Maryland abolishes death penalty.

[FireIceTalon]

I mean, I'd point to the obvious things, and say that USSR, North Korea, China, and Cuba have "EXCELLENT" (insert air quotes and eye roll here) Track records of human rights ideologies like what you are championing, but you'll just point out that even thought they claim to be communist, they aren't "Really" communist.

Sigh, this troll-based argument again. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, since we are living in a nation where we have a president who is pushing policies of austerity, war and counter-terrorism, and rewarding private capital while shitting all over the working class; and the people are calling it "socialism" or "Marxism". The mind-fuckery of this is indescribable to me. Really shows how intellectually inept, backwards, and gullible the American public is. It is pretty depressing really.

And yes, I will say they (the countries you listed) aren't communist, because to say otherwise is historically inaccurate. As I stated above, people will throw labels ON ANYTHING without knowing what they actually mean. This isn't my opinion, it is a fact: Communism, by defintion, is a classless/stateless society where the means of production is communally owned by all. Last I checked, the countries you named all had class systems, and of course, as a result, they all had states. By definition, it would be impossible for them to be communist. And no, this isn't "my" definition of communist, its THE ONLY definition of communism, which was conceived long before I was even a thought. Just because you accept the slanderous, bourgeois and intellectually dishonest definition of communism, as promoted by our bourgeois media, the ideological state apparatus, and our banking-system of primary (and secondary also) of education doesn't make it so. I can sit here and call myself a proud American, but if I start burning US flags and bibles, would you say by definition that I am still a proud American? I could give a shit what a person or country labels themselves as - only the material conditions matter. Hitler called himself anti-capitalist, but his actions did wonders to oppress the German working class, and did a relatively good job furthering the interests of German capitalists (even if the Nazi Party ultimately seized economic power for itself to achieve its Bonaparte-like, imperialist ambitions which proved destructive for German capitalism), and he was also very openly anti-communist. In fact, the initial mission of the Nazi Party (and fascism in general) was to prevent communism from being realized, by suppressing the working class from taking revolutionary action and the Enabling Act of 1933, which banned the SPD.

As a matter of fact, the USSR, N.Korea, Cuba and China are just state-capitalist regimes with heavy handed bureaucracies wrapped in a red flag, nothing more. They, like liberal democracies, do a wonderful job of fitting the bill of using capitalist Great Man theories of history and cult of personalities to justify their privileged position - it has nothing to do with communism, or really even Marxism for that matter. Just because the state has a higher degree of control over production, distribution of resources, or even the overall daily lives of its citizens doesn't make it any less capitalist than the liberal capitalism of the West. It's a false dichotomy that the Western propaganda machine has brilliantly presented as "socialism vs. capitalism" to millions of intellectually brain-dead Americans, who eat it up like candy because thinking critically (especially in a dialectical manner) is a foreign concept to most of them. At the end of the day, Cold War politics is all about capitalism vs. capitalism, despite the rhetoric of both the former SU and the U.S., the degree of state control is not what matters here (it matters in other ways but not to what we are discussing here). The competition for global dominance of international markets by the mega industrial super-powers is what the Cold War was all about, not capitalism vs. communism. If capitalism exists anywhere in the world, that means socialism has not yet come to pass, and therefore cannot exist until capitalism is defeated entirely. FACT. So we can add the material atrocities of those nations to capitalisms crimes against humanity list.

Contrary to what you were taught in your high school history class, the whole Stalinist concept of "socialism in one country" was NOT debunked by bourgeois historians or media pundits as we are so often told, but rather it was debunked by a large number of Marxists following The Second International who criticized the Bolsheviks well before Stalin even came to power. Not that they didn't necessarily support the Bolshevik Revolution (some did, some did not), but were critical of some of its policies that resulted after the Revolution whether they supported it or not, as well as skepticism towards some of the theories within Leninism (in particular Vanguardism and Democratic Centralism). Perhaps you should educate yourself a bit more on what Marxism really is (and isn't) and why there are multiple tendencies within it (as you seem to think there is one encompassing theory in it - which is a vulgar distortion of Marxism) instead of just blindly accepting something you read in a text book, or something you saw on CNN, FAUX, MSNBC or the Huffington Post...and maybe read a little more history in general.

