There were no actual efforts to establish communism in eastern europe. Only autocratic regimes backed by soviet russia.
The US political spectrum is leaning so far to the right. A US left is a France center or moderate right. So what Americans consider communism is merely what French consider moderate leftist.
- I’m French living in the US
McCarthy propaganda go brrrr
Well we’re not praising fascism and corruption.
More like: People on the internet being critical of the current system, Americans on the internet saying “COMMUNISM BAD” as if USSR style state capitalism is the only other possible option.
Didn’t the USSR just do state capitalism, and not actual communism or socialism? And weren’t they also totalitarian & also not a democracy? Are people actually asking for what was happening in astern Europe or something else?
Yup. Also shot the anarchists, that worked with them and wanted democracy, in the back of the head during a meeting, The USSR then also did imperialism in their neighboring countries, deported a ton of people from those countries to death camps in siberia and allied with the nazies dividing Europe in their treaty
Anarchists are the first victims of authoritarian regimes. The dictator goes for them first, even before their sworn enemies, e.g. fascists or, if it’s a fascist dictatorship, communists.
The story of ukrainian anarchist communist, Machno, is interesting in this resect. Bolsheviks treated his so well. Russian revolution, although started occasionally with good ideas, quickly revealed itself as authorithian russian nationist imperialism.
That’s kind of the point of horseshoe economics, “the people own the economy” is impossible to implement without an intermediate agency to actually oversee the day to day of said economy.
What’s that entity? The government. Any conceptual type of non-state entity would just be governance in nature regardless of title, and therefore still essentially operate as “a state” if not the same state that the federal government exists as.
Though as someone who works in modern IT I foresee the future of robotics and AGI allowing for the kind of economic automation that would make communism inevitable eventually as jobs are reduced over time in the course of the next hundred or two hundred years.
Though as someone who works in modern IT I foresee the future of robotics and AGI allowing for the kind of economic automation that would make communism inevitable eventually as jobs are reduced over time in the course of the next hundred or two hundred years.
Yeah, I thought that too, but now that we’re getting some rudimentary functional AI and robotics, what we’re seeing is companies using it to save them money - basically automating work that would be done by highly paid specialists, contractors, or outside companies. And they are not investimg in it to automate low paid rote work because the human labor is cheap enough that a big automation investment only yields gains long term - and businesses have been focused on short term gains for the last few decades. So, automation, in the short term at least, is really just limiting our opportunities for more satisfying work.
What’s more likely to happen in the short term is that the pressure to adopt new tools will fall on the worker. AI and robotics won’t take your job, but someone using them will.
You talked about the long term, hundreds of years, and it’s difficult to speculate how our society would work then. But… work and money is a form of social control. There will be significant pressure as jobs disappear to ensure the populous is still working to earn something that the ruling class has more of. Nothing short of a looooonnnnnnng term political change or violent upheaval of power dynamics will change that. Now, is that possible in the time scale of hundreds on years? Maybe, but I find it hard to believe that those in power would easily give up the very thing that gives them their power.
Didn’t the USSR just do state capitalism, and not actual communism or socialism?
The Soviet idea was that 1) if it’s state-owned, then it’s people-owned and not capitalism, 2) it’s people-owned, because USSR is a union of soviet republics, where soviet is a democratic (initially) entity, 3) it’s socialism, not communism, as we’ve not built that yet, 4) it’s still socialism as we use money to buy things and not receive them as we need automatically, as the planning precision doesn’t allow for this.
(A soviet is initially like an elected body, where every member on level zero is elected by constituency, like certain factory’s workers or inhabitants of some street, as this thing was static in the USSR, or on every level above zero by an underlying level soviet ; the main difference between this and normal democracies is that those factory workers or that underlying soviet can vote anytime to recall and replace their representative, which turned out to make it more authoritarian all by itself ; well, also obviously these in fact decided nothing in the USSR anyway, the party structures did).
I guess that’s the best way put it I saw in this post. I’d just add that after growing up in soviet and postsoviet state, and later coming to western Europe, my first impression was that they somehow almost managed to build here what “communist” soviet party tried to build so unsuccessfully.
Even Marx thought that path to communism is through capitalism, what soviet state did is something very different.
lol, no it wasn’t. They had a planned economy.
if the government owns the economy (i.e. plans it) and the people don’t control the government (i.e. no or bad democracy), then it is state capitalism.
I love when people employ the Socratic method tactfully lol.
deleted by creator
The USSR was definitely communist. They called themselves communist, were inspired by communists and implemented communist policies.
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is definitely a democratic republic.
No because they are not inspired by democratic republicans and they do not have democratic republican policies. Read me whole comment next time.
Critical thinking needs a bit of work there buddy. That’s exactly my point: the USSR did not have communist policies, it wasn’t even based on communism. It was an authoritarian state-capitalist regime which called itself socialist (not even communist), much like North Korea calls itself a democratic republic.
Go to the Wikipedia homepage: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union
State Capitalism a term used exclusively by a vocal minority of leftists to gaslight, revise and no-true-Scotsman historical events to fit their ideological world-view.
