>>76
"But there is a pretty big difference between a country with institutional total control over the media and a country with an extensive and free press."
No, even that is a problem, eg i would say that Sweden has a more free media since it HAS a stateowned television and radio station. Media whitout profit interests are more unbiased media than those with profit interests. I dont mean to say that the soviet union was a democracy and that it is all about how you judge things, im a staunch anti stalinist. What i am saying is that you over simplify if you judge democracy or rather capitalism against soviet style totalitarianism.
As concerning the dictatorship of the proletariat, lets say i agree, that is a stupid idea and post revolution there shall be council communism instead (direct democracy). It is still communism. Does direct democracy place to much power in the hands of to few humans?
"Communism's version of imperialism is naziesque occupation, which is one standard deviation more evil than allying with a tyrant or selling weapons to guerillas."
Have you been to abu ghraib? If that is not naziesque then i dont know what is. And the anti war demonstrations and the critique of the foreign policy did not stop the iraq war from happening, it was the largest and loudest protest this world has ever seen yet it didnt stop anything. There are ignored protestors in communist china also, the point of a democracy is not that one has the freedom to demonstrate but that policy can actually be changed through popular opinion. And a lot of democracies fail hard in this regard.
"As for Marx I have a little rule..."
The well documented difference between the leftist and the rightist intellectual. Leftist intellectuals actually reads the opponents canon, while rightist intellectuals are so few that they hardly exist.