Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

dogma wrote:Nor has anyone offerred a good definition of what the right side of the spectrum constitutes, and why it does not include Obama or the American left.

I think I have offered legitimate reasons to distinguish President Obama from the "Right" side of the spectrum. You may not agree with them, but ideas like single-payer health care, opposition to the war, support for an expansionist view of "civil rights" and government control and support for industry are all "left" ideas.

Others have suggested that Obama is right-of-center. I'm simply asking for an explanation or definition of what "left" means, and how that definition can exclude the President. At least Melissia made an attempt, even if it was too restrictive, and didn't distinguish.

Opposition to unnecessary foreign wars is classically Right, being entirely in keeping with noninterventionist and Libertarian doctrine.

Civil Rights are nothing more than an extrapolation or fulfillment of the rights granted us in the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Government control and support for industry is a fact of life in all modern governments. It's how it's done that makes it Right or Left. Done one was it's Facism; which Mussolini considered the merger of state and corporate power.

How are the democrats right wing?

If Obama was to run for office in any other country in the developed world, and attempted to run on moving the country towards social structures and tax rates he's currently trying for in the US, he'd be on the fringe of the right wing. Probably so far on the fringe he'd be unelectable in all but most conservative parts of the country.


In other news, it's actually pretty much impossible to create a universal scale of left and right, because politics varies so much from location to location. Abortion, for instance, is actually still illegal in several states in Australia, but openly practiced*. Access to abortion is widely supported by the general population, and the folk who campaign against are treated very harshly, I'd say unfairly. Yet technically abortion is more restricted in Australia than it is in the US, but access isn't, and nor is it mentioned at all in the lead up to elections. So how do you put that on a left right scale that also includes the US position.

There's also problems with splitting things along left/right, authoritarian/libertarian. If I support strict drug laws but also support gay marriage, am I more or less authoritarian than someone else?

Ultimately you just use the labels when vague descriptors are good enough, and when they're not you have to drop them talk about what people actually believe.




*The law in two states in Australia, WA and QLD, says abortion can be performed if there is a risk to the mother's life, but abortion as an operation is safer than childbirth, so technically every abortion is protecting the mother... this loophole is used to have legal abortions even though the act is still officially illegal.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

biccat wrote:Huh? How does it not necessarily entail authoritarianism? How else do you ensure that everyone contributes and doesn't leech off of the system?

Because communism can simply mean that the state owns the means of production. Getting a job and keeping a job, and therefore getting paid, would still be up to the individual.

There's this idea, bizarrely agreed by both the left and the right for entirely different reasons, that there was no poverty or homelessness in communism. There was.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:[snip]

Herp derp. I keep forgetting zero is a point, while one is two points.

Frazzled wrote:Then it wouldn't be communism now would it Manchu.

While I think modern communist thinkers need to do a lot of work in describing why communism has resulted in oppressive states and why it wouldn't happen in future communist states, and that it speaks very poorly of them that they aren't doing that work, it doesn't do much to advance the anti-communist cause to just keep bleating 'authoritarian!'

If the bulk of society voted to nationalise industry, and kept voting for this, you'd have a communist society that was also democratic.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Frazzled wrote:respectfully, and I say that because your angry ork avatar makes the weiners nervous, they are. To obtain the ideal communist endgame all power has to go to the centralized collective in order to properly reorganize and re-educate the propulation. Thats the antithesis of democracy.

None of what you've said there is true.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

micahaphone wrote:Isn't Utopian communism called Marxism generally? It has succeeded in small scale tests, but that is when you are using only volunteers for the test subjects. It would not work on a large scale.

Marxism is a term used by some communists to differentiate what they want want from how communism has actually worked out in the real world. "That wasn't communism, that was Leninism". "That wasn't communism, that was Maoism."

They then claim what they're aiming for, Marxism, is totally different, because ummm, oh look over there a factory worker in Guatamala is being oppressed, vote Socialist Party #1


Automatically Appended Next Post:

biccat wrote:I refuse to apologize for having a bad sense of humor.

Ironically enough, that was pretty funny.

sebster wrote:

micahaphone wrote:Isn't Utopian communism called Marxism generally? It has succeeded in small scale tests, but that is when you are using only volunteers for the test subjects. It would not work on a large scale.

