There were no actual efforts to establish communism in eastern europe. Only autocratic regimes backed by soviet russia.
It’s like saying democracy sucks because look at states like Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Democratic Republic of Congo and German Democratic Republic.
When people proclaim to be something doesn’t make it true.
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I’m no too learned in the subject but what would “true” communism even look like on the large scale like a country? Would it even be feasible?
True communism in a country is impossible.
You can have socialism, or anarchy, which we’ve seen before, but communism cannot function in one country alone, unless said country is completely and absolutely self reliant.
A major part of communism is internationalism, which is why socialist countries had the Comintern. (Communist International). Besides a political/social system, communism has a strong basis as an economic system. You can’t apply communist economic system principles to the capitalist market.
To my knowledge, no existing country is self reliant to the point that they can completely cut off trade with the rest of the world. USSR didn’t do it, China didn’t do it and they were the two biggest countries at the time.
That, of course is all a very surface level ELI5, and if you want to ask something more specific or in depth, feel free to.
Unless you’re an ultra-orthodox marxist, there is no such thing as trüe communism™.
There always have been many different ideas what „communism“ is, e.g. there have been various „nationalist communist“ ideologies (complicated by the fact that the Russian SFSR called everything „nationalist“ that wasn’t 100% aligned with its ideas of the Soviet Union, e.g. Hungary).
There are also no clear boundaries between communism, socialism, and anarchism, e.g. Kropotkin with his theories of anarchist communism.
That being said, I don’t think communism is a system (either social or economic), it’s strictly an idealogy, meaning it’s a way to achieve something, i.e. the classless and stateless society. If you follow that thought to its logical end, you cannot even „achieve“ communism at all, since at this point e.g. the proletariat ceases to exist, and as a result you cannot have a „dictatorship of the proletariat“.
It’s… complicated.
In feel like you make it complicated to arrive at your conclusion here. Communism, as described by Marx and Engels and to some degree Lenin, is something very specific that covers most aspects of the society. Political, social and economic. Marx himself wrote books upon books on the economy of a socialist, communist system.
It is not an abstract “I don’t like capitalism so let’s try something different” approach. And yes, many have tried to adapt it, as you mentioned which is why those different approaches carry a different name ‘anarchist communism’ in your example. Because they are different enough from flat out communism.
No, I have a very easy explanation what communism is, it’s just that nobody else agrees is the issue.
different approaches carry a different name
Yeah, well… So let’s see, we have: Marxism, Leninism, Trotskyism, Stalinism, Titoism, Gulyáskommunizmus (both, as mentioned before, considered „nationalist communism“ by other communists), Rätekommunismus, Realsozialismus, Maoism …
So, which one of those is the true communism?
Joking aside, most of the 20th century was spent with people killing other people because they had slightly different opinions on what true communism means, so it’s really not me who made things complicated.
And you keep using different names to describe them. As you should. Communism is not one thing and never was. But when people refer to base or true communism, the answer is just one.
It’s how it was defined in the communist manifesto in 1848. You could say it’s Marxism, but I dislike that naming since others played a big role on forming it as well, like Engels and others who based on Marx’s mostly economic study added the philosophical and political angles.
Every theme or name change after the manifesto (that is not found in later revisions by the communist international) is attempts at adapting it with different angles and for different purposes and circumstances, aka NOT base or pure communism. Don’t bundle everything in one basket and try to make sense, same way that bundling Putin’s Russian form of Capitalism with US’s imperialism and French Revolution’s early capitalism together doesn’t make sense either.
He asked for pure communism, I answered for that. If he asked about Trotsky, I’d focus more on the permanent revolution and the Fourth International. If he asked of Stalin, I’d talk about his socialism in one country theory
I’ve got no horse in this race, I just want to point out the irony of asserting that there is only one “true” communism in reply to a comment about how leftists have spent the last century arguing over what “true” communism even is.
Yeah well, so you’re an orthodox Marxist and I disagree with you ¯\(ツ)/¯
But when people refer to base or true communism, the answer is just one.
Aha, is that so?
I dislike that naming since others played a big role on forming it as well
Yeah, you could say that!
So! Let’s talk about Restif de la Bretonne who was using „communist“ and „communism“ 60-70 years before Marx writes the „Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei“. Babeuf (who called himself a „communalist“) already tried to incite a communist revolution in the 1790s. De La Hodde calls the Parisian general strike in 1840 „inspired by communist ideas“. In 1841 the „Communistes Matérialistes“ publish „L’Humanitaire“, which Nettlau calls „the first libertarian communist publication“.
