A communist nation that can really provide all that is as realistic as capitalistic utopia.
Not a tankie, but the USSR had mostly solved this problem, despite all its other issues. There did exist some homelessness, but nowhere near the extent of current USA.
At least they tried. Our homelessness is an intentional feature of our capitalist system. A constant threat and extant punishment for those among us who aren’t fortunate enough to be born with a silver stick up our ass.
Sure, you could get a piece of land in Siberian tundra at any time, I would not call that housing.
Moving to a city was way more complicated than in capitalist US. You could not simply buy an apartment. You had to be allocated an apartment by the government. And you needed connections for that. Or bribes. Ideally both. If you think your local rabid Republicans do not care for little wage slave men, you never experienced USSR, it was like that but 100x worse.
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Yup. And networking would inevitably involve vodka. All major decisions would eventually involve vodka in USSR.
One of Stalin’s failures almost any tankie won’t deny.
Vodka had been linked to the Russian economy under multiple Czars. I’m not sure that Stalin could have separated the two even if he had wanted to. Admittedly it doesn’t appear that he wanted to.
I’m pretty sure that the USSR was screwed the moment that Lenin returned from exile in Germany, or when Wilson was elected. Take your pick.
The Menchaviks would have been a better government.
I just find it ironic that Stalin was everything that the party worried about Trotsky becoming.
The mechaviks literally wanted to continue ww1 and have a psuedo democracy where the bourgeoisie were literally guaranteed a majority of seats, wtf are you talking about?
Well, I’m from a post-USSR country and a substantial part of this was the criminalization of homelessness. Can’t have homeless people, if you lock them up (be it in a prison or asylum).
Then again, just about anyone, who did not conform to the party’s message got locked up. Getting your place bugged at the slightest hint you might be up to something disagreeable and all that good stuff. The secret police could disappear and or beat you up without any real justification.
I hate late-stage capitalism as much as you, but coming from a country that’s been through this, I am extremely reluctant to give the rotten and frankly repugnant USSR regime any credit.
Your grandma that “fled communism” lied to you. Eventually you’ll understand that and stop repeating their nonsense.
The real communist solution to homelessness was to put them in jails. True story.
From a Legislative Perspective, it is Illegal to be Homeless in Virtually Every State in the USA, Except for Two – Oregon and Wyoming I think you are confusing Communist countries with Capitalist ones. Lol, lmao even.
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Woohoo both systems suck. You can actually believe that just because one system is bad, what is considered the opposite is also bad. Marx was not some omniscient doctor manhattan. He had some ideas. Some were good critiques on capitalist culture. Others were fantasy that do not function in the real world.
Notice how the folks arguing in favor of Communism have sources and receipts, while the folks arguing against it have done nothing but regurgitated Capitalist propaganda. Also note folks who are opposed to Communism and Marx’s philosophy are always forced to admit that it only works on paper, because his logic is irrefutable if you address it with a modicum of intellectual honesty…
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Bruh, almost every old person I’ve heard talk about Communism that lived under it talks about it fondly. Lmao
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I have a whole fucking family, who lived through the USSR. Not a single one of them misses it. Being spied on every step you take, my grandma has the “you never know who’s watching” mentality to this day.
That’s not to say they don’t hate the current regime, but it’s nothing compared to the absolute atrocities of the USSR’s secret police.
Love how all your sources are NATOpedia and all their sources are actual sources.
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The holodomor narrative surrounding the ussr wide famine of 32-33 was literal nazi propaganda from open nazi collaborators and was used as a justification for the mass murder of jews in Eastern Europe during the holocaust.
It was debunked in the literal 1930s in the US and now it re-emerges like a zombie during an era where fascism is on the rise. Even anticommunist academics like Applebaum, Davies, and Conquest say it wasn’t a genocide.
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It’s funny how upset it makes people when you point out the elephant in the room.
Truely
No one is going to deny that making perpetual motion device is good. How are you going to do that?
Do you have source and receipts for real life communism solving housing problem? Not being better than capitalism. Solving. Being better than capitalism is kinda low bar you know. There are plenty of other things that real life capitalism does better than real life communism, hence communism failure. No one is going to show up with receipts and sources because obvious.
You show us tents as a capitalist solution. That’s not a capitalist solution. That’s the problem itself. You’re misleading.
because his logic is irrefutable if you address it with a modicum of intellectual honesty…
Can you at least try to sound less douche about things?
The joke is that Capitalism DOES NOT have a solution to homelessness because there is zero profit motive to solve it. And facts dont care about your feelngs, you cant refute Marx’s philosophy while being intellectual honest. Capitalist Economists study Das Kapital because Marx was so fucking spot on.
Yes, that’s why there is no pure capitalist country anywhere.
you cant refute Marx’s philosophy while being intellectual honest.
Why are you keep doing this? I said I don’t disagree with Marx. It’d be nice if communism can happen. Facts don’t care about your feelings either and all the shitty attemps of communism failed due to human being shitty. If you have to kill off people to keep the ideology, only to fail after about few decades, it has some reality problems.
And again, I cannot stress this enough, can you please stop sounding like a 16 year old kid who just read few paragraphs of Marx going iamverysmart about it?
No need to refute Marx, reality has already proven time and time again that communism doesn’t work in practice.
Btw your argument only applies to “pure” capitalism, without any government interference. Homelessness is not really an issue in many European countries.
So what? America is a shithole, that’s nothing new.
That’s what a lot of red states are doing now. Make homelessness illegal. Arrest the homeless. Make them do slave labor in jail. Profit.
In what communist country was housing a problem?
This is a trick question, the real answer is that there weren’t real communist countries
That’s true.
No true communists
It’s the final refuge for tankies. That and the old “social democracy only works by exploiting the global south” canard.
“social democracy only works by exploiting the global south” canard.
