Red, with Reagan's passing, some of your brothers on the left are coming out of the woodwork opining that Reagan shouldn't receive credit for defeating Communism since it was a failure waiting to happen anyway.

To wit, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., "... but surely the thing that did in the Russians was that time had proved communism an economic, political and moral disaster." Or according to Strobe Talbott, the Soviet Union had failed "not because of anything the outside world had done or not done ... but because of defects and inadequecies at its core."

So how do you feel that some of your Leftist brethren are jumping off the commie bandwagon and kicking the red horse when it's down? ;) (Sorry, I didn't cut&paste the entire article!)

http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/25318.htm

Oh, and in honor of our resident Marxists, I quote Ronald Reagan in 1982, "In an ironic sense, Karl Marx was right. We are witnessing today a great revolutionary crisis. ... But the crisis is happening not in the free, non-Marxist West, but in the home of Marxism-Leninism, the Soviet Union."

You are confusing Communism, a philosophy, with the USSR, a state.

I think History and the ghost of Marx will have the last laugh on Reagan. Perhaps Irony will be in on the chuckle too, given the ever more specatcularly failing economic policies being passed off as his legacy.

[QUOTE=HouseMoney
So how do you feel that some of your Leftist brethren are jumping off the commie bandwagon and kicking the red horse when it's down? ;) (Sorry, I didn't cut&paste the entire article!) <A href="http://."[/QUOTE" target=_blank>[/QUOTE]

socialism (i.e. Stalinism) and how we Trotskyists were (even back in 1990) happy when the whole mutant nightmare collapsed. It's a longer discussion than I have time for right now. But believe me, I never recognized the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe as legitimate expressions of Marxism.

Interesting question. I'll come back to it when I have time...

Red, with Reagan's passing, some of your brothers on the left are coming out of the woodwork opining that Reagan shouldn't receive credit for defeating Communism since it was a failure waiting to happen anyway.

To wit, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., "... but surely the thing that did in the Russians was that time had proved communism an economic, political and moral disaster." Or according to Strobe Talbott, the Soviet Union had failed "not because of anything the outside world had done or not done ... but because of defects and inadequecies at its core."

So how do you feel that some of your Leftist brethren are jumping off the commie bandwagon and kicking the red horse when it's down? ;) (Sorry, I didn't cut&paste the entire article!)

http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/25318.htm

Oh, and in honor of our resident Marxists, I quote Ronald Reagan in 1982, "In an ironic sense, Karl Marx was right. We are witnessing today a great revolutionary crisis. ... But the crisis is happening not in the free, non-Marxist West, but in the home of Marxism-Leninism, the Soviet Union."

Schlesinger is just mouthing what George Kennan (the father of containment theory) wrote in 1947 in his "Source of Soviet Conduct." He believed the "Stalinist" state was doomed. Although the U.S. at that time made no delineation between what Marx wrote and what Stalin did, they only saw it as the natural occurance or outcropping of Communism.

The reason Marx fails in his philosophy, (in my humble estimation) is that it takes out human desire and human wants. These intrinsic traits cause one to want to dominate another, for one to have it better than another and basically makes Capitalism work. For Marxism to work everyone must want for the greater good as human history has shown that has not been the case thus far.

I'm curious to hear Red's exposition on how the Soviet Union wasn't a bastion of communism. I've heard it before from marxists and generally write it off as utopian well-wishing for some society we have never had.

On the flip side, hard core lassaiz faire types will contend that we have never given capitalism a proper chance without cutting it off at the knees with regulation. Maybe it is the same attitude.

Yeah I find it quite hypocritical of these 'pundit's since most at the time were saying that we were going to be bogged down in the Cold War arms race with the SU for a long time. That the AR would be our undoing. That we would put all our financial resources into something with no return on investment and no longstanding benefits other than to drag us down. They all said we should embrace the SU for they would be around for a long time. The we needed to find a way to work with them. Now all of a sudden it was no great feat to defeat the SU without a shot being fired in anger.

I also find it funny that Reagan is now being criticized for how he was able to extract us from one of the worst economic conditions in modern time. It does seem that Reaganomics worked. Carter did nothing to help the situation and probably made it worse with his weakness on national security. He even cited the state of the union as being almost in despair in his infamous "Malaise Speech". Democrats hate giving any Republican credit.

Yeah I find it quite hypocritical of these 'pundit's since most at the time were saying that we were going to be bogged down in the Cold War arms race with the SU for a long time. That the AR would be our undoing. That we would put all our financial resources into something with no return on investment and no longstanding benefits other than to drag us down. They all said we should embrace the SU for they would be around for a long time. The we needed to find a way to work with them. Now all of a sudden it was no great feat to defeat the SU without a shot being fired in anger.