As a term, communist state is used by Western historians, political scientists, and media to refer to these countries. However, these states do not describe themselves as communist nor do they claim to have achieved communism, as it would constitute an oxymoron—they refer to themselves as socialist states that are in the process of constructing socialism.
China also calls themselves Communist
Yes, because there’s no other way to implement communism. They tried hard and it still didn’t work
Despite the downvotes, you’re correct.
In Germany the left leaning parties want that shit. It sucks. They side with Russia atm as well and a lot of them just have this odd nostalgia for the time
not to defend them, but capitalism is not doing very good recently, so that might give them points
Yes, I know. I’m not a fan of that myself.
But the idea that current day Russia has it better is insane. The Propaganda has survived through 30 years of non existence
There is a difference between Russia, communism and an authoritarian/totalitarian regime.
Communism is not necessarily authoritarian or totalitarian.
It always leads to absolute authoritarian hellholes. It never not has done that.
Marxism-Leninism does, and invariably so. It’s not however the only existing current of communism.
What’s an existing current for. Of communism that hasn’t gone Auth or totalit?
deleted by creator
counterpoint and some reading material for capitalism stans on here https://ia800309.us.archive.org/26/items/fp_Killing_Hope-US_Military_and_CIA_Interventions_Since_WWII-William_Blum/Killing_Hope-US_Military_and_CIA_Interventions_Since_WWII-William_Blum.pdf
Communism isn’t the issue the same way Capitalism isn’t the issue, the issue is rich people abusing working class and poor people. Removing democracy from these systems just make them absolutely horrid in the long run. Also China isn’t communist it’s state capitalist dictatorship.
Finally, a smart person here
China are ABSOLUTLEY communists, just the smarter type
How are they communist? Their economy is obviously heavily based on capitalism, no redistribution of wealth. The only thing that lines up is the promise of socializing in the future? Though I don’t believe western politicians nevermind Chinese dictators.
It’s just like Hitler’s party’s name. They said that they are socialists, but in practice it wasn’t true at all.
What someone calls themselves and what they actually are don’t always match up.
How much time have you spent in china? When I worked there they were capitalist as fuck with everyone hustling for themselves ( besides the government being able to force people and companies to do anything they wish)
deleted by creator
I think fundamentally most people would agree with that. The problem with communism though is that it’s not just a staple of the USSR. There is something on the order of 48 countries that have experienced state-sponsored communism in relatively recent times and it has never once succeeded in achieving these goals but tends to exacerbate poverty, class division, and government oppression of human rights, if not resulting in completely failed states.
Some will read this and assume I am advocating for capitalism. I am not. Asserting problems with communism does not imply capitalism is perfect or even good. But if we do choose to abandon capitalism, the wrong decision is to move to a system with a 100% failure rate of achieving its goals over dozens of historical attempts. As the meme suggests, many Eastern Europeans are old enough to have personal experience with those failures.
Where communism can work well is on a smaller, voluntary scale. When people choose to get together and establish their own rules for pooling resources, small communities can sometimes live quite satisfactorily this way. But no, if we are willing to call capitalism a failure based on its history we have to be honest enough to say the same thing about state-sponsored communism.
I’m not quite sure how to reply to that, because you make some good points. I flatly disagree that communism can’t work. It’s like saying Capitalism couldn’t work because for a whole century the French revolution was failing before 1789. Which is not even the first humanity’s attempt for a capitalist system, but the first well known one. We still have ways to go and failed attempts to try to get it right.
However, the most important thing in my eyes is to learn from the past. Being in a country that was surrounded by communism, tried, and was refused help from the then socialist states, I know very many people that still look back to those times with fondness. From my country and neighboring ones that were parts of the socialist block. But all those implementations had their problems and these same people would be the first to admit that. Our job is to go through all that history and judge it with clear heads, see where it went wrong and how or why, so in the next attempts we’ll fail in a different way, until we get it right. Similar to how every socioeconomically system did so far.
I don’t care about Anarchy or Socialism or Trotskyism or whatever, as long as it gets us to the end goal of a classless system without economic or power elites that see us as data nodes to profit off. Each of those approaches has its pros and cons and there are many others as well.
But saying it failed so we best move on, because the first handful of attempts went wrong is not going to bring any change whatsoever.
Yeah I get you. But it’s important to realize that we’re talking about much more than a handful of attempts. I see the value in learning from history and iterating on processes to try and get better over time. But if we’re honestly striving for the best system for humanity, what we shouldn’t do is say, “I really want it to be communism so let’s just assume that must be the right answer and keep trying it over and over again until it works.” At some point you do have to be willing to try something new.
It’s my opinion that communism has had more than a fair shot and has been eliminated from the running. But I am also not so crazy as to immediately disregard some new communist paradigm that theoretically works in some new way that is designed to fix the problems that continually appeared in communist systems historically. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen it presented yet. And it’s also not what these “western teenagers” (as the meme calls them) are advocating for. They use language and symbols characteristic of very specific brands of communism that were massive historical failures in terms of preserving human rights and eliminating poverty and class divisions.
