Admiral X wrote:Outside of little hippie communes, communism does not work and in order to even try, it must be enforced through authoritarian rule.
Honestly, can you name a system of government/economics which does not require a degree of enforcement, though?
Something the Berlin Wall and the Inner German Border was a great symbol of. After all, those walls weren't to keep people out so much as to keep people in. Historically, communism has oppressed and killed tens of millions, and there's no getting around that.
To put it bluntly, so has probably every major religion. If we count by death toll, I wonder how Christianity and Islam would stack up against Communism? Though they've had more time to rack up that body count.
This is part of what makes it laughable when I see people make excuses for it to the effect of "well, it just hasn't been done right yet." You would never, ever, ever, ever see anyone do that when it comes to fascism. Hell, not even the neo-nazis and the like would make that claim, because I'm sure they'd insist someone out of Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, etc. had got it right the first time around.
Well, like I said, I'm not a communist. I understand the appeal somewhat, but its not a system that I would ever care to see adopted.
But funnily enough, I have heard that Stalin is quite popular in Russia today, though I suspect that's more because of nationalism/WWII/"He made Russia strong" than out of loyalty to communism, given Russia today.