Quote:
Originally Posted by Ramrod
So we are all agreed that there is a problem defining socialism & communism and where one becomes the other...
This problem has been pointed out by our left wing leaning members and has bogged the thread down nicely.  
This reminds me of the times we discussed the perils of unfettered immigration and it's effects on the social fabric of Britain/England......the same thing happened there as our left wingers immediately challenged us to define what Britishness/Englishness is......thereby bogging down the discussion and shifting it away from the real topic
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Definitions are important. Just because it may be difficult to find a single point where a extreme form of socialism becomes communism doesn't mean they're not different. The world isn't that black and white and that isn't a left-wing trick to make things difficult, it's just how the world works. Things are complicated.
People were saying people on the left love to control and that the left were responsible for the deaths of 100 million people. Left = socialism = communism = Stalin seems to be the formula that people are trying to advocate. If you're on the left these are the things that you do or the consequences of what you believe.
That is nasty and it is wrong. It's a sick way to characterise people who disagree with you.
The "left wing leaning members" are trying to point that socialism does not mean communism and doesn't have to led to communism. That there are many examples of countries with socialist tendencies that have not succumbed to communism. Also that totalitarianism/fascism is not just the end of the left wing scale but can exist irrespective of the political learnings of the oppressive administration. It's a form of Government control that can be exercised often by people with extremest political views.
In the end those the discussion of the extremes is pointless because no one is really advocating communism here. We're talking about control and as I pointed out towards the start, this government has been just as authoritarian as the last so the notion that it's a Labour trend is simply wrong.