I disagree about the part of enough attempts and fair share, but honestly, I don’t care much. Could very well be something completely different and as long as it kept the basis of no inequality, no ruling elite, free education and medical care and so on, I’d be in. I just haven’t found anything that does that even half convincingly.
My belief is that similar to how back in the 18th century, they couldn’t see past the following system, namely capitalism, we can’t see and plan for past a classless system now, which for the moment is communism, regardless of the path there. That doesn’t mean that societal evolution will stop there.
At least we are disagreeing respectfully :)
Another interesting point is whether we attribute the successes and failures of a state on it’s particular social, economic and political situation or it’s ideology as the root cause of anything. Most people, when they agree with an ideology, will attribute the good things to the ideology and the bad things to specific circumstances, and the opposite with ideologies they do not agree with. The more nationalist Americans will tell you that Cuba is poor because it is communist, and that Bush invaded Iraq either because he was corrupt or because he was promoting freedom. However there’s also the argument that Cuba is poor because it is sanctioned to hell by the US, and that Bush invaded Iraq because of American capitalist imperialism. Which one of these you agree with pretty much entirely depends on your ideological opinions rather than what actually happened, and as far as making a valid argument either one is at least a coherent point.
The reality is that you have elements of both the fundamental ideology and the specific political circumstances in every social outcome you see. Which is an idea quite fatal to most of the rhetoric you see nowadays and part of why it’s impossible to have any political discussion with people you have fundamental disagreements with.
😂😂😂
yes vietnam no longer exhist indeed north vietnam never once succeeded
consider reading a book and touching grass
those who read know
the largest economy in the world is a socialist state dedicated to working towards communism ⚒️🌍
It’s also an oppressive police state where huge portions of the population live in poverty and endure awful working conditions. Oh and they’re actively engaged in genocide against a minority ethnic group. But sure if we just ignore all the downsides it’s great.
Nor is it, in fact, the largest economy in the world by any measure.
I think you must have inferred something from my comment that I didn’t actually say. I didn’t say every communist country ceases to exist. I also didn’t say that communism can’t generate a large economy.
What I said was that it has a 100% failure rate of achieving its goals, where those goals are economic equality, and elimination of poverty and class divisions. Most open pro-communists today have an additional goal of increasing access to basic human rights which communism has historically failed at as well. I did mention that some communist states have failed outright.
In the case of China, which you alluded to, note that China deliberately weakened their communism in the 90s as part of a series of economic reforms that introduced capitalist principles designed to stimulate growth. Specifically, agriculture was de-collectivized, Chinese business were opened to foreign investment, permission was granted for entrepreneurs to start businesses, state-owned industries were privatized, and many price controls were removed. By 2005, the private sector was responsible for 70% of China’s GDP. There is no reason to believe that China’s economy would be anywhere near as large as it is today absent these reforms.
But is that what you personally want out of your system? A large economy? Is that what matters most?
mate you really twisted yourself to trying to explain two unequitable things.
china literally #1
In what world is a country with billionaires and an autocratic ruling class in which the workers decidedly do not control the means of production, “socialist”?
you aint a communist i couldnt gove a rats booty what yoj believe
go watch some mpre fox news
Western politics already has a vehicle in which to accomplish your 3 bullet points called regulation. The problem is children in charge and the voters apathy to hold their feet to the fire.
People should get mad, not at each other but at their “masters” that aren’t supposed to exist. The powers that be want us to argue amongst ourselves
It’s not children in charge, it’s old ass white guys who depend of screwing everyone over to maintain their standard of living.
Age and skin color especially don’t matter when you a corrupt politician taking corporate bribes.
I mean it does matter, because of who is doing the bribing
Either way. Still arguing with ourselves. If we can agree there’s less to talk about and only action remains
Maximum Wealth should be set to 10 million. At that point you’ve won at wealth and every penny after that should go to someone else.
That’s a bit of an arbitrary figure. Also wealth isn’t really money as much as it is things.
Take a house, for example. You only really need one. The monetary value of the house depends on a few factors, but it’s primary value is that it gives you shelter. It probably fluctuates in monetary value but the actual value doesn’t change. If you cap wealth based on monetary value, how do you deal with homes in different places that are valued differently? I think it’s going to be more complicated than it seels at first glance.
Assuming you mean dollars, since everyone on the internet is American. 10mil seems like a lot all together. But if you had to feed your entire family for the rest of your life on 10mil you might struggle, depending on where you live.
Maybe you mean 10mil income per year and not overall wealth. That’s different, but I can understand this. A progressive tax system could impose a cap of sorts but tax avoidance (the legal kind) would render it useless.
I don’t have any answers, just felt like continuing the thought train.
1st, don’t read to deep into this, It’s not even a pipe dream is a barely thought that crossed my mind but ain’t smart enough to even process in any meaningful way, but thought it would be ok to vomit here.
I mean total wealth including houses, cars, personal belongings, clothes, groceries, bank accounts, shares at some company, pocket change, everything. Yes, I was thinking dollars. It could be per person. And yes, it’s a VERY arbitrary number, but it could be adjusted.
