hihi, not to bring up about politics... but just read on communism recently on star... so I did some google.. and suprise on the ideology of it...
apart from media exposure, what I used to know about communism is that it links to terroism... we often talk about communism... bad bad.. chin peng.. but no one ever talk about what communism is.....

but recent self research shocks me...

I think this is what some people refer as new world order.... what do you all think? no more double standards, no more discrimination, no more class of people, no more oppresion.... where world is united...

P/S.. I am not pro communist.. just someone who are curious and just got to know what communism is....

p/s 2... there`s no slowpoke in PhD school right?

On paper it sounds good and jolly, but in society such idealisms fail due to the inherent nature of humans. We are greedy, selfish and pervert things to our own perception of them.

See where I'm going?

yes... and the man on the helm will be like the persian god in 300 spartas.....

but china is doing well.... all the people love mao zhe tong

hahaha you wish , with new world order it is going to get worst.

It is always good to have governments in small scales in my opinion , like each town and city should have its own elected government , also referred to federalism if i am not mistaken , cause people know the government of the town and there is personal relationship so they will help each other , plus in federalism power is shared there is lower corruption and problems.

Communism always has lots of problem with corruption and mismanagement of resources , if you read communism history you will see how many people died of hunger because bad implementation of policies , and corruption , we got one real life example North Korea ,

once the government becomes to big , problems people face will be ignored.l

China is practicing mixed system just like many country . not communism.

the idea behind communism is very good actually, but it doesn't work in the real world. human behavior is very hard to predict. since there is no incentive for the commoners to work hard, the economic system fails.

but the national geographic showed that people bowed down to picture of the president and say " I love you"

Not all is as it seems in the media. That which is portrayed is probably a portion of the entire community.

There's no such thing as a communist country, ever.

Try digesting on that above a bit, and think on why this is so. I'll elaborate further as we go on.

fyire's right

There are no Communist state in this world, never. Not China, not former CCCP/USSR(Soviet Russia), not Cuba, not North Korea, not Vietnam, not Laos and more. None of them are the true practitioner of Communism.

Chairman Mao respected in China because of his role in creating a new and stronger China, not because of any Communism etc etc.

IMO, human nature failed the Communism, not the ideology.

If they don't bow in front of the camera, the whole family will end up in Correction Camp No 101.

the best political system in general for asian countries is a single party system.... good models are like china and singapore... capitalism is not a part of the political system to a certain extent... the economy is free but at the same time restricted... that would be the best

communism? for politics yes, for the economy.. no

Agreee with Alaskanbunny

Then People's Republic of China(controlled by CCP) and Singapore(controlled by PAP) is best example liao. Heck, even Chinese gomen learnt many things from Singapore

Just follow the Meritocracy system AKA "make sure only good people control the government" then the country is A-Okay.



Saja for fun :



This post has been edited by JunWisewar: Dec 2 2009, 10:31 PM

To be exact, the communism theory is not even completed to the point to have an idea of how it'll effect economy. Every single country that claims to be communist are all pseudo socialist states masking dictatorship at the top.

true for sg... and also for north korea... but not china, the world's so call biggest communism...

Singapore claimed to be communist?

For China, its the same thing too really. Just that its not just one person making all the decisions, but its a group of people dictates everything in the country.

if you're libertarian, you'll oppose communism. reason being communism promotes big government, which will infringe the individuals' liberty.

exactly how does a big government infringe on the individual's liberty?

Read from Newsweek one. China's CCP party itself got 2 camp(Populist and Technocrat) so they pretty much practice intra-party democracy which maintain single party control but still got healthy competition. Either side can't afford to mess up or kena makan by other side. Their president(President Hu from the Technocrat) and premier(Premier Wen Jiabao from the Populist) came and represent from both of the side.

So, feel those people that insult China government of dictatorship are tools/retard.

This post has been edited by JunWisewar: Dec 2 2009, 11:26 PM

Yes. Not one single country ever followed the ideology of communism to the letter. At some point human greed and corruption set in, then it backfired gao gao.

I think communism is a very good idea. But not for humanity.

they dont claim... it is understood

a group of ppl.. isnt it the same for singapore? the group of people vote among themselves.. so it is kind of a republic... and hence the name people's republic

in american it is the same... just between two parties... so it is still a group of ppl

Singapore is Socialist, not Communist.

