my long life that you have, but I have questioned it and researched it. You swallowed it.
     
  24. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    <Mod Edit- Rule 2> If I quote a dictionary, you will only disavow it. If I quote the Communist Manifesto, you will only disagree with my interpretation and on and on and on. For it is not the truth you seek, but rationalization to excuse what you know is evil. As for the Scandinavian countries, I suggest you do some historical research as to the source of their wealth and whether or not in the last 20 years they have become more capitalistic and less socialistic. But as I feared, it is not the truth you seek, but the unearned and the destruction of morality and life on earth.

    Lastly, this much is true, should I not like your system, and try to leave, there will be a gun pointed at me and those I love. Do not ask me, ask Nadia Comăneci, she lived under it.

    Ayn Rand: "When, at the age of twelve, at the time of the Russian revolution, I first heard the Communist principle that Man must exist for the sake of the State, I perceived that this was the essential issue, that this principle was evil, and that it could lead to nothing but evil, regardless of any methods, details, decrees, policies, promises and pious platitudes. This was the reason for my opposition to Communism then—and it is my reason now. I am still a little astonished, at times, that too many adult Americans do not understand the nature of the fight against Communism as clearly as I understood it at the age of twelve: they continue to believe that only Communist methods are evil, while Communist ideals are noble. All the victories of Communism since the year 1917 are due to that particular belief among the men who are still free."--http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/communism.html

    Ayn Rand: "Learn to distinguish the difference between errors of knowledge and breaches of morality. An error of knowledge is not a moral flaw, provided you are willing to correct it; only a mystic would judge human beings by the standard of an impossible, automatic omniscience. But a breach of morality is the conscious choice of an action you know to be evil, or a willful evasion of knowledge, a suspension of sight and of thought. That which you do not know, is not a moral charge against you; but that which you refuse to know, is an account of infamy growing in your soul. Make every allowance for errors of knowledge; do not forgive or accept any break of morality.”--https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/432.Ayn_Rand?page=2


    There will be no further communication between us; one does not enhance nutrition by adding cyanide, intellectual or otherwise.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Oct 7, 2017
  25. Kode

    Kode Well-Known Member

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    Yes, you will run rather than engage me in the discussion that I invited you to participate in. You don't want to know the truth. You would rather protect your false beliefs from scrutiny. I knew you would do so.
     

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