What's the difference between communism and democracy?

Communism


Definition:

  • (n.) A scheme of equalizing the social conditions of life; specifically, a scheme which contemplates the abolition of inequalities in the possession of property, as by distributing all wealth equally to all, or by holding all wealth in common for the equal use and advantage of all.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) When communism collapsed at the end of the 1980s and the sledgehammers started to thud into the Berlin Wall, the future for laissez-faire economics was brighter than it had been since 1914.
  • (2) Gen Pinochet was also under indictment in three cases stemming from the 3,000 people killed and thousands tortured during his regime, when he was feted by Washington as a bulwark against communism.
  • (3) Ever since the ex-PD leader Walter Veltroni started praising President Kennedy as a way to jettison communism, this has been an abiding theme, manifesting itself institutionally in the desperate attempt to engineer a US-style two-party system through breathtakingly inept electoral reforms – the latest one, the " Porcellum " (after porcello, swine), was behind the impasse earlier this year.
  • (4) After the collapse of communism, industrial production migrated to Asia, and China in particular.
  • (5) Fresh flowers have been placed on the grave of the exiled Polish prime minister Władysław Sikorski, buried in the town after he died in an air crash in Gilbratar in 1943.His remains were removed to Poland in 1993 after the fall of communism.
  • (6) For those who believed that overthrowing communism would bring immediate prosperity and right the wrongs of the past, the fact that they were still poor while communist officials profited from the transition made it seem like the old order had not really been overthrown.
  • (7) As a political idea it is at least as old as Eduard Bernstein's bid in the last decade of the 19th century to detach the German Social Democrats from marxian communism by taking the parliamentary road.
  • (8) Some former communist countries, known in the jargon as "countries in transition", were allowed to chose a different date because after the collapse of communism many closed heavy industries.
  • (9) I don't mean the year communism collapsed and democracy-loving Berliners tore through bricks and mortar with their bare hands.
  • (10) Romney arrived on Monday in Gdansk, Solidarity's birthplace, where Soviet communism was punctured 32 years ago.
  • (11) The obsession of "For Fatherland and Freedom" to pay public homage to the Latvian-SS Legion in contradiction to all historical logic and sensitivity to Nazi crimes is not a product of ostensibly harmless nostalgia as Pickles would have us believe, but part of a rather insidious plan to gain recognition for a perversely distorted version of European history which will officially equate Communism with Nazism.
  • (12) Despite the promise of a layered saga involving communism, the IRA and betting syndicates, not a great deal happens in Peaky Blinders .
  • (13) In Uncommon Danger, the representatives of communism and what Zaleshoff calls "moderate radicalism" but Kenton himself would probably think of as basic human decency are pitted against the agents of capital and fascism: Balterghen, Saridza and their many cronies.
  • (14) Poland remains one of Europe’s most staunchly Catholic nations, although the clergy’s influence has been steadily eroded by more than two decades of democratisation and market reforms since the 1989 fall of communism.
  • (15) In certain telling ways the response of the nation’s leaders to the recent market crash is emblematic of a much larger dilemma – one that sits right at the heart of China’s uneasy fusion of communism and free-market economics, a system with little precedent and no operating manual.
  • (16) Silicon Valley’s flavor is, of course, thoroughly technological, embracing tech advances to achieve abundance in a manner that bears some resemblance to “ fully automated luxury communism ”.
  • (17) So pervasive and persistent was the regime’s reach that a law to open Albania’s secret police files was passed only this year, nearly 25 years after the fall of communism.
  • (18) Members of the leftwing group Plan C deploy the slogan “Luxury for all” in their agitations, and a sharply-designed Tumblr, Luxury Communism , trumpets sympathetic ideas.
  • (19) As a recently published biography reveals , the archbishop's globetrotting adventures began in 1981 when he and his wife, Caroline, joined the Eastern European Bible Mission and embarked on a trip to help Christians persecuted under communism.
  • (20) The west has long since given up its cold war rhetoric against Communism.

