I'm not sure, he just sounds like more Fukuyama. I don't think one ideology can win over another.

I listen to a podcast the host is often on, and it's supposed to get a lot better.

But one ideology can totally win over another. Nobody today says slavery's OK. The pro-slavery ideology lost all over the world.

Maybe, I'll make a full judgement after I've heard the whole thing. Also, I disagree that an ideology can 'win'. How does it do so? What are the requirements for 'victory'? Ideas are always floating around, and as long an idea is around, I bet there is at least one person who believes in it. We still have people who say slavery is OK (even on this very forum).

Well, there is no more Soviet Union. That's a strong indicator of victory. And of the few remaining states ruled by a communist party only Cuba, Laos, and North Korea actually try for a socialist economy in addition to just trying to maintain political power.

As for slavery, just because something still exists doesn't mean it hasn't lost. Absolute monarchs still exist in Saudi Arabia and Oman, but as a serious political theory it has been vanquished in virtually the entire world. Even in his maddest dreams of grandeur Sarkozy doesn't expect to become a new Louis XIV.

In Diplomacy, and Italy with nothing but an army in Tunis has clearly lost the game. He might still exist (and in PPSC could even get a sliver of the pot), but once he has been pushed that far back there is no possible way to recover. I think that's the point this guy was trying to make with regards to communism, but (like you) I'll wait to really form an opinion till the rest of the videos come out.

I hope he expands more on his thoughts of Trotskyism and other forms of communism. He stated that he believes that the problems are inherent in communism and that Trotsky would have been no different, but then he left that point.

As for ideological victory, I can see what you are saying but I still disagree. Maybe I'll change my mind if a concrete definition/set of conditions arise. And even with the Soviet Union gone, I don't think liberal democracy has won.

Well who is Yuri Agaev. He's one of the founders of "Resistance International", an umbrella organization for a whole host of sordid terrorist groups around the world during the Cold War, including the Afghan Mujahadeen, UNITA in Angola (please look up Joseph Savimbi), the Contras in Nicaragua (a list of their atrocities would be a mile long), the White Khmers, and a number of Cuban terrorist groups.

The fact that this terrorist is expounding on the evils of communism today (sponsored by the pro-apartheid/pro-segregation National Review and the fascist Hoover Institution), 20 years after the Soviet Union disbanded, demonstrates the durability of Marxism Leninism. It also demonstrates that there are real fears that the 'triumphalism' of the 1990s has turned into capitalist despair, as we witness crisis after crisis in the capitalist world. We also see that the successful popular revolutions going on in the world today, the most successful nation-states today, and and successful resistance to US imperialism are using Marxism Leninism as its model. Anti-communists in one breath whine about the 'China threat' while managing to claim that Marxism Leninism lies defeated, and that capitalism has won a complete victory. They fall over themselves trying to claim that China is *not really socialist* because otherwise that would mean that the fastest rising power in the world is following that supposedly "discredited" ideology that was supposed to have discarded in the dustbin of history.

I think it's quite clear which economic system is moribund and has no future. The developing world is not going to tolerate being the slave labor for western consumption, and the masses in the west are not going to tolerate having their standard of living destroyed as western countries try to save themselves from living off of borrowed money for 40 years to prop up their house of cards economies.

Typical.

Is that going to be your modus operandi now? Cluck "typical" after posting your usual red baiting drivel?

Incidentally I'm sure Osama Bin Laden has well reasoned "arguments" against communism too. I'm sure Invictus will be posting those soon.

I doubt it, I hear hes dead

I'm sure they're immortalized on home videos.

Yeah, because Soviet dissidents are the moral equivalent of Islamic terrorists.

Is anything critical of communism red-baiting? Perhaps you should leave this thread alone and let people see the videos as they come out during the week, forming their own opinions unmolested by your neo-Pravda posts. We can do without your shrill agenda at least till Friday.

"Yeah, because Soviet dissidents are the moral equivalent of Islamic terrorists."

Umbrella organizations that fund Islamic terrorists and other terrorist groups sure are. By definition. Do you think before you write?

"Is anything critical of communism red-baiting? "

Why would you post this? To feed red meat to people who already disavow communism? This is transparent redbaiting. Otherwise you wouldn't bother patting this clown on the back for bashing an ideology supposedly no one believes in anymore.

"forming their own opinions unmolested by your neo-Pravda posts."

Yes of course, you want them to form their own opinions, which means no dissent from your latest John Birch Society bulletin.

So anything critical of communism is red-baiting.

I want to hear Putins argument explaining that Stalin was a benevolent dictator!

I will watch this when I next have time...

Part II

http://tv.nationalreview.com/uncommonknowledge/

As for the guy being a terrorist, I decided to actually look for myself rather than take the impartial Putin33 at his word. The first five pages of Google results show no terrorist umbrella group called Resistance International. Even with quotes around the words they are split up. By the second page you're already getting results for "international" efforts to combat drug "resistant" microbes.

Ditto for a search of Yuri Yarim-Agaev. It's his stuff with the Hoover Institute (which is an anything but fascist institution) and just general academic stuff you would expect from a person like him. In fact, everything is about how committed he is to total nonviolence, as he says in the video above. Even a search of "Yuri Yarim-Agaev terrorist" only shows him in discussions about Islamic terrorism and terrorist acts in Russia in the first 5 pages.

I'm not saying Putin33's full of shit on this, but I can find nothing to back up what he claims. Nothing. Maybe he just wrote the wrong name down here. Maybe this group did exist at some point but was never really that important at all, like the phoney opposition parties Russian exiles always seem to be setting up. Maybe there's a guy with a similar name who really did funnel money to shady anti-communist groups. I mean, it looks like even National Review got his name wrong at first. As it stands now though, his arguments look to be based solely on his anger as a twenty-something American academic communist at a man who actually opposed the supposed worker's paradise that was the Soviet Union.

@Invictus, why do you take this guys opinion as any more valid than anyone else's?

What he claims is that what he is saying is true of all communisms, all possible social structures which follow some kind of Marxist theory.

Even if i accept this to be the case, do you think it is possible to have a economic theory based on the combined teachings of the Buddha, Jesus of Nazareth and Karl Marx? some kind of mix of 'treat others as you would like them to treat you', 'We are the cause of our suffering.', 'From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.' ?

would that be communism? and how would you tell?

He's just one guy, and I find him interesting. That's all.

And to be fair, I think he's making most of the arguments here from a political angle rather than economic. It is true that in everyplace that a communist party has imposed one-party rule there have been atrocities, after all. I don't see much point in quibbling over economic merits when the state will shoot you for joining a pro-democracy movement.

Largeham with his head firmly buried in the sand again.
"I don't think one ideology can win over another."
I guess the end of the Cold War can be explained away by some totally incoherent nonsense besides the truth that one ideology triumphed over another.
I wonder how Largeham explains the Communists building the Berlin Wall to keep people in.