Yeah, I could see finding this unconvincing if you haven’t read theory, history, or were just cool with benefiting from imperialism
I mean even in the case of USSR they had to wait for more than a decade to actually get a livable apartment, not to mention severe lack of infrastructure…
But of course, better than people just kicked out to the streets. But then again, less is not none. The housing situation definitely didn’t do USSR’s overall economic status any favor.
People at least had somewhere to go
that’s just moving the goal post, isn’t it?
I’m sure there were extra houses after all those people that starved to death.
In Communist countries people starve to death because of famine, in Capitalist countries people also strave to death because of famine while still starving to death after famines are over because they cant afford groceries.
Soviet Union? It was uncommon for a family of 6 to live in a small apartment. You can even see it in old soviet movies where apartments would be separated by curtains (common comedy trope).
Yeah that’s called late stage Communism, which we have never achieved as humanity. Late stage Capitalism is currently pushing more and more folks into dangerous housing situations like the bottom right quadrant of this meme. Capitalism and Utopia are oxymorons while Communism and Utopia are synonymous.
Communism and your concept of utopia are synonymous. Communism and utopia are not synonymous.
Call me old fashion but no one living on the streets and having their basic needs met sounds pretty utopian to me.
Ah yes because there was no one living on the streets, yes because a propaganda told me that it must be true.
I guess killing literal millions of your own citizens is better than being homeless, huh?
There were still people that lived in the streets in the USSR. Also, the housing the USSR provided wasn’t really that… great… I watch a Russian YouTuber (NFKRZ) who has talked about Soviet architecture in not just Russia, but other former USSR countries and shows that yes it’s good they were built, they weren’t very well built.
The USSR had many problems, and bureaucracy was a big problem. I never understood why tankies love the USSR so much when the USSR didn’t truly get rid of class. Those in the government lived like kings compared to the common man, who yes lived better than they had before but still not that well due to the bloated and mismanagement of the government.
Idk, the fact that they even had a centralized government like that seems like… the opposite of communism to me.
I think what people don’t fully understand is that Marxism is meant to be scientific. That means that there will likely be many imperfect and failed attempts at building a socialist society before one comes along that is stable enough to outlast outside interference from capitalist states.
As such, most people I know who like the USSR are also it’s biggest critiques. Unfortunately, there is so much misinformation about the USSR that most discussions about it online are just about delineating truth from propaganda.
Yeah those soviets sure got rid of the homeless problem. Can’t be homeless when you were intentionally starved to death.
The USSR and communism are separate things
Slaps Table Thank You!!
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I’m still confused and alarmed that the only alternative brought up is communism, not socialism. So far as I know, the core difference is transfer of power - one is peaceful, one is violent.
So in communism, your home might be six feet underground because “It is necessary to achieve the revolution, comrade.” Absolutely zero chance of a leader that wants the best for their people, apparently.
That’s incorrect.
Socialism is Worker Ownership of the Means of Production. There sre many, many forms, such as Anarcho-Syndicalism, Marxism-Leninism, Democratic Socialism, Market Socialism, Libertarian Socialism, Anarcho-Communism, Council Communism, Left Communism, and more.
Communism is a more specific form of Socialism, by which you have achieved a Stateless, Classless, moneyless society. Many Communist ideologies are transitional towards Communism, such as the USSR’s Marxism-Leninism or China’s Dengism and Maoism.
Whether by reform or Revolution, the form doesn’t change.
Personally Star Trek is my favorite form of Communism.
Pretty sure that’s everyone’s ideal, across all forms of leftism, except perhaps Le Guin’s Anarchist societies she writes about.
Holy shit. That makes so much sense as to why I hated those books as a kid. Thanks for that insight. I knew something wasn’t working properly in Earthsea.
Wrong series though.
Not to shit on child you, but that kid has terrible taste
Which political ideology is Responsible for capitalizing random Words?
German
My phone’s autocorrect, apparently.
Nationalise essential needs and create State corporations, let capitalism have fun with non essentials. If don’t care if private producers make wine or funky clothing or big houses, the government should make sure everyone has food to eat, basic clothes to wear and a place to live.
On that last part, buildings with 8 living units or more should be ran by a non profit State corporation, charge people based on the cost of maintenance and the salaries required, send a check if people were charged too much at the end of the year.
You left out, healthcare, education, higher education, and Internet access. While we are covering basic human rights, let’s make sure we cover all the basic human rights.
Outside of internet access these things are already nationalised in first world countries (I know exactly what’s implied by what I’m saying). I didn’t feel the need to enumerate every single thing.
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Real socialism leads to communism. I want to call what I am advocating for as cultural marxism, but unfortunately that term has antisemitic connotations, while also perfectly encapsulating the gradual shift in the publics perception of Marxist ideology I am advocating for with memes such as this. I am not advocating for a violent revolution, but I wont deny the fact that when the powers that be make a peaceful revolution impossible, a violent revolution is inevitable.
You’re also taking a snapshot of the most regulated industry in the US. Building high rises is illegal in huge swaths of urban areas. Before we say the free market isn’t providing an answer cab we actually try it? I’m talking removing exclusionary zoning, speeding up the permit process and reducing the power of local action committees, and reforming the broken heritage process that’s used by rich people to keep their areas from densifying.
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Fucking communist countries have killed how many millions of their own citizens?
Bruh, centuries of capitalist exploitation of its citizens and treating them like a disposable commodity would like to have a word on the whole ‘citizens killed by their own country’ topic.
How many thousands or millions of citizens die yearly because they can’t afford to live in this fucked up system?
So whataboutism really is the only argument for communism lmao
“I’m presented with a single argument that refutes this claim, better setup a strawman that this is the only argument available”
Lmao, at least try to sound intelligent
Asks for link that doesn’t say “hurr durr capitalism bad
Gets a link from Marxists.org
I made this comment without looking at the website but WHAT THE HELL IS THIS WEBSITE
It’s communist innovation (not innovative)(no incentive to update that UI from the 90s)(communists find lack of progress calming)
A phenomenal resource.
It actually is a decent resource as long as it is not your only context for history and political science.