Democracy


Definition:

  • (n.) Government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is retained and directly exercised by the people.
  • (n.) Government by popular representation; a form of government in which the supreme power is retained by the people, but is indirectly exercised through a system of representation and delegated authority periodically renewed; a constitutional representative government; a republic.
  • (n.) Collectively, the people, regarded as the source of government.
  • (n.) The principles and policy of the Democratic party, so called.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) On his blog, Grillo called the referendum results a victory for democracy.
  • (2) We are deeply saddened," said Nyan Win, a spokesman of National League for Democracy.
  • (3) Despite Facebook's size and reach, and its much-vaunted role in the short-lived Arab spring , there are reasons for thinking that Twitter may be the more important service for the future of the public sphere – that is, the space in which democracies conduct public discussion.
  • (4) UPDATE II [Tues.] Two other items that may be of interest: first, Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger was the guest for the full hour yesterday on Democracy Now, discussing the paper's role in reporting the NSA stories, and the video and transcript of the interview are here ; second, marking our collaboration on a series of articles about spying on Indians, the Hindu has a long interview with me on a variety of related topics, here .
  • (5) Can somebody who is not a billionaire, who stands for working families, actually win an election into which billionaires are pouring millions of dollars?” Naming prominent and controversial rightwing donors, he said: “It is not just Hillary, it is the Koch brothers, it is Sheldon Adelson.” Stephanopoulos seized the moment, asking: “Are you lumping her in with them?” Choosing to refer to the 2010 supreme court decision that removed limits on corporate political donations, rather than address the question directly, Sanders replied: “What I am saying is that I get very frightened about the future of American democracy when this becomes a battle between billionaires.
  • (6) Historical reality suggests the concept of socially necessary risk determined through the dialectic process in democracy.
  • (7) Spain’s constitutional court responded by unanimously ruling that the legislation had ignored and infringed the rules of the 1978 constitution , adding that the “principle of democracy cannot be considered to be separate from the unconditional primacy of the constitution”.
  • (8) These are basic principles of democracy and Israeli law.
  • (9) The values of human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and the respect for human rights are absolutely fundamental to the European Union.
  • (10) And it means the Foreign Office dealing with those in the Middle East and North Africa who are on the side of democracy and human rights, not sitting down to tea with torturers.
  • (11) The referendum shows that democracy really sucks – that democracy does not deliver stability, prosperity [or] responsible government,” Tsang said.
  • (12) This thoughtful intervention brought new hope to us and others, for the rebuilding of public trust in surveillance conducted with respect for privacy, democracy and the law.
  • (13) "For tax evaders, she should turn to Pasok and New Democracy to explain to her why they haven't touched the big money and have been chasing the simple worker for two years."
  • (14) Secularism is the only way to stop collapse and chaos and to foster bonds of citizenship in our complex democracy.
  • (15) The charity Bite the Ballot , which persuaded hundreds of thousands to register before the last general election, is to set up “democracy cafes” in Starbucks branches, laying on experts to explain how to register and vote, and what the referendum is all about (Bite the Ballot does not take sides but merely encourages participation).
  • (16) The writer John Lanchester concedes that democracies will always need spies, but reading the Snowden documents persuaded him that piecing together habits of thought from internet searches takes things far beyond conventional spying: “Google doesn’t just know you’re gay before you tell your mum; it knows you’re gay before you do.
  • (17) In the wake of her win, Aung San Suu Kyi has written to Min Aung Hlaing, the president, Thein Sein, and the parliamentary Speaker, Shwe Mann, requesting a meeting to discuss the election and “national reconciliation”, according to the National League for Democracy Facebook page.
  • (18) Our later measures – parliament's power to declare peace and war, MPs to be subject to a right to recall, an end to the royal prerogative, an elected Lords – were about a 21st-century democracy, with citizenship to be founded on a new bill of rights and responsibilities and, in time, a written constitution.
  • (19) It won’t happen suddenly, but the most likely outcome for European social democracy is the one being secretly contemplated on the Labour backbenches: a fusion with liberalised conservatism.
  • (20) The genius of a democracy governed by the rule of law, our democracy, is that it both empowers the majority through the ballot box, and constrains the majority, its government, so that it is bound by law.” Turnbull added: “Why does Daesh [another term for Islamic State] hate us?