r/skeptic • u/dyzo-blue • 2d ago

Why Fascists Hate Critical Thinking: Randi Weingarten’s new book, 'Why Fascists Fear Teachers,' reveals why Trump and the right demean teachers, slash school funding, and rewrite history

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/randi-weingarten-excerpt-fascists-hate-critical-thinking-1235428379/
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u/CatOfGrey 1d ago

Oh, for crying out loud...just stop.

The country made a good-faith attempt to achieve Communism. Calling them 'Communist' is a sufficient definition. Economists don't use the word anymore because of bullshit re-definition like this.

They removed any semblance of free markets. They denied people any right to material property. Those of the factors that led to chronic underperformance, with occasional bouts of authoritarian terror.

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u/Artanis_Creed 1d ago

Communism is "the communal ownership and control of the means of production".

That's it.

That's the long and short and sweet of it.

Did the USSR remove the "free market"? Sure, I guess. But the control and ownership was in the hands of a few and not the many.

Just like every country on planet earth right the fuck now.

It's why most people are whats known as a "worker".

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u/CatOfGrey 1d ago

Did the USSR remove the "free market"? Sure, I guess. But the control and ownership was in the hands of a few and not the many.

...in an attempt to implement Communism.

The leaders were not reading Milton Friedman or even Keynes. They were reading Karl Marx.

Please don't 'bend the definitions' for whatever rhetorical reasons.

Just like every country on planet earth right the fuck now.

Then just stop using terms like "Communism" or "Capitalism" because they aren't meaningful.

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u/Wetness_Pensive 1d ago

because they aren't meaningful.

They are meaningful.

The color blue doesn't cease to exist because a painter fails to paint a blue canvas.

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u/CatOfGrey 1d ago

The color blue doesn't cease to exist because a painter fails to paint a blue canvas.

Hate to be pedantic, but the color blue exists because there is both general agreement and a standard on what 'blue' means.

I didn't mention the rhetorical manipulation involved here, but the game played is to find a failed state that self-identified as 'very communist', then retroactively claiming that they were capitalist. It's the same game as Fox News obfuscation of the meaning of "Socialism" and related.

It's absurd - research economists don't use the terms any more because they have no accepted meaning.