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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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?

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.

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.

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