I also find it funny that Reagan is now being criticized for how he was able to extract us from one of the worst economic conditions in modern time. It does seem that Reaganomics worked. Carter did nothing to help the situation and probably made it worse with his weakness on national security. He even cited the state of the union as being almost in despair in his infamous "Malaise Speech". Democrats hate giving any Republican credit.



Yep we are just a bunch of antithetical Ann Coulters freebasing history, rewriting her wonderfully researched, "Treason" where she accuses all Democrats of being Commies. (Read it very funny stuff)

If you don't think that living 40 years under the specter of Nuclear disaster a long time (decades longer than any hot war) or that no one fought the Cold War before Reagan you are mistaken (not uncommon).

First by 1947 Lippman and Kennan were already debating how to take on the Soviets. (Kennan won that debate) leading to NSC-68 which led Truman to Okay the Nitrogen bomb upping the ante appreciably. Truman raised the level of spending some 300 percent, secured the Marshal Plan coupled with the Truman Doctrine, stabilized key areas such as Turkey, France and Italy all by 1950. He developed the rules of the Cold War rules that Reagan would follow to a great extent. Every president worked to undue the Soviets in one form or another.

From Kennan in 1947. "But in actuality the possibilities for American policy are by no means limited to holding the line and hoping for the best. It is entirely possible for the United States to influence by its actions the internal developments, both within Russia and throughout the international Communist movement, by which Russian policy is largely determined."

"But the United States has it in its power to increase enormously the strains under which Soviet policy must operate, to force upon the Kremlin a far greater degree of moderation and circumspection than it has had to observe in recent years, and in this way to promote tendencies which must eventually find their outlet in either the breakup or the gradual mellowing of Soviet power."

"But the possibility remains (and in the opinion of this writer it is a strong one) that Soviet power, like the capitalist world of its conception, bears within it the seeds of its own decay, and that the sprouting of these seeds is well advanced."

Reagonomics is tatamount to a punch line among economic circles.

I realize that Reagan was not the first, nor among the first. However to try to diminish his roll in it's ultimate demise, is pathetic. He played all the cards perfectly. The Star Wars Plan was brilliant! It scared the crap out of the Russians and they knew they couldn't play the game at that level. Reagan wasn't afraid to use it. He knew he could sell it and make the Russians believe their attempts to circumvent it, would be feutal.

You make claim that Reaganomics is a joke, but it worked and there is no denying that. Please, someone, anyone show how any other policy or event helped remove us from the deep recession we and death spiral we were in. The Bush tax cuts are having the same effect on the economy as did JFK's. There was precedent for it when Reagan did it. He wasn't afraid to use it, just as he wasn't afraid to take the bold measures he did with the SU. That is what makes great presidents - learning from the successful lessons history has to offer, not trying to reinvent the wheel.

Your inaccuracies are close to lamentable.
You speak with so much hyperbole that no one can take you seriously.

Reagan did not preside over one of the worst economic conditions of all time.

The panic in the first Washington Admin, when speculators nearly bankrupted the country and rolled back the progress Hamilton had made.

The panic during Jackson's administration and his destruction of the National Bank.

Lincoln's enormous debt or the dessimation of the South that was almost total.

The Great Depression.

I do not seek to diminish Reagan role, I merely put him as one of three presiding people who helped end the Cold War at that time. Gorby, the Pope and Ronnie. I have already credited him for his Iceland summit in another thread.

Reagan rolled back much of that "success" in revenue enhancements over the following two years.

You speak of knowing your history as being useful for learning "lessons" just so long as your knowledge is deeper than thimble deep I suppose.

Regan passed the largest tax hike in the history of sentient life (given the hyperbole piled on to Clinton's second largest tax hike). It was what was needed at the time (especially to correct the damage of his failed tax-cut policies), so I agree that he deserves credit for learning from history.

Reason 198,234 that Reagan, for all the damage that he did to this country and to the world, was a better man than Bush.

There are lots of flavors of communism, but let's stick with Marxism for this question.

1- marx said that first came class consciousness for labor, then they would spontaneously rise up. The Russian revolution was led by a small group of elites who thought they could then "bring" the lower classes to class awareness AFTER the revolution. Marx is a mass action theory, Lenin was an elite actor theorist.

2- marx said advanced industrial society was needed before the revolution. Russia was a peasant society, not an industrial one. The conditions for a real marxist revolution were not present. Related to 1 above.

