It Is Official!!

[Damien the Leper]

Forget governments or economics, I believe the point his is making is that under the symbol of the "Hammer and Sickle" have come the greatest lose of life, dwarfing the Holocost.

So because the Nazis and Hitler perverted the sanctity and sacredness of the Swastika we should avoid using it at all? That is illogical.

The Hammer & Sickle, for me, represents the struggle of the proletarian society. I'm not concerned with Maoism or Stalinism or any other perversions. They are irrelevant to the future of Communism as a pluralistic and egalitarian society.

[volgadon]

So because the Nazis and Hitler perverted the sanctity and sacredness of the Swastika we should avoid using it at all? That is illogical.

The Hammer & Sickle, for me, represents the struggle of the proletarian society. I'm not concerned with Maoism or Stalinism or any other perversions. They are irrelevant to the future of Communism as a pluralistic and egalitarian society.

Well said.

[Robert F. Smith]

Pa Pa, on 01 November 2012 - 10:21 AM, said:

Forget governments or economics, I believe the point his is making is that under the symbol of the "Hammer and Sickle" have come the greatest lose of life, dwarfing the Holocost.

Dwarfing the Holocaust is absolutely correct.

No it isn't.

The fascist and national socialist Axis powers, Japan, Italy, and Germany, were very efficient killers, and killed many more people per diem than the state capitalist dictatorships of the Russian Empire and China -- at least until Rwanda. The reason why Stalin and Mao managed to kill so many more people was very simply because they were around longer than Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo. Hitler instituted an industrial killing machine the like of which we have not seen, before or since.

[Robert F. Smith]

Volgadon;

No doubt there are similarities between LDS theology and any poltiical party platrform. Of course they overlap. But to say that the Law of Consecration is the same as communism is to say tha Mormonism is the same as Catholicsim. Communism does not serve God. At all. Where has it ever? What divine end did Karl Marx advocate from communal living?

Your analogies here don't work. Karl Marx never practiced communism, and his followers didn't either. Early Christians were communists (Acts 2:44, 4:32), and so were the Nephites (III Nephi 26:19, IV Nephi 3,25), until they apostatized. The same was true of the covenanters at Qumran (1QS 1:11), and of 19th century Mormons.

See

Kenneth Rexroth, Communalism: From Its Origins to the Twentieth Century (1974).

Dean May, “One Heart and Mind: Communal Life and Values Among the Mormons,” in Donald E. Pitzer, ed., America’s Communal Utopias (1997), 135-158.

Mario De Pillis, “The Development of Mormon Communitarianism, 1826-1846,” doctoral dissertation (Yale Univ., 1960).

Gordon E. Wagner, “Consecration and Stewardship: A Socially Efficient System of Justice,” doctoral dissertation (Cornell Univ., 1977).

Allen Lambert, “Capitalism and Christianity,” Sunstone Review, II/11 (Nov 1982), 18-20.

[volgadon]

No it isn't.

The fascist and national socialist Axis powers, Japan, Italy, and Germany, were very efficient killers, and killed many more people per diem than the state capitalist dictatorships of the Russian Empire and China -- at least until Rwanda. The reason why Stalin and Mao managed to kill so many more people was very simply because they were around longer than Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo. Hitler instituted an industrial killing machine the like of which we have not seen, before or since.

Which is not to say the Nazis didn't learn a lot from studying Chekist and NKVD actions throughout the years. The full extent of the NKVD horrors during the takeover of Western Ukraine is only now being uncovered. Some of the killings shocked even the Nazis, but they were quick to adopt, adapt and perfect those methods, making them as efficient and systematic as a factory's production line.

Chekist actions were unprecedented for their times, but had absolutely nothing to do with communism. Much of the framework for the VChK was laid by former sailors of the Tzarist navy and others like them, who were brutalised, abused and dehumanised by their officers over a long period of time. They naturally revelled in killing and torturing, often for no good reason. That is the bitter fruit of an abusive system.

Most of Stalin's victims died from starvation. Most of Hitler's were actually killed by man and machine.