It would be like a rolling cap, if you’re at the limit, you could buy food, and after you eat it, that expended budget would be available for you to earn more money again.
Root of the issue is that there is no way to achieve this. People with money hire an army, now what?
What do you mean “now what?” lol. Assuming an American-centric or Euro-centric point of view, they would use their extremely expensive military armaments that can’t be purchased in large quantities by private organizations, and crush the rebellion. The government is the government because they have a monopoly on violence.
I mean, really. Their money is in banks subject to the oversight of the countries they’re trying to raise an army against. People may be relatively cheap, but they still need to be paid quite a bit to attempt to fight the military head on. Freeze their accounts and they’re screwed. Musk’s entire fortune isn’t even a single years worth of funding for the US military, and even if all the billionaires pooled their money it would take years to accumulate the excess hardware that is allowed to be sold and then train their PMCs on hardware. Years that they wouldn’t have if a bill was passed to cap wealth inequality.
We may yet reach the corporate dystopia where businesses can directly challenge governments, but we’re not quite there yet. At least not in the first world. Russia may have shot itself in its confusion, but that’s because the rich already are the government there.
Who is in government with rank enough to authorise this violence, but doesn’t have the above-$10M to lose?
To authorize repelling a slowly gathering military coup? That’s an incredibly low bar to commit treason, since honestly, even at the highest levels military bureaucrats aren’t going to be much wealthier than 10 mil. Unlike Congress, there’s a much closer eye kept on the finances of military leaders because they’re paranoid about foreign nations bribing them. It’s physical national security, which is one of the few areas that money doesn’t hold absolute power.
Even if they stood to lose a few million, there are plenty of genuine patriots, as well as people smart enough to realize that overthrowing the government by force does not mean the law instigating it gets repealed, but that the entire legal structure of the United States is no longer functioning. That’s fifty different militias reporting to states, Naval, Army, and Marine branches with hundreds of billions of dollars in ordinance that’s explicitly empowered to not follow unethical or illegal orders. It’d be a disaster for the coup throwers unless they managed a movie villain level simultaneous takeover of the Pentagon.
I’m not saying a coup is impossible, but the idea of rich people successfully overthrowing the American government by “hiring an army” is so cursed to failure that I almost don’t know where to even start. Could they cause unprecedented chaos and potentially kill a large portion of the government? Possibly. Could they succeed? Absolutely not.
Also, this whole chain completely ignores the fact that Congress would never set the cap at 10 million. I doubt they’d set it at a hundred million. My bet would be one billion, where it wouldn’t actually affect any of them. Were they to actually pass a 10 million dollar cap, the world would be such a different place that we wouldn’t need to worry about a handful of grumpy generals inciting treason.
No one said Marxism was all done and finished out of the box… feel free to workshop it as needed since it’s barely been attempted to put into practice at all.
deleted by creator
synthetic left
the latest scientific materialist work was recently released by my favorite social worker
Xi Jinping
its definitely being put into practice today
You need to ask for a little more or you’ll get all that but at the price of a corrupt and abusive regime.
A really good perk in Eastern Europe is that the brief period of communism flattened inequality and nationalised all infrastructure, and both have been kept under democracy and capitalism. Which means that those countries now kinda have the best of both worlds. Although with the snowballing of wealth that is inevitable under capitalism (unless regulated), it is a question of if, and not when, that starts to change.
Do you know of a community to discuss this? I feel like people stop criticizing economic systems once they benefit from it, and so people just default to communism or capitalism without actually considering the game theory behind it all.
deleted by creator
join the party mate
There is no such thing as no ruling class, and generally, anyone who sells you that is aiming to become the ruling class themselves. In the best case scenario, they want to be a benevolent dictator, and we might have seen a few people get close to that over the course of history but no benevolent dictatorship lasts longer than two generations and many fail even sooner than that. In the worst case, they are just riding on this political train and aim to be a not so benevolent dictator themselves.
Any system that does not account for human nature and build an incentive structure that guarantees the maximum possible equality/equity while assuming everyone involved is selfish is a system that’s ill suited for humanity. And if you force an ill-suited system, someone will inevitably swoop in and use it for their personal gains. Like as bad as our current system is with wealth inequality, the soviet system had an even slimmer and richer elite, they just hid it well.
I agree with all of your goals, but we need to do this the smart way, and that involves setting the priority exactly as your list goes and actually accounting for how people behave. The result might not be perfect, but we can do better than we do currently, I think that should be the goal rather than going for perfection and falling for snake oil on the way.
I seriously believe we must build an A.I. to replace human leadership since we proved time and time again that we are corruptible, and that when that happens you start getting your poor and elite classes and rampaging exploitation of resources and its refusal to imorove to better technologies and processes (ie oil companies). We need something avobe humans to administer resources and solve politics since we just made both into ridiculous games that are alreaddy fixed so that everybody , exept those that a where winning already, loosses. I believe that the survival of the human race hinges on this.
