[mvanvoorden]

That does not apply here. There's not an exact definition what a Scotsman is, except that he's from Scotland. Communism is actually a completely worked out ideology. It has never really been tried. In Russia for example, it was State Capitalism under the guise of Communism.

[elcapitan]

> In Russia for example, it was State Capitalism under the guise of Communism.

LOL. Sorry, but that is really beyond absurd.

[marxidad]

- http://www.marxists.de/statecap/binns/statecap.htm

- http://www.hetsa.org.au/pdf/34-A-08.pdf

- http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/31567-socialism-means-abo...

[elcapitan]

Yes, I already said that it's a weird sectarian fringe opinion, you don't need to post weird sectarian fringe group sites to prove it, but thanks.

[dragonwriter]

Communism has a lot of different varieties (you may be thinking of Marxism specifically), many of which have not been tried. While among Communists there might be some point in arguing over whether Leninism (and it's descendants, Stalinism and Maoism, etc.) are really forms of Communism or something else, in more general contexts it's probably better just to note the specific, rather extreme, departures from Marxism that they involve, and note that while they may have failed, those failures cannot be generalized to Communism more generally or, e.g., to Marxism specifically.

[mc32]

Forgive me but that's like batting aside misgivings about capitalism and saying, well that's neo-liberal capitalism or capitalism with eastern values, or government regulated capitalism, etc. When someone points out some deficiencies in capitalism. A form of not a true Scotsman argument.

[dragonwriter]

It's not no true Scotsman to point out a faulty generalization (particularly, because there is no denying that the specific cases are examples of the general concept, merely that they are isolated to a particular subclass of the general type and thus are not sufficient to demonstrate a conclusion about the broad class rather than merely the subclass). But nice try invoking one fallacy falsely to protect another.

[mc32]

You were basically saying "None of those were TRUE Marxism -they were perverted, etc.". So in that form basically anyone with any issues with capitalism can be dismissed by saying, well, what east Asian and western economies are living under is not true "free enterprise" capitalism, so don't knock it. However, the reality is we've tried a variety of both and they are known values and the ones we _can_ talk about and anything else is pure speculation and quite beside the point.

[dragonwriter]

No, actually what I said it's that it might be reasonable to argue that (since Marxism is a real thing defined by the works of Karl Marx, and Leninism and it's descendants are defined by key differences from Marx's theory, starting with abandoning the prerequisites of an advanced capitalist society from which the Marxist Communist society is built), but that it would in any case not be reasonable to do so with Communism in the place of Marxism, given the more vague boundaries of the term Communism compared to Marxism.

That being said, there probably aren't any capitalist societies today; capitalism was the dominant system of the advanced societies if the 19th century, so banned by various Socialist (including Communist, Marx in particular) critics of that system. Most advanced economies today are mixed economies which retain some features of Communism as well as substantial departures afford specifically to address the problems identified by critics of the system. While it is neither, the modern mixed economy resembles a form of socialism a much as it resembles capitalism. Actual advocates of capitalism, of which there are many on the right, seek significant changes to undo the departures from capitalism introduce offer the last century and a half or so.

We've tried capitalism and Leninism and various variations on the modern mixed economy, of those Leninism and the modern mixed economy each have some (but not the same subset) of the features that differentiate Marxism from capitalism. You could as well say we've tried Marxism and it proved better than capitalism (based on the modern mixed economy as a form of Marxism) as you could say that Marxism was tried and failed (based on Leninism as a form of Marxism.) But really, capitalism fell, evolving in a direction similar to -- but still distinctly different from -- that suggested by Marx.

[Natanael_L]

We tried for centuries to make both airplanes and perpetual motion machines. Eventually we succeeded with one and proved the other physically impossible.

A long series of failures only proves that those specific things didn't work. You need more than that to come to a final conclusion.

[mc32]

That may very well be true but such thing will not be "Marxism" or "Capitalism" it will be however a "political and economic system" Just as what we have flying now may be a flying machine or aeroplane but not an "Ornithopter".