re: #697 Leonidas Hoplite

Communism is a form of socialism just as fascism is. While there may be no direct historical examples of socialism leading to totalitarianism, I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to believe it couldn’t happen. Given the requirement that a degree of personal liberty be given up in any socialistic state, it is also fair to say in my opinion that socialistic states have totalitarian qualities.

It is quite a stretch to believe that socialism can lead to totalitarianism. You can’t have totalitarianism when you have an educated population, which is the case with most countries which have some form of democratic socialism. Plus, most democratic socialistic countries have private ownership of business and commerce. The control and flow of commerce is actually more important in the shaping of history than religion, politics or any other ideology.

The reason communism can take hold is because you start with an uneducated peasant society, and putting them under a collective communistic government is easy. That’s what happened in Russia and China etal:

It’s not the same and does not lead in the same direction.