https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine
Wow they sure got a lot of landlords
People are starving every damn day under Capitalism and there is no famine going on. This isn’t the dunk you think it is.
No it isn’t, but it does highlight the main issue:
Communism would work if it weren’t for people trying to co-opt it for power
Fully Automated Luxury Space Communism is the end goal (since, it being automated, means there should effectively be no way to hijack it), but we ain’t getting there for a long time. Let’s go for socialism first and work from there
Communism would work if it weren’t for people trying to co-opt it for power
As long as there exists a way to gain power over others, someone will do it. That’s just the reality of our nature, unfortunately.
No it isnt.
“No, Wrong”
Thank you Donald, very cool!
That’s just human nature unfortunately. We like to help one another and hate to see another human being suffering because we know that could be us. But capitalism has conditioned and limited us out of our human nature to help one another, because either there is no profit in helping the poor or destitute, or we lack the means to help.
This goes into a fight over philosophy of human nature. However, since the days of the Roman republic over 2000 years ago where capitalism wasn’t even a concept, people have used political systems to consolidate and gain power over others. It is undoubtabele that there will be people who try to co-opt the system for their personal gain
Depends on Mode of Production. Roman society was still a class driven society.
“Nuh-uh!”
It absolutely is. Coming from an anarchist communist.
I’ve been to Capitalist countries, I’ve been to Communist countries.
Guess which system has their people immigrating to the other system on rafts with their children, just to try the other system. Guess which system builds walls to keep people IN, guess which system has beggars asking for milk for their children instead of money.
Your comment isn’t the dunk you think it is when it brushes up against the harsh truth that is reality.
Bruh I’ve seen families begging for food outside of grocery stores in the United States of America. Now what communist countries had beggers asking for milk?
China has over 3 million starving homeless people.
https://havanatimes.org/cuba/child-beggars-a-growing-problem-in-holguin-cuba/ Cuba has a huge child starvation problem.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-66924300 Laos has a huge poverty and homeless problem.
Vietnam has over 23k homeless street children https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/oct/05/saving-hanoi-street-children-vietnam-from-abuse-hunger-and-self-destruction
So to answer your question, every current communist country has a huge poverty and homeless problem.
Every source i can find puts homelessness rates in China at max 1,000,000 and all of them say that they live in shelters, not on the streets.
Cuba had been under embargo from the USA since 1962.
Laos has a massive poverty proborm because of debt which is a capitalist construct.
That statistic on Vietnamese homeless Children is 16 years old, and every source ive found states they have been making great strides since then to fight poverty and homelessness.
Lol, you extreme communists are hilarious.
You Capitalist Apologists are so blind to reality it is pathetic there are 18 capitalist countries with higher homeless populations than China. You literally have to divorce yourself from reality to attack Communism. You might as well be covered in shit, while mocking someone for having toilet paper stuck to their shoe.
Those famines happened every 10 years before communism, they happened ONCE during in each location and not again since.
In the meantime capitalism had that death total due to forced starvation every 7 years on average.
Socialism is usually built from the remains of a previous brutal regime. Starvation doesn’t end overnight.
This is the case for both Russia and China. After stabilizing they had an unprecedented improvement in nutrition, longevity and such.
The same can’t be said for the vast majority of capitalist states, who still experience starvation despite being perfectly capable of feeding everyone.
Famines happen regardless of political system.
And here’s the list of 3.3 million landlords killed by communism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excess_mortality_in_the_Soviet_Union_under_Joseph_Stalin
Do the people saying that communism is bad think capitalism is good?
you knoe there isn’t only 2 choices right? Thay can both have good and bad sides. Maybe try some mix of it fisrt
Dialectical Materialism. Right now, they are. You either work towards communism or capitalism moves towards consolidation of capital. Those are your choices.
