Comment by afiori | Hacker News Reader

Comment by afiori | Hacker News Reader

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I come from a culture that is comparatively pro-comunism, but my personal reaction to people promoting comunism is the same as when a religious person claims that their religion is based on love, understanding, and inclusion.

In the case of religion (whether or not I believe it is positive or negative) I know that there are many many dark corners that the "it is all about love" person is not talking about.

Same thing with comunism, I have known in my life people I would be slightly afraid to see holding power flying that banner and we all know what happened many times in history, and while this can be said of many ideology in my opinion the comunism cluster looks like it is trying to sweep the dust under the rug.

I am sure that there are a lot of people that are trying their best to rehabilitate comunism from the curse that Stalin and many many others have cast and I wish them the best of luck, but I do not think that their job is close to being done.

> Same thing with comunism, I have known in my life people I would be slightly afraid to see holding power flying that banner and we all know what happened many times in history, and while this can be said of many ideology in my opinion the comunism cluster looks like it is trying to sweep the dust under the rug.

Having spent much of my early twenties embedded with some of today's more prominent socialist activists in the US, I can tell you that behind closed doors the only subject that ever crossed their lips was "power".

It was enough to terrify me off of such thoughts and ideals. All these years later and I still wake up in a cold sweat at night having nightmares about the people I knew getting what they wanted.

>can tell you that behind closed doors the only subject that ever crossed their lips was "power".

So you talked to politicians?

Surely socialist activists are no closer to having any sort of power now than they did when you were in your twenties?

Also, would you mind to be a bit more specific about who these people are? In my experience Americans aren't particularly good at identifying what constitutes a socialist to the rest of the world.

Comunist are also quite bad at that, I have met moderate reasonable people under the comunism banner that were sorta ok with other people calling themselves stalinists.

For example for all the criticism that you can point against religion most religious communities openly and clearly oppose and denounce terrorism.

In my view comunism was never able to separate itselft from a revolutionary mindset, and so agitators and extremists were always (since Marx, at least) considered a planned and likely step.

The one thing I did take away though is neither economic system is good or bad. A good emulsion of both is the ideal. But one thing is certain, at least in my opinion. Both systems require violence to keep civil society in check. A standing military is a subtle threat by the state. Its hard to think about it. The state spends a lit of money on violence and projecting it. Why?

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