Extreme poverty. Sounds like the name for a ESPN show where they put on hobo fights.

So, all this poverty going on around here. Who's the most poor? Who gets the biggest glass of beer to cry in? Do you get special achievements for upgrading or multiplying poverty combos? Does the local food mission have a plaque where they celebrate the best baby mama of the month?

No. I guess you just made that up, as usual.

A Russian-language forum user posted this in their general thread. I think it's relevant.

Let's not forget Cuba.
Poor cubans, living under the bloodiest/longest dictatorship in all Latin America. The Castro brothers deserve a special place in "el inferno", if you ask me.
Don't let folks fool ya: this renewal in US/Cuban relations didn't change a single thing (so far) for cubans. The killings, repression, censorship and etc are still running strong.

Fixed! :P

And people who wear heir baseball caps backwards.

Needed to Google them. Though they rang some bell probably from reading Norman Davies... more modern Polish History is far from my forte. Quite interesting history though, I did not expect to find it so.

I recommend this book
http://www.publio.pl/absurdy-prl-u-piotr-lipinski,p105790.html

goes often on promos (purchased it for less than 10 PLN). I especially enjoyed the part about building Nowa Huta when communitsts from France came to aid commarades from Poland. After a few months all but 1 went back to France. :-P

Marxism may have been the evilst thing, although Nationalsocialism was not much better either, but I would also say this is hardly the fault of Karl Marx.

Indeed there is much truth in what he said and it still is very important, maybe even more important than ever before. In this way, I guess he really made an important discovery about humankind - we only still need to figure out what it really means.

I guess it means that the right balance between capitalism and socialism is needed. Active redistribution, chances for everyone, upwards mobility - these things are probably more important than ever.

And from the socialistic countries which resorted least to terror and killings ... maybe Cuba might be the one that kind of represented the most human possible socialism. And since they are moving (albeit slowly) to an even more balanced capitalistic/socialistic mixture, it might be they have a good future in front of them.

You're nuts. Here's what Marxism is: Marxism is currently implemented by just about any sane developed country.

Nah, there's not much difference between Civic Platform and Law and Justice. I mean, there is a difference in aesthetics and rhetorics but in the end those two branches come from the same root, their members constantly change sides and I wouldn't be surprised if each of them were happy that there is the other party to have something to rant about :)

Thanks for the recommendation, will keep an eye out for it when I enter an Empik.

My polish reading adventures are at present taking me towards more Stanislaw Lem (the gentleman 5 years ago that recommended me the Pirx adventures while travelling on the train deserves a hat tip - it's not only entertaining reading but quite thematically deep) and Ryszard Kapuscinski whom I learned about from excerpts in polish classes. I have also tried Slawomir Mrozek, but considering he writes shorts he amazingly is even more incomprehensible than Sapkowski, whom I can understand over 66% of the prose. Still the 40% or so I could get of Mrozek's prose was quite funny, in a dark way of course - like the best fables are, I might go back to it and see if I made any progress in comprehension in the years since.

Anything else along those lines in original polish? I have a soft spot for deep, insightful literature, regardless of genre.

I even almost enjoyed Faraon, despite the turgid prose - for its let's say, sociological commentary disguised as the plot. And I found Borowski's Pozegnanie z Maria very touching, despite my belief his intent with the semi-poetic treatment being more to obfuscate than clarify, still the very real pain of those experiences surfaced. Come to think of it I wonder if it was an attempted exorcism to write that book...

PS: A book I've been wanting to get my hands on is Sienkiewicz' Latarnik. I think it is a short / novella of sorts. And I was totally sold on it from Davies' description. Seems hard to find though... not that I actually tried to put an order through in Empik, but I went through the appropriate sections a couple of times. Other Sienkiewicz works seem to be much more available.
That's a very overbroad definition of Marxism...

Marxism has two legs, one an economic theory based on the value of labor as opposed to Kapital and a sociological theory based on class struggle defined by those same economic aspects - the Kapitalist class versus the Proletariat.

The first leg is flat wrong, and the second reductive. As to evil, I agree that's more from the further implementations than the original, but Marx himself can be criticized for revolutionary radical approaches - it's not all due to Lenin, far from it.

I'm inclined to disagree, Das Kapital preaches a lot of radicalism and is full of destroying the old order violently, the guy wasn't exactly Ghandi. He is primarily the reason for the creation of European welfare states, it was the only way to keep the popultation from revolting. Look only how many uprisings there have been in Germany, France and Great Brittain during the 19-20th centuries. The USA was in the same boat but instead of making concessions to the population, they got an unexpected economic boom from two world wars.

I thought the welfare states come from the rising of democracy. In a democratic system you just have to make at least some concessions to the poor, otherwise they do not vote for you. And this is true even for the US. Also I would rather say that welfare states are kind of a good thing, so being responsible for them is rather a praise.