The Pinochet thread got me thinking, because he took out a socialist government, and was credited with fighting communism by some unlikely allies.

What's worse? Being a citizen of a communist nation or being a citizen of a dictatorship?

China or Saudi Arabia?
Iran or Cuba?

depends on whether you are a member of the proletariat or the elite

i guess if push came to shove i'd rather be a communist but once you get to the extreme end of the spectrum they really aren't that different.

Quit stalking me.

hey, doesn't look like anyone else cares about your thread B. i'm just throwing you a frikkin' bone here out of pity

considering no communist states exist, this question is pretty moot.


living in a communist state would be better, clearly.

Depends, there's a lot of different types of Communism. The guy in Chile who Pinochet ousted was an elected official.

Most tyrants end up doing a few good things so the people don't rise up and throw them out. Aside from jailing dissidents, Castro also improved the education and health-care systems of Cuba immensely. If and when democracy ever returns to Cuba, the people are going to be less willing to give up socialized health care because it's been fairly effective. Hitler and the Nazis rebuilt infrastructure in Germany and lowered inflation. Even leaders like Mao and Stalin who killed tens of millions of people industrialized and modernized their countries pretty quickly.

There was another case in the Dominican Republic in which a dictator was ousted, but the guy who replaced him was a former associate and was basically a similar leader, just much less brutal. He ended up enacting extreme environmental protection measures by using the military to take back land from logging companies and forcing them to shut down. Which in America would be seen as an outrage, but it was necessary to protect Dominican forests so the country could have prosperous growth. There was another similar case in feudal Japan during the Tokugawa era.

Back to the Pinochet thing, someone mentioned that he improved the economy, which is fine, but the people's desires should come before the will of their leaders' long term goals. The same thing nearly happened in Venezuela a few years ago.

People here may view them as socialist boogeymen, but they were fairly elected officials. I wouldn't want other countries or foreign businesses meddling in the affairs of our government, That's where the line should be drawn. Anything else goes against the will of the people.

demonocracy!

This is a tricky one. My first impulse would be communism, but I just can't understand how that society would function beyond a generation or two. Not all dictatorships are bad and sometimes a single leader can make better decisions than a mob. I guess communism.

its sort of a black and white question... at least with communism. of course living in a socialist government would be better than both, I beleive the one thing that communism and a dicatorship have in common is that people are forced to live according to the will and oppinion of either one man or a government under threat of a military power, besidses that the differences are more or less economic.

I personlly would rather live in a mixed economy that has tendencies towards socialist policies. sorta off topic but sorta relevant.

It's a false choice. Communism as we have known it is no different 99% of teh time from a fascist dictatorship.

The question is totalitarianism vs. democracy.


"Would you like horse shit or cow shit for dinner this evening?"

Mao did not modernize China one bit, Deng Xiaoping in the 80's did that. Mao, however, did manage to sustain a fairly long period of peace and independence for China for the first time in over a century. That is why he become almost immortalized by most of the Chinese, perpetuating his power and eventually allowed him to become a dictator.

but i agree with most of what you said.

The dictator- is he or she a benevolent one? The commies- are they more Stalinist collectivist or more Scandinavian social democrat?

Salvador Allende was not a communist. I don't understand why Pinochet's death inspired this thread.

Mao did modernize it a little, though pretty much everything he did failed miserably.

Stalin, however, was a huge success except for the 20 million dead people it took to industrialize Russia in 10 years.

Cuba?

Do they even really count as people though? I mean, Ukranians, who cares?

I don't understand how the Soviets were able to produce such long lasting nationalism when all they did was fuck over everyone else in order to benefit the ethnic Russians. Thats some damn good propaganda.

There's about 700 years of history in the Russian Empire of people getting fucked by oppressive governments with no regard for the rule of law. That IS Nationaist sentiment in Russia. Makes them feel like home.

I stick with the belief that we may have a messed up system here but ideally it is solid. If people only realized that politicians have to do what we want rather than the other way around.

I just heard a guy on the radio who was talking about Allende, and this journalist was a MAJOR critic of Pinochet, so he was no right-wing stooge. He said that Allende was to the left of even the Chilean Socialist Party, which was closely aligned with teh Soviet Union. Allende was a personal friend of Castro, and had a more radical social plan than even those in teh rest of his party.

However you feel about Pinochet, saying that Allende was not a Communist is not really being truthful.