[QUOTE=Marbalo;34956679]Oh no, they were doing plenty of things worth noting in Europe, and Im sorry if my wording lead you to believe that I thought they did absolutely nothing.
What I was getting at was that the operations in Italy and France - while noteworthy, are not as statistically significant when compared to Soviet operations, which were usually extremely bloody, brutal and even sometimes barbaric. (Although that has changed as the war progressed and the Red Army started to employ both new, experimental and old cunning tactics while both field marshals and soldiers gained combat experience.)
Basically, the Soviet Union was the only European power capable of eradicating Germany and at the same time even fighting off the Japanese all the way in the far east and the Italians [I]on their own.[/I] Although I admit it'd have a very hard time making due without the Western supply shipments, regardless I am sure that they would be able to hold off long enough for their mass industrialization to kick in thus rendering the supplies useless. If memory serves me right, I think by mid-'44 the SU started to actually have overequipped units and started to distribute the incoming shipments of supplies to irrelevant fronts such as Georgia and the surrounding area - instead of the actual Eastern Front.
[editline]2nd March 2012[/editline]
I used to have a massive WW2 PDF library focused on the Soviet Union, I would source all my claims if I hadn't lost the links.[/QUOTE]
Whether or not you [I]believe[/I] the Soviet Union could have taken Germany, Italy, and Japan all on its own is of little consequence in regard to what they [I]did[/I] do. They waited to take action on Japan and Germany itself pushed quite a distance into Soviet territory, so to say that they could take on the Axis by themselves is not only unlikely but it sounds impossible.
The Soviets had no reason to control Germany whatsoever, any more than Americans, French, or British did. I can understand why you could see that they should have oversaw a larger chunk because of losses, but losses did not mean right. The Soviets were ill prepared. Stalin spent his best in Finland, executed all of his experienced generals, and used the tactics of raping and pillaging his way with fear-driven, starving, untrained units. Trying to say that the Soviets should get more because they lost more is equivalent to saying that someone fucked up and lost because of their own ignorance, only to come back on top only after aided by their friend, so they should get first place over their friends. It doesn't work like that.
The Soviets had no chance of surviving the war without Allied cooperation. Had D-Day not happened, Stalingrad would have been lost, and the Germans would have been at Moscow's door in weeks. That's not to say that the Allies had won the war single-handed- they would not have succeeded without the Soviets. It was the splitting of the forces that caused a German failure, not the sacrifices of the Soviets or invasions of the allies.
The Soviets had no push in Italy- it had fallen purely by Allied hands and the Soviets would have never had made it to Italy on their own, even after the Germans had fallen. By the end of the war, the Soviets were seeing food, fuel, and morale shortages, surviving only on US and UK exports. Their homeland was in ruins, and I'm absolutely confused at how you could say there were "millions" of experienced troops when the Soviets were shipping men from Siberia and the far east and using "undesirable non-Russian" Armenians, Caucasians, and Kazahks in Germany by the end of the war, many of whom had not seen direct combat until landing on German soil. A Soviet soldier pre-Stalingrad was expected only to survive a couple of weeks. Post-Stalingrad, a month at most. The officers were beginning to become experienced, sure, but the tactics still revolved around human wave charges and barbaric sacrifices of scores of men for the capture of even the smallest amount of land.
Besides this, there's a couple of right-out fallacies you've stated.
Firstly, the Soviets took Berlin with consent of the Allies. They had talked it over beforehand, it was agreed that the Soviets would take Berlin. It wasn't as if they snatched it out of anyone's hands. It was a decision made for the reason you promoted- the Soviets had lost the most, therefore they would claim the prize. The bad relations after the war came because Stalin had plans to not stop in Germany- it was not the Allies being the aggressors, it was Stalin.
Secondly, the Soviets had no Japanese front. They signed a treaty to not attack each other, and it was held, until the Manchurian invasion. The invasion was a breaking of the treaty by the Soviets- the Japanese held it honorably, and occurred parallel to the Atomic Bombings, which they had no knowledge of. There was not strong resistance. At this point in the war, the Japanese were drawing most of their troops to the home islands in preparation of an American invasion. The Soviets took advantage of the weakness of Manchuko and pushed in hopes of taking as much territory as possible for bartering in Yalta. it was purely a diplomatic and political move meant to give the Soviets a say in post-war Japan. They marched their asses straight down to the 38th parallel, where they were stopped by American troops landing in Korea to stop the unsupported Soviet advance.
When Japan surrendered to the Allies, one of the terms was that Japanese forces in China would not surrender to the Soviets, and so they didn't. While this was a problem, the Soviets simply dealt with it by handing over their occupied territory to the Chinese communists and deconstructing the industries of entire Manchurian cities to be shipped back into the USSR. By no means was it a loss for the Soviets. The complete extent of the Japanese front was them leisurely taking north China and Korea, throwing a tantrum over not getting their way in Yalta because of the atomic bombs stopping the war early, giving their territory to Mao and stealing the industry.
What I'm saying here is that it's bullshit that the Soviets did much of anything in the east, didn't have the power to do anything much after Berlin, and didn't deserve all of Germany. You don't reward failure, especially if that failure involves mass rape, executions, and pillaging.
