: : Capitalist regiems have entirely WIPED OUT ENTIRE peoples from the planet. The Tasmanians were murdered, every last amn of them, by the British settlers trying to make money off their mines and ranches in Australia.
: $$$$$$$$$That's not a function of Capitalism, that's a function of man's nature. If Capitalism were to blame, those sorts of atrocities wouldn't have appeared throughout history.
Yeah right. Where are the records of the Khoi-San or the Pygmies wiping out their neighbors? the degree to which a society engages in genocide and oppression is a function of cultural values not of human nature.
*******EXTRA EXTRA everyone! Frenchy apparently believes that genocide is part of human nature!**************
: : It wasn't the socialists who murdered a million Indonesians, sent hundreds of thousands to prison camps, and exterminated a third of teh east Timor population.
: $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$May I suggest repressive dictators did that? The very same sort of dictators that have graced the pages of Socialist/Communist history.
They were capitalist dictators. If you blame socialism for the crimes of 'socialist' tyrants, then you must blame capitalism for the crimes of capitalist dictators.
: : it wasn't the socialists who killed ten million people in the Congo 90 years ago, mutilating thousands more. That crime was carried out by the Belgians, in the name of private enterprise and Christian civilization.
: $$$$$$$$$$$Could you supply some reference for 10,000,000? Did they keep census records in the Congo? Are these just made up figures to support your position? Like Zimbabwe being a wildly sucessful Socialist/Communist modern nation?
Look who's talking about sources. The man who quoted a Nazi. To be honest, few people are more unreliable and mendacious than the right wing 'scholars'. Ronald Reagan once claimed that neither ZANU, SWAPO, or the ANC enjoyed the support of a majority fo teh people. Unfortunately, that was before each of these three parties won an overhwehlming majority of the vote in free and fair elections. In any case, in spite of teh mendacity of right wingers in general, I'll assume you'r in good faith here. The source is Adam Hochschild, "King Leopold's Ghost", 1998. Look in any bookstore.
: : And just to pre-empt Gee, may I add that the Congo Free State was a model of capitalsim and state non-interference; there was no state in the Congo Free State, only untrammeled private ownership. It was the privayte rubber companeis, not the socialists, who carried out genocide in the upper reaches of teh Amazon, wiping out 84% of the Brazilian Indians by murdering them and deliberately infecting them with disease.
: $$$$$$$$$$$$Frankly this sounds like propaganda, something that you seem to specialize in. Could you give me some sources for these claims? I'd appreciate it.
Yes, this from the man who conveniently hid the fact that teh 1984 elections in Nicaragua involved seven different parties, ranging from conservatoives to communists, who all won seats in the legislature, as compared to a two-party monopoly in the US. That's different from 'propaganda'.....how?
Propaganda is bad only if it's false. If it's true, then it deserves to be propagandized.
: : It was a right-wing capitalist government, backed by teh US, which razed Indian villages in Guatemala and wiped out a quarter of a million people.
: $$$$$$$$$$$$Right wing? OK. Capitalist? Hmmmmm. What is your definition of "Capitalist"?
An economic system characterized by private ownership of the means of production, centralized in the hands of an elite, and managed for the sake of financial profit.
: :It was the right wing in El Salvador which murdered peasants, priests and trade unionists, soem 70,000 of them, under the slogan 'Be a patriot, Kill a priest.'
:
: $$$$$$$$$$$Yes, they don't play in other countries like they did w/ the WTO demonstrators in Seattle, you can plainly see that. In Seattle they had the luxury of the First Amendment as well as the rest of the Bill of Rights. Uhh, I happen to include that in a Capitalist system. Private ownership, courts for redress. If a government doesn't provide these things, is it a Capitalist system?
Yes, just as much as a one-party socialist staet is socialist. I include freedom and democracy in any definition of true communism, just as you do in your definition of capitalism. What gives you teh unique right to define your terms?
The US is what I'd call a 'weakly capitalist' country. El Salvador is a strong capitalist country.
:
: : It was a right wing government in Pakistan, closely allied with the US, that murdered three million Bengalis until the Indian Army invaded and liberated the people.
: $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$Excuse me Nickel Jack.......HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHJAJAJAJAJAJAJAJAJAJJAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!
: Oh, yes, you were saying...the Indian Army liberated the Bengals in
Pakistan.....yes, go on.
Three million dead is nothing to laugh at. Go to Dhaka today and you'll see that the Bangladeshis love the Indians. India liberated them from the murdering butchers of Generals Yahya and Tikka Khan, set free the unanimously elected leader Mujibur Rahman, and proclaimed teh People's Republic of Bangladesh. Nixon, of course, actually sent a warship up the Bay of Bengal to aid the genocidal killers, but by that time, Tikka Khan had already suirrendered.