How would such an AI be created and how would it work?
that’s a question for the scientists to answer, we just have to watch their incentive structures and verify that they’re doing their peer review
I think that such A.I. should be build with the principles of sustainability of resources, the preseevation of human and animal life inluding but not limited to mental health, phisical health, fullfilment, and perception of freedoom. When it comes to penalties while i would like to get rid of any type of penal system i understeand its nececity due to people being people, so i would like for that system to focus on rehabilyitation rather than punishment as long as its possible and if not then just on keeping bad actors from causing any more harm into society. It should distribute resources to the human populance according to their necesities when it comes to basic needs being housing, energy, plumbing, food, medical suplies and services, clothing, transport, entertainment, social fulfilment, etc. when it comes to other things like nicer furniture, software, specialiced tools or anything on the frivolous nature or customisation then it shouldnt be a problem asking the a.i. as long as requests are reasonable since resources should be exploited sustainably enough so that this tyoes of needs could be fullfiled, like what i mean is “i whant a wooden table like this design i found” would be fullfilable request and not " i want a chair that looks like this made out of plutonium" since plutonium is toxic and should be used with care and only for cientific and energy producing porpuses. It should have as a goal to automate as much labor as posible, from agriculture, metallurgy, transport,etc. all the way to accounting, administration, executive decisions, software design, and even science, in the way as to research technologies and other fields for the benefith of humanity be it medical, technological or even space travel, all of this would leave humans to pursue more recreative activities like self fullfilment, socialising, pursuing artistic endeavours like music, painting, literature, cooking, plastical arts, teather (traditional or movies) and cientific research and studying, or just living it with their loved ones, friends or alone in the woods, if anyone whants to labor because they hate themselves (i mean in an ironic way) then they very much can. Also while it would sound bad, it should have control over all weapon and defence systems in the world and have the ability to create more if the need arises and be able to operate them at discretion in case of an external attack on humanity. It should also be able to better itself and self preserve and be abble to feel love for humanity but in a good way so that it doesnt turn against us. Look what im proposing is that we create god pretty much since its the only way we are gonna survive global warming and end war between ourselves for ever. But since your comment is givving me the vibes of being in a condecending manner in the: “AHA GOTH YA DAM LIB” sence, i dont think you are gonna read any of this and if you do you are probably gonna argue that i didnt tell you exactly step by step how to build an A.I. overlod so to that i tell ya of course i wouldnt because i dont know how since im just some dumb dumb on the internet, and while i would like to work building A.I. thats kinda far away from me at this point in my life. And if the down to upvote ratio on my original comment and your response is telling of anything, then its probably gonna validate any point you are gonna trow against mine since im the unpopular one and every one is gonna be able to rule me out as some jerk with a wrong opinion so have fun with that i guess.
Sorry for bad english.
i dont think you are gonna read any of this
THINK AGAIN YA DAM LIB XD
In all seriousness though, I can understand your desire for utopia and for technology to solve all our problems (I desire those things too!), but I think people generally view those two desires as naive. The world’s problems usually don’t have simple solutions, AI is still somewhat of a new area of research with its own potential dangers, and putting all your stock into AI solving our problems ignores the very real solutions that could be implemented sooner rather than later.
But don’t beat yourself up too much over meaningless internet points, learn about what you’re interested in more! If AI is your cup of tea and you want to learn more about the potential issues with creating super powerful AI, I can strongly recommend the channel “Robert Moses AI Safety”. Particularly his videos about The Orthogonality Thesis and Mesa-Optimizers.
Fuck Communism and fuck unchecked capitalism. People deserve basic human rights. Free heallthcare, education, insurance and liveable basic income is a must. It doesn’t make your society full of freeloaders instead it gives all the people a chance to become what they want in the society. I hope that people can see this basic difference and we can work towards for a better future as humanity instead of whatever country title.
7 out of 11 countries believe the end of the USSR harmed their countries rather than benefited them
Reflecting back on the breakup of the Soviet Union that happened 22 years ago next week, residents in seven out of 11 countries that were part of the union are more likely to believe its collapse harmed their countries than benefited them. Only Azerbaijanis, Kazakhstanis, and Turkmens are more likely to see benefit than harm from the breakup. Georgians are divided.
Hungary: 72% of Hungarians say they are worse off today economically than under communism
A remarkable 72% of Hungarians say that most people in their country are actually worse off today economically than they were under communism. Only 8% say most people in Hungary are better off, and 16% say things are about the same. In no other Central or Eastern European country surveyed did so many believe that economic life is worse now than during the communist era. This is the result of almost universal displeasure with the economy. Fully 94% describe the country’s economy as bad, the highest level of economic discontent in the hard hit region of Central and Eastern Europe. Just 46% of Hungarians approve of their country’s switch from a state-controlled economy to a market economy; 42% disapprove of the move away from communism. The public is even more negative toward Hungary’s integration into Europe; 71% say their country has been weakened by the process.
Romania: 63% of the survey participants said their life was better during communism
The most incredible result was registered in a July 2010 IRES (Romanian Institute for Evaluation and Strategy) poll, according to which 41% of the respondents would have voted for Ceausescu, had he run for the position of president. And 63% of the survey participants said their life was better during communism, while only 23% attested that their life was worse then. Some 68% declared that communism was a good idea, just one that had been poorly applied.
