Nothing new about the communists being pro-poor. They make people poor whereever they find a way. Today India is suffering the effects of commie policies. Today, 29th Sept, the commies have struck again in India crippling the transportation system. One day’s loss of production and productivity will add about a few million people to the ranks of the poor. How so you may ask? Simple, there are people at the margin. When the country grows poorer by a little amount, the people who were at the margin suffer the consequences of that shock most acutely.
Will those guys–the communist leaders–suffer? No way in hell. They will continue to live comfortable lives knowing that their policies have added to their vote banks. That is the irony of all. The commies create the conditions for their continued victory in the elections by improverishing the country.
May the commies all rot in hell for eternity.
Related Post: The Privatization of Public Sector Units.
Atanu Dey : Life is a Random Draw 
Atanu,I felt exactly the same way. The strike has been engineered by the Central Leftie trade unions; all protesting against the “betrayal of Congress” towards the Common Minimum programme.
The elections ar fast approaching and they need something to speak of. Wherever the freaking commies have ruled, they have made a mess of that place. West Bengal, Kerela Tripura and now by proxy in the centre.
Interestingly, Hindus have suffered the maximum in the states ruled by them; with virtual wholesome changes in the demographic profile.
Rot in Hell for eternity? I blame their mothers for having them!
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In case of communists I am pro – choice.
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If stopping all regular activities is a way to oppose policies, why don’t these band-walla’s come out with a better, peaceful ways? These “Messaiah’s of poor” assume that they sent shock to the Govt, by one-day-strike.
Are they noticing that very people for whom they call the strike, suffer so much due to the strike?
I remember reading in newspaper that “Any party calling for band has to bear with the expenses for the damage caused during band”.
Is that judgement made a rule & being followed ?
I wonder, if band-wallah’s even remember that?
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I simply cannot go for such hate mongering it is the root of what poisons peoples and societies. I am an American and see first hand how hate has tarnished my country. I can also see in India where hate (1947) and subsequent conflicts threaten India’s social fabric, but also one can witness the ascension of the country of India through positivism. Just look to your placement on the world stage regarding technology, Bollywood, outsourcing, and various professional fields Indians have taken up around the globe.
The poor will be poor if communists, republicans, democrats, or fascists are on the margin or in power. The system of capitalism requires a system of poverty, where the poor handle jobs that allow people on the margin of middle class to have better lives through cheaper services, this is not unique to communism, this is not communism, this is life. Striking is capitalism, it is bargaining, in communism strikers are put in prison. Striking is making a sacrifice, doing nothing is maintaining a status quo, someone somewhere must do something? What really is your fix to help the poor in a country where the poor are untouchables?
Your venting with such disdain and vapid seething hatred for communism does no one any good, it only keeps the rule of hatred alive. I suppose you spout this nonsense as you have accepted and condone when other races refer to India and its people in such derogatory terms.
As for me, you have unfortunately turned me away from your blog. Your vulgarity and petty mindedness should embarrass you, your family, your nation.
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The worst kinds of commies are not the ignorant politicos…its the elite mediawalas who have the most effect.
In this month’s Tehelka interview, Aparna Sen laments about decline of culture in Kolkatta…the students don’t go on strike, they don’t have any politics, they just want to graduate & work in malls & BPOs, so Kolkata is becoming a boring Singapore instead of a culture-filled Paris!!!
The fact that the youth is independently choosing a capitalist lifestyle that leads them to buy gadgets & work for them conveniently escapes this holy cow. She wants a bunch of leftie long-haired jholawalas blocking roads & creating ruckus to preserve what she sees as Kolkata’s culture!
This sort of leftist insidious propoganda warps student’s minds at a young age & leaves them totally naive about how the world really works.
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If you are still visiting this blog, I have a question for you, JW. What was that you were showing in your last paragraph? Was it exceptional “love” because you think this Atanu is a moron? That same kind of “love” was shown by him to the Communists.
Religious conflicts, Ideological conflicts are there because people think that only their belief is correct and the rest all are fools. Everything has its own plus and minus. Certain things dont work in certain places; certain things work in certain places; One has to apply and see what works where.