: : It was a right-wing government in South Africa that stretched its long and murderous arms from Sweden to Mozambique. (yes, I've heard rumors that Prime Minister Olof Palme of Sweden was assassinated on orders from the South African government).
: $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$Yes, and you are not short in the rumors department.
See my most recent post about the true confessions of Eugene de Kock et al.
:
: : It was a right-wing British regime that amid myriad other atrocities, slaughetred 400 peaceful protesters on one afternoon in Amritsar.
: $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$Probably so. Americans killed a shitload of Indians too. So? What's your point? If you want revenge, say so.
My point is to demonstrate how the supposed 'liberal-democratic" Western regimes have been as murderous as anyone.
: :And what about the right wing Contra terrorists who killed 30,000 Nicaraguans?
: $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$Well, those kinds of things happen in a civil war. Probably wouldn't have happened at all if Castro hadn't stirred things up.
Ah, yes, so you'd prefer that the Nicaraguans still lived under Somozist slavery, is that it? You remind me of people who conmfront a raped woman with "She asked for it'.
: Another good example of good intentions gone bad, eh?
No, we knew eaxactly what we were getting into. REagan wanted to re-enslave the Nicaraguans., and he didm, all five million of them.
: : and what about the 3 million dead in Vietnam?
: $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$Yeah, and if we had won, Viet-Nam would probably be another sucess story like S. Korea and Japan.
Why? What makes you think it wouldn't be a sordid genocidal tyranny like Indonesia? That seems more likely, considering that our chosen man, Air Vice Marshal Ky, was a confessed Nazi sympathizer. Or perhaps it would merely have become a racist, eugenicist monarchy like Malaysia.
:And we wouldn't have that pesky Pol Pot to talk about either.
Ignoring the fact taht we KEPT Pol Pot and his Maoists in power, and extended RECOGNITION to Democratic Kampuchea....
:Nothing at all wrong with people who are willing to die to keep their country free of dictators wearing little red stars on their caps.
: : Even the far-right scholar Eugene Genovese acknowledges these crimes.'
: $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$Got no idea who he is.
Euguene Genovese is a former Marxist who's now somewhere bewteen teh Republicans and the Fascsits.
:
: : Plus, if you even include Mao and Stalin as socialists (which most socialists here don't;
: $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$I certainly can understand that.
: : do you accept Hitler as a capitalist?
: $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$Of course not, but I'm sure you have a good reason for doing so. Maybe you'll explicate.
Well, Nazi Germany certainly had private ownership, elite control, the profit motive, and access to goods was dependent on wealth...
:
: : most of their death toll was due to famine.
: $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$Yup, a state induced famine in each case....
:
: : This is accepted by even teh most anti-communist 'scholars'.
: $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$What's an anti-communist 'scholar'?
You tell me. An oxmoron, isn't it?
:
: : If it's famine you want to talk about, let's look at the modern world, governed by a capitalist order, which denies food to soem 840 million people, causing gross millions to die of famien every year.
:
: $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$Uh, 'denies' food? What do you mean by that? I live in the modern world, and I've never once been denied food. No one that I know has ever been denied food either. Who are these 840 million people who are dying because food is being denied to them?
If you were a starving peasant in El Salvador you would think differently.
1) There is enough food in the world today.
2) There are numerous wasy to distribuet food. You could distribute according to a fixed share for each family, or according to how hard peopel work, or accroding to how much people need.
3) The capitalist system allots food according to how much people can pay. People receive whatever quality and quantity of food as tehy can pay for. (except in social-democratic, welfare states, or socialist countries.)
4) In any system except the communist, food is not allotted according to need. This means that peopel will invariably starve. This goes for the 'socialist" (accroding to work) and the egalitarian (food equal for everyone) as well as the capitalist.
5)Therefore, if peopel starve as a result fo not having food, we must balme the distribution system which denbied them the food, since it was both available and neede by them, but they didn't get it.
As a matter of fact, millions of kids in America grow up hungry. Hunger afflicts some 840 million people worldwide.
: : If you attribute the famine deaths to Stalin and Mao, you must attribute the famine deaths caused by teh Western world, which beat Mao hands down.
: $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$Actually NJ, I 'must' not do anything, least of all agree with your silly premises and their ludicrous conclusions.
Only if you wish to be consistent and reasonable....
: : A little reason and truth here, please.
:
: $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$Anytime your ready for some let me know....
None.