Imma be real, chief, I don’t think DiaMat is going to work on Non-marxists, even if I agree.
also there are more than 1 proposed way to achieve communism, even though i tend to favor socialism.
there’s capitalism and its variants (the current system), and there is anti-capitalism in various flavours. (socdem, ML, anarchism)
you can choose your favorite flavour, but its either moving towards capitalism, or moving away from it.
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Feudalism?
Traditionally the “Third Way/Position” is fascism. So, ultimately, kinda, but with race science.
fascism isn’t a third way. It’s liberalism in crisis
I mean, it’s just literally what they call themselves. Sure, they lie or don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about, but that’s kind of their whole deal.
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fascism is just extreme capitalism
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Describe what you consider the “third way” that isn’t capitalists owning the means of production, workers owning the means, or the state owning the means.
its take it or leave it i guess.
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Yes. It’s just those are the two mentioned, and I’m slightly communist. So there’s some bias.
We did that already. We could do it again.
thats not a mix though, it was just a bandaid over capitalism, borrowed from socialistic ideas. the capital accumulating class was never extinguished, eventually leading to the same problems today all over again.
hence why we advocate for a systemic change, if you can’t accumulate capital, you can’t buy back the system again like it is rn. this is pretty much the crux of the issue here.
Some do
As usual the best answer lies somewhere between the two extremes
we tried that before though, improving things temporarily, but it will never be permanent until we extinguish the owner class.
The trick is not falling for the lie that social democracy is meeting socialism in the middle.
Social Democracy is just liberalism with enlightened self interest. Is it better than other capitalists models?
Sure. That doesn’t make it the end goal.
you put it in better words than i did.
Yes, we must have a middle ground between having parasites and not having parasites. Thank you enlightened centrist.
No
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Can’t we just nuke people we don’t like….like my neighbour or Elon Musk?
I was in my early 20s when the Soviet occupation collapsed here, the victims here were everyone not high up in the party.
Sure, capitalism fucking sucks but pretending the USSR was anything other than just bourgeoisie rule is delusional. The oligarchs were just called the communist party then.
shock therapy was not a socialist, but a capitalist plan after the ussr ended.
Yea, no shit, nothing to do with what I said though.
shock therapy happened upon the collapse of the ussr
Yea and I was commenting on how things were in a country under the occupation of the USSR. So both temporally and geographiclly unrelated.
Not really. You’re talking about what happened after the USSR. Which yes, was horrible for the quality of life of people who lived in numerous countries all over the globe, but that’s more of an indictment of capitalism than communism. The looting of the government coffers to privatize everything and create oligarchs was a result of the post-USSR shock therapy.
I was literally talking about the time before the USSR collapsed also it was applied to Russia, not to the countries it occupied.
Ah, I misinterpreted you. Sorry about that. But it’s hard to tell exactly what you’re talking about without more details. Afghanistan, maybe? I get if you don’t want to dox yourself, as someone privacy minded, but it’s hard to know how to respond without more context.
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i think we are talking about different things here
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I don’t understand why anything anti capitalism these days is automatically communism. It’s such a large swing from one side to the other. I just want my taxes to pay for healthcare, infrastructure, and education instead of wars and prisons. I want to stop getting fucked by corporations that have infinitely more money than I can ever imagine. I don’t think that makes me a communist. I’m just anti-fucking-the-people. Capitalism can fuck people. Communism can fuck people too. I support Corpo-Politico-Celibacism. Stop the fucking.
Edit: Okay, fuck the people. You guys must have this figured out.
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Bruh i see people starving in the streets of America every damn day.
Russian and Chinese famines weren’t intentional though. In China, because they were literally coming out from being the hungriest country in the planet, and decided to change too much too fast, you can’t really turn such a huge country around overnight. In Russia because they needed to collectivize really quickly in preparation for WW2, and the landlords at the time decided to literally burn grain and kill cattle instead of handing their big estates. The numbers offered by western authorities on both are greatly exaggerated without adequate proof.
After the tragic events, both countries saw unprecedented improvements in quality of life, nutrition and life expectancy. These events didn’t really repeat after they stabilized, something that can’t be said of most capitalist countries to this day.