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JW,
by commies, Atanu was refering specifically to the CPI, not communists in general such as those in China. To disagree and have contempt for policies, especially those that are politically motivated is not hateful or ignorant, but rather just plain good sense
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Patel,
I love political discourse, vile cursing of those you do not agree with is antagonistic hatred, it inspires violence, wars, disdain which leads nowhere. I disagree with my own President, but calling him names is petty and will only make others turn on me instead of engaging those I do not agree with. I am no communist, I don’t by into the politics of it in the slightest. But come on Patel, Atanu wished for “commies” to burn in hell. How is this not hateful? Do Indians enjoy be called Boojie’s or Darkies by whites?
Vivek S.,
Love? Your sarcasm will ultimately have you veering into the same hostility that takes my fellow Americans into vitriolic barbs – man, it’s a dead end street – we do not progress when reduced to hostile speech, we spin out of control. Atanu is not a moron, on the contrary, but one does not need be genius or moron to take up the mantle of stupid aggression. I will respond to intelligent argument, even heated argument, but have to walk away when we devolve into name calling.
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JW
The poor will be poor if communists, republicans, democrats, or fascists are on the margin or in power.
True. And in the case of Communism, all of us will poor, whereas with Capitalism, there is chance that many people can escape that poverty if they so choose
The system of capitalism requires a system of poverty, where the poor handle jobs that allow people on the margin of middle class to have better lives through cheaper services
It does? This is news to me. I thought it was a system of allocating scarce resources, where the market (when allowed to FREELY) allocates resources in the most economically feasible, efficient and mutually beneficial way, barring the exceptions such as Public Goods, and other Market Failures as covered in any decent economic textbook.
I never realized it a system setup to enslave poor people. Well there go my 18 years of education. Thanks for the enlightenment.
Striking is making a sacrifice, doing nothing is maintaining a status quo, someone somewhere must do something?
This just shows how completely misinformed you are about the whole issue. Am I feeding a Troll perhaps? Well since I’m halfway through, I’ll finish the job.
Why are the workers striking? Because the airports are being privatised. Why is that a bad thing? Because it means there will be less bribes to go around, and because people who don’t do their jobs will get fired. These bastards are nothing more than a bunch of gangsters and that goes for all trade unions anywhere.
hat really is your fix to help the poor in a country where the poor are untouchables?
Factual error. It is not the poor who are untouchable. It’s the Untouchables who are poor. You really seem to be clueless.
Your venting with such disdain and vapid seething hatred for communism does no one any good, it only keeps the rule of hatred alive.
Communism and Socialism are the true evils of this world, and have caused more suffering than any other -ism that I know of. It should be stamped out, and should be vehemently opposed, in the exact way that Atanu has done it (I can’t believe that I’m actually here supporting Atanu, considering the amount of ranting I usually do against him!)
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To JW:
Nehru was a socialist dictator who did astoundingly stupid things. Hundreds of millions of Indians live lives that are too horrible to contemplate even, leave alone live, as a result of Nehru’s policies.
So yes, I have a lot of hatred for stupid evil people, especially the commies who are hell bent on adding to the misery of India.
If they don’t want my hatred, the commies should stop doing hateful things.
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I concede defeat here. It was not my intent to ‘troll’, nor within my ability to teach economics. I was at the core simply asking for the conversation to remain civil. That doesn’t seem to possible as the defenders of hateful speech are abundant so I will excuse myself without further ‘trolling’.
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Interesting discussion. I wish to add that as (or perhaps despite being) an economist, I have a healthy skepticism about the promise of free markets. The fundamental problems in normative economics (what “should” be, rather than what “is”) arise from the need to balance efficiency against equity. And this question is far from solved. In fact, mainstream economics seems to have abandoned thinking about this question altogether. Social choice theory which attempts to aggregate individual preferences into some coherent “social preference” is now a dead field. As such, economic theory does not really give us a clear idea of what the right model “should” be. It does have a lot to say about the benefits of free markets, but that is largely because economists find the analytics of free markets calculus-tractable. In fact, keep in mind that the notion of free markets which mainstream economic theory analyzes, is an ideal concept. There is hardly any room for distributional considerations (meaning who benefits at the expense of whom) in these models. Take something as fundamental as monetary policy for example. Try to introduce distributional considerations into the central bank’s loss function (which is typically what the central bank minimizes in order to arrive at what optimal monetary policy should look like), and at once things begin to become unweildy and complex. What I am saying is that the profession is far from a consensus that free markets are normatively desirable. Note that the whole issue of providing incentives etc. is orthogonal to this debate.