Marxism is a term used by some communists to differentiate what they want want from how communism has actually worked out in the real world. "That wasn't communism, that was Leninism". "That wasn't communism, that was Maoism."

They then claim what they're aiming for, Marxism, is totally different, because ummm, oh look over there a factory worker in Guatamala is being oppressed, vote Socialist Party #1

So in essence, communism only works in theory, not practice?

biccat wrote:
Others have suggested that Obama is right-of-center. I'm simply asking for an explanation or definition of what "left" means, and how that definition can exclude the President.

As I've said, in most cases, "left" and "right" have more to do with rhetoric than policy. Considering rhetoric, and using your understanding of the term, Obama supports war (campaigned on expanding operations in Afghanistan), tax cuts (campaigned on reducing the overall tax burden, extended Bush tax cuts), has a reasonably aggressive foreign policy (Libya), and maintains a desire to export democracy (basically all the rhetoric surrounding the ME/NA protests). All of which still put him to the left of a lot of US politicians due to his stance on DADT, gay marriage. abortion (marking him as socially progressive, rather than socially conservative), and healthcare reform. Really I think what this comes to is whether or not you consider political spectra to be relative or absolute. I'm fairly certain you're in the latter camp.

Additionally, I basically agree with Mannahnin in that, excepting single-payer healthcare, all the ideas you listed have alternately been elements of both the left and right sides of the political spectrum.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

micahaphone wrote:
So in essence, communism only works in theory, not practice?

It doesn't really work in theory either. The ideology as espoused by Marx never really defines what a dictatorship of the proletariat is, or how it would bring about a worker's paradise. In fact, just about every Marxist in history has made his name by trying to solve both of those problems.

There's this idea, bizarrely agreed by both the left and the right for entirely different reasons, that there was no poverty or homelessness in communism. There was.

So in essence, communism only works in theory, not practice?

It never works in practice.
It works in theory, when you theorize it working in Utopia. However being Utopia most things work there.
It does work in the mind of every naive university freshman who thinks that capitalism is inherently evil (its' not, well not more than any other system) and wants to be Radical (guilty).That's really about it!
The amount of poverty and homelessness in Soviet Russia was very large(not that capitalism has fixed this), not to mention the political murders.

micahaphone wrote:So in essence, communism only works in theory, not practice?

Maybe, I don't know. I know that authoritarianism never works, in theory or in practice, and every communist government we've seen has been authoritarian. And so, like authoritarian capitalist societies, they've been doomed to economic stagnation, political oppression and the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few.

For that to change, you'd have to look at a democratically elected communist government... which we've never seen. And that's the trick to the question I hinted at above.

See, everyone asks "why are all communist governments undemocratic?" but they're putting the bull before the horns. Because we the pattern they've assumed is that countries have taken on communism, then dismantled their democratic systems. But no democracy has ever embraced communism. Instead we see un-democratic states, typically failed states, with a general revolution or a coup, replace one authoritarian government with a new, communist authoritarian government.

At which point we can see that while non-democratic societies can become communist, but at least so far in history, it appears democracies do not become communist.

Suddenly the question isn't "why are all communist states undemocratic?", but "why don't democracies ever become communist?"

And the answer to that question is "because no society actually wants it."

Whether it could ever actually work or not, no society has ever actually wanted it. When they have played with it, like the UK did in the wake of WWII, they've backtracked about as fast as possible.

Andrew1975 wrote:

There's this idea, bizarrely agreed by both the left and the right for entirely different reasons, that there was no poverty or homelessness in communism. There was.

So in essence, communism only works in theory, not practice?

It never works in practice.
It works in theory, when you theorize it working in Utopia. However being Utopia most things work there.
It does work in the mind of every naive university freshman who thinks that capitalism is inherently evil (its' not, well not more than any other system) and wants to be Radical (guilty).That's really about it!
The amount of poverty and homelessness in Soviet Russia was very large(not that capitalism has fixed this), not to mention the political murders.

It's more complex than that, since "communism" is frequently used to mean a number of different things: at its broadest any command economy, more narrowly the whole of the extremely disparate movements that have claimed to be communist, and at its most specific the actual ideas put forward by Marx. The last of which I don't think works on paper either; that's just a cliche that gets repeated ad nauseum, like "at least the trains ran on time!" or some variation thereof in reference to Fascism. What's important to note, however, is that even many of the "failed" attempts at Marxism worked better than the Capitalism Marx was familiar, as he lived at the height of the excesses of Victorian Capitalism, a system so horrific that even the Soviet Union comes out looking good. Shown the post-New Deal USA, and the Stalin-era USSR, he probably would have favored the former, as it curtailed the worst excesses of Capitalism, while the Soviet Union descended into paranoid fratricide and poverty.