And how come that a certain bloke named Karl Marx in his 1842 essay „Der Kommunismus und die Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung" finds that communism had already become an international movement. Hey, I know that name! 🤔
Tell me, how exactly is Marxism (or whatever you want to call it) the one and only trüe communism™ when there’s decades of different variances of communism and movements of people calling themselves communists before the „Manifest“?
Just face it: your beloved Marxism is just one variant of communism, which for a variety of reasons has become the best known. But it’s certainly not „base communism“.
Bojler eladó
It’s doable if we all become Borg, but not really otherwise
What do you think is anarchy? Without searching engine please.
Without search engine and without going into detail that is out of the scope, anarchy is a different path to a classless system. Said classless system is different enough from communism to warrant discussion but close enough for that discussion to be devolving into anarchy vs socialism most of the time to differentiate the path to that system.
Said path in anarchy is comprised of setting up collectives that start small, neighborhood small, and gradually evolve. Each collective shares almost everything between its members and there’s no leadership or ranking across its members.
Anything deeper than that leads to a long discussion that is out of the scope of this thread and definitely out of the scope of the ELI5 the post I originally replied to needed or had the philosophical basis to understand possibly. I’m not saying one is better than the other, but they are quite different approaches to a similar goal, a classless society that money does not rule all.
So i was wrong. Sorry for the ‘nuanced’ question.
Anarchist checking in, so, y’know, bias and all that. But I’d say it’s just as impossible to have anarchism in one country. Bearing in mind, I’m an anarcho-communist, and not terribly familiar things like mutualism, so that may be different. I tend to view, as do (to my knowledge) most ancoms, communism and anarchism as synonyms. The difference is how we get to the end point, not the end point itself. A stateless, classless, moneyless society. We’ve had the Spanish anarchists, and some examples of societies like Madagascar, where there are villages and region that function in an anarchistic way, but True Anarchism™ couldn’t function in a single country/region. It needs to be international in it’s scope for all the same reasons communism needs to be international in it’s scope. Anarchist political methods can function at a smaller scale, but we can’t have a fully anarchist society until it’s global.
Which all just means that I’m an anarchist because I prefer the methods to achieving the shared goal, not because I disagree on the goal itself, if that makes sense.
Well, it is feasible. You just need to give people replicators and free living space, and they will eventually learn to use their skills to enrich the world we live in. And boldly go where no one has gone before.
True communism is pretty much impossible, same as true capitalism.
There have been some short-lived small-scale experiments like the “United Order”, but nothing that actually survived more than a few months with more than a few thousand people.
Realistically, it would look something like how the Anarchists organized society in Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War, or how Rojava is organizing today with communal federations. Anarchism sidesteps the inevitable authoritarian regime that various Marxist theories have by not installing a ‘temporary’ vanguard state that quickly becomes autocratic and dictatorial, they just jump straight to decentralizing power immediately by giving it to the people.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War
Rojava is organizing today with communal federations
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
And here comes the guy who thinks he can do it better, this time without mass killings.
Hey, I can think what happened in Eastern Europe was just authoritarian dictatorships, backed by Muscovite colonialism & branded as communism just the same as what happened in parts of South America was just authoritarian dictatorship, backed by American imperialism & branded as laissez-faire capitalism.
Also I can think communism has never actually been tried, and that it’s functionally impossible (therefore people should stop advocating for it).
Implying capitalism does not regularly do mass killings.
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With capitalism we just outsource the death to 3rd world countries.
Hey, I can think what happened in Eastern Europe was just authoritarian dictatorships, backed by Muscovite colonialism & branded as communism just the same as what happened in parts of South America was just authoritarian dictatorship, backed by American imperialism & branded as laissez-faire capitalism.
Also I can think communism has never actually been tried, and that it’s functionally impossible (therefore people should stop advocating for it).
This time without hierarchy wherever possible. And we’ll keep most of the capitalistic economy as is, just redistribute the wealth so that everybody is safe and happy. Cut the bullshit jobs, make produced goods more durable and sustainable, so that the last at least ten times as long, cut more jobs in producing, distribute the remaining work to all the people, everybody who wants to get a little extra can do this by working, most will. I certainly would still work even if i did not have to, even if there is no monetary benefit. Doing a job that is nice and that you like is fun, because you’re doing your part.
Can’t critizise something that has never been tried! Also we already got a comment critizising capitalism as a counter argument :D
Oh here we go with “That wasn’t real communism!” as if any other communist state on this planet is any different.
I mean they violated some if tge main principles outlined by Marx, like the other states, who almost all followed the lenin-stalin-model, so yeah. Prove me wrong.
Give me an example of a capitalist society. Waiting.
They are though. China, Vietnam and Cuba are all pretty drastically different and they are all communist countries.
