If only there were some kind of way for it to not devolve into totalitarian dictatorship…
lucky u, there is; its called just doing the fucking thing like normal, cuz non of the historical examples did that so u know.
Communism inevitably will always lead to dictatorship and totalitarianism.
In order to become a communist state, you have to: 1.) Get a bit army or group of people to enforce the upcoming rules. 2.) Force people to get rid of private ownership or threaten them to give it up. This will piss a lot of people off. 3.) Get rid of them if they don’t. This will piss a lot of people off. 4.) Realize that you’ve pissed a lot of people off, and that your the only power in the land, you definitely don’t want to give this up. 5.) Enact a single party system…oh, fuck…
Communism doesn’t work on a large-scale, and it’s not sustainable. By it’s very nature it’s extremely prone to abuse, and fundamentally impossible to install any sort of checks and balances on a single party-system. Look how bad it is with a two-party system in the US.
fundamentally impossible to install any sort of checks and balances on a single party-system. Look how bad it is with a two-party system in the US.
Buddy, checks and balances are one of the many reasons why our democracy doesn’t work. I already covered this elsewhere in this very post.
The failure of democratic checks and balances does not preclude the failure of communist checks and balances as well.
Democratic Socialism is where I’d like the US to head. But we have to start consistently winning majorities so that we can fix the disproportionate representation that’s hurting progress and making electing the progressives needed for change difficult.
u can believe the cia on that or u can actually fucking learn how these systems work or worked and what people who lived and live in them think of them, imma put it very plainly the percent of Americans who think amerikkka is a democracy is a LOT lower than Chinese people who think China is a democracy. And that holds true for most capitalist countries and most socialist countries past and present.
yesbut did you consider that chinese people are very stupid and brainwashed by 5g havana syndrome /s
Communism doesn’t work on a large-scale, and it’s not sustainable.
Have you ever heard of little thing called “economy of scale”? The bigger scale is - the more sustainable it is.
By it’s very nature it’s extremely prone to abuse, and fundamentally impossible to install any sort of checks and balances on a single party-system.
“checks and balances” do not prevent abuse. They are not designed to.
Look how bad it is with a two-party system in the US.
In my opinion two-party system is worse than single-party system and full pluralism. In single-party system there is only one party to blame, while in many-parties system no party can control discourse. While in two-party system both parties can agree to screw over people and finger-point at each-other, only creating illusion of pluralism.
And that besides societal issues two-party system creates like strong polarization.
while in many-parties system no party can control discourse
As someone living in a country having many-party system, the discourse is perfectly controllable in the same way they are doing it in US, just with tiny extra effort. Since 1989 we didn’t had even a single anticapitalist party in parliament despite having sometimes over a dozen of them for several years. Hell in current term we have the most parties - 17 parties + 42 independent parliamentarists on 460 seats in sejm, and still what we hear from all of them is similar on every base question - no alternative to capitalism, neoliberalism in practice, and complete submission to USA and EU in all manners.
“devolve”
Big fan of Tsarist Russia, Feudal China, Colonial Japan, and Batista Cuba I take it.
It starts with a high minded idea and promise of freeing people and whatnot, then it just turns around back to authoritarian rule.
If only there were some kind of way for liberals to learn the actual histories of AES states…
There is, and most have, despite imperial core propaganda to the contrary. Here’s a 1955 CIA report that was declassified in 2008.
Even in Stalin’s time there was collective leadership. The Western idea of a dictator within the Communist setup is exaggerated. Misunderstandings on that subject are caused by lack of comprehension of the real nature and organization of the Communist power structure. Stalin, although holding wide powers, was merely the captain of a team and it seems obvious that Khrushchev will be the new captain.
“Totalitarian” is itself propaganda: The Origins of Totalitarianism
Hannah Arendt came from wealth and so unsurprisingly was anticommunist. Her work was financially supported and promoted by the CIA. “Totalitarianism” is a bourgeois liberal, anticommunist construct for the purposes of equivalating fascism and communism.
Monthly Review, The CIA and the Cultural Cold War Revisited
U.S. and European anticommunist publications receiving direct or indirect funding included Partisan Review, Kenyon Review, New Leader, Encounter and many others. Among the intellectuals who were funded and promoted by the CIA were Irving Kristol, Melvin Lasky, Isaiah Berlin, Stephen Spender, Sidney Hook, Daniel Bell, Dwight MacDonald, Robert Lowell, Hannah Arendt, Mary McCarthy, and numerous others in the United States and Europe. In Europe, the CIA was particularly interested in and promoted the “Democratic Left” and ex-leftists, including Ignacio Silone, Stephen Spender, Arthur Koestler, Raymond Aron, Anthony Crosland, Michael Josselson, and George Orwell.
If fact almost all of the “Western left” (that wasn’t repressed by the red scares) was captured by the imperial core’s propaganda machine: Imperialist Propaganda and the Ideology of the Western Left Intelligentsia: From Anticommunism and Identity Politics to Democratic Illusions and Fascism
Rather than placing absolute power of The State in one person’s hands, start with an elected council of members whose number is not divisible by 2. Transition to a Stateless co-op arrangement. Congratulations you just implemented Communism the way it is intended to be implemented, and no dictator could screw it up.
Sounds great. Unfortunately it has never succeeded for more than a few months. The last 100+ years have shown that attempting to transition to socialism in that manner doesn’t work. Each time the bourgeoisie manages quickly regain control of the state. Given that the worldwide capitalist class still holds a great majority of the power, siege socialism is the only method to have had any successes to date.
The Six Nations have been using a form of communism, not Marxism, for somewhere between 15,000 to 25,000 years. Works pretty well for them. Aboriginal Australians have done the same for roughly 60,000 years.
I’d say capitalism is the short lived and failed economic system, considering that it’s about 400 years old and rapidly failing.
The Six Nations have been using a form of communism, not Marxism, for somewhere between 15,000 to 25,000 years. Works pretty well for them. Aboriginal Australians have done the same for roughly 60,000 years.
Sure, they had what Marxists call “primitive communism,” but they don’t now. They’re as captured by capitalism as we.
I’d say capitalism is the short lived and failed economic system, considering that it’s about 400 years old and rapidly failing.
I doubt it will fall on its own any time soon, especially if no one builds something to replace it.
“Primitive communism” is a derogatory term with racist undertones. The dismissiveness towards existing methods of collectivism is IMO one of the biggest flaws of Marxist theory. The establishment of an intelligentsia is an idea rooted in this paternalistic arrogance. If Marx had acknowledged the Russian peasantry as an important political class the Russian revolution might have gone very differently.
“Primitive communism” is a derogatory term with racist undertones.
I suppose it is a problem, thanks to “primitive” often meaning “subhuman.” It’s not that the people were primitive, but the pre-capitalist & pre-industrial-revolution means of production.
It isn’t just the wording that’s problematic, it’s the way Marx was dismissive towards the existing methods of collectivism and horizontal organizing. Yes, subsistence farming is a “primitive” mode of production, but the way peasants and indigenous people organized and collectivized resources is not irrelevant to modern industrial modes of production. Marx dismissed the way peasants and indigenous people collectivized resources as “primitive” and argued in favor of centralized power structures. I believe this to be a mistake.
This is one of the tests of reading Marx, somehow it’s nearly always evident if someone use the term “primitive” about level of development or is just spewing racism. Problem is that liberals, ultras and such cannot differentiate between the two, but i guess it’s their problem.
…and how do you enforce it? No one is going to want to give up the land that they worked for and purchased themselves, or that they developed. Give up your rights or we imprison or kill you?
And who controls this enforcing agency? The single party government? Because you can’t have multiple parties…how do you prevent the government from taking advantage of their position? Like, I don’t think communism is this magical fix-all that you think it is.