A command economy actually works, however. Even the poorly implemented and focused, run-by-thugs-and-assassins USSR managed to go from war-torn agricultural backwater to contemporary industrial power in a couple of decades, before being burned to the ground again, only to defeat an army that conquered almost the whole of Europe, despite being led by an incompetent sociopath who had his entire military leadership killed prior to the war. Afterwards, it emerged the second most powerful country on Earth and managed to survive another half century before bankrupting itself in Afghanistan and collapsing, while the most powerful nation tried to undermine and bring it down, and it actively advocated an ideology at odds with its own actions, with its leaders being chosen with a game of courtiership and assassination, neither of which translate well to actually running a country. Was it a brutal regime prone to economic oversights causing shortages and poverty? Of course, but it still came out second despite the odds against it. A command economy with modern technology that's not waging a constant war on its own citizenry and pursuing a bizarre mix of hypocrisy and Marxism would almost certainly work quite well; there's no chance of one actually being implemented anywhere, and if it were you can bet it would be sabotaged by ideologues and criminals seeking personal gain, but the fundamentals behind it are functional.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

sebster wrote:Whether it could ever actually work or not, no society has ever actually wanted it. When they have played with it, like the UK did in the wake of WWII, they've backtracked about as fast as possible.

Right, because American interference and wealthy interests investing in anti-communist propaganda couldn't have had any influence on that...

Sir Pseudonymous wrote
It's more complex than that..........

The basic psychology of communism doesn't work. Humanities main motivational instincts are survival, followed by greed. Capitalism thrives because it understands it is easier and more productive to nurture these drives and then regulate them, whereas communism tries to deny they exist or at least espouses that they are wrong(well to the masses anyway).

I don't think communism saved the Soviets during world war 2, Totalitarianism did! The USSR may have been the number 2 military power in the world, but they were far from being anywhere near the west in an economic sense, Seriously the country has 2 large metropolitan cities, Moscow and St.Petersburg, the rest is medium size cities and ......well nothing! They have the infrastructure of a third world nation and one of the worst primary and secondary education systems in the modern world. Lots of natural resources though.

Don't get me wrong, I love the place, but when I lived there for a while my friends and I just couldn't understand how they were ever really considered number 2. We didn't even have heat and hot water in our dormitories 90% of the time!

That being said, not pure form of communism or capitalism will ever work.

There are a lot of societies that existed without greed being the major element of their culture. Greed from exterior cultures wiped out a lot of those cultures but they do show that greed isn't second behind survival. It is our culture that has told us this, though the reasons vary depending on the researchers varying from it being the most natural state (thanks CATO) to a rationalization for being horrible people. It is obliviously an element but whether it is a base element is up for debate, not set in concrete.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:Right, because American interference and wealthy interests investing in anti-communist propaganda couldn't have had any influence on that...

In 1948? No, it wasn't a factor. You need to look at least a decade later to start seeing the CIA beginning to feth around in other people's politics. Even, then their influence in developed countries wasn't that great.

And in all of them the communist party remained legal but never won an election. Because ultimately there's never been a majority population that wants to hand the means of production over to the state.

Andrew1975 wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote
It's more complex than that..........

The basic psychology of communism doesn't work. Humanities main motivational instincts are survival, followed by greed. Capitalism thrives because it understands it is easier and more productive to nurture these drives and then regulate them, whereas communism tries to deny they exist or at least espouses that they are wrong(well to the masses anyway).