In capitalism the owner class needs people to be in despair for them to be willing to work such shitty, desperate jobs. Millions of poor and starving people have to exist either in your own country, or elsewhere in a neocolony for one billionaire to be able to steal so much accumulated capital to himself. It’s common to see them taking decisions that help with their accumulation at the expense of everyone else (eg. Oil companies covering up climate change). We are already making more food than we would need to be able to feed everyone fairly, yet capitalist countries don’t.
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Why do you believe Communism isn’t achievable as envisioned? Is it possible that you don’t actually know what is envisioned in Communism, just a few slogans and buzzwords?
You could do that with any country that’s had famines and disasters.
United States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl
Ireland https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)
There’s never be a full communist or capitalist society. What wears arguing over how far towards either we should go. Also, FYI for those that don’t know The USSR and China are not communist. Both are/were dictatorships that call themselves communist.
Look up dialectical Materialism. China is ‘communist’ as they are progressing along the roadmap Dialectical Materialism provides towards achieving communism.
Are they making actual progress on that path, though? They have tons of billionaires, lots of people go bankrupt there from medical bills or are homeless (unlike some other communist countries). The state owns a lot of businesses, but then so does Norway. All their initiatives seem to be related to hurting gay people or making it harder for kids to play video games. They’ve arrested some rich people and cracked down on some corruption, but that also sounds like it could come from a capitalist country. I can’t really find any sort of long-term plan.
The problem is that you won’t ever get a full communist country, at least not for a very, VERY long time, because you always get those few fartweasels who end up hijacking it and turning it into a dictatorship. You need to eliminate that problem first, and with how the world is sliding into fascism, it doesn’t look like we’re any where near close to solving that dilemma
Read ‘State and Revolution’ by Lenin. It’s quite short and not that bad a read. Addresses exactly what you are talking about.
I thought I was still on Lemmy.world and was wondering why this thread was going so hard on theory. Carry on.
Upvote for fartweasel.
Even when they don’t turn it into a dictatorship, they may just turn it back into capitalism, like Russia did. And when that happens, they just sell all the old estates to the highest bidder, making them richer and turning them into oligarchs. And that becomes functionally equivalent to a dictatorship of the bourgeois.
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Ah yes, my grandparents, the landlords. Wait hol’ up, they were working people, not landlords. GDR fucked them regardless.
“bUt tHAT wASn’T rEaL ComMunIsM” If neither the USSR nor China could achieve true Communism, then maybe it isn’t so much a realistic goal as a utopian ideal, a convenient justification for all kinds of crimes against humanity that occur in its pursuit.
It’s weird, we tried having a small group of people control the flow of capital and it was unpopular each time. Let’s try it again but call it something different or say it was something else when we tried it before.
The thing is, both USSR/China and USA don’t fit the ideals of Communism. While in USA suffers from the gap between rich and poor, USSR/China suffered from the difference between the people and the government. Just because you get rid of economical suppression doesn’t mean you can’t have political suppression. Sure these countries had economical problems but a lot of their problems could have been avoided if the government would have actually worked for the people and not for themselves.
Neither the USSR or China fulfilled Dialectical Materialism yet either. That’s a prerequisite for the ideals of communism.
it WAS real communism and ur grandparents probably deserved it. absolute worst case senario no system is perfect and good people still get fucked over sometimes for no good reason, difference is under capitalism it is constant under socialism it is rare.
As I understand it, “real communism” is supposed to be some kind of stateless society. As the GDR was, well, a state, it clearly did not achieve that. Nor would it ever have been likely to, as actually doing what was ideologically promised would have required those with power within that system to relinquish that power, which is incredibly rare as it conflicts with human nature.
Real Communism, along Marxist lines, has a government. Marxism isn’t anarchic, the “stateless” part is specifically referring to instruments of the government by which one class oppresses another. Marxism has always been about achieving a global Communist republic.
i wonder what planet u came from; clearly u arent human cuz any human would understand the context here. actually u are human (probably) and u are just making a meaningless semantics argument in bad faith.