It’s really simple - centralization = seat of power
The worst flavor of people are drawn to that like moths to a flame. It’s not even a good idea, any potential economies of scale are wasted by communication lag in the bureaucracy
Decentralization is key. You can have a commune easy enough, humans self organize just fine in small enough communities. There’s communes all over the world doing just fine
The question is, how do you knit those small communities together in a way that doesn’t give anyone much power, but still come together when needed?
Where has that happened?
Soviet Union under Stalin comes to mind. North Korea.
That wasn’t totalitarian nor a dictatorship. Soviet Democracy continued to be practiced, and Stalin’s authority wasn’t absolute or all-encompassing.
Where does a state go from a non-totalitarian, non-dictatorship to a Totalitarian Dictatorship?
From the very article you linked:
There, Lenin argued that the soviets and the principle of democratic centralism within the Bolshevik party still assured democracy. However, faced with support for Kronstadt within Bolshevik ranks, Lenin also issued a “temporary” ban on factions in the Russian Communist Party. This ban remained until the revolutions of 1989 and, according to some critics, made the democratic procedures within the party an empty formality, and helped Stalin to consolidate much more authority under the party. Soviets were transformed into the bureaucratic structure that existed for the rest of the history of the Soviet Union and were completely under the control of party officials and the politburo.
Very democratic indeed lol. Can’t wait how they ensure democracy in North Korea next.
according to some critics
Hey look at what the core of the quote you pulled is
I wonder what the ideology of those critics is
Very democratic indeed lol. Can’t wait how they ensure democracy in North Korea next.
Objectively more democratic than the US. In the US you vote for president and they appoint the ministers of every executive agency. In Korea they vote for those directly.
Can’t wait how they ensure democracy in North Korea next
Objectively more democratic than the US.
In Korea they vote for those directly.
They certainly have an interesting method.
Each candidate is preselected by the North Korean government and there is no option to write in a different name, meaning that voters may either submit the ballot unaltered as a “yes” vote or request a pen to cross out the name on the ballot.
A person’s vote is not secret
Uhhum.
Wow you sure did copy and paste from a wikipedia article that doesn’t even bother to source the claim to any of the overtly state propaganda articles at the bottom of the page it uses as a bibliography.
And you didn’t even bother mentioning where you got it so we’re 2 levels of lack of citations deep.
Gee I wonder why leftists constantly criticize anti-communists for being intellectually lazy and dishonest…
I linked the absolute most liberal friendly source for you. Banning factionalism didn’t mean they banned democracy. Banning of factionalism was done when there were literal fascists and Capitalists trying to infiltrate the party and reinstate Tsarism for their profits. You were allowed to have different ifeas, voice them, and vote on them.
It’s very kind of you to have chosen that as a source but it seems to have been an unfortunate pick.
Banning of factionalism was done when there were literal fascists and Capitalists trying to infiltrate the party and reinstate Tsarism for their profits.
It just happens that that was claimed to happen always, so you know, ban was only liften in 1989 as the article mentions lol. Funny how that happens.
You were allowed to have different ifeas, voice them, and vote on them.
Not even mentioning the lack of press freedom but Stalin famously purged a shitload of people on the basis of their political opinions. And voting in a strictly controlled single-party state, it does have the sound of a empty formality as the article had it.
It just happens that that was claimed to happen always, so you know, ban was only liften in 1989 as the article mentions lol. Funny how that happens.
Looks like it was true! Millions of people died when the USSR was illegally dissolved afterwards, and the majority of living former-soviets say they prefered the Soviet System.
Not even mentioning the lack of press freedom but Stalin famously purged a shitload of people on the basis of their political opinions. And voting in a strictly controlled single-party state, it does have the sound of a empty formality as the article had it.
Liberalism and fascism were banned. Additionally, it is not at all an empty formality, unless you think every human being in a political party shares the exact same opinions, which is laughably false.
You were allowed to have different ifeas, voice them, and vote on them.
There’s an entire wiki page dedicated to how the USSR repressed scientific ideas and promoted absolute idiocracy (such as Lysenkoism) because of politics. If something as (relatively) objective as science wasn’t allowing different ideas you can only imagine what was happening in areas that are far more subjective.
And I can tell you that the “democratic voting” was also just a farce. I can’t find the source anymore but voting didn’t really have oversight. It’s in their voting guidebook, the people counting the votes are also the people who verify the votes. That means the voting committee gets to assign votes however they want because they’re also the ones verifying the votes. From a certain political level onwards the political elite chose who gets what political position. Lysenko is actually excellent example of that because the scientific community hated him, but Stalin loved him and so Lysenko got to fuck up science for multiple decades.
There’s an entire wiki page dedicated to how the USSR repressed scientific ideas and promoted absolute idiocracy (such as Lysenkoism) because of politics. If something as (relatively) objective as science wasn’t allowing different ideas you can only imagine what was happening in areas that are far more subjective.
The USSR was overall very pro-science. In it’s early years, it went through growing pains, as their number one task was centered around instilling Marxism in the population. Marxism itself is founded on Dialectical and Historical Materialism. Certain liberal sciences had been, at the time, focused on Idealism, such as Race Science.
And I can tell you that the “democratic voting” was also just a farce. I can’t find the source anymore but voting didn’t really have oversight. It’s in their voting guidebook, the people counting the votes are also the people who verify the votes. That means the voting committee gets to assign votes however they want because they’re also the ones verifying the votes. From a certain political level onwards the political elite chose who gets what political position. Lysenko is actually excellent example of that because the scientific community hated him, but Stalin loved him and so Lysenko got to fuck up science for multiple decades.
Do you have evidence that the Soviets were assigning votes?
Just like, everywhere they’ve tried it.
You must have an odd definition of Totalitarian Dictatorship then, I suppose.
Australia had communism for 60,000 years and never developed a dictatorship.
Would you like to provide a link, or any sort of proof to back up this outlandish claim?
Calling it communism may be a bit of a reach, but collectivist social organizing in a variety of ways was and still is a very common element of indigenous cultures around the world.
This link focuses on family and child rearing, but it’s a good window into how Australian aboriginals express collectivist principles.
Same for all forms of government including capitalism.
Related meme:
As a theory, sure. I just have yet to see it expressed in any functional way that didn’t devolve into a shit show. See: Russia, etc.,
I think it’s telling that so many wish for a return to communism but still defend Putin’s atrocities. :|
Russia devolved into capitalism. Funding a military is incredibly expensive and necessary when a communist country wants to exist in a world with the United States. This creates a militant economy that must be centrally governed to coordinate this military might. True democratic socialism is impossible as long as the United States exists as an imperialist force.
True democratic socialism is impossible as long as the United States exists as an imperialist force.
1, That’s silly, there’s tons of democratic socialist countries that are doing just fine - today! Bolivia, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Canada, the Netherlands, Spain, Ireland, Belgium, Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand - think the US fucks with their way of governing?
2, the USSR was never a type of democratic socialism. Period. They literally called it ‘soviet democracy’ distinctly, and it meant something WILDLY different that the kinds of democratic socialism we see in the above listed countries.
Your premise is faulty, built upon an imagined soviet union that did not practice the tenants you’re endorsing.
1, That’s silly, there’s tons of democratic socialist countries that are doing just fine - today! Bolivia, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Canada, the Netherlands, Spain, Ireland, Belgium, Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand - think the US fucks with their way of governing?
All of these countries are free market economies, though. If you classify a country that has public programs as socialist, then USA is a socialist country.
Also, just as a detail, Switzerland is probably one of the most capitalistic countries in the world. They have nearly a flat tax rate, very small amounts of corporate / capital gains taxation and a health care system that is nearly privatized. And it’s all working pretty damned well for them.
Canada
Ok, how did Canada managed to get on this list? And Switszerland?
