Henry C.K. Liu Brett Knowlton wrote:
> I agree with Jacob and Brad that the Chinese and Russian communist regimes
> are/were not worthy of support or praise. It is important and useful to
> expose the lies and exaggerations which circulate in anti-communist
> propaganda about the USSR and Communist China. But the point is not to
> praise or defend these systems, but instead to expose the ideological
> stance and real motivations of the people spreading the propaganda.
>
> I am also disheartened by Brad's comments - the more or less standard line
> about communism being just terrible, while we live in a relatively decent
> society/system (in need of reform, perhaps, maybe even serious reform, but
> not complete overhaul).
>
> In both systems the powerful few exploit the majority of the population.
> For what its worth, I think the US and Europe are pretty decent places to
> live compared with the rest of the world. More politically free (by any
> measure) and materially well off (although this is due in large measure to
> historical reasons) than the former USSR and China under communism.
>
> At the same time, western intervention in the third world was more brutal
> and more widespread than communist adventures, although this may have been
> due to the West's greater power and wealth as opposed to being more
> inherently "bad," or "evil," than its communist adversaries.
>
> The world has never seen a free industrialized society, which in my mind is
> the proper standard for comparing systems, with anything approaching real
> democracy and equality. By this standard both the East and West look bad.
> And the outlook for the development of such a society in the near term is
> bleak. There simply aren't any popular progressive institutions which
> could be called upon to serve an egalitarian and democratic society, even
> if all of our current bad institutions were swept away in a revolution
> tonight at midnight.
>
> Brett