The majority of human history has been served in de facto second stage communism (Anarchism). Prior to the advent of agriculture, all known societies were effectively anarchist: everyone who is able works, everyone eats, no one has any authority beyond the respect of others. This isn't compatible with the larger societies agriculture made possible, nor the more permanent land ownership agriculture requires (horticulturalists being either semi-nomadic, or simply frequently (every couple of years) changing their fields), and obviously couldn't support all the modern comforts we have today, like running water and medicine, but it does work, and has historically been the most prevalent form of human society. To quote what I said by the end of the last page:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:I'm assuming "proper communism" means "(actual) marxism" (as in, what Marx actually proposed), which isn't so much a system as a "path to Anarchism", so to speak. The idea is for the working class to revolt and establish a "dictatorship of the proletariat" that would serve to coordinate the logistics of the transition to Anarchism, then stand down and return to work. Naturally, this doesn't actually work, but it's a far cry from Stalinism or any other "communist" regime we've seen. Now Anarchism, as a system, demonstrably works, with the caveat that it only works in very small groups, no more than a few hundred. We see it in both horticultural tribes and hippy communes, and in both it functions, but it doesn't scale up beyond those numbers, at which point the "crime protection" of "everyone knows and is familiar with everyone else" breaks down due to the limits of the human brain, and logistics become too burdensome for chaotic organization to work everything out.

Further, a command economy, in and of itself, is not Communism. If you had a technocratic government who nominally owned all business, industry, and agriculture, and thus employed all the citizenry, you'd have a command economy, even if it provided luxuries and rewarded skill much like a capitalist system does. I'd go so far as to say such a setup would be the only way a post-labor/scarcity society could function, for instance, as Capitalism breaks down if there's no need for workers (if no one needs employees, there'll be no one with money to buy any products or services, after all).

I don't think communism saved the Soviets during world war 2, Totalitarianism did!

Their massive population and the government control over the remaining industrial infrastructure, coupled with the hostile climate, the small, overextended forces the Nazis could bring to bear, as well as the monumental incompetence of the Nazi command (which probably made up for Stalin offing the Soviet military leadership), are what led them to victory. The fact that they managed that under communism isn't to say that Capitalism would have failed in such a circumstance, only that having a command economy didn't lead to their downfall.

The USSR may have been the number 2 military power in the world, but they were far from being anywhere near the west in an economic sense, Seriously the country has 2 large metropolitan cities, Moscow and St.Petersburg, the rest is medium size cities and ......well nothing! They have the infrastructure of a third world nation and one of the worst primary and secondary education systems in the modern world. Lots of natural resources though.

Don't get me wrong, I love the place, but when I lived there for a while my friends and I just couldn't understand how they were ever really considered number 2. We didn't even have heat and hot water in our dormitories 90% of the time!

That being said, not pure form of communism or capitalism will ever work.

It certainly didn't bring about luxuries or comfort, but it still managed a great deal of industrial development and scientific progress, and considering its conditions (when the Czars were toppled, Russia was basically to the rest of the developed world what it is to the rest of the developed world today, if not worse off) I don't think Capitalism would necessarily have done much better, though had the Bolsheviks not seized power after revolutionaries overthrew the Czars, it may have ended up better off, more like Scandinavia.

Andrew1975 wrote:I don't think communism saved the Soviets during world war 2, Totalitarianism did! The USSR may have been the number 2 military power in the world, but they were far from being anywhere near the west in an economic sense

Thing is, communism works to turn agrarian societies into industrial societies really, really quickly. They can't really innovate or build new industry, but they can copy the industry already developed elsewhere in the world, and just pick up peasants and pile them into new factories in a way that free economies just can't.

The same thing is happening in China now. Most of their growth is just in pure inputs, drawing labour off the farms and into the factories, bringing in more and more natural resources from the rest of the world, and building more and more factories.

The thing is, it doesn't last, because sooner or later the inputs have all been maximised, and to keep growing you need to do things better and more efficiently. And communism does not do efficiency.


Oh, and Russia wasn't the number 2 military after WWII. It was number 1. By a long fething way.

Ahtman wrote:There are a lot of societies that existed without greed being the major element of their culture. Greed from exterior cultures wiped out a lot of those cultures but they do show that greed isn't second behind survival. It is our culture that has told us this, though the reasons vary depending on the researchers varying from it being the most natural state (thanks CATO) to a rationalization for being horrible people. It is obliviously an element but whether it is a base element is up for debate, not set in concrete.

If greed represents greed for power than I'd disagree strongly. Can you cite examples?

dogma wrote:Really I think what this comes to is whether or not you consider political spectra to be relative or absolute. I'm fairly certain you're in the latter camp.

I have said this a number of times before. I believe (and have shown) that Obama is left of center in American politics. Others have suggested that Obama is "right of center," or that the US doesn't have a "real left." This is an absolute statement, yet one no one has been willing to defend it (ok, no one except Melissia).