They literally called it ‘soviet democracy’
Parlamentary democracy is real thing. Usually it is called parlamentary republic. Nothing special, most of Europe works this way.
soviet democracy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_democracy
Parlamentary democracy is real thing.
yeah, it is, and it’s not what the soviets were doing.
yeah, it is, and it’s not what the soviets were doing.
Even article you linked says it was parlament with delegates.
few parliaments are made out of soviets - worker delegations - lol.
but if you’d actually read the article I linked you’d have seen:
In contrast to earlier democratic models à la John Locke and Montesquieu, no separation of powers exists in soviet democracy.
show me where that’s a thing. no, actually, don’t bother.
you’re too stupid to continue engaging, I’m not going to enlighten you, and you aren’t going to bullshit me any further.
In contrast to earlier democratic models à la John Locke and Montesquieu, no separation of powers exists in soviet democracy.
And I’m didn’t say parlament should be strictly legislative body.
None of those are socialist countries. They’re all capitalist
I guess you can stick your head into the ground and pretend democratic socialism isn’t a thing.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/top-15-democratic-socialist-countries-181857008.html
it’s stupid, but stupidity is always an option.
Of course, if you just toss these countries’ accomplishments away, you’re really just undermining the entire premise, because without these successes the record of ‘socialism’ gets a whole fucking lot worse.
lol
You’re citing a capitalist finance website to prove your point about socialism. You seem to be confused between social democracy and democratic socialism. I understand because they seem so similar that they must be basically the same thing, right? Nope.
The Nordic model is a form of social democracy. They take many of the benefits that socialism provides and builds them into a capitalist economy. Democratic socialism is an actual form of a worker owned an operated economy.
If you’re ever in doubt, ask the question, “who owns the means of production?” If the answer is huge megacorporations and wealthy billionaires, then it’s a capitalist economy. If the answer is the working class, it’s socialist.
if you just toss these countries’ accomplishments away, you’re really just undermining the entire premise, because without these successes the record of ‘socialism’ gets a whole fucking lot worse.
Ok, then.
I don’t think they are socialist democracy but social democracy. There is a distinction. I don’t think any country is a socialist country in morden history. There where some movement that were trying to be socialist but it either fell into dictatorship (USSR, North Korea, etc)or it was squashed by USA(Chile, and other central/ south american countries). The most successful one was that of Chile, until US backed coup overthrew the democratically elected government in favour of dictatorship.
11·4 months agodeleted by creator
What makes it require capitalism suddenly?
True democratic socialism is impossible as long as the United States exists as an imperialist force.
Not sure how to explain, but I don’t think so.
The US has destroyed every socialist country in history that didn’t have a strong enough military to fight them off
My concern with this line of argument is that it bundles consequences from a system of government up with the consequences of trade embargoes and other hostile actions from capitalist economies. That doesn’t make the actions of the dictators in those countries justifiable in any way, but might have precipitated conditions that made them more likely.
How would communist nations have fared if the US had taken a ‘live and let live’ approach to them? The approach during the cold war was that they couldn’t be allowed to succeed. That led to the sort of standards of living where dictatorship tends to thrive. Note this isn’t unique to communist countries. Look at the Republican party in the US, now that Neoliberalism is failing.
It also ignores that Socialism in AES states has generally resulted in mass reductions in poverty, increases in literacy, education, home ownership, and life expectancy.
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You’re a fucking idiot if you think the problem with those countries is communism and not unceasing imperial violence targeted at them from the global core of wealth and fascism.
But even living under conditions of siege warfare they still manage to provide housing and healthcare to their people which make them objectively better places to live than the US, which deliberately keeps a large population homeless because of the coercion it creates for the working class.
Do you think changing Mode of Production magically transforms levels of development? Typical liberal.
Perfect, no response except to throw a question and “insult”
This is why you won’t be taken seriously ever.
I already answered you, living in the US is currently better than some AES states, because development isn’t something magical. However, I would absolutely pick an AES state over the US in the comimg years. Hell, the PRC is in many ways ahead of the US for the average worker already.
Serious question because it is relevant to the discussion, do you currently have a job?
Do you live in one of these western countries?
What is your personal frame of reference that tells you you’d have a better life than where you are in Cuba or Laos or North Korea?
What would china give you right now that you would move there for?
Please, be specific so I can understand.
Pretend you had a chance to convince me instead of angrily and frustratedly arguing your point in a defensive manner.
I believe in socialism, it’s been incorporated into democracy quite well actually and provided significant quality of life for its citizens.
Communism on the other hand has largely always moved to an authoritarian beat, China and Laos and Cuba and North Korea are all prime examples of this in the present day. Much like the two party system in the USA has hindered its democracy I don’t see how a one party system with strong central rule is not a HUGE step back from that. At least we have a semblance of choice and the mechanisms to fix what is broken.
Why do you prefer a form of government that takes choice away from its citizens?
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Europe is not socialist. Socialism requires ownership of the means of production by the proletariat, no western European nation has had that, and the eastern ones got overthrown and capitalism re-instated.
Communism is ownership of production, socialism is social safety nets managed by the government like free Healthcare. And sure most of Europe probably is just the lite version of that.
No.
Socialism is Worker Ownership of the Means of Production, and a transitional state towards Communism.
Social Safety Nets are Social Safety Nets.
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socialism is social safety nets managed by the government like free Healthcare
That’s social, not socialist. Yes, entire Europe is social(maybe except UK), even dictatorships(Russia, Belarus) in Europe have social element. And Europe is not socialist for over 30 years.
Europe is socialist
The very first sentence from Wikipedia: Socialism
Socialism is an economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership.
Who owns the means of production in Europe? The capitalist class, same as in every other capitalist state. Social welfare under capitalism is not socialism.
what communist Russia had was a totalitarian government
I already covered this elsewhere in this post.
Go pound sand you ducking idiot.
We’re done here.
Europe is Capitalist and Imperalist. What the USSR had was Socialism.
Please explain exactly why you think Europe is “Socialist,” lmao.
Even if you hate communism, calling the EU socialist is hilarious. Seems a lot of people in this thread have never even read a basic dictionary definition for socialism. I am surprised the people replying to you even know there is supposed to be a difference between socialism and communism.
Legitimately frustrating. As a Communist, I try my best to help people understand just what these terms actually mean, and explain why people such as myself support Communism, but there are people that cling to nonsense definitions and shroud themselves in mystery.
Decades of calling everything you don’t like, and any government support, communism, I guess.
maybe, before the '56 invasion this could have happened, but I’m dubious. And after Hungary, lol, fuck right off thinking the capitalist world should support your communist brutality.
“Fascism is good, actually.”
get
fuckedoops that’s not civil.fuck fascism and it’s practitioners.
See: Russia, etc.,
Last time I checked sheikh-esque palaces and yachts are something that is not communism. Same goes for Putin’s oligarchs.
I think it’s telling that so many wish for a return to communism but still defend Putin’s atrocities. :|
For some reason I see them less than few years ago. I wonder why…
Putin’s oligarchs.
And where did Putin come from?
For some reason I see them less than few years ago. I wonder why…
probably because they’re losing their love of this special military operation slightly exceeding it’s 3-days-to-kiev plan. Those dumb sonsabitches brought their dress uniforms for the parades they knew were going to happen.
lol
And where did Putin come from?
Some from behind desk near him in KGB, some are his neighbours.
First can be solved with lustrations. KGB, FSB, NSA, FBI - they greatly harm society.
Both can be reduced by destruction of iron throne. “All power power to soviets” v2. Most of Europe already into parlamentarism, so nothing unusual.
Both can be reduced by destruction of iron throne. “All power power to soviets” v2.
This would be grand, good luck! Make it happen.
What do you mean by "devolve into a shitshow?
See every communist nation in history
I see China building renewable energy capacity, and crazy fast trains, faster than the rest of the world combined.
I see Cuba, a tiny island nation, still independent after 64 years of brutal US sanctions.
I see Vietnam, a popular retirement destination for American ‘expats’.
