[ExI] communism/authoritarianism

[Dan TheBookMan]

On Fri, Sep 18, 2020 at 7:06 PM Dan TheBookMan <danust2012 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 18, 2020 at 6:53 PM Anton Sherwood <bronto at pobox.com> wrote:
> > On 2020-9-17 10:17, Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat wrote:
> > > Were those governments really communist though? I mean I would
> > > state socialist and from an economics perspective it's centralized
> > > planning that's their key feature. I feel it's a misnomer to call
> > > them communist, though at this point it's kind of like trying to
> > > rescue the term 'liberal.'  [...]
> >
> > Fine, but we can still contrast tyrants who TOTALLY ILLEGITIMATELY call
> > themselves Communists with those who don't.
>
> Of course.

I wanted to add one thing to my 'of course,' but I was rudely
interrupted. :) It's that I'm sure most here would have no problem
with saying the USSR wasn't really a union of 'republics,' or that the
DDR wasn't really a 'democratic republic.' Or that the PRC isn't
really a 'people's republic.' It's amazing easy to see through the
rhetoric here to see how these republics or that people's democracies
aren't really democracies in the conventional sense -- that term is
being used to sell dictatorship to people who aspire to liberal
democratic principles in places like the UK, France, the US, etc.

Regards,

Dan