Fer feths sake, is it really that difficult for people to explain what they mean when they make statements like this? Could you please address the issue, or, if you disagree that Obama is generic-right (or that generic-right has any meaning), avoid making meaningless posts about the relativity of political labels?

Hey, I stand by my position

I don't appear to be doing a very good job at explaining it though :(

Andrew1975 wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote
It's more complex than that..........

The basic psychology of communism doesn't work. Humanities main motivational instincts are survival, followed by greed.

I'm pretty sure humans have more motives than just a desire for excess wealth whether it's the lonely guy who wants a girlfriend or friends, the sports jock who wants to score the winning goal to boost his bloated

ego, the nerdy kid who does good in school because he wants to be a doctor, there are many examples that show people have different priorities/values over one another and sometimes wealth is going to be pretty low

on that list.

Melissia wrote:Hey, I stand by my position

I don't appear to be doing a very good job at explaining it though :(

Thanks for taking the time to seriously address the issue. Despite the fact that I think you're wrong (that is, your definition doesn't distinguish), I appreciate the discussion.

Melissia wrote:Hey, I stand by my position

I don't appear to be doing a very good job at explaining it though :(

AS noted, you did stand up and try to explain it though so kudos to you.

biccat wrote:
I have said this a number of times before. I believe (and have shown) that Obama is left of center in American politics. Others have suggested that Obama is "right of center," or that the US doesn't have a "real left." This is an absolute statement, yet one no one has been willing to defend it (ok, no one except Melissia).

A statement that the US lacks a "real left" doesn't need to be taken as an absolute one

biccat wrote:
Fer feths sake, is it really that difficult for people to explain what they mean when they make statements like this? Could you please address the issue, or, if you disagree that Obama is generic-right (or that generic-right has any meaning), avoid making meaningless posts about the relativity of political labels?

Why are post like that meaningless? I'm making an explicit claim (political labels generally are relative, especially when they're generic by intention) , and arguing for that claim, which certainly indicates the presence of meaning.

The point attached to the end of my lat post was meant to illustrate the crux of the disagreement between both sides here; namely that some posters are using a spectrum governed by the relative positions of extant politicians (which would allow Obama to be centrist relative to both people like Pelosi, and people like Gingrich) and others are using an absolute spectrum (which places Obama roughly center-left, in most cases). Then there are people arguing from a global perspective, which places Obama roughly center-left wit the rest of US politics, and others speaking from a Western spectrum which places Obama center-right (again, together with most US politicians).

I would argue that Obama is, relative to US politics, center-left if only due to his behavior in office (I don't think we know enough about his personal positions to comment). He pushed for DADT, Health care reform, and withdrew troops from Iraq (all leftist issues, except perhaps Iraq) while also extending the Bush Tax Cuts, sending troops to Afghanistan, and refusing to close Gitmo (all right issues, except perhaps Afghanistan). He also hasn't taken a position on gun control, or illegal immigration, which to me says either indifferent, or centrist. And, while he certainly acted to intervene in corporate activity, he didn't do so in a way which was overly intrusive, or really even particularly unpopular amongst other American politicians; meaning that whether or not you see the spectrum as absolute or relative is going to determine where you place it.

Globally, Obama is obviously going to be influenced by his presence in the United States, which is itself right-leaning. In this context he comes out further to the right of just about every leader in the Western world, and really only to left of people like Hu Jintao, Dilma Rousseff, Pratibha Patil, and maybe Angela Merkel.

dogma wrote:

biccat wrote:
I have said this a number of times before. I believe (and have shown) that Obama is left of center in American politics. Others have suggested that Obama is "right of center," or that the US doesn't have a "real left." This is an absolute statement, yet one no one has been willing to defend it (ok, no one except Melissia).

A statement that the US lacks a "real left" doesn't need to be taken as an absolute one.

Um...what?

If politics is relative, then the US has a "real left." Unless you're using a global relative scale, at which point you still have to define what quantifies someone as left/right.

dogma wrote:Why are post like that meaningless? I'm making an explicit claim (political labels generally are relative, especially when they're generic by intention) , and arguing for that claim, which certainly indicates the presence of meaning.

Because you're not advancing the issue. When the claim is made "He isn't a true scotsman," and someone asks for the definition of a true scotsman, you can't respond to the 2nd person by saying there's no such thing as a true scotsman. You're casting doubt on the original premise rather than addressing the question presented.

