[QUOTE="Luminouslight"]Read the book 1984.RainandSunshine
It's too bad 1984 has very little to do with communism. It's too bad most people never actualy read a book on communism. It's too bad that most people assume communism is a negative, when in fact the only thing bad about it has been the leaders behind it. It's too bad that communism is no different than democracy. People still have crap lives. It's inevenitable. EVERYONE cannot and will not be happy. There is no way to make a perfect society.
Americans aren't familiar with socialism since in the States the social democratic people's movements were effectively culled in their infancy around 100 years ago. This was largely because courts (made up by judges who often had a conservative bias) rather than congress decided on how strikes and protesters should be dealt with, so the political consequences for mistreatment of working class organisations were less severe than in Europe. It is interesting that although basically American workers movements no longer exist, they used to be as active as the European counterparts, even to the extent that May Day is celebrated by socialists globally in commemoration of the 1886 CHICAGO Haymarket Riot (the rioters were executed and are revered as martyrs by socialists all over the world).
Anyway, the result in the US governments cracking down on its worker class (at home as well as abroad, e.g. in occupied Japan) is that:
(1) unionisation in America is only around 10%, compared to 80% in some European countries.
(2) there is no influential Labour Party in the States, which is the main reason why voter turnout is far lower among American citizens (54% in presidential election years, 40-45% in other Congress elections) than European citizens (80% on average).
A lot of Americans simply don't have anyone to vote for since half of the political spectrum you'd find in a European parliament is missing. Whereas in other countries new parties would form to meet democratic demand, the US has institutiuonal barriers in place to prevent this (mainly the cost of campaigning).
American citizens have also been successfully conditioned to fear and hate anything even remotely red, as well as into adopting the self-interested (presented as patriotic) view of their elite that Communism = evil/the enemy/Stalin/Mao etc. There are however many different kinds of socialism, not all of which are revolutionary, such as Social Democracy, which is one of three-four mainstream political blocs in Europe, and demonstrably capable of running a successful mixed economy, e.g. Sweden has free health care, education, the lot, but also currently the most competitive economy in the world, and achieved a 4.5% GDP growth in 2006.
Neocons generally prefer to look at the disasters rather than the successes when discussing socialism, however, so that they can safely repeat their assertation that it "just doesn't work" based on historical precedence (conveniently ignoring cases where it has "worked", as well as ignoring cases where capitalism hasn't "worked").
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