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Is the Left Wing more truthful than the Right Wing, and if so, why?

All the evidence shows is that Kim Il Sung was tugging at Stalin's sleeve begging to be allowed to invade South Korea. Stalin relented and let him.
 
All the evidence shows is that Kim Il Sung was tugging at Stalin's sleeve begging to be allowed to invade South Korea. Stalin relented and let him.
He wrote two long volumes on the origins, you can get a sense of his position in this interview:
A lot of liberals, for example, in several articles over the years in the New York Review of Books, paid attention to one chapter of the 33 chapters I wrote in two volumes. They focused on the one called “Who Started the Korean War?” and proceeded to show that they didn’t understand what I was talking about. I tried to deconstruct this whole utterly politicized question because if you ask it, the official story in this country is North Korea started the war at Stalin’s behest. You can then wrap it up, put a ribbon on it, and that’s the story you need to know. What happened in the previous five years while the US was supporting the South? Well, we had a military government for three years and then the US supported the Syngman Rhee government for two more years. Nobody knows that. I mean, even well-informed New York Times journalists that I’ve talked to over the years were unaware that there was an American occupation of Korea. They know all about the one for Japan and the one in West Germany, but they don’t know there was an occupation, let alone what happened during that time...
I remember reading that General William Roberts, the American commander of the military advisory group that we had in Korea in the summer of 1949, informed Washington in a top-secret message that the South Koreans had started more than half of the fighting that whole summer. The first battle in May was also said to have been started by South Korean forces, as was the last in December 1949. I said to myself, anyone looking at this would call this a civil war and know that when North Korea gets ready, North Korea will deal with these people. North Korea had tens of thousands of its soldiers fighting in the Chinese Civil War on the communist side, but they came back in fall of 1949 and 1950 and formed the crack divisions of the Korean People’s Army. So, I consider it just pure politics when someone says this war has a single author, which is the communist side. It’s purely political.

 
What is it they used to say?

Google is your friend -

noun
noun: left wing; plural noun: left wings; noun: leftwing; plural noun: leftwings
  1. 1.
    the section of a political party or system that advocates greater social and economic equality, and typically favours socially liberal ideas; the socialist or progressive group or section.

  2. 2.
    the left side of a team on the field in soccer, rugby, and field hockey.
    "his usual position on the left wing"
    • the left side of an army.
      "the Allied left wing"
adjective
adjective: left-wing; adjective: left wing; adjective: leftwing

  1. advocating or taking measures to promote greater social and economic equality, and typically favouring socially liberal ideas; socialist or progressive.
    "left-wing activists"


 
Communism always ends up being like Stalin or North Korea.
You judge people by their actions - not their words!
already you hav two examples on this thread of Left-wingers not being able to accept the truth and trying to bend it to match their politics.
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The world is shit, people are shit, but communism isn't the answer.
Even after the revolution nothing will changed:
you won't be any better looking than you are now, your Willy won't be any bigger than it is now, nothing will change, you will still have all the same medical problems that you have now, you won't become instantly popular and people will still be shit, don't try to find answers for your personal medical problems in left-wing politics.
 
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Communism always ends up being like Stalin or North Korea.
You judge people by the actions not their words.
already you hav two examples of Left-wingers not being able to accept the truth and trying to bend it to match their politics.
-
The world is shit, people are shit, but communism isn't the answer.
Even after the revolution nothing will changed:
you won't be any better looking than you are now, your Willy won't be any bigger than it is now, nothing will change, you will still have all the same medical problems that you have now, you won't become instantly popular and people will still be shit, don't try to find answers for your personal medical problems in left-wing politics.

Which personal medical problems of mine are you alluding to?
 
He wrote two long volumes on the origins, you can get a sense of his position in this interview:



That is interesting.
Also interesting is that there was an uprising in South Korea in 1948 that was brutally put down.
Many of the people that the USA put in power in South Korea had collaborated with the Japanese occupation of that country.
 
pokazuka - Getting back to the subject of the thread russia used to take the signs off machine tools that it had bought from Finland and take off the trademark signs and replace it with "made in Russia" type signs there was nothing honest in the old Soviet Union, Everything was about lying to the populace, Deceiving them, and keeping them down.
 
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This looks like the definition was written by a left-winger, a daydreamer, A wishful thinker, delusional fantasist who can't cope with the real world. This definition was written by a left winger. “We are the Good Guys!!!!!”.

You come across as dishonest. Or ill informed, at the very least.

Why are you posting on this site, out of curiosity?
 
ooh, ooh, I know this one.
Please tell me how long you would last if you had been born in North Korea or in Stalin's Russia?


Many people on this site struggled in the midsts of plenty. This site is a sanctuary for intelligent people with brain problems, mental problems, and I include myself in this group, in this category as I have quite bad brain damage. I joined this site when I was bedridden as I got a bit better and was able to start doing things I sort of lost interest. But my medical problems rule my life, I woke up just before I came on to this forum (my laptop is next to my bed), after having not a very enjoyable dream, when I woke up my the top of my head was hurting, it totally explained my crap dream. Every day for the last eight years I've woken up in pain I have to keep my head warm or I get a bit doodally or if I'm asleep I just have nightmares. None of my medical problems, life problems were caused by the Tories or by Margaret Thatcher or by the USA or by Americans or by Donald Trump, my problems, like everybody else's on this site are medical. yes, you're intelligent, some of you very intelligent, but our brains aren't working properly. if we've been born in North Korea virtually every single one of us would be dead because we don't know how to survive.
 
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Please tell me how long you would last if you had been born in North Korea or in Stalin's Russia?


