In fairness to Gunfighter, he never said socialism was evil. He said that Communism is evil and that he vehemently opposes that and socialism. It's possible that he also thinks socialism is evil, but he hasn't said so... yet.

I did see that, but I feel his comment still is overtly negative towards socialist ideology, and I'm definitely interested in his reasoning.

[aside] Yeah, but you've got to trap him into actually saying it first. Otherwise he'll accusing you of fighting a straw man.

Noted. I'm no professional debater and don't pretend to be. I just like arguing like everyone else on here :).

With communism, I believe that *no* government, even a democratically-elected one, has the right to exert that much control over peoples' lives, especially for the objective of evenly distributing the nations' resources for the benefit of few and at the expense of many. An objective, I may add, whose success is completely dependent on a society completely free of corruption. The practical application of communism almost always Draconian in nature and involves the forfeiture of individual rights that should never be forfeited under any circumstances, such as the freedom of speech, religion, and the right to bear arms.

These factors lead me to conclude communism = evil.

My argument against socialism reaches a similar conclusion but is more heavily based on American law, history, and culture. I will omit such an argument from this discussion because this is not an America-specific thread.

History and culture definitely are important, and a number of socialist policies that work in Europe and elsewhere wouldn't work nearly as well in America. So I think we actually agree here more than I thought initially.

I lean, pretty far left.

But, I'm not a communist. So in answer to the initial question, no.

Notice I left out laws. I think people in America put too much importance on sticking with old laws and rules that don't work just for the sake of perpetuating those bad laws to the next generation, and inadvertently punishing them in the process because of moral hazard; most of the horrible effects of some laws 20 years down the road will not be witnessed by the people perpetuating the laws in government, so the politicians don't give a shit about keeping them on the books.

Sorry for the run-on. Too lazy to fix :/

"with communism, I believe that *no* government…has the right to exert that much control over peoples'(sic!) lives" - I guess, at least Marx would agree with you here (too lazy to quote it, but nicely pointed out in the "18. Brumaire". Also, for the ones who slightly ignore the political discourse in Eastern Europe: "Communism is Socialism + Electricity" - as we all know, they had significant shortages on this one and hence self-described them only as "socialist" or "real-existing socialism" that was yet to reach communism.

In Marx phrases, communism was characterised by the joint ownership on means of production by everyone AND by necessity of capitalist development would emerge sooner or later from this system. Well, considering who are the so-called institutional investors in means of production (mostly pension funds), the road to communism lays bare before us.

Revolution and political action was mostly meant to speed up the process and lift the immediate plight of the working class. In general, communism is a theoretical descriptor for a certain form of production aka economy.

Where I can't follow though, is where the right to bear arms enters the debate?

When you're talking to a guy named "Gunfighter" are you surprised the right to bear arms *always* enters the debate? I think he even brought it up in the Super Bowl thread.

The fact that the government kills priets, political dissenters, and "undesirables", steals all of your money in taxes, and controls every aspect of your life.

If you like Communism, then move to North Korea.

For the record, my username is a videogame reference. Medal of Honor (2010) to be exact.

which government didn't? Or rather, there is a majority of non-socialist governments committing the same crimes. It's not an ideology thing, it is a polity thing.