Lmfao not at all, the dude literally said whataboutisms are the only arguments for Communism, so i linked him a copy of Das Kapital. Unfortunately you clearly lack the reading comprehension to consume it.
The state of commies, laughable
None? People don’t starve to death in western countries. And where they do the issue is lack of infrastructure. A communist government couldn’t conjure the resources needed to build that out of thin air either.
None? People don’t starve to death in western countries. And where they do the issue is lack of infrastructure.
“This thing doesn’t happen, and when it does, it’s not the fault of capitalism itself” is a monumentally stupid argument. Especially when talking about the homeless population, which absolutely does have people that starve.
A communist government couldn’t conjure the resources needed to build that out of thin air either.
And the capitalist economy chose not to build it because it wasn’t profitable, or after it was built, it was too expensive to be used.
I said it doesn’t happen in the west, not that it doesn’t happen anywhere. Please learn to read.
Bullshit it doesn’t happen in the west. 12.8% of US households were considered food insecure in 2022, with 5.1% of that being considered to have VERY low food security(Source). Over 20,000 Americans died of malnutrition in 2022, more than double the number in 2018(Source).
There’s also nearly 30 vacant homes for every 1 homeless person in the US, so there’s plenty of room, too. Nobody needs a 2nd home when over half a million people don’t even have one.
Maybe you should have actually read that article before linking it. It discusses in detail the reasons for malnutrition being an issue, and none of those reasons is being unable to afford food. The problems are typically due to age and diseases.
Where is your great communist country ?? Oh wait, it’s not there. It doesn’t exist and it never will. Capitalism works. Not perfect but it works. Your idealized version of communism is great but so is my idealized version of capitalism where everyone has a shot at the American dream!
Remind me, how many capitalist countries have killed millions of their own citizens?
Germany, pre-communist China, Japan, Armenia, pre-USSR Russia, Pakistan…
Edit: if apparently this isn’t the point, why so passionately call out the communist killcount?
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You are 100% correct in your assertion, my anti Mario sex toy friend, and I love your passion. I worry that the minute you call someone’s intelligence into question, they’ll take a defensive posture and stop thinking critically. Critical thinking is what we need more than anything else in this world right now. That’s what’s in short supply. It’s why the news is constantly being flooded with new things, and why there are so few media outlets that don’t have a slant. If I can get you outraged at team blue, or team red, or team US, or team THEM, your anger overrides your reason and you stop thinking about who benefits from the distraction provided by us arguing over whatever this new bullshit thing is we’re arguing over. Hopefully that last statement makes sense.
It’s simple… If you convince the communists that the capitalists are trying to destroy them, (and vice versa), they fight each other, distracting them from the real enemy: the 1% with enough money to directly influence the folk that make the rules that keep them in the 1% club. We’re fighting culture wars so we won’t fight class wars, my friend.
… capitalism is the ideology that lets the 1% be the 1%.
This is like the one fight that isn’t part of the culture war.
The 1% exist in every form of government, my friend. Billionaire capitalists == Russian Oligarchs. The name changes based on the audience, but the idea is money influences politics. The folk with the most money to do so are the 1% who actually rule, not the interchangeable talking heads who take their money to live a comfortable life acting as the mouthpiece (or scapegoat) for that group.
…do you think Russia is still Socialist? The Russian oligarchs are Billionaire Capitalists.
The USSR collapsed in the 90s, buddy.
Exactly! This is exactly what I’m saying. The 1% is still the 1% calling the shots… No matter where they are or what you want to call the type of government they influence.
The Russian Oligarchs you speak of are a result of the fall of Communism in Russia.
Yes, so you’re proving the Communists and Socialists in this thread correct. Across all Capitalist systems, the bourgeoisie are still the ones calling the shots. Therefore, a better system would be a more decentralized, worker owned system, perhaps along the lines of Socialism or Anarchism, to reach an eventual state of Communism in the far future.
What exactly do you take issue with Socialism, Communism, and Anarchism here? You appear to be advocating for a more top-down system like Capitalism, than a bottom-up system. Your argument appears to uphold your criticism.
Oh! I see. No…I’m only saying the minute you start talking any “-isms”, you trigger feelings of tribalism that exist in all of humanity. We want to be on the “good team”. No one wants to be on the bad team, and that feeling is what the Uber wealthy uses to keep us busy. Debating all of the “-isms” is the problem. Let’s figure out how to take care of the masses so basic human needs are met, allowing humanity to prosper, and figure out what the hell to call it later. Otherwise, we just quibble over semantics and nothing gets done.
Is there even a non-capitalist government in existence? Even the communist nations generally have a currency and tiered income based on position.
Couple things: tiered income would likely exist in early stages of Communism, and certainly in almost all forms of Socialism. Marx makes it exceptionally clear that both intense and skilled labor are represented as condensed unskilled labor.
Either way, there are examples of anti-capitalism. Chiapas and Rojava are more Libertarian Socialist. There’s also countries like Cuba, Vietnam, and Laos, who appear to be attempting to reject Capitalism still and still operating on some basis of Marxism-Leninism Socialism. China relies on Capitalism as their dominant mode of production, but claims to be Socialist by 2050, though that remains to be seen.
The nations you think of as “Communist” are typically Communist in ideology, but are building towards it through Socialism. Just as Feudalism gave way to Capitalism, so to do Marxists believe Capitalism is a necessary stage before Socialism, which is a necessary stage before Communism.
Do you think the Russian oligarchs, who by the way pen a FAR larger portion of the Russian economy than their American counterparts, appeared from nowhere after the collapse of the Soviet Union? The Soviets had an extremely wealthy and influential elite
The 1% are the Capitalist and they are trying to defeat the Communists and surpress/continue to exploit the Prolitariat with every tool at their vast disposal. The folks in the comments defending Capitalism are all members of the Prolitariat brainwashed into thinking they are down on their luck Millionaires.
