Black and white much? This idea that everything that's anti-capitalist or anti-stupid-ways-we-spend-money is communist is absurd.
The anti-capitalism rhetoric of the "mid-1900's" was a full-on propaganda campaign put out by government agencies and supported by the very real threat of nuclear total annihilation. Comparing a complaint about the stupid ways we spend money and organize our priorities to the Cold War is a bit of a stretch. I fear communist comparisons are becoming the new Godwin's law.
In reality, the guilt mentality discussed above is much more similar to the ultra-realist perspective of the comedy of Louis CK— http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r1CZTLk-Gk —in that it is ridiculous that we have the immediate concerns that we do, but is, in fact, entirely true, and it's observant and useful to point that out.
So, in the mid-1900's there was this thing called Communism. It was a real thing, practiced in many different countries self-consciously. One of the tenants of Communism as it was practiced was that capitalism was bad, and one of the things that Communist countries did was to release anti-capitalist propaganda. So when today we talk about communist anti-capitalist rhetoric, we're not calling all anti-capitalist rhetoric communist, but rather referring to that particular subset of anti-capitalist rhetoric which was, indeed, communist.
This does not mean that such arguments are not straw manning the issue. However, it does mean that they're more nuanced than whatever the argument is that you're trying to debate with above.
Excuse me for a one-off useless comment, but a Communist country never existed. USSR was not communist.
Communism is being described as "A communist society would have no governments, countries, or class divisions."[1]
Hence, no rulers. Communism in its essence is a form of Anarchist society.
For most idealistic -isms, I doubt any implementation could exist that would satisfy the -ism's true believers (particularly since those implementations would have flaws that would need to be disclaimed).
Black and white much? This idea that everything that's anti-capitalist or anti-stupid-ways-we-spend-money is communist is absurd.
The anti-capitalism rhetoric of the "mid-1900's" was a full-on propaganda campaign put out by government agencies and supported by the very real threat of nuclear total annihilation. Comparing a complaint about the stupid ways we spend money and organize our priorities to the Cold War is a bit of a stretch. I fear communist comparisons are becoming the new Godwin's law.
In reality, the guilt mentality discussed above is much more similar to the ultra-realist perspective of the comedy of Louis CK— http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r1CZTLk-Gk —in that it is ridiculous that we have the immediate concerns that we do, but is, in fact, entirely true, and it's observant and useful to point that out.
It is not, however, communist.