China is state capitalist, not communist
The functioning of their government is absolutely unequivocally communist. They have allowed some form of capital interests, which I would not consider communist in definition, but the government retains control over nearly all those interests and the plan they’ve put forward from the beginning is to renationalize industries as they reach a point of competitive development with the western world.
I’m going to preface this with saying I don’t support communism or centrally planned socialism, so this isn’t me handwaving things away. It’s just that this is a nuanced topic and definitions are important, and the red scare has sucessfully lied to most people about what these words mean.
The government being in control of everything is not the sole defining feature of communism. Socialism is where the people own the means of production (business assets), typically through the government owning it all. Communism takes that a step further by removing currency and markets from the system and using some other system to determine how to create and allocate goods and services. And for the people to own the means of production through the government, they need to have an actual say in the government.
Basically to have centrally-planned socialism or communism, you need the government owning all business assets in addition to something like a democracy or republic form of governmental policy. If you don’t have a governmental policy that is controlled by the people, then the people don’t own the means of production and by definition you don’t have socialism or communism. You have one of the various forms of autocracy/oligarchy/etc.
The issue we see here with people conflating modern day China, the USSR, etc with communism is that the change in government started out as socialist or communist movements, but then got coopted by fascists who removed political agency from the people, but also decided to keep calling themselves communists. However, overthrowing a form of government and pretending you’re still that form of government doesn’t magically make it true. North Korea isn’t democratic or a republic just because the rulers call themselves it. Similarly, China’s government is defined by its actions: state capitalist and not communist.
In what sense was it not an actual effort? Just because it quickly slid into non-marxism doesn’t say anything about the initial idea of the revolutionaries. Bakunin predicted exactly what would happen with Marxism, and it did every time.
If you are against an authoritarian state, the only viable way to communism is to skip the dictatorship part directly and just have anarchism.
That’s a joke, right?
Right?
If you want to argue against that, fine by me. I have nothing against an honest duscussion. But this comment is neither funny nor smart.
I was about 99% this was a joke because I thought nobody could be this stupid. I don’t argue with jokes, that’s pointless.
But that is no joke at all. It is what every honest historian will tell you. If you take communism as it was defined by Marx (not that this would be the best system or even what I would propse, parts of it maybe) then no society actually tried that.
There were no actual efforts to establish communism
Period. Relying on the “temporary” government to relinquish their power is…foolish. If you’re building a system for the greater good, hierarchy will always undermine that goal. Unequal amounts of power does not a just system make.
I literally pissed a slow day at work away pointing out the many, many flaws in the USSR to a lemming whose primary response was LALALALA I CAN’t HEAR YOU, GO READ THIS BOOK
There is definitely a cadre of extremely disillusioned and extremely ill informed users who think the USSR was legitimate sunshine and candy communism
Full no true scotsman.
Communism fails every time it is tried because it goes against human nature of constantly comparing yourself to others and trying to improve yourself. You will never do harder work if you can get the same reward for easier work, and you will look for other, less moral ways of getting the bigger reward.
Communism sounds great but it will never work until we have unlimited resources and completely automated labour.
Nah, that’s just wrong. You can compare yourself in other ways than how much fake money you earn. Fun thing is: truly communistic society would mean easier work for most people.
And communism does work in small scale enviroments. Families, cooperatives, tribes. Sometimes neighborhoods.
This whole “Sounds great but won’t work” rhethoric is just what the ones that would loose their power in communsim want you to think. If you dig into it you will see, that there were and are a lot of efforts to discredit the idea.
While I agree with you, this doesn’t mean that Eastern Europe was communist.
They did attempt to be communist, but they failed like every other attempt will fail. Greed is basic human nature, and those who have it more than others will find a way to abuse the system, get in charge and ruin it.
Greed is basic human nature
I’m not arguing your other points, but this isn’t always true. Humans seem to crave respect, not necessarily monetory wealth. If you want you can read more about gift economies.
What did they do to be communist? And what about a society where there is no such thing as ‘in charge’?
How would a society like that work?
That’s funny because I do easy work for a great paycheck yet we have a harder time hiring than in my previous job which didn’t pay as well and was harder.
Can you say what are the jobs?
I’m in my mid thirties, my current job (first time for this employer) is the best paid and offers the best conditions and is the easiest one I’ve ever worked and they need to give us a retention bonus so people don’t leave for another department.
I’ll leave it at that so I don’t dox myself.
Edit: Don’t know why people are downvoting? It’s an office job that requires a high-school diploma, I’ve worked physical jobs before that paid less and where we weren’t short staffed as we are in my current job. Happy?
You can tell us the field of work, that wouldn’t Dox you to know it’s programing versus electrician or something.