Look… It’s all tribalism, in the end. We can argue semantics, but doing so it’s exactly their point. It keeps us busy with pedantry, while they continue to enjoy their wealth from on high. I am not educated enough to debate the pros and cons of each group, but I am intelligent enough to smell an attempt to distract me from the point. To know there’s some sleight of hand fuckery happening right in front of my face.
Yes you are intelligent, and so close to getting it, the cultural warfare bullshit is all a distraction to keep you from noticing the class warfare being waged against the working class by the 1% who continues to rob value from us to horde weath far beyond our comprehension. I cant recommend Marx’s writings enough, there is so much slight of hand fuxkery going on and it SHOULD rightfully piss you off!
Help me understand how I’m close in what I’m saying, my friend. It feels like we’re saying exactly the same thing.
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Bruh if I HAD to be right I would still be a devoted Libertarian simping for the free market. I love being proven wrong, its how people and ergo society are supposed to evolve and grow.
EXACTLY!!!
If you want to fight a class war, you’re a communist
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What ideology is it, again, that champions working class people to take their power back? It’s certainly not right wing.
If you think the world is fucked because of the greed of the 1%, and you want those people to pay for their crimes through class war, you’re communist.
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Lol no, I do not say. No ruling class. No government. That’s communism.
It’s bonkers to me that you talk a big talk about class and class conflict, yet are opposed to left wing politics. Where do you think those terms come from?
What’s even more bonkers is that you seem to think communism has never said anything about the 1%, when that is the biggest problem communists won’t shut up about!
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It’s almost like there’s a middle ground that’s the best of both worlds.
Except there isn’t. we tried that then the capitalists bought the weaker willed politicians and used them to undermine any regulation. Capitalism is a cancer and must be excised as such.
I don’t disagree that Capitalism doesn’t work in its purest form, but we’ve hardly had a success with communism in its purest form either.
We literally have. Look at the massive literacy, life expectancy, and political rights increases under literally every single communist government compared to what came before them instead of comparing them to some utopian ideal that capitalism compares even less favorably to.
Right. Communism vs capitalism is just more centralization. There are plenty of decentralized options to balance things as too much centralization, no matter the political system leads to corruption.
It’s even worse than that. Most Lemmy commies are aggressive sectarians who cling to a very particular form of the ideology, while rejecting all forms of moderate leftism and Marxist revisionism. It’s extremely obnoxious, and their bizarre, outdated philosophy is a primary reason why people are skeptical of leftist politics.
fucking communist countries have killed how many millions of their own citizens
Most of these articles cite the Black Book of Communism, which goes to absurd lengths to inflate the death toll of Communism, for example counting all the millions of nazi and soviet soldiers killed on the eastern front as victims of communism, counting the entire death toll of the Vietnam war, and even counting declining birth rates as deaths due to communism.
Noam Chomsky used the same methodology to argue that, according to Black Book logic, capitalism in India alone, from 1947–1979, could be blamed for more deaths than communism worldwide from 1917–1979.
https://web.archive.org/web/20160921084037/http://www.spectrezine.org/global/chomsky.htm
Why a lot of people on Lemmy like communist so much? As a person who grow up in a country which is almost destroyed by the communist party in the past I don’t know what to say just why?, capitalist or not it’s depends on your own country’s government, at least you still can talking shit about them without getting arrested and torture to death, have we not learn from the past or other communist country, why don’t you live in North Korea or China and see how’ve you like it
I’m going to take your question as genuine and answer in equal.
It’s a bit more complicated than that. Most leftists will agree with you, the USSR and other Eastern Europe countries that were communist did a lot of damage and most likely more harm. They committed atrocities. They were authoritarian. It was disgusting.
The leftists who still prop those countries up on their shoulders are what many call tankies. Today they sing praise about Russia, China, and North Korea, but your observation is correct, they won’t ever move there. These are individuals who repeat propaganda and are, ultimately, just red fascists. When you actually dig into their ideals they parallel and sometimes mirror Nazis.
I believe leftism cannot have an authoritarian element to it. I think most social hierarchies need to be destroyed. I think the only way to have a socialist society is through democratic means. Democracy in the workplace and national level. I think most of us can agree workers need higher wages and there is a wealth gap that needs to be dismantled. I think most of us believe healthcare needs to be universal, food and shelter and water, education, information (internet), speech, and much more should be free and readily available. There is this element of freedom that needs to be achieved that isn’t found the countries that are “communist”.
I don’t want to explicitly say those communist countries wasn’t “real communism”, but fascists, authoritarianism, always appropriate from progressive movement. There is no freedom, especially of workers, under a dictatorship. If workers are starving, dying, being outright black bagged and killed, i don’t think that can be considered communist.
Hello, I’d like to speak for people I disagree with
As a leftist whose platform doesn’t seem to include a word about abolishing capitalism, any time I am challenged by someone to the left of Bernie Sanders, I turn into a right wing crank telling people ‘if you don’t like it get out’
And today I’d like to tell you about horseshoe theory
If you actually believe in horseshoe theory then I have a bridge to sell you. Are you going to tell me you’re a centrist?
context clues
Yes, anti-Tankies are verry simmlar to Tankies. However, I think the commenter is coping by being an anti-tankie. Both groups can becone and come back from crazy. People can also safely hold tankie and anti-tankie like beleafs but (like a lot of ideology) run the risk of becoming crazy.
amaricentric peoples perspective (wrough draft probably wrong)
“Tankie” nationallists fail to see the raising over time evil and fantisize the good and the ones who passionately hate Tankies (im guilty of it) fail to see the good slowly rotting away. Then we say the whole country never changed throuout its lifetime, one points to the beginnigng the other points to the end.
Places like the Soviate Union from my limited knolage seem to be a nation with slowly growing leadership alignment problems, slowly using things like nationalism and subverting democracy to flip who should be masters and who should be slaves.
Can we just go back to saying communists please?