In what sense is this semantics or bad faith? I meant this sincerely.
fine ill humor ur bad faith argument.
when left leaning libs defend their ideals from right leaning libs by saying “it wasnt real communism” like in this case. they mean that the thing being talked about did not adhere to communist ideals.
when u say that “it wasnt real communism” u mean that there is a distinction between communism and socialism or lower stage communism as marx called it.
the gdr was a socialist country led by communist with the goal of establishing communism when they original lib said it wasnt real communism what he mean was that “the gdr was not a socialist country and it wasnt led by communist”, then when i said it was real communism i meant to re state the fact that the gdr was a socialist country led by communist. so it is self evident that ur argument is irrelevant no one was actually talking about where the gdr was a stateless, money less, classless society, we were talking about whether the leadership of the gdr truly adhered to communist principles.
as to why ur argument looks to be in bad faith u would have to live under a fucking rock not understand this context or far more likely u are arguing in bad faith.
I think you have an unrealistic estimation of how much most people understand the topic of communism, if you think not labelling different types of communism as the same ideology is living under a rock. More than half the country doesn’t even realize that socialism and communism aren’t complete synonyms, and a good fraction think paradoxically that center right liberalism is somehow communist.
Basically, I think you’re doing this: https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/average_familiarity_2x.png
Communism is not anarchic. Stateless with respect to Communism refers to instruments of government by which one class suppresses another. Communism was always meant to have a world republic.
I suggest reading Marx.
Take it from a self-identified pinko commie and someone born in one of those regimes, it was not real communism. It was authoritarianism with a strong (but at times selectively applied) social safety net. To say that their grandparents deserved it when you know nothing about them is fucking absurd. You’re not helping your point or cause. You’re just being a child.
first anyone who would call themselves a pinko isnt a communist, ur probably a rad lib. second do u truly think that some lib the grandchild of gusanos can even be convinced by a random person on the internet to be a communist im not helping my cause sure, this is just for fun but if i had wrote some essay pointing out why the gdr was a real socialist country led by real communist which really adhered to communist ideals and said that its unfortunate what happened to his gusanos but that bad shit still happens everywhere i wouldnt be helping anything either.
first anyone who would call themselves a pinko isnt a communist, ur probably a rad lib
Gatekeep harder
it WAS real communism
I mean, it wasn’t, at least not according to the actual people who ran those governments. The USSR and the CCP were/are revolutionary governments, real communism happens when/if the revolutionary governments succeeds and transitions the means of control back to the proletariat.
and ur grandparents probably deserved it.
Really working hard to build those bridges of mutual respect and cooperation I see. This is one of the key reasons the USSR imploded in the first place.
The expansion of Soviet influence happened under the influence of Russian chauvinism, a major contradiction with the more successful maoist ideology today. Instead of allowing communism to be shaped by individual ethnicities or nations they did their best to russify or simply purge the base of power in the country, bolshevists or not.
Stalin and Beria did a whole bunch of purging of leftist to secure their control over the party. If you actually think everyone the Soviets killed deserved it, please go read about the Makhnovist, the Mensheviks, the Georgian bolshevist, hell go read what the Soviets did to the original leftist leader in North Korea.
difference is under capitalism it is constant under socialism it is rare.
Unfortunately that’s just not true. Revolutions are highly hierarchical due to their inherent need to react to militant reactionaries. As they begin to solidify their revolution and take over the responsibilities of the state, this hierarchy gets transferred from the the state.
Authoritarian governments are highly efficient, but are extremely hard to get away from once established. Often times the militant leader of the revolution is not the guy you want to be in complete control of the state after establishing a revolutionary government.