3- the USSR was a centralized state, more socialistic than marxist. Marx foresaw the "withering away" of the state. Marx felt control should be directly exercised by the worker, and he had more a decentralized idea of economic activity. The USSR was the exact opposite of this.

I am sure Red can add more and expand on these items as well.

Soviet Russia was not in any sense communist. It was state capitalism, pure and simple. Meet the new boss/same as the old boss.

Nor was it a classless society. A commisariat/apparatchik class emerged that was in every really existing sense an upper class/bourgoisie. Just because a bureaucrat is ripping off the worker instead of an owner/boss ripping him off, doesn't make it any less anti-Marx. The fat bureaucrat has a dacha. The worker shares a small apartment with six families. This is a classless society? Pardon me while I laugh bitterly.

hoo is correct on all points too. Russian, a nation of serfs, was not in any sense ripe for a true industrial workers' state, and what we got was predictable: A grossly deformed monstrosity. "Socialism in one country" indeed.

Don't get me started on Maoism.

Whenh true communism comes, you will stare in wonder, and bow in admiration & awe.

Hasta la victoria siempre!

RM

Under communism, it's just the opposite."

John Kenneth Galbraith

The reasons Americans hated communist Russia was that, not only were dictatorial regimes killing dissenters, not only were communist revolutions bad for rich capitalists, but religions were persecuted.

By the mid Fifties, the US had clear military superiority and more nuclear bombs on much better rockets than the Soviets, and they knew if they tried anything, they'd get smacked. They funded a few Third World revolutionaries in former European colonies, while we funded Third World dictators friendly to our capitalist investors. Even before Vietnam, it was obvious the Soviets weren't intent on world domination, but our policy makers were still thinking under that illusion. Why?

Reagan's "Evil Empire" belief is a direct spinoff of Truman's "Godless communism." The Cold War went on for another 35 years under the illusion we Christians were fighting those godless Russian communists.

Is history repeating itself?

The reasons Americans hated communist Russia was that, not only were dictatorial regimes killing dissenters, not only were communist revolutions bad for rich capitalists, but religions were persecuted.

By the mid Fifties, the US had clear military superiority and more nuclear bombs on much better rockets than the Soviets, and they knew if they tried anything, they'd get smacked. They funded a few Third World revolutionaries in former European colonies, while we funded Third World dictators friendly to our capitalist investors. Even before Vietnam, it was obvious the Soviets weren't intent on world domination, but our policy makers were still thinking under that illusion. Why?

Reagan's "Evil Empire" belief is a direct spinoff of Truman's "Godless communism." The Cold War went on for another 35 years under the illusion we Christians were fighting those godless Russian communists.

Is history repeating itself?
Religion is a hobby, war is about money, international relations are about power. The cold war was not some random betting on third-world horeses by Washington and Moskow. It was real, and it was one of the longest periods of peace between the great powers. The USSR was very interested in world domination, just as we are, and GM and Phillip Morris are.

Religion is used to influence people who have no influence. In Ireland, Israel, the US, central Africa, powerful people make the decisions based on a balance of power, then religion is used to tell the unwashed masses what side they are on.

One of the rare instances where I'm in general agreement with 53T.

But maybe someone can answer me this, since he brought it up: once the corp's like GM and Phillip Morris have acheived world domination, what will they have left to dominate? ie: what will they do for an encore? I suppose spend their time/effort beating down The Great Unwashed to keep the status quo?

But then won't that get boring after awhile? I mean, no new frontiers to conquer!

Religion is a hobby, war is about money, international relations are about power. The cold war was not some random betting on third-world horeses by Washington and Moskow. It was real, and it was one of the longest periods of peace between the great powers. The USSR was very interested in world domination, just as we are, and GM and Phillip Morris are.

Religion is used to influence people who have no influence. In Ireland, Israel, the US, central Africa, powerful people make the decisions based on a balance of power, then religion is used to tell the unwashed masses what side they are on.

Balance of power can be interpreted as a perpetual standoff between mutually threatening forces. The Cold War was like that. Our strategists were convinced the Soviets had the will to attack us, and they believed we had the will to attack them. Each side waved its missiles at each other like snarling dogs, and checkmated each other's little moves around the world.

Our Commander in Chief would say you were stoned, coming out with the idea that religion is a hobby, and is only invoked by military leaders to get the troops motivated. In a previous thread some of us agreed that Bush was fighting Iraq primarily motivated by religion: save Israel, and prepare the ME for the second coming of Christ. The enemy are Muslim fundamentalists. The war is a contest of religious convictions. That's pretty idealistic. A cynic would have negotiated with Hussein and gotten all the oil he wanted.