The US political spectrum is leaning so far to the right. A US left is a France center or moderate right. So what Americans consider communism is merely what French consider moderate leftist.
- I’m French living in the US
Yeah, it’s basically “If you keep calling all of the stuff I like ‘communism’, then I guess that makes me a communist.”
Or if you’re not a Nazi you’re a communist, then I’m a communist I guess.
To be fair, depending on the european country the spectrum is quite broad.
For example Norway has both literal marxists and full on “gay people should be put in camps” christian conservative nutjobs in parliment.
Hell even Obama was right wing to many countries.
…this was before we all dove headfirst into facism as a trauma response
Sure, but the meme refers to the communities on the internet that unironically go full tankie, praising Stalin and Mao.
Worst of all, tankies tend to inflitrate sane leftist spaces and slowly transform them. I’ve witnessed it many times, and that just makes me think that Marxists-Leninists are just the most dominant form of leftism on the internet, which is horrible.
This doesn’t mention Stalin or Mao.
It doesn’t, but in this thread’s we see a simultaneous claim of “We aren’t tankies, of course Stalin and Mao are not good examples of communists” and “Eastern european people were better off under the USSR”. Of course, I don’t think the same people are making both claims, but just the fact that some people can claim the latter and not get collectively shunned is indicative of a huge problem in leftist spaces, it’s disgusting frankly. Tankies are significant force, at least partially representing leftism to everyone else.
I think a lot of people give Mao a bad wrap.
For what it’s worth, Stalin is a monster, and the state of China right now is repugnant.
Mao didn’t intentionally lead tens of millions of people to starve in the same way Stalin did. Mao was trying to revolutionise agriculture (The Great Leap Forward) but didn’t understand the ecological and logistic principles required.
I’m convinced his intentions were good, he just wasn’t educated enough to implement something like this.
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McCarthy propaganda go brrrr
Also a terrible person. The world’s big enough for there to be many terrible people in it. You need to create a very robust bureaucracy to keep corruption out and maintaining one is a very unglamorous job. Revolutionaries rarely have that skill set.
Almost like we need a large state apparatus…
Well we’re not praising fascism and corruption.
The main issue is that they communism is economic policy, NOT social policy. While they do go hand in hand people often conflate the two. Many dictatorships use communism as a way to control the people but that doesn’t mean that communism leads directly to dictatorships.
If they’re using “communism” to control the people, then they’re not really using communism
Is true Communism even possible if it’s being attempted by flawed humans? Seems like it doesn’t matter the economic system so much as the fact that people will ruin anything given enough time.
It’s about incentives. Worker oppression in Monarchy requires a bad King, in Feudalism bad lords, in Capitalism bad shareholders, and in Socialism self-hating workers. If you shared your workplace, would you push to remove your rights? Or to screw over your customers? And then argue for that against everyone else you share power with? The incentives are plainly better in a worker owned economy.
Respectfully, I can easily see a shared workplace at least encouraging screwing over customers. To me its an even more intense instance of the shareholder problem. Shareholders are obsessed with the money they’re getting back with no real work but the risk inherent in the bet they made. The workers are working, for a livelihood, and of course will want to improve their quality of life. They’re even more motivated to do so. And some of the best ways to do that, in the “make monkey brain happy” obvious short-term are the same policies the shareholders are already pushing. Will there be some pushback? Definitely, but you only have to sell a bunch of people on short-term easy money. And the lottery isn’t popular because people are smart about this stuff.
“That wasn’t real communism” eh? First time I’ve ever seen this one…
I guess the main issue is with the government having absolute control over the economy. I would not want the most prominent politicians in my country having control of the economy. No matter how much I dislike capitalism.
Just put the people who work for a company in charge of the company. Have them elect who calls the shots. Also have them directly benefit from the company doing well. I guess that is like end-stage unions or smth. All power to the workers. Should be doable within capitalism, maybe, probably.“All power to the workers” is a communist principle, though. It’s the main political slogan of the communist manifest by Marx and Engels.
Communism is an economic fairy tale, not policy.
It would be nice if it were possible but with the current state of the world, it is not.Social democracy is a reasonable compromise.
You can’t have a communist economic policy without being authoritarian. It’s human nature - once money is removed as a motivator, society breaks down unless you motivate people some other way (not being sent to the gulag).
The only thing that motivates you in life is money? How do you feel about that?
Don’t forget the times dictators try to enforce communism onto nature. Mao’s Great Leap Forward killed tens of millions.
Mao’s great leap forward wasn’t communism, your using association fallacy.
The introduction of mandatory agricultural collectivization and outlawing of private farming led by the Chinese Communist Party wasnt communist? That is an interesting take.