I see Russia, being fairly shitty and also 100% capitalist for 25 years.
Hmm, seems like you may have been told a bunch of times that communism is bad but never really looked into it.
China is extremely capitalist lmao
I’m not fucking defending capitalism or demonizing communism, it’s just never worked. I see absolutely zero reason to expect any difference if we tried it in the us
Nuh-uh, Xi pressed the big red communism button and now all the capitalism is gone!
[is joke, obviously that’s not how it works]
“It’s just never worked” is ignorant though. Every nation that has tried to dump capitalism has has successes and failures, and there are many factors that contribute to each. Economies are extremely complex and you simply can’t say anything intelligent without getting at least a bit more in-depth than “works/doesn’t work”.
China is Socialist with Chinese Characteristics, the CPC practices large and extensive levels of State Planning and the People’s Democracy structure means the Capitalists in China do not control nor guide the State.
Capitalism exists in China as a concession, it isn’t some fully Socialized state, but it is a transitional economy.
Read China Has Billionaires.
I see China starting to prosper as soon as they dropped the Communist economic model and opened up to capitalism, private ownership and free trade. I see Vietnam starting to do the same.
I see NK, a more developed nation than SK right after the war, very close to their communist allies and having the second biggest economy as trade partner and neighbor (USSR first, China now) now being irrelevant economically while you can’t even enter or exit the country freely. In the meanwhile SK managed to become a global power. Btw, what’s up with communist countries and not letting anyone enter or exit the country freely?
I see Vietnam, a popular retirement destination for American ‘expats’.
Pretty sure this has nothing to do with communism. Happens also in Indonesia or Thailand and has all to do with them being poor as fuck and the huge human trafficking business happening in those countries. And those “expats” are the worst of the worst scum on earth, trust me
The USA and the international institutions they control have done an impressive job making it look like open markets equals prosperity, but when you look just under the surface, a different picture emerges.
Vietnam, for example, was denied access to IMF loans, while trying to rebuild after an absolutely brutal war that basically set them back to the stone age. Only once they agreed to certain liberal reforms were they allowed access to the funds and resources they needed.
If you’re not really paying attention, it looks like you’re right.
I’ve looked, I see the exact opposite. Go back to reddit where you can wallow in ignorance without anybody noticing.
Vapid
So large increases in literacy rates, life expectancy, home ownership, education access, healthcare access, and democratization of society is “devolving into a shitshow?”
Do you think Russians were better off under the thumb of the Tsar? Do you think Cubans were happier as slaves in Batista’s US-backed slave-state? What point are you genuinely trying to make?
First part is a result of industrialization.
Second part, no they weren’t, but that just means that they were worse off before, not that they were great afterwards.
I genuinely think the idea of communism is great, but human nature will ensure that it will never be successful. There will always be someone who gets greedy and takes more for themselves in the pursuit of wealth and power.
human nature will ensure that it will never be successful
Human nature is to be kind and helpful. Humans are social creatures. We wouldn’t have survived for thousands of years if everyone said “fuck you got mine”.
Even if that were true, you are saying we should continue with the system that rewards stuff like greed, rather than try to have a system that doesn’t. “Human nature” is an argument for socialism/communism.
First part is a result of industrialization.
Partially, the other huge part is that the products of production were funneled into safety nets and state projects like railways and universities, providing free education and healthcare, and not corporate profits.
I genuinely think the idea of communism is great, but human nature will ensure that it will never be successful. There will always be someone who gets greedy and takes more for themselves in the pursuit of wealth and power.
What’s considered “Human Nature” changes alongside Mode of Production. It isn’t Human Nature to be greedy, greed is more often expressed within Capitalism.
Additionally, wealth disparity went way down in the USSR. It wasn’t a case where some few individuals profited massively and others lived in squalor, wealth disparity skyrocketed after it collapsed.
Are you familiar with Marxist Theory? You have a decidedly Idealist take, rather than Materialist.
LMAO
I’ve had quite a few people say I’ve been brainwashed by Chinese or soviet propaganda, a thing I do not encounter often, and then slowly explain the most bog standard white Australian nationalist narrative to me. I wish I was better at confrontational social situations
I mean, I’ve checked out a few English language Chinese news programs out of curiosity. Not really anything vitriolic I’ve seen, if anything they all seem a bit more chill and relaxed and maybe even a bit boring. It’s obvious that some of it is propaganda but they don’t really bother to hide it behind this facade of “NO SPIN” and “TOTALLY RELIABLE” or controlled oppositional pushback that American corporate news (aka propaganda) feels the need to project.
It’s very easy to not look like propaganda but still push a message that spins things in a certain light.
Many news agencies practice this, Al Jazeera, RT, the BBC, etc.
It’s not just east and west, it’s common practice.
The extreme vitriol we get here in the states is because SHOCK sells domestically but if you want to sell your message globally you say it politely and calmly and often in a soft spoken way.
The point of foreign facing news is to seem reasonably so you can push another narrative.
Not necessarily saying “foreign” news is bad, in fact I recommend everyone take a peep but always remember with whatever information you’re consuming someone has their bias in it
I’m inclined to agree
Any
currentreal-life examples of “communism good”?It’s been democratically instituted many times. And every time America marches in and “liberates” them.
It’s difficult to provide good examples when they’re all actively destroyed.
Cuba. Cuba has the most educated population in North America, more doctors per capita then almost any other nation. The only reason they’re struggling is because America’s embargo. They want stuff too.
There is a Brazilian right-winger moron that said this golden statement: “there is only three things that works in Cuba: Security, Education and Healthcare”.
For him that’s a bad thing btw.
Mostly this, although Vietnam is doing quite well, especially considering their circumstances.
Cuba is also really interesting…not thriving, to be sure, but you have to end the US blockade before you blame them for their own hardships. And in spite of everything, they have democracy like we’ve never seen in the west.
Edit: also what beejboytyson said about Cuba.
The US dropped more napalm, and bombs, and agent orange on vietnam (a comparatively small country) than it did during all of WW2. Lots of its people are still suffering from this atrocity.
Sadly true. And most people aren’t aware that they did pretty much the same thing to Laos, who they weren’t even at war with. They just carpet bombed the whole country, “just in case.”
Fuck the USA. They’re literally the evil empire from star wars.
It’s so funny that george lucas was like: “the rebels are the vietnamese communists, and the empire is the USA (its soldiers the storm troopers)” and somehow a lot of modern star wars fans are extremely pro-US, and never connect the dots.
IMO the biggest critique of star wars, its that lucas didn’t focus at all on the lives of the stormtruppen, and force its audience in the imperial core to look in the mirror, at their values, their chauvinist culture, their pro-war ideology and news media.
Still gotta keep blaming the rebels for all the world’s problems.
That’s true, the storm troopers and stuff are basically presented as automatons. I guess some audiences like not having to think, but it would have been much more impactful to show them as people with their own beliefs and motivations and stuff.
There’s a lot of short stories about that in various books, though they tend to overuse both the tropes of banality of evil and the cackling evil maniacs.
Fuck Kissinger.
May he have pineapples shoved up his arse in hell, right next to old hitler.
Yeah but all forms of government are constantly attacked. You’re like a multicellular organism crying foul because bacteria and other pathogens are trying to invade it.
One of the reasons capitalism wins is it produces enough wealth to win wars. Consistently. The same wealth that leads to ever-lower levels of poverty also wins wars.
Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism causes wars.
WWI was an inter-imperialist war. WWII was two wars: on the Western front it was an inter-imperialist war and on the Eastern front it was largely a war to crush socialism. Most of the wars since then have been imperialist wars of aggression against imperialized states, many of them by the United States, the global imperialist hegemon that has over 750 overseas military bases.
The same wealth that leads to ever-lower levels of poverty
Where have you been during the last 40 years of neoliberalism and neocolonialism?