This isn't about ideologies, this is about an material analysis of the WORKINGS of the capitalist system, which your ahistorical idealism and 'appeal to emotion' politics does not provide and therefore isn't very useful for scientifically understanding the system in which we live; you seem to be more interested in arguing about ideological semantics (yawn) than about the material realities of the justice system under capitalism. Most criminal behavior is a result of social and economic inequalities that exist as a result of property relationships, and the so-called "crazies" you speak of are a vast minority - the prison population of the United States consists overwhelmingly of non-violent offenders (most of them drug related offenses). Of course, the US media parades the violent crime the most, because 1.) we live in a capitalist culture that loves and glorifies violence and the objectification of women, because thats what SELLS and is thus profitable, both in a monetary context and for ratings, and 2.) because the media is controlled by a handful of capitalists who want to impose their faulty and cynical view of human nature onto the rest of us, as justification for the continuance and re-enforcement of their capitalist dystopia. It is they who determine what is knowledge, common sense, and not only what is discussed and reported, but the very language and context that is acceptable to discuss it. "The ruling ideas of every epoch have ever been the ideas of its ruling class".

As for a justice system in a communist society, there are lots of theories and opinions on how it would work, if there is one at all. Generally though, because a communist society is classless (and therefore stateless) the social and economic inequalities that we see now would cease to exist. Does this mean all crime would disappear? All is a pretty strong word. Nevertheless, humans would not be living under the alienation and estrangement that they do now, because no one is being exploited or oppressed anymore - so I would venture to say most of it would. It is probably impossible to eliminate criminal behavior ENTIRELY, but there are certainly differences in how it would be dealt with in comparison to how it is now. There probably would be the occasional person that was unfit to live in society or not be a danger to those around him/her. However, it would be entirely up to the people, and not some state acting in the interests of a ruling class as under capitalism, onto how such people should be dealt with, and what punishment, if any, is fitting for a particular crime. In general though, the goal for any socialist should be to rehabilitate and not to punish if at all possible - afterall the whole reason of being socialist is because we favor humanity. I might actually be more in favor of the death penalty in a communist society than I am now, because under communism people who commit a horrid crime like the ones mentioned in this thread would have no excuse then. I can't say for sure, but it seems logical to me. But people like Breviek, who are very reactionary, and very anti-human, would likely be little more than a mere memory. The behavior, thoughts, and nature of people in general under socialism would be much different than it would be under capitalism - because they are two entirely different social orders...just as those who lived under slave or feudal society had a very different conception of the world they lived in that those under capitalism do. So it is doubtful that people like good ol' Brev would exist to begin with - the material conditions that produce people like him would be long gone. Everything in a socialist society, from the family structure all the way to the entire culture would look and function radically different than it under capitalism, because they have two entirely different social relationships. As I've stated many times, human nature is a complex social construct of our thoughts and views, and our actions. It isn't innate, and it isn't static either - its a reflection (not a cause) of the material world in which we live and ultimately changes as those conditions change. The whole purpose of Marxism is not to sit here and predict what socialism will look like and how it will function (though socialists do this all the time, and there is nothing wrong with that) - the purpose of Marxism is to understand how to bring about socialism as a possible (but not necessarily inevitable) alternative to the current social order BY UNDERSTANDING the current social order. No system of analysis (Marxist or otherwise) can use itself to say a particular future is preordained or what it will look like (this would be overly deterministic), nor should it be used as such. The laws of history are very complex and there are an overwhelming amount of factors that go into how class relationships will play out, but by understanding things as they were in the past and currently are, we can use it to say which futures are possible (but once again, not inevitable) and which are not, and try to come up with solutions that make that future possible.