The Irony Of Communist Countries...

[rkwright]

So I was thinking about this for some reason, maybe after reading the socalism thread...

Does it seem ironic to anyone else that China probably, the most economically "advanced" communist country, also has some of the most worst working conditions? I mean they're getting better... but I thought communist countries were supposed to protect the rights of the workers? Seems to me they're getting paid the least, working the longest hours, and in the worst conditions...

Seems to me that if I am a worker I do not want a communist government - a weird paradox?

[Nihil Obstat]

[quote name='rkwright' timestamp='1283892778' post='2169298']
So I was thinking about this for some reason, maybe after reading the socalism thread...

Does it seem ironic to anyone else that China probably, the most economically "advanced" communist country, also has some of the most worst working conditions? I mean they're getting better... but I thought communist countries were supposed to protect the rights of the workers? Seems to me they're getting paid the least, working the longest hours, and in the worst conditions...

Seems to me that if I am a worker I do not want a communist government - a weird paradox?
[/quote]
It makes perfect sense when you're willing to recognize that an entirely free market is far and away the greatest economic system, and the only sure-fire way to make the lower class richer than they've ever been at any point throughout history.

[Laudate_Dominum]

[quote name='Nihil Obstat' timestamp='1283905619' post='2169410']
It makes perfect sense when you're willing to recognize that an entirely free market is far and away the greatest economic system, and the only sure-fire way to make the lower class richer than they've ever been at any point throughout history.
[/quote]
NOOO! Not you too!!

[Nihil Obstat]

[quote name='Laudate_Dominum' timestamp='1283906284' post='2169418']
NOOO! Not you too!!
[/quote]
Don't worry. I'm a Laudate_Dominum-capitalist.

[Laudate_Dominum]

[quote name='Nihil Obstat' timestamp='1283906383' post='2169421']
Don't worry. I'm a Laudate_Dominum-capitalist.
[/quote]




All is well . . . I hope. *dramatic prairie dog*

[Johnny]

[quote name='rkwright' timestamp='1283892778' post='2169298']
So I was thinking about this for some reason, maybe after reading the socalism thread...

Does it seem ironic to anyone else that China probably, the most economically "advanced" communist country, also has some of the most worst working conditions? I mean they're getting better... but I thought communist countries were supposed to protect the rights of the workers? Seems to me they're getting paid the least, working the longest hours, and in the worst conditions...

Seems to me that if I am a worker I do not want a communist government - a weird paradox?
[/quote]
Because China's not really "Communist." They are a dictatorship. They don't really believe in the advancement of worker right's, and promoting equality and all of that croutons. They believe in the advancement of their leader's pockets and power.

[Winchester]

Communism requires dictatorship to deny private property.

[Tridenteen]

JMJ
Look at Poland. Look at Hungary. Look at Slovenia. For all the Communists were supposed to help all people, I guess you had to be a certain person to get helped. You couldn't believe in God, you couldn't participate in free thinking, you couldn't be well off....the list goes on and on and on...

[ThePenciledOne]

Of course this is why most of the big Capitalist companies based here in the U.S. have their factories overseas, in China and in other counties where the wage is cheap.

So, you tell me which system is better, because sure the apparent system in say China is not well off, yet companies here are profiting off of them anyway. Check the perspective.

Edited September 8, 2010 by ThePenciledOne

[rkwright]

[quote name='ThePenciledOne' timestamp='1283962408' post='2169975']
Of course this is why most of the big Capitalist companies based here in the U.S. have their factories overseas, in China and in other counties where the wage is cheap.

So, you tell me which system is better, because sure the apparent system in say China is not well off, yet companies here are profiting off of them anyway. Check the perspective.


[/quote]

But here is the key difference... our capitalist companies do not promise workers good conditions. The Communist government, by definition, is supposed to protect the working class.

Our system is working just as it should - maybe if we want to change our system we can. Their system is failing them.

[ThePenciledOne]

[quote name='rkwright' timestamp='1283964671' post='2170029']
But here is the key difference... [b]our capitalist companies do not promise workers good conditions[/b]. The Communist government, by definition, is supposed to protect the working class.

Our system is working just as it should - maybe if we want to change our system we can. Their system is failing them.
[/quote]

Ok, so does that mean we still milk the workers then? I don't see how capitalism is more fair, we cannot say that sure communism etc haven't worked out in the past and currently, and capitalism is better...when we are in essence committing the same atrocities. I use the word atrocities, because reinforcing the mentality that these people in China and other places have to work in factories for less than a dollar or whatever meager wage it is.

