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Marxism has been tried, over and over again. Always it produces shortages, usually it produces skulls. Why do we have to keep doing it?
Sure, Marxism mostly fails to create good economies. However, the part of Marxism where you drag rich people out of their homes in the middle of the night, shoot them in the back of the head, and toss their still-warm bodies into a ditch is appealing to many people. So what if everything goes to shit afterwards? You still got your revenge on the previous elites, and nothing can ever take that away from you.
The other thing is, command economies are pretty effective if you want to speed-run a society's development from mostly agricultural to mostly industrial and if you want to introduce stuff like public education and women's rights on a mass scale. Many people die in the process, but a few decades later the survivors look back and see that they went from having no prospects except subsistence farming when they were children to now working as factory professionals or bureaucrats.
Can capitalist economies accomplish the same thing? Sure, and probably with less death on average. US-aligned dictatorships murdered over a million civilians during the Cold War, whereas the failures and repressions of communist regimes led to probably an order of magnitude more deaths in communist-controlled countries during the same period. However, this is a rather subtle point and the difference is not so obviously glaring as to immediately cause the average person to throw out Marxism as a clear failure. For most of the history of the competition between capitalism and communism, in most of the world, the average person's choice has not been between modern-style US liberal democracy and communism, it has been between non-communist dictatorship and communist dictatorship.
It's appealing to all people with some absolutely minor editing. Lefties aren't uniquely bloodthirsty and the layer of civilization on people is paper-thin.
What's unique is the acceptance. Someone proposes gassing Jews and they're properly viewed with horror. Someone proposes shooting kulaks and they're given professorships, important positions on NGOs and government advisory committees, and occasionally made Secretary of Labor.
Weren't you the one who was ready to collect commies skulls just yesterday? In self defense assumably, but as they're as evil as Nazis then being given some actual power - are you sure you wouldn't be happy to shoot them just for being evil commies or after something from them will trigger that ancient "it's now you or me" instinct?
There's no "but". Self-defense is different from shooting the kulaks. (And yes, I realize communists and Nazis both will sometimes phrase their murders in the form of self-defense, but at some point you have to get down to the object level and note that they're just lying or at the very best deluded)
So if you're sure that the enemy will kill you if they have an opportunity, will you wait for them to start shooting first?
I understand your point but you're wrong. You're claiming that commies have uniquely wicked METHODS for some reason, and you would never use their wicked methods (killing their enemies), just in self defense. While the methods you would use are exactly the same if you're as convinced in you being right as they are(or just if you're being rational organizing your "self defense", it's very rational to shoot first when you're past some point). It's not the methods which differ you from them, it's the content of your ideology. Methods are the same. You're not more or less bloodthirsty and not more or less "accepting of violence" than commies, look in the mirror.
Not interested in giving you an opening to make the villain speech ("We are alike, you and I"...)
I'm not a leftie, but I'm self aware enough and also old enough to recognise the Hitler/Stalin/Mao in me, during the right circumstances. But I'm glad you're uniquely good individual, without any dark sides. And I'm sure you'll remain good and just no matter what. And massacre millions purely in self defense.
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