Mao was decent enough to accept this after the failure of the cultural revolution, Stalin on the other hand…
saying that lower stage communism as marx called it or socialism as we call it today wasnt real communism is meaningless, and at best petty. the argument was never a semantics one about the specifics of what communism is and where the lines between socialism and communism are, what was said when they said it wasnt real communism was that it wasnt led by communist and that it did not adhere to communist ideals and goals which it did. u would have to be some kind of alien lizard to not understand the context here which is why i know u are arguing in bad faith.
also some idiot lib going around saying that the gdr wasnt real communism because their ancestors had a bad experience with that system (or more likely they were landlords or capitalist and go what they deserved) isnt gonna change their mind cuz some random person on the internet told them otherwise nor do i care to make that argument.
saying that lower stage communism as marx called it or socialism as we call it today wasnt real communism is meaningless, and at best petty.
The problem is that the Soviet Union couldn’t even be correctly defined in Marxist terms to be socialist. Socialism according to Marx was a lower form of communism, one described as a transition from democratic capitalism to communism. The Soviets did not transition from a democratic state to communism, there were no valid democratic election from 38’-89’.
what was said when they said it wasnt real communism was that it wasnt led by communist and that it did not adhere to communist ideals and goals which it did.
I mean I still think there’s room for debate depending on who you’re talking about. I tend to think that the most simple definitional test whether or not you are adhering to communist ideology is to examine how the means of production is being managed.
Has the state expanded the means of control over the production to the workers in an equitable manor? Is the equity created by the workers being shared to the entire population of workers? By what means do workers negotiate their control over the means of production?
My arguments against Soviet communism is that workers had no meaningful control over the means of production. Groups of workers had no real access to influence the government such as voting as Marx described. The equity created by the workers was not shared equitably throughout the Union, with non ethnic Russians generally acting as a resource to be extracted from.
u would have to be some kind of alien lizard to not understand the context here which is why i know u are arguing in bad faith.
I think the misunderstanding comes from the fact that when Marx was dreaming of a communist nation, he was not thinking it was going to start in Russia. It was an absolute shock when the 1rst country to commit to communism was autocratic Russia instead of Democratic Germany. Meaning a lot of Marxist writing isn’t really applicable to the Soviet State, Marx didn’t think about revolution occuring in a authoritarian state.
also some idiot lib going around saying that the gdr wasnt real communism because their ancestors had a bad experience with that system (or more likely they were landlords or capitalist and go what they deserved)
Or, they were one of the tens of thousands of leftist that were purged by Beria or Stalin. Pretending that the Soviets only killed landlords is not only academically dishonest, it’s harmful to future leftist endeavors. Self criticism is essential to eliminating internal contradictions from arising within the state.
Just… no. Coming from an anarchist communist
It wasnt the GDR, it was the totality of global Capital conspiring to defeat the biggest threat to their power structure. What did the GDR do specifically that ‘fucked’ your grandparents?
It’ll be different this time guys, no really, just one more time guys, we’ll get it right, it wasn’t even a good try, let us go again, this time for real, no way it’ll be anything other than a utopia guys, the people will have the power, guys.
Lol it sounds like someone trying to defend capitalism. “No, it’s totally fine, we just didn’t implement it right. There are certain laws and regulations that can fix it, we swear!”
Yet for some reason any flaw with a communist country is endemic to communism itself, instead of the implementation, contexts of their outside conditions, or foreign influence, or general state of economic development.
I’m not defending capitalism in that comment. Communist is also more than an economic model.
Communism isn’t a series of sacrifices for an eventual greater good, Socialism is definitely better than what preceeded Socialism in Russia and China. The idea of True Communism can only be achieved globally, sure, and in the far future, sure, but Communism is about building towards that through gradual improvements.
You’re implying that any progress forward is useless if it doesn’t immediately achieve a far future society, it’s devoid of logic.
No, I just have very different ideas what progress is.
Progress in my eyes is made when a society becomes more democratic, and when we solve conflicts without bloodshed.
In that sense, sure, the GDR was a step in the right direction, but nazi germany didn’t exactly set the bar very high.