Although, if you were to agree that the idea that Obama is "right of center" is absurd, you would be on topic.

dogma wrote:Globally, Obama is obviously going to be influenced by his presence in the United States, which is itself right-leaning. In this context he comes out further to the right of just about every leader in the Western world, and really only to left of people like Hu Jintao, Dilma Rousseff, Pratibha Patil, and maybe Angela Merkel.

Wait, Hu Jintao, the communist leader of the largest communist country in the world who is making moderate capitalist reforms under strong internal and external pressure, is on the "right"? While a capitalist leader of the largest capitalist country in the world who is making moderate socialist reforms is not on the "left"?

I see that your scale lacks clarity. Although I appreciate the effort to answer the question.

Here is another one http://www.nolanchart.com/survey.php, though only 10 questions but pretty quick if not horribly accurate. Though it put me in Libertarian leaning towards Liberal and Centrist.

Apologies if this one already got posted.

I haven't seen it before. Interesting.

The flaw from a foreign perspective is that most other developed countries are basically more socialist/collectivist than the USA, so our citizens are likely to score towards the blue pentagon.

It seems like if I were to use the standard that is assumed to declare "communism doesn't work in practice," I should also be saying "capitalism doesn't work in practice." Or is the difference that capitalism is supposed to create, at least incidentally, some of the problems that communism claims to be able to fix?

Manchu wrote:It seems like if I were to use the standard that is assumed to declare "communism doesn't work in practice," I should also be saying "capitalism doesn't work in practice." Or is the difference that capitalism is supposed to create, at least incidentally, some of the problems that communism claims to be able to fix?

Well both systems struggle at absolutes, but a capitilist society will grow and develop, while a communist one will often stagnate, or at best keep up.

Communism doesn't work because no country has had success over anything approaching a long term. Capitalism has a far better track record.

If nothing else, capitilism relies on human nature, regulated and controlled by the state (not unlike the criminal code, religion, etc). Communism relies on the state essentially repressing the human nature.

Sckitzo wrote:Here is another one http://www.nolanchart.com/survey.php, though only 10 questions but pretty quick if not horribly accurate. Though it put me in Libertarian leaning towards Liberal and Centrist.

Liberal towards centrist (no bias toward either libertarian or statist).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Polonius wrote:If nothing else, capitilism relies on human nature, regulated and controlled by the state (not unlike the criminal code, religion, etc). Communism relies on the state essentially repressing the human nature.

Very interesting and truly couched in the spirit of '76. Of course, the same criticisms apply: whose view of human nature is the one to capitalism matches so well?

Oh, and Russia wasn't the number 2 military after WWII. It was number 1. By a long fething way.

Bigger, yes; better, questionable; as capable, doubtful. I think the soviets would have been destroyed in the air, which is all that mattered by the end of WWII. All of which didn't matter if the button got pressed, on either side.

I'm pretty sure humans have more motives than just a desire for excess wealth whether it's the lonely guy who wants a girlfriend or friends, the sports jock who wants to score the winning goal to boost his bloated

ego, the nerdy kid who does good in school because he wants to be a doctor, there are many examples that show people have different priorities/values over one another and sometimes wealth is going to be pretty low

on that list.

Greed isn't just money you know. Of course there are other driving forces, I was just listing the two that are strongest amongst the general population.

The majority of human history has been served in de facto second stage communism (Anarchism). Prior to the advent of agriculture, all known societies were effectively anarchist: everyone who is able works, everyone eats, no one has any authority beyond the respect of others.

Anarchism doesn't have anything to do with Marxism, neither does a forced economy. Well not in the context that I was speaking anyway. The facts are, systems that deny human motivations fail, systems that harness this same power are more likely to work. Now maybe through generations of reeducation you can change human drive, but no one has ever really succeeded with this.

There is also the question of how many losses the Soviets could have absorbed in a hypothetical direct confrontation with the US in 1945. They were worn out, and couldn't keep losing men like they did in 1942, while the US was still ramping up in 1945. Dont' write off the Soviet air force, though.

I think arguing that the the Soviet Military was the most improtant to the allied success in the war is a pretty solid point. Yes, it was successful due to economic aid and the opening of other fronts, but it still essentially beat the germans at their own game.