Germany: more than half of former eastern Germans defend the GDR
Glorification of the German Democratic Republic is on the rise two decades after the Berlin Wall fell. Young people and the better off are among those rebuffing criticism of East Germany as an “illegitimate state.” In a new poll, more than half of former eastern Germans defend the GDR.
28 percent of Czechs say they were better off under the Communist regime
Roughly 28 percent of Czechs say they were better off under the Communist regime, according to a poll conducted by the polling institute SC&C and released Sunday.
81% of Serbians believe they lived best in Yugoslavia
A poll shows that as many as 81 per cent of Serbians believe they lived best in the former Yugoslavia -”during the time of socialism”.
The majority of Russians polled in a 2016 study said they would prefer living under the old Soviet Union and would like to see the socialist system and the Soviet state restored.
The above memes are almost always made by Americans, whose brains are riddled with red scare brainworms and are completely devoid of any knowledge or understand of what the left thinks in Europe because Americans do not have a left.
A meme like this is what happens when you believe the GOP that doing anything to benefit regular people is communism.
Yer not gonna fool me with yer
checks notes
child safety laws, ya damn dirty communist!
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
I think the way we argue over labels hurts us. If I use heavy regulation and government aid to limit the abuses in a capitalist system, at what point does the label change to “socialism”? I think we do ourselves a disservice to create these strict conceptions of systems like capitalism, socialism, or communism. Then when one fails we get to say “well that wasn’t true x”. And the labels allow people to boogeyman an idea. And worst of all, we eliminate the possibility to take good lessons from multiple different systems and incorporate them into our system. I think we would be better served promoting policies on a case by case basis instead of using these huge words. And to be clear, I’m a bit of a hypocrite here. I’ve been mostly telling people I’m a “social democrat” or that I support “capitalism with heavy regulations”. But even those words can get picked apart and don’t really capture nuance. My main point is that I think this thread is a perfect encapsulation of how these arguments stop us from getting behind good policies when we bicker about the definitions of words that mean different things to different people.
IMHO, by this point those labels are nothing but thought-terminating clichés.
Yeah. Like saying you believe that companies beyond a certain size should be legally required to seek a vote from their employees before implementing certain types of changes is a real policy to argue about. Call it democratizing business or whatever you want. And then that’s an actual concrete issue we can argue about. Or if you believe in the government buying out businesses beyond a certain size, that’s a specific conversation we can have and we can discuss the hypothetical implementation of that. Call it business seizure or whatever. Just saying “I believe in socialism” doesn’t dig enough into the details of how you perceive socialism or how you would implement it. And frankly, I think it hurts the socialists or communists or whoever is trying to persuade the current culture away from what we have more than anybody else. Ideas grow when you make real, concrete proposals. These exceedingly large scale labels usually end up killing a conversation rather than feeding it. Someone gets mad at a label and then everything shuts down on that sticking point.
Then when one fails we get to say “well that wasn’t true x”. And the labels allow people to boogeyman an idea.
Essentially a No True Scotsman fallacy.
I think it’s better to simply state that things like Stalin’s USSR weren’t communist. Period.
It wasn’t “almost communist”; it was a dictatorship. So to say it wasn’t “real communism” is like boiling a sock and saying it’s not “real dinner”. It’s not dinner at all, it’s a sock.
I think labels are still useful for discussion, but I completely agree that we should regularly rediscuss what they mean and how they evolve.
I find this arguing over labels more and more as I browse online, and it is sooo exhausting. I have noticed so many instances of arguing and discourse where both sides have similar ideals and want the same things, but argue with each other over stereotypes of labels on the other side, and point to the faults of the vocal rabid minority on the other side as if to prove a point. Sigh.
The label changes to socialism on the same day that the old institutions are thrown out and the new institutions are introduced.
Socialism is the transitionary stage of society between capitalism and communism. Its defining feature is that it is a society run by the proletariat as the ruling class instead of the bourgeoisie. Everything else about it can be in some state of flux based on the conditions, because it is transitional. Socialism is a process, not a magic button.
Social democracy is not socialism. You are just a capitalist that likes welfare. Your ideology has absolutely no desire to change the ruling class or overturn the system that is currently burning the world and leading us to destruction.
Bumner, you should have started your comment with the last paragraph. It would have been easier to get the point across
The liberals obsessed with the “nordic model” still would’ve downvoted it. They don’t like having to wrestle with the reality of climate change. Our options are socialism or extinction.
Climate change will not cause human extinction. Even the worst predictions aren’t close to extinction level. There’s 8 billion of us and we have technology.
Climate change will cause bad shit to happen. It already has. But bad shit is not the same as extinction.
Near-total collapse of the ecosystem is not something we are anywhere close to teching through. Whether there are a few enclaves of civilization clinging to life or not, life on Earth as we know it is being destroyed by industry.
Oh man we won’t go extinct so we shouldn’t worry about 80% of us dying ! Nevermind the absolutely hostile and inhospitable conditions those who do make it through will have for the rest of eternity.
You are just a capitalist that likes welfare. Your ideology has absolutely no desire to change the ruling class or overturn the system that is currently burning the world and leading us to destruction.
