Tao regarding “You may recall that the British ruling classes also flirted with Hitler at one stage.”

Oh they flirted with everyone tao.

The thing with a democracy, people are free to flirt with who they like. It is a personal choice thing, not directed by government. Not suppressed by locking people into psychiatric hospitals, regardless how misguided they may be but no one can claim a blameless life, certainly no commie.

Some dullards even flirted with Lenin and his Bolshevik butchers, he called them “his Useful Idiots”, a cynical phrase but lets face it, he was a communist, cynicism comes as an indispensable part of the kit, just as we see your slimey protests to “the workers” here, just a cynical catch phrase to pretend you actually care when we know, from the fate of the Kulaks, that you would turn on the workers faster than a capitalist if it suited your agenda.

As for “The ruling classes have already begun preparing the ground with anti-terror laws denying civil liberties etc. As the crisis of capitalism comes to a head, they will resort to fascism, just as they did with Pinochet.”

Ah the good old wedge politics, divide and conquer. Sorry tao, the wall was torn down 15 years ago. Your style of politics is more discredited nowadays than at any other time. Russians, Germans, Poles, Hungarians and Czechs the all have enough memories of how your politics work to fill the rest of their lives with nightmares.

The secret police coming in the night. Family member disappearing into gulags.

The practical tools of your communism. No one elected a communist government into power, they all arrived either by revolution or were imposed by Stalin.

Oh you claim Guantanamo Bay is a “gulag” well how many people, citizens of the worker paradises, were living in gulags before the fall of communism?

You can name one American prison, does anyone know how many gulag prisons there were in Russia between 1920 and 1990?

Too many, on a scale unimaginable and incomparable to a handful of American Military prisons.

Oh tao, Margaret Thatcher, by being a bulwark against the evil empire has done more for millions of people in Europe than you or I could even dream of achieving.

As for your little fixation on Margaret and Pinochet.

She would have known more about the alternatives to Pinochet as the socialist lead Chile into economic and social meltdown than you or I will ever know.

As for your supposed “50,000 dissenters” that is nothing compared to the politicians of the system you would see us suffer. Stalin alone was 50,000,000
I would say 50,000 in “communist terms” would represent an average month.

We know the cynicism of communists, in communist terms 50,000 is a mere statistic.

The Marxist/communist alternatives to Pinochet would have likely lined up 5 million. How many have the Peruvian Shining Path alone butchered?

So Margaret’s credibility is still intact. That you try but cannot discredit her effectively merely shows your personal inadequacies. The inadequacies of your politics is easy to prove, just ask any Pole, Lithuanian, Estonian, German, Czech, Hungarian, Bulgarian or Romanian over the age of 25

Your failure to answer direct questions, like my Alchemy analogy, which you shy away from every time and Logical’s question regarding where he would be in your social order which is too confrontational for you ro deal with, (confrontational = requires an honest answer and not some snake oil spruker spin) compares you unfavourably to Margaret Thatcher.

Questions, Margaret would answer on the wing, like the eagle. You, scratch around in the dirt and hope they will go away, like a chicken.

Well tao, it is plain to see, it is your own inadequacies and petty jealousy which makes you so envious of Margaret Thatcher as you see her soar on the wing, looking up, from the dirt of your chook pen.

Oh come back with the alchemy and Logicals social positioning questions before you inflict any more of your rant upon us. You are getting seriously boring.

I am off on a fortnights holiday without computer access. I will be interested to see if anything has been resolved by the time I return. I will not be holding my breath.

Persisting in lining up who has been responsible for the worst atrocities in the past is unlikely to result in an answer to the question of how our affairs might be better structured in the future.

Such a score card of attrocities only polarises opinions and serves as a diversion from addressing the shortcomings of your preferred mode of government.

It might be more constructive for:
a) Col and I to concentrate on how the checks and balances of a capitalist Western democracy can be maintained, and hopefully improved, while still confronting the intolerance of radical Islam (or any other fascist ideology that might seek to impose itself upon us), and
b) Tao to explain how his version of universal socialism is going to incorporate any lasting checks and balances.

In answering b) I have a belief that Tao's intentions should include my right to exist and continue being logical or illogical.

The purpose of the ? in my name is to leave open the possibility that my current opinions might be wrong or my arguments ill-conceived.

Col,

I am not going to continue this conversation with you as you have still not been honest enough to acknowledge that Stalinism is not same as the Marxist conception of communism. When Logical gets back I may continue, however I see no point debating someone as dishonest as you.

As for your comments.

“As-for-your-little-fixation-on-Margaret-and-Pinochet.

She-would-have-known-more-about-the-alternatives-to-Pinochet-as-the-socialist-lead-Chile-into-economic-and-social-meltdown-than-you-or-I-will-ever-know.”

My comments on Thatcher were merely to highlight her hypocrisy, and the hypocrisy of those who idolise her.