At first PAP follow Leninist ideology but after some incident where far-left wing supporter kena kick out from PAP, the party change to the more centre Socialism.

Read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People's_Action_Party

Perhaps you can elaborate on what are the criteria that are fulfilled for them to be 'understood' as such? Come to think of it, what exactly are you making a reference to anyways? Single party states? Or Communist States? If you're making a reference to Communist States, then what is your definition of a 'Communist State' anyways, considering that there's no one working template of what a communist state is to be.

Mind you, a lot of self termed communist regimes tends to use the term "People's" quite a lot. Looking at when the PRC was first called the PRC, there's nothing about the people in there, it was basically swapping one set of dictators with another.

It was only during Deng Xiaoping's time that the PRC actually tried out having elections. The PRC today is very different from the time when when the term 'PRC' was first coined, when at that time, the 'group' of people is limited to a selected few.

My point? labels are just labels. they may not be accurate. PRC has gone a long way, but they've still got quite a bit left to do still.

they can call themselves anything... it is all just labels...

no lar.. even during mao's time there's election... the republic was founded with a few collision of other parties including democratic ones... deng xiaoping reform d economics

everywhere is also limited to a few mar.... look at US, still between elephant and donkey, msia dont need to say, sg also dont need to say...

So what is the criteria that you had used to place the label that you had placed on them?

Perhaps you can provide more details of the elections that were held during MTZ's time?

the rule of thumb that I use to measure this is if it corresponds to universal suffrage or not. that is, if everybody above a certain age is eligible to vote or not. of which is not the case before DXP.

And perhaps you can elaborate by what you mean by the US being limited to a few, Malaysia being limited to a few, and Singapore limited to a few?

Communism is an "ideal" ideology in creating classless utopia world.

It is pretty in theory however it is not practical.

Human Needs:
- Food to eat
- Education (food for thought)
- Ownership of things
- Differentation/Superiority

It addresses the fundamental needs and not the others.

Many society started with socialism/communism, as it evolves/improves, democracy with capitalism structure start to take over.


As many forumer mentioned here already, it creates a divided power to top tier of the hierarchy and fails to address the greed and the will to be superior within human being.

It is an idea resulted from the society observation during the non structured/chaos era.

Example, if 1 billion people lives life in poverty, hardly enough food to eat, jobless, education is out of the question, what is the best society structure to address this issues temporary? Sharing resources would be the best temporary solution.

Just take PRC as an example, after WWII, as the entire nation is still in poverty, socialism idea at least address the hungry mouth issue first. Once the nation as a whole is progressing, then the policy is gradually structured/transformed to capitalism.

In my opinion, this progression ideology is a better model for such a large population society.

Looking at the other two examples, Soviet and India, they started with socialism ideology. However, the introduction of democracy is too drastic until the whole nation collapsed (Soviet, every state wants to have their own rights, independent and currency) or the gap of the wealth is huge (India).

In certain so called democratic countries, as the gap of the wealth is huge, instead of sending their children to school, the poor parent makes them children labor, which receive 50 cents a day or so.

In summary, one ideology that fits one country does not necessary fits another. The leader need to look into the history, culture, society and modify the ideology accordingly. Else it would becomes another fallen empires like what we always saw and learned from the history.

criteria... 1 party ruled by people from the professional/medium class, everything owned by the people, and noone owns more than a certain amount of wealth.. but i guess only the political system of communism is praticed now

during the establishment of the PRC, the 1st meeting held to choose d national anthem and flag.. etc etc was done through voting... among prominent people... warlords, wife of dr.sun, head of democratic parties...

in the US, there's only 2 ruling party since after the civil war i think... although the heads change but the core people remains the same..

in msia, we have d ruling collision eversince birth with leaders most of the time pick by the previous leader... sg PAP & mr.lee

so how democratic is this? once a party gets into power, they will use whatever means to stay in power.. democracy is not all about voting..

the only onces that truely pratice democracy are the europeans and scandinavian countries... d rest are just borrowing the name

There's more than just 1 party in Singapore if you're not aware. So this violates the one single criteria that you had put out now. And besides, having people who are either professionals and/or from the medium class in the ruling party, is this a trademark of communism only?

ie. no universal suffrage.

Democracy is more than just having a lot of parties involved in the system. What it really means is that the power to govern is determined by elections by the people via universal suffrage.