One more point. The lay comparison of “-isms” is always a big downer for me. In particular, I would hesitate before agreeing with TTG’s claim that socialism and communism have led to more suffering than any other isms. The political economy of capitalism is no less troublesome, and is still unfolding itself in real time as we write. I feel that the suffering inflicted on countless civilians around the world by the US’s foreign policy can be squarely laid at the doors of its unabashed pursuit of wealth and prosperity. In some sense, the geopolitics of capitalism are not that different from that of the ethnic violence in small African countries – both are essentially motivated by a competition for scarce resources. So full-blown capitalism is yet to reveal all its ills. Perhaps only with hindsight, 100 years from now, we will know if this magical -ism is a panacea or an addictive drug waiting to reveal its true colours.
Lots more to write on this, but I think I’ll stop here. Thanks as usual, Atanu, for the space.
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Deep, one word – Obfuscation.
Whatever is written in those textbooks, there is one thing that is visible for all to see. Any country that embraces Free Markets, and Democractic Governance is a success. Would you like give me an example of a country which has done so, and has failed? Which capitalist democracies are failures. Kindly point them out.
Oh and for the purposes of this, or any discussion, I do not consider China Communist. I consider it to be Authoritarian/Totalitarian.
I do not claim Capitalism to be a “panacea” for anything. But one thing that is blatantly obvious is that Socialism and Communism are just plain wrong. They are against the Natural Order of Things. This is why They Don’t Work. Capitalism exploits the Natural Order of Things. Nobody said this Natural Order was a beautiful thing to behold.
Furthermore, do you agree with JW’s position that it is a system designed to keep certain sections in poverty?
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All organized political systems are energy control mechanism’s. From the santana dharma system to the communists to the energy cousuming western “democracy” the goal is the same, to sustain the prevailing orthodoxy. While once can debate the ethics and efficacy of each ideology, the bottom line is that all systems have a built in oligarchy that *will* prevail. There has (for the information of detractors) never been a true communist state or for that matter a pure capitalist state ever in this world and in my opinion never will be. the technological brilliance of humans is not matched by our social evolution. While we can put a man on the moon we still cannot evolve a proper society. I wonder where this consumption driven, great ape society will head. Sometimes i believe that Frank Herbert is the only one who got it right ” The only sustainable form of human government is an aristocracy”. Emperical evidence validates this in all forms government, even the so called democratic ones.
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TTG,
To answer your questions : I agree that free markets and democratic governance are engines of economic growth, but these are vague terms. What do the precise contours of sustainable, empathetic economic reform look like? For this, you have to dig deeper. And no, I dont agree with JW (although if you replaced “poverty” with “involuntary unemployment”, I would be more likely to agree, but not really in the context of a “system designed to….” etc. – that is rhetoric for the most part).
Deep
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Its my contention that JW is an agent provocateur. His words could be the perfect examples of ‘doublespeak’. Yes yes, Im ‘name-calling’. For whom isnt it obvious to see that while denouncing so-called “hate-speech”, he is seething with anger, and almost foaming at the mouth while spewing rhetoric out of his ass. Atanu has already de-constructed most of his rhetoric and as expected, he has nothing but a lot of misinformation coupled with ignorance in his post. I dont support this ‘name-calling’ business either, but if you refuse to call Hitler a fascist, then you yourself are a hate-monger masquerading as a peaceful “civilized-conversation-lover” hippie. Its a very well documented fact that Communism has authoritarian roots. Stalin and Mao were not aberrations but the true representatives of this hideous ideology. In case, you need more info on our own Indian “commies”, order Mitrokhin Archives right now, Mr. JW. If hating an ideology which has reduced nearly a billion people to poverty over the last 5 decades is wrong, then Id gladly be wrong.
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