3rd March 2004, 12:27 PM
Quote:such a system could never ever work unless human nature itself changed,
That is exactly my opinion about communism.
Well first, remember -- No country has actually tried Marxian communism. Oh countries have been "communist" but none of them got past the first 'destroy the government' phase and quickly became dictatorships. No nation has ever been truly communist. And none probably will be (at least with this society) because Marx had some flaws in this theories...
For instance one of the biggest is the idea that it would spread. Marx, in the 1840s (remembering it in its historical perspective is key), thought that since workers were being so opressed (remember Marxian communism would have been for a industrial capitialistic society, not a peasant farmer one like most of the nations that actually went communist) and getting nothing from their government they should unite and ally with the proletariat (worker class) of the world, not the bourgeoisie (merchants, royalty, etc). He thought that nationalism and patriotism would be stupid ideals for workers because the governments give them nothing. All workers would unite against the bourgeoisie and create a state that in the end would be classless and with no government... and of course he was dead wrong. Nationalism won out bigtime, not international fellowship between workers.
When you look at communism you see a philosophy that just does not work. As we saw in Russia it rotted away from the inside... it isn't an especially realistic belief.
But of course Cuba, China, Vietnam, and North Korea aren't communist. They are dictatorships plain and simple, except with a few communist trappings to delude some of the people.
Oh, and increasing use of capitalism, especially in China. Shows how well Communism works...
Socialism of course works (at least on a small scale) but communism and socialism split way back and are very different philosophies.
And as for North Korea... as I said it's all fine for people like Weltall or ASM to say 'we should attack Korea now'. You aren't threatened by the Koreans after all. But the people in Japan and South Korea? They are desperately trying to avoid a war that they know could and probably would kill millions of their citizens (Japan if NK isn't lying about nukes...). Acting only in our own intrests isn't just shortsighted in this case it's sheer idiocy. Even W. knows we cannot attack North Korea.
China? Despite their abysmal human rights record the course we are taking is the only real one we can. In a perfect world we'd drop the Most Favored Nation treaty with them and say 'we will give it back if you greatly improve your human rights and workplace safety both in laws and in act' but that is impossible because they provide too much cheap junkt for our lawmakers to grow the spines they'd need to do something that could hurt our economy as badly as that would...
War with China? Huh? Why? I see no point. We never would and they wouldn't either... both sides know they need the other...
Oh and as for Japan... Japan from ~1850 to 1945 is an interesting case. I could write a quite lengthy post about it (given how I am in a History of Japan from the 1850s to the present class this semester...), if anyone wants... :) But in short from the beginning the Japanese were essentially brainwashed to believe that the Emperor is a god and that they need to be strong and the only way to be strong and equal to the west is to make a empire. Anything less and they'd get subjuagated... so they over a period of years indoctrinated their people. Given the extremely top-down order of Japanese society once those militarists and industrialists took power it was easy to get the people into line... oh sure there were some more liberal periods but the militarists were never far from power and popular support for military action was very strong whenever they saw any 'threats to their empire/prestige/etc'. Especially with a militarist emperor like Hirohito, but the Japanese Military didn't need much help...
Oh and supressing any mention of any of the atrocities that the Japanese troops committed from the Japanese people was also a matter of course. Stuff like the Rape of Nanking didn't get exposed to the Japanese public until the war was over...