I don’t think you help your case arguing this way. I’m not even dissecting socialism when I say that - just your approach to argument. You don’t know my ideology. Creating a strawman of my views isn’t going to convince me or anyone else that you have a good point. Hell, for a long time I did consider myself an actual socialist. I would love to lay out my reasons for my movement away from that, but I’m not sure you’re ready to have that respectful exchange of views.
The liberals obsessed with the “nordic model” still would’ve downvoted it. They don’t like having to wrestle with the reality of climate change. Our options are socialism or extinction.
Beginning an argument with “Your head is up your ass so far that I won’t bother arguing. I’m right no matter what.” is a sure way to have people dismiss your arguments outright. I say this all because I want my opponents to be good at arguing. I want to hear persuasive viewpoints. I don’t believe for a moment that I have all the answers, so I welcome any opposition to the beliefs that I’ve come to possess. If you believe that you have the answers, then I’m genuinely all ears. But unfortunately, arguing isn’t about being right - it’s about persuading other people that you are. The internet has made it easy to lose sight of this and argue with hostility instead of respect. I’m trying to be sincere here. Please consider the purpose of getting into these internet spats. I see so much hostility outright from people on the left and it genuinely sucks. I find that when I try to dig even a little bit into arguments for socialism or communism that I often hit this barrier of hostility. It’s not a good way of selling a viewpoint. And you can say that it’s not your job, but then I ask why we’re even here having this conversation.
Now, I’ll stop patronizing you. I’ll throw my argument out there so you can tear it to pieces. Back to labels - what socialism looks like to you depends on who you are. You say it’s when “the old institutions are thrown out and the new institutions are introduced”. I’ll take that to mean some form of government is in possession of the means of production across the board? My hesitancy towards socialism is mostly centered on my knowledge of history and the repeated trends of powerful institutions decaying into corruption and greed. I think socialism could genuinely work really well as long as the people in charge were kept honest. But my skepticism is towards the long term sustainability of such a system. Time and again we see institutions decay and fall prey to humanity’s worst impulses. The fall of the Roman Republic (and the regular chaos of the Roman Empire for that matter) is my classic go-to for this, but there are plenty of non-western examples as well. The best cases I’ve seen in my studies of various histories seem to be centered around cultures that dispersed their power into many smaller institutions. My problem with socialism is that it inherently says “we’re going to get rid of business corruption and government corruption by combining the two”. I think creating an even smaller, more focused center of power in society is a dangerous proposal - it becomes all the more easy for the wealthy elites to worm their way into that power and take control. Essentially you’re taking all of those wealthy capitalist greedy dirtbags and then moving them into the government.
Capitalism, on the other hand, removes business from government which allows, in theory, for the government to act as a counter-weight to business. Now, you and I both know that that hasn’t stopped wealthy elites from worming their way into capitalism and capturing government interests. But my main point here is that socialism isn’t solving that problem. It’s throwing fuel on the fire by cutting out the one supposed protection we do have, which is a separation of government interests and business interests. Ostensibly, when capitalism is working the way it should, the government is acting as a counterweight to business greed. I think there are better ways to strengthen that counterweight that don’t necessarily fall under the label of “socialism”. I think heavily regulated capitalism is better than outright socialism because in the ideal case the government is still acting as a tool of the people, flexing its power in opposition to businesses. The ideal case in socialism has the government acting as the businesses itself, which I believe would encourage greed and would actually cause even less incentive to address things like climate change.
Now, I’ll stop patronizing you. I’ll throw my argument out there so you can tear it to pieces. Back to labels - what socialism looks like to you depends on who you are. You say it’s when “the old institutions are thrown out and the new institutions are introduced”. I’ll take that to mean some form of government is in possession of the means of production across the board? My hesitancy towards socialism is mostly centered on my knowledge of history and the repeated trends of powerful institutions decaying into corruption and greed. I think socialism could genuinely work really well as long as the people in charge were kept honest.
Nah man this is nonsense and it comes from people who exist on the fringe of politics who don’t actually participate and have never actually had a political education or tried to give themselves one.
Socialism is exceptionally well defined as an ideology. You take Marx’s historical materialism and come to the conclusion that all of human history is driven by class struggle and revolution. You then reach the understanding that there is a possible ending of all class struggle through the abolishment of class (communism). After that you accept that communism can not be jumped to straight from capitalism because it would simply be crushed by capitalist states through being unable to defend itself. This leads you to the belief that a transition exists between capitalism and communism - socialism. What is the socialist state? A state in which the proletarian class of society overthrew the bourgeoisie(capitalist class of society) and built a dictatorship of the proletariat. This of course is not a dictatorship of an individual but a dictatorship of class, the opposite of capitalism where the bourgeoisie have designed a system and institutions that always comes to the outcomes that benefit them the most, instead it is a society where the proletariat designed their institutions to always come to proletarian outcomes. Economics and everything else within this socialist state differ from country to country, because conditions differ and what is possible differs. The important aspect is that the proletariat control the power.