Absolutely, internal divisions suck. (What people are calling) Tankie and anti tankie ideas have the potential to be useful if and when its not an ideologial snare.
The last paragraph comes across as about “no true Scotsman” as it gets. Maybe true IRL communism is as much fiction as the star trek depiction of it is.
That’s the point of my concluding paragraph. I am acknowledging that fallacy. So I ask, if freedom is an actual component to socialism, communism, or anarchism, then is the USSR actually a communist state? I can easily argue North Korea isn’t. China and Russia aren’t socialist at all. Russia is an oligopoly and China is just state capitalism.
So what is “true socialism”? I don’t think we can ever achieve. We can’t have a “perfect” society, but I do think we can get close enough having workers been more in control of their labor, be more democratic, and not live in an authoritarian state. We may not 100% be able to live in a Star Trek universe but I think we can get quite close.
The former is operating illegally amidst intense violence that they have as much responsibility for as the Mexican government and the latter have committed ethnic cleansing. So I’m not sure why you think they are good examples. Unless you think socialism means people must be killed.
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See how these people aren’t even engaging you here? That’s because you’re not trying hard enough.
You can do better my troll friend. I believe in you
sing praise about Russia
I have never seen a communist claim that the modern Russian government is good or communist, only that it opposes western hegemony, to the occasional benefit of poor nations in the global south.
It’s a bit more complicated than that. Most leftists will agree with you, the USSR and other Eastern Europe countries that were communist did a lot of damage and most likely more harm. They committed atrocities. They were authoritarian. It was disgusting.
Most leftists are literally marxist leninists or some derivative of ML in socialist countries. I think you mean most white leftists in the imperial core when you say most leftists.
Are there any statistics on where the most (convinced) leftists currently live? Just wondering. Not talking about people who are forced to adhere to authoritarian systems to survive or further their career.
There are literally 100 million members of the CPC. If .1 percent of them earnestly believe in communist thought that is more than the total members of communist orgs in the US.
I think you might call me an FDR New Deal socialist. I’m in favor of things like social security and government public works projects.
It has been my experience as a lifelong American that “capitalism” is just feudalism, or a desperate attempt to return to feudalism. “Capitalists” aka the ruling class have all the “capital” aka enough resources to actually accomplish anything. When any normal citizen wants to start a business, they have to beg a capitalist for a loan of some type, possibly selling “stock” aka a loan that never pays to term, allowing the capitalists to leech off of your profits basically forever. Wages get lower, costs get higher, all to funnel as much wealth to a small upper class. The myth of the meritocracy, where he with the best ideas, the best inventions, the most innovation, the product most in demand is he one that succeeds…doesn’t hold up in a world of patent trolling or felony contempt of business model we’re currently in. Doesn’t stop them from parroting it to keep the little people quiet though.
Meanwhile I’m not aware of a “communist” nation that ever actually was. I am unaware of a nation that has ever actually operated per “to each according to his ability, from each according to his need” workers owning the means of production etc. They’ve all turned out as dictatorships with command economies. I mean, show me a country where the workers’ unions are actually the ones in power. No, you’ve got the likes of North Korea, Russia and China building empty skyscrapers, building entire cities that sit empty, demolishing brand new apartment complexes because the floors aren’t safe to walk on. The government told us to build it, so we built it. I get punished if I don’t, and I don’t get rewarded for doing a good job. The man that wrote Tetris didn’t earn a single kopek.
Neither seem to actually work long-term.
Okay, a “fdr new deal socialist” isnt a thing. FDR was a social democrat which isn’t socialist. The new deal was a social democrat policy, not socialist.
Please consider reading “the abc’s of socialism” it is a good introduction to socialist thought.
In the “capitalism did better than communism/socialism” debate i still feel a great lack of historical context. Eastern Europe has been largely destroyed by the Nazis. China has lived through brutal Japanese occupation and a genocide of 10 Million people. Korea has been subject to a war emplyoing terrible new weapons such as Napalm to bring great destruction.
Meanwhile the US homeland has been faring without any destruction, France surrendered quick enough to avoid most damage and the UK sucessfully fended off the Nazi attacks so the damage was limited.
Purely economically speaking the Western allies were off to a much better start than the Eastern countries. So i would argue that for the economical question, it remains impossible to claim capitalism to be superior to socialism. Otherwise authoritarianism is always to the detriment of the people.
Ah yes the utopian rainbow many want, yes, #metoo
It’s an unfortunately nuanced subject, where people don’t agree on the underlying definitions of words. For instance, I think you’re confusing “capitalism” with “democracy”. You can have authoritarian undemocratic capitalist countries, where you can’t talk shit about your government.
For me personally, I think communism has too many issues to actually try, but I like some of its theoretical tennants when compared to that of capitalism. Those goals are something to strive for. The spirit of communism is helping eachother and rewarding work, and the spirit of capitalism is sacrificing others for personal gain
Because they are reacting to living under the oppressive structures of late capitalism. Having been raised in a capitalist world, they naturally overemphasize economic systems and their alternatives and make assumptions about government.
So when they communism theyusually mean communism + some equitable government or just they mean socialist democracy.
Funnily enough, you live pretty well in China these days if you’re a good little capitalist.
“China is capitalism with beastly grin”
- Ekaterina Shulman
A number of reasons. Just like you claim a Communist party almost destroyed your country, Capitalist parties destroy and are destroying many countries as well. The existence of bad Communist parties does not itself mean Communism is structurally a bad thing, as pursuit of a Stateless, Classless, Moneyless society is a noble goal for humanity.
I think it’s fair to say that decentralization is a good check against Authoritarianism, and as such, this should be extended to the workplace, not just government.
As far as why Lemmy leans left, the founder is a Communist, and principles of decentralization and federation tend to appeal far more to leftists, while Capitalist-inclined individuals have Reddit.
Saying that any existing communist party looks like what we, or theory, want(s), is like saying that North Korea is a Democratic Republic because it’s part of the name. Authoritarians love corrupting the meaning of words so they can keep people ignorant.
