Posted on 07/21/2015 8:13:33 AM PDT by C19fan
“If you understood what communism was, you would hope, you would pray on your knees that we would some day become communist.” - Jane Fonda
Yep, brings back memories of Jane Fonda and the good old days of her tour of North Vietnam.........
Maybe Jane could go back to Hanoi and get coffee at the Starbucks there??? And then make some inane pronouncements again????
Calling a system that allows free enterprise and private property, the antithesis of communism, “Communist “ is oxymoronic or just plain moronic.
China and Vietnam are much closer to a fascist state or a one party dictatorship.
Like here?
Schindler’s List actually displayed fascist control of “private industry” pretty well. Oscar Schindler’s factories produced what the nazi government told him to produce and he produced it where the nazi government told him to produce it. If he hadn’t been a member of the nazi party in good standing he wouldn’t have owned his business and wouldn’t have saved the lives he saved.
Liberals like to claim the nazis were capitalists and point to nazi supporting businesses doing very well in nazi Germany. It always leaves them stumped when I ask them what happened to the businesses that didn’t support the nazis.
How long until it dies at Burkeley?
That’s an excellent analogy.
Every system is “Capitalist”, it’s a question of who controls the Capital.
Some things bother me about chinese cannibalism....vs..african cannibalism...or Japanese cannibalism...or Islamic cannibalism...............#1 the Scale....with 40-80 million killed during Maos “cultural revolution”..and the government ordering cannibalism “as a method of proving loyalty”....that means a large portion off the chinese pop....has eaten people.....................#2...the fact that it is still an accepted practice ...50 yrs later.......................................#3...The fact that it is practiced without necessity “when noone is starving” .....................................#4 The fact that the same government is still in charge of that country....#5.. .The fact that due to the size of china.......1/3 of the worlds current population has been partially dehumanized through acceptance and or practice of this primal behavior
We’re going to prop up the communists in Cuba by similar means. The people will have greater access to “stuff” but freedom will remain out of reach as the people are appeased by their new stuff.
“Meet the new boss,
Same as the old boss.”
P. Townsend c1971
My understanding is that after the communist take-over of Vietnam was complete, China cut back its food aid - they simply couldn’t justify it anymore. The Hanoi government tried to increase domestic production through central planning but of course this had the opposite effect. Faced with serious food shortages, they decided to experiment in a small way by relaxing the controls on farmers in one region in the south, at the same time allowing them to trade and profit from anything above the production quotas. The benefits were immediate and the rest, as they say, is history. The country went from subsistance to a surplus in rice and other produce.
I don’t know what their leaders’ motives had been in following that path; I like to think that however hardened and desperate they were - just maybe - the prospect of seeing the population starve was too much even for them despite, or maybe because, of what the country had endured during the war years?
“In the latter, (fascist) the state pretends somewhat to private ownership, but maintains total control over the means of production, despite the fiction.”
That seems oddly familiar.
China has only a thin veneer of “capitalism”, I wonder if Hanoi is any different
You betcha. It should.
It’s likely to be the last bastion.
I would imagine many of them started out as idealists like many mush-brained, young people today who wish for a "fair and just" society. In Russia in the early 1900s there were many leftist parties vying for leadership of the masses and wishing to overthrow the czar.
The problem is in the absence of the rule of law, the most violent and radical people always take power. That's what happened in Russia with the Bolsheviks. When the Czar and later Kerensky were overthrown, there was no law. The law was whatever Lenin and the Bolsheviks said it was.
Virtually every country where communism/socialism took place the most radical and violent leftists got themselves into power. Ho Chi Minh was similar to Lenin, Stalin, Mao and the rest of the butchers. He was the most ruthless communist. Nice guys didn't rise far in those communist parties. Ho condemned Vietnam to fifty years of suffering and poverty, and millions of deaths.
A Youtube search on Vietnam and food will turn up a wave of food vendors in Vietnam.
They have elected officials but they tend to stay elected forever.
Kinda like us.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.