I'm just trying to suggest that this same "Christian fundamentalist" mindset, this moral judgement that we are good because we're Christian, and they are evil because they don't believe in God, is what prolonged the Cold War at least 30 years, when it was obvious the Soviets were no longer a threat to US security. Reagan can be credited with recognizing that the "glasnost" smiles on Gorbachev's face were the signal the Cold War was over, and responding to it. He may have propelled the process forward with his Star Wars threat, but he can't take credit for actually causing it.

Conservatives of the Dick Cheney variety cling to that notion of security being a function of "balance of power." But the US has it all, hands down. There is no other military force nearly as large as the US. The US can now do anything it wants, and the rest of the world can only protest. Now it seems obvious that military force works only for an occassional trouble spot, a "police action," but that world security is more realistically obtained not by military occupations, but with trade treaties, international governing bodies, and open borders and labor markets, so that as many people as possible are happy and economically secure.

The CEOs of conglomerates are the kings and generals of today. They are the autocrats who control the destinies of millions of workers. They're the ones who's power has to be "balanced," not military dictators wishing to govern the world by force of arms.

Funny thing about religion and the cold war. Eisenhower was completely adverse to religion in fact when he was deciding whether or not to run for president a confidant chided him that if he ran he would have to go to church. To wit his reply was "the only way they get me into church it feet first."

This disdain for religion did not dissuade his administration from using religion as a weapon. By May 1954 the Psychological Planning Board released a top secret memo about how to effectively use religion against communism. It felt that the USSR was vulnerable in this area and recommended mobilization from the United States Information Agency, Voice of America and others to combat communism. "Because of the immoral and un-christian nature of Communism and its opposition to and persecution of religions...the use of religion as a cold war instrument should be the furtherance of world spiritual health; for the communist threat could not exist in a spiritually healthy world." DDRS CK3100507266

Funny thing about religion and the cold war. Eisenhower was completely adverse to religion in fact when he was deciding whether or not to run for president a confidant chided him that if he ran he would have to go to church. To wit his reply was "the only way they get me into church it feet first."

This disdain for religion did not dissuade his administration from using religion as a weapon. By May 1954 the Psychological Planning Board released a top secret memo about how to effectively use religion against communism. It felt that the USSR was vulnerable in this area and recommended mobilization from the United States Information Agency, Voice of America and others to combat communism. "Because of the immoral and un-christian nature of Communism and its opposition to and persecution of religions...the use of religion as a cold war instrument should be the furtherance of world spiritual health; for the communist threat could not exist in a spiritually healthy world." DDRS CK3100507266

This is a good example of what 53T posted about religion justifying war to "the unwashed masses." The definition of "a spiritually healthy world" seems totally dependent on the definer's sources of spiritual sustenance. To know who we're fighting, we have to know why a Muslim willing to blow himself up, feels so alienated and dispossessed in the culture we've created. It's a spiritual problem, very much like the competing ideologies during the Cold War, but not at all like WWII, the last great territorial war.

The more I hear about Eisenhower, the more I admire his intellect. He was the first to come up with the warning about "the industrial-military complex," which also helped continue the Cold War beyond it's time, and is now enriching itself running the war in Iraq.

Eisenhower was completely adverse to religion in fact when he was deciding whether or not to run for president a confidant chided him that if he ran he would have to go to church. To wit his reply was "the only way they get me into church it feet first."



I like Ike!

This is possibly the best explanation I have heard to date, between hoo and red. Like most things, they are done best when done willingly. I believe the beauty of having a free market is that people are free to enter into communal societies at will, however under a communist market it is not possible for an individual to enter into a private enterprise. This situation leads me to believe that the free market economy serves the best interest of people. I personally think it would be great for people to band together as communists, provided that they don't overthrow governments that recognize my property rights.

This is possibly the best explanation I have heard to date, between hoo and red. Like most things, they are done best when done willingly. I believe the beauty of having a free market is that people are free to enter into communal societies at will, however under a communist market it is not possible for an individual to enter into a private enterprise. This situation leads me to believe that the free market economy serves the best interest of people. I personally think it would be great for people to band together as communists, provided that they don't overthrow governments that recognize my property rights.
you might get a better idea of some of the problems ...

http://www.geocities.com/cordobakaf/boggs.html

The CEOs of conglomerates are the kings and generals of today. They are the autocrats who control the destinies of millions of workers. They're the ones who's power has to be "balanced," not military dictators wishing to govern the world by force of arms.

Interesting perspective, but what specific activity would be a proper balance? There are many companies that I disapprove of and about all I can do is protest with my wallet. Is that what you have in mind?

