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*lights Weaver beacon*
So, the story is, you probably all have seen folks claiming that Evil Dictator X (Stalin, Mao etc.) actually isn't a communist, because he did bad stuff that isn't intended to happen under communism. But you know what, to me, being a communist isn't about behaving like a citizen of the perfect communist society, it's about adhering to a philosophy put forth by Marx and others, and working towards the goal of achieving that perfect communist society. If you came up with an idea that it requires the murder of a hundred million people and one clown, and you did that, then you're just a very evil and/or very crazy communist. Especially as vanilla Marxism includes some ideas about revolutions and stuff. Otherwise we could never speak of ideologically or even religiously inspired violence.
(Inspired by a discussion on NationStates forums.)
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Also, you're kind of ignoring the fact that the Ukranian Free Territories were actually anarcho-communist until the Soviets annexed them in a bid for power.
^^^^ How about that
So, as far as I know, communism has that revolution stuff built in, unless there's some sort of non-Marxian communism I don't know of. The democratic socialists decided they can get away with this part, and for the most part became social democrats. Lenin added some practice to the theory of revolution. AFAIK he saw the revolts of 1905 as a proof that unguided revolution will never succeed, hence the "guiding role of the Party". As for my own limited understanding of the Marxist theory, it seems like communism is self-defeating: if socialism comes as a result of capitalist society stretched to the point of revolution, then by speeding up the revolution, we risk that the post-capitalist society we achieve is not ready to create socialism.
edit: \/ worked for me, but swapped for another.
One of many varieties. Fascism is my favourite part of the pic.
This picture amuses me greatly.
Mussolini described fascism as "the merger of state and corporate power." We're not really too far off from that these days.