The idea of socialism is nice, but you hardly have any progress if the system (be it built on free markets or planned economies) doesn’t work to improve ordinary citizens’ lives, but only to keep the powerful in power.
Personaly, I don’t care much about free markets or planned economies. I think the best approach, as so often, is a kind of blend, a social market economy that allows independent companies in a framework that protects workers, consumers and the environment.
Thing is, the specifics of the economic system aren’t important. What matters is that the people are the ones who decide them.
There is nothing wrong with pursuing a utopian society, but ultimatly you have no control over what happens in the far future (neither should you, future societies need to be ruled by future people).
The only thing you can control is the present and the near future, so what really matters aren’t the ends you strive for, but the means you employ while doing so.
Theoretically, anyway
Yeah. Nobody’s ever done real communism on a national scale. As in, not just being a dictatorship in charge of everything that funnels money and power to the top while giving communism lip service and the people get screwed.
Stalin: “Why not both?”
He did adopt a tougher stance, because of the looming world war. However, Stalin wasnt nearly as much of a tyrant the west paints him to be. Not to the honest working class.
Let’s see: Communism A system of government where the country’s wealth is concentrated into a small, ruling class of billionaires, who use the media they own to keep the lower classes fighting with each other while they . . . the rich . . . run off with all the farking money.
Oh wait. that’s capitalism. I don’t know how I got those two systems confused.
I’m pretty sure the leftcommunists and anarchists and worker councils requesting for power to be really handed to the soviets which were purged by Lenin and Trotsky weren’t actually landlords. But you never know, people from .ml may think people unwilling to obey the bolsheviks get labeled landlords too.
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Yeah continue ww1, so fucking based
When people complaining about your side latch onto factions that they know nothing about it is kinda really funny
If you didn’t willingly ignore the sins of “your side” that’d be valid.
Meanwhile, the only criticism you launch at the Mensheviks is… They wanted to keep fighting the imperial powers?
Don’t get me wrong, it was just a bad decision, but it wasn’t, ya know, genociding fellow socialists.
I’d personally criticize them for thinking they needed to follow the traditional Marxist thought that economic liberalism was a required stage on the path to socialism.
Meanwhile, the only criticism you launch at the Mensheviks is… They wanted to keep fighting the imperial powers?
Bwahahahaha yeah that’s why Tsarist and Kerensky Russia was aligned with France and England
Bwahahahaha
At some point you gotta just come to the conclusion that you haven’t read enough on this topic and pick up some books instead of speaking garbage.
Also “the only criticism” that’s the fucking big criticism that got them overthrown, which you’d fucking know if you studied history.
The imperial powers that were direct threats to the revolution and they were already fighting, buddy, aka the Ottomans and the Germans. Hey, remind me how that worked out in the end? Did the People’s Government get a seat at Versailles? No? Had to fight a war against fucking Poland first and then get even more people killed by Germany later?
And your argument is “the decision was unpopular,” not that it was wrong.
You also find that they were not overthrown. Their political alliance was couped, like what happens in a “real democracy” when you push an unpopular policy. Even then, they supported the Bolsheviks anyways in the civil war.
Generally speaking, it’s considered rude to murder all of your fellow socialists anyways if that happens.
Hey, remind me how that worked out in the end? Did the People’s Government get a seat at Versailles? No? Had to fight a war against fucking Poland first and then get even more people killed by Germany later?
And your argument is “the decision was unpopular,” not that it was wrong.
Wait are you out here arguing that Russia should have continue fighting ww1? Seriously? And that refusing to fight the war led to nazi Germany and their exterminationist war against the soviet union?
Bwahahahahahaha
Eh, as you mentioned, it was deeply unpopular.
But yes. It would have.
Why would you think changing history would not change history?