In both Malaysia & Singapore, despite a successor getting chosen by the previous leader, that successor will not be able to succeed should the people in the area that they run for their parliamentary seat in happened to reject them.

And the US has got far more than just merely 2 parties only too. Just that most people only know of either the Democrats or the Republicans. There's nothing stopping the other parties from attempting for the presidency, apart from the people's vote.

Socialism =/= Communism.

So no, Singapore is still not a communist country and can't be labeled as one.


Democracy is all about check and balances, alaskanbunny. So numbers of party doesn't equate how "democratized" a country is.


p/s : no offense. Read more about governmental system instead of knowing only democracy and communism cuz you pretty much trying to generalized different type of governments into a single category which is wrong. Oligarchy doesn't necessary mean that country is a communist country k?

This post has been edited by JunWisewar: Dec 3 2009, 09:53 PM

This is an interesting topic Awakened Angel.

I've been pondering about this myself. Is communism really Bad....

Over here, we watch war movies, where our heroic soldiers destroy the communist. Over in China I've been watching movies, of communist heroes eliminating, the treacherous democrats.

Actually, both systems have their pros and cons, but evidently Democracy is better, because communism breeds dictators, and are more prone to corruption.

In an ideal communist state, of course, it would be better, but in reality, it is difficult to achieve.

Through out history, communism, were used merely as an excuse by the elite, to rule over their country. "We love you dear leader" this should be a hint of what's going on.

If we look at north korea, teachers are discussing, how they can glorify their dear leader to the kids. It is no wonder they love their dear leader whom they have not met, and whose policies left them in the slumps.

Chairman Mao? hasn't anyone watched that doco on astro? He caused the Catastrophy of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_leap_forward
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution

The former, many people died in famine.
The later, caused young adults to go against their parents and teachers, to pick up arms and farm implements, instead of continuing their studies.

It was a bloody mess.

As for the later chinese government, nobody watched, the masacre at Tian men square? The chinese government open fire at defenseless students, who asked for democratic reforms.

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Added on December 9, 2009, 3:55 pmBut the ideals of communism, as some mentioned, are quite good. A state where all man are equal, etc.

All these systems of government were created by us. Why hasn't anybody considered having a government with a combination of the two major systems?

- Free media, where it's everybody's responsibility to spread info, be a whistle blower if an official is taking bribes, etc
- A sense of ownership of the country, collective effort, where it's everybody's responsibility to improve the country.
- Selection of leader, by the people, and not an elite few.
- Fair and concentration on individual rights and to stop the elite from opressing the common man.

To name a few things I can think off.

Actually, if we talk about tyrants, there's no different between one in a democracy and one in communism, both tries to brainwash the people, with fake information, glorifying the leaders. We don't have to look far for a democratic example.


This post has been edited by TheDoer: Dec 9 2009, 03:55 PM

No matter how you look at it buddy, politics is a dirty game. There are no two ways about it, and there has and will never be an innocent politician. The very word is an oxymoron. In that sense, all types of ruling will eventually fail, be it communism, democracy or any other you wish to insert here.

in our democrate malaysia.... aint the politics here somehow indirectly practise communism? the leader call the shots and with ISA the same as ruthless dictators?

one word, I think will change all politics scene..... TRANSPARENCY.. which is very very hard.........

can we see all our government spendings? what they did? what they buy? where the money goes to?

The nearest to communism is socialism.
Most democratic government who practices capitalism also includes a lil bit of socialism in the government to help the poor..

Fat chance that they'll post their financial statements out like that. We all know where it goes don't we?

you've somehow connected the ideals of 'communism' with 'dirty politics' and 'people doing stuff to cover up their shit' which is how we have a lack of transparency. 2 very different things here, man

IMO for humans to achieve near communism we would need to have superb technology in all areas which usually found in science fiction. Software will be in open source, basic task would be handled by robots but even so it's not close to perfect as greed is still there unless we even resort to make use of technology to alter genetics where all will have similar skin color and build, the way we think and so on. It may sound like those in the movies but we never know.

You're right, both systems have it's fair share. but we can see that one tends to be worst then another isn't it?
Instead of stating what we know, why don't we, talk about creating a system which can reduce corruption, misuse of power, and making sure we have choosen the right leaders.

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Added on December 14, 2009, 10:56 amYep that's right. We can't blame democracy for that, blame the people for not knowing what democracy is and not caring to uphold it.