And explain this: United Nations, 2019: Helping 800 Million People Escape Poverty Was Greatest Such Effort in History, Says Secretary-General, on Seventieth Anniversary of China’s FoundingI have bad news for you about the rate of poverty…
Our current attempt at democracy—the methods we’re using to elect our leaders—are fundamentally irrational.
They are rational, and they work as intended, it’s just that they’re not popular democracies, they’re bourgeois democracies, designed by & for the capitalist class and against the working class. They’re not meant to represent us.
Take the US, which has has been ruled by the bourgeoisie since the 1776 bourgeois revolution. The wealthy, white, male land-owning, largely slave-owning Founding Fathers intentionally constructed a bourgeois state with “checks and balances” against the “tyranny of the majority.” It was never meant to represent the majority—the working class—and it never has, despite eventually allowing women and non-whites (who aren’t disenfranchised by the carceral system) to vote. BBC: [Princeton] Study: US is an oligarchy, not a democracy
Ah yes my favorite authoritative source on the mathematics of democracy: a YouTube video.
Fuck off
Veritasium is legit, they cite their sources and explain concepts exceptionally well.
However, I don’t think the conclusion of the video is “Democracy is mathematically impossible”, but rather “perfect representation in a democracy” is mathematically impossible (but can still be much much better than FPTP).
The video basically goes through all the top voting systems and explains their pros and cons and the history of the mathematicians who invented the systems.
but rather “perfect representation in a democracy” is mathematically impossible (but can still be much much better than FPTP).
It’s not even that. The more accurate title would be “Ranked voting types cannot mathematically meet all of the requirements of democracy this one guy made”
The whole video I wanted to yell out “so switch to approval voting”.
The dude makes some pretty legit videos. He has a PhD in physics education research. Using YouTube is just a sign of the time we live in. Imagine if your professor quit their job to become a YouTuber because they thought it’d be a more effective medium for education than a whiteboard.
Mathematics is, in a sense, about abstraction and generalization, and the video covers an ideal, or set of axioms, you’d want from a voting system. This perfect system was proven to be impossible and the researcher was granted the Nobel prize in economics. In short, there can be no perfect voting system, and we must accept a compromise (much like an engineer). You can also say mathematics is about proofs, and, no matter how unintuitive something might seem, it leaves no room for doubt. It doesn’t hardly matter if the source comes from a YouTube video.
Edit: I don’t agree with the context the video was posted, but I was bothered by this response to it.
The title of that video is wildly misleading click bait. We should just switch to approval voting and be done with it.
You could’ve just typed “No”.
All the other things you’ve typed is nonsense anyways.
How so?
In the “I disagree but can’t articulate a cogent reason for it” sense of the word “nonsense”, of course. 🙄
Might be worth reading up on history to put some facts behind those feelings. Either you’ll find out you’re right or you’ll update your beliefs to be more correct.
Democratically instituted communisim? For all the uppity yall get when someone suggests democratic socialist policies, you sure can’t seem to find the line you blurred.
My country was on the path of the democratically instituted socialism thing. Well, it tried but the United States instigated, funded and armed a military coup and the military dictatorship that followed.
Guess it’s better to have torture camps than gobbunism
Democratic Socialism is alive and well in many countries without any U.S. intervention. You must be referring to the fascist kind.
Ah, yes, the United States famously only interferes in fascist countries and not for benefit of plutocrats.
Also, which demsoc countries are you talking about where the means of production are controlled by the working class?
What is “Democratic Socialism” in your eyes?
Here you go, and before you say China is not really communist. That’s true that China is in a socialist stage of development led by the Communist party. However, it’s very clear that it is developing very differently from capitalist countries.
The real (inflation-adjusted) incomes of the poorest half of the Chinese population increased by more than four hundred percent from 1978 to 2015, while real incomes of the poorest half of the US population actually declined during the same time period. https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w23119/w23119.pdf
From 1978 to 2000, the number of people in China living on under $1/day fell by 300 million, reversing a global trend of rising poverty that had lasted half a century (i.e. if China were excluded, the world’s total poverty population would have risen) https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/China’s-Economic-Growth-and-Poverty-Reduction-Angang-Linlin/c883fc7496aa1b920b05dc2546b880f54b9c77a4
From 2010 to 2019 (the most recent period for which uninterrupted data is available), the income of the poorest 20% in China increased even as a share of total income. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.DST.FRST.20?end=2019&locations=CN&start=2008
By the end of 2020, extreme poverty, defined as living on under a threshold of around $2 per day, had been eliminated in China. According to the World Bank, the Chinese government had spent $700 billion on poverty alleviation since 2014. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/31/world/asia/china-poverty-xi-jinping.html
Then there are the massive poverty alleviation programs in China that have no comparison in the US https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/04/01/lifting-800-million-people-out-of-poverty-new-report-looks-at-lessons-from-china-s-experience
90% of families in the country own their home giving China one of the highest home ownership rates in the world. What’s more is that 80% of these homes are owned outright, without mortgages or any other leans. https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2016/03/30/how-people-in-china-afford-their-outrageously-expensive-homes
If we take just one country, China, out of the global poverty equation, then even under the $1.90 poverty standard we find that the extreme poverty headcount is the exact same as it was in 1981.
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/07/5-myths-about-global-poverty
China also massively invests in infrastructure. They used more concrete in 3 years than US in all of 20th century https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2014/12/05/china-used-more-concrete-in-3-years-than-the-u-s-used-in-the-entire-20th-century-infographic/
China also built 27,000km of high speed rail in a decade https://www.railjournal.com/passenger/high-speed/ten-years-27000km-china-celebrates-a-decade-of-high-speed/
Such massive infrastructure projects directly improve the standard of living for the people of the country.
Social mobility happens to be really high as well https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/11/18/world/asia/china-social-mobility.html
Furthermore, people in China see their country working in their interest and hence view it as being far more democratic than people do living under the dictatorship of capital
- https://www.newsweek.com/most-china-call-their-nation-democracy-most-us-say-america-isnt-1711176
- https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2021/0218/Vilified-abroad-popular-at-home-China-s-Communist-Party-at-100
- https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-06-26/which-nations-are-democracies-some-citizens-might-disagree
- https://web.archive.org/web/20230511041927/https://6389062.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/6389062/Canva images/Democracy Perception Index 2023.pdf
- https://www.tbsnews.net/world/china-more-democratic-america-say-people-98686
- https://web.archive.org/web/20201229132410/https://en.news-front.info/2020/06/27/studies-have-shown-that-china-is-more-democratic-than-the-united-states-russia-is-nearby-and-ukraine-is-at-the-bottom/
Meanwhile, if you want a historical example then look no further than USSR.