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I don’t think the Mensheviks were the good guys either. Mensheviks would allow a way out for the old elites to remain elites if they kept on with the times (from aristocracy to bourgeoisie), the Bolsheviks just laid the way out for new elites (party apparatus) by choosing not to empower the working class. The leninist model followed somewhat similar structures everwhere from Hungary to Vietnam, and they always ended the same way: with the party elites opening the way to privatization after one or two generational changes and the heirs of the new system realizing that they’d get more material privilege by establishing capitalism, and without an organized, conscious working class capable of stop them.
I agree. A viable long-term economy needs an organized working class that isn’t sleepwalking through life. Would be cool to make the economic system not inherently hierarchical also.
I’m sure they were able to pick themselves up by the bootstraps right?
Nice…
Without regard for the political content (which I agree with), this is a very bad and unfunny meme.
meme sent from my iphone
u see im very smart if u live under a society u can not criticize it, what RIGHT does a salve have to criticize slavery when they do the masters bidding and eat the food the master provides and wears the clothes the master provides.
When you pay for a luxury brand phone it’s not you master telling you too, it’s you choosing. Don’t come at me with the onipotent lord that control all of us. The system IS broken, captalist is NOT the best for the people but people stiil choose.
Lmao, Capitalism practically requires a phone to get through modern society, buying a decent phone doesnt mean one casts a vote for Capitalism to continue to exist, you absolute ham sandwich.
When you start calling peoples names it’s because you know you’re.wrong. but ok
Lol no it doesn’t.
The iPhone workers designed, workers made, workers marketed, workers transported, workers sold and “landlords” got paid for. It really is a perfect illustration of the issue.
Iphones build by communists btw
I think this is a more significant point than most people want to admit, it’s not just iPhones, people choose status over fairness pretty much every time - they’d rather pay more to feel better than others.
The car market, computers, clothes, food - literally everything. It’s true in all the porest and richest circles even when like iphones and a lot of fashion the more expensive product is objectively worse.
It’s not capitalism inventing this it’s always been a thing and capitalism simply leverages it. I move in probably the least capitalist circles as an open source obsessive and dev, people choosing to share their work free so others can benefit but the mentality is there too, its in the eco obsessive communities too - I don’t think it’s totally universal amywhere but it’s prominent everywhere.
I’ve come to belive that the Marxist ideals don’t cover enough of what people really need, they’re idealistic and somewhat how we’d want to think of ourselves but it’s similar to dieting, deciding in a serious mood to eat only kale and beans feels like who we want to be but when we try and live that way we realize that we’re not that person.
We need to focus on achievable steps in the right direction which allow us to feel good about the change we’re making while also letting us fill our needs, even those lazy and embarrassing ones that the idealized version of of lacks.
We need to learn to understand and enjoy other forms of status but also we need to learn to reward those status symbols in others just as we reward economic status symbols even if we pretend to ourselves we dislike them. People in expensive clothes get treated better because it symbolizes the power they have to make an economic difference - even the fact iphones are feature restricted money milking machines only plays into this, it signals that you’ve got enough money not to worry about them adding $500 to the price for no reason or stinging you for a dozen subscriptions and this makes it seem like you’re the most likely person to be able to help them if they’re in trouble or give them things they xouldnt otherwise have.
Yes this is bad greedy nasty thinking and no one wants to admit it’s part of them but this is how the math in our brain works. We can’t help it, and when we ignore it or pretend it doesn’t exist or that we can wish it away that doesn’t change reality.
I don’t know what the solution is, I’d like to hope we can at least shift it from being solely economic to respecting skills too, I dont know but we need to make it socially rewarding to be a benefit to society rather and make good choices.
Thank you. Kids here trying to justify having Iphones when they could very well have the cheepest phone workable. They screem comunism but want to be better than others. I don’t thino there is a solution because humans are imperfect. No perfect solution will ever exist if a human is responsible for managing it.
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People fleeing communist countries en mass sure is a mystery. Who could ever know why they built the Berlin Wall or why Cuban families risk their children on rafts to get to a capitalist country
You are aware that the vast majority of undocumented immigrants are coming to America from other capitalist countries right?
This reply perfectly highlights why people who have issues with basic logic support communism.