I honestly don't care what capitalists/communist entities are supposed to do by definition, because that is always the ideal. I want to hear something that someone is willing to stick with their integrity, and I find the fact that most Catholics will preach the Capitalist gospel over other forms, very disheartening. Of course this is my opinion as well.

As to your last comment, I would say that we are failing them by putting them into the system of our economics as well.

[rkwright]

[quote name='ThePenciledOne' timestamp='1283965689' post='2170048']
Ok, so does that mean we still milk the workers then? I don't see how capitalism is more fair, we cannot say that sure communism etc haven't worked out in the past and currently, and capitalism is better...when we are in essence committing the same atrocities. I use the word atrocities, because reinforcing the mentality that these people in China and other places have to work in factories for less than a dollar or whatever meager wage it is.

I honestly don't care what capitalists/communist entities are supposed to do by definition, because that is always the ideal. I want to hear something that someone is willing to stick with their integrity, and I find the fact that most Catholics will preach the Capitalist gospel over other forms, very disheartening. Of course this is my opinion as well.

As to your last comment, I would say that we are failing them by putting them into the system of our economics as well.
[/quote]

I think you're reading too much into these posts. The only point of this is that communism seems to empirically fail. It not only fails on a macro scale, but also fails the people whom its supposed to protect.

This has nothing to do with Capitalism being the answer, or Capitalist gospel over other forms.

[ThePenciledOne]

[quote name='rkwright' timestamp='1283966297' post='2170061']
I think you're reading too much into these posts. The only point of this is that communism seems to empirically fail. It not only fails on a macro scale, but also fails the people whom its supposed to protect.

This has nothing to do with Capitalism being the answer, or Capitalist gospel over other forms.
[/quote]

It's not that I am reading to much, I have read similar topics in which some of on the forum have already presented their ideas to some degree, so maybe in part I am responding to that.

And most make Capitalism the only option economically, when it is not.

[Hassan]

[quote name='rkwright' timestamp='1283892778' post='2169298']
So I was thinking about this for some reason, maybe after reading the socalism thread...

Does it seem ironic to anyone else that China probably, the most economically "advanced" communist country, also has some of the most worst working conditions? I mean they're getting better... but I thought communist countries were supposed to protect the rights of the workers? Seems to me they're getting paid the least, working the longest hours, and in the worst conditions...

Seems to me that if I am a worker I do not want a communist government - a weird paradox?
[/quote]


That's because most countries that experienced communist revolutions were formerly agrarian societies with despotic forms of government. You can't compare Russia or China, which were in this century agrarian cultures with only the beginnings of an urbanized and industrial class, to America and Europe which have been able to benefit from the industrial revolution and an open society from the start. The average Russian worker in the 1960's was in a poor place compared to an American worker, but he was significantly better off than his father. The communist revolutions did, at a staggering human cost, manage to radically transform societies in an incredibly short period of time. Russia went from an agrarian culture to an industrial power and military super power that managed to beat back Nazi Germany (Germany having a much longer history of industrial growth) within a few short decades. In 1917 the British Empire was arguable at the zenith of it's might and Russia was a poor, backwards agrarian culture ravaged by civil war, humiliated and broken by Germany (Russia lost Ukraine in WWI, which contained much of what developed industry it had), and being led by a new and inexperienced government of radicals. By 1945 Britain was a declining power desperately clinging to the United States in a strategic bid to stay marginally relevant and Russia had surged ahead to the only serious rival the US faced. That is an amazing transformation. China has transformed itself in half a century from similar circumstances to the worlds second largest economic power and is set to overtake the US as the global hegemon within the century. The position of ordinary people in both countries improved greatly from pre-revolutionary days under the more mature variants of communism. In both countries these feats were accomplished through a horrendous human toll and central planning is a deeply flawed economic and political system when it moves from trying to catch up with more advanced nations to trying to be innovative in it's own right, but your argument is a bad one.

[Hassan]

[quote name='Nihil Obstat' timestamp='1283905619' post='2169410']
It makes perfect sense when you're willing to recognize that an entirely free market is far and away the greatest economic system, and the only sure-fire way to make the lower class richer than they've ever been at any point throughout history.
[/quote]

That's croutons. An entirely free market is hardly the greatest economic system. Not even close. There are periodic market collapses, the crushing poverty that the lower classes existed in during the heyday of lazzie-fair capitalism (Dickens, anyone?), or the tremendous inefficiency that totally free markets produce (in the form of monopolies and other phenomena). Communism also made lower classes in their countries far more wealthy than at any point in their history. An Russian living in the USSR in the 1970's was tremendously more wealthy than the average citizen had been at any point in Russia's history.

Vibrant, free markets can be a very powerful tool for inspiring innovation and lifting people out of poverty. You're confusing a mean with an end, turning a powerful economic tool into an economic end in itself.

[Hassan]

[quote name='rkwright' timestamp='1283964671' post='2170029']
But here is the key difference... our capitalist companies do not promise workers good conditions. The Communist government, by definition, is supposed to protect the working class.

Our system is working just as it should - maybe if we want to change our system we can. Their system is failing them.
[/quote]


A communist government is. The revolutionaries didn't claim to have implemented a fully communist government. Marxist theory always acknowledged that the transformation to communism was a gradual process that could only come about after societies had progressed from more primitive economic systems (like from feudalism to capitalism to socialism and eventually to a truly communist society).

I don't see how you could claim that China's system is failing them compared to ours. China recently passed Japan as the second largest economy in the world. In a few decades they have emerged from a weak, pitiful country to a giant on the world stage. China has radically improved the lives of most of it's population beyond what anyone thought possible even in the 1970's and their trajectory is pretty bright. The status of the American worker is in decline. Wages have stalled out. Adjusted for inflation, the average American is making less now than they did a few decades ago China is exactly the opposite.

[Sternhauser]

[quote name='rkwright' timestamp='1283892778' post='2169298']
So I was thinking about this for some reason, maybe after reading the socalism thread...

Does it seem ironic to anyone else that China probably, the most economically "advanced" communist country, also has some of the most worst working conditions? I mean they're getting better... but I thought communist countries were supposed to protect the rights of the workers? Seems to me they're getting paid the least, working the longest hours, and in the worst conditions...

Seems to me that if I am a worker I do not want a communist government - a weird paradox?
[/quote]

No, it's no more ironic than Nixon saying "I am not a crook." It's not ironic, just a lie. Lies are sometimes the foundation for an entire system. It's still a lie, even if people believe the lie.

~Sternhauser

[un.privileged]

[quote name='Hassan' timestamp='1284933826' post='2174701']
That's croutons. An entirely free market is hardly the greatest economic system. Not even close. There are periodic market collapses, the crushing poverty that the lower classes existed in during the heyday of lazzie-fair capitalism (Dickens, anyone?), or the tremendous inefficiency that totally free markets produce (in the form of monopolies and other phenomena). Communism also made lower classes in their countries far more wealthy than at any point in their history. An Russian living in the USSR in the 1970's was tremendously more wealthy than the average citizen had been at any point in Russia's history.

Vibrant, free markets can be a very powerful tool for inspiring innovation and lifting people out of poverty. You're confusing a mean with an end, turning a powerful economic tool into an economic end in itself.
[/quote]
The Government has always been responsible for intensifying and prolonging depression during the market collapse.
[url="http://mises.org/rothbard/agd.pdf"]America's Great Depression[/url] (link) by Murray Rothbard
[url="http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:0tglZ4vfG_4J:mises.org/journals/rae/pdf/rae9_2_3.pdf+the+myth+of+natural+monopoly&hl=en&gl=au&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESjOChikcBCZKJH0eWCtRGIcPKCjQv9W0Rx-XliEBspu_q0XDHFe42AY64o0MoPf-Q8ZlZYqOk-vQKAxXZO0UPtiC469cw3bK95Cpea96togqpfQbrhXGIkYZw4ExJKv2CpsEBpQ&sig=AHIEtbSwRwJa1eU9fISPQFmAFeELxvtFSA"]The Myth of Natural Monopoly[/url] (link)by Thomas DiLorenzo.

[RandomProddy]

Oh I think we can come up with some more..

The fact that the most class-ridden societies on earth are Communist ones that preach equality?

The fact that they preach atheism yet have a godlike cult of personality around the leader and to criticize them is blasphemy?

I'm just getting warmed up!..

[C Martel]

[quote name='Nihil Obstat' timestamp='1283905619' post='2169410']
It makes perfect sense when you're willing to recognize that an entirely free market is far and away the greatest economic system, and the only sure-fire way to make the lower class richer than they've ever been at any point throughout history.
[/quote]


Perfectly said!

Unrelated, Father Kolbe was truly a great man. Great avatar.