I completely agree with you. Transparency is a key ingredient if we want to eliminate abuse. Perhaps we can include that in our new Political system?

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Added on December 14, 2009, 11:03 amDoes anyone realise, the difference and the problem, about the way people think under different political systems?

In a democracy, people are trying to fight for human rights, freedom of speach, and information.

in communism, people are trying to prove that their system is the best. And constantly fighting against other systems. They will lie to others and even themselves, for national pride.

In otherwords, communism, is just good on paper.

No, hold on, I'm not proposing we scrap communism, what do you feel we can do, to make it more practical? How can we incooperate it with democracy and other ideas?



This post has been edited by TheDoer: Dec 14 2009, 11:03 AM

do you think malaysia a capitalism islamic country can achieve that the prime minsiter could be like USA where it is not native?

hard to imagine huh

A little request to everybody here, when speaking on communism, can you all state if you're making a reference to either:
- communism as envisioned by Karl Marx, or
- communism as practiced by the self proclaimed communists?

There's a huge world of difference between the 2 actually, because there has never been a communist state ever.

I agree, I'm refering to Karl Marx most of the time. But in the above example, I was refering to how some countries, are trying to practice communism.

Perhaps it's too idealistic to be practical?

Communism used by those self proclaimed countries, is like, *ahem, some asian country (in the vicinity of Singapore), that claims to be democratic.

I think the problems with Communism or Democracy in the purest sense, is how easy it is to abuse and exploit those systems.

It's like putting a gun to ones head, and asking them to vote. "Heck, who says we aren't democratic".

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Added on December 14, 2009, 11:36 amI'm sorry, can you please explain?

This post has been edited by TheDoer: Dec 14 2009, 11:42 AM

in malaysia,

can a non malay and non muslim be prime minister?

Yes, it is impossible. *Ahem. some countries are democratic, while other's are just a dictatorship in the guise of proper political systems.

- If the government, controls information.
- Use scare tactics to sway votes.
- Use government resources so to win in future elections.
- Use government influence to gain support

Then it is by no means democratic.


Perhaps, a better system of democracy would be that, campaigning will be organized for both parties equally. And no outside effort, or benefit of how rich you are at advertising would be permitted?

This post has been edited by TheDoer: Dec 14 2009, 11:55 AM

My personal thoughts on the entire thing:
- Marx never had a chance to fully explain what his idea of communism is. His works were still incomplete before he kicked the bucket.
- The issues with countries that claim to be practicing communism is not really to do with communism itself. Come to think of it, even George Owell's animal farm shows as much, that its not the ideology that's the problem, but its the revolution to get rid of the previous regime that's the problem, in the sense that those heading the revolution will end up being so powerful that they can just claim that they embody the ideology behind the revolution that has taken place. This is something applicable regardless of what that ideology is, not just to communism

This post has been edited by fyire: Dec 14 2009, 12:01 PM

One main reason why Communism ideology fails is the way it handles the economic of a country. It assumes that the economic of a country is finite. Don't get me wrong, finite here doesn't mean that the regime leader comes out with a GDP of says 1Billion for year 2010 for that country.

"Finite" means the economic is determined by the regime leader and his team in a hierarchy structure. A team does infrastructure, B team food, C team medical, D team weapon....etc. The nation's wealth is determined by the top tier of the hierarchy. The job creation, the number of companies are all are predetermined by the leader. Food is distributed to each citizen in the form of coupon (like North Korea). The country will need to shield the entire nation from the outside world (capitalism) in order to maintain the ideology.

On the other hand, why capitalism is a better model? Because it started with the assumption that economic of a country is theoretically infinite.

Looking back at the history of western economy capitalism model, prior to 17th century, there were kings, dukes, rich man or central planner who control the entire piece of lands and everything (includes everyone) in it.

There was one Scotsman who proposed a new model called "Invisible Hand". He argued that when each person pursues his own line of work, the general population is far better off that it is when the king or the central planner runs the economic show and dictates who does and gets what (e.g. cloth, hat, vegetable). He argued that if millions of individuals making and selling whatever they pleased, and going off in all directions at once, could create an orderly society in which everyone had clothes, food and a roof over their heads. What if 99% of the people decided to make hats, and only 1% decided to grow vegetables? The country would be flooded with hats, and there would be nothing to eat. But this is where the Invisible Hand comes to the rescue.