Right, which would also hold true for capitalism… Thus mooting the original point.
Capitalism is sadly doing exactly what it’s designed to do there’s just a lot of propaganda to mislead you such as the infamous trickle down economics idea
Not really. The US has completely unchecked capitalism if you aren’t wealthier than $100,000,000, as does the rest of the world thanks to a court that the IMF set up. If your country has a resource the capitalists want to exploit, and the people or government don’t allow it, they will sue you in this international court and use the US military to impose fines of billions of dollars per year in “lost revenue.” Much of Africa and South America can tell you all about it.
Capitalism and communism are economic systems not political theory.
NK’s highest legislative body is a multiparty parliament elected directly by the people.
“Oh but the communists dominate”
Yeah, because they do popular things and have a popular political program compared to the other parties.
Is it more democratic when no one party is popular because all of them don’t help the proletariat and power is a hot potato passed to whatever bourgeois party fucked the people the longest time ago?
This community is on lemmy.ml, which explicitly leans hard left. Maybe a memes community on another instance would be less like this
Though to be fair, DPRK is the way it is at least in part thanks to the Americans obliterating their cities and farm land. But we can ignore history to make a “I used to be in a communist country and it’s bad, trust me bro” statement.
And I agree, I prefer to live in a system where prisoners aren’t primarily minorities or political prisoners. And where the prison system isn’t the most populated in the world, and rife with for-profit forced labour.
I would also be curious to hear which definition of “capitalism” and “Communism” you are using. That is, if you are open to dialogue.
We have never seen an actual communist country. USSR for example was a fascist dictatorship which runs directly counter to the first property of communism, it must be stateless.
Facists like the Nazis like to claim they are for the people and sadly the only “communism” we’ve seen so far has been carried out by their hands. This is similar to how Nazis were supposedly progressive… Hopefully we can agree that is obviously not the case.
https://jewishcurrents.org/the-double-genocide-theory
Don’t call communists fascists please. This is an article from a mainstream holocaust historian that explains why a related equation between the two is harmful.
I would also recommend reading “economy and class structure of german fascism” so you have a better idea of what fascism actually means.
Grass is greener on the other side
‘in the past’
How old are you? If your claim to authority here is that you grew up being told history by the winners, what should that mean to us?
What was done in South America for a century was done in a decade in Eastern Europe when the west finally won the cold war. Read Shock Doctrine.
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So you think that The Christ was a moron? He is the literal archetype bearded, sandal wearing, tree
huggingcursing (ok that one is weird), hippie. Hell, he told his followers to go live in communes…
“They took my father’s slaves!”
Shut the fuck up, colonizer.
What Country?
how old were you when the USSR fell? Did you experience communism, or the capitalist takeover after communism fell?
Because they hate the system they live in and communism is the only modern alternative that has ever existed.
When someone comes up with an alternative to both, humanity will move forward.
These discussions on communism vs capitalism that devolve into comparing the US with the USSR are like discussing feudalism vs liberalism in 1825, when the only perceptible legacies of the French Revolution were the Reign of Terror and Napoleon’s degeneration into monarchy.
If you’re sensibly anticapitalist, for the love of Marx do not argue in favor of states that rejected all pretension of wanting to let the economy be democratically managed, ultimately turning into party-controlled hierarchies rather than socialism. If you’re a liberal in 1825 and rather than arguing in favor of ending serfdom and enfranchising everyone you keep going on about how Robespierre wasn’t really that bad, you’re politically useless.
This is capitalist solution to homelessness
What if, and hear me out on this one, the problem isn’t which “-ism” is prevalent. The real problem is that ANY form of power or society needs checks and balances. If those are missing or not enforced, then everything goes to shit. It’s a balancing act, not just a matter of black or white.
The whole point of Communism is to balance power away from the 1% and back to the masses. The fact that it is an “-ism” and has decades of propaganda demonozing it, doesnt make that any less true.
The important part is it’s not an authoritarian running the show and calling it “communism” or " democracy" when the reality is it’s just a plain old oligarchy with a new title applied.
100% couldn’t agree more.
The whole point of Communism is to balance power away from the 1% and back to the masses
But there needs to be some governing body that is responsible for determining how the power and wealth is distributed. Per the OP’s point: if the proper guardrails are not in place, control of that governing body will eventually shift towards a person or party who corrupts it for their own purposes. It doesn’t matter what the “point” of a system is, corrupt people will always attempt to take the wheel.
This was legitimately a problem after ww2 where the politically active communists were more heavily involved in the war and a bunch of the human infrastructure of (especially local)democracy got killed by nazis
balance power away from the 1% and back to the masses
By installing a dictator…every time it’s attempted…
Maybe not do that next time and try doing it from the bottom up instead of top-down🏴. It’s much more work to convince people that this is a solution and have them help willingly instead of forcing them to go along with it. We tried the Marxist-Leninist way dozens of times, let’s try the anarchist way. A capitalist boot or a communist boot on my neck makes no difference to me, it’s still a boot on my neck.
That is a problem of how revolution works, not a problem of communism.
Create a power vaccuum, and those who had the most power will STILL have the most influence. Even if you literally killed all the old power, you would be immediately creating an authority structure with the legal authority of capital punishment, which many, MANY communists wouldn’t agree with.
The problem is horrible people exist, NOT the concept of communism. For every reason people shit on Communism, there are twenty valid reasons to shit on capitalism. Neither system works in the real world on its own. To pretend like capitalism is magical in comparison is literally failing to observe reality.
The rich and powerful constantly shit on political action because it IS effective. They do not enjoy going through the effort of retaining power through internal conflicts and ESPECIALLY not actual revolutions. Why would they EVER tell you the truth?
Even the fucking CIA isn’t dishonest enough to say such things
https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80-00810A006000360009-0.pdf
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Why did Napoleon take power after the French Revolution if Capitalism doesn’t have dictators every time a revolution occurs?