Russia went from a backwards agrarian society where people travelled by horse and carriage to being the first in space in the span of 40 years. Russia showed incredible growth after the revolution that surpassed the rest of the world:
- https://wid.world/document/soviets-oligarchs-inequality-property-russia-1905-2016/
- https://wid.world/document/appendix-soviets-oligarchs-inequality-property-russia-1905-2016-wid-world-working-paper-201710/
USSR provided free education to all citizens resulting in literacy rising from 33% to 99.9%:
- http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/PubEdUSSR.htm
- http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/anglosov.htm
- http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0000/000013/001300eo.pdf
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Likbez
USSR doubled life expectancy in just 20 years. A newborn child in 1926-27 had a life expectancy of 44.4 years, up from 32.3 years thirty years before. In 1958-59 the life expectancy for newborns went up to 68.6 years. the Semashko system of the USSR increased lifespan by 50% in 20 years. By the 1960’s, lifespans in the USSR were comparable to those in the USA:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_Soviet_Union
- https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB5054/index1.html
Quality of nutrition improved after the Soviet revolution, and the last time USSR had a famine was in 1940s. CIA data suggests they ate just as much as Americans after WW2 peroid while having better nutrition:
- https://www.scribd.com/document/430076844/CIA-RDP84B00274R000300150009-5-pdf
- https://artir.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/compar1.png?w=640
USSR moved from 58.5-hour work weeks to 41.6 hour work weeks (-0.36 h/yr) between 1913 and 1960:
USSR averaged 22 days of paid leave in 1986 while USA averaged 7.6 in 1996:
- https://www.ilo.org/public/libdoc/ilo/1994/94B09_66_englp2.pdf
- https://www.bls.gov/news.release/ebs.t05.htm
In 1987, people in the USSR could retire with pension at 55 (female) and 60 (male) while receiving 50% of their wages at a at minimum. Meanwhile, in USA the average retirement age was 62-67 and the average (not median) retiree household in the USA could expect $48k/yr which comes out to 65% of the 74k average (not median) household income in 2016:
- https://www.ilo.org/public/libdoc/ilo/1994/94B09_66_englp2.pdf
- https://www.cbsnews.com/news/could-you-get-by-on-the-average-americans-retirement-income/
GDP took off after socialism was established and then collapsed with the reintroduction of capitalism:
The Soviet Union had the highest physician/patient ratio in the world. USSR had 42 doctors per 10,000 population compared to 24 in Denmark and Sweden, and 19 in US:
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http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0735675784900482 (sci-hub for access)
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USSR defeated a smallpox epidemic in a matter of 19 days https://www.rbth.com/history/331857-how-ussr-defeated-black-smallpox
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The Social Consequences of Soviet Immunization Policies https://www.ucis.pitt.edu/nceeer/1997-812-03g-Hoch.pdf
So, how do people who lived under communism feel now that they got a taste of capitalism?
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Adult mortality increased enormously in Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union when the Soviet system collapsed 30 years ago. https://archive.ph/9Z12u
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Former Soviet Countries See More Harm From Breakup https://news.gallup.com/poll/166538/former-soviet-countries-harm-breakup.aspx
The Free market paradise goes East chapters in Blackshirts and Reds details some more results of the transition to capitalism.
*crickets*, as usual.
tried actually having a conversation with the person, they’re just unresponsive to actual discussion.
From your first source
Figure 1 shows that China had very low inequality levels in the late 1970s, but it is now approaching the US, where income concentration remains the highest among the countries shown
sure, and that’s happening while the standard of living for the poor people continues to rise dramatically with each and every year
Do you live in china?
sadly no
May I ask why not? And if I’m not being too intrusive I’d be interested to know which country you do live in (I’m in the us)
Also really weird I never got a notification from your reply
I live in Canada, my family moved here back when I was still in school. I’d like to move to China one day, but it’s unlikely that I’d be able to do that in the foreseeable future. My parents are old and I’m not just going to abandon them to move half way across the world. That’s the main thing holding me back. In general, it’s not easy to just uproot your whole life and move to a different country to start anew. For example, I find even the language to be a challenge, I’ve been learning Mandarin for the past two years and I’m still not fluent in it. Getting a job in my field without knowing a language would be unlikely.
Very interesting thank you for sharing, so I gather that if you could make it work you would but it isn’t in the cards right now. I wonder how hard it would be to immigrate there.
It depends a lot on whether you can get a job. If you can, then you can get a work visa and you’re fine. A friend of mine lived in China for a decade, and he liked it. We both work in IT, there are a lot of jobs in that area, but also pretty competitive. From what I’ve read, China’s been recently relaxing immigration laws as well and they’re looking at creating a program similar to the green card in US. https://www.semafor.com/article/07/23/2024/china-is-considering-a-green-card-scheme-to-attract-more-foreign-scientists
It’s hard for me to look at % increases or “X out of poverty” or “This person makes 1+ what they did before!”. I get fed the same stuff about how great America is doing because of our “numbers”. Without being there it’s hard to grasp if what you’re saying is anything better, worse, or just par for the course of a developing nation with such a high output with manufacturing.
90% of families in the country own their home giving China one of the highest home ownership rates in the world. What’s more is that 80% of these homes are owned outright, without mortgages or any other leans. https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2016/03/30/how-people-in-china-afford-their-outrageously-expensive-homes
Seeing this statement and reading the link, they have absolutely nothing to do with each other and you make it seem like it’s a “quote” from the article (I’m guessing it’s from the 93 page research paper I’m reading through). They would’ve just been better off publishing whatever data they talked about researchers definitely having, the whole thing read like an Elon Musk press conference…
“To sustain poverty reduction gains, China will focus more on achieving endogenous development in areas that have been lifted out of poverty and introduce vigorous measures to support rural revitalization. Our goal is to achieve common prosperity and high-quality development including through the rural revitalization strategy with a focus in five key areas: industry development, human capital, culture, ecological environment and local governance.”
It’s interesting and kinda disconcerting reading through the policies and how no real figures are presented for what the policy should be, such as the “common prosperity” they hope to achieve be 2030 (link page 15)
China has set a new goal of achieving significant progress toward common prosperity by 2035.1 While no particular income target or poverty threshold is attached to this goal, it can help keep the policy focus on the vulnerable population over the coming decade.
It makes me wonder if setting an elusive “goal” of a policy is better to get members on board and then slap them with the real numbers after they have already signed on and can’t openly complain about (bad for corrupt sectors of government though). There’s also just not enough information as stated in the paper to actually understand what is going on,
Finally, this review of China’s poverty reduction experience leaves a number of questions open for further research…
- the interplay between poverty reduction and growth deserves further analysis to understand the extent that poverty reduction measures may, in turn, help less-developed areas grow faster
- a deeper analysis of China’s use of policy experimentation at the local level combined with high-powered performance incentives may contribute to our understanding of models of decentralization and public service delivery
- an evaluation of China’s targeted poverty alleviation experience in recent years would benefit from further analysis of individual policy interventions and their interactions to better understand not just the effectiveness but also the efficiency and sustainability of the program.
- An analysis of the costs and benefits of policy intervention would also be warranted in a broader sense, helping to systematically account (suan da zhang in the Chinese term) for factors such as the impact of infrastructure investments on poverty reduction or the merits of the hukou system and man- aged urbanization policies. In all these areas, active exchanges between researchers within and outside of China, and between academics and policy makers, should be encouraged, and the data needed for high-quality empirical work should be made more widely available. These actions will help ensure that China’s poverty reduction achievements get the attention and understanding that they deserve.
Just now seeing and trying to wrap my head around the Hukou system. I’m not here arguing good/bad communism, I just like the information and think that many forms of government can work out with protections in place (regulations, corruption detection, etc). I just wanted to point out your article mention and link didn’t really fit together with how you presented it. I did enjoy the reading and will continue today, but I take it all with a grain of salt. I don’t really 100% trust any source these days, which in this technological era should really be the default for everyone. Definitely let it sink in and contemplate the realities of others, but you only have your own reality to work within for any type of effective action.
you put a lot of work into that word salad
oh wow, ok. Thought you posted links for actual discussion and would’ve been interested in someone reading through wanting to talk about it lol. This just a copy/paste warrior kinda thing you’re doing? Weird way to try to insult back after everything you posted, thanks for letting me know not to continue the conversation!
It’s pretty clear you’re not interested in any actual discussion given that you just dismiss everything by saying you don’t trust anything. You never explain the reason for this distrust or provide any sources that contradict anything said there. I’m pretty sure that no matter how much evidence you’re provided with, you’ll just keep moving goal posts and repeating how you don’t trust the sources. It’s not very original.
Dawg, it is a direct quote from the Forbes article. Read it again I guess?
If you ever been to a commune where people share food, resources, bills. They go under the radar.
Open source software is like communism. Held in commons, free to use, contribute to, and benefit from.
Large-scale, actual communism with no authoritarianism? Not that I’m aware of. It’s hard to implement true communism effectively on a large scale because most people have to care enough about others to willingly contribute for it to work.