There wasn't really an Invisible Hand, of course. It is a metaphor. For instance, if too many hat makers made too many hats, hats would pile up in the market, forcing the hat sellers to lower the price. Lower price for hats would drive some hat makers out of the hat business and into a more profitable line of work, such as vegetable farming. Eventually, there would be just enough vegetable farmers and hats makers to make the right amount of vegetables and hats.

The "invisible hand" method proposed is the basics of how a free market works, and they still hold true today. He was referring to supply and demand kept goods and services in balance. His idea seems obvious today, but in 17th century, it was a novel idea by one human being when such ideology was never heard and never implemented before.

His name was Adam Smith aka The Father of Modern Economics. And his idea was written down in the book called "The Wealth of Nations".

If a country wants to be prosper, it needs to adopt "free market" concept where the wealth generated is theoretically infinite. In summary, bottom up (capitalism) is a better model then top down (communism) from economical perspective.

One can still argues that there are pro and con with "free market" capitalism concept. I agree. Look at Tulip bubble, Automotive bubble, .Com bubble and lately property bubble in Dubai. Again, as Adam has mentioned, this is how the free market work in cyclic order, where price goes up will eventually comes down and this cycle will continues......just like the hats maker and the vegetables farmer.....

Communism is sometimes called "scientific socialism" which means you can implement the ideology in scientific ways, which can be in different way that you can scientifically perform it. It is actually a form of socialism in its final stage, where social equality can be fully performed and everyone is treated equal without class, race or even religion. That's why most communist countries are banning religions.

The huge different between socialism and Communism (defined by Marxists) is the separation of "socialism," a society ruled by workers, and "communism," a classless society.

Practitioners of Communism have their own ways of implementing Communism. And yeah, there were communists (not Communist, we should know the differences now) states, but that's is a general collective name for the countries that applied the ways of implemented Communism e.g. Maoist, Marxists-Leninist, Stalinist and even Juche (DPRK). There even religious and non-Marxist form Communism like anarcho-communism and Christian-communism. There even some that combined communism/socialism with right wing politics like racial fascism e.g. Nazi party in German circa WWII, even though in practice they never implemented that.

If you read Karl Marx Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei, you'd come to your sense that Communism can be fully achieved after the all the human basic needs are fulfilled. In reality, this is very hard to achieve but it is not impossible.

Basically, there are two ways to implement communism

a) Revolution - via firepower, coup, war
b) Democratic solution - by winning election and changing the state's constitution (sometimes called anti-revolutionary) to most of the time single ideology parties (not to be confused with single-party state) - commonly known as Workers' Parties or Communist Parties.

Hence, there is no actual ideological barriers that Communism must defeat Capitalism. You can still achieve communism with a strong economy, and especially when you have a strong economy.

On the other hands, the ideology does not fail. It is the implementation that fails. Unfortunately, Communist leaders in the past eventually became dictators, autocratic and somewhat ruthless.

We forget that human nature has corruption and madness on the its list too. Even capitalism can collapse when there are corrupt people around. I don't have to give the examples, you should know this already.

Human aren't perfect even they have perfect ideas.

It's not wrong to embrace either Communism or Capitalism. It is the way how you implement and taking care of it.


Pictures related to Communism

This is how the Marxists view Capitalism | Soviet Propaganda "Workers (People) and Army are one"

[attachmentid=1361610] [attachmentid=1361861]

This post has been edited by dopodplaya: Dec 17 2009, 12:47 PM

I love this picture...

somehow, no matter how civilized we get, or how democratic we get, we still stuck in the pyramid.. just the one on top of the pyramid changed.... from kings to president to prime minister to chairman etc

Like I said, humanity failed Communism, not the other way around.

If human achieve the cohesion of bees or ants and take up Communism, the selflessness in humanity will propelled us to a new heights.

But yeah, it's a fantasy that pretty much not gonna happen.

communism can't work for us cos

we're all lazy and greedy...if we're like ant and work very hard for the good of the nation then yes(it's kinda like the hive mentality thingy) but how can a pig be a worker ant?

imo communism can work if we're invaded by alien hehe cos if it's capitalism then...then economy collapse ppl jumping off building etc....if it's communism ppl in charge of food and supply will work their part while soldier will fight cos nobody give a damn bout the econ and self gain

i feel theres no difference in democracy either, its just how people handle something