Because short man special!
/s (do I even need this? This one HAS to be so absurd as to make the “/s” superfluous)
HE WAS AVERAGE HEIGHT FOR THE TIME PERIOD!!! (I miss overlysimplified so much)
Maybe not do that next time and try doing it from the bottom up instead of top-down🏴.
Those have been tried, but they often tend to get liberated by the CIA. Or in some cases, the KGB / Red Army.
I’m certainly not advocating for toppling other countries’ governments, but honestly the fact that so many countries end up not being able to withstand the attacks from outside is kind of a mark against them.
Well, that’s the problem with bottom-up government, isn’t it? It is better in most ways, but the local empire will invade you at the first chance they get.
If I remember correctly, the fall of the Paris commune to a Franco-German alliance was what led the early Marxists to embrace a centralised system. Of course, that brings its own problems, as power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Rojava wants a few words.
Rojava is doing exactly as I suggested. Spreading the power out. It’s a rare bird among the many communist attempts. I was actually going to offer it up as an example.
Just look at “balance power away from 1%” in China, Ruzzia or North Corea. Do you really like it? Or you just read books and not looking at real life examples?
This is why Xi Jinping lives in a giant gilded castle and any negative thing said anywhere about him is censored, just like every other citizen. Everyone’s equal.
Citation fucking needed, do you even know anyone from China?
But I want to defend my -ism
Sir please put your -ism away, you’re scaring the children.
Name checks out lol
You should read capital volume one, it will explain how the problem actually is capitalism
Actually, the problem is homelessness.
The solution is either housing (ethical) or genocide (unethical).
Provision of housing for the poor can be achieved by means of social housing programs. These can exist in both communist and capitalist societies. E.g. the Netherlands is capitalist, but there is almost no homelessness thanks to its social housing program. The few homeless that are present are choosing this way of life and are therefore not part of problem.
Why is there so much communist propaganda on Lemmy? Could it be that reddit is actually good at filtering out state-sponsored content farms?
Decentralization appeals to leftists, as that’s the principle of the ideology, away from bourgeois interests.
I haven’t seen evidence of state-sponsored propaganda, though there are people that simp far too hard for China and the CPC on Lemmy though.
Communism’s solution to homelessness is mass starvation.
People tend to argue that commie blocks look depressing and dystopian but you can actually make very pretty neighborhoods with them.
This is where I live. It’s called Oyak Sitesi in Turkey/Antalya and it’s a beautiful place with an actual community. Very affordable too. We just did a stability test and they were also very durable to earthquakes.
Just because you’re making blocks doesnt also mean that they have to be 20 stories tall either. Here is my old house.
The important parts are paint and maintenance.
Give a commie block a fresh coat of paint every decade or so and they can look good (though I just don’t like flat roofs. But that’s personal taste.)
But while a somewhat run down european style house can still have some charme for longer (guess I’m biased here) a run down commie block in gray and with cracks in the facade will quickly start to look depressing.
And as they are often chosen for cost reasons inside capitalistic environments, they are often neglected.
So, the problem is not commie blocks, but how they are maintained. And as often we tend to search for the extreme examples if we (dis)like something.
I happen to live in a city that’s primarily blocks (or as we call them: Plattenbauten) and honestly, they’re pretty good houses. The structure is sound, after some renovations in the 90s and 00s, insulation and comfort are perfectly fine, and the surroundings are usually very green and pleasant.
The only real problem is, that these buildings are somewhat away from the city center due to superior socialist planning, so they are not super attractive for younger people.
I should probably take pictures of freshly-paited commie blocks in my district and post them on lemmyy.
Why do you call them “commie blocks”??
It wasn’t communists who came up with the idea of that type of building and it’s a common sight in many European countries, for example, which are not communist.
Please, not this again… Personally, I am a lot in favour of communism. But some people, especially US Americans, have a fundamentally wrong idea about the housing shown in the upper picture.
This is often neither cheap, nor does it reduce homelessness. And it’s also not the goal of that kind of rental homes to reduce homelessness.
That is just normal homes of average people in many places.
It’s not “cheap housing for everyone”.
This is not communist solution, this is half-socialism humant colony solution.
Real communist solutions look like this:
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They were built for the Prolitariat, which homeless folks are quite literally a part of.
So if one person picks 1000 apples per day and the second picks 2 apples, then they split apples 501 to each. Good luck convincing the first person that this is good for them
Except we aren’t talking about two people, are we? We’re talking about entire populations of people.
And when people have their needs met, they are more able to be productive. And they are more likely to believe in the good of the system that supports them, as they can see the tangible results of that system in their daily life. They can see how their contribution to the system benefits them. Making them more likely to be happy to contribute.
Will some percentage of people under-contribute because of laziness? Sure. But who cares? That percentage is small. And we have the technology to compensate many times over now.
Why the hell do we make society more miserable for everyone, forcing everyone to live under the threat of poverty if they don’t work, just to force this small percentage to work against their will? Not to mention completely screw over anyone who cannot work for reasons beyond their control, because we subject them to this insane level of scrutiny because we’re paranoid that they might just be lazy.
We can choose a cooperative system, or the antagonistic one we currently have, where we are all at each others’ throats because of suspicion that someone might be getting something that they “don’t deserve”.
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You still have the problem of misaligned incentives together with the fact that the only way to mitigate it is through coercion. This is why all communism inevitably leads to authoritarianism. The strength of capitalism is that it can absorb and indeed is designed to allow for the fact that humanity’s cooperative impulse --due to the fact that we evolved over hundreds of thousands of years to live in small bands of about 30 to 150 people-- cannot work at the level of the modern nation state.
You still have the problem of misaligned incentives
Not really sure what you mean by that. Socialism leads to better alignment of incentives. If everyone is benefitting from the system, contributions to the system are incentivised.