What issues with basic logic do supporters of Communism have?
What issues with basic logic do people who support Communism have in common?
still
>many cases of people fleeing from communist countries to capitalist ones
>far less cases of people fleeing from capitalist countries to live under communism
most people don’t want communism, that’s why there are no democratic elections in communist countries and wrongthink is persecuted
Under communism wrongthink is wanting to profit off the labor of others.
no, under communism being gay is wrongthink, apparently
Lmao no it isnt.
didn’t the USSR prosecute gays?
>inb4 “b-but it wasn’t REAL communism, akshually”
So did the United States untill very recently, what is your point? Advocating for Communism isnt Advocating for a return of the USSR you absolute ham sandwich.
Living conditions for the majority of the population in Cuba are far better than in any capitalist Latin American country. This is despite the brutal blockade on Cuba by the burger empire. Please go make a clown of yourself elsewhere.
im on latin america and despite being bad over here, i’m a bit skeptical on this one. the blockade is currently making sure cuba can’t even get basic medication in sufficient quantities.
i’d say its safer to say they are much better in some aspects, the ones they can control.
The kind of abject poverty you see in Latin American countries simply does not exist in Cuba. Everyone has access to basic necessities, education, and healthcare. Cuba has even higher life expectancy than US.
when it comes to inequality i can agree its probably among the best, if not the best.
but despite efforts to provide it, they don’t always get basic necessities because of the embargo. there is a not insignificant amount of poverty in cuba too.
Of course, the blockade is doing incredible amounts of harm. My point is that even despite that, Cuba manages to do a better job ensuring a minimal standard of living than capitalist countries in Latin America. What this shows is that communism performs better under extreme stress than capitalism does under best conditions.
This might help to explain the siege mentality of socialism.
People move to areas with better material conditions. Assuming that is the fault of Socialism and not of countries being in different stages of development is immaterial and ignores the trajectory of nations, as well as the geopolitical landscape.
For example, in the GDR, education was high quality and free, but wages were lower than in West Germany. Many highly educated people in GDR attempted to leverage their free education for higher wages in the West.
As for Cuba, people fleeing are typically the people prosecuted during the revolution, ie plantation owners. People still flee from less developed to more developed countries, which is why people flee from Capitalist states to other Capitalist states.
I don’t disagree but this meme is ass lmao
memes are usually all ass
ITT: That doesn’t count!!!
Well. Stop using strawmen. Communism is defined by progress through dialectical Materialism. Has any nation finished that progression?
‘We’re only defending the imaginary ideal!’
That’s not how words work. Things mean what they are used to mean.
Y’all understand this perfectly when describing “capitalism.” That word becomes synecdoche for every level and aspect of modern reality. By definition, capitalism is only really the part where having money makes money, but nobody has any trouble understanding what you mean when you refer to its consequences and implications. Nor would you respect if libertarians split hairs about “corporatism.” Like oh, this isn’t capitalism, because it lacks X and Y and Z, which have never existed, so how dare you talk about bad things that actually happened.
It’s more that anticommunists judge Socialist states by their inability to fulfill Communist ideals at the level of development AES countries are at, as though they exist in a perfectly frozen picture absent history and trajectory.
Yeah sure dude, existing in a context is why people condemned police states.
‘People who don’t know the difference between these terms must be using the more-recognizable one as an oblique criticism of the gap between theory and practice’ is the most .ml take I have ever seen.
Condemning the USSR and PRC for not achieving a global stateless, classless, moneyless society is ridiculous. This isn’t a gap between theory and practice, lol. Communism isn’t anarchism.
… do you understand that criticism can come from outside your own belief set?
Yep, but I also understand what Communists actually advocate for and understand that countries building Communism should be judged like every society: with respect to trajectory, not as a snapshot.
Communism isn’t a goal because it is stateless, classless, and moneyless. Rather, Communism is a goal because the process of getting there is to create a society benefitting all and directed for the working class, by the working class.