Eeehhhh there are plenty of Tankies around here that unironically simp for Stalin and Mao, (never Pol Pot for some reason though), and those regimes were frought with corruption and are often called “red fascism,” so I wouldn’t be so quick to say “we” here. “You” maybe, “me” definitely, but “we” is too strong of a word when there are plenty of people doing just that on lemmygrad right now, and lemmy.ml being a marxist instance some there as well (though the refugees mostly drowned them out now).
Mao and Stalin (though to a noticably lesser extent) actually had insightful things to say though. Mao’s essays on epistemology are genuinely really fantastic. And that can be true alongside all of the show trials and sparrow murder which was genuinely really fucking bad.
Pol Pot meanwhile admitted to never having really ever read Marx, and his faction of the Communist Party of Cambodia was more concerned about Khmer ultranationalism and anti-Vietmamese sentiment that had been brewing over the course of French colonialism, then with anything to do with building socialism.
So, I guess what I’m saying is that we ought to take a nuanced, grounded view of historic socialisms that accounts for their success and failures, and doesn’t fall into either mindless exoneration of awful shit, nor reflexively screeching “TANKIE TANKIE!!!” Every time anything vaguely socialist oriented comes up in discussion.
Stalin botched Marxism into an authoritarian system that suited him. It was successful and he sponsored other authoritarians that liked his ideas. Those are all about the concentration of power and have fuck all to do with Marxs ideas.
Mao and Stalin (though to a noticably lesser extent) actually had insightful things to say though. Mao’s essays on epistemology are genuinely really fantastic.
And Hitler was a Vegetarian. Does that mean vegitarians should simp for Hitler because “he had at least one good idea?” I should hope not! Furthermore if they do, even if they only simped for his vegetarianism and not his “political career,” it is gonna come off a bit different than they intend to most people.
By all means, keep those subs dedicated to defending all those atrocities and simping for despots, but people likely won’t be fooled into thinking they only care about epistemology while they say nothing happened in Tienanman Square without a shred of irony.
LOL I see I struck a nerve. Keep downvoting, the salt seasons my post.
And Hitler was a Vegetarian. Does that mean vegitarians should simp for Hitler because “he had at least one good idea?” I should hope not! Furthermore if they do, even if they only simped for his vegetarianism and not his “political career,” it is gonna come off a bit different than they intend to most people.
Hitler being a vegetarian had nothing to do with his fascism. Mao’s Epistemology was built on Stalin’s synthesizing of Marxism-Leninism from the works of Lenin and the experiences of the Russian Civil War, etc.
There’s actual political philosophy here that we can think through, debate, apply, update, and revise. Mistakes or outright malicious behavior can be learned from or discarded as necessary, because Marxism has within it mechanisms for self criticism and recitification.
You can ascribe to that philosophy or not, I don’t care. But this kind of kneejerk reaction isn’t in line with the way these discussions actually happen within Marxism.
Do dogmatic Marxists who blindly defend bad shit exist? Yes. But they’re commonly denounced and criticized for their garbage analysis.
You’re taking a small subset of, mostly online weirdos, and stawmanning my position, and an entire branch of political philosophy.
By all means, keep those subs dedicated to defending all those atrocities and simping for despots, but people likely won’t be fooled into thinking they only care about epistemology while they say nothing happened in Tienanman Square without a shred of irony
Buddy, I’m not trying to pull wool over your eyes or be sneaky. I literally said to not do this shit. I’m trying to get people to engage with these topics with nuance and critical thinking skills. Not blindly screech uniformed praise or condemnation based on kneejerk, emotional, preconceptions.
It’s difficult for people. When Mao/Lenin/Stalin or even Marx are discussed they all go to the “takie” slur. Their brains turn off and all they can think about is their propaganda.
Everyone is so quick to write off the atrocities of the USA and Europe. Japanese internment camps, destruction of democracies and creation of fascists dictatorships. The funding of terrorists (before and after we called them terrorists), the destruction of the environment in pursuit of profits, child labor and slave labor also in pursuit of profits.
But damn, because communists took businesses away from their oppressors, they are just as bad as fascists. /Shrugs
People gotta read more books.
Ok so the analogy isn’t the best, but the point still stands that simply because they did a good, that doesn’t mean that simping for them and ignoring the bad is a good idea, nor does it mean that those simping for “the guy” will be taken as simping only for “the good” and not also “the bad” he did. Those subs/instances I mention and the people that populate them are literal genocide denialists, they aren’t posting on “c/epistemology” and they aren’t talking specifically about epistemology, they are denying the holodomor, the armenian genocide, and the tienanman square massacre, among other things they support like China’s current Uyghur genocide because “America did an Iraq, and while we said that was bad, China is good for doing the same thing, because America did the bad” which is among the dumbest circular logic available to be found on lemmygrad.
