Without further context, this kind of thing just seems to me like an exercise to get people to imagine a better future. And remember, some people are very stuck in a mindset that a better future is not possible and that the current way is inevitable and always has been.
I also disagree with this framing:
These people are why communists are seen as a joke.
I don’t think communists generally are seen as a joke, first of all. In my experience, the detractors tend to either frame them as frightfully efficient villains or woefully inefficient idealists. But even the most vicious anti-communist rhetoric seems to acknowledge on some level that communists have been impactful historically, even if that rhetoric frames it as a negative impact. There may be a distinction here between communists and communism, where the 2nd is more what’s framed as idealism and the 1st as the villainy.
Second, the wording here is “leftist commune” not “communist society”. Those who use “leftist” to describe themselves, at least in the US cultural context where this might have derived from, can range from “I want universal healthcare” to, well… ultras. There is a lot of ignorance and newness to communism within that, and being a little naive about how things are going to go isn’t necessarily the same as having firmly held views that insist we can “jump from how things are now to fully automated luxury gay space communism within a year, if only people push hard enough on being principled and not revisionist.”
Without further context, this kind of thing just seems to me like an exercise to get people to imagine a better future. And remember, some people are very stuck in a mindset that a better future is not possible and that the current way is inevitable and always has been.
I also disagree with this framing:
I don’t think communists generally are seen as a joke, first of all. In my experience, the detractors tend to either frame them as frightfully efficient villains or woefully inefficient idealists. But even the most vicious anti-communist rhetoric seems to acknowledge on some level that communists have been impactful historically, even if that rhetoric frames it as a negative impact. There may be a distinction here between communists and communism, where the 2nd is more what’s framed as idealism and the 1st as the villainy.
Second, the wording here is “leftist commune” not “communist society”. Those who use “leftist” to describe themselves, at least in the US cultural context where this might have derived from, can range from “I want universal healthcare” to, well… ultras. There is a lot of ignorance and newness to communism within that, and being a little naive about how things are going to go isn’t necessarily the same as having firmly held views that insist we can “jump from how things are now to fully automated luxury gay space communism within a year, if only people push hard enough on being principled and not revisionist.”