What you are saying is that you – Col - think it is acceptable to overthrow by military coup a democratically elected government and impose a fascist military dictatorship, which eliminates and tortures those who oppose it, in the service of capitalism, just because you don’t like the politics of the legitimately elected government.

“economic-and-social-meltdown-than-you-or-I-will-ever-know.”

No, we will never know what would have happened under Allende because he was murdered and his government was overthrown. So whatever you say is unsubstantiated speculation, or more correctly, right wing spew.

As for social and economic meltdown what we DO know is that, in decade following the US-backed coup, Chile’s unemployment rate soared from 4.3 percent to 22 percent, while real wages plummeted by 40 percent. During the same period, the share of the population living below the poverty line more than doubled, reaching 44.4 percent.

Chilean workers are among the most exploited in the world. Part-time and temporary jobs and contract labour are the norm, with most workers putting in 48-hour weeks. Children are compelled to seek employment as early as possible. By 1992 only 2.5 percent of the population had more than seven years of formal education, a third as many as in Argentina and half the number in Brazil or Mexico.

Of course, the rich did very well from Pinochet’s “economic miracle” - the smashing of democratic-rights and labour organisations, and any opposition to the dictates of the “free” market.

No wonder Maggie loves him so much.

It doesn’t matter what you accuse me of Col, or what excuses you make, nothing can hide the fact that Maggie unabashedly supports fascist-military-dictatorships in defence of capitalism.

Tao “I am not going to continue this conversation with you as you have still not been honest enough to acknowledge that Stalinism is not same as the Marxist conception of communism.”

That your recipe for “angel cake” tastes like dead cockroaches means that regardless of what you call it, people are going to associate it with what it tastes like, not the name of the recipe.

As for honesty is, your “recipe” for Marxism has ended up tasting like Stalinism, Pol Potism Maoism Kimism etc. regardless that yo call it "Marxist angel cake".

As to continuing, please your self, we live in a democracy. If your system prevailed one of us would be off to the gulag anyway.

Whilst on the topic of honesty, Logical asked where is your solution for Stalinism not happening again? Something you have avoided ansering.

Who gets to vote against communism under your system?

Regarding Margaret. She was a practical politician, elected to power in public election and who was so recent, I had the privilege to vote for.

Marx, who you seem to idolize, has been dead 150 years and never held public office. His system of government has only ever been implemented by revolution and bloodshed over the bodies of the innocent bystanders.

As for as anyone’s hypocrisy is concerned, whine all you want. Thatcher to Marx we are talking real people versus theories, it will always be easier to find fault with real people, unless you had the honesty to include Stalin in with Marx, being the actual manifestation of Marxism then we could compare real “hypocrisy” in the mix.

I was thinking the other day, Here I am, what many would call politically a "conservative". I am debating with a supposed “radical”.

Yet this conservative supports a political system which changes with public needs and the radical clings, vainly, to the crackpot theories of a bloke who is died 150 years ago and for a political system which, except for two small patches, collapsed and has been rejected by countries who used to suffer it.

So who is the “conservative”?

“It doesn’t matter what you accuse me of Col, or what excuses you make, nothing can hide the fact that Maggie unabashedly supports fascist-military-dictatorships in defence of capitalism.”

I am sure the history of South America is terrible, compared to life in a Siberian Gulag.

I wonder if every Cambodian who died in Pol Pot’s reeducation camps would not have swapped places.

We can tell how Margaret Thatcher “unabashedly supports fascist-military-dictatorships”,

Tell me who launched the British expedition to remove the fascist-military-dictatorship occupancy from the Falklands, In the face of socialist opposition?

You know I recall how stupid socialist can be, despite an agreement not to politicize the Falkland war, the following general election Healey of the left, reneged on that agreement and went and put it into a speech. It secured Maggie’s future. She was voted back on a landslide.

Nothing I can say will change your mind, tao. Nothing you say will change mine. I have seen your lies and deceits a thousand times before. Theories which do not stack up. The alchemist lead into gold, which you have still not responded to.

Think what you want, you are, under the political system which I support free to do so but think on this, under your system you would not be free to think, let alone express a view. How is that for hypocrisy ?

I hope others might consider what is written here, particularly people who might think that marxism sounds like a nice idea and I hope they are prompted to understand what happens when it is in place. Stalin, Mao, Kim, Pot Pol, Caucescu. The KGB, Stasi, repression, economic stagnation. The Legacy of Marxism is for all to see. Except it seems for you, oh deluded one

I will finish with a Quote from Margaret Thatcher, quoting a Russian. Oh Logical, have a happy holiday!

“As the former dissident Vladimir Bukovsky remarked, referring to the Russian proverb to the effect that you cannot make an omlette without breaking eggs.

He had seen plenty of broken eggs, but had never tasted any omlette."

Margaret Thatcher 'Statecraft'