This, too ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- \"Why do you hate communism?” Somebody asked the masses. “It’s a nice idea on paper, but it hasn’t worked in reality.” Replied every idiot and his goose. "Before the Athenian attempt, few on earth could have imagined the plebiscite as a functioning implement of governance. Before the first cities even more primitive forms of government and economy were presumably dismissed as unworkable. This prime argument against communism is almost unspeakably stupid.” I said, you fucking peons. “Exactly the same thing we said before, but with some baseless insults!” Screeched the fucking peons, giving examples of ‘communist atrocities’, or something, for reasons well grounded in a duck, or some bags of potatoes. "Communism is an economic system like any other, and it can be practiced in purity or dilution, with efficiency or corruption. The same is true of capitalism and slavery. Then I tried to explain the difference between freedom and pretend freedom as made at the neo conservative new labour playdough* factory, but apparently the words, "for" and, "by" and alternately the phrases, "on behalf of" and, uhm, "by" are too fucking difficult to understand in conjunction with big words like, "the people" and "government". *I can't remember how the brand spells that, so they don't get upper-case. "Look at the Sandinistas. Look at the Vietcong. Look at the National Liberation Front (Ben Bella's group), ZANU, FRELIMO, the 26th of July Movement, the Bolsheviks, the Chinese communists, the Khmer Rouge, the Pathet Lao, etc. That is why I hate communism." "Putting aside, for a moment, the fact of US support for Pol Pot until the KR's defeat by the Vietnamese, it must be said that Vietcong, like Al Qaeda, is a term invented by US* propagandists because it sounds sinister and menacing. To use it matter-of-fact as you have is indicative of gross ignorance of the subject in hand." *Or related. And it's funny, but I thought that Zimbabwe had currency in circulation. Man, that capitalist entity is all kinds of communistic! Damn commies and their Zimbabwean Dollars! And damn the Pathet Lao for bombing Laos once a year for two decades, for voting for US domination of their country! I am drinking banana and orange something as a mixer for crap vodka. I do not feel as if I shall be well in the morning. In this entry, I am trying to explain something important. "Again, a really fundamental part of this whole affair must be recognised! Democracy is not some sort of contrary condition to communism. Democracy means popular rule. Communism is an economic system requiring community of goods, as has been practiced with success countless times, even within the United Kingdom and respecting his or her majesty's government (the residents of St.Kilda (semi-)famously addressed the wrong one in the petition that removed them from their once utopian isles). It [communism] may exist in some fashion under dictatorship, representative democracy (such as the usual Western parliamentary form) or true, direct democracy. In truth, systems such as the American one are not democratic even if we (wrongly) assume them to be free of corruption. They enable popular representation, not popular rule." And then... "Argh! None of you are getting it! Communism is, really, an economic theory, not a political one. You see how capitalists can be evil, right? Pinochet was a capitalist of a high order, but he was not much of a democrat, and both killed and oppressed. Lenin could be called a communist, but he wasn't much of a democrat, either, and there was killing and oppression. The current American big-shots are dilluted capitalists, but they're not much for democracy, and they both kill and oppress. The Khmer Rouge weren't capitalists or communists (their foreign minister said, "we are not communists"), and the Nazis were a little bit of both, and each of those parties were counter-democratic oppressors and killers. "Wrong-doing and dictatorship has nothing much to do with economic theory. Please, I want people to realise this. It isn't complicated, is it? It's not losing an argument, it's just recognising from where your resentment really stems. "I am not a communist, because I live in a (diluted) capitalist society. I am a capitalist. I expect some day that my society will be communist, though I do not know if I shall live to see it. "I am an advocate of democracy. I do not live in a democratic society (I live in the UK). I expect that some day my society shall be democratic. I hope that it will, regardless of whether or when it becomes communistic. "I'm sorry, I can't do it anymore. People aren't reading. I'm on your side (all of you, you shites!), and this, "...on paper..." argument is back again even though its paper-thin base has been obliterated. Please, when I'm gone, just try to understand for yourselves. Economy and politics are two different (though obviously linked) causes/struggles/entities/concepts. Capitalism does not equal democracy, and at the same time, nor does communism. Democracy as you've grown up with it is not true democracy. These are the central truths against which you can argue until I've been dead a thousand years, but never will they be eroded. "I have to go, because I can't take the depressing self-defeating condition of the species any longer. I hope to God (well, not really, I'm agnostic) that people are, deep down, on the same side, and that they believe in pure democracy above all else, and can eventually recognise that it has nothing to do with capitalism or communism. "Thanks to anyone who's paid any attention. I'm going back to my book. And beer. Also beer." "I know this feeling. People really need to wake up and realise what you've said." Ah! If I can get-through to just one person...!
You see? 6:55 a.m. - 2005-01-22 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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