Yes yes, but the people I’m complaining about aren’t doing that, they’re simply doomposting about late stage capitalism and denying genocides, simping for their preferred cults of personality. In essence to use my bad analogy, it’d be like if an instance of nazis doomposted about communism and denied the holocaust, but it was fine because they could sometimes also discuss his vegetarianism if they so chose, they just happen to not do that very often.
In “marxism,” or on lemmygrad, “internet marxism?” If you suggest these things are different, maybe, but if you’re suggesting that I’m wrong about the specific people I’m talking about, I’ll have to disagree having seen it for myself.
Do dogmatic Marxists who blindly defend bad shit exist? Yes. But they’re commonly denounced and criticized for their garbage analysis.
Again, on lemmygrad or somewhere else? Because I’m complaining about the Tankies on lemmygrad specifically and all who think as they do, and they certainly do not denounce and criticize that garbage analasys, rather they encourage and fester it.
You’re taking a small subset of, mostly online weirdos, and stawmanning my position, and an entire branch of political philosophy.
Again, do you mean a small subset of lemmygrad, or do you mean marxists as a whole? In any case, I’m actually inclined to believe the subset isn’t quite as small as you believe, or would like others to believe. I run into those people all the time and rarely your camp, suggesting either they are more numerous, or they are more loud, in which case I’d suggest your camp attempt to be louder to drown those crazies out, because they’re doing a pretty good job at convincing people they’re the bigger camp.
That’s great that you’re trying to do that, but the people on lemmygrad still exist, and hand waving my complaints about them away as simply nuance saying they’re just discussing epistemology is patently false. You’re basically just saying “not all communists” here, like “not all men.” Well, as the “not all men” camp was told, “it’s enough that it’s a problem, and you need to teach
mencommunists not torapedeny genocides.”
Ahh so guilty by association McCarthy?
They literally said the exact opposite of that. Work on your reading comprehension.
whoosh
oka. explain how you centralize governmental control of the economy without enabling the government to profit from it.
Communism isn’t the issue the same way Capitalism isn’t the issue, the issue is rich people abusing working class and poor people. Removing democracy from these systems just make them absolutely horrid in the long run. Also China isn’t communist it’s state capitalist dictatorship.
Fuck Communism and fuck unchecked capitalism. People deserve basic human rights. Free heallthcare, education, insurance and liveable basic income is a must. It doesn’t make your society full of freeloaders instead it gives all the people a chance to become what they want in the society. I hope that people can see this basic difference and we can work towards for a better future as humanity instead of whatever country title.
Fuck Communism and fuck unchecked capitalism
Interesting how capitalism needs the qualifier ‘unchecked’ while apparently communism has only one possible form.
But is it Communism’s Final Form? I think Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism is the best form.
Fuck centralized power. By definition true communism shouldnt have any of that, and anyone considering the systems equal is butt chugging propaganda
People deserve basic human rights. Free heallthcare, education, insurance and liveable basic income is a must.
I think the irony is that a significant portion of conservatives (not only in the USA, I speak from Brazil) see that as “evil commienism”. That and anything that even remotely attempts to reduce inequalities, like taxing the rich.
Honestly, I think the way we argue over labels hurts us. If I use heavy regulation and government aid to limit the abuses in a capitalist system, at what point does the label change to “socialism”? I think we do ourselves a disservice to create these strict conceptions of systems like capitalism, socialism, or communism. Then when one fails we get to say “well that wasn’t true x”. And the labels allow people to boogeyman an idea. And worst of all, we eliminate the possibility to take good lessons from multiple different systems and incorporate them into our system. I think we would be better served promoting policies on a case by case basis instead of using these huge words. And to be clear, I’m a bit of a hypocrite here. I’ve been mostly telling people I’m a “social democrat” or that I support “capitalism with heavy regulations”. But even those words can get picked apart and don’t really capture nuance. My main point is that I think this thread is a perfect encapsulation of how these arguments stop us from getting behind good policies when we bicker about the definitions of words that mean different things to different people.
So what you’re saying is you don’t believe in labels.
The very concept of a free loader best represents the ruling class of capitalists interests. The ruling class does not contribute in any way to society, and instead steal billions of dollars of labor value from the working class and use it in ways that benefit only themselves. Allowing people to survive even without providing a capital benefit to the ruling class wouldn’t enable free loading, it would mean society actually does what its supposed to and looks out for the wellbeing of all people.