Interesting perspective, but what specific activity would be a proper balance? There are many companies that I disapprove of and about all I can do is protest with my wallet. Is that what you have in mind?

Roosevelt said that the day corporations have more power in government than the people of the country. A corporate fascist state would exist.

Roosevelt said that the day corporations have more power in government than the people of the country. A corporate fascist state would exist.It contains its own schism. He has skillfully manuvered himself into this position by convincing both the corporations and the fundamentalist/religious that he is firmly and exclusively their boy. So far he has satisfied both constituencies admirably. It's been a nifty juggling act to watch.

HOWEVER ...

Corporate fascism and theocratic fascism (of the Christian Dominionist type that represents Bush's core religio-poitical constituency) cannot peacably coexist when the time comes to take final power. The fascist state that the Bush family seeks to impose on America must, ultimately, be one or the other. And that raises interesting possibilities, including the world's first-ever fascist civil war, right here in America. It will be interesting to watch the Bush family send out troops with live-ammo machine guns to face off against the boiling Christian Dominionist mobs, who will descend on Washington when they realize they've been betrayed (or, conversely, when he sends the troops to seize corporate headquarters and arrest CEOs all the across the country when he casts his final lot with the theocrats.)

Oh, the good times will roll!

Then comes The Revolution!

It contains its own schism. He has skillfully manuvered himself into this position by convincing both the corporations and the fundamentalist/religious that he is firmly and exclusively their boy. So far he has satisfied both constituencies admirably. It's been a nifty juggling act to watch.

HOWEVER ...

Corporate fascism and theocratic fascism (of the Christian Dominionist type that represents Bush's core religio-poitical constituency) cannot peacably coexist when the time comes to take final power. The fascist state that the Bush family seeks to impose on America must, ultimately, be one or the other. And that raises interesting possibilities, including the world's first-ever fascist civil war, right here in America. It will be interesting to watch the Bush family send out troops with live-ammo machine guns to face off against the boiling Christian Dominionist mobs, who will descend on Washington when they realize they've been betrayed (or, conversely, when he sends the troops to seize corporate headquarters and arrest CEOs all the across the country when he casts his final lot with the theocrats.)

Oh, the good times will roll!

Then comes The Revolution!

Menace, seriously, how do you expect the masses to rise up when they can't even get off the couch to change the channel. The majority of America would prefer to watch Riverdance than get up and switch the television that didn't make their eyes boil. These cannot be the same fat, tired, SUV driving, fops to lead a revolt. Nor can you expect the apartment dwelling, credit card inundated, sportscenter watching plebe to rise up. That leaves you with the immigrants that can be squashed or the disenfranchised urbanites that the voting public would just as soon be "erased" anyway.

We are a collective group of Neros fiddling while Rome burns...

Menace, seriously, how do you expect the masses to rise up when they can't even get off the couch to change the channel. The majority of America would prefer to watch Riverdance than get up and switch the television that didn't make their eyes boil. These cannot be the same fat, tired, SUV driving, fops to lead a revolt. Nor can you expect the apartment dwelling, credit card inundated, sportscenter watching plebe to rise up. That leaves you with the immigrants that can be squashed or the disenfranchised urbanites that the voting public would just as soon be "erased" anyway.

We are a collective group of Neros fiddling while Rome burns...
Menace, seriously, how do you expect the masses to rise up when they can't even get off the couch to change the channel....
The only thing that will get Americans off their collective duff is the sudden realization that jackbooted fascists are at their door! The Bush family is very useful in that regard. They're so stupid you have to love them. They're driving the soft caress of American liberal democracy right off the cliff at top speed, and that's when Revolution will occur.

It's interesting: Most unreflective reactionaries fail to understand that the best defense against Revulution/Communism is the soft liberalism that keeps the masses fat, sassy and content. (The Romans understood the value of bread and circuses). When you really tromp the bastids down under the iron boot of Bush-like fascism, now THAT'S when the grumbling, and eventually the uprising, starts.

I hate counterrevolutionary liberals! I love Bush! Bush, unbeknownst to himself, DESPITE himself, is the Che of the next American Revolution!

Hasta la Victoria Siempre, Jorge!

I hate counterrevolutionary liberals! I love Bush! Bush, unbeknownst to himself, DESPITE himself, is the Che of the next American Revolution!

Hasta la Victoria Siempre, Jorge!

Does that mean he gets to die in the jungles of South America like Che G did?

Does that mean he gets to die in the jungles of South America like Che G did?
welcome him there, and see that he is properly ... taken care of. LOL!

Just a joke, Mr Asscroft!