That is the opposite of capitalism, where the individual tries to gain any advantage they can, even at the expense of everyone else. And broad advances and contributions of work benefit very few people, by design. That leads to lower trust, which further entrenches the idea that the individual has to look out for themselves, and is thus incentivised to game to system.
together with the fact that the only way to mitigate it is through coercion
I reject that premise.
So Instead, one person picks 1000 apples, gives them all to the property owner, and then receives enough money to buy 50 apples, yet you’d prefer that over having to split the 1000 apples evenly.
In your example, I’m assuming the first person is a worker and the second person is the boss. That’s usually how it goes
And for both situations I would need ask at least one of them “Why do you need so many apples? Why not give some of them to those who need them instead of accumulating them?”
Think about it, you’re already living the situation you presented but the person picking two apples is in a managerial position and gets to keep the thousand apples you picked in exchange for the two apples they picked.
The fuck you on about?
This is under the assumption that there is a surplus in society that can satisfy the needs of everyone. Marx’s point is that technological development and industrialization could make this possible. As such, the need to motivate people to work harder is not necessary.
Prior to such a surplus existing, the distribution of goods would be more akin to “From each according to their ability, to each according their contribution”. That ensures people are motivated to maximize their productivity as long as that’s still necessary.
Yeah, is a bad deal.
But that’s not the point, the point of this approach is that like in cooperatives, there are minimum productivity goals and many roles to play, and so on. Obviously like you point out, no one is that stupid.
Now, consider the needs of people who are old or need help. Like helping your old man, I’m sure you don’t mind getting more apples. I wouldn’t. Like you, I would get angry if I’m the only useful one hahaha, but that what productivity and organization is for. No one lives in a bubble.
Now… What you said, I’ve seen it happen in capitalism. Not in small businesses, normally the owner is in the store too. I mean when we talk about the big bucks like a better example. They expect you to handle of those apples, and ain’t offering you a comfy home neither.
This is disingenuous: the fundamental principle of socialism and Communism is democracy. And, credit where credit is due, capitalism forced us to socialize the production of goods and services (it now takes many people to “produce” anything). Currently, there is no discussion about who gets the profit of socialized labour, it goes to the people who own the workplace, which are rarely the workers.
So, to make your example realistic, you and this other person are part of a community that grows apples (pick any rural community). Together, you all own the fields.
How do you decide what each person gets? You come to a consensus. There are so many variables; is the other person injured?young?sick?old? Or really bad at picking apples? Maybe you are on some apple picking super serum. How do you decide who gets what? The same way people usually do; you decide together.
In your example, having a blanket rule as you suggest would never work, and would be unfair, but it is what happens now in our advanced capitalistic economies. If you pick 1000 apples for a company, how many do you keep? Or more realistically; once the apples are sold, how much of the.profits go to you? You have no choice. You work, get paid, and go home. You work harder and you end up with just about the same amount at the end. The only saving grace is if you work hard enough, one day you might be promoted by the generous owner to a position where you are no longer the poor schmuck who does all the work. But that poor schmuck will always still exist, it’s just no longer you.
…I need to write less lol
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No duh, they were built to be very affordable so you wouldn’t have as many homeless people. It’s incredible that you thought that answer was somehow insightful
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Affordable and available housing has everything to do with homelessness though, it’s one of the best ways to actually keep people from becoming homeless in the first place. If more people can afford a place to live, less people will be homeless. Won’t fix all of it but a huge chunk anyhow
I have no idea if or how much old Eastern Bloc countries lied about the number of homeless. I wouldn’t be surprised at all, but I haven’t seen any studies or statistics about this so I can’t assume they were all lying or that the situation was universally worse than in Western countries.
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And yet they still would affect the rate of homelessness.
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I live in north-east Germany in one of these Blocks (it was firmly renovated tho). It’s actually not bad. Most of them are build in Horseshoe shape so you have small parks inside. But it’s nearly impossible to hang anything to the wall without proper power tools. EDIT: typos
Capitalism has a solution to the tent problem though
UK - The home secretary is proposing new laws to restrict the use of tents by homeless people, arguing that many of them see it as a “lifestyle choice”.
It sure is a lifestyle choice. The choice is the tent or a cardboard box, fucking insensitive assholes.
San Diego already banned camping in the city. The county board of supervisors either has proposed that they do the same or already has.
San Diego county is bigger than two states. They are trying to outlaw homelessness in an area about 65 miles north to south, and roughly the 86 miles east of The Pacific Ocean.
These are almost all Democrats, btw. We didn’t vote for Republicans.
Pls keep your talkie bulshit out of the meme subs. You may be right with this one, but this still isn’t a political sub, so just don’t.
Thanks for letting us know you’re seething and coping dronie.
“Get politics out of my entertainment” is a literal nazi talking point.
Tf? Politics are currently pretty difficult and I am spending way to much of my time discussing it. Excuse me for just wanting to see a few bad memes on a meme sub and not slide into the next discussion. I don’t even know what to answer to bullshit like this. You know what also was “literal nazi talking point”? Food. Sex. Drugs. After all they are still human and a human is defined by more than just their ideology.
Don’t make me get that 10 minute alt-right “get politics out of my video games” youtube video. Neither of us want that.
Finland is capitalist and kind of solved homelessness, with there being around only 1.3k homeless people in the entire country (population: 5.6m, which means the rate of homelessness is around 0.02%).
I don’t think that communism or any ideology is an answer to homelessness, it’s pretty much the job for the government and what kind of systems/reforms they implement.
Finland hasn’t really solved anything, as social democracies just push the problems elsewhere
For example?
i reccomend watching this video from 5:53 to 8:31 to see the problems with social democracy https://youtu.be/TRq3pl17C8M?si=Cml7fql--qiRgFT_
Wow, three minutes with that vlogger changed my entire worldview! Thanks, grandpa! /s
You should instead read “Riding the wave” which is a serious book that explains why social democracies rely on imperialism using one case study (Denmark I believe but I haven’t read it in forever)
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/TRq3pl17C8M?si=Cml7fql–qiRgFT
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