You shouldn’t have to work to exist. You shouldn’t have to be useful to anyone else to be a part of a community. Food and shelter are human rights. Water is a human right. Healthcare and education are human rights.
Toppling capitalism and wage slavery is the only way to a just world. Socialism doesn’t inherently belong to the soviet union. And the soviet union did not categorically fail at every single thing they did. Don’t mistake my words for endorsement of stalinism or of any of the many horrible things they did. But there were other aspects of their society and governance that were actually pretty great. Its not all black and all white. Life isn’t that simple in reality. A flat condemnation of communism is rooted in propaganda more than it is in reality.
And I’m an anarchist, before you accuse me of being a tankie. I do not advocate state communism. But to say “fuck communism” and be done with it just shows your bias towards socialism.
you shouldn’t have to work to exist, you shouldn’t have to be useful to anyone else to be part of a community
While I largely agree with your points (or at least some of the core of them) I think you’d have to flesh this out. For anything alive to exist, work needs to be done. And for anyone to be in a community people must mutually agree on membership. The “freeloader” problem isn’t a problem of ability where individuals “not useful” (and that gives me chills as much as it probably does you) to society can’t work, though it’s often framed that way to varying extents from both sides. I feel that it’s a problem where a large enough segment of the population would not be productive at what they could be doing simply because they don’t have to.
Our brains are literally wired to seek out more for less energy.
Again, I agree with most of your points, but these two could probably use a bit more explanation (at least to me)
We live in a time of unprecedented efficiency and automation. We over produce how much we require massively. Optimized, no not every human has to work. Work should be voluntary and without exploitation. Food water and shelter should be shared resources that no one is deprived of. We have the abundance to do this, we only don’t because of the capitalist economic political and social systems which promote wage slavery (the concept that you don’t deserve to live if you’re not capable of producing labor value for capitalists).
Everyone should be encouraged to work and contribute. But no one should face death for being unable to do so. All work should be voluntary and people should be encouraged to work for their benefit, their family’s benefit, and their community’s benefit. Universal basic income should exist (in our society today) so that if you’re being exploited you don’t face either further exploitation or literally death. Supporting yourself and your family and society should be done because you believe in those things and you see the direct benefits of your contributions. The problem is capitalism has indoctrinated people to believe that work is not a mechanism of direct survival. It is a mechanism for attaining capital value, which is traded for direct survival.
It goes beyond that even, they indoctrinate us to believe that:
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Capitalism is natural and can be found in nature.
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Human beings are inherently uncooperative and hate each other. Plenty of human beings are uncooperative, but capitalism literally makes people uncooperative by continually reinforcing the hopelessness of helping others. How can you cooperate when your own survival solely depends on you being willing to give your labor value to capitalists in exchange for indirect survival?
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The homeless, the mentally ill, the addicted, all those who are unable or unwilling to give up their labor value to capitalists - they’re all the picture of sin and vice and they are to be derided and hated for their inability to provide labor value to capitalists. That they are worthless, and should be treated like wild animals.
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On that note, they also indoctrinate us to believe that homelessness is natural. That its a personal failing.
When examined separately you can see that they pre-construct people’s opinions to cooperation among the labor force. “Don’t be a failure by not giving us your labor value.” “Don’t help those who we deem failures.” “Being a failure, by our definition, is a personal choice and not a product of exploitation.” “Our system is natural, the natural world has capitalist-type hierarchies. So it is unchallengable.”
Bear in mind that politically I am an anarchist. In my eyes no society has ever done nearly enough to create real equality. And I fundamentally disagree with all social hierarchies.
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I see a lot of empty slogans here. You sound like a politician.
Just because you don’t understand what words mean doesn’t mean they’re “empty slogans”.
It’s not that.
It’s the commenter rambling and wanting a unicorn of a social ideology. Those slogans aren’t real and will not work.
counterpoint and some reading material for capitalism stans on here https://ia800309.us.archive.org/26/items/fp_Killing_Hope-US_Military_and_CIA_Interventions_Since_WWII-William_Blum/Killing_Hope-US_Military_and_CIA_Interventions_Since_WWII-William_Blum.pdf
7 out of 11 countries believe the end of the USSR harmed their countries rather than benefited them
Reflecting back on the breakup of the Soviet Union that happened 22 years ago next week, residents in seven out of 11 countries that were part of the union are more likely to believe its collapse harmed their countries than benefited them. Only Azerbaijanis, Kazakhstanis, and Turkmens are more likely to see benefit than harm from the breakup. Georgians are divided.