This is a basic 101. The fact that you see liberals misusing the word socialism does not change the fact that this is definitionally what socialism is. We’ll argue about whether market economies or single party or multi party or completely centralised planning or something in between are best, but all socialists will agree on the above. It is the core definition of socialism and is more or less what Engels and Marx laid out 200+ years ago. It is materialist and it is non-utopian because it accepts that these states will have their flaws, socialism isn’t a magically perfect society, it has problems and struggles, the difference is that it comes to better outcomes for its populations than capitalist societies when compared at an equal level of development. (This is a very important point with regards to the difference that proletarian rule vs bourgeoise rule has.)
But my skepticism is towards the long term sustainability of such a system. Time and again we see institutions decay and fall prey to humanity’s worst impulses. The fall of the Roman Republic (and the regular chaos of the Roman Empire for that matter) is my classic go-to for this, but there are plenty of non-western examples as well. The best cases I’ve seen in my studies of various histories seem to be centered around cultures that dispersed their power into many smaller institutions. My problem with socialism is that it inherently says “we’re going to get rid of business corruption and government corruption by combining the two”. I think creating an even smaller, more focused center of power in society is a dangerous proposal - it becomes all the more easy for the wealthy elites to worm their way into that power and take control. Essentially you’re taking all of those wealthy capitalist greedy dirtbags and then moving them into the government.
This is contrary to what socialist institutional design actually is. You don’t get smaller numbers involved, you get much bigger numbers involved. The basic socialist democratic system implemented in the single party states is one where you start with a small group of people, 150 or so, called a worker’s council, these people select a representative and are intended to physically know their representative. This person then represents them at the local workers council. Then every representative on this council selects from among their reps someone to represent that council at the next tier. And the next and the next. 12 tiers up until the national congress, where the final tier selects leaders councils and various committees etc. This design removes popularity contests from the leadership and builds a democratic meritocracy where anyone at the top has also worked their way up through the entire system demonstrating actual ability to improve the lives of the people to their peers at every single level. The design of this differs slightly from country to country of course but these fundamentals remain the same. My point here is that you don’t have less leaders, or bigger centralisation of power, you actually have a larger spread of power across more people. Even the highest councils like the politburo don’t typically have a leader with special powers above anyone else on the council, even if we go to controversial figures like Stalin, he didn’t have special powers, he had exactly the same powers that the other 5 members of the Politburo had. But let’s stay off controversy. There’s a neat video of Cuba’s system here that I strongly recommend
Capitalism, on the other hand, removes business from government which allows, in theory, for the government to act as a counter-weight to business.
This is not really true is it? Capitalism is designed from the ground up to ensure that the people in power are the bourgeoisie - the financial elite. Assuming you’re american (correct me if not) who runs your country? The people on Wall Street do that’s who. No not the people. No not the government. The people on Wall Street run the country through the think tanks they fund dictating policy, through the media they own deciding who wins and who loses, through the political parties and representatives that they fund with hundreds of millions of dollars. This system is designed from the ground up to ensure that it does not produce proletarian outcomes, in fact there are several quotes I could give you where founders explicitly state such.
It’s throwing fuel on the fire by cutting out the one supposed protection we do have, which is a separation of government interests and business interests. Ostensibly, when capitalism is working the way it should, the government is acting as a counterweight to business greed. I think there are better ways to strengthen that counterweight that don’t necessarily fall under the label of “socialism”.
Under capitalism you have a system that is designed to chase profit. Everything about it is built around that central point. A very good way to chase profit is to hold the levers of power in order to wield them in a way to chase more profit. You can not counterweight this in a society where the people chasing the profit have all the money, own all the media, own all the politicians, own all the policy tanks, etc etc etc. This is the way bourgeoise-democracy is designed to come to outcomes that benefit the bourgeoisie. It is a dictatorship of class built for them.
The proletarian democracy on the other hand is a dictatorship of class built for the people. And it does a lot of shit things, because it’s a state and states do shit stuff. It does all the shit stuff that the capitalist states do in fact (and oh boy they’ve done a lot of shit things we could reel off). But what it also does is come to outcomes that are proletarian, and thus benefit a massively larger number of the population than the bourgeoise-democracy does.
You talk about needing government to mitigate business and I AGREE. But the reason government does not mitigate business in the bourgeoise-democracy is because the bourgeoisie run the government, so they obviously do what benefits their class. When you put the proletarians in power on the other hand you get a government that DOES mitigate the power of business, oppressively so in fact (oh boy they love to remind us of that). In exactly the same ways that the bourgeoise state oppresses the proletariat, the proletarian state oppresses the bourgeoisie. This is your government that mitigates the worst aspects of business. Properly.
There’s no use arguing with Lenins2ndCat. I’ve argued with them before, and they already know they’re right despite any arguments or evidence to the contrary.
Because the single only way to do communism is how the UdSSR did it, there’s no other way.
And of course it’s only possible to either agree with the whole of a specific ideology, or none of it. There’s no “good parts of communism” or “bad parts of capitalism” it’s only ever all good or all bad.
western teenagers praising capitalism
the children sewing their clothes, harvesting their food, mining their metals, …