I'd be happy to argue this with you more, but you're right. I hate it when a wall of text comes up, and then someone quotes it with counter points for each point, making it longer, and then someone quotes that etc. That's why I dropped out of the last communism vs capitalism thread.
[QUOTE=Zally13;34923376]I don't believe that saying they're perfect systems is correct if they're susceptible to corruption. However I do agree with the whole "which system is more resistant to human corruption" idea. I think that true Capitalism is a neat idea that turns greed into a driving force to turn the cogs of economics, and works pretty well.[/QUOTE]
Perfect is a subjective term. There are such things that can be perfect and elegant in terms of nature, and things which are perfect in terms of catering to human productiveness. I do believe that notion, that Capitalism and Communism are perfect systems. BUT, I don't believe that they're necessarily perfect in terms of human desirability.
[QUOTE=Zally13;34923376]I believe humans, for the most part, want to do what is best for them. This is not wrong, but merely how nature seems to be. The strongest, smartest, most adaptable (Darwin, I guess) thrive compared to the rest. To take a type of governance that fosters this while not destroying the lower people seems to be required.
I'm not entirely sure on what that would be.[/QUOTE]
Yes, by law of nature a Darwinistic idea would be required for human productiveness. So far the best idea that mimics this is Capitalism. But, I will note that Capitalism isn't perfect to human productiveness either because of the fact that the most merit-able humans quite notoriously don't fill the most powerful positions in our hierarchical systems. These positions tend to be filled with malevolence or incompetence, unless this is an indication of what our universe deems as merit.
P.S. Humans are an imperfect creature. To try and model perfect systems around an imperfect centerpiece sounds like an impossibility.
P.S.S. The only epiphany that will get you out of that debacle is the one that implies imperfection is a perfect invention in a perfect world, and good luck finding peace in certainty with a stigma like that.
Note: All my references to perfection assume perfection in terms of nature, not in terms of human-centric models.
[QUOTE=Robbobin;34392347]you [I]still[/I] have every reason to be an anarchist.[/QUOTE]
I agree that anarchism has huge potential, I'm an anarchist (specifically anarcho-communist) too. However, there has never been a long-term term of anarchy besides pre-history (cavemen, hunter-gatherer tribes, etc.) So I'm slightly curious as to where it may go if it takes hold in today's world.
communism fails due to the prisoner's dilemma. human nature is bound to fuck anything up.
those who haven't a grasp of rudimentary philosophy won't know what i am talking about.
[QUOTE=Hayburner;35145649]communism fails due to the prisoner's dilemma. human nature is bound to fuck anything up.
those who haven't a grasp of rudimentary philosophy won't know what i am talking about.[/QUOTE]
How does the prisoner's dilemma present a problem for communism? If we've learnt anything from the prisoner's dilemma and the subsequent game theory leagues (by Axelrod in [url=http://www-ee.stanford.edu/~hellman/Breakthrough/book/pdfs/axelrod.pdf]the Evolution of Cooperation[/url]), it's that we have sufficient reason to cooperate with our peers given a set of conditions (which I think real life satisfies, largely).
[QUOTE=Robbobin;35147383]How does the prisoner's dilemma present a problem for communism? If we've learnt anything from the prisoner's dilemma and the subsequent game theory leagues (by Axelrod in [url=http://www-ee.stanford.edu/~hellman/Breakthrough/book/pdfs/axelrod.pdf]the Evolution of Cooperation[/url]), it's that we have sufficient reason to cooperate with our peers given a set of conditions (which I think real life satisfies, largely).[/QUOTE]
communism requires total cooperation or the entire system will break down. this is why in the [B]very few[/B] times it has been implemented it didnt last long at all.
[QUOTE=Hayburner;35148072]communism requires total cooperation or the entire system will break down. this is why in the [B]very few[/B] times it has been implemented it didnt last long at all.[/QUOTE]
I doesn't require total cooperation at all. A free-market communist system would allow for the same competitive incentives that our current system does. The localized center of law and society would require that only communities would need to be heavily cooperative. Given that this is already a reality outside of urban and suburban neighborhoods in western nations, I don't see how this is at all improbable.
[QUOTE=Hayburner;35148072]communism requires total cooperation or the entire system will break down. this is why in the [B]very few[/B] times it has been implemented it didnt last long at all.[/QUOTE]
Axelrod's game theory league shows fairly conclusively that this isn't the case, from a purely game theoretic perspective. In fact, it takes very few people following a cooperative strategy before the other players realise the benefits of adopting such a strategy. The problem is mostly irrationality; the only times a cooperative strategy aren't expedient are those when you're dealing with irrational players or when the payoff for the players is really asymmetrical (and I don't think the latter is the case since most humans are pretty equal when you get rid of our pathological obsession with private property).
however I'd argue that this presents a strong case for anarchism (not anarchocapitalism - not a fan of private property because I think they present us with fake inequalities that are the source of a lot of our irrationality), rather than communism
[QUOTE=Hayburner;35148072]communism requires total cooperation or the entire system will break down. this is why in the [B]very few[/B] times it has been implemented it didnt last long at all.[/QUOTE]
there's no system in marxism
i've explained this like a dozen times in this thread.