Hungary: 72% of Hungarians say they are worse off today economically than under communism
A remarkable 72% of Hungarians say that most people in their country are actually worse off today economically than they were under communism. Only 8% say most people in Hungary are better off, and 16% say things are about the same. In no other Central or Eastern European country surveyed did so many believe that economic life is worse now than during the communist era. This is the result of almost universal displeasure with the economy. Fully 94% describe the country’s economy as bad, the highest level of economic discontent in the hard hit region of Central and Eastern Europe. Just 46% of Hungarians approve of their country’s switch from a state-controlled economy to a market economy; 42% disapprove of the move away from communism. The public is even more negative toward Hungary’s integration into Europe; 71% say their country has been weakened by the process.
Romania: 63% of the survey participants said their life was better during communism
The most incredible result was registered in a July 2010 IRES (Romanian Institute for Evaluation and Strategy) poll, according to which 41% of the respondents would have voted for Ceausescu, had he run for the position of president. And 63% of the survey participants said their life was better during communism, while only 23% attested that their life was worse then. Some 68% declared that communism was a good idea, just one that had been poorly applied.
Germany: more than half of former eastern Germans defend the GDR
Glorification of the German Democratic Republic is on the rise two decades after the Berlin Wall fell. Young people and the better off are among those rebuffing criticism of East Germany as an “illegitimate state.” In a new poll, more than half of former eastern Germans defend the GDR.
28 percent of Czechs say they were better off under the Communist regime
Roughly 28 percent of Czechs say they were better off under the Communist regime, according to a poll conducted by the polling institute SC&C and released Sunday.
81% of Serbians believe they lived best in Yugoslavia
A poll shows that as many as 81 per cent of Serbians believe they lived best in the former Yugoslavia -”during the time of socialism”.
The majority of Russians polled in a 2016 study said they would prefer living under the old Soviet Union and would like to see the socialist system and the Soviet state restored.
The above memes are almost always made by Americans, whose brains are riddled with red scare brainworms and are completely devoid of any knowledge or understand of what the left thinks in Europe because Americans do not have a left.
western teenagers praising capitalism
the children sewing their clothes, harvesting their food, mining their metals, …
“You criticize society, yet you partake in it. I am very smart.”
That’s pretty much the opposite of what I said. Bangladeshi children sewing your clothes under horrible conditions while H&M and it’s shareholders make billions isn’t (for the most part) your personal moral failing, but a systemic issue within and due to capitalism.
Genuinely, sorry. Misread your comment as “praising communism”. Must’ve been tired or something.
No worries :)
Mmmmm, child labor
I really find all these posts entertaining, there are a bunch of reddit refugees that are trying to impose their ideology on Lemmy. It’s almost like they’re trying to ironically colonize the space.
I expected this shit here tbh
Oh good! I was hoping for some condescension!
dude im just glad here we can educate them
Or maybe your echo chamber is getting a taste of centrism.
Lol centrism is just Neoliberalism that’s pretending not to be right wing.
I think the way we argue over labels hurts us. If I use heavy regulation and government aid to limit the abuses in a capitalist system, at what point does the label change to “socialism”? I think we do ourselves a disservice to create these strict conceptions of systems like capitalism, socialism, or communism. Then when one fails we get to say “well that wasn’t true x”. And the labels allow people to boogeyman an idea. And worst of all, we eliminate the possibility to take good lessons from multiple different systems and incorporate them into our system. I think we would be better served promoting policies on a case by case basis instead of using these huge words. And to be clear, I’m a bit of a hypocrite here. I’ve been mostly telling people I’m a “social democrat” or that I support “capitalism with heavy regulations”. But even those words can get picked apart and don’t really capture nuance. My main point is that I think this thread is a perfect encapsulation of how these arguments stop us from getting behind good policies when we bicker about the definitions of words that mean different things to different people.
How dare teenagers not become Neoliberals while growing up in a late capitalist hellscape where climate change can’t be taken seriously because it isn’t a profitable problem to solve.
Because the single only way to do communism is how the UdSSR did it, there’s no other way.
And of course it’s only possible to either agree with the whole of a specific ideology, or none of it. There’s no “good parts of communism” or “bad parts of capitalism” it’s only ever all good or all bad.
Because the single only way to do communism is how the UdSSR did it, there’s no other way.
It is, because one bad apple spoils the bunch if you don’t send them to gulags. Communism on a large scale is not self stabilizing unless everyone is ideologically 100% onboard.
But sending people to gulags is not the only way to ensure ideological consistency.
It is. Education would not be sufficient for that unless you can program people with chips in their heads.
You then get a few people who produce something that is desirable and rare, start exchanging it for favors and you’re on your way to a systemic collapse.
Is really the only punishment you can think of slavery?
Define communism.
comment section frustratingly filled with McCarthy-brained liberals who have never critically examined their preconceptions about communism