Many people on this site struggled in the mists of plenty. This site is a sanctuary for intelligent people with brain problems, mental problems, and I include myself in this group in this category as I have quite bad brain damage. I joined this site when I was bedridden as I got a bit better and was able to start doing things I lost interest. But my medical problems rule my life, I woke up just before I came on to this forum (my laptop is next to my bed), after having not a very enjoyable dream, when I woke up my the top of my head was hurting, it totally explained my crap dream. Every day for the last eight years I've woken up in pain I have to keep my head warm or I get a bit doodally or if I'm asleep I just have nightmares. None of my medical problems life problems were caused by the Tories or by Margaret Thatcher or by the USA or by Americans or by Donald Trump my problems like everybody else's on this site are medical yes you're intelligent, some of you very intelligent, but our brains aren't working properly. if we've been born in North Korea virtually every single one of us would be dead because we don't know how to survive.
Really sorry to hear about your problems. I wish you well.
 
And I wish you well, Elizabeth. I've read your bio on Danny the Rouge's thread and I have great sympathy for you. I am thinking of doing a similar bio, but will I be able to get around to doing it, I don't know. The people who have written on that thread have shown great honesty and courage I think it's the most important thread on this forum.. I want to say more, but I can't quite articulate it.
 
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It really depends what criteria you are using. Life in Cuba under Castro was measurably better in many ways for a lot of people than life under Batista. But the Cuban Revolution did not bring freedom. I guess that would be my question. Are there examples of violent revolutions that have led to genuine freedom?

When I consider the examples I can think of, the more peaceful the revolution is, the better its chance of achieving freedom as its outcome. But is the peaceful overthrow of tyrants (like Batista) always realistically possible?
Why is the violence of the oppressed against their oppressors always condemned?

What is genuine freedom?
 
Democratic?
People's?
Republic?
This is regularly wheeled out and it's so tedious. Those words mean wildy different things to different people. And so it is with Marxism-Leninism, with the above specifying a particular form of government within M-L doctrine, identifying a country on the socialist road (as understood by M-Ls specifically and not everyone else you don't like) but necessarily behind the socialist (again as understood by M-Ls) development of Soviet society. The criteria for it involving pre-revolutionary class basis of said society, type of economy, depth of capitalist development, position within the world system etc, relationship to the USSR etc... Now this is going to blow your mind, but the convergence of Marxism-Leninism with a deeply patriarchal national culture, and influence from Japanese colonialism, created a society that according to other M-Ls moved beyond the acceptable bounds of what it reasonably means to be 'Marxist-Leninist.'
 
Not being arrested for saying stuff like what I just posted.

There do exist freedoms of expression in places like the UK that do not exist in Cuba.

This stuff matters.
I'm not a Cuba fan but it's authoritarian government can't be removed from the context of its relationship with the US. I'm a communist and believe all basic human needs should be met for free with or without 'earning' them, as a baseline for a healthy society. There are people who want to kill me for holding such views. The UK government aided Chile during the civil-military dictatorship, where members of the left were raped by dogs in its torture chambers. This stuff matters, indeed.
 
The UK government aided Chile during the civil-military dictatorship, where members of the left were raped by dogs in its torture chambers.
Yes. It did. It's aiding Israel commit genocide right now. But that doesn't change ideas about basic freedom to dissent. Anywhere where that has been lost is in a bad place, including Cuba.
 
Yes. It did. It's aiding Israel commit genocide right now. But that doesn't change ideas about basic freedom to dissent. Anywhere where that has been lost is in a bad place, including Cuba.
These ideas, as vaguely as we're both talking about them now, or the modern understanding of them, were expressed when other human beings were chattel. Cuba pre-revolution was essentially a brothel and safe place for US organised crime to launder money. It had to gradually adopt Soviet political practices as a condition for outside support during blockade and attempts to destabilise it. Like I said, I'm no fan of its authoritarianism. I'm no fan of equating all communist politics with a crude caricature of M-L, either. Which I acknowledge you're not doing.
 
Philosophers, sociologists and economists have talked about many forms of “freedom” down the years, of course. You have the ultimate neoliberal’s version of freedom in Hayek. Hayek defined it only as “the condition of men in which coercion of some by others is reduced as much as possible”. He carefully distinguished this freedom from broader notions, excluding political freedoms like the right to vote, saying that a benevolent despot might respect individual freedom while a democratic majority might violate the protected space of minorities. It also did not include psychological or “inner freedom.” Poverty did not threaten Hayek’s version of freedom, But he rejected any unqualified laissez-faire that might allow people to invade each other’s’ personal space. So, minimization of coercion was equivalent to maximization of a protected personal space.

Then you have the pragmatists like John Dewey. His freedom was about being a free moral agent who, facing conflicts between habitual ways of acting and pressures from duties, impulses, and fears, could mentally rehearse possible actions, and decide what to do based on anticipated consequences. These consequences must include consequences for other people and for the kinds of persons that the moral agents want to become. Although free moral agents make ethical decisions as individuals, their ability to do so depends on “deep communities” in which they are born, learn, and develop habits. And these “deep communities” depend, in turn, on the capabilities of free moral agents who become parents, live in neighborhoods, work in schools and libraries, and join voluntary organizations. So, for Dewey, freedom was inseparable from the social development of capabilities.

Or you have your more collectivist-economists definitions of freedom, like those given by John Commons. Freedom for Commons was the power of citizens to call on officials of the state to protect their “privileges, immunities, and rights.” For Commons, a right for one person implied duties for others, an immunity for one person implied liabilities for others, and so forth. He thus feared that the rise of corporations rendered an abolitionist notion of “free” labor irrelevant for the landless working classes of the factory age. For Commons, there were thus three kinds of coercion that prevented freedom: political, economic, and moral.
 
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