[QUOTE=thisispain;35155745]there's no system in marxism
i've explained this like a dozen times in this thread.[/QUOTE]
but he said communism
Communism will fail every time until(if?) we make the transition to a post-scarcity society.
[QUOTE=Splendor;35230885]Communism will fail every time until(if?) we make the transition to a post-scarcity society.[/QUOTE]
That's a bit of a contradiction since that will never happen under capitalism. Communism and abundance pretty much need each other.
[QUOTE=Splendor;35230885]Communism will fail every time until(if?) we make the transition to a post-scarcity society.[/QUOTE]
Any reasons or evidence to back up that claim?
[QUOTE=Splendor;35230885]Communism will fail every time until(if?) we make the transition to a post-scarcity society.[/QUOTE]
A free market workers' democracy works around that catch quite well.
it depends on your view in my opinion communism could never have truly worked though capitalism does has its flaws it hasn't really gone under yet so i'm gonna go capitalism
Full blown Communism, lead to anger.
Full blown Capitalism, anarchy.
[QUOTE=Chessnut;35239606]Full blown Communism, lead to anger.
Full blown Capitalism, anarchy.[/QUOTE]
Full blown Anarchy is impossible.
[QUOTE=Conscript;35230978]That's a bit of a contradiction since that will never happen under capitalism. Communism and abundance pretty much need each other.[/QUOTE]
I'm sure you'd like to prove that causation.
I always thought that Communism wasn't do-able in practise and should just be forgotten. Well not forgotten, but you know what I mean. Just not even be brought up as an idea to run a country.
[QUOTE=Badballer;35242770]I always thought that Communism wasn't do-able in practise and should just be forgotten. Well not forgotten, but you know what I mean. Just not even be brought up as an idea to run a country.[/QUOTE]
Because someone told you so?
[QUOTE=Splendor;35242401]I'm sure you'd like to prove that causation.[/QUOTE]
Capitalism relies on scarcity in order to work. It's simple economics that scarcity is a major driving force behind the capitalist market economy.
Communism was theorized to work, by utopians and by Marx, in an environment where capitalism created significant spoils and advancements. Post-scarcity.
[QUOTE='[Seed Eater];35244286']Capitalism relies on scarcity in order to work. It's simple economics that scarcity is a major driving force behind the capitalist market economy.
Communism was theorized to work, by utopians and by Marx, in an environment where capitalism created significant spoils and advancements. Post-scarcity.[/QUOTE]
Capitalism works by demand and offer, scarcity is not really a major factor. But it happens from time to time that the things that are highly demanded are scarce.
Without scarcity nothing would be profitable, including labor (thus perpetual unemployement). It's why improvements in production efficiency are unrecognizable profit-wise once it's widespread, or why there is a lot of planned obsolescense in products.
With steps away from scarcity the rate of profit tends to fall, leading to overproduction and thus unemployment in a cycle of destructive deflation. Pretty much anytime this happened there was great friction with the working class and a rise of class consciousness.
Some people are forgetting capitalism is a system of rationing with an interest in keeping it that way, there is no other way to accumulate capital.
[QUOTE=Splendor;35242401]I'm sure you'd like to prove that causation.[/QUOTE]
Capitalism would have to collapse first, because by its own mechanics it would not allow post scarcity to exist.
Communism has never existed ever. Those who call themselves Communist are not a communist. For example, if you look at North Korea their official name is the "Democratic People's Republic of Korea". Are they Democratic? Hell no. The Soviet Union and all these other countries you are arguing about weren't communist either. You can call yourself whatever you want that doesn't make it so. People who use the title communist just use that to get into power promise the people equality, then rule with an iron fist. The basic morals of communism would work and have worked. If you look in Israel the kibbutz have worked fine, and have had the same basic idea.
I just look at history to see which one is better.
Genocide, imprisonment, getting banished from your homeland, getting your home stolen by the state, forced labour in a factory, no income, etc.
Or!
Free market, minimal taxes, no limit on how rich you can get and other lovely goodness!
I think the answer is clear.
[QUOTE=Robbi;35246297]I just look at history to see which one is better.
Genocide, imprisonment, getting banished from your homeland, getting your home stolen by the state, forced labour in a factory, no income, etc.
Or!
Free market, minimal taxes, no limit on how rich you can get and other lovely goodness!
I think the answer is clear.[/QUOTE]
Shitty posts like these should be avoided like the plague.
[QUOTE=Robbi;35246297]I just look at history to see which one is better.
Genocide, imprisonment, getting banished from your homeland, getting your home stolen by the state, forced labour in a factory, no income, etc.
Or!
Free market, minimal taxes, no limit on how rich you can get and other lovely goodness!
I think the answer is clear.[/QUOTE]
what about 1 billion people starving, half the world living on less than $2.50 a day, wars for profit and much much more.
Marx's theory of Communism is now obsolete, yet so is capitalism. Dont front as if capitalism is the holy grail when it has massive flaws.
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