Authoritarianism is a meaningless term that people with lack of capacity for rational thought regurgitate. Every single government holds authority by virtue of having the monopoly on legal violence. The only question is whose interest the authority is exercised in.
What do you count as “Authoritatianism?”
Why do you think Communism requires people to care about others to function, and why would they not work otherwise?
I think you have some serious misunderstandings about what Communism entails.
Authoritarianism is the opposite of libertarianism, roughly speaking. It’s a sliding scale, but those would be the two opposites in play.
For example, a more authoritarian approach to road safety would be: “Manufacturers are not allowed to make cars that go over 50 mph”
A more libertarian approach to road safety would be: “We’re publishing the average fatality rate of this road. You can choose to engage with it as you deem appropriate”
Our actual approach with licenses and speed limits and some regulations on car safety and soft but escalating consequences for breaking the road rules is somewhere in between.
So it’s vibes-based and not actually tied to anything material.
Also they have to not want to trade. If someone starts trading, then the communism is over.
Turns out when people are free to make economic arrangements as they please, capitalism happens.
Which is why it’s a utopian movement. They do their best to enslave your thoughts and control your actions, and when that fails (and it always does) they slaughter anyone and everyone that won’t play along.
No person is perfect, so when you demand perfection, you’re going to have to get rid of anyone but those who are perfect at playing perfect.
Can you find a legitimate example of “communism bad?”
^ this is a bad faith engagement
“[citation needed]” is bad faith now? I guess Wikipedia should pack it in, then.
Inshallah
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Can you take the negative energy you’re spewing elsewhere? It would be nice to not have this place turn into another reddit cesspool. Thanks.
“Sir you’re being entirely too hostile towards my genocidal arguments and beliefs”
The tone policing liberal
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Why would you bother replying if the only thing you have to contribute is absolutely vapid pearl clutching?
Just lol, dude.
Oh no I am defeated by the internet rando putting their full back into camera mugging
Lemmy.ml is a Marxist instance, you’re free to stay on Lemmy.world if you are anti-Marxist. That’s the beauty of federation.
You say, from a Lemmy.world account, very much intentionally trying to create a Reddit 2
No true Scotsman
That’s not a No True Scotsman fallacy, they legitimately are recreating Reddit intentionally.
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While it accomplishes lot of basics right, like housing, food and education generally, further it goes, it starts carving into personal freedom and makes everything worse.
Can you explain what you mean by this, and why you believe it despite direct evidence to the contrary, such as in Cuba?
The country in which 86% of the population live in poverty? But at least there’s doctors and literacy so that’s great. Classic communism win.
What definition are you using for “poverty?”
That’s not a definition of poverty.
Well, I’ll give you that, I was expecting you to come up with a reason why my source was wrong, not to just ignore it and say “nah”. Thanks for making this shorter.
USSR Angola Cuba China DPRK Ethiopia Mongolia Vietnam GDR. I cant understand how people can look at a country that dramatically improved its peoples standard of living brought democracy and freedom, and not see it as a good thing.
America Bombs North Korea and Vietnam to smithereens
Communism bad?!
Hey that’s not accurate. France bombed them too.
Those were freedom bombs, duh.
USSR Angola Cuba China
Ok, I guess you could argue the point that these countries
DPRK
What the absolute fuck are you talking about.
The war sure explains why they have a reason to be antagonist towards South Korea and USA – in a similar way as WW2 explains why Finland is very wary of Russia still in 2000s.
But it doesn’t explain why they insist on keeping their system in the same horrible broken state. Germany and Japan were ravaged by a war and they didn’t go permanently crazy at state level.
Why don’t you tell the audience who got the OK from Stalin to start this war?
The side that didn’t collaborate with fascist Japan in WW2 and then go on to commit the bodo league massacre.
The DPRK is by no means perfect, but it’s also not some hermit kingdom where the peasants push trains to make them move.
If you have 20 minutes, I recommend you watch We Went to North Korea to Get a Haircut, it’s humanizing and helps dispel a lot of modern myths about the DPRK. Again, it’s by no means perfect, but the West has absolutely mythologized its existence to lunacy.
What the absolute fuck are you talking about.
On this subject more than any other the western brain is completely destroyed by propaganda.
The crazy shit you will and have believed about Korea without any evidence is stunning and can only be explained by racism.
You actually believed when they said the whole country had to get the same haircut?
Some school districts in Japan already do this to kids tbh. There was a kerfuffle a while back and some schools dropped some limitations after lawsuits. Like if your kid has naturally curly or blonde hair you’d need to prove it. (Haven’t gone deep on fact checking, take it with a grain of salt)
I’d say it’s not unreasonable that if you have a manufactured preconceived (racist) notion about a place that you would believe it.
South Korea and RoC actually did the mandatory haircuts on occasions (though in case of RoC it was justified and was more like one particular haircut was forbidden). It’s always projection.
whats wrong with the DPRK? I have family that has been there and they thought it was a fine place certainly doing a lot better than the median capitalist country.
Its a current enemy for not being destroyed (like the US tried to do), so a bunch of western-supremacist-brained people believe literally anything negative said about it, as it confirms their racist biases.
check their post history.
You could probs add Burkina Faso to that list too.
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having a market does not make a country capitalist. And yeah there is corruption as there is in every 3rd world country (and most 1st world countries just in different less noticeable ways), they are certainly doing more about it than most capitalist countries, and all indicators of standard of living are far better than is the vast majority of capitalist countries so i wouldnt call it a shit show, i mean its hard to recover from having just about every fucking building in ur country destroyed and ur forests and farms poisoned and millions murdered and even more displaced only 50 years ago especially when the country that did all that continues to actively try to fuck u over. They are doing well great even.
It is not capitalist. There has been corruption and those corrupt official have been executed, as they should.
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u can listen to the propaganda or u can look at reality.
u can listen to the propaganda or u can look at reality.
No u
Just like Capitalism you aren’t going to find any examples of the system in the world today
When people actually lived in communes it was cool though
Just like Capitalism you aren’t going to find any examples of the system in the world today
About to have my brain turned into soup by asking this question:
Are you implying that there are no examples of capitalism in the world today?
I’m genuinely curious about this, as well.
Yeah, what country rewards jobs based on hours worked rather than assets owned?
What people refer to as “late-stage capitalism” is no different than the system capitalism was supposed to replace
Just because it is (and always was) a complete lie that capitalism would lead to prosperity for working people, that doesn’t mean that capitalists aren’t doing capitalism. Capitalism hasn’t been corrupted from some ideal system into something else, this is what capitalism is and it’s been known as such for over a century and a half.
Since the beginning but not because that’s what capitalism is, it’s because the mercantilist lords wanted a rebrand when peasants started killing them
If a country decided to switch to communism, that elite rebrand would still happen. Animal Farm paints this, China having more inequality than Japan or South Korea also paints this it’s what allows people to say true capitalism has never been tested and the elite can exploit that to increase inequality
Animal Farm is garbage and Orwell was a racist, antisemitic, homophobic, backstabbing snitch: Orwell’s list.
Animal Farm was Cold War agitprop, which the CIA airdropped on eastern Europe and made it into an animated film that you may have seen. The CIA funded the film adaptation of 1984 as well.
You’re even aware you don’t have an argument so you went after the author’s character which is irrelevant then started talking about the cia
As per the original point: you’re inability to understand that the rich are greedy doesn’t mean they aren’t
Obesity isn’t a problem in North Korea. They’ve met their BMI goals.
Viewed from hexbear this thread has 27 comments lol
Funny, the same thing happened when I realized that I’m Trans. It’s almost as if capitalist ran media is incentivised to lie and decive in ways that cause permanent damage.
Now I love boiling down the pitfalls of modern western society into large statements like “capitalism bad” and “communism good” as much as anyone, but having dealt with a bunch of people dismiss good change as “that’s communism” has made me rethink how I talk about topics online and in person.
Now the accelerationist are gonna be mad about this for sure, but maybe you should start small, and discuss topics at a more local level. Then again the internet is world wide and everyone wants to talk about grand scale things.
Basically, I’ve stopped telling people outside of my direct circle that leftism cool, and instead talk about socialised medicine programs, pushing for support of worker owned productions and business, getting involved with coop housing. Lot easier when you don’t have to bump up against the red scare.
But have you considered iphone vuvuzela
Lol I saw the comment that was removed. The comment couldn’t have been more neutral saying people who ignore the problems in the most Communist historical societies reduce the perceived integrity of it’s proponents.
This mod is the exact antithesis of this meme. Pure censorship.
Classic “improved democracy”
The removed comment was “as a black man”
shut up
Modlog has this comment: My grandparents would like a word, since they barely escaped communist rule, while their siblings/other family members didn’t. They could tell you first hand what it was like. So go ahead and call me brainwashed.
Do people just not believe Eastern Europeans etc exist lol
Only supportive anecdotes allowed here, or else gulag
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Am I the only person in the world with reading comprehension? Can you even find a single fucking claim in that? “I knew a guy once who said it was bad so now the conversation is over”
This is the level of evidence that’s sufficient for people brainwashed by 100 years of propaganda.
I don’t think anyone took it as some be-all and end-all argument. It’s just an anecdote and reason why the person believes what they do. Removing it as “reason: Typical anti-communist propaganda” as it shown on modlog seem silly.
It’s just an anecdote
It’s not a fucking anecdote. Look up what an anecdote is.
Who? What? Where? When? Why?
Not a single one of those questions answered.
Removing it as “reason: Typical anti-communist propaganda” as it shown on modlog seem silly.
100% justified.
It’s not a fucking anecdote. Look up what an anecdote is.
I’m sorry, I’m not a native English speaker. I just meant that they just mentioned their grandparent’s/family’s experience and how it helped form the view he has now. I don’t get how that makes you so unhappy.
Not a single one of those questions answered.
Well if the comment hadn’t been deleted you might’ve had a change to ask them lol
they just mentioned their grandparent’s/family’s experience
No they didn’t.
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It’s worse when you say you’re a Communist or say Communism is good, and people agree, but when you advocate for AES or advocate for standard Marxist theory the same people flip on you and call you brainwashed.
I haven’t gotten that far with people yet. I have only met people who say “no communism” but “socialism” or “Democratic socialism” or “social democracy”
There are two kinds of deviations on the left, right-deviations (aka opportunists) that are succdems and such, basically defending capitalism and always siding with libs against communists, and the left-deviations (also called ultras, leftcoms etc. often including anarchism) who refuse to acknowledge every real-world attempt at socialism as “not real communism”, “statism”, “authoritarianism”, “state capitalism” etc. because real world has a habit of clashing with their ideals.
Some short reading.If you want to met those latter people, probably just wait for the answers for my comment here, since there’s many of them here on fediverse.
I find it’s valuable to push people on the whole concept of democracy and getting them to understand that politics is about organization of the economy first and foremost. The key question is why we work in the first place and who decides on what the purpose of work is. If people believe in democracy then it necessarily has to extend to organization of labor as well. Having a democracy where a handful of oligarchs decide why and how people work is a farce.
It is bad tho lol
Why?
Pol pot has entered the chat
Communist vietnam fought a war against feudalist cambodia under pol pot.
The US-backed fascist that denounced Marxism and was defeated by Communists? Why?
literally not a communist and rejected by almost communist.
It always ends up as a dictatorship, because communism puts too much trust and responsibility on the one in power. So much so that, no one history was able to resist being a dictator.
There have been plenty of Capitalist dictatorships to stop Communism. The deal with dictatorial states has less to do with their internal economic policies, and more to do with world superpowers intervening to advance their own interests. You can see this with the Eastern Bloc having strong ties to the U.S.S.R. instead of having their Communist ideas being brought up within their own state, and the Deng being Soviet-influenced. Yugoslavia is a very good example of a Communist state done right, as is Vietnam; the former was deemed false Communism by the U.S.S.R., and the latter was left alone. There’s also Cuba, which again, is not under the U.S.S.R. You can also see Capitalist satellite states being given arms support by the United States, which really makes it far less about the nation’s own choice to be Capitalist or Communist, and more about their status within the Cold War.
I do agree that Communist economies aren’t perfect, but it’s not as simple as G.I. Joe.
TL;DR No economic system exists in a vacuum; nations act and are acted upon each other like cogs in a giant machine.
What on Earth are you talking about? Can you give an example? Not a single AES state has been managed by a single person, especially not one who had to “resist temptation.”
How do you believe AES states function politically?
What about Stalin who purged rivals and sent out hit men with ice picks to take out his critics? Or Xi Jinping who’s been made President for life or whatever recently? Or Fidel Castro who basically led the country from the revolution until he was too old to run it? The DPRK which looks like a monarchy in all but name? No one says dictators run whole countries literally by themselves but they do dictatorial things to make sure people only loyal to them can have power, their word is law without going through other checks or balances by the people, like some popularly elected body or something.
I will admit though that after Stalin, the USSR changed out rulers pretty regularly so that doesn’t seem like a dictatorship to me. Same with Cuba now after Castro. Now people just say it because those countries allow only one party I guess.
What about Stalin who purged rivals and sent out hit men with ice picks to take out his critics?
Purging fascists and Capitalists from the party is a good thing. Purging did not necessarily mean executing, it meant forcing out of the Party.
Or Xi Jinping who’s been made President for life or whatever recently?
Mind sharing what you mean, “or whatever?” Are you arguing using facts that came to you in a dream?
Or Fidel Castro who basically led the country from the revolution until he was too old to run it?
Does getting re-elected make you a dictator? Lmao.
The DPRK which looks like a monarchy in all but name?
In what way?
No one says dictators run whole countries literally by themselves but they do dictatorial things to make sure people only loyal to them can have power, their word is law without going through other checks or balances by the people, like some popularly elected body or something.
Do you have evidence that there were not popularly elected bodies making all of the decisions, and that leaders of AES states were never contested successfully?
Mind sharing what you mean, “or whatever?” Are you arguing using facts that came to you in a dream?
I guess it was just no term limits? Still, he’s got control of all the levers of power and without term limits he can continue to consolidate power over time, gathering favors, loyalty, etc. There’s a reason people like term limits and Mexico fought a couple wars over the idea.
In what way?
Power goes from father to son. They have elections but the person in power always wins like 100% of us vote, and I don’t even think they have alternative candidates. Someone else above had a link that showed they have a person and you just vote “yes or no” for that person, which isn’t very democratic if you don’t know the alternative.
Do you have evidence that there were not popularly elected bodies making all of the decisions, and that leaders of AES states were never contested successfully?
I don’t, but if you have proof that those things have happened before, I’d be curious to see them.
I guess it was just no term limits? Still, he’s got control of all the levers of power and without term limits he can continue to consolidate power over time, gathering favors, loyalty, etc. There’s a reason people like term limits and Mexico fought a couple wars over the idea
If people reelect candidates, what purpose does limiting them serve?
Power goes from father to son. They have elections but the person in power always wins like 100% of us vote, and I don’t even think they have alternative candidates. Someone else above had a link that showed they have a person and you just vote “yes or no” for that person, which isn’t very democratic if you don’t know the alternative.
Untrue, generally.
I don’t, but if you have proof that those things have happened before, I’d be curious to see them.
Try Reading This Soviet World, or Blackshirts and Reds.
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Reporter: [REDACTED]
Reason: Artificially upvoted😂 There is a spectre haunting Lemmy — the spectre of communist bots & trolls 👻
It’s funny cause it’s truuueee
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