Democracy is a big word that American children shouldn't be allowed to play with.
Even the Framer's didn't like using the word Democracy. They much more prefered Constitutional Republic to pure democracy.
Democracy is one of the things that people like to yell about and say "We're more free then nation x because we're a democracy", why do you think so many Stalinist (read: not communist) like to call themselves democracies.
Communism is a big word too, basically any single 'form' of government has so many different and often competing underlying theories its impossible to say "THIS IS BETTER FOR REASON X!!1!!!"
Marxist communism kicks democracy's ass up and down the globe.
EDIT: And even though pure Stalinism in all of its entirety is pretty scary, I find it very interesting that through a series of three 5 year plans that Stalin instituted are theorized to have been the period of fastest economic and industrial growth ever acheived. The effects of which were pretty much destructive on Russia due to just how backwards the country truely was, however, if such a socialist policy were to be adopted by a government in a nation such as america it would be relatively sustainable and the grand ideal of a "global revolution" would be relatively obtainable.
The underlying problem with communism is effectively where it took hold. It couldn't take hold in America because the standard of living was high after World War I. The only reason it took hold in Russia is because Lenin was able to make a rather random and senseless mob follow his orders but the nation was so industrially backwards it didn't work. Marx called for communism in a highly industrialized nation, in 1928 only 20% of the Russian population was considered to be workers.
Stalinism effectively ruined communism, no matter what Kruschev tried to do. Stalism is, by the Trotskyist but very accurate definition, a non-capitalist state in which exploitation is controlled by a ruling caste which, while it did not own the means of production and was not a social class in its own right, accrued benefits and privileges at the expense of the working class.
Last edited by Infernus